Chapter 4: The Adolescence of Humankind

The World Empire of Genghis Khan

Over long ages, East Asian culture began as the farming culture of the coasts, changed into the nomadic culture of the interior, and then saw the two cultures come together and fuse; adapting to the four seasons, it achieved a complete culture and civilization. The East Asian culture of the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) was the culture and civilization of a great world empire that advanced along the convenient Silk Road into Southwest Asia and Europe and was connected even to Africa and the Americas. After the Tang had held power for 300 years, East Asia saw the Jin dynasty, ruled by the Manchus, grow in the north, and the Yangtze culture of the Song dynasty grow in the south. The Mongol state, which had been growing in the north, competed with the Jin, fellow descendants of the Dongyi, and then united the peoples of the same blood in the remaining Manchurian region and the Tibetan region, and at last the power of East Asia set out on the history of conquering the world.

The Mongol society into which Temüjin (Genghis Khan) was born in 1167 was in a period of ceaseless war and hardship to secure pastureland to produce food as the population of the nomadic society grew. It was under constant pressure from its neighbors of the same Manchurian blood, the Jin to the east and the Uyghur state to the south. Temüjin, who grew up from childhood as a child of fortune, gathered soldiers and cultivated the pleasure of winning in competition, conquering, and possessing. In his thirties he unified the Mongol state, and in 1209, the year he turned 42, he conquered the Uyghur state on the upper Yellow River, which held the wealth of the old Tang, and secured its resources.

In 1215 he conquered the Jin, which held the wealth of the old Han down to the lower Yellow River, and established the great Mongol state uniting three states that shared a language. Soon after, in 1918, he invaded the Pakistan region, the old Persian cultural area, and the Caspian Sea region of eastern Europe. Continuing, in 1223 he subdued the lands around the Black Sea, the old domain of Rome, and his military power possessed the greatest strength, equipped with formidable weapons and labor. While handing over the leadership to his sons and kinsmen as his health weakened, Temüjin returned to Karakorum, in his Mongolian homeland, and in 1227, at the age of 60, having founded a great empire reaching from the Manchurian region of East Asia to the Black Sea region of eastern Europe, he entrusted it to his son Ögedei Khan and his kinsmen and departed this world.

The transcontinental road on which Genghis Khan rode with his cavalry was a great highway his ancestors the Huns had already opened when they destroyed Rome, so he could easily accomplish the great undertaking of seizing Southwest Asia and eastern Europe in five years. Ögedei Khan, who carried on his father's undertaking and returned to Europe, attacked southern Europe between the Caspian and Black Seas, the base of the white peoples, in 1230, and from 1236 plundered the whole of eastern Europe thoroughly for six years. At the same time he attacked Tibet, Vietnam, and eastern India.

On the Korean Peninsula, the Mongols took Gaeseong, the Goryeo capital, in 1231 and occupied Donggyeong (Gyeongju) in 1260, and in 1274 and 1281 they twice attempted to invade Japan, but suffered from the sea winds and failed. From this time, Japanese culture, which had belonged to the Korean cultural sphere, independently preserved the Tang-Song culture that Korea had possessed, while the Korean Peninsula, following the changes of continental culture, shifted from the Tang-Song cultural tendency to the Yuan-Ming cultural tendency.

In 1254, the Catholic Church, which had played the leading role in the medieval culture of Europe, felt threatened, and the Roman papacy sent envoys to the Mongol capital, Karakorum, to petition for protection of the Holy See. In 1258 the Mongols attacked Baghdad, Turkey, and the whole Mediterranean coast; then in 1260 Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, took power, and over 34 years he occupied the island nations of Southeast Asia and southern India and Sri Lanka, further expanded his territory in Southwest Asia and Europe, made all the invaded countries pay tribute, and named his state the Yuan dynasty. He moved the capital to Dadu (Beijing), enlarged the Forbidden City, re-established the capital of the world that Chang'an had enjoyed in the Tang, and once again made it the center of world culture and civilization. That he founded an empire so much larger than the Roman Empire as to be beyond comparison is because the world had long been the domain of Asians.

