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Paradigms and Cheon Il Guk
The Unification Movement has come a long way and it has come to age. Its history is so multi-facetted that it will probably never be told entirely. Sun Myung Moon, the old man behind it, has always talked and steered towards Cheon Il Guk - one world under God.
I see that not so much as a system of government but as the description of an internal goal that is supposed to inspire external development. I know that this is just one way to see it. Numerous quotations lend themselves towards the interpretation that an external kingdom with him at the top is behind all his endeavors.
I will talk about that elsewhere sometime – check out the section ‘Movement’. Here the focus is on something else - the issue of change and how the movement goes about moving into the next century. It’s about time.
In February there was a conference in the ‘Heaven and Earth Training Center’ in Chung Pyung, Korea, with the title “Cheon Il Guk Leaders Assembly 2005”. An underlying theme – according to the opening speech by Chung Hwan Kwak, head of dozens of organizations within the movement – was supposed to be the opening towards new paradigms, in other words change.
Was it due to the fact that the second generation of the movement, the children of the early members, has no intention of stepping into the mess that the first generation would like to pass on? Were it the many situations occurring from diverse cultural environments in world wide activities, the clashes of value systems, the movement’s image in Western countries? We spoke about this over breakfast, lunch and dinner, sometimes.
The conference’s approach to these topics was less direct. The opening speech by Chung Hwan Kwak mentioned unfulfilled expectations that slowed down the implementations of new instructions. The solution – a new start. Other suggestions included the integration of organizations to reduce redundancy and free up manpower or to put it less favorably – centralization.
The details were left for later. Unfortunately, later came, but details didn’t. Even though the change of mindset was a central concern behind the conference, the event proceeded with the usual, old-style reporting of continental directors and leaders of other activities in Korea.
The first evening sported a question and answer session which consisted basically of polite requests for clarification of instructions and procedures. The organization of the session - questions had to be submitted in writing during the day - did not allow for spontaneity anyway. And the habit of most speakers to answer a question with a speech also didn’t help.
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