Legacies

However, it is proposed to describe examples where people have left a significant and lasting legacy; totally the opposite to the legacy of the politicians described.

It is also perhaps an indication of many of the people who contributed a permanent and enduring legacy to our history lived lives that entailed a considerable amount of frustration and personal sacrifice. As you already know I attempt to live my life according to the teachings and example of Christ and of course we all know what happened to him and it is not propose to make any further explanations here.

I propose to take the examples, in chronological order, of Confucius, Sir Thomas More, Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. There is no need for elaborate details about their lives for what I am trying to indicate is that they had a purpose that obviously included principled actions. They possessed an instinct, an integrity that drove them to fulfil their destiny even if, during the course of their life, their examples brought little or no rewards in worldly terms.

Many years ago I was fortunate to hear a presentation by the British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch. Murdoch was best known for her novels about good and evil, morality, and the power of the unconscious. In her presentation Murdoch described how homo sapiens is capable of attaining a higher level of morality through individual effort and of course the opposite is true as well.

She spoke of how joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, beneficence, generosity, truth, compassion and faith are part of something much greater. That when we action such thoughts or actions we are aspiring to belong to something greater than ourselves.

Constrained with a physical body we can only obtain a glimpse through these thoughts or actions of that world. Albeit at different levels and in different circumstances Confucius, Sir Thomas More, Gandhi and Nelson Mandela each in their own way set us examples of mortal man that we can try and aspire to.

It should again be emphasised that the examples they provide occurred through great personal cost.

Confucius
Confucius, more than any other man, influenced China’s early history. He was not a king and he was not a great warrior but he was a thinker. He thought deeply about how people should live their lives, and he passed on these ideas to his disciples. He was little known in his own time.

He did not write books to record his ideas. However, his followers wrote down his guide for good behaviour, and after his death the ideas began to spread.

At the time of Confucius, the Zhou kings were no longer strong leaders and the real power was in the hands of the feudal lords. These lords waged war against each other and the result of all the fighting and rebellion left China in chaos. There was a great deal of poverty and suffering.

It was during this time that many great thinkers were born in China including Confucius and Lao-Tzu. These philosophers talked and wrote on how people should live their lives so that Chinese society could improve. Confucius believed that the suffering of the people mainly came from rulers who were unjust as they thought nothing for the welfare of the people they ruled. They were concerned only with riches and power for themselves.

Confucius believed that his guidelines were important to anyone in a position of power. He believed that a person’s goal in life should be to become a good person and that his guidelines applied to a king governing a land, a lord governing a territory, or a father governing his family (tradition in Ancient China said that men must always be the authority in the family).

He believed that if the relationship between those governing and those being governed was fair and just, then it would lead to the happiness of all. Although he held positions of power he was very disappointed by the action of those in authority. He died in 479 B.C.E. believing he was a failure.

Little did he dream that his philosophies would still be remembered and revered more than 2,000 years after his death. His memory is precious to the Chinese who are now establishing Confucius Institutes in universities world-wide.

The first opened on 21 November 2004 in Seoul, South Korea and by October 2010, there were 322 Confucius Institutes in 94 countries and regions with the highest concentration of Institutes in the United States, Japan, and South Korea.

Sadly my dealings with this organisation where I live in the USA leads me to believe that although they revere his memory they are not dealing with people in the way Confucius recommended.

Sir Thomas More
Sir Thomas More was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman, and an important councillor to Henry VIII of England; he was Lord Chancellor from October 1529 to 16 May 1532. However, he opposed the King’s separation from the Roman Catholic Church and refused to accept him as Supreme Head of the Church of England, a title which had been given by Parliament through the Act of Supremacy of 1534.

He was imprisoned in 1534 for his refusal to take the oath required by the First Succession Act, because the act disparaged Papal Authority and Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. In 1535, he was tried for treason, convicted on perjured testimony, and beheaded.

Intellectuals and statesmen across Europe were stunned by More’s execution. Erasmus saluted him as one “whose soul was more pure than any snow, whose genius was such that England never had and never again will have its like.” Two centuries later Jonathan Swift said More was “the person of the greatest virtue this kingdom ever produced” a sentiment with which Samuel Johnson agreed.

Gandhi
Born originally in India in 1869 Gandhi also lived in England and South Africa. In 1914 Gandhi returned to India where he supported the Home Rule movement, and became leader of the Indian National Congress. He advocated a policy of non-violent non-cooperation to achieve independence.

