Comenius and Irenic Religion

Comenius and the Principle: "Religion is a Cause of Love"

By John Taylor; 2009 Nov 18, Qudrat 15, 166 BE


This essay series attempts to cover the salient contributions of John Amos Comenius's Panorthosia to our understanding of the subject matter of all the Baha'i principles. In recent weeks we broached the religious principles with a discussion of how to eliminate fundamentalism and other forms of religious prejudice. Today we look at the positive phrasing of the same principle, which has two aspects. The first Abdu'l-Baha called "religion is a cause of love" (RCL), and the second is "Religion is a Remedy." Although we treat them in isolation here, these are really only phases of the same process. RCL establishes the purpose of religion and the second, religion is a remedy, considers the practical implications of this purpose, that is, a heavy responsibility of faith groups to render themselves accountable to their own ideals.

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Nietzsche was no admirer of religion but nonetheless he recognized a spiritual truth when he said that "To forget one's purpose is the commonest form of stupidity." When we get wrapped up in our own thoughts we tend to become "wise over trivialities" and become distracted from our purpose in life. Comenius wrote in the 9th chapter of Panorthosia,

"As Seneca aptly remarked that `the disease of the Greeks was to be wise over trivialities,' the Philosophy to which I am referring is like the wisdom of the Greeks, and is therefore trivial and mainly frivolous, not even touching upon the most essential needs of man, but occupying his mind with irrelevancies and constantly diverting him from his most important goal, i.e., God and Heaven. (Comenius, Panorthosia II, 148)

Although this sort of stupidity can be as common in religion as in any other field of endeavor, it is fair to say that it is more inexcusable here, since religion is all about our ultimate purpose in life. If we cannot get eternal aims right, it is unlikely that we will ever do so in more immediate, short-term issues.

In this series we have discussed at length a series of proposals that Comenius made to eliminate this sort of stupidity once and for all. Throughout Panorthosia he suggests that we distill purposes and place them front and center. Once we have a summary of the central goals that is acceptable to each level of society, it becomes a highly valuable reminder. For example, in the tenth chapter of Panorthosia he writes,

 "This would therefore eradicate the curse of sectional differences now and forever. Let us adopt as our common motto the idea expressed by our Common Master (Matthew V, 45) GOD AND THE SUN ARE THE SAME FOR ALL." (Comenius, Panorthosia II, 157)

This motto can aid in-groups and out-groups, members and outsiders alike in recalling that the ultimate purpose of God is universal. "God and the sun are the same for all" implies that although we may say "my God" alone or in a faith group, we have an obligation to treat God as for all and above all, as an end in Himself, in a public forum. The sun does not shine only for some, it shines on all equally. This spiritual principle Baha'is call the Oneness of God, and as Comenius says, it dampens the spirit of factionalism or "sectional differences."

Once "God and the sun are the same for all" is understood by all sides, the word "God" will no longer be banished from public fora, as it is today -- in spite of the fact that well over 90 percent of the human race profess some kind of belief in God. The word "God" will be a useful distillation of all our ultimate purposes in life.
This motto, though, is only the first of many brief mottoes or bywords that Comenius suggests be proclaimed everywhere, at every level of society, following the guidance of the proverb: "Wisdom calls aloud in the street. She utters her voice in the public squares." (Prov 1:20, WEB) For example, in the twenty third chapter of Panorthosia, on the reform of churches, he offers this slogan, from the words of Genesis 23:17,

"This is Bethel, the house of God and the Gate of Heaven." (Panorthosia, p. 85-101)

I do not know whether this motto is universal enough to be applicable to faith groups outside Judaism and Christianity. If not, some other motto could easily be chosen from scripture. The law of compassion and the Golden Rule spring to mind, since they are featured in some form in every religious scripture and tradition. Karen Armstrong has had some success lately in persuading various Abrahamic faith groups to accept a declaration based upon the law of compassion. This is a baby-step toward what Comenius proposed, 330 years later.

Of course we cannot ignore the heart and soul of religion, the purpose of God for the individual. The twentieth chapter of Panorthosia deals with personal reform. Here Comenius puts forward the following seven word declaration: "Here is a splendid image of God." This he clearly intends for everybody, not just his fellow Christians or any other sub-set of believers.

"Therefore no matter who you are, you must reform yourself according to God's good pleasure and with His help, so that angels and pious men are able, as it were, to read on your forehead the inscription: `HERE IS A SPLENDID IMAGE OF GOD.' (Panorthosia, Ch. 20, para 24, p. 28)

The motto refers of course to what God said of Adam just after creating him in the garden of Eden, that he was created in the image of God. Our purpose in life is to realize this Adamic spiritual heritage and destiny by remaking the self into a divine image. To be an image of God, he clarifies, means a maintaining a holy attitude in everyday matters, not only in isolated moments of sublimity.

"But inasmuch as you are the image of God, you must wholly transform yourself for the purpose of representing the very likeness of God in the actions of your daily life. This means that you should be holy, even as our God is holy," (Leviticus 24:2) and merciful and generous, and kind yet just to all men without respect of persons, (Romans 2:11) and so on, as true religion teaches you." (Panorthosia, Ch. 20, para 15, p. 25)

I imagine this declaration "Here is a splendid image of God" inscribed on a personal escutcheon, perhaps surrounding a mirror, so that in moments of retrospection one can decide how splendidly one has reflected the divine image of late.

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The Dialectician

The Dialectician

By John Taylor; 2009 Nov 16, Qudrat 13, 166 BE

Hillside construction projects are communally owned cooperatives that apply mixed-use zoning and standard, high-density design. The layout of hillside housing projects allows residents to live close to their place of work, while being ready at any time to travel and fit their modular living unit into another hillside housing project anywhere else on earth. Each neighbourhood has a variety of shops, workshops and other institutions and facilities close to residences. This minimizes the need for mechanized transit in daily commutes and improves health by forcing residents to walk and bicycle for errands and recreation.

As we have seen, the heart of hillside housing is the Room of One's Own (ROO), a mobile, modular living unit that can be fitted into any hillside dwelling slot anywhere on earth. If a citizen attains to wealth, his or her "black box" unit may fit into a standard slot that is required to be built into each mansion. If poverty is his or her lot, the ROO may be a stand-alone unit, like a trailer in what we now call a mobile home park. In any case, there is no homelessness. The shell of each living module is mass manufactured according to environmentally friendly "open standard" rules. The ROO remains with each person through all stages of life and is adapted and redesigned as needs change.

The ROO living module is the size of a standard shipping container. It includes a bedroom, reception area and bathroom, but has no kitchen (food preparation and serving is offloaded to the household, a compound of several living units). It also has a small study, which is mostly standard to the dweller's trade or profession. Additionally, it has a small space for a hobby or avocation. The ROO module can be split into three parts, a bedroom, a hobby space and an office. As needed, these can be detached and combined again later on. The bedroom unit may be placed in any of a variety of households or apartments in the neighbourhood, as plans, needs and tastes require. The ROO office or workshop is devoted to one's vocation and is usually but not always moved into one's place of employment. The avocation section is placed in a garage, studio or workshop in or near one's household or neighbourhood.

A ROO's additions and options are decided upon by the resident in consultation with a profession called the dialectician. Its design and placement is taken extremely seriously in this UCS society. It is the central concern of an entire profession, the dialectician. Just as a library is run by librarians, the ROO's of a neighbourhood are overseen by dialecticians. As Plato envisaged, the science of dialectics (learning peripatetically through regular, informal conversations) is the highest kind of knowledge. Learning how to apply cosmopolitan dialectics is an essential element of every world citizen's education.

Everyone will feel comfortable working out their own search for truth with one or more dialecticians. The profession is technically the applied or clinical branch of philosophy. The minimum entry qualification of a local dialectician is a degree in philosophy. The goal of the profession is to avoid today's interventions by the "nanny state", which are clumsy, intrusive, arbitrary, patronizing, or, especially in the case of insurance companies, self-serving.

Like most neighbourhood professions, dialecticians may be public officials, free agents or private consultants and entrepreneurs, but their remuneration is always geared to capitation. That is, income and other rewards increase as the ROO's in the entire region or neighbourhood under their purview improve, as compared with similar communities elsewhere.

Many dialectician's interventions are subtle or even automatic. For example, if it is observed that a resident is gaining weight, the bedroom may automatically move to a higher location so that he or she will work off the extra pounds by walking further and climbing more stairs. Or, if a person expresses boredom, his or her bedroom unit may be moved to a busier household, the hobby unit may be moved or re-designed, or the study module or career dashboard may be tweaked.

Other interventions by dialecticians are more direct, but they are rarely arbitrary or confrontational. This is because the responsibility of ROO dialectics is, on the local level, nobody's exclusive, permanent domain. The workload is shared among several types of personal advisors with a variety of professional backgrounds. As an individual's needs, status and circumstances change, the job may shift around among several friends, confidants and advisors. This will seem more natural than we imagine today, since residents will have been in intimate contact with dialecticians since early childhood.

The most extreme intervention by dialecticians occurs when a resident is convicted of a crime. Criminal acts are born of hatred, and hate can only be eliminated by behaviour untainted by hatred. This principle was identified by Machiavelli, who wrote that, "...no prince is ever benefited by making himself hated." (Discourses, Book III, Chapter XIX) There are therefore no prisons in a UCS. These institutions only institutionalize hatred and the loss of freedom. They are known to increase recidivism by reinforcing the criminal identity, and train criminals in the techniques of criminality. Worse, the sadistic, animalistic conditions of prison life corrupt not only guards and prisoners but society in general. Nor are there criminal records, which stigmatize offenders and reduce the chances of rehabilitation.

Instead, a large part of a violent or serious offender's punishment is for his or her freedom and privilege levels to bottom out, in other words, to revert to the minority of a child. In that case only are the rulings of a dialectician obligatory, arbitrary and unmitigated. The job of the dialectician then is to show the offender the way back to full autonomy again. We will discuss these sanctions in more detail in the coming section of People Without Borders on protection.

Suffice to say here that there are three types of dialectic philosopher, each a specialist in the three basic phases of Comenian governance, education (science), faith (wisdom) and politics (peace). Each is concerned mostly with one of the three possible kinds of relationships, relations with oneself (knowledge and science), relations with God (faith and wisdom) and relationships with others (peace and politics). A person who offends others (nobody is labelled a criminal, since labels become self-fulfilling prophesies) would have a philosopher of peace on their case until their escutcheon -- the record of a person's lifetime achievement -- beautifies and balances out again.

I have mentioned how the dialectician would intervene in a negative occasion. Most of the work that dialecticians do, however, is positive, aiding residents of the ROO in maintaining an "initiative credit rating," in planning and in maintaining a moral center. This activity we will broach next time.

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Shuffling Off Borders

Dawn of the Optimates


How Do We Get From Here to There?

At dinner, a friend and reader of this blog lately asked how I expect to get from where we are in the world now to this UCS and Comenian world government that I am always talking about. Here is how I see it, barring unexpected circumstances. I expect that science will be proven right. Climate pressure will get worse and the seas will rise. After a few decades, or sooner, local, regional and global conflicts will break out as nations and peoples become increasingly desperate.

This is just what Gwyn Dyer describes in his book Climate Wars (I have not read it but I did audit a rather frightening radio documentary predicting in coming decades political tensions, wars, environmental collapse, mass famines and political anarchy.) If I agreed with what Dyer assumes, that the only way people can think and solve their problems is through relations between nation states, I would not be bothering to write this book, whose title will be "People Without Borders."

Instead, I think we can change course. We can escape this bind if we cast off our mental shackles. We are perfectly capable of thinking of our world as a unity, unbounded by prejudice and nationalism, and acting for the benefit of all human beings. The intellectual groundwork has already been laid by John Amos Comenius. I am convinced that his Panorthosia is the most important book to come out in my generation (after a three hundred year diversion, it was finally translated into English and published in its entirety in the mid-1990's). Although it is some ways a difficult book, it details exactly how to escape our otherwise inevitable slide into anarchy, famine and collapse.

