• 33% prefer socialism over capitalism
• 37% prefer capitalism
• 30% are undecided

These statistics, from a 2009 Rasmussen telephone survey, were cited in Michael Moore’s latest documentary “Capitalism: A Love Story“.

At a glance these figures are surprising, coming as they do from the country that has historically prided itself in being the champion of free market capitalism. They reflect just how badly the financial crises of the last 2 years has shaken young people’s confidence in the once impregnable fortresses symbolised by New York’s Wall Street and the Square Mile in London. With jobs in short supply and a startlingly high ratio of unemployed university graduates, the sense of disillusionment is palpable.  And it hasn’t just been the youth. World leaders have been forced to sit up and scrutinise elements of a system that has lead to senseless exploitation of the masses, gross disparities between the rich and poor and blatantly unjust practices by individuals and corporations alike.

Just last week, President Sarkozy of France reiterated the plea in front of students at Columbia University:

The world economic regulations cannot go on as they are. We can’t accept a capitalist system without rules any more… Lack of rules will be the death of capitalism.

“Capitalism: A Love Story” begins with a sequence of flashing images, juxtaposing elements that precipitated the fall of the Ancient Roman Empire with correlating scenes from modern-day society. This impactful intro calls to mind the words of Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith, who once asked rhetorically:

Are we, the privileged custodians of a priceless Faith, called upon to witness a cataclysmical change, politically as fundamental and spiritually as beneficent as that which precipitated the fall of the Roman Empire in the West?

Dr. Peter Khan, in his reflections on the 2009 Ridvan Message, examines the phrase in the message that calls on the Baha’i community to be conscious participants in “rebuilding a broken world”. Again, the metaphor of Ancient Rome is used. Civilizations don’t just come and go he reminds us — they exhibit cracks over time, often hundreds of years in the making, until eventually they crumble and collapse. Much has been written by various authors in an attempt to identify the fissures in the Roman Empire, some of which have been represented by Moore’s sequence of images…

• The disparity between rich and poor
• Too few jobs
• Games and spectacles “to keep idle citizens entertained”
• Rule by decree
• Irresponsible behaviour of public officials

Sounds like our world, right?

Not everyone agrees. Critics of Moore’s documentary-making style state that it is too black-and-white — everything is categorised as either right or wrong, focus is placed on extreme cases and subjects are often treated superficially. Some have taken issue with the subject matter directly, challenging his premise that the capitalist system is the main cause of the problems. One critic concludes with the following statement:

What he doesn’t tackle are the individual Americans who have made their own avaricious or unwise economic decisions… Perhaps what Moore should have condemned are greed and corruption. They are the human vices at the root of the issue and unfortunately, they can surface in any economic system.

Fair point. But one might then contend with this critic that, actually, many people were duped into the unwise decisions by unscrupulous bankers or mortgage lenders — that these individuals were merely naive — and the finger-pointing debate would cycle round again.

The Baha’i position accepts elements of both viewpoints. Neither should the capitalist system and the associated practices of corporations and big business be accepted as the hallmark of planetary organization — far from it — nor should the root causes of greedy and short-sighted behaviour be left unexamined. Pure capitalism, like socialism and other man-made systems preceding it, is a flawed system based on certain false assumptions about human nature and well-being (nevermind total disregard of the environment based on an antiquated assumption of inexhaustible natural resources), and is slowly unravelling before our eyes. Individuals too, while affected by the system in place, are certainly culpable for the unwise and harmful actions carried out under the pretext of personal rights and “getting ahead of the pack”.  Ultimately, the relationship between society and the individual is so intertwined and mutually affective that ignoring one at the expense of the other has to be viewed as simplistic.

With all of this as the backdrop, how are Baha’is, as re-builders of a broken world, as individuals ”anxiously concerned with the needs of the age”, going about their task? How is unity of focus and effort achieved in an environment where opinions on where to begin are so varied that one could quite easily spend a life fighting cause after endless cause… and still end up worse off? Do we tackle societal problems first and then look at individual behaviours next, or vice versa? Or do we take the visionary step of replacing the damaged shell of our present civilization with the foundations of an entirely new one?

Peter Khan neatly breaks down the immediate requirements…

How do you make a civilization?

A civilization involves a foundation of behavioral change through spiritual transformation. We can agree on that. A civilization depends upon certain moral and ethical, spiritual characteristics, but what else? What is the framework of the new civilization we are conceptualizing in this hypothetical example of given a blank sheet of paper and asked “please, set out a framework for a civilization”?

We would want to have certain things:

- We’d want an institutionalized practice of individual and community worship, for a variety of reasons

- We would want individuals comprising that civilization to engage in an exploration and application of divine teachings to daily life, so that we can build up a civilization in a reasonable and productive manner

- We would want civilized society to be imbued with a sense of altruism to the service of humanity. We don’t want selfish greedy people, but people who are altruistic, who think of the larger good.