The nations of Europe paid tribute, and merchants came and went from every continent. Among them, Marco Polo and his father, who came bearing a letter from the Pope, worked as servants of Kublai Khan and, traveling back and forth to their homeland, introduced the culture and civilization of East Asia to western Europe. To them the environment of an advanced country — such as the Mongols using paper money while Europe was still using coins — was astonishing. In East Asia, people wore cloth woven from cotton, silkworm thread, and wool, and paper and woodblock printing were developed for exchanging knowledge and information; this culture and civilization was a marvel to them.

Maritime industry flourished; they explored the geography of the world, developed sea routes, and received tribute from continents and island nations, and Marco Polo visited Sri Lanka and brought back the Mongols' taxes. The land and sea routes linking Beijing to eastern India had long been the passage between East Asia and South Asia, linking the politics, religion, and economy — Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and so on — of East Asia and India. This road was opened before the Silk Road linking East Asia to Europe existed, and, together with the man-made canal linking the Yellow River and the Yangtze, it shows the world's earliest-developed linkage of farming culture and nomadic culture. Later, in the Ming dynasty, world navigation charts were drawn up, which, together with the compass, resulted in East Asian navigational technology spreading to Europe and spurred the maritime industry of western Europe.

Mongol soldiers developed cannons using gunpowder explosions, which were passed on to Europe and brought change to the history of warfare. Woodblock printing, and later the metal movable-type printing developed in Korea, were for a long time the means by which East Asia developed its culture and civilization. The printing technology passed to western Europe at this time resulted in bringing the Renaissance to Europe. It woke Europe, which was going through the Dark Ages of the medieval period, from its sleep, and maritime activity began in western Europe. After the Mongol invasions, the European interior and coasts underwent revolutionary changes in their way of life, and from this time world history began to change from a history of East Asian dominance to a history of western European dominance.

The Xiongnu empire, formed of the Huns, conquered Rome and Europe, and competed with the Han dynasty while ruling the nomadic belt stretching from eastern Europe through East Asia. Around the seventh century they built the Uyghur empire and contended with the Tang, and Genghis Khan, born in AD 1167, once again united the nomads and founded an empire unifying the Eurasian continent, bringing the greatest change in human history. It gave the Europeans, passing through the dark period of the European Middle Ages, the opportunity to learn again the culture and civilization of Asia they had forgotten since the invasion of the Xiongnu. From that time, modern civilization began in the world.

Three Languages

Just as black people, white people, and people of medium color live together in the world, within the speech we use there are three different kinds of words: words spoken out of love, words spoken out of feeling, and words spoken out of thought. The words of love begin between mother and baby; as the child grows, the sounds of emotion appear next — the sound of crying aloud, the sound of laughing with joy, the sound of singing in merriment — and as human reason develops, the words of thought arise. The world's linguists seem to think that as humankind began settled life in Southeast Asia around 50,000 years ago, clan villages grew and social language developed.

Praying, being comforted, recovering love, gaining hope, and escaping misfortune — this is the language of the spirit, which our lives absolutely need. Dance, song, and art are the language of feeling, which lets us share what moves us in our lives and so have richer experiences. Science, which lets us understand all things between earth and heaven and judge rightly the events that happen around us, is the language of reason.

There is an old saying that thoughts give birth to words and actions, words and actions become habits, and habits determine destiny. Because people cannot distinguish these three languages, their actions run into difficulties, and they even go so far as to commit terrible deeds. The foremost of these are religious wars. The 9/11 terrorist attacks, which took thousands of lives in an instant, are a clear example. This was a tragedy that arose from mistaking the language of the spirit in the Quran for the language of reason.

North Korea's religion that deifies its leader, the Catholicism of Hitler, who took the lives of six million Jews, and the war between Islamic nations and Christian nations that is still going on — are these not tormenting the world? It seems to be the misfortune of humankind, which has failed to distinguish the language and thought of the spirit from those of reason. The theory of evolution is scientifically explained common sense and the knowledge of modern people. To argue back and forth that it differs from the Bible is a self-contradiction that confuses spirit and reason. Even if the Bible says the creation of humankind and the Earth took place 6,000 years ago, that is the language of the spirit, so there should be no need to explain it in the language of reason.

