Ideal World of Peace

"People should marry across national and cultural boundaries with people from countries they consider to be their enemies so hat the world of peace can come that much more quickly."  Reverend Sun Nyung Moon

 As social theories go, it's as respectable in its assessment of human nature as any.  Breaking down cultural barriers and suspicions by getting to know another's values to discover they're not all that different than one's own is a good way to foster communication and understanding.  Conducting mass marriages while encouraging nuptial link-ups to different ethnic groups and cultures - though not religions, since the Unification Church would suffice - was one way to go about it.

As cults go, perhaps this one had an ostensible basis for performing a world service.  Although not everyone would be compelled to buy into such an ideology.  Many parents whose children were enthralled by the prospect of becoming a member of this exotic, strange new 'religion' of peace and harmony thought of it more as a threat to the well-being of their offspring than as a springboard to normalcy and happiness.

And it seems it was a thriving business as well, inspiring members to understand that it was their duty to generously fund the 'religious movement'.  Its founder, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, was both revered and reviled, depending wholly upon whose experience was being probed.  He either brainwashed those whom he succeeded in inducting into his church, or he inspired them to become better human beings.

And perhaps those thousands of men and women who agreed to participate in those spectacular mass marriages thought that under his guidance and spiritual mentorship they would be making the world a better place.  Reverend Moon had the distinction of inspiring friendship between himself and the Kim dynasty.  Kim Il Sung is reputed to have told his son and heir: "After I die, if there are things to discuss pertaining to North-South relations, you must always seek the advice of President Moon."

That might represent an urban legend; North-South relations have spiralled into a complete absence of meaningful communication, replete with threats emanating from the North, despite the Reverend Moon's geographic availability living out his last years in South Korea.  And the Unification Church has become a family business.  Its wealth and its inspired dictates as a multibillion-dollar enterprise controlled by the Moon children, all ten of them.

For someone who aspired to teach others of the possibilities in diversity and the blessings that would accrue to the world with mixed marriages, Reverend Moon himself did not appear to have ventured out of his own sphere of ethnic and cultural comfort himself.  With his death, it will be interesting to see how long his legacy will last.