Nhan Duong Professor Corp Eng 103 19 April 2018 The Eternal Flame When I try to explain passion
Nhan Duong
Professor Corp
Eng 103
19 April 2018
The Eternal Flame
When I try to explain passion, I’m so desperate. Passion has killed all words in me. It is a universal feeling, a sea of infinite desire, where the greatest poet drones in love. Passion can come from one’s heart to another and stay ever since. Passion makes people without religion believe in something similar to God as they stand up, protect, and sacrifice for it. And people will realize their passion once it awakes their souls. It may come in the form of the impulse of building a nation, a spiritual belief, a career, or even a sincere longing for love. Passion is the fruit of life, where no one once tasted its slide could ever resist the sweetness.
Unquestionably, Philip Stanhope says its best, “If you can once engage people’s pride, love, pity, ambition (or whatever is their prevailing passion) on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.” Passion embarks people’s feelings and controls their lives, actions, value beliefs, moral standards, and motivations. The ability to plant a great affection into people’s soul is no different from the ability to take over their heart. Once a person has control over people’s passion, they can afford to make others listen, trust, and obedience. The power of enthusiasm can be enormous and proceeds beyond people’s imagination. In another word, passion holds an eternal flame in which people voluntarily walk in and forever stay.
One powerful source of passion comes from the most sophisticated emotion on earth, in which two people are connected through a deep attraction and desire. One who falls in the ocean of love will not be able to escape from its voices, and unless walking through incredible waves of griefs could they fall out the arms of love. These fairytale-like love stories are reflected authentically through a marriage of the princess who went familiarly by “Lilibet” and an 18-year-old cadet and Greek prince named Philip. Sweet as it sounds, the courtship and marriage of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark has been for over seventy years and remained intense. The royal couple shares partnership based on love and mutual respect and also a sense of humor. In the eyes of people, it is a marriage of unequal. The organization of Philip life depends unreservedly on his wife’s official royal programme. Thus, the Prince has renounced his titles to fit for another title as Queen Elizabeth II’s husband and converted his religious belief from Greek Orthodoxy to Anglicanism. However, Philip has over time entitled himself with another unusual role, to “never let the Queen down” (Jobson). Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, another love story of the princess of Japan, Mako, recently gives up her royal title to marry an ordinary piano commoner is debated. The couple even has had a long-distance relationship while Mako was studying in Britain and Komuro in the U.S. While confirming her engagement, the young adorable princess receives a loving gaze from her fiancé as she then states that she was first attracted to his “bright smiles like the sun” (Agerholm). Although this young couple is greeted with a lot of blessings and support from the Japanese people and the royal family, there is still a concern that the monarch of over 2,600 years long-line will be threatened due to the Japanese tradition of only allowing male succession. Apparently, love vigorously remains a major driving force in people’s lives. It is unarguable that the flames of love blew up the courage to face the royal reproach, the humility of renouncing the royal title, as well as the patience to care for the one you love. Love can once make the Prince of Greece and the Princess of Japan giving up their titles, as it could make them sacrifice their freedom, their family, or maybe even their lives. All the things that we have seen are important may be one day overshadowed by the glory of love.
Beyond question, religion is the most influential spiritual source of passion. Although the ideology of passion does not have to be religious, the sacred words can, once a soul, having an incredible effect. The word passion was strongly related to Christ’s suffering and death. The worship of Christianity was century by century painted by mythologies of a glorious past to invoke God’s will and thus dehumanize the enemy. One of the world’s most disastrous military expeditions, which flamed in the name of God, was the bloody crusaders. The Army claimed to mobilize combat to recapture Jerusalem from Muslim Turks in convincing they would reassure forgiveness for their sins and earn a ticket to heaven. Sacred violence requires as a premise of conviction that God and his intentions for humanity were intimately related to the well-being of a political structure on earth which has become threatened by the Turks (“Crusades”). Until today, passion fires most in Abraham’s religions. Some people can see the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as much as a political movement rather than a religious one. However, the influence of religious belief cannot be completely denied. Countless orthodox Muslims, who have been indoctrinated by the story of the Islamic state, join this organization as a loyal commitment to their faith (“An Overview of ISIS,”n.d.). Spiritual belief is an integral component that sticks many diverse groups of people together and makes them obedient at all costs. Religious wars and terrorist movements have gone beyond political control where no power could stop the continuing deaths of thousands of lives. Surprisingly, even though wars and the vital of all religions may seem to conflict each other, historical events have shown that they are notably intertwined. The one who loves their God with their pure heart and soul should not hesitate to do what he assigns to be done with no exclusion to threatening, raping, bombing, robbing, and mass-killing. It doesn’t matter if it converges human morality and exhausts people’s sympathy toward another human being. It doesn’t matter either if thousands of families are separated, children lost their moms, or a city sinks in blood. Some people still believe that they work for God, and killing is the act of executing God’s will. For them, nothing means more than passionately following “God.” Clearly, a malevolent orchestrated passion that hides under the religious tent can engulf whole societies and bind people into unquestioning fondness.