So, how do we get there? We read Panorthosia, then act upon it. We form a three pronged democratic government on all levels, starting with the family and neighborhood, going right on up to the continental and inter-continental levels. This will reform from the ground up the three pillars of order in the world: science, religion and politics. It will swing power away from the present axis of nations and large corporations toward continental, world and local organization.
The first part of Section One of People Without Borders describes how this must start with the peoples of the world. There must radical improvements to democracy as we know it. This in turn will reorient the media, transport and architecture and, most importantly, introduce a new way of life for the world citizen. This lifestyle will not come about on its own; it is the fruit of a plan set up at the same time as the local, neighborhood, continental and world governments form. The second part of People Without Borders describes elements of this plan. Here are a couple of its most important goals.

Goal One: Every child learns a trade or profession, with full work qualification by the next generation. The trades and professions then reform democracy, introducing into it a stronger element of meritocracy. Introduce a fund to assure that every person, working or not, receives a standard liveable income.
Goal Two: Make the human ecological footprint non-destructive. Invent a new high-density housing project that is combined with rapid underground transport and run on renewable energy sources. Run this housing, power and energy strip in a world encircling line uniting each continent with every other. Use this experience to devise a building code for a consultative, dynamically shifting architecture that places agriculture at the heart of residency.

Once these megaprojects are underway, lay down similar autonomous living projects across desert regions. This will green an area as large as South America. This is the most promising colonization prospect since the discovery of the Americas -- Richard St. Barbe Baker estimated in the 1960's that with a massive effort at planting trees the Sahara alone could sustain four billion people. This population shift would allow us to depopulate ecologically sensitive regions and allow them to return to nature. It would also provide excellent housing and opportunity for the billion souls now languishing in slums, without any infrastructure at all.

Section Two of People Without Borders looks at the theoretical groundings of the four essential organizational services of world citizenship: freedom, wealth, merit and security. We have completed the first two and are entering into the third, merit. Merit is the concern of meritocracy, what used to be called aristocracy, the rule of the best.

Hereditary aristocrats had already reached such a stage of outrageous corruption that the Greek word "aristocrat" was a pejorative when Comenius suggested the Latin form of "the best" as an alternative way of referring to those who earn power and influence through merit: "optimates." I would call an optimate any scientist, spiritual leader or educator who promotes goal number one mentioned above: universal trades and professions. This section covers the goals and plans that optimates might want to undertake once everyone has a trade and a standard living.




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Birth of Baha'u'llah Presentation

Post scriptum to today's essay

Post Scriptum to "The Moral Leap Towards the First Universal Republic"

By John Taylor; 2009 Nov 13, Qudrat 10, 166 BE

 

I am avoiding mention of the Baha'i Faith directly in this book, but just after posting today's essay, I found Jack Bush's blog devoted to what happened today in Baha'i history (http://jacklbushjr.blogspot.com/2009/11/november-13th-in-bahai-history.html). I was delighted to find out that the Master talked on this very subject of today's essay on the need for religion in republics.

"One reason that people despair of the world of religion is this very matter of superstitions and imitations practiced by religious leaders. When intelligent and learned people see these imitations and customs as being contrary to reason and knowledge they forsake the divine religion and are not aware that these are idle fancies of the leaders and have nothing to do with divine principles. The foundations of divine religion do not negate sound reason and true science. The principles of divine religion do not contradict knowledge and insight, except for some principles and minutiae of the law which were given according to the exigencies of the time and age. Of course, the second or social laws suited to the Mosaic dispensation and useful for the Jewish people at that time are now purposeless and ineffective and seem futile, but they were pertinent and useful at the time." (Mahmud's Diary, entry for 13 November, 2009)

Last night I mentioned the importance of religion in contributing to politics to my three friends on the Wainfleet Philosopher Cafe, and the very idea got a big laugh. The reaction is predictable. It is good to recall that the Master recognized this woeful, dangerous situation, and that he was able to speak to this need without alienating leaders of thought.


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Rembrandt's Portrait of John Amos Comenius

 

A Machiavellian Interlude

The Moral Leap Towards the First Universal Republic

By John Taylor; 2009 Nov 13, Qudrat 10, 166 BE

Why is a republican government better than any other? First, let us define what "republican" means. Basic civics holds that there are three simple forms of government, rule by one, rule by a few, and rule by many; these are termed monarchy, aristocracy and democracy. Each has its own advantages but also glaring drawbacks. Republicanism ideally is a happy mix of all three that maximizes their advantages and minimizes their disadvantages.

Unfortunately, modern nationalist governments, although they aspire to republicanism, are inclined to mix the three in a rigid, legalistic manner, and corruption has an undue influence. I call the result predatory democracy, or "gun-to-my-head democracy," where the people sell the right to pull the trigger of the gun they hold to their own head. Procrustean strictures set parties into permanent competition with one another. Constitutional barriers variously called checks and balances or separation of powers prevent these elements from harmonizing. Niccolo Machiavelli, in contrast, saw the elements of a republic setting each other off in a more natural way.

"In fact, when there is combined under the same constitution a prince, a nobility, and the power of the people, then these three powers will watch and keep each other reciprocally in check." (Machiavelli, Discourses, Book I, Chapter II)

Although Machiavelli is best known for his sinister work on Realpolitik, "The Prince," his greatest contribution to political science was his "Discourses," an apologia for republican governance. Here he makes his real sympathies clear, "...the governments of the people are better than those of princes." (Discourses, Chapter LVIII)

He accepted that a prince (meaning rule held in the hands of an individual) rules more ruthlessly and, if he knows his job, more efficiently than any other form of government. But only for a while. The prince builds a delicate house of cards that can stand temporarily. However, freedom is only assured if both leaders and followers free themselves from crisis and corruption.

In the long run the only time a "he" or a "she" is better than a "they" is when civic virtue has disappeared, crime is rampant and the land is teetering on the brink of anarchy. When times are out of joint a tyrant can be a step to betterment, but only if his rule leads to a general betterment of morals. If they do not improve, he has only himself to blame.

"Let not princes complain of the faults committed by the people subjected to their authority, for they result entirely from their own negligence or bad example." (Discourses, Book III, Chapter XXIX)

If the virtue of both leaders and the people somehow improve, they will be able to work together in a harmonious balance. They will then merit republican rule. And it is only under a republic that the people, the rule of many, can show their superior brilliance over rule by one or rule by a few.

"...if we compare the faults of a people with those of princes, as well as their respective good qualities, we shall find the people vastly superior in all that is good and glorious." (Machiavelli, Discourses, Chapter LVIII)

This marks a crucial transition point. We need virtue in order to pass from lesser, corrupt rule by one or by a few, or from unbalanced, imperfect republics to a truly harmonious republic where every part functions organically. But the only tried and true way to make millions of people more virtuous is through religion. To name just one reason why this is so, religion reconciles the human heart with God, providence and eternity; by doing so, the people learn the virtue of contentment. This virtue placates us all with seemingly unfair providence and the infinite number of galling circumstances that would otherwise lead to discontent. Religion promotes faith and faith, obedience. And a republic depends, more than anything else, upon rule of law.

"Now in a well-ordered republic it should never be necessary to resort to extra-constitutional measures...." (Machiavelli, Discourses, Book I, Chapter XXXIV)

This is where the teaching of John Amos Comenius comes in useful. Comenius held that the root of the world's problems is disunity, and that is worsened by a sense of pride and superiority, especially among our best and brightest. As a result, the three learned fields of activity, politics, religion and science, which should be pillars upholding a republic, are continually at war with one another.

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"The third plague which I mentioned as disturbing the peacefulness of human society consists of disagreements arising from ill-feeling between one group and another. In some instances politicians claim to be superior to the other orders; in others, churchmen have claimed superiority over the political order; and even philosophers at times choose to regard themselves as superior to any monarchy.

"Then even within the same order men climb over one another, spurred by ambition to seek the heights from which to look down upon their fellows, who take offence at this and refuse to look up to them, as they would much prefer to cast them down.

"This results in various forms of unrest, hatred, and strife, and there is no limit to it. Therefore in a reformed state of affairs there must be a complete change in our administration. I shall deal first with the question of agreement between the three orders."

(Panorthosia II, Ch. 10, para 29, p. 163)

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Niccolo Machiavelli

 

Peace Talk in Dunnville

From the Dunnville Chronicle's Around Town column:

Next Wednesday, November 25th at 8:00 p.m. in the Garfield Disher room of Dunnville’s Library, Betty Frost will present a talk "Is Peace Possible?" Many people think that war is inevitable, but from the background of the Baha’i teachings, a different understanding of this worrisome problem will be presented. All are welcome.As a follow-up to the many stories and television presentations on the subject of war these past few weeks and the debt we owe the many veterans who have sacrificed so much over the years to keep us safe, we thought that a talk on the subject "Is Peace Possible?" would be timely.


Betty Frost adds:


To give you some idea of the content of this talk, here are a few of the questions which will be discussed. Initially the concept of peace itself will be explored since "peace" is not simply a cessation of hostilities. Then, citing some of the numerous wars which have been fought and are still in process, the basic question will be raised "Is Peace Possible?" In a remarkable document "The Promise of World Peace" written by the chief administrative body of the Baha’i Faith, it states that many people who long for peace and harmony cling to the belief that "human beings are incorrigibly selfish and aggressive and thus incapable of erecting a social system...giving free play to individual creativity and initiative but based on cooperation and reciprocity."

The document states that the assertion "human beings are incorrigibly selfish and aggressive" is a "distortion of the human spirit". The truth of this insight into the true meaning of human nature will be explored. Statements in the above-noted document (and other sources) will be cited. An example: "Acceptance of the oneness of mankind is the first fundamental prerequisite for reorganization and administration of the world as one country, the home of humankind."

It is interesting to note that at least one of the world leaders (President Barack Obama) had the courage and wisdom to echo this quite clearly in his inaugural address "We cannot help buts believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace."

There will be an opportunity for questions and comments. The meeting will conclude, as usual, with a social hour including light refreshments. All are welcome.

Patriotic Song

This patriotic song, Canadian Please, was suggested by long time contributor to the Badi' Blog, Ed de Jong.

What it takes to count yourself a world citizen.

World Civics

By John Taylor; 2009 Nov 11, Qudrat 08, 166 BE

The goad that got me going on the book I am writing -- people without borders -- is rage at what I regard as one of if not _the_ greatest humanitarian disaster in history, the banishment of over a billion people in endless slums and favelas without benefit of sanitation, roads or other infrastructure. Yet there are those who see good even in this. Two of them who had their say at the TED fora are Robert Neuwirth and Steward Brand. Here are the blurbs for their talks.

"Robert Neuwirth, author of Shadow Cities, finds the worlds squatter sites -- where a billion people now make their homes -- to be thriving centers of ingenuity and innovation. He takes us on a tour. Robert Neuwirth spent two years living in squatter cities on four continents to research his amazing book...

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/robert_neuwirth_on_our_shadow_cities.html

I listened to this talk in a moment of relaxation and for the next three days I did one of my longest double takes I recall ever having. After the third day, at about the time I normally would have forgotten about the experience completely, I was suddenly filled with indignation. Surely this fellow has to be joking! Or maybe he is being ironic. I listened again to the talk, and I swear he is serious.

One memorable anecdote that this apparatchik for capitalist anti-planning fundamentalism tells of his years in the favela is about when a young boy who climbed a mountain of trash near his home. Will he start playing "king of the castle" with his friends, the apparatchik asks? No, instead he defecates on the peak. There are, you see, no toilets at his home. This disgusting act becomes a sort of conversion experience for him. He realizes that there must be great creativity and innovation going on in these places... He shows some pictures of shacks that have been turned into sub-standard houses. The fact that there is some slight improvement in some hovels is proof that there must be something great in the works here.

The great act of creativity here is the idea that you can openly justify the atrocities of an ideology at the same time that they dwarf the evils of Nazism and Communism combined. You can almost understand a neo-Nazi denying that the holocaust never took place. He has an investment in the nobility of his cause, and at least denial is mute recognition of the horror of killing millions in death camps. Besides, the Nazi camps and Soviet Gulags were shut down decades ago. They are part of the past.