- And essentially we would want them to transmit civilized values to the new generation of children and youth.

If you were to agree that those are the elements of the framework of a civilization then I must tell you, you have fallen into my trap, because what I have described are the elements of the core activities of the Five Year Plan. What I have referred to are things such as the devotional meetings, the institute process, study of the Ruhi Books, the focus on service to humanity, children’s classes, youth classes, the junior youth activities.

The point I make is that we are engaged, obviously in the spread of the Faith, in pursuit of the endeavors of the Five Year Plan and beyond, but far more than that we are establishing the roots of new civilization in our day-to-day activities of the present plan. This doesn’t mean that civilization will magically spring into being like the goddess Athena, rather it will come gradually, slowly, generation upon generation, decade upon decade, and century upon century, to realize its fruit in the Golden Age, but its roots are to be found in the activities of the present day at this time in history.

Thousands of miles to the east and to the west, the cold of tribulation is a stark reality. To the east, the sham trial behind closed doors of the seven members of the Baha’i Administrative Committee of Iran, arrested and imprisoned by the Islamic government in 2008, merely for their religious beliefs. To the west, the heart-wrenching devastation caused by the Haiti disaster and the scramble to save as many lives as possible before it becomes too late.

Although outwardly cataclysms are hard to understand and to endure, yet there lies a great wisdom behind them which appears later. All the visible material events are inter-related with invisible spiritual forces. The infinite phenomena of creation are as interdependent as the links of a chain.

When certain links become rusty, they are broken by unseen forces, to be replaced by newer and better ones. There are certain colossal events which transpire in the world of humanity which are required by the nature of the times. For example, the requirements of winter are cold, snow, hail and rain – but the birds and animals who live for six months, enjoying a short span of life, not realizing the wisdom of winter, chide and make lament and are discontent, saying, “Why this awful frost? Why this hail and storm? Why not the balmy weather? Why not the eternal springtime? Why this injustice on the part of the creator? Why this suffering? What have we done to be meted out with this catastrophe?”

However, those souls who have lived many years and have acquired much experience and have weathered many severe winters realize that in order to enjoy the coming spring they must pass through the cold of winter.

(Abdu’l-Baha : Divine Philosophy)

He confessed waking up that morning in a contemplative mood, filled with profound thoughts about meaning and purpose – rather uncharacteristic of him, he added. But these thoughts were not entirely random either. For one, he had observed his classmates devoting every waking hour to their studies, in an almost mechanistic way, without pausing to ask themselves why they were doing it. Was the lure of the job that might follow really worth all the fuss?

Life in London wasn’t as enriching as he had imagined either. Sure, it is pacey, hip and multicultural, but like most newcomers to the city – and even some who have been here for years – he had fallen prey to the paradox of big city life. That acute awareness of being surrounded by masses of people from all walks of life, yet at the same time feeling isolated and alone.

On this latter theme, we tossed some thoughts around for a while. What was it about life in the urban sprawl, or the structure of the education system, or the norms of acceptable dialogue and interaction that give rise to feeling like you may as well be the only living organism on this planet? Surely there are elements of the human condition that are being overlooked here, but what could they be? As I suggested that they might be related to conditions that uplift the human spirit, a palpable expression of acknowledgement appeared on his face, at which point the conversation somehow drifted to other themes.

Yet in my mind, the words “systematic” and “exclude” rang loud and clear, as I recalled the passage from Century of Light that seemed to encapsulate the moment :

…the pressure of a dogmatic materialism, claiming to be the voice of “science”, that seeks systematically to exclude from intellectual life all impulses arising from the spiritual level of human consciousness.

Applying this statement to most tertiary education systems, it is quite an indictment. And another passage from the Prosperity of Humankind (part of a larger critique on contemporary development theory, and well worth reading in its entirety):

For the vast majority of the world’s population, the idea that human nature has a spiritual dimension — indeed that its fundamental identity is spiritual — is a truth requiring no demonstration. It is a perception of reality that can be discovered in the earliest records of civilization and that has been cultivated for several millennia by every one of the great religious traditions of humanity’s past. Its enduring achievements in law, the fine arts, and the civilizing of human intercourse are what give substance and meaning to history. In one form or another its promptings are a daily influence in the lives of most people on earth and… the longings it awakens are both inextinguishable and incalculably potent.

These two passages, referring to the potent longings of the human spirit, help to explain why strictly rational approaches to development would alone fail to yield the inner satisfaction sought by every soul. We might imagine, for example, that putting people of different cultures within close vicinity of one another (the so-called “melting pot”) will magically lead to people holding hands and singing together.

Unfortunately, it’s not so straightforward. This year, the Scottish Interfaith Council produced a document entitled Values in Harmony, containing representations from 10 major Religion and Belief communities, including the Baha’i Faith. In it, one finds this striking quote from Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:

Multiculturalism has run its course, and has not led to integration but segregation. It has allowed groups to live separately with no incentive to integrate…Culture is fragmenting into non-communicating systems of belief in which civil discourse ends and reasoned argument becomes impossible.