Throughout history, passion has proved its power in manipulating not only a people but an immense kingdom. The expansion of the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth century demonstrated a great sense of imperialism, loyalty, and cultural pride. Led by the “oceanic leader,” Genghis Khan, the Mongols spread out like wildfire and ruled from the islands of Japan all across Asia to Eastern Europe and included China, Russia, Hungary, Iran, the Middle East, Mongolia, and Indochina. The complexity and size of the Mongol Empire represented the unified conquests of Genghis Khan, in which his people showed an undefeatable pride and belief in their leader. Further, the most significant impact of desire and leadership features clearly by the image of the world’s Nazi leader, Hitler. He whose his start was either with power or connection became an influential political figure, a dictator of German in World War II. Just as the Mongolian leader, Hitler confirmed his talent in regaining trust and nationalism inside every Germany’s heart. Apparently, he transformed the history of the Jewish, the German, the European, and eventually the history of all human beings into a blood-soaked chapter. There were many reasons against Genghis Khan and Hitler triggering bloody invasions and expansions. After all, every war cost lives, millions of lives. The process of wars and massacres have not only contradicted humanistic moral standards but also gone against some people’s religious beliefs. Sadly, when building hope and dream in the “pure-blooded” Germany, Hitler has also threw many others’ lives into complete darkness. And people once have been known as warmth-hearted husbands, beautiful wives, smart children, may suffer hard and die cruelly to Khan and Hitler’s faith in making their country powerful and wealthy. According to the History ,between the year 1933 and 1945, approximately six million Jews were persecuted and murdered by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust (2009). Nevertheless, the Holocaust did not happen because of the devil. Rather, it was possible because a significant mass of people did not find the execution to be an evil act from which they should abstain. Hence, the question to be asked is not why, but how the ethics of various groups, such as church and academic backgrounds, could be co-opted by the Nazi theory. Apparently, the German did not only obeyed but carrying an absolute faith in their country leader. The glory of a folk proved to cost countless lives of innocent individuals. Undoubtedly, some people willingly sacrificed their souls, denied their morals, and betrayed their religious rules of doing good for a leader who held them in a delusional madness.
Ever since I talk about the art of manipulating people’s mind, I cannot see any occasion where passion does not sneak in. If passion is a perpetual power source, then the one who posses the key to it must be the king. Passion is the crown to dominate a nation, a people, a religion, a belief, and love. Passion is a seed that once plant in people’s souls will sprout its branches to the moon. And when someone tells you they could hold on to other’s passion, what they mean is they can control hearts.
Work Cited
Agerholm, Harriet. “Asia Japanese Princess Mako of Akishino to Renounce Her Royal Status to Marry Commoner.” Independent, 4 Sept. 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japan-princess-mako-akishino-commoner-marry-engagement-royal-status-imperial-family-a7928341.html. Accessed 18 April 2018.
“An Overview of ISIS.” ING, 22 July 2015. https://ing.org/an-overview-of-isis/. Accessed 18 April 2018.
“Crusades.” History, 2010. https://www.history.com/topics/crusades. Accessed 18 April 2018.
Jobson, Robert. “Prince Philip Turns 95: Through Love and War, The Duke Has Met The Greatest of Expectations.”Evening Standard, 7 June 2016, https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/prince-philip-turns-95-through-love-and-war-the-duke-has-met-the-greatest-of-expectations-a3265416.html. Accessed 18 April 2018.
“The Holocaust.”History, 2009. https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/the-holocaust. Accessed 18 April 2018.