But defending these hell holes even as they still continue, a billion souls left without property or citizen rights living under grossly unsanitary conditions that make a concentration camp look orderly and even enviable -- why would anybody ever want to defend such an atrocity? They have the temerity to go around saying openly that third world slums are the cities of the future ... surely there is something evil and perverse here that I am missing. Then I recalled listening to another talk on the TED site with a similar theme. After a search sure enough there it was,

Stewart Brand's 3-minute TEDTalk on cities

"Rural villages worldwide are being deserted, as billions of people flock to cities, to live in teeming squatter camps and slums. And Stewart Brand says this is a good thing. Why? It'll take you 3 minutes to find out."

http://blog.ted.com/2007/05/stewart_brands.php

Clearly, the organizer of these TED talks is moved, as I am, at this humanitarian quagmire, but as I say he goes even further than a holocaust denier, he puts on speakers who are willing to defend the thesis that favelas and slums are a good thing. They have 100 percent employment. There are some inspiring activists there trying to get rights that the other six billion already have and take for granted. A billion destitute are a sign of a bright future! I cannot believe what people will say when their ideology is being refuted by reality. Then I remembered what my 15 year old daughter does when she sees something that impresses her: she reads the comments. Here is one comment on this presentation by one Rahul Dewan.

"People migrate to cities to live in near-inhuman living conditions in slums (squatter cities!) to get out of abject poverty - absolutely correct. But the answer to get them out of this poverty is not in getting them to cities and claiming that it is a "good thing". On the contrary, the model of our "skewed economics" [is] city-centric, solely-profit-oriented (without values of maximizing human creativity, spreading love, compassion) needs to change."

Yes, it is an ideology at work here, an openly acknowledged policy of the World Bank. Allow corporations to bribe governments into driving country folk out of the village into the favela, and then forbid them from investing in infrastructure, as every normal city does. This is not the work of a magnet, as these speakers would have us believe, it is a pincer attack. It is highly inconvenient for corporations to have people living on land that they could be "developing." So get them out of there. Better and easier to drive them off and let free market forces have at them. The same commenter continues,

"Got the point about `diffusing the population time bomb'. Wealth creators? ahem! There is increasing discussion going on in the Planning Commission to have 85% of India's population in cities. Villages are so inefficient they say. To my mind, this sounds obnoxious. Villages are inefficient if you have to drag nuclear or thermal power over distances of 10,000 kms, but if you could allow and invest in villages investing in their own local power - through solar, wind, bio-gas, biofuels - that would change the demographics of the village."

It is Baha'u'llah's birthday tomorrow, and I must calm down for that. But I was thinking about the plight of the poor in the favelas so much last night that I woke with a thought. Baha'u'llah says: "This earth is but one country and mankind its citizens." He calls us citizens. He does not call us consumers or customers or clients or investors or workers, he calls the human race citizens. That, it seems to me is unique in religious history. A Manifestation of God talks about citizenship. And not ordinary citizenship but world citizenship.

What upsets me about the systematic exclusion of this bottom billion is that they have been disenfranchised. A large proportion of the human race does not have the basic rights of citizens. Ownership, for example. A squatter cannot own anything, and what they rent is not owned, it is extorted by criminals. In other words, the government does not depend upon their tax revenues for its own survival, it depends upon other revenue, such as corporate bribes. Why should governments respond to the needs of the dispossessed? They do not vote because they are not even documented. They are non-persons, non-citizens. Their very existence is under the radar.

The source of the problem then, is a lack of citizen's rights. Or to speak more exactly, in terms defined by Baha'u'llah, a lack of universal citizen's rights. A world election would have to start the process going to re-enfranchise the bottom billion. Baha'u'llah asserted a spiritual reality when He said we are citizens of one country, but this inner truth has yet to become official. It is undocumented. Not until all count and are counted as citizens of the world will it mean anything to call yourself a world citizen. Such universality is what Baha'u'llah emphasized in one of His most often cited statements, which comes from the Tablet of Maqsud,

"That one indeed is a man who, today, dedicateth himself to the service of the entire human race. The Great Being saith: Blessed and happy is he that ariseth to promote the best interests of the peoples and kindreds of the earth. In another passage He hath proclaimed: It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." (Tablets, 167)

Abdu'l-Baha, in His Secret of Divine Civilization, pointed out that after the Manifestation and those closely associated with Him, the highest station in the world is that of a just king, one who whose prime concern is not his own profit but that of his subjects.

"Then comes the station of those just kings whose fame as protectors of the people and dispensers of Divine justice has filled the world, whose name as powerful champions of the people's rights has echoed through creation. These give no thought to amassing enormous fortunes for themselves; they believe, rather, that their own wealth lies in enriching their subjects. To them, if every individual citizen has affluence and ease, the royal coffers are full. They take no pride in gold and silver, but rather in their enlightenment and their determination to achieve the universal good." (Abdu'l-Baha, Secret, 20)

Shoghi Effendi made another point that reinforces this, that the realization of world citizenship will mark the ultimate stage of human evolution. Once an organism has reached maturity, it has no higher stages to traverse.

"The emergence of a world community, the consciousness of world citizenship, the founding of a world civilization and culture -- all of which must synchronize with the initial stages in the unfoldment of the Golden Age of the Baha'i Era -- should, by their very nature, be regarded, as far as this planetary life is concerned, as the furthermost limits in the organization of human society, though man, as an individual, will, nay must indeed as a result of such a consummation, continue indefinitely to progress and develop." (Shoghi Effendi, World Order, p. 163)

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Comprehensive Cornerstone of Hillside Housing

Checking in at the ROO

By John Taylor; 2009 Nov 09, Qudrat 06, 166 BE

(this is a revised version of an essay called ROYOBB originally posted to the Badi' Blog on July 31, 2006)

Black Boxes in the UCS

Hillside housing, the architecture of the UCS, is inspired the Black Box, one of the best-known "livingry" -- as opposed to weaponry -- proposals made by Buckminster Fuller. Fuller envisioned a wholly mobile future where, instead of permanent, grounded dwellings, people would live in portable manufactured living units built of materials strong and light enough to be carried about to new locations by blimps or helicopters. These modular units, built to exacting, standard dimensions, would have at their heart a rented "Black Box" capable of producing everything necessary for survival, including energy, food and air.

A spin-off of the space program, the Black Box would also recycle water and other wastes, thus reducing what we now call the ecological footprint of dwellings virtually to nil. Once these high-technology Black Boxes are miniaturized and mass produced, economies of scale would reduce their cost to a point where having one in one's house could be declared a basic human right. Because they are so efficient, this might be considered the first human right that is simultaneously an environmental right.

Buckminster Fuller, like H.G. Wells, saw the home of the future as an independent, low-density, freehold structure, which we know now causes sprawl and social isolation. Hillside Housing in a UCS is a determinedly high-density, full service facility. The difference, therefore, between Fuller's mobile dwelling units and those in a Comenian development is that many functions of Black Boxes are intentionally offloaded to the household and neighbourhood levels. Instead of an entire home, then, the mobile dwelling module in the UCS consists only of a bedroom, bathroom, a small personal living space, and a study.

The functions of a laundry room, living room and kitchen are all performed either in the household compound or by specialist companies in the neighbourhood. At the same time, other specialized functions that are centralized now, are taken on at the most local level possible. For example, Comenius envisaged a small school, church and government being incorporated into every household. That way basic schooling, worship and consultation take place not only close to home, but actually in the home.

The UCS household, then, consists of a compound of several mobile bedroom units surrounding a common dining and living area. Since this is an agronomy, plants are everywhere, and a small kitchen and nursery garden are also part of every household. As for residency, it is a possibility, though hardly encouraged, for individuals to avoid household living and dwell alone in a small apartment. As a result, the institution of the household must compete for members not only with other households but also with no household at all.

Each personal dwelling module is the size of a standard shipping container, though parts of it may be detached and placed in various locations in the household at the user's convenience. What remains of the Black Box, then, after all these tasks have been offloaded? Basically it has a bed in a small bedroom, a shower and toilet, and maybe a small reception area. But its most important and technically advanced room is the study, which I call the "Room of One's Own," or ROO.

Virginia Wolfe in a famous lecture advised girls who aspire to becoming writers to somehow reserve a room in their house, a private space devoted to their career alone. A ROO should not be restricted to writing, however. This minimal space, it seems to me, is an essential for every creative person. No painter, for instance, can function without a studio, or an inventor without a workshop. Each and every worker in this information age must be a creative worker, and therefore have a personal, private space in which to seek refuge, even if it is compact. Everyone, no matter what their calling, would benefit from a small study in which to contemplate and communicate, if not carry on their entire daily work.

There is no such thing as a worker's constitution today, but there would be in a UCS. This constitution should declare this study a universal worker's right and obligation, every bit as sacred as physical rights like food, clothing, shelter, and rights of the soul, like freedom, dignity and equality.

Of course in order to use it well, a ROO would have to be introduced from our earliest years. The ROO could start as a play area next to a baby's crib. From there it would grow and evolve throughout life. The design of a child's ROO would be under the oversight of parents and teachers. Their power might fade into influence, perhaps reducing only to a veto during adolescence. Other influences might come from friends and faith groups. In early youth the room expands and develop into an open-standard educational space partly designed and controlled by teachers, partly by parents, partly by the creative urges of the child itself.

As a child grows into adolescence, the use of this station would fade from play into the experimentation of a student, and finally flower into a productive worker's studio. Thus, as we have seen, partial regulation of this semi-independent unit gradually passes from parents and teachers to one's chosen trade or professional body.

Although it is a private space, the design of an adult's ROO would still be carefully regulated and to some extent run by one's trade or profession. In a real sense, then, it is a Black Box, a mass-produced technological device connecting each worker with all other members of his or her specialty in a communally designed workspace.

The ROO is also a tool for easing the transition between employment and unemployment. Instead of a total dichotomy, as now, between working and out of work, the ROO system encourages workers to move through a gradation by moving their workspace around. It may be located entirely in the office or company where one works --in which case the ROO will be devoted to a serious hobby, sport or pastime (studies of Nobel Prize winners found that most of these highly creative discoverers are highly competent in a second area, apart from their speciality. This avocation is often related to music.) At another, creative or introspective stage in one's career, the ROO would move into a neighbourhood cooperative workshop, or into a garage or so-called "man space" within the household itself. At another time of cocooning or retirement, the ROO would be fitted back into its original location, next to the bedroom in one's mobile living unit.

The design of a ROO is so important that it would be a central concern of an entire new profession, the dialectician. This we will get into next time.

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Our Monthly Fireside Makes Page One

Shirlee Smith spoke in October of her harrowing experiences as a descendant of escaped slaves living in Toronto, and of her eventual discovery of the Baha’i Faith. Our monthly meetings are always covered extensively in the local paper, but I do believe that this is the first time we have made the front page. In the photo, Shirlee is showing a photo of her when she won an essay for Black History Month (read it at: http://www.globaltoronto.com/search/Week+Contest+Winner/1310621/story.html) that made the front page of the Toronto Star, coincidentally on the same day that the first Black president also made history. You can read the full text of the report of Shirlee’s talk as it appears in the Dunnville Chronicle article, “From Slavery to Celebrity,” at:

http://www.dunnvillechronicle.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2138848

Simplicity and Works; Medications against Fundamentalism

Final notes on the Comenian Cure to Fundamentalism

By John Taylor; 2009 Nov 08, Qudrat 05, 166 BE

The threat of imminent climate dislocation demands a quick response from us all. Scientists are beginning to worry that their training is too specialized and theoretical to address the challenge of the present hour. Some suggest that there be "clinical economists" and "climate engineers," and that all disciplines put students through a final phase of practical or clinical training, especially in the social sciences. Just as medical schools go beyond physiology and anatomy and insist that young doctors undergo years of practice as interns, so every discipline should concentrate on practice and responsible application of knowledge.

