An expression of power, an empire is the supreme expression

[samiaseo222]

Life and death, destroying and creating, destroying and doomed in its turn to eventually perish. (The religions of the Book preach against this yet they too preach an empire, the eternal empire of God.) The imperial struggle is a struggle for power over the self and other selves and over the entire environment. But there are other selves expressing themselves in like manner. So the empire encounters resistance. Empires, posing a challenge to others, are themselves under constant threat from without and within.

Frontiers which are set by trials of strength may as easily be shrunk by trials of strength. Where are the limits to an empire? A nation has geographical, linguistic, tribal, cultural and religious boundaries but an empire and the idea of the empire embraces all these. The limits of imperial rule are marked out as places where the forces of empire have been job function email list obliged for reasons which are tactical and practical, not natural, to cry halt. Of course, empires are constrained by geopolitical factors and may be hindered from expansion by natural barriers, an ocean, a range of mountains..but what imperialist (as opposed to nationalist) ever insisted that certain areas were by nature "out of bounds" because the empire "had no right" to them? The "rights of peoples" is a nationalist slogan raised against an empire.

Popular wisdom, not least Christian wisdom, treats power and the quest for power with deep suspicion. Who does not know Lord Acton's dictum, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely"? But life itself is unthinkable without power. Life is power. Political and commercial empires wield power over what is essential to survival: food, and essential to prosperity: trade, and essential to growth: space. Cerebrally and physically our bodies work "imperially". There are obvious natural limits to our mental and physical powers as individuals, but our minds have devised many ways of expanding these natural limits. In this sense Spengler in Mensch und Technik defined technical appliances as extensions to the human body. (Ernst Juenger went as far as to imply they were extensions of the human body).