Baha'i Perspectives

Baha'i Perspectives October 28th, 2008

Is anyone actually in control anymore? Financial markets continue to stagger, major banks try to pull back from the brink of collapse, and ordinary people everywhere are bracing themselves for tough economic times ahead. On his blog, ‘Where the World’s Going‘, Robert Weinberg muses on the significance of these happenings in the light of recent history. The conclusion? Traditional power structures have shifted, are shifting and will continue to evolve into the future. Here is the full text of the article…

“Who is writing the future?” was the question heading a statement issued by the Bahá’í International Community in February 1999 that explored the challenges facing humanity at the end of the 20th century.

Now, almost a full decade since this perceptive document first appeared, this question seems more relevant than ever. With share markets continuing to plummet amid fears of a world wide recession, the impotence of our current leaders to take charge of the situation is clearly visible to the entire planet. And for the first time, they have been prepared to admit it.

Not surprisingly, the world is alarmed.

Earlier this week, in a powerful letter to the Bahá’ís of the world, the Universal House of Justice wrote that, in a short span of time, “financial structures once thought to be impregnable have tottered and world leaders have shown their inability to devise more than temporary solutions, a failing to which they increasingly confess.”

“People desperately want someone to get a grip,” commented Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian on 10 October, “The realisation is dawning that this is not just a financial or economic crisis, but a democratic crisis – the people and their representatives have little or no control over what affects them directly.”

More than sixty years ago, Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í faith observed that we are living in an age which is witnessing a dual phenomenon: “The first signalizes the death pangs of an order, effete and godless…The second proclaims the birth pangs of an Order…within Whose administrative structure an embryonic civilization, incomparable and world-embracing, is imperceptibly maturing.”

“The one is being rolled up, and is crashing in oppression, bloodshed, and ruin,” noted Shoghi Effendi, “The other opens up vistas of a justice, a unity, a peace, a culture, such as no age has ever seen.” The process of the rolling up of the old order began with the revelation of Bahá’u’lláh and his announcement that power had been seized from both “kings and ecclesiastics.”

The rest is history. Empires were toppled. Kings lost their thrones. The clergy of all faiths were no longer able to exert their moral influence on the masses.

Economic structures are now coming face to face with the same prospect that met the rulers and religious leaders of the late 19th and much of the 20th century. The wresting of power from the hands of the few who have asserted their right to exercise control over the lives and minds of the many is continuing.

Another prescient statement from the pen of Shoghi Effendi anticipates the emergence of a “mechanism of world inter-communication will be devised, embracing the whole planet, freed from national hindrances and restrictions, and functioning with marvellous swiftness and perfect regularity.”

It is now possible for any citizen of the planet who has a computer and internet technology to communicate with anyone else who has access. Blogs and online forums give every participant a voice to share his view of the world. Even large media outlets are increasingly linking to grass roots websites that can better reflect the voices and views of the public.

Digital cameras and video technology, coupled with the ease of posting and circulating pictures and home-made films, has enabled every one to display their creativity. Citizens caught up in incidents of major import become the journalists, texting their video and pictures to conventional news media or posting them on their own platforms. Unsigned bands can become major stars, freed from the control of major record companies. The works of authors can be read throughout the planet without the rigmarole of acquiring agents and publishers, the agony of serial rejection letters or the environmental nuisance of destroying trees.

The ability of centralized providers of information to dictate the news agenda – or spin the truth to reinforce a particular view – is giving way to the power of everyman to share his own personal perception of reality to a global audience, “freed from national hindrances and restrictions.”

Such a transfer of power from the minority into the hands of the masses, spanning as it does much of the last century and accelerating with every passing day, calls to mind the passage in the Koran, that “The mountains, firm though you may think them, will pass away like clouds.”

“However great the turmoil,” it says in Who is Writing the Future?, “the period into which humanity is moving will open to every individual, every institution, and every community on earth unprecedented opportunities to participate in the writing of the planet’s future.”

“Those are the minarets of the West,” observed ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, sailing into New York City in 1912, witnessing the skyscrapers of Manhattan’s financial district. With what prayer, should the muezzins of Wall Street, be calling the faithful now?

Tags: economics, financial crisis, integration/disintegration

• Baha'i Concepts , News & Current Affairs , Society
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