A Sovereignty of Softness
Reimagining Empire as Love without Flags
The ancient doctrine that ‘no one crosses the same river twice’ is extended. No thinker thinks twice; and, to put the matter more generally, no subject experiences twice. This is what Locke ought to have meant by his doctrine of time as a ‘perpetual perishing.’ ... In the philosophy of organism it is not ‘substance’ which is permanent, but ‘form.’ Forms suffer changing relations; actual entities ‘perpetually perish’ subjectively, but are immortal objectively. Actuality in perishing acquires objectivity, while it loses subjective immediacy. (Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality)
What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world. By reason of this reciprocal relation, the love in the world passes into the love in heaven and floods back again into the world. In this sense, God is the great companion—the fellow-sufferer who understands.' (Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality)
The consequent nature of God is an empire of sorts—but it is an empire in reverse, and one without a dominating emperor. It gathers rather than conquers. It receives rather than rules. It is not imposed from above, but grows from within. In it, nothing is lost, and no one is forgotten. Every joy, every sorrow, every act of courage or care is tenderly preserved and felt. And it floods back into the world, again and again, as recycled love.
This empire has no capital, no borders, no flags. Its power lies not in coercion, but in compassion. It is the opposite of empire as we’ve known it—an inversion of grandeur, a sovereignty of softness.
*
We live in an age where men all over the world—yes, most are men—seek to build empires: political, financial, technological, even spiritual. The impulse is often driven by ego, by the desire for control, permanence, and dominance. These empires, old and new, are rarely content with their borders; they reach outward, seeking to command, to colonize, to consume.
But what if this imperial yearning is reimagined? What if, with help from people of faith—and from philosophers, artists, and mystics—men and others were invited to transform their ambitions? To reframe empire in terms less rooted in ego and more grounded in love? Less about control, more about care? Less about hierarchy, more about equality and co-creativity?
The deep longing beneath empire—the yearning to matter, to belong, to contribute to something enduring—is not itself wrong. It is a spiritual hunger. But it needs redirection. It needs a new form, a new name.
I want to suggest that empire can be renamed as open and relational love, and that its highest expression—the only expression that is truly everlasting—is divine tenderness. This tenderness is not singular and controlling, but a relational multiplicity, in which the many of the universe become one in God, and God becomes one in the many.
*
In Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley captures in fourteen lines the truth of what Whitehead calls the perpetual perishing of all things. Time, like the desert wind, smooths over ambition, topples monuments, and swallows pride into silence. What remains of Ozymandias—the “King of Kings”—is not a legacy of awe-inspiring power, but a ruined statue, a sneering face in the sand, and an ironic inscription surrounded by desolation.
"Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains.
Here, Shelley exposes the paradox of empire: it claims permanence while being utterly impermanent. The pedestal's boast becomes a grim joke, for the "works" that once testified to Ozymandias's might have vanished. What endures is not the empire but the wreck, the emptiness, and the sands stretching far away. This stark image is not just about a single ruler; it is a meditation on civilizations as fragile processes, destined—no matter their grandeur—to erode into relics. Ozymandias’s “frown and wrinkled lip,” survives only as a faint echo, a fingerprint on stone already half-buried.
We should have some sympathy for Ozymandias, for there is something of him in all of us. The yearning to create and sustain an empire is rooted in a desire to create something permanent, something that, to quote Whitehead, is “objectively immortal.” In this light, an “empire” need not mean political dominance or territorial control alone. It can signify a civilization, a culture, a legacy, a name, or an idea that endures. It is a human attempt to defy the perishability of time.
And yet, as both Whitehead and Shelley’s Ozymandias make clear, empires crumble. Their monuments fall, their power fades. True—their echoes, whether constructive or destructive, are never erased. They become part of the ongoing process of reality, woven into the becoming of everything. They are objectively immortal. But the enjoyment of empire—the subjective immediacy of belonging to something great, the lived feeling of triumph or purpose—perishes. What remains is not the experience itself, but its trace, its consequence, its contribution.
*
It would be simple enough to say that the desire to create empires is foolish from a Whiteheadian perspective, since all things are in process and subject to change. But that would be too simple. For Whitehead does not dismiss the human longing for permanence; he honors it. The desire to create something enduring—to leave a mark, to participate in a reality greater than oneself—is not a mistake but a meaningful impulse. It reflects a deep metaphysical intuition: that what we do, feel, and become matters not only for the moment but for the whole.