While multiculturalism has helped to weaken age-old prejudices and contributed to a greater sense that we are a single human race, I can also see where Rabbi Sacks is coming from. How will the motivation arise to genuinely reach out and integrate with other cultures, if not driven by an inner belief system that encourages it? And how nice would it be if more welcoming neighbourhood communities started to spring up across our cities as a result?

As I come full circle to my flatmate’s sentiments on that day, I am left with two conclusions:

• That at some point, every individual will experience those inner promptings that lead to the question “why?” and we can scarcely predict when that point will be.
• That to be an effective antidote to alienation in the big city, multiculturalism has to be infused with a big dose of spirit…

We all have questions about the nature of humour.  What is the ultimate form of humour? Should slapstick be banned:)? Are there universal standards of acceptable humour or is this largely bound by cultural constructs? When are we crossing the line? Is there even a line? Or is it more like a zigzag?

I don’t claim to have any answers beyond those I create for myself. As always though, we are blessed to have the Writings to help us in developing our own constructs…

Humour too, as you say, is an essential element in preserving a proper balance in this life and in our comprehension of reality.

(Shoghi Effendi)

Abandonment of “a frivolous conduct” does not imply that a Bahá’í must be sour-faced or perpetually solemn. Humour, happiness, joy are characteristics of a true Bahá’í life. Frivolity palls and eventually leads to boredom and emptiness, but true happiness and joy and humour that are parts of a balanced life that includes serious thought, compassion and humble servitude to God are characteristics that enrich life and add to its radiance.

(Shoghi Effendi)

The Universal House of Justice has requested us to acknowledge your letter of November 6, 1977 and to say that while laughter should not be suppressed or frowned upon, it should not be indulged in at the expense of the feelings of others. What one says or does in a humorous vein should not give rise to prejudice of any kind. You may recall Abdu’l-Bahá’í caution “Beware lest ye offend the feelings of anyone, or sadden the heart of any person…” (From “Tablets of Abdu’l-Bahá”, vol. I, p. 45) (1 December 1977 to an individual believer)

There is a note in Abdu’l-Bahá’s character that has not been emphasized, and with which no idea of him is complete. The impressive dignity which distinguishes his presence and bearing is occasionally lighted by a delicate and tactful humour, which is as unaffected as it is infectious and delightful.

On his last afternoon in London, a reporter called to ask him of his future plans, finding him surrounded by a number of friends who had called to bid him good-bye. When, in answer to this query, Abdu’l-Bahá told in perfect English of his intention to visit Paris and go from there to Alexandria, the press representative evinced surprise at his faultless pronunciation. Thereupon Abdu’l-Bahá proceeded to march with a free stride up and down the flower-scented drawing room, his Oriental garb contrasting strangely with his modern surroundings; and, to the amusement of the assembly, uttered a string of elaborate English words, laughingly ending, “Very difficult English words I speak!”

(Abdu’l-Bahá in London)

Bahá’í scholars, especially those who are scholars in the teachings and history of the Faith itself, would be well advised to remember that scholars have often been most wrong when they have been most certain that they were right. The virtues of moderation, humility and humour in regard to one’s own work and ideas are a potent protection against this danger.

(Bahá’í Scholarship Statements from the World Centre)

Shoghi Effendi, like his grandfather and great-grandfather before him, had a delightful sense of humour which was ready to manifest itself if he were given any chance to be happy or enjoy a little peace of mind. His eyes would fairly dance with amusement, he would chuckle delightedly and sometimes break out into open laughter. Inside his family, with those he was familiar with, he liked to tease.

(Ruhiyyih Khanum : The Guardian of the Baha’i Faith)

Finally, enjoy this comic from some talented friends of mine!

In his book Change and Habit: The Challenge of Our Times, one of the 20th century’s most respected historians, Arnold J. Toynbee

4. Should we be worried?

While researching this post, I stumbled across this list of sci-fi clichés, the ones we are repeatedly subjected to in movies and TV shows. Here are a few:

Today, we use crystals to make digital watches work. In the future, they’ll power entire starships.

“Reversing the polarity” is the solution to virtually every engineering crisis. It’s the futuristic equivalent of “turning it off and on again”.

Any intergalactic federation of planets will have a human president.

In the future, individuality, creativity and sex will be outlawed – and suppressed by a daily dose of drugs – while overpopulation will be solved by enforced euthanasia. Or… only heavy-metal fans will survive the apocalypse.

Laughable as some of these scenarios are, isn’t it strange that when postulating about the future many of them will sneak their way into our frame of reference? Some, like the first three above, are laughed away and soon forgotten, whereas scenarios like the last one, a future devoid of individuality and creativity, are a little harder to shake.

