I was sitting in my dorm room with 8 other men.\u00a0 Because I could not sleep, I decided to get out of my cot, pass the outdoor restroom and look across the river into El Paso, Texas.\u00a0 While El Paso is not the most cosmopolitan of towns, it is light years ahead of Anapra, Mexico.\u00a0 This dusty little shanty town that sits on top of an old dump is a few miles away from Juarez and one mile from El Paso, yet it might as well be one million miles away from the US border town.\u00a0 Our team built houses in this tiny hamlet.\u00a0 As a matter of fact, we built two houses in less than 50 hours. The people we built them for were so grateful, but I dare say that these homes would not meet anyone\u2019s standards in the States.<\/p>\n
What is odd about Mexico is its past.\u00a0 About 180 years ago, Texans became independent.\u00a0 Now, being raised in Texas, I know that Mexico was a great empire.\u00a0 They had a thriving economy and a strong army, but all that began to change when Texas became independent.\u00a0 While the States became its own empire, Mexico became trapped \u00a0in the past and corruption ran rampant.\u00a0 Unfortunately for our neighbors to the south, their better days are behind them.<\/p>\n
While I am not trying to demean Mexico, there is a point to be made that is tied to Peter Frankopan\u2019s book, The Silk Roads.\u00a0 <\/em>In this seminal work that I found fascinating, we see the rise and fall of many empires in the east.\u00a0 Frankopan\u2019s great insight provides a new insight into history that this Westerner never realized.<\/p>\n Let me explain.\u00a0 Frankopan\u2019s description of the eastern world is mind-boggling.\u00a0 He describes empires such as Rome, Ottoman, Mongol and the like as being radically global and fiercely innovative.\u00a0 These empires were motivated by trade, discovery and each seemingly would never end, at least to the people in power.\u00a0 However, history tells us that they all ended.\u00a0 While each empire in the East has contributed greatly to our modern empire, all of them are no more.\u00a0 They are simply pages in history.\u00a0 This is true of modern empires as well.\u00a0 Just within my own lifetime, we have seen the fall of the Soviets, the rise of China, the weakening of British Imperial Power, and the economic growth in emerging markets.\u00a0 There have always been empires, and there will always be the fall of great empires.\u00a0 Frankopan makes that abundantly clear.<\/p>\n As I walked in Mexico, I could see another great glimmering empire.\u00a0 It seems that this empire\u2019s power will go on in perpetuity.\u00a0 However, we know that this simply will not be the case.\u00a0 Rome never could see life outside of Rome, the Mongols knocked on Europe\u2019s door with dominance, Suleman the Great expanded the Ottoman Empire without resistance, but they all eventually failed.<\/p>\n If there is anything we can learn from Frankopan\u2019s book, it maybe that we should not be seduced by our own hubris. The world was strikingly progressive long before the Western ideal arrived on the scene and will be long after the West is gone.\u00a0 As global leaders, we must understand that life does not begin and end with western modernity.\u00a0 If we understand this and walk in humility, then it is my belief that we can have a greater impact on society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was sitting in my dorm room with 8 other men.\u00a0 Because I could not sleep, I decided to get out of my cot, pass the outdoor restroom and look across the river into El Paso, Texas.\u00a0 While El Paso is not the most cosmopolitan of towns, it is light years ahead of Anapra, Mexico.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[762],"class_list":["post-9570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-frankopan","cohort-lgp6"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/70"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}