John Amos Comenius centuries ago made the same point about religion. Religion is not a mere set of beliefs, it is an entire lifestyle. Life, he said, should be reformed before doctrine, basing his authority on John 7:17, "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine," and, "If ye were blind, ye should have no sin, but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth." (John 9:41) We should work on our lives before our beliefs not only because it is easier and simpler, but also because it has a better chance of reconciling us to God, whose ways are not our ways. This, he held, is the meaning of the myth of Adam and Eve in Eden,

"We must return from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to the tree of life. In his judgment Christ inquires not so much into our doctrine as into our deeds..." (Psalm 50, Matthew 25, Romans 2:16; Comenius, Panorthosia, Ch. 23, para 9, pp. 62-64)

By emphasizing what we do rather than what we believe, by valuing mercy and compassion before being right, we take the first step to extirpating nitpicking and fanaticism from spiritual life. We can do this with a simple lifestyle that encourages all to put first what Comenius calls the "cardinal points of wisdom and salvation,"

"Simplicity will reconcile us if we turn away from the rigmarole of disputations (whose trivialities are a never-ending cause of schism and disunity) and confine ourselves to more substantial considerations containing the cardinal points of wisdom and salvation." (Panorthosia II, Ch. 8, para 43, pp. 127-128)

Since the word "cardinal" comes from the Latin word for "heart," Baha'is will recognize "Fu'ad," or heart, a major theme in the Writings of Baha'u'llah. As long as we bear in mind that one of the most important "cardinal points" is simplicity, of mind as well as dress, clear essentials can stand as the basis of agreement. This makes it difficult for false power-mongers to turn faith into its opposite, to substitute hatred for love. Comenius continues,

"Since these [cardinal points] are few in number and consist of clear and substantial truth (for God poses no subtle questions when he invites us into Heaven, as Saint Hilary warns us) they will serve not to separate but rather to unite us. Then indeed if in seeking answers to our questions, we do not launch into a flood of subtlety but attend to the rule laid down by Christ, 'From the beginning it was not so' (Matt 24:8) and then follow his examples and practice, countless problems will suddenly be solved." (Ib.)

As long as simplicity is held up first, experts cannot obfuscate their way to power. Another stumbling-block is pride and vainglory. The cure to that is the injunction, "He who would live, let him give up his life..."

"For example, since he bids those who have fallen into the sin of pride to be converted and become as little children, (Matthew 18:3) that they may begin to hold themselves in better esteem, which means no esteem, why should this not apply likewise so that those who have fallen into false knowledge are converted to no knowledge, or those who have come into false power (tyranny) are converted to no power? What I mean to say is that the man of false knowledge should begin to learn better, and he who has not the power to rule himself should hand over the reins of power to others, as suggested by Christ in John 9:39,41." (Comenius, Panorthosia II, Ch. 8, para 43, p. 128)

By applying the most important lessons of faith, including renunciation of corrupt power, we will cure the arrogance and parochialism at the heart of fundamentalism. As soon as religion is subjected by firm public opinion to the reasonable demand that it be kept simple, active and humble, democracy will take its rightful place in matters of faith. This will allow the new philosophy, theology and politics of Comenian governance to filter out opinions that are violent, complex or biased before they can do harm. Then science and religion will stand together with political policy in facing climate change, ethnic reconciliation, and the many other challenges of the present hour.

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Inducements, Real and Virtual

More on the Three Sub-Currencies of the Terra; Eduterras, Ecuterras and Paxterras

By John Taylor; 2009 Nov 04, Qudrat 01, 166 BE

Economics is not just for economists. Monetary policy should broaden its scope to include more than profit, growth and other merely economic values. With proper organization, the money supply can be used as a positive reinforcement for moral worth and socially beneficial behavior. As a way of doing this, we are contemplating a universal currency called the Terra that would be overseen by a Comenian world parliament, that is, a decentralized body of three houses, one each for politics, science and faith. Comenius called these branches of the world court and parliament the Dicastery of Peace, the College of Light and the Ecumenical Consistory.

The ability to print its own currency permits a government to work out its own monetary policy. Each of these branches, therefore, can work an independent monetary policy by manipulating its own particular brand of terra currency. Thus, there are three flavours of Terra currency, called respectively the "paxterra," "eduterra," and "ecuterra." Reflecting this structure, subsidiary authorities at local levels run their own banks, insurance companies and other financial organs as public utilities. These print and distribute either paxterras, eduterras or ecuterras, as needed. Each currency has a special use and a strictly limited purpose.

Whereas governance in the past has been preoccupied with force and punishment, each of these three currencies is designed to to open up the field to rewards as well. Hence, terras also have the unique ability to purchase adornments and enhancements for escutcheons, the official displays marking a prestigious place in a cosmopolitan order. Thus, the inducement of earning paxterras protects our immediate interest in law, order and keeping the peace. Eduterras are the tool of scientists, teachers and other experts in promoting educational ends. Finally, ecuterras maintain our moral center, reconciling us to a longer perspective.

Let us look in more detail at each currency in turn.

The paxterra is what we think of as money today, a politico-economic currency. The guaranteed basic income is paid in paxterras, so for most people its primary use is paying basic living expenses, food, clothing and shelter. Paxterras are also used for reward schemes based on certain professions, similar to the teacher's eduterra that we have already discussed in some detail. Although under the aegis of the Dicastery of Peace, these schemes are promoted by and for members of protective professions, such as the police, military, doctors, nurses, civil servants and politicians. Beyond these watchdog purposes, the paxterra is mostly the currency of basic economic necessities, not rewards, since opportunities to spend paxterras are strictly limited.

The eduterra is the currency overseen by the college of light. It is earned and distributed by philosophers, scientists, teachers and other trades and professions in order to promote learning and reinforce the practical application of knowledge.

In earlier discussions I have concentrated on the use of the eduterra in early schooling as the currency of students. However, earning an eduterra income does not stop when classes end. As children grow into adolescents they wean themselves from student eduterras to coop and apprenticeship eduterras. Finally, the eduterra becomes the currency of one's trade or profession. Independent adults earn eduterras from their work and, since they have a vote for their representative on the college of light, they also pay part of their taxes in eduterras. Eduterras are also paid to their trade, which distributes them in controlled ways to further the professional goals and interests of that field of endeavor.

With their own currency, trades and professions can institute monetary policy, in effect, leveraging knowledge itself. As an area of knowledge becomes more or less useful to humanity, its exchange value will rise or fall in comparison with others. Instead of passively offering advice as now, control over eduterras give experts the ability to actively make their own policy, literally to put their money where their mouth is.

The ecuterra is the currency managed by the Ecumenical Consistory, the religious and existential branch of the Comenian government. The "ecu" in ecuterra comes from "ecumenical," the Greek word for "the entire populated world." Although in English we use the word to refer to relations among Christian sects, here we include all world religions and beyond them to the wider "populated world" of spiritual, eternal things, including the arts, literature, music and painting. Whereas paxterras are the currency of citizens, the ecuterra is the currency of everyone endowed with a soul. Whereas eduterras are primarily the currency of teachers, youth and the learned professions, ecuterras are the currency of old age, the time when our thoughts turn to the fruit of our whole lives, to what extends beyond this fleeting lifetime.

Thus the ecuterra is the primary means of exchange not only of faith groups but also manual workers, artists and artisans, everyone whose calling involves the long-term concerns of beauty, wisdom and virtue. It is the currency of human fulfillment, of all that is shadowed by the aspect of eternity. For example, most of the badges on the personal escutcheon, a heraldic device displayed in life and placed on one's gravestone after death, are purchased with ecuterras.

In order to promote a balanced life for all, one characterized by exuberant effort and deep involvement, yet devoid of desperation, fanaticism or fundamentalism, every paycheck must by law include a minimum quantity of each of the three kinds of Terra, eduterras, paxterras and ecuterras. A scientist or teacher would receive a higher proportion of eduterras, a doctor or police officer gets more paxterras and an artisan or pastor earns more ecuterras than others. However, this is because their professional lives give them both knowledge and opportunity to spend these currencies more intelligently than others.

This contrasts with the present financial system. Nationalist governments delegate monetary policy to central banks, and new money is created by bankers, who leverage debt. With the eduterra, the learned create new money through knowledge, not credit and lending. With the paxterra, new money comes to those whose work protect the peace and health of society. With the ecuterra, new money goes to those who would worship God and prolong their own memory by enriching and beautifying our populated world.

At each nexus of economic activity, monetary policy is dynamically worked out in a "war and peace room," a real-time, large scale display of the local economy. Like courtrooms, these planning rooms are required by law to be open to public examination at all times. Here inventors and entrepreneurs present initiatives, projects and proposals to all concerned stakeholders. The rooms also serve as monetary exchanges between real and virtual currencies.

A virtual currency is the money used in a genre of computer games called "virtual worlds," the best known of which is Second Life. These virtual worlds train all concerned parties in the skills and values of that currency, in an atmosphere where mistakes can be made and risks taken without painful real-world consequences. The lessons gained from this activity, both in professional practice and in computer games and simulations, are incorporated here into actual monetary policy. Here, as well as in the real world, a player has an escutcheon designed to improve with moderate effort, and worsen as the bounds of moderation burst and break.

Rather than constantly introducing new laws and rules, a Comenian system thus applies subtle monetary inducements to swing the balance of power over to indirect influence rather than arbitrary force.

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Flushing Fanaticism

The Comenian Cure for Fundamentalism

 

By John Taylor; 2009 Nov 03, Ilm 19, 166 BE

 

 

The Reformation was the result of a general realization that change in religion was unavoidable; unfortunately efforts at reform often cause yet more disagreement, disputation and even war. John Amos Comenius's solution to fanaticism was a systematic process of reasoning combined with efforts at reconciliation, starting with the self by eliminating lazy imitation. Every vexed question must be depoliticized by undergoing treatment by each of the big three, politics, science and religion. These lay down three "channels" of sure knowledge, sense, reason and faith,

 

"No-one who has received a taste of true knowledge, wisdom and piety will doubt my words. For he must have acquired it by means of his own senses, his own reasoning and his own testimony from God. Knowledge and wisdom are rooted in the senses and reason, but piety depends on faith. He who accepts dogmas and beliefs for no other reason than that he sees other people holding them has no faith worthy of the name, but only superficial persuasion or idle superstition or grievous error. But if the three channels, sense, reason and faith even in isolation have power to convey sure knowledge, there will be no limit to their power when they act in unison to convey the combined light of God's three fountains. Here in the light of God we cannot fail to see the light and rejoice.'" (Comenius, Panorthosia II, Ch. 3, para 39, p. 80)

 

Early in Panorthosia he lays out ten more criteria for sifting out blocks to reconciliation. They constitute a veritable list of the characteristics of what we now call fundamentalism. Whatever point of doctrine does not pass through should be labeled "not clear" and left aside for the resurrection. Some include:

 

3. "Nothing should be affirmed in absolute terms, unless its truth is so manifest as to be undeniable."

4. "Nothing should be absolutely denied, unless its falsity is so manifest as to be indefensible." (Ch. 8, para 39, pp. 125-126)

 

Those with a professional interest in the search for truth, especially philosophers (they were not called scientists until the 19th Century) and spiritual and political leaders, should use particular rigor in this.

 

"I mean that all philosophers should prove the truth of their opinions by real experiments, based with the truest skill on the hypotheses of their theory. Theologians, too, should prove the truth of their doctrines by passionate practice in the worship of God, and by evidence of Regeneration in those who worship Him in this way, and lastly, politicians should prove their theories by establishing true peace and tranquillity." (Ch. 8, para 39, pp. 125-126)

 

Above all, it is important to avoid conflicts in matters of religious opinion. In a chapter about reform of the church in Panorthosia, Comenius cites a saying attributed to the poet Sir Henry Wotton (d. 1639) that "The itch for disputation is the scab of the churches." (Panorthosia, Ch. 23, para 9, pp. 62-64) Frances Bacon, who heavily influenced Comenius, wrote in "Of Unity in Religion" that "it is certain that heresies and schisms are of all others the greatest scandals (of the Church)." Comenius agreed, though he added that can be some limited good in allowing diverse opinions to clash as long as it is not prolonged long enough to become an end in itself.