Looking back over human history, the religious culture that holds the lives of family precious and marvels at the mysteries of nature appeared first. Artistic culture — human song and dance, the chang [narrative song] and sijo [classical verse] of the Korean Peninsula, and the metaphor of written poetry — followed after. Scientific culture began last, from the time people used tools of wood, earth, and stone, drew pictures and then invented writing, and used metal tools. Now, with the power of computers, a new information culture is forming, and the face of the Earth is changing rapidly. If the intellectuals of today can distinguish the language of the spirit, the language of feeling, and the language of reason, and so do away with misunderstandings and illusions about one another, the world will regain peace.

As black people, white people, and people of medium color live mixed together, the regional notion of living divided by bloodline until now is disappearing. Now we are all becoming kin of mixed blood. Connected by the Internet, a new computer language is appearing, and is the world not becoming one household under one roof, eating rice from one pot? Is it not the right path for today's intellectuals to live a truly human life — enjoying peacefully, each in his own equal form, all the benefits of science, art, and religion, and leaving a clean natural environment and peace for our descendants?

The Confusion of Reason, Feeling, and Spirit in Adolescence

If we call the period up to 100,000 years ago, when modern humans were born in Africa, humanity's gestation, then humankind passed through infancy on reaching Southeast Asia and through boyhood on reaching East Asia, achieving the growth of civilization and culture in the world; and from the time the Mongol Empire founded an empire that united the world, it reached young adulthood and formed today's modern world. From the time humankind appeared on Earth until the thirteenth century, the culture and civilization of East Asia was the base that led the world. The culture and civilization produced by mutual competition and mutual harmony between the growing population of farmers in the vast farmlands of Southeast Asia and the enormous population of nomads in the nomadic lands of Northeast Asia were the wellspring of the development of human life on Earth.

The Great Wall is a high-speed military circuit road on that dividing line, and a symbol of East Asia in human history showing the balance of two opposing forces. The largest empire in human history was founded when the Mongol people conquered Asia and Europe. And the Mongol Empire showed the process of change from childhood to adolescence in humanity's growth. The character of that period was like a boy and a girl feeling attraction to the opposite sex they are seeing for the first time: it was a time when Asia looked upon the populated regions of other continents such as Europe and Africa and felt their attraction, and Europe looked upon Asia for the first time and was attracted.

When we compare human history to the life of one person, the changes of adolescence are the period of the most violent change, both physically and emotionally. Mongol history shows that part and character of world history. During that time, humanity's being, feeling, and intellect passed through the growth of infancy and of maturing children, and world history shows it at last reaching the young adulthood of adolescence. The final part of Chapter 2 likened the entire history of humankind to the life of one person.

There I likened humanity's birth and growth in the past to the process of children growing up, as if the Earth's environment were a household environment and its master, instead of parents, were God the Creator; and I explained the character of modern humankind, which, having passed through infancy and grown as a child, at last reaches adolescence and shows a tendency to resist its household environment, rebel against its parents, and try to stand on its own. The future of humankind will pass through young adulthood and at last form its own household.

It is a prediction and explanation of a beautiful future in which humankind gives birth to its next generation, the space people who will leave the Earth, and cultivates the ability to change from the Earth environment to a space environment, so that the history of new life begins. As the source of mechanical energy changes from fossil oil to the energy produced by transformations of atoms and electrons, Southwest Asia and South Asia will once again ally with East Asia.

As South America forms, with North America and Europe, the power of the American sphere, and as the allied forces of Asia and the allied forces of America come into balance, a new generation will be born; human culture, which began in Southeast Asia, will return to its origin, and the one history that began between God and humankind will now leave the Earth and head for space. The evolutionary process of growth from clan society to village society, regional society, city-state, feudal state, and empire began in Southeast Asia and was achieved in East Asia. The process of spreading east to the Americas, west to Central Asia and eastern Europe, and south to India, Southwest Asia, the Mediterranean coast, and western Europe was humanity's growth in childhood, and the process by which the nomads of East Asia fused with farming culture and unified the world.

If, with such eyes, we open the window and look at the past and present of humankind in the great square of the world unfolding before it, we will see its future too.