His goal was to help poor farmers and labourers protest against oppressive taxation and discrimination. He struggled to alleviate poverty, liberate women and put an end to caste discrimination, with the ultimate objective being self-rule for India.

Gandhi sought to practice non-violence and truth in all situations, and advocated that others do the same. He saw the villages as the core of the true India and promoted self-sufficiency and he did not support the industrialization programs of his disciple Jawaharlal Nehru.

He lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, woven with yarn he had hand spun on a charkha. He was a dedicated vegetarian, and undertook long fasts as means of both self-purification and political mobilization.

Following his civil disobedience campaign (1919-22), he was jailed for conspiracy (1922-24). After independence in 1947, he tried to stop the Hindu-Muslim conflict in Bengal. In his last year, unhappy at the partition of India, Gandhi worked to stop the carnage between Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs that raged in the border area between India and Pakistan. In India he was also called Bapu (“Father”). He was assassinated in Delhi by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fanatic in 1948.

In his lifetime he failed in his objectives but after his death, Gandhi’s commitment to non-violence and his belief in simple living, making his own clothes, eating a vegetarian diet, and using fasts for self-purification as well as a means of protest, has been a beacon of hope for oppressed and marginalized people throughout the world.

Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the first black South African to hold the office, and the first elected in a fully representative, multiracial election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalized racism, poverty and inequality, and fostering racial reconciliation.

Politically an African nationalist and democratic socialist, he served as the President of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1991 to 1997. Internationally, Mandela was the Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999.

After the Afrikaner nationalists of the National Party came to power in 1948 and began implementing the policy of apartheid, he rose to prominence in the ANC’s 1952 Defiance Campaign, was elected President of the Transvaal ANC Branch and oversaw the 1955 Congress of the People.

Working as a lawyer, he was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and, with the ANC leadership, was prosecuted in the Treason Trial from 1956 to 1961 but was found not guilty. In 1962 he was arrested, convicted of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Mandela served 27 years in prison, first on Robben Island, and later in Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. An international campaign lobbied for his release, which was granted in 1990 amid escalating civil strife. Becoming ANC President, Mandela published his autobiography and led negotiations with President F.W. de Klerk to abolish apartheid and establish multiracial elections in 1994, in which he led the ANC to victory.

He was elected President and formed a Government of National Unity in an attempt to defuse ethnic tensions. As President, he established a new constitution and initiated the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses. Continuing the former government’s liberal economic policy, his administration introduced measures to encourage land reform, combat poverty and expand healthcare services. He declined to run for a second term.

Becoming an elder statesman, he focussed on charitable work in combating poverty through the Nelson Mandela Foundation. Controversial for much of his life, right-wing critics denounced Mandela as a terrorist and communist sympathiser.

He has nevertheless received international acclaim for his anti-colonial and anti-apartheid stance, having received over 250 awards, including the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, the US Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Soviet Order of Lenin. He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to as “the father of the nation.” He died in December 2013.

Their Legacies
The four people described have enriched our lives yet during their life-times they suffered a great deal. Confucius died believing he had been a failure. Sir Thomas More was beheaded and certainly failed in his attempts to persuade Henry VIII to pay homage and loyalty to Rome. Gandhi during his life-time failed in his main objectives. Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison.

Each spent much of their life-times frustrated, believing they had failed in what they wanted to do yet each has left a wonderful legacy and an example to aspire to. If like me you are a committed Christian you also look to the inspiration of Christ accepting that He was the “Son Of God” yet he ended up alone and was crucified.

Are there lessons we need to learn in as much we refused these people when they attempted to fulfil their destiny or karma? The German philosopher Schopenhauer once said “Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is highly resisted, in the third it is regarded as self-evident.”

It appears that such a statement is accurate in as much as the people taken as our examples brought some sort of truth that until we, to a lesser or greater extent, denied. They brought their particular truth to and for the human race. They possessed some sort of integrity and their instinct, if we want to call it that, was to endure (wasn’t it Trollope when talking about life experiences said, “Enjoy a little, endure a lot.”)

With the exception of Mandela, they proved, albeit after their deaths, their efforts however were needed and of significant value to the Homo sapiens race. Mandela was the only one of the four to see his legacy come to fruition during his lifetime. Their example is also meaningful to such lesser mortals like me as I believe I have something to offer.