In Whitehead’s metaphysics, every experience is preserved in the unfolding life of the universe. Every act becomes objectively immortal, taken up into the consequent nature of God and woven into the becoming of all things. In this sense, the desire to be part of an empire—understood as a legacy, a civilization, or a great unfolding—can be a desire to participate in the everlasting memory of the cosmos.
And yet, the traditional empire—the political and territorial assertion of control—is always doomed to perish. Its power cannot outlast time. The subjective satisfaction of being part of it vanishes with each generation. What survives is not its glory, but its consequences.
Thus, the desire to be part of an empire lies somewhere in between folly and wisdom. It is misguided when it becomes a lust for domination, for permanence through control. But it is wise when it becomes a yearning to contribute to something meaningful—something that, though fleeting in its immediate form, lives on in the ongoing story of the universe.
There may even be a sense in which the consequent nature of God is the empire rightly sought. Not an empire of domination, hierarchy, and control—but an empire of tenderness, equality, and love.
*
This empire is not built on conquest but on care. It is not enforced through power-over, but welcomed through relational intimacy. It is the patient accumulation of every lived moment—the joys, the griefs, the efforts, the failures—gathered into divine memory, tenderly held and woven into a deeper harmony. In Whitehead’s philosophy, the consequent nature of God is where every actual occasion is felt, preserved, and responded to with perfect sympathy. Nothing is lost. Everything is valued.
To seek that empire is not to cling to permanence as fixity, but to entrust one's life to a process in which meaning is never wasted. It is to live in such a way that one's actions, however small, become threads in a web of cosmic compassion. This is empire reimagined—not as the triumph of one over many, but as the co-creative flourishing of the many within the divine.
*
There is a sense in which this reimagined empire is an empire without an emperor. There is no single ruler—not even God—who governs by decree or imposes by force. In this vision, God does not rule over the world but with it, through it, and for it. The divine is not sovereign in the sense of domination, but in the sense of ultimate relationality.
Each entity—from star to seed, from soul to silence—plays its part not in obedience to a master plan, but in resonance with a lure toward wholeness and beauty. Authority is replaced by attunement, command by invitation, hierarchy by harmony.
This is not an empire of uniformity, but of relational multiplicity. Its bonds are not forged in conquest but in care. Its unity is not enforced but felt—like the harmony of voices in a choir, or the shared breath of companions on a journey, participants in a sovereignty of softness.
It is an empire in name only—an echo of old ambitions transfigured. It is better called a communion, a tapestry, a cosmic kinship. And if it is ruled by anything, it is ruled by love—not as law, but as lure.
This empire has no capital, no borders, no flags. Its power lies not in coercion, but in compassion. It is the opposite of empire as we’ve known it—an inversion of grandeur, a sovereignty of softness.
*
We live in an age where men all over the world—yes, most are men—seek to build empires: political, financial, technological, even spiritual. The impulse is often driven by ego, by the desire for control, permanence, and dominance. These empires, old and new, are rarely content with their borders; they reach outward, seeking to command, to colonize, to consume.
But what if this imperial yearning is reimagined? What if, with help from people of faith—and from philosophers, artists, and mystics—men and others were invited to transform their ambitions? To reframe empire in terms less rooted in ego and more grounded in love? Less about control, more about care? Less about hierarchy, more about equality and co-creativity?
The deep longing beneath empire—the yearning to matter, to belong, to contribute to something enduring—is not itself wrong. It is a spiritual hunger. But it needs redirection. It needs a new form, a new name.
I want to suggest that empire can be renamed as open and relational love, and that its highest expression—the only expression that is truly everlasting—is divine tenderness. This tenderness is not singular and controlling, but a relational multiplicity, in which the many of the universe become one in God, and God becomes one in the many.
*
In Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley captures in fourteen lines the truth of what Whitehead calls the perpetual perishing of all things. Time, like the desert wind, smooths over ambition, topples monuments, and swallows pride into silence. What remains of Ozymandias—the “King of Kings”—is not a legacy of awe-inspiring power, but a ruined statue, a sneering face in the sand, and an ironic inscription surrounded by desolation.
"Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains.