Toynbee himself ponders the potential effect that a future world authority would have on human creativity, and presents the following fictional metaphor as a warning –  based on the real-life stagnation and decline of the great Roman empire:

It is said to have been reported to one of the Roman emperors, as a piece of good news, that one of his subjects had invented a process for manufacturing unbreakable glass. The emperor gave orders that the inventor should be put to death and that the records of his invention should be destroyed. If the invention had been put on the market, the manufacturers of ordinary glass would have been put out of business; there would have been unemployment that would have caused political unrest, and perhaps revolution; and then the World might have been thrown back into the turmoil from which the Roman world-state had salvaged it.

The emperor clearly made an error of judgement by ordering the death of the inventor of unbreakable glass, much as he deemed it a necessary price to pay for maintaining the status quo. History has proven that states which stifle conscience and creativity are doomed to extinction (take the fate of the former Communist bloc).

It seems nowadays humanity is caught between, on the one hand, acknowledgement that looming world catastrophes such as environmental or nuclear destruction can only permanently be addressed by having empowered world authorities, versus a fear of “signing our lives and freedoms away” to the so-called mega state.

The result is a passionate debate within various strata in society, a debate that most Baha’is, as advocates of world unity, will at some point be engaged in. It makes sense, then, to examine some of the common arguments or misconceptions against world governance and offer a different angle:

1. Loss of freedom. This particular fear, or variants of it, are certainly among the greatest of all barriers in peoples’ minds. But let’s turn this argument on it’s head. Today’s governments use and abuse the “freedom” of national sovereignty to spend hugely on increasingly sophisticated armaments, far beyond what is necessary. Consider, if checks and balances were enforced to prevent this from happening, just how much more money could be channeled towards improving education or providing better healthcare?

2. Greater bureaucracy. While this may be true in certain situations, it can also be stated that challenges such as reducing global warming could actually do with increased bureaucracy and sanction, rather than the carbon emission free-for-all occurring around us all the time.

3. Dictatorship. It is interesting to note that where the law of the land precludes dictatorship from happening, it generally doesn’t. Take the federated union of American states discussed in the previous part of this series, or more recently, the states which together formed the European Union. These two examples are key evidence that world governance does not necessarily imply dictatorship – and the power of the law can ensure it.

For the sake of brevity I will leave it there, but would love to hear your own additions to this list. Finally, I am reminded of a talk given by one of my favourite Baha’i speakers, noted for his infusions of offbeat humour. Describing the vision of the future mentioned in the major Holy Scriptures, one of peace, unity and everyone getting along with each other, all of a sudden he exclaims: “But wouldn’t life be boring?!”

Chuckles fill the room, accompanied by a few barely discernible nods, and then an expectant pause. It is at this point that he presents this quotation from Shoghi Effendi, a glimpse into the exciting challenges that actually lie in store for the human race:

Destitution on the one hand, and gross accumulation of ownership on the other, will disappear. The enormous energy dissipated and wasted on war, whether economic or political, will be consecrated to such ends as will extend the range of
human inventions and technical development,
to the increase of the productivity of mankind,
to the extermination of disease,
to the extension of scientific research,
to the raising of the standard of physical health,
to the sharpening and refinement of the human brain,
to the exploitation of the unused and unsuspected resources of the planet,
to the prolongation of human life,
and to the furtherance of any other agency that can stimulate the intellectual, the moral, and spiritual life of the entire human race.

(Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha’u'llah, p.204)

In his book Change and Habit: The Challenge of Our Times, one of the 20th century’s most respected historians, Arnold J. Toynbee

3. Federalism as the way forward?

Given Toynbee’s assertion that world governance cannot be imposed by force if it is to succeed, do cases exist where voluntary union between member states has taken place and actually proven a success? Is there a positive model we can refer to and use as a point of reference? Well, peering back into the 1700s we find one such case, where a divided and oft-times hostile community was united under one system:

The stirring of a new national consciousness, and the birth of a new type of civilization, infinitely richer and nobler than any which its component parts could have severally hoped to achieve, may be said to have proclaimed the coming of age of the American people.

By agreeing to the federal system of governance, the member states of the United States of America ensured their own survival while simultaneously yielding to the promise of an “infinitely richer and nobler” civilization than they could alone achieve. Given their evident success against what seemed like impossible odds, there is quite clearly something related to the principle of federalism that holds promise for a global implementation of this model. Abdu’l-Baha, perceiving this potential, went so far as to encourage a high-ranking official in the U.S. government who had questioned Him as to the best manner in which he could promote the interests of his government and people:

You can best serve your country… if you strive, in your capacity as a citizen of the world, to assist in the eventual application of the principle of federalism underlying the government of your own country to the relationships now existing between the peoples and nations of the world.

