Change and Habit II: What the Cultured Class Forgot…

nadim — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:54:53 +0000

In his book Change and Habit: The Challenge of Our Times, one of the 20th century’s most respected historians, Arnold J. Toynbee, puts his in-depth knowledge of human history and his concerns for its future into focus. He suggests that to avoid self-destruction and move towards unification, humanity must make a radical break from deeply ingrained habits built up over many generations. In his quest to pinpoint these habits, Toynbee examines the would-be world states and would-be world religions that have appeared in human history, considers the impact they have had on our collective identity and then suggests the factors that, once realized, would bring us closer to the dream of a united world. In cross-referencing Toynbee’s findings with the Baha’i writings, we discover a striking harmony between lessons learnt from history and Baha’i guidelines on lasting peace.

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 clearly be discerned 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 >

Viewed from this perspective, Westernization has been a factor in creating a higher level of homogeneity than has been witnessed in humanity’s past, and elevated standards of human rights, equality between the sexes and freedom of conscience are universally appreciated. Yet the saddening side of Westernization is, in these days, glaringly apparent (and I highly recommend reading these articles which examine both sides of modernity in detail).

By far the greatest area of neglect in this global mindshift, say the Baha’i writings, has been the failure thus far to establish a unifying conception of religion. Religion, unlike any other force known to man, has the potential within it to bring about unshatterable unity and solidarity. And yet — perhaps because nothing stirs the emotion like religion — discourse on this most critical theme has been limited to nothing more than lukewarm appeals for tolerance. But tolerance will only go so far. The Universal House of Justice, in the document “One Common Faith“, presents the following analysis of the intelligentsia, while offering the worldwide Baha’i community as an example of the kind of unity in diversity that must be the vision:

A global intelligentsia, its prescriptions largely shaped by materialistic misconceptions of reality, clings tenaciously to the hope that imaginative social engineering, supported by political compromise, may indefinitely postpone the potential disasters that few deny loom over humanity’s future. “We can well perceive how the whole human race is encompassed with great, with incalculable afflictions”, Bahá’u'lláh states. “They that are intoxicated by self-conceit have interposed themselves between it and the Divine and infallible Physician. Witness how they have entangled all men, themselves included, in the mesh of their devices. They can neither discover the cause of the disease, nor have they any knowledge of the remedy.” As unity is the remedy for the world’s ills, its one certain source lies in the restoration of religion’s influence in human affairs. The laws and principles revealed by God, in this day, Bahá’u'lláh declares, “are the most potent instruments and the surest of all means for the dawning of the light of unity amongst men.” “Whatsoever is raised on this foundation, the changes and chances of the world can never impair its strength, nor will the revolution of countless centuries undermine its structure.”

Central to Bahá’u'lláh’s mission, therefore, has been the creation of a global community that would reflect the oneness of humankind. The ultimate testimony that the Bahá’í community can summon in vindication of His mission is the example of unity that His teachings have produced. As it enters the twenty-first century, the Bahá’í Cause is a phenomenon unlike anything else the world has seen… comprises several million people representative of virtually every ethnic, cultural, social and religious background on earth, administering their collective affairs without the intervention of a clergy, through democratically elected institutions. The many thousands of localities in which it has put down its roots are to be found in every country, territory and significant island group, from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego, from Africa to the Pacific. The assertion that this community may today already constitute the most diverse and geographically widespread of any similarly organized body of people on the planet is unlikely to be challenged by one familiar with the evidence.

In last week’s state visit to Egypt, the U.S. President made clear his views on what he considers universal principles – as opposed to so-called Western constructs. This was not entirely unexpected. Instead, what stirred the imagination most were his numerous beautifully-chosen quotes from the Holy Quran, his assertion that “faith should bring us together” and his mention of the Golden Rule, common to all the world’s faiths. This was tacit acknowledgement, to this observer anyway, that inter-religious dialogue can no longer be set aside as an afterthought. The mind harks back to the call made back in 2002 by the Universal House of Justice, addressing the world’s religious leaders:

…interfaith discourse… must now address honestly and without further evasion the implications of the over-arching truth that called the movement into being: that God is one and that, beyond all diversity of cultural expression and human interpretation, religion is likewise one.

Baha'i Perspectives » intelligentsia

Change and Habit II: What the Cultured Class Forgot…