Here, Shelley exposes the paradox of empire: it claims permanence while being utterly impermanent. The pedestal's boast becomes a grim joke, for the "works" that once testified to Ozymandias's might have vanished. What endures is not the empire but the wreck, the emptiness, and the sands stretching far away. This stark image is not just about a single ruler; it is a meditation on civilizations as fragile processes, destined—no matter their grandeur—to erode into relics. Ozymandias’s “frown and wrinkled lip,” survives only as a faint echo, a fingerprint on stone already half-buried.
We should have some sympathy for Ozymandias, for there is something of him in all of us. The yearning to create and sustain an empire is rooted in a desire to create something permanent, something that, to quote Whitehead, is “objectively immortal.” In this light, an “empire” need not mean political dominance or territorial control alone. It can signify a civilization, a culture, a legacy, a name, or an idea that endures. It is a human attempt to defy the perishability of time.
And yet, as both Whitehead and Shelley’s Ozymandias make clear, empires crumble. Their monuments fall, their power fades. True—their echoes, whether constructive or destructive, are never erased. They become part of the ongoing process of reality, woven into the becoming of everything. They are objectively immortal. But the enjoyment of empire—the subjective immediacy of belonging to something great, the lived feeling of triumph or purpose—perishes. What remains is not the experience itself, but its trace, its consequence, its contribution.
*
It would be simple enough to say that the desire to create empires is foolish from a Whiteheadian perspective, since all things are in process and subject to change. But that would be too simple. For Whitehead does not dismiss the human longing for permanence; he honors it. The desire to create something enduring—to leave a mark, to participate in a reality greater than oneself—is not a mistake but a meaningful impulse. It reflects a deep metaphysical intuition: that what we do, feel, and become matters not only for the moment but for the whole.
In Whitehead’s metaphysics, every experience is preserved in the unfolding life of the universe. Every act becomes objectively immortal, taken up into the consequent nature of God and woven into the becoming of all things. In this sense, the desire to be part of an empire—understood as a legacy, a civilization, or a great unfolding—can be a desire to participate in the everlasting memory of the cosmos.
And yet, the traditional empire—the political and territorial assertion of control—is always doomed to perish. Its power cannot outlast time. The subjective satisfaction of being part of it vanishes with each generation. What survives is not its glory, but its consequences.
Thus, the desire to be part of an empire lies somewhere in between folly and wisdom. It is misguided when it becomes a lust for domination, for permanence through control. But it is wise when it becomes a yearning to contribute to something meaningful—something that, though fleeting in its immediate form, lives on in the ongoing story of the universe.
There may even be a sense in which the consequent nature of God is the empire rightly sought. Not an empire of domination, hierarchy, and control—but an empire of tenderness, equality, and love.
*
This empire is not built on conquest but on care. It is not enforced through power-over, but welcomed through relational intimacy. It is the patient accumulation of every lived moment—the joys, the griefs, the efforts, the failures—gathered into divine memory, tenderly held and woven into a deeper harmony. In Whitehead’s philosophy, the consequent nature of God is where every actual occasion is felt, preserved, and responded to with perfect sympathy. Nothing is lost. Everything is valued.
To seek that empire is not to cling to permanence as fixity, but to entrust one's life to a process in which meaning is never wasted. It is to live in such a way that one's actions, however small, become threads in a web of cosmic compassion. This is empire reimagined—not as the triumph of one over many, but as the co-creative flourishing of the many within the divine.
*
There is a sense in which this reimagined empire is an empire without an emperor. There is no single ruler—not even God—who governs by decree or imposes by force. In this vision, God does not rule over the world but with it, through it, and for it. The divine is not sovereign in the sense of domination, but in the sense of ultimate relationality.
Each entity—from star to seed, from soul to silence—plays its part not in obedience to a master plan, but in resonance with a lure toward wholeness and beauty. Authority is replaced by attunement, command by invitation, hierarchy by harmony.
This is not an empire of uniformity, but of relational multiplicity. Its bonds are not forged in conquest but in care. Its unity is not enforced but felt—like the harmony of voices in a choir, or the shared breath of companions on a journey, participants in a sovereignty of softness.
It is an empire in name only—an echo of old ambitions transfigured. It is better called a communion, a tapestry, a cosmic kinship. And if it is ruled by anything, it is ruled by love—not as law, but as lure.
"Ozymandias" (1818)
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”