Beyond the need for world leaders to rise to unprecedented heights of political maturity and high-mindedness in order to set up global federal structures, Toynbee mentions two mental barriers at the level of each individual that often impede progress towards the sense of world-citizenship spoken of by Abdu’l-Baha.

The first is to do with feelings of psychological discomfort. According to this theory from evolutionary psychology, there is a limit to the number of stable social relationships that we can maintain. This number varies widely depending on a variety of factors, but the upper limit (known as Dunbar’s Number) is about 150 relationships. Granted this number is open to debate with the emergence of online social networking, yet the fact remains that since the neolithic age we have been hard-wired to maintain strong relationships with no more than our family and a handful of close friends. And even though the sizes of our societal units have long since grown beyond our capacity to “connect” with everyone, there remains, according to some psychologists, an inherent fear of feeling dwarfed by the system.

In the end this fear is unfounded, states Toynbee. The price of feeling an extra bit of psychological discomfort for belonging to a slightly larger system is negligible when compared to the guarantee of a more prosperous future for all.

The second barrier which Toynbee mentions, and which is addressed directly by the Baha’i teachings, are physiological factors: cultural differences, racial prejudices, feelings of class superiority (in fact, all forms of blind imitation). In other words, emotions that run counter to the principle of the oneness of the human race — a truth with all the sciences affirm but which, as individuals, we have struggled to embrace. Baha’u'llah, Whose mission was to propel mankind towards the promised age of universal brotherhood, transcendent of man-made limitations, has stated in The Hidden Words:

68. O CHILDREN OF MEN!

Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust? That no one should exalt himself over the other. Ponder at all times in your hearts how ye were created. Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest. Such is My counsel to you, O concourse of light! Heed ye this counsel that ye may obtain the fruit of holiness from the tree of wondrous glory.

By consciously acting this lesson out and encouraging others to do the same, we put God’s most recent counsel into practice in our daily lives. We learn to consider all as equals, brothers and sisters of a single human race, and in a very practical sense bring to life the concept of world citizenship. We find also that the pyschological and physiological barriers mentioned by Toynbee are far from insurmountable. And it follows that by our actions we are opening doors to more perfect systems of governance, such as world federalism, which will be greatly superior to the outdated models in our midst.

In his book Change and Habit: The Challenge of Our Times, one of the 20th century’s most respected historians, Arnold J. Toynbee

WHY the need to look back into history? What can dusty books by grey-haired historians possibly have to offer when FOX news et al are screening “blow-by-blow” coverage of U.S. President Obama’s trip to the Middle East? Well, you may be interested to know that the follow up to Part I of this series also discusses that trip, but not in the way you think it does. First, some context…

2. Culture and the Impact of the Intelligentsia

Imagine a situation where a handful of powerful nations came to an agreement — motivations aside — to forcefully impose a global system of governance on the rest. Would this be effective? Would everyone merely shrug their shoulders and accept it? Not according to the lessons of history, says Toynbee, before listing a host of examples that illustrate his point.

Instead, there should be some universally agreed principles that would form part of a lasting pact. This would in turn would require some degree of uniformity between states. Toynbee ponders the following questions:

Would world government be practicable if it were not underpinned by a certain amount of unity and uniformity in the peoples’ outlooks and ways of life? What is the minimum amount of homogeneity in this field that would be needed? Has this amount of homogeneity been achieved yet? And, if it has not, what is the prospect of its being achieved in the foreseeable future?

When the British ruled India they were faced with a host of dilemmas. How would they go about reconciling prevalent cultural practices with their own notions of moral rightness? Take the practices of female infanticide and of sati (the self-immolation of a widow by burning herself to death on her husband’s funeral pyre). Such practices were seen as abhorrent to the conquerors but sacred form the standpoint of much of the Indian public. At the risk of being forcibly ejected from the country, as had happened to the missionary-minded Portuguese in Japan and Abyssinia, the British government in India eventually banned these practices.

Was this the right thing to do? In hindsight, with such practices now frowned upon and altogether rare, one may confidently assert that it was. But how would one deal with a similar situation today? How would humanity reach a general consensus on the aspects of culture that are conducive to the richness of life and to human upliftment, versus those aspects — be they steeped in tradition or not — that are self-abasing products of the human imagination?

Toynbee credits the phenomenon of the “Westernizing intelligentsia” with breeding a certain level of homogeneity between previously disparate cultures and nations. Intelligentsia is a Russian term that denotes a strata of society engaged in the development and dissemination of culture within a nation (nothing to do with any Soviet-era spy networks!)