 

"The question could also be asked at this point whether there is any need for religious disputations in the church. My answer is: Yes, there are certain periods for controversies, like disease symptoms which do not last for ever. The itch of disputation has infected the church with a scab, so that we achieve nothing by our disputing and grasping at knowledge except to inflame one another into hostility, forgetting the better parts of Christ's teaching, namely: compassion, long-suffering, prayer, and lamentation. Everything has been disputed in the past, even whether there was any such person as God or any such thing as revelation. Therefore universal reform is necessary, so that wars and quarrels cease with the dawning of light in which all men can see the same things in the same way. Now therefore, is the time for action. Let us change things for the better (I shall demonstrate a way that far excels it, namely, contemplation)... (Comenius, Panorthosia, Ch. 23, para 21, pp. 69-82)

 

It is refreshing to read Comenius because he did not despair, as we unfortunately do today, of finding common ground in disputed issues. As an educator, he saw the problem as one of ignorance on all sides. If an argument becomes too entrenched, one solution is simply to stand back and reflect. If that does not work, get away from theorizing completely, since words upon words often only multiplies argumentation, and jump right to practice. Very often just serving and experimenting together is enough to reconcile opposing parties.

 

"If anything cannot be reconciled in theory, one should begin to try it out in practice, for better practice would follow from the earnest attention given to both aspects. (I mean that all philosophers should prove the truth of their opinions by real experiments, based with the truest skill on the hypotheses of their theory. Theologians, too, should prove the truth of their doctrines by passionate practice in the worship of God, and by evidence of Regeneration in those who worship Him in this way, and lastly, politicians should prove their theories by establishing true peace and tranquillity)." (Panorthosia II, Ch. 8, para 39, p. 126)

 

Many matters only seem complicated; they can be solved to general satisfaction if we subject them, one after the other, to the three basics of knowledge: philosophy (science), theology and politics. Each must contribute to the result. This means first testing each idea for universality, since philosophy and science give results that apply everywhere. Then testing for simplicity, since the religious lifestyle simplifies desires of the heart. Last, we can test for agreement, since peace is the chief goal of politics. These three act as a sort of filter to purify the mind from violent, complex or biased opinions. Whatever passes through this filter must be universal, simple and unifying, and therefore pleasing to all parties.

 

"Suitable means to restore our happy state to its true form will be 1. New Philosophy, 2. New Theology, 3. New Politics all conforming to true laws of universality, simplicity and agreement. Since contemporary philosophies, theologies and political systems are biased, complex, and violent, they cannot therefore be brought back to the ideas and laws of true universality or true simplicity or agreement unless retraced from their very foundations so that they are left with no taint of bias, no knotty problems, no threat of fear, alarm, hatred or schism." (Comenius, Panorthosia II, Ch. 5, para 24, pp. 96-97)

 

This can be distilled to two basic Christian principles, first, strict testing, "narrow is the way and strait the gate..." Once a matter has been tested though, the second principle applies, freedom: "the truth shall set you free," and "my yoke is easy..." Comenius sums up this latter principle in a passage that rings true in the ears of every lover of freedom:

 

==========

 

" ... our Good, as God will restore it to us, should not only be genuinely good and well-ordered, but also sweet and agreeable, without even the outward semblance of compulsion, everything flowing along, as it were, of its own accord. For human nature has an innate preference for guidance rather than force, for action of its own free will rather than at the behest of others, for self-reliance rather than to rely upon others. Whenever high-handed treatment is involved, man turns away in disgust, and whenever he is confident of making his own way forward, he goes without a guide.

Take the case of an infant, for example, as soon as he begins to walk regularly, he refuses a helping hand and wishes to be left to himself. Similarly no adult finds it easy to put up with a master.

 

Therefore, our whole aim and object must be to secure the return of Philosophical liberty, Religious liberty, and Political liberty to the human race; liberty, I say, which is Man's most exquisite good, created with him and inseparable from him except in the hour of his death. Hence God restores to liberty those whom He carries away to death, according to the word of His son, in John VIII, 36, and His apostles, in Galatians IV, 31, and V, 1, 13, 17, etc.6 Therefore let us assert the claim of human nature to its full portion of liberty, by setting men free from the yoke of compulsory Dogma, Worship and Obedience." (Panorthosia II, Ch. 10, para 9, pp. 155-156)

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What the Bastinado Feels Like

Passage from: Marina Nemat, Prisoner of Tehran


Marina Nemat was kind enough to come to speak at our Human Rights Day commemoration in Dunnville last December, and I purchased her memoir, Prisoner of Tehran. I noticed lately that it is still on the Canadian Bestseller List. It is the story of how just after the Iranian Revolution this Christian schoolgirl in Tehran was arrested for requesting that her calculus teacher teach math, instead of the Qur'an. When she refused she walked out of class, and the rest of the school followed in protest. She was branded a "revolutionary" for this, and the authorities refused to believe that she was not an agitator for some political group. The following is an account of how she was bastinadoed soon after her arrest. After I read it, I remembered how both the Bab and Baha'u'llah were bastinadoed. Since as far as I know, we have no first-person account from Them of what the experience was like, I thought I would include here Marina's rather detailed story of her similar encounter with the bastinado soon after entering Evin prison. It is something to think about in the days leading  up to the Birth of Baha'u'llah this month.




"We have to know her whereabouts."

"I can't help you because I don't know where she is."

He had remained calm during the interrogation and had never raised his voice. "Marina, listen carefully. I can see you are a brave girl, and I respect this, but I have to know what you know. If you aren't willing to tell me, Brother Hamehd will be very upset. He isn't a very patient man. I don't want to see you suffer."

"I'm sorry, but I don't have anything to tell you."

"I'm sorry, too," he said and led me out of the room and through three or four hallways.

A man was screaming. I was told to sit on the floor. Ali said that, like me, the man who was screaming didn't want to share any information but that he would soon change his mind.

Pain-saturated cries filled the air around me. Heavy, deep, and desperate, they got into my skin, spreading into every cell of my body.

The poor man was being torn apart. The world became a slab of lead sitting on my chest.

The loud, severe impact of the lash. The man's scream. A split second of silence. And the cycle repeated itself.

After a few minutes, someone asked the man if he was ready to talk. His answer was "no." The lashing started again. Although my wrists were tied, I tried to cover my ears with my arms to push the screams away, but it was useless. It went on and on, strike after strike, scream after scream.

"Stop ... please ... I'll talk ..."  the suffering man finally cried. It stopped.

Nothing mattered except the fact that I had decided not to give them any names. I was not helpless. I was going to put up a fight.

"Marina, how are you?" asked the voice that had questioned the suffering man. "Ali has told me all about you. You have impressed him. He doesn't want you to get hurt, but business is business. Did you hear that man? He didn't want to tell me anything at the beginning, but he did at the end. It would've been a lot smarter if he'd told me what I wanted to know at the start. Now, are you ready to talk?"

I took a deep breath. "No."

"Too bad. Get up."

He grabbed the rope that was tied around my wrists, dragged me along lilt a few steps, and then pushed me to the ground. My blindfold was pulled off. A thin, small man with short brown hair and a moustache stood 0ver me, holding my blindfold in his hand. He was in his early forties and wearing brown casual pants and a white shirt. The room was empty except for a bare wooden bed with a metal headboard. He untied my wrists. "Rope won't do; we need something harder and stronger," he said. He took a pair of handcuffs out of one of his pockets and put them on my wrists.

Another man entered the room. He was about six foot one and two hundred pounds, had very short black hair and a trimmed black beard, and was in his late twenties.

"Hamehd, has she talked?" he asked.

"No, she's pretty stubborn, but don't worry; she'll talk soon."

"Marina, this is your last chance," the newcomer said.

I recognized his voice. Ali. His nose was a little too large, his brown eyes were expressive, and his eyelashes were long and thick.

"You're going to talk at the end anyway, so you'd better do it now. Will you give us the names?"

"No."

"What I really want you to tell me is where Shahrzad is."

"I don't know where she is."

"Ali, look; she has such small wrists! They'll slide out of the cuffs," said Hamehd.

He forced both my wrists into one cuff and dragged me to the bed. The metal cuff dug into my bones. A scream escaped my throat, but I didn't struggle, knowing that my situation was hopeless and would only worsen if I put up a fight. He fastened the free cuff to the metal headboard. Then, after pulling off my shoes, he tied my ankles to the bed.

"I'm going to whip the soles of your feet with this cable," Hamehd said, waving a length of black cable, which was a little less than an inch thick, in front of my face.

"Ali, how many do you think it will take to make her talk?"

"Not many."

"I'm saying ten."

The sharp, threatening whistle of the cable cut the air, and it landed on the soles of my feet.

Pain. I had never experienced anything like it. I couldn't even have imagined it. It exploded inside me like a bolt of lightning.

Second strike: my breath stopped in my throat. How could anything hurt so much? I tried to think of a way to help myself bear it. I couldn't scream, because there wasn't enough air left in my lungs.

Third strike: the scream of the cable and the blinding agony that followed. The "Hail Mary" filled my head.

Blows came, one after another, and I prayed, struggling against pain. I wanted to lose consciousness, but it didn't happen. Each strike kept me wide awake for the next.

Tenth strike: I begged God to ease the pain.

Eleventh strike: it hurt more than all the ones before it.

God, please, don't leave me on my own. I can't take it.

It went on and on. Endless agony.

They'll stop if I give them a few names ... No, they won't stop. They want to know about Shahrzad. I don't know anything about her anyway. The beating can't go on forever. I'll take it one at a time.

After sixteen strikes of the lash, I gave up counting.

Pain.

"Where is Shahrzad?"

I would have told if I knew. I would have done anything to stop it. Strike.

I had experienced different kinds of pain before. I had broken my arm once. But this was worse. Far worse.

"Where is Shahrzad?"

"I really don't know!"

Agony. Voices.

When Hamehd stopped, I could just find enough energy to turn my ad and see him leave the room. Ali removed the handcuffs and untied my ankles. My feet ached, but the agonizing pain was gone, replaced by a soothing emptiness that spread inside my veins. A moment later, I could hardly feel my body, and my eyelids began to feel heavy. Something cold splashed against my face. Water. I shook my head.

"You're passing out, Marina. Come on, sit up," said Ali.

He pulled on my arms, and I sat up. My feet were now burning as if a hundred bees had stung them. I looked at them. They were red and blue and very swollen. I was surprised that my skin had not burst.

"Do you have anything to tell me now?" Ali asked.

"No."

"This isn't worth it!" He glared at me. "Do you want another beating? Your feet will look a lot worse if you don't talk."

"I don't know anything."

"This isn't bravery any more! It's stupidity! You could easily be executed for not cooperating with the government. Don't do this to yourself."

"Don't do this to me," I corrected him.

He looked me straight in the eyes for the first time and told me that they had all the names from my school. Khanoom Mahmoodi had given them the list. He said that my cooperation would change nothing for any of my friends, but it would save me from torture. He said that my friends would be arrested whether I talked or not, but if I wrote down their names, I wouldn't have to suffer any longer.

"I believe that you're telling the truth about Shahrzad," he said. "Don't try to be a hero; you could lose your life for it. Hamehd is sure that you're a member of the Fadayian, but I don't think so. A Fadayee wouldn't pray to Mary under torture."

I hadn't realized I had prayed out loud.

I asked if I was allowed to go to the bathroom, and he took my arm and helped me up. I felt dizzy. He put a pair of rubber slippers on the floor in front of the bed. They were at least four sizes too big for me, but because of the swelling they were too small. It hurt to put them on. He helped me walk across the room. It was not easy to keep my balance. Once we got to the door, he let go of my arm, gave me my blindfold, and told me to put it on. I did. He put a length of rope in my hand and guided me to the bathroom door. I stepped in, turned on the tap, and washed my face with cold water. A sudden wave of nausea rushed through me, my stomach contracted, and I vomited. It felt like a knife had cut me in half. A loud ringing filled my ears, and darkness swallowed me.

