To say that it is a good thing or a bad thing that since the Sixteenth Century, European derived cultures have tried to create an "empire of uniformity" -- that is, tried to re-make the world in their own image -- is not to understand the source of that impulse (some might say addiction).

So can we? Can we try to understand that impulse? The impulse that thinks of internal and external differences NOT as resources but as forms of dis-order, as pollutants and plagues on body of perfection.

My own effort takes us back to the Europe of Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century. More specifically the time period between the Reformation's challenge to the supremacy of the Catholic Church and the series of treaties in 1648 that brought a kind of a cease fire to one of the three bloodiest wars in the history of the European continent.

I want to bring attention to two aspects of this time period:

1. The internal religious crusades within Europe, and
2. the discovery of American Indians.

That is, I want to highlight the attempted purging or purification of internal differences between Catholics and various forms of Protestantism, and the largely but not totally successful purging and purification of external differences represented by American Indians. Few theorists or historians have noted that these two processes were intimate parts of each other.

First to give you a feel for the religious crusades within Europe:

Such intense feelings led to momentous political consequences. Andreas Bodenstein Von Karlstadt -- Luther's colleague -- argued that because Catholic worship transgressed the word of God it was the duty of Christians to remove idols and idolatry even if this required violence. Karlstadt's revolutionary views provide a sense of how the Catholic Church came to be seen by its critics as a "realm of darkness" and the "Kingdom of the Antichrist." In response, Catholics aimed their animosity at the bodies of the "heretics" themselves. Each faction regarded the other's false worship as a threat of plague-like pollution.

Soon there was war; a war that simmered for much of the sixteenth century and boiled over and exploded in the early part of the Seventeenth.

Second, it is in this context, that the discovery of the Americas is going on.

Using the Bible as their source, Europeans in this time period believed that the world contained upwards of 50 but no more than a hundred nations. The Voyages of discovery exposed these numbers and revealed to Europe that the Christian parts of the world amounted to little more than a sixth of the world's population. Worse than this de-centering was the revelation of behavior shocking to European sensibilities. (Shocking, compared to what, we might ask.) Finding disconcerting and overwhelming, the sum of religions, sects, rituals, gods, and idols, the question became: How can we account for the strange diversity?

The resolution to the problem of cultural difference was formed by equating difference with degeneration. Difference is degeneration. The assumption was that all humans originated from a single creative act, in a single moment or time, and at a single spot on the Earth's surface. Humans were considered to be of one blood and inheritance and were therefore physically, ethnically, and socially homogeneous.

In short, Europeans believed that all humans were once Christians; the dispersions of peoples across time and space caused some people to lose touch with their Christianity, that is they degenerated. Therefore, it was the duty and obligation of those who retained the pure faith to re-convert everyone back to their original real selves. This, I suspect, is the blue-print for most modern projects of creating an empire of uniformity.

Of course, the Europeans would take on this heavy responsibility despite the protests of Americans, Africans, and Asians.

But, we might wonder, which Christians would carry out this project? Recall that Europe in the Sixteenth Century is internally divided and headed for a continent wide war that would not end until 1648.

The charge of "Degenerated Indians" was leveled by Protestants at Catholics. Protestants believed that the Catholic Church had itself lost touch with Christianity and therefore represented evil disguised as good. Symmetrically, Catholics considered these charges as an attack on the only real heritage of Christ by heretics in league with the devil. Both considered the other as worse than Indians.

With this juxtaposition of inside and outside, I want to highlight that what is planned for others elsewhere is also our secret sub-conscious desire for ourselves here.