Thus the Westernizing intelligentsia, according to Toynbee, spread a way of thinking that sought to reconcile Western expectations with prevalent norms and traditions (often by first mastering the culture of the West). Traces of their influence can be found in Russia under Peter the Great, Mustafa Ataturk’s Turkey or the colonial wings of the intelligentsia established in India and elsewhere, under the British Empire. Continue Reading >

In his book Change and Habit: The Challenge of Our Times, one of the 20th century’s most respected historians, Arnold J. Toynbee

The phrase New World Order has appeared in the press once again. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was quoted saying it this time, and not for the first time either, having said it before he became PM. He joins a list of world leaders who, unhappy with the present situation, have used this phrase to describe the vision of a more balanced and equitable future; a place where we’ll have finally figured out all the economic, environmental, moral, political, you-name-it messes that afflict the human race. In the past this list included Woodrow Wilson, Rajiv Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, George H.W. Bush and Tony Blair. Current leaders include Georgia’s Mikheil Saakashvili, Abdullah Gül of Turkey and, entirely ironic considering Iran’s unabated persecution of the Baha’i community, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

This list, along with the list of leaders who have used related phrases like the “end of history” or the “era of globalization” (think Bill Clinton), or all those who have appealed in vain for greater political unity and justice in international trade, are sufficient evidence to indicate that a major shake up is needed. All signs indicate that while present-day global bodies, like the UN and WTO, promote these aims in principle, they are neither capable in their present format nor do they possess the unqualified support of member nations to bring about long-lasting change. 

Toynbee begins by taking a step back from this scene to look at what brought us here. He studies the characteristics of the so-called would-be world states, who through a process of conquest and victory, extended far beyond their original boundaries with the aim of bringing the world under one rule. He acknowledges their successes and examines reasons why they ultimately failed, in so doing gleaning numerous insights (of which I will only touch on four). If, as the saying goes, one should “look to the future through the lens of the past”, then this seems like the perfect place to start. 

1. Technology and world-mindedness

The rapid emergence of new technology over the past century has annihilated the distances that once divided tribes and nations. But technology, as pointed out by Toynbee and affirmed in the Baha’i writings, is a morally neutral force which can be used, at will, for good or evil.

In the atomic age, with nuclear warheads dotted all over the planet, the consequences of how we choose to make use of technology have been magnified beyond all compare. In other words, trying to mimic the approach of would-be world states of the past, that of using  force to bring about unity, has the potential to end in catastrophe. This outcome cannot be risked, for obvious reasons.

Toynbee optimistically asserts that throughout history, whenever man has been forced to choose between survival or destruction, the move has eventually been towards the former. However, the obstacles to surmount this time lie not only in making “correct technology decisions”, but more importantly in overcoming habits of division that have characterized 99% percent of the span of human history.

99% percent, really?

In brief, yes. The world split into separate parts over 900,000 years ago, and the earliest of the would-be world states, the empire of Egypt, was established under 5000 years ago. Thus, relatively speaking, the movement towards unity has occured in the blink-of-an-eye (nevermind the major acceleration over the past 150 years). It is clear, then, that humanity has an entire history of antagonistic feeling to overcome before embracing a new culture of world mindedness, which may partly explain why international diplomacy has been such a painful struggle for everyone concerned — we’re just not used to the realities of life in a global village. This disconnect between our (often noble) attempts at establishing international peace and our final decisions are encapsulated in this gem of a paragraph from the Baha’i International Community:  

Twice in this century humanity has attempted to bring about a new international order. Each attempt sought to address the emergent recognition of global interdependence, while nevertheless preserving intact a system which put the sovereignty of the state above all else.

BIC : 1995 Oct Turning Point For All Nations

The process, of transferring the loyalty one feels towards one’s tribe or nation to that of mankind as a whole, is according to Baha’is the single most vital condition to nurture for the sake of universal peace and prosperity. 

The chief Personages in history, according to Toynbee, who have striven to promote sentiments of universal goodwill have been the founders of the world religions and their closest followers. Interesting, then, that relatively few of the adherents of these religions have succeeded in breaking the shackles of tribal, national, or indeed religious loyalty, in exchange for a love of the entire human family. It’s almost as if a saturation point would be reached, beyond which societal unity could no longer be sustained.  

The reasons for this, according to the Baha’i Faith, have nothing to do with any failure on the part of Buddha, Christ, Muhammad or founders of the other religions. Rather, the problem lay in (a) human capacity at the time the message was delivered and (b) the existing conditions of society. It would have been futile, for example, to promote feelings of world unity at a time when the world was supposedly flat and didn’t extend beyond the point of the horizon!

In this age, Baha’u'llah renews the timeless message of universal love and extends it to encompass the entire globe:

Let not a man glory in this, that he loves his country; let him rather glory in this, that he loves his kind…

Soon will the present-day order be rolled up, and a new one spread out in its stead.

Part II to follow.

