Baha'i Perspectives

nadim June 3rd, 2008

I ended my last post on the documentary film “God Grew Tired of Us”, about the Lost Boys of Sudan emigrating to the United States, by noting the clash between two opposing ways of life, aspects of which were reflected in miniature throughout the film. An example was a scene where the boys were filmed going about their errands in a group, as was the norm back home. This aroused the suspicion of onlookers, eventually leading to one person phoning the police, who in turn ordered that the boys should refrain from walking around in groups. Watching this scene, you will come to your own conclusions regarding the underlying motives behind this incident as they weren’t explored in any further detail during the film.

Nevertheless, we observe a clash of two worlds. We see a demonstration of modern society’s “individual is king” ideology that tenaciously upholds individual rights and liberties, in this case the perceived right to safety. This right is a given, yet if it is established that the boys have not caused any harm and that they merely prefer walking in groups, should this factor not also be taken into consideration? One may also ask how much the group’s ethnic background had to do with the police decision, and so on and so forth, but this would be an entire discussion of it’s own! The key point here is that, even when dealing with notions of individual liberty, one should carefully weigh such rights against the principles of equity and moderation.

…Bahá’u'lláh “inculcates the principle of ‘moderation in all things’; declares that whatsoever, be it ‘liberty, civilization and the like’, ‘passeth beyond the limits of moderation’ must ‘exercise a pernicious influence upon men’…

(The Universal House of Justice, 1988 Dec 29, Individual Rights and Freedoms, p. 4)

Of course, moderation is also vital in ensuring that we resist the temptation to hop to the other end of the ideological spectrum, namely an excessive collectivist culture. Much has already been written about the “pernicious influence” of Communism in stifling the flame of individual creativity and dismissing the importance of religious faith. In an extract from “In The Quantum Self: A Revolutionary View of Human Nature and Consciousness Rooted in the New Physics”, Danah Zohar makes some compelling observations about such extremes, or “splits”, in our thinking:

The split between the individual and his relationships led on the one hand to an exaggerated individualism, to a selfish will to power and possession, and on the other to an enforced communitarianism like that of Marxism, which denied the meaning or importance of individuals at all while stressing the absolute primacy of relationship.

The split between culture and nature led both to relativism of all sorts — factual, moral, aesthetic and spiritual (value judgments) — and to dogma and extreme fundamentalism. There seemed no middle ground between the two extremes of saying that a given way of looking at things was only one of many contingent and relative ways of looking at them, or between saying there was only one, true and absolute way of looking at them. There seemed no way to say that we were not either wholly creatures of culture, and therefore unrooted in any established facts, or wholly creatures of nature (of the given), with no flexibility or room for creative development.

In the West, these dichotomies robbed our individuality of its context and landed us in the deepest isolation, leading to narcissism. We were cut off from an outer confirmation of our inner life, leading to nihilism, and denied the confirmation of our ideas, leaving us with relativism and subjectivism. Each nourished a form of alienation, and the sum total of this alienation is the curse of modernism.

Zohar’s conclusions on these fragmented approaches to understanding human reality are echoed in the Baha’i Writings. So, where do the Baha’is stand? It could be said that the Baha’i model lies at the confluence of several lines of thought; and while aspects of each are recognized and their worth acknowledged, none of them are accepted in isolation. For example, on the necessary relationship between the individual and the collective, Shoghi Effendi states:

We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life moulds the environment and is itself also deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions.

(Compilations, The Compilation of Compilations vol. I, p. 84)

Similarly, in stressing the importance of both material as well as spiritual education, Abdu’l-Baha offers the perfect analogy of the lamp and the light during one of His talks in the United States:

Since my arrival in this country I find that material civilization has progressed greatly, that commerce has attained the utmost degree of expansion; arts, agriculture and all details of material civilization have reached the highest stage of perfection, but spiritual civilization has been left behind. Material civilization is like unto the lamp, while spiritual civilization is the light in that lamp. If the material and spiritual civilization become united, then we will have the light and the lamp together, and the outcome will be perfect. For material civilization is like unto a beautiful body, and spiritual civilization is like unto the spirit of life. If that wondrous spirit of life enters this beautiful body, the body will become a channel for the distribution and development of the perfections of humanity.

(Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 11)

These passages only scratch the surface. Indeed, there is an enormous depth of knowledge in the Baha’i Writings in terms of gaining an appreciation of our role as individuals within society, on society’s effect on the individual, on the necessary duality of spiritual and material civilization.

The unease one feels when watching certain scenes in the film will hopefully force the viewer to question certain assumptions, leading to a deeper understanding of what it means to be human; an understanding that would harmonize rather than fragment, one that would accept that material existence is empty unless it is illumined by the light of the spirit, one that would acknowledge the totality of our existence both as creative individuals as well as vital actors in society.

Tags: culture, development, moderation

• Arts & Culture , Baha'i Concepts , Society
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