When I opened my eyes, I didn't know where I was. As my mind gradually cleared, I realized I wasn't in the bathroom any more but was lying on the wooden bed where I had been tortured. Ali sat on a chair, watching me. My head felt very sore, and when I touched it, I felt a big bump on the right side of my forehead. I asked Ali what had happened, and he said I had fallen in the bathroom and had hit my head. He said that the doctor had seen me and that my condition wasn't too serious. Then he helped me sit in a wheelchair, put my blindfold back on, and pushed me out of the room.

When he took off the blindfold, we were in a very small room with no windows and a toilet and a sink in the corner. There were two grey military blankets on the floor. He helped me lie down and spread one of them over me; it was rough and stiff and smelled of mould, but I didn't care; I was freezing. He asked if I was in pain, and I nodded, wondering why he was being nice to me. He left but came back in a few minutes with a middle-aged man wearing a military uniform, whom he introduced as Doctor Sheikh.

The doctor gave me some kind of injection in the arm, and he and Ali left the cell. I closed my eyes and thought of home. I wished I could crawl into my grandmother's bed as I used to when I was a child, so she could tell me there was no reason to be scared, that it had all been a nightmare.

(Marina Nemat, Prisoner of Tehran, A Memoir, Penguin Canada, 2007, pages 15-20)



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Corrupion of the Cradle, I

Two Unworkable Pieces of Marble


By John Taylor; 2009 Oct 30, Ilm 15, 166 BE

Baha'is believe that the Manifestation of God always comes to the most corrupt place in the world. This is how God proves His expertise as teacher and reformer. It is like that messed up, split, dirty, ugly hunk of marble that ordinary sculptors found unworkable. They left it aside until along came the greatest among them, Michelangelo. He drags the block out of the dump and carves his masterpiece, the famed David. So it is with the cradle of the Baha'i Faith, the nation formerly known as Persia. Iran, from a religious point of view, was a sub-standard piece of marble, by far the most corrupt, bigoted nation in the world. This is obvious to all, whether they have heard of Baha'u'llah or not.

"All observers agree in representing Persia as a feeble and backward nation divided against itself by corrupt practices and ferocious bigotries." (George Townshend, introduction to Shoghi Effendi, The Dawn-Breakers, p. xxiv)

No human can do anything with a nation so embroiled in prejudice; only God, the supreme Reformer, could ever turn it into anything but a pile of rubble. The root of its corruption is a confusion between politics and faith. Religion is all but indistinguishable from politics in Iran, and has been for centuries. The Guardian describes how the Mullas find it convenient to persecute Baha'is in order to enhance their own power and influence.

"In the land of its birth, wherein reside the immense majority of its followers ... a civil authority, as yet undivorced officially from the paralyzing influences of an antiquated, a fanatical, and outrageously corrupt clergy, pursues relentlessly its campaign of repression against the adherents of a Faith which it has for well-nigh a century striven unsuccessfully to suppress." (Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice, p. 4)

The Iranian revolution kneaded religious opinion even deeper into the fabric of their administration. Still, one might think that this concern with religion might give its leaders the faith to reach out to stranger and trust the West. Unfortunately, revolutions, like the titan Chronos in Greek mythology, eat their own children. The power of Mullahs and parliamentarians alike is now permanently built on protest, negativity and reaction. Fear and xenophobia predominate, hatred, not love, suspicion, not trust. And, as often happens, the dislike has become mutual. Now the West has put Iran at the top of its enemies list. Take this sample headline from a recent New York Times article:

"Both Iran and West Fear a Trap on Uranium Deal; Iran is afraid of falling for a Western ruse to neutralize its `strategic reserve' while the West fears being lured into a plot to buy time for a nuclear bomb program." (David E. Sanger, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/26/world/middleeast/26iran.html?th&emc=th)

Contrast that with the trust and cooperation that Abdu'l-Baha promoted between America and Persia. When He spoke to the "Orient-Occident-Unity Conference" in Washington, He said,

"Tonight I am most happy in presenting myself before an audience such as this. I am an Oriental and have come into the West to meet the people of the Occident. Praise be to God! Upon the faces of those assembled here I perceive the light of God. This I consider an evidence of the possibility of uniting the East and the West, of establishing a perfect bond between Persia and America -- one of the objects of this conference. For the Persians there is no government better fitted to contribute to the development of their natural resources and the helping of their national needs in a reciprocal alliance than the United States of America, and for the Americans there could be no better industrial outlet and market than the virgin commercial soil of Persia. The mineral wealth of Persia is still latent and untouched. It is my hope that the great American democracy may be instrumental in developing these hidden resources and that a bond of perfect amity and unity may be established between the American republic and the government of Persia. May this bond -- whether material or spiritual -- be well cemented. May the material civilization of America find complete efficacy and establishment in Persia, and may the spiritual civilization of Persia find acceptance and response in America. ... Surely there will be great harvests of results forthcoming for Persia and America. In Persia advanced material civilization will be established and the doors thrown open wide to American commerce." (Abdu'l-Baha, Promulgation, 35)

Nor were the central figures of the Baha'i Faith silent before the authorities in Persia, antagonistic as they may have been. Although Baha'u'llah disdained to mention politics in His own Writings, He saw to it that the Baha'i position was available to those who sought it out. Not long after He revealed His Book of Laws, He commissioned His son, Abdu'l-Baha, to write down some suggestions for eliminating the "ferocious bigotries" afflicting His native land. This book, "The Secret of Divine Civilization," is in my opinion one of the greatest works of reform and political science ever written. Needless to say, it was ignored in Baha'u'llah's native land. In a recent letter to the Baha'is in Iran, the Universal House of Justice continues the story of what happened after Abdu'l-Baha wrote "Secret of Divine Civilization."

"Locked in the grip of an antiquated Qajar autocracy restrained only by its incompetence, Persia drifted ever deeper into stagnation. Venal politicians competed with one another for a share of the diminishing wealth of a country driven to the verge of bankruptcy. Worse still, a population that had once produced some of the greatest minds in the history of civilization -- Cyrus, Darius, Rumi, Hafiz, Avicenna, Rhazes and countless others -- had become the prey of a clerical caste, as ignorant as it was corrupt, whose petty privileges could be maintained only by arousing in the helpless masses an unreasoning fear of anything progressive." (The Universal House of Justice, 2003 Nov 26, To the Followers of Baha'u'llah in the Cradle of the Faith, paragraph 10, p. 2)

Next time I will talk about the other rock the workers threw out that, as Jesus prophesied, would one day become the corner of the foundation, that is, the administrative cradle of the Baha'i Faith, North America.


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Ethics, Reward and Finance

Money as Root of All Good

 

A brief theoretical interlude about ethics, reward and finance

 

By John Taylor; 2009 Oct 29, Ilm 14, 166 BE

 

 

In this series we are speculating on the possible introduction of local monetary schemes using three universal currencies based on trades and professions. Today we back off a bit in order to look at the right and wrong uses of money.

 

==========

 

There are fundamentally three ways to get someone to go out of their way to do good or to refrain from doing harm: one is fear of punishment, two, hope for reward, and three, inherent value. Inherent value is another way of saying the "l" word, that you love the good and do the right thing for its own sake. Unfortunately, when speaking about moral behavior in a social context you have to ignore inherent value.

 

If I leave my diamond necklace in a public place, a hundred or a thousand people may walk by, valuing their own integrity above stealing, but if only one is tempted, I still lose it forever. Similarly, that one thief among a thousand saints may be perfectly moral in every other way, may do right for its own sake every minute of their life except the moment they glimpse my necklace, but that does not save me from becoming a crime victim.

 

Government and even religion do not have the power to impose love on everybody. Often one cannot order oneself to do what is for our own good; if we could, smoking and obesity, to name just two, would be unknown. And even if we could impose love, love in imperfect beings is never an absolute or a constant. All it takes is one fleeting moment of temptation in one in a thousand for that necklace to disappear.

 

That leaves the other two motivators, reward and punishment. Historically, rulers have been better at imposing punishments for wrongdoing than they at rewarding good deeds. Government as we know it today is obsessed with negative sanctions, such as war, fines and imprisonment.

 

There are good psychological and evolutionary reasons for this. For millions of years large predators lurked behind every tree, ready to pounce. This constant danger made our brains respond instantly and viscerally to any imminent threat of harm. No matter how much our ancestor hoped to better himself, no matter how sublimely he valued good for its own sake, his genes were not passed on if he did not respond instantly and ended up as dinner for a sabre-toothed tiger.

 

With the possible exception of agriculture, the two greatest human inventions ever were language and money. Among other things, they introduced into the social equation the two longer-term motivators, hope of reward and love of right. For the first time hope and love could equal and even surpass brute fear as prime movers. Language enabled communication, which permited humans to cooperate in their own defense. The new power of speech empowered a weaker species to scale the food chain and take on the largest, most fearsome beasts.

 

The invention of money gave birth to homo economicus. It is a practical fact that for most people most of the time, the most enticing reward is cold, hard cash, and losing it is the most repugnant sanction. Even the prospect of paying less than expected is an enticing prospect, judging by how often advertisers use the word "save!"

 

Why is money so powerful?

 

The biggest reason is that historically it permitted the division of labour to come about. With a reasonable expectation of fair recompense, it suddenly made sense to spend years learning a specialized skill and even longer working high priced masterpieces in that craft. In this sense, money is the root of all good, but only if it furthers professional virtues like thrift, knowledge and excellence.

 

Money, then, has become an even more constant motivator than fear. In effect, money pits a long period of time against a relatively brief chill. Whereas fear galvanizes the body for quick reaction, money impells us to delayed gratification. Much delayed. As the saying, Ars Longa, Vita Brevis, implies, an artist reaches beyond the grave, much less the next pay-cheque.

 

Language and money are so fundamental that we treat them like the air, we forget they are there. Distressingly, in spite of tremendous progress in just about every other area of knowledge, the two greatest accomplishments, language and money, easily the most fundamental inventions ever made, are being neglected. We act as if they were blind forces of nature that we cannot alter or improve. Yet the language barrier is widening the digital divide, and it remains the greatest structural cause of poverty and injustice. If linguists agreed upon a second language for everybody, we would remove it in a single generation.

 

Similarly, we treat finance and monetary issues as if they are fixed and forever beyond human purview. The result? Money ceases to motivate, and when it does move us, it does so in an unhealthy way, one that does not further peace, enterprise or expertise. As the Bible says, "the love of money is the root of all evil." If money becomes an end in itself, it loses the power to motivate good deeds, delayed gratification, for most people most of the time. Without engrossing careers, the source of good money is out of reach and ceases to motivate the masses. Fear and gross punishments again become the only thing that moves them. At the same time, the wealthy fear loss of their fortunes more than they hope for the far greater fortunes that could be made if economic equity were univerally applied.

Thus inequality is a churning maelstrom from which it is impossible to escape.

 

It is not a coincidence that countries with the highest income inequalities also have the highest rates of incarceration.

 

With little chance for the poor majority to better their condition legally, the only perceived way ahead is trafficing, pandering and other criminal activity. Even in supposedly egalitarian and freedom-loving democracies, a spirit of revenge proliferates. As punishment fails, and the authorities retaliate with even more severe punishments.

It is also not a coincidence that these unequal, punitive societies are also the most caught up in materialism, a worldview that concentrates on immediate motives at the expense of a longer view.

 

Next time we will continue with the question: What kind of currency and monetary policy would make money the root of all good again?

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A Pause from the Three Terras; Eduterras, Ecuterras and Paxterras

Money As Motivator


By John Taylor; 2009 Oct 28, Ilm 13, 166 BE


This series asks what monetary policy might be like under a decentralized world government. We often forget that the extreme centralization of power that is the norm today is not inevitable. Rather, it is a symptom of the corruption and slow death of the sovereign nation, which jealously guards every jot and tittle of its own prerogatives.