I settled down in my train seat, free newspaper in hand, all geared up for the early morning commute to work. Being free of charge, it’s quite a challenge finding anything of substance amongst the pages of tabloid gossip, cheap flight promotions and stories of cats in trees. This particular morning though, I found two stories of the compare-and-contrast variety, both to do with alcohol. The first was a Japanese study which concluded that moderate social drinking reduces the risk of heart disease, as opposed to drinking in isolation which has less effect. All well and good, but this naturally leads to the question: does this study have more to do with alcohol or with social interaction? Replace alcohol with, say, grapes or broccoli, and the findings will no doubt be the same…plus you wouldn’t have to deal with all the harmful side effects. Not sure that the idea of social broccoli eating will take off anytime soon though. Seedless grapes might have a chance though .

So much for that. The next article highlighted the consequences of the growing binge drinking culture across Britain. 

An ambulance for drunks will run all year in London to cope with the growing scourge of binge drinking.

Today London Ambulance Service announced its “booze bus” will operate every week to relieve pressure on other crews of medics and to save thousands of pounds…

Since starting four years ago, the service has only operated during periods of high demand such as weekends in December, New Year’s Eve, and the 2006 World Cup. But now a paramedic crew will trawl the West End each week in the Central London Alternative Response Vehicle, treating drunken revellers.

Among the more obvious repercussions of binge culture, to add to the growing list of medical crises related in some way to alcohol, is the dramatic rise in demand for liver transplants. Problem is, there is also a major shortage of liver donors. What’s more, the liver guardians (frequently a family member of the deceased donor) have the final say in who receives the organ – and quite often they will decide against donating the liver to an alcohol abuser, lest the person ends up going back to the bottle post-operation. One can’t help but feel sympathy for all parties concerned: the patient who requires urgent medical care, the doctors who are trying to help him, and the donor who feels priority ought to be given to someone who hasn’t “brought it upon themselves” and will genuinely treasure the second chance.

When people ask me why I’m a non-drinker, the question goes something like this: “Is it because of your religion?” My answer is a hesitant yes. Yes because my religion forbids me to drink. Hesitant because by giving a one-word answer, the practical and philosophical reasons get lost. The topic often changes immediately, and I’m surreptitiously cast into the pile of inhibited fellows whose religion “forces them to do it”, when actually this is far from the truth. I follow the law because firstly, it makes practical sense, and secondly because I believe in the Personage who brought the teaching, and believe he knows what is best, not only for us but for general society too.

Sitting in on a Ruhi class one day, in the presence of a warm, thoughtful group of people investigating the teachings of the Baha’i Faith, the topic of alcohol prohibition arose. Surely, pointed out one participant, the fact that there are millions of people out there who drink responsibly should be considered and that they should be afforded their dues. Another participant responded that the line between drinking responsibly and overstepping the mark was very fine indeed, thereby we always ran the risk of irreperably harming our own physical/spiritual selves and the lives of those around us. 

This conversation went back and forth for a while, but ultimately it came down to one question, one that all the participants were engaged in by attending the class: Was Baha’u'llah really who He claimed to be? Was he really the Divine Educator for this day and age? If the answer is affirmative, and each individual is free to decide that for themselves, then one has absolutely no grounds to argue against the laws He has revealed. For how can we, the puny and unintelligent beings that we are, argue against the perfect wisdom of the Divine? How can we with our limited comprehension argue against that which is limitless?

Regardless of what one ends up believing, if the truth really is enshrined within Baha’u'llah’s laws and teachings, then what is certain is that the wisdom behind them would become ever more apparent as time goes by. In other words, society is in a state of constant flux, and conditions would evolve in a way that only reinforces the rationale behind these laws.

The UK government has poured millions of pounds into failed drink reduction policies, and they certainly aren’t the only government battling the epidemic. The latest proposal by the UK’s Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, is to raise the minimum price of alcohol in an effort to prevent young people from being able to afford it. In the comments section below the article, paulaxed from East Yorkshire is not impressed: “Its a cultural / attitude thing and playing with prices will not change it.”

Point taken, but to the cultural/attitude thing I would hasten to add the moral/spiritual thing. Because until we teach a deeper appreciation of our true selves, the reasons behind our existence and the heights to which we must strive, such scourges won’t be disappearing any time soon.

22. O SON OF SPIRIT!
Noble have I created thee, yet thou hast abased thyself. Rise then unto that for which thou wast created.

(Baha’u'llah, The Arabic Hidden Words)

Man is even as steel, the essence of which is hidden: through admonition and explanation, good counsel and education, the essence will be brought to light. If, however, he be allowed to remain in his original condition, the corrosion of lusts and appetites will effectively destroy him.

~ Baha’u'llah

The article which forms the background of this blog entry is from the UK’s Sunday Times. Entitled “Cure for the Facebook generation“, the article actually has little to do with Facebook itself (I imagine the reason was purely to capture the reader’s attention). Rather, it highlights a study conducted which examines the impact of greed culture and individualism on today’s children.

Britain’s cult of individualism, greed and selfishness has so blighted children’s lives that families and pupils need basic training in love and moral responsibility, according to a landmark report on the state of childhood.

More than 35,000 people contributed to the inquiry, which recommends measures including emotional report cards for children to give a snapshot of their mental and moral state at the ages of 5, 11 and 14.

Every now and again, we come across an article that strikes a chord within us, one that has us nodding thoughtfully as our eyes slide down the screen (or newspaper if you’re old-fashioned). Not only did this article have me nodding, but it actually evoked feelings of impatient anxiety.

Here’s one way to describe the feeling:

Imagine being back in high school and your science teacher asks the class a real brainteaser, which (to your surprise) you know the answer to. You wave your arm frantically trying to catch the teacher’s attention. only for your gestures to go unnoticed. You squirm so much that you almost fall off your chair, as you watch those around you fail in their responses, until at long last the skinny finger is extended in your direction.

Further extracts from the Times article:

A Good Childhood states emphatically that society has been damaged by rampant individualism… and that this ethos needs to be replaced by a greater sense of personal responsibility and the common good.

It calls for “a radical shift away from the excessively individualistic ethos which now prevails, to an ethos where the constant question is, ‘What would we do if our aim was a world based on love?’ ”

It paints a stark picture of social breakdown. The report cites evidence that this country [Britain] has some of the worst rates of child unhappiness, poverty, family breakdown and child violence in the western world.

Two-thirds of respondents say the moral values of children have declined; other polls show people’s trust in one another has crumbled.

These results are hardly a surprise. We see the evidence all around us, yet to pinpoint exactly how it happened is far from easy. The cults of individualism and greed have certainly played a role. However one can also mention the declining influence of true religion as a positive guiding force, replaced by moral laxity, on the one hand, and fanaticism on the other. One can talk about the initiatives to remove religious instruction classes from school curricula, or the increased demands placed on parents to provide for their families. And then there’s the good old World Wide Web, which when taken to excess has it’s own pitfalls, like Facebook addiction, stunted social skills, etc.

You will probably have your own list of modern-day offenders, so enough on that topic.

Before examining the solution proposed in the article, a few words should be mentioned about the recent experience of the Baha’i community.

Baha’is have long recognized the plight faced by children the world over, children living in societies where the sense of close community has all but vanished and moral education neglected almost in it’s entirety. Aware of the dire need for a remedy, Baha’i communities worldwide have, in the past decade, put classes for the moral and spiritual development of all children — not just children of Baha’i parents — at the very top of their plans of action.

More will be said about this later on, in the meantime let’s read on…

The solution, according to the experts who wrote the report, is to emphasise love and mutual respect in education, public policy and personal life. The recommendations include “civil birth” ceremonies to foster a sense of commitment for atheist parents who do not want their children christened; more prenatal classes to educate parents about child-rearing responsibilities; promotion of team sports; and the development of a sense of wonder and inner peace.

Without delving into the points above, I would invite the reader to consider whether they fall into the realms of:

A) definite non-solution
B) partial solution
C) the only solution
D) too vague a suggestion

(For the record, my answers were mainly B and D, sprinkled with a bit of A).

Going further, it makes sense to then pose the question: is it worth making the effort to develop an educational curriculum that will encompass these partial solutions, or, as some might suggest (adopting the attitude that it’s impossible to please everyone) do we “leave it up to the parents”? But what of parents who have psychological and emotional problems of their own? Or those who feel that teaching their kids about moral virtue in the face of MTV-culture is simply an exercise in futility? Or, and this is the true story of someone I met recently, you are a mother who has to work 18 hours a day, 6 days a week, just to earn enough money for your family to survive?

The Baha’i community recognizes that these are very real problems which cannot be ignored. Moreover, it recognizes the diversity of thoughts, feelings and convictions that characterize each individual’s set of beliefs, differences which contribute to the richness of society, yet all too often become barriers to (or excuses against) a solution.

But should we accept this to be the case? Can we allow this to be the case?

Indeed, the Scriptures of the world’s major faiths share a wealth of common ground in terms of teaching us how to lead spiritual lives. More so, it seems, than leaders of religion will care to admit.

The Baha’i community places great emphasis on the moral and spiritual education of children and youth, with a focus on providing ongoing opportunities for developing a sense of world citizenship and a lifelong commitment to serve humanity.

Children are the most precious resource a community has. Like young trees, children grow and develop in whatever way they are trained and according to the influences they experience. Baha’i spiritual education for children is intended to nurture spiritually vibrant and healthy young people who will grow up without prejudice and with a positive, powerful sense that they are important to God and have a role to play in serving humanity.

(From www.bahai.us)

A remarkable movement is taking shape and gaining in momentum across thousands of neighbourhoods. It is characterized by a curriculum that teaches eternal spiritual verities while addressing challenges that are unique to the modern age. This movement is still in its early stages. Its aim is to dispel the gloomy picture painted by the Times article. For now it remains under the radar, yet within it lies the solution which independent studies, like the one described here, are crying out for.