Hegemony's Downfall

The big picture is painted with broad strokes.

A prolific statement perhaps, but an analogy worth exploring. It goes along with "seeing the forest for the trees." Each bristle of the paintbrush is unique, yet part of a whole - the paintbrush itself. Together, expression is found in thousands of strokes in a myriad of color and texture, and each stroke unique as each bristle contributes in its own way. Every tree is unique, and every tree contributes to the big picture that is the forest.

The big picture is Earth itself, and people are the bristles of the paintbrush. In other words, human beings, all of them, create the world.

Hegemony is another word for superpower. Hegemony exists based on three conditions: economic, military and political strength. The United States was the world's hegemonic power since WWII, and now shares it's power with the European Union and China (Waving Goodbye to Hegemony).

By its definition, hegemony is leadership, not dominance, of the world; leaving each culture, society and country intact and untouched. It is an oxymoron to say that hegemony is shared by three entities, no matter how idealistically sound the theory of leadership instead of dominance may be. To be a hegemony means absolute financial, military and political strength over all others. What is avoided, nay, danced around in today's news, is that the position of World Leader is vacant. It would be more accurate to say that the European Union, China and the United States are now campaigning for election; but only if democracy truly existed.

Hegemony, in its idealistic form as leadership, would be the handle of the paintbrush, the soil beneath the roots of the forest's trees. Transparency is an acceptable attribute, translucency is not. The potential unity of hegemony is no longer possible or probable. Will today's point in history mark the disintegration of the big picture?

Perhaps it is beneficial to rebuild from the ground up, to conceptualize the canvas under the paint, to honor the Earth as the foundation to life that it truly is.

Yes, it is abstract. The only way through an abstract to reach truth is to understand it individually. Without bristles, there is no paintbrush; without trees, there is no forest.