A democratic world government would immediately shift the balance away from the sovereign middle. Without the need to maintain large armies or pay for weapons, there would be a great shift of wealth towards the world center. However, with Comenian organization the lion's share of the wealth would flow out to the periphery, towards localities, neighbourhoods and families. This is because the power to collect taxes, print money and, as a result, the power to manipulate monetary policy would be delegated to local levels of governance. The present fractional reserve system is designed to concentrate monetary policy in the hands of central banks, which then permit banks to create money through lending. Why cannot other, local institutions, including the trades and professions, do this too? They could create their own money by providing credit and taking out loans for activities that they know about best, enterprises promoting their own trade, such as training apprentices, funding research and promoting related charities.

In our present financial system money is the be all and end all, the overweening reward for all economic activity. The sole motive rewarded and reinforced by money is lust for naked profit. Worse, this profit is gained not necessarily by invention or productive activity but simply from growth. It has been calculated that high finance has gone from five to fifteen percent of GNP in only ten years. Lately these financial wizards have devised derivatives based on debt risk. This means that even our future growth is being systematically plundered. Since risk is by definition, well, risky, this model is inherently ephemeral and unstable, a house built not on sand but on financial bubbles. Responding to the current economic crisis, governments are even raising their stimulus funds by borrowing from private lenders. This was not how the miracle of the New Deal was performed. While this is highly profitable for a moneyed few, its cost to society is so great that at least one European banker, hardly a socialist, has suggested that the entire financial industry be officially nationalized and that these offending institutions be run as not-for-profit public utilities.

Meanwhile, the greatest factor of social as well as economic stability, income equality, continues to spin out of control. An often mentioned example is the stratospheric pay given to professional athletes. It has been calculated that an ordinary professional worker who makes the average starting salary of a university graduate, fifty-thousand dollars a year, would have to work for seventy years to make what the average professional hockey player gets in a single season -- and hockey is on the lower end of the pay scale among elite athletes. Meanwhile, those who do tremendous good to society, such as inventors, innovators and discoverers, must scrounge for funding.

An economy that allowed local institutions and trades and professions to manufacture money would see to it that those who work in fields that benefit society the most would merit the highest pay-rates. Those who innovate and discover new knowledge in these areas would stand to gain the most of all. What is more, their pay would be in a currency (the terra, a three pronged currency) that is best suited to their expertise, managed by a local and world public utility of high finance.

The great benefit of this localization would be an increase in administrative efficiency. One of the most brilliant advocates of local governance was Jane Jacobs. She deplored the present funding squeeze on the local level, especially for cities and towns, saying that, "standardization is the parent of stagnation." (Dark Age, 119) Large cities are sinking into decrepitude because the lion's share of the wealth and tax revenue they produce is "standardized," that is, pre-allocated by having strings attached to them by more "senior" levels of government.

"Healthy municipalities do not march in lockstep. At a given time, each has its needs and may also have its own particular opportunities for innovative solutions. These opportunities can be very valuable. Central planning, whether by leftists or conservatives, draws too little on local knowledge and creativity, stifles innovations, and is inefficient and costly because it is circuitous. It bypasses intimate and varied knowledge directly fed back into the system." (Dark Age Ahead, 116-117)

The worst effects of over-centralization are witnessed on the lowliest but most important level of all, that of the individual. Over past decades the relative share of wealth in the hands of the majority has diminished while the riches of the few concentrated beyond measure. Here, centralization is at its most extreme.

Advocates of the status quo argue that our economic stagnation would be worsened by giving everyone a standard, livable income as a human right. We need the threat of homelessness and starvation to keep the wheels of society turning. How else could bosses light a fire under their lazy employees? If the threat of destitution ever went away, workers would not want to work.
Next time I will argue that this fear is fallacious. It is born of ignorance of how to manage the most powerful human motivator, money. If local institutions and trades controlled the money supply, workers would be more motivated to work, not less. They would be concerned with something that really matters, progressive social change, not crass profiteering.


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Voyager Ends

Voyager Notes

By John Taylor; 2009 Oct 26, Ilm 11, 166 BE

It has taken over a month but now at last we have viewed all seven seasons of Star Trek Voyager. On the day when we watched the last episode I dreamed a sort of fan-fiction Voyager scenario. There was a big explosion and one of the shuttles was obliterated, along with several central characters. Captain Janeway was about to move the star ship on when the Doctor objected that it would be immoral to just leave. He could send out nano-probes to act as markers. These will give the cells that are living a chance to gather together into clumps. These clumps of flesh may someday learn to live a sort of multi-cellular existence on their own. She was considering his suggestion when I woke up; only then did the absurdity start to sink in.

My original fear when I heard they were making Star Trek Voyager was that it would be horrible to watch. The plot of making one's way home across the galaxy is too similar to that excruciating TV Sci-fi comedy that blighted my childhood, Lost in Space, with its prescient robot crying: "Danger Will Robinson, danger!" Now that I have seen the whole Voyager series I am reminded more of Homer's Odyssey. Actually, this space opera is probably somewhere in between, though I think closer to the Odyssey than to Lost in Space. The writing is as good as it ever gets on television.

The effect of Voyager on the kids is even more marked than on me. Though I did not intend to do so, it looks like I am raising a couple of trekkers. 15 year old Silvie has decided that her costume for Halloween will be Ohura in the new movie version of Star Trek. Yesterday she and her mother bought a red miniskirt and black net hose, just like Ohura. All she needs is a com badge and a black turtleneck dickey, and maybe a deeper tan, and she will look just like the communications officer of the original Star Trek series.

Ten-year-old Tommy is now spouting pseudo-scientific Star Trek babble as his natural language. He carries around an unrecognizable piece of an old toy that now is his "phaser." In his grade five class he was assigned an outline of a turkey to colour for Thanksgiving. Instead of using crayons, he took a pen and drew cybernetic implants over one of its eyes. When his teacher asked what it was, he said that it was a Borg turkey. In response, she told him of a golf partner she once had who wore a flashing Bluetooth cell device behind his ear, which made him look eerily like a Borg drone. Ignoring the fact that the Borg would have disdained to assimilate a turkey, Tommy's Borg turkey is one of the most ridiculous looking creatures I have ever seen. If the earth were invaded by Borg turkeys we would at least go out with a laugh.

As the series ended for us, I heard news on the CBC science radio program, Quirks and Quarks, that the two real Voyager probes are travelling at two different points of a newly discovered ribbon of EM radiation at the outer edge of the heliosphere. The EM ribbon was discovered by telescope, and the two Voyager spacecraft cannot see it because it runs directly between them. Strange.

This morning before school Tommy was huddling on the couch under a blanket while his hot chocolate was waiting for him on the kitchen table. He made the following observation about Voyager, which had me rolling on the floor laughing. "You know with all the transporting they do in Star Trek, you never see them transporting a meal directly into someone's stomach..."

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Eduterras: An Educational Economy

Eduterras




By John Taylor; 2009 Oct 25, Ilm 11, 166 BE


Yesterday we broached the possibility of a Comenian world government instituting a world currency called the "terra," with three semi-exchangeable sub-types, the "ecuterra," the "paxterra" and the "eduterra." The first sub-currency is the ecuterra, a currency overseen by interfaith institutions at every level of society that are charged with overseeing faith groups and, more broadly, with the general religious, spiritual and metaphysical welfare of humanity. The paxterra is run by the political world parliament, whose chief goal is peace, the removal of injustice, and the immediate material welfare of all world citizens. The third, the eduterra, is the terra sub-currency overseen by affiliated institutions dedicated to philosophy, science, art, culture, knowledge and education. This is what I will discuss today.


While the idea of educators printing money seems foreign at first, it has great affinity to everything that teachers and learners do that. The desire to learn gainfully is deeply rooted in human psychology from the earliest age. As we shall see, teachers who are empowered to give students substantive rewards, short term as well as long term, will suddenly be far more effectual with their students and influential in society. So spectacular will be its success, I feel certain, that once eduterras are instituted the big question will be how educators ever muddled along without it.



==========



Roland Fryer, an economist and head of Harvard's Education Innovation Laboratory, has been experimenting with "pay-for-performance" in education, where students are paid in cash or cell phone minutes for getting good grades. In a 2008 interview with Macleans Magazine he told how he realized that the reason why it is so hard to motivate children and youth to try hard at school is that the rewards are so distant, usually ten or twenty years into the future. Children complained that they are the last to be consulted on educational issues. Although results from his experiments are still tentative, Fryer told how he has already noticed how pay for achievement in class is universally popular among pupils and students.

"Part of the resistance (to pay for performance) echoes part of the [problem] with public education: we consult mainly adults, and do things that are comfortable for adults. I think if the answer lay there, we would already have found it. One thing we are trying to do at Ed-Labs to push the envelope is to ask children how schools can better serve them. And the most important thing is that I never met a kid who did not like it. Though in D.C. a few weeks ago, there was a kid who surprised me. He said, `I do not think we should be paid for school. I think I should pay to come to school, because it is such a valuable resource.' I was so impressed. An hour later, we were giving out the first cheques in the auditorium, and this kid's name was called, so I put his cheque in my pocket. He said, `What are you doing?' I said, `You told me you did not believe you should be paid, so I would like to honour that.' He looked at me in a way that only a 13-year-old could, and said, `I never said that!'" <http://blog.macleans.ca/2008/12/08/macleans-interview-roland-fryer/4/>

I too have observed in my own son and daughter that money, even fake money like reward points, silly and insubstantial as they seem to someone old enough to take into account several decades of life, are extremely effective motivators. It was an economist, J.M. Keynes, who said that in the long term we are all dead. The brilliant invention of money acts as a constant reward for economic virtue. Meanwhile, educational values tend to be pie in the sky. As long as there are no immediate rewards for learning as well as working, for all intents and purposes it is not rewarded at all.

This initiative hints at what could be done with eduterras. Let us go over the numbers. Where I live, in Ontario, it costs the government an average of about ten thousand dollars to keep a child in a public school for a year. This expense is slightly above average for developed countries. Some nations, such as Belgium, attach that yearly sum to the child, so that whatever school the child decides to attend, be it public, parochial or private, and whether teachers are unionized or not, the money follows that child. This forces all schools to compete for pupils; reportedly, Belgian teachers take great pains to keep pupils and their parents happy. In any case, this ten thousand dollars a year amounts at five percent interest to the equivalent of a float of two hundred thousand dollars for the duration of a child's schooling.

In view of Fryer's findings, it would make sense to make at least some of this ten thousand a year available for pay for performance schemes, paid directly to children. It would be wise to earmark at least some of this money not for pupils to retain for themselves but to pay out to their peers, conditional upon performance, in this case on whether those peers show them kindness, cooperativeness and helpfulness in studying together. The power to reward others in this way would give children a degree of financial independence and would teach how to influence others in reaching their own educational goals. Of course, all this could be done with ordinary money.

The advantage of paying educational expenses in the world eduterra currency is that educational institutions would actually gain the ability to exercise monetary policy. They could leverage their budgets by tying education to not-for-profit revenue schemes. For example, eduterras could pay for tokens in video and internet games that are sanctioned and licensed by educators; they might be used to pay for educational books, toys and games. Under the present system, such new revenue streams could be used to increase the float, or reduce the yearly costs of school.

Under an eduterra scheme, this would be leveraged. That is, the extra eduterras are re-distributed directly to students, who in turn purchase more sanctioned goods, which increases the revenue further. Since children would have only marked eduterras in their pocket, it would be difficult for them to spend the money on illicit or non-age appropriate goods or activities. At the same time, any advertising or commercial outreach to children would have to live up to the standards of educators before earning the right to trade in eduterras.

This goes further than what Comenius actually proposed as sources of revenue for teachers in Panorthosia. However, in other ways Comenius went further. Here is the full text of paragraph 11, Chapter 22 of Panorthosia, which deals with pay for teachers.

"Proper salaries for teachers. Where the question may arise, whether it is better for teachers' salaries to be paid from public funds by the local Magistracy, or from private fees charged to parents, my answer is 'Both'. Modest salaries should be paid from public funds, payable in advance, to provide them with means of subsistence while teaching the poorer pupils free of charge. But fees should remain as an incentive to diligence, payable duly after a public examination at the end of a year's work, if the teacher has fully succeeded in bringing his Pupils to the proper standard. Otherwise he should receive nothing except disgrace for failing to perform his task. If these arrangements are made, there will be plenty of opportunities and incentives for diligence on the part of teachers and generosity on the part of parents." (Panorthosia, Chap 22, Para 11, p. 51)

It can be seen that he advocated multiple revenue streams for education, and, rather severely I think, advocated pay for performance for teachers, or, more exactly, no pay for poor performance of students in examinations. I know of no school where teachers get no pay-cheque if their students fail their final examination.

In his defence, he does seem to advocate an unconditional salary from the state. An under-performing teacher would be like a business that goes bankrupt; he or she would lose out on extra pay, but would not be faced with homelessness and starvation.




Parts of this are based on an essay originally written for the Badi' Blog dated Dec 10, 2008, called: "The Leadership of Knowledge; Beautiful Balance Sheets and Trade Money" (http://badiblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/leadership-of-knowledge.html)


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Paxterras, Eduterras and Ecuterras

A Three Part, Unidirectional Currency

By John Taylor; 2009 Oct 23, Ilm 09, 166 BE


This is part of a series of essays on John Amos Comenius's idea of universal reform, or "Panorthosia," and how it might be applied today. Today let us continue our discussion of a Comenius-inspired idea for three new forms of currency.

John Amos Comenius proposed a world government unlike any other. He saw the routine, day-to-day work of legislation being handled by continental governments, while at the top, instead of a wholly political entity, there would be a three-chambered supreme court keeping education, politics and religion as three separate but equal partners. These three bodies Comenius called the College of Light, the Dicastery of Peace and the Ecumenical Consistory. Each has an independent sphere and runs autonomously, holding elections, maintaining its own budget through independent taxation and possibly, as we will speculate upon today, even print its own currency.

This tripartite partnership is not restricted to the world level. It is universal, meaning that it is a sort of franchise duplicated at every institutional level, from continental governments right down to faith groups and family households. It uses as foundation or model the individual, whose fundamental interests, Comenius maintained, are threefold: peace in the short term (politics), providence in the long term (religion), and the advance of knowledge from one generation to the next (science and education).
Such governance has no parallel in modern times. Even the most enlightened democratic politicians would shrink in horror at sharing money and power with scientists, educators and spiritual leaders. True, political leaders gladly take science and faith under their wings, as long as the purse strings and decision-making remain firmly in their hands. Even the United Nations tacked on Unesco only as an afterthought years after the U.N. formed. To find something similar, you have to go all the way back to Plato's "The Republic." Let us briefly summarize Plato's idea.

Plato compared society to a pastoral model run by a shepherd, who is served by sheepdogs, which in turn manage herds of sheep. These three functions of the state, wisdom, protection and production, are mutually exclusive, yet at the same time utterly depend upon one another. This can be compared to the world's simplest game, rock-paper-scissors. Just as rock breaks scissors, scissors cut paper and paper wraps rock, so it is with shepherd, sheepdog and sheep. The shepherd, or philosopher king, cannot eat without an income from sheep, nor manage sheep without a sheepdog. The sheepdog, the spirited, protective element of society, cannot restrain its passions without knowledge and guidance from the shepherd, nor are its natural abilities constructive without a flock of wandering sheep to keep in line. The sheep cannot fully concentrate on grazing or protect against predators without sheepdogs, nor do they have any long term hope of survival without serving the needs of humans through their shepherd.

As mentioned, the nation state of today is monolithic, with one shepherd, one sheepdog and one flock of sheep. The guardian or sheepdog is the laws, police and military, which protect and tax the people and their various enterprises. Nationalists justify their monopoly on power by pointing to the constant threat of attack from other nations, or from separatists, terrorists and insurgents within. Tension between nations creates a so-called balance of terror holding war at bay, even as nuclear weapons proliferate. One advantage of keeping almost two hundred separate nation states in the United Nations is that it does perforce maintain a degree of decentralization, though in practice it leaves even the strongest nation states open to undue influence from wealthy corporations, which are not tied down by borders.

In a Comenian UCS, all nations would unite under a single, constitutional, elected republic. As the government of all human beings ruling over all nations, its very existence would finish the threat of external attack forever -- or, at least until we experience first contact with intelligent aliens. As for the more insidious internal problems of discontent, insurgency and civil war, and the often worse threat of arbitrary countermeasures from the center, these would be removed by constitutionally decentralizing the world government, for example, by applying the principle of subsidiarity and shoring up the periphery, adding continental, neighbourhood and household governmental structures both above and below the level of the nation state.

Another important way to diffuse power in the center is what we are discussing here, splitting the central authority into three chambers, each holding its own elections, enforcing taxation and printing its own money. Just as nation states now require taxpayers to pay taxes in their own currency, each of the three chambers would require world citizens to pay their taxes in their own respective currency.

How might monetary policy work in such a system?

As discussed yesterday, the variety of local currencies could be collectively called "locas," and the global currency "terras." In a Comenian world order there might be three types of terra. The College of Light, charged with science and education, might produce an educational terra, or eduterra for short. The political body, Comenius's Dicastery of Peace, is charged with keeping the peace. A name for its currency might be "peace terra," or paxterra for short. The currency of the Ecumenical Consistory, responsible for inter-faith relations and fulfilling the spiritual needs of humanity, might be called "ecumenical terras," or ecuterras for short.
I am on so to speak Terra Incognita here I know, but I wonder if the world body might decide to limit conversion among these three kinds of terra currency, using Plato's pastoral game of stone-paper-scissors as model. For example, it is a major lesson of history that religious leaders do tremendous harm and provoke terrible persecution when they attempt to meddle in politics, so why not prohibit the conversion of ecuterras directly into paxterras? Similarly, the relentless creep of global warming demonstrates the harm that politicians do when they try to write the agenda of science. In order to prevent this, the constitution of the world government could forbid conversion of paxterras directly into eduterras.

Like the game of rock-paper-scissors, these two blocking rules force money conversions to circulate in one direction only, from eduterras to paxterras to ecuterras, not the other way around. So, religion must cross through science (that is, quasi-political or superstitious beliefs must be subjected to the systematic, reasoned scrutiny of the scientific method) in order to have a say in the arena of policy and politics. Similarly, politicians would have to subject their policies to religious values of mercy, love and reciprocity before they can speak to scientific opinion. Plus, scientists and educators must address practical policy before wasting time and energy fathoming the eternal, ultimate concerns of faith. Unless this due vetting takes place, not a penny, or whatever the smallest unit of the terra is called, can be spent in ill-advised boundary-crossing enterprises.

Next time, let us talk in more detail about how these three world bodies might work monetary policy using their respective currencies, starting with the eduterra.

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Terras or Locas?

Three New Types of Currency


By John Taylor; 2009 Oct 22, Ilm 08, 166 BE



I have been looking for a precedent for the new types of money that I have been contemplating for the UCS, Universal Civic Society -- that is, the world after the concurrent formation of continental, global, familial and neighbourhood governments. Here is what I learned after wading through several Wikipedia articles on currency, including "alternative currency", "complementary currency," "fiat currency," and "private currency."


There is a startling variety of types of currency. Some are well established, some remain experimental and others are only proposed. The most common currency in actual use is fiat currency, the national government-imposed money that most people use most of the time. These are universal largely because governments back them up and demand that taxes be paid in this type of currency. There are, however, alternatives to fiat species. Many types of local or private schemes have been tried with varying success, some based on barter and others on commodities, like gold or silver. Many are local currencies that can only be spent in a certain place, and others are limited to a single company or industry (scrip, coupons or air miles).


Among the most interesting experiments in local currency took place in response to the hyper-inflation that afflicted Germanic countries after the First World War. They had various names, including the Schwundgeld. This local currency started with a private company and ended up as a project by urban governments. This local currency had a "best-before-date," which is to say that Schwundgelds devalued gradually; after a certain deadline they expired and were useless. Termed demurrage, or negative interest, this encouraged fast and furious spending in local stores and other enterprises. This shot of adrenaline was a strong but temporary stimulus to the economy. Some environmentalists, including the Green Party and George Monbiot, argue that demurrage, by discouraging cash holdings, encourages investment in long term resources, like forests, fisheries, and so forth.


Many other currencies have been speculated upon by futurists and science fiction writers based on units of energy, time, labour, carbon, etc. The Star Trek universe, at least in its early incarnations, contemplated a future society without need of money at all. Indeed, the nature of money would change as soon as a standard income covering basic needs is introduced. With a modicum of food, clothing and shelter guaranteed as fundamental rights, the threat of starvation and homelessness would not loom over economic relations; naked profit might not exert the addictive fascination that it does now. Other values and virtues would enter the economic equation if work and purchases were done more out of inherent interest rather than brute survival. Just as government-owned corporations are not necessarily restricted to brute profit as motivators, standard incomes would allow other financial agents to take on new spiritual, scientific and legal motivations.


The question remains, however: what kind of currency is the best? When a democratic world government comes about, should it retain unchanged the present monetary system run by national governments? Or should it encourage entire continents to take on their own currencies, as has already been done in Europe with the euro? Should there be an "afro," an "americo," and an "asio" as well? Or should the world authority establish right away its own fiat currency to replace the hundreds of currencies, fiat or otherwise, in use around the world?


A name has even been suggested for this world currency, the "terra," analogous to the EC's "euro." So, under a world government will every exchange of funds be in terras, or will the terra be restricted to travellers and diplomats while most transactions are done using various forms of local currency? What should we call them, since presumably every locality would have a different name for its currency. Collectively we could call the myriad local currencies "locas." So the question is, in a UCS should we pay our taxes and everything else in terras and keep locas as adjuncts, or should the loca be the main currency in use, with terras reserved for exceptional cases, such as intercontinental tourism?


I cannot begin to try to answer these questions. I expect that specialists using computer simulations could determine what currency or combination of currencies would be most economically viable on a regional or international basis. There seems to be a consensus of opinion that locas do offer a measure of security against hyper-inflation (whether that would be a problem in a cosmopolitan order I have no idea) and against over-investment in environmentally unfriendly enterprises, and that demurrage and Tobin taxes on currency exchange could be effective protections against hyper-inflation and overly heated speculation. But beyond that, not much is accessible to the non-economist.


Undaunted, I have an idea for three new kinds currency that, as far as I can see, has never been tried. To recap: In this series of essays on the Badi' Blog (badiblog@blogspot.com) I have been exploring the idea of a three-chambered world government based on education, politics and religion. Since, as we have seen, these three already have their own elections and taxation, the question I am now interested in is: should each of the three branches print their own money as well? That is what I will try to answer over the next several installments in this series.

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Validation

Other Baha'i bloggers have noted how this sheds light on the holy words: "A kindly tongue is the lodestone of the hearts of men..."

Baha'u'llah on the Bab

Baha'u'llah on the Bab

By John Taylor; 2009 Oct 20, Ilm 06, 166 BE


On this holy day, the Birth of the Bab, it is helpful to recall what Baha'u'llah wrote about the Bab. In the Ishraqat, He wrote,


"Praise be to God who manifested the Point [the Bab] and caused to proceed therefrom the knowledge of all that was and shall be.... He is that Point which God hath made to be an Ocean of light unto the faithful among His servants, and a Ball of Fire unto the deniers among His creatures and the impious among His people. (Baha'u'llah, Tablets, 102)


Baha'u'llah, in one of His most important prayers, the Tablet of Ahmad, vindicates the Bab's power and glory, and challenges those who would question it, "If ye deny these verses, by what proof have ye believed in God? Produce it, O assemblage of false ones." Compare this to the following parallel statement in the Writings of the Bab himself, which declares that the very mercy of God is conditional upon this allegiance.


"O peoples of the earth! Bear ye allegiance unto this resplendent light wherewith God hath graciously invested Me through the power of infallible Truth, and walk not in the footsteps of the Evil One, [Q2:204] inasmuch as he prompteth you to disbelieve