How to Govern Ourselves

“MENE, TEKEL, UPHARZIM”

The above words ( see Kralicka Bible, Daniel 5) mean approximately:” God hath numbered Thy kingdom and finished it. Thou art weighted in the balances and art found wanting. Thy kingdom is divided  and given to the Medes and Persians.  “

King  Belshazzar evidently devoted himself to much feasting and drinking and used sacred and forbidden platters for his food. Suddenly an unknown hand wrote those words on the wall. Nobody could understand them, only the prophet Daniel. Belshazzar’s kingdom was then  divided and the king died the same night because he behaved blasphemously.

The writer Petr Den says in his book  THE ABACUS  ( POCITADLO) * the following:

‘All of today’s politics is concerned with our well being here – on planet Earth. Therefore it is all about bread, money, employment, etc.  Those who believe in historical materialism are right in claiming this. However, all politics breaks down as soon as we forget that there is also something beyond it. Something that cannot be proven, something that has to be believed. Great politics  cannot exist without great faith. We will never understand politics without also considering  the future. A king who does not think about the future of his children is not a good ruler. And a politician who does not create for “eternity”, who does not view the world – as Masaryk used to say- sub specie eternitatis - should not be in politics. Those who care only for the present  kill all politics.

All of the above are truths for those who want to rule. Therefore THEY ARE ALSO VALID FOR YOU WHO WANT TO GOVERN YOURSELVES. Those are the truths of high mathematics and therefore they are the truths for those who want to rule.

When the German army occupied our land during the war we were told that food and drink were the most important things. We were the conquered people. And it was fortunate for us and for our future independence  that there was a war and that there was a shortage of food and that they could not fill our stomachs and empty our minds. Is it necessary for every nation to wander in the desert for forty years in order  to be awakened? Shall we also need those forty years to finally come to our senses?

The person who sees beyond death and who is reaching for Infinity is already free. Free is also the one who is not afraid of death, who is not afraid of Infinity.YOU CANNOT TRULY GOVERN WITHOUT FREEDOM. The stronger the desire for freedom the less one clings to life and vice versa. Every ruler should escape from death only by a hair, he should often be in danger to lose his life. A ruler should always be above the human law. And if he is above it- he needs to pass the test of blood.

THEREFORE THE RIGHT TO RULE BELONGS TO A REVOLUTIONARY, NOT TO AN OFFICIAL. His friends are artists and poets, all those who create with fantasy. They actually had helped you to become rulers. Ink and paint is used before one needs guns and cannons.. One uses fantasy to produce something that had not been here before. You can only rule such a world that you had created yourself. Even a politician can be considered an artist in this sense. A state is actually a political work- therefore it is not a natural but a supernatural and artificial product. To create a new reality, actually a super-reality- has always been the task of mathematics.  Truly scientific politics should try- as all other sciences do- to dissolve in mathematics and place all governing into the hands of mathematics. Thus we might be able to understand that mysterious and sinuous way from chaos to somewhere higher up- to where we cannot see any more. Where does this road lead if not to Infinity?

It would be worth it to look at  Descartes, Newton or Leibnitz  also as political creators. It was not by chance that all of them were also theologians. Thus we might recognize that – even in modern times- the throne, the altar and the protractor have more in common that is usually thought.

Thomas G. Masaryk wrote:” States live by the ideals that created them.” There had to be some political ACT. There must have been someone who did not think of his own comfort and who became a traitor, an outlaw, an outcast. His ideals forced him to abandon everything that had been dear to him. All states were founded on treason, the USA as well as Czechoslovakia. Then you will undergo the test of a statesman for which you were not too well prepared. It is not enough to carry out a revolution. Then you have to show that you are able to establish and maintain a new order and a new status quo.

They say that great mathematicians often wore shabby clothes. They did not dress like other people.. The great founders of states often wore an iron shirt of a warrior and a horsehair garment of an ascetic.. They often wore it even under their royal attire. According to the historian Pekar, St Venceslas wore under his princely clothes a penitent’s shirt. And it usually was not good for the state if the ruler took off his penitent’s garb and if he got too used to gold and silk. A ruler in silk is always more vulnerable than a ruler in armor. The revolutionaries and reformers usually had very strict morals. They were used to a hard and often a military life, hard work and to long suffering. They were also used to fasting  and to scarcity and they knew how to deny themselves life’s pleasures. They knew that libations and feasting usually preceded the end of the powerful and the ruling ones. They knew that drinking from vessels that were to be used for the gods was sinful and that it destroyed the state. They knew that those dishes were brought to the dining chambers during that horrible riotous night for Belshazzar when a hand wrote on the wall the royal prophecy of his end and in which he was also killed.

All of you who want to rule are revolutionaries and  YOU MUST ALSO BE REFORMERS. Even you should continue to wear a horsehair shirt of ascetics  and you should not get unused to fasting and scarcity.. Even you found your previous rulers at a feast. If you will join them at the  tables full of half-consumed food and drink, you will not enjoy an easy and merry life for long. Be careful-the banquet table might become even your last battle ground!

THOSE WHO WANT TO EAT, DRINK, ENJOY AND STEAL EVERYTHING CANNOT BE RULERS.  Carpe diem is the motto of the slaves. The real ruler- the one who is looking toward Infinity- is not concerned with the small things of everyday life. To rule means to give. And one cannot give for long even from the richest farm- one can give only from Infinity.

Hunger turns people into revolutionaries, but it also makes them into rulers. The hungry ones make good soldiers. Because the basis of hunger is actually starvation for Infinity, for eternity.

If you lose this hunger  you will end up like all the satiated ones, all the materialists who lost the desire for Infinity, all those who forgot to calculate. You “will be weighted in the balances and found wanting and your kingdom shall be divided”, because you failed to understand the basic dilemma of politics, because you did not understand that God rules over every human kingdom and He gives it to whom He will.”

*This excerpt ( edited, abbreviated and translated) is from the book ABACUS- (POCITADLO) by Petr Den. The book contains seven chapters devoted to Their Majesty-The People). Published in the USA in Feb, 1961 by Universum Press Co. New York, 114 pages

The work received the Prize of the Christian Academy and the Prize of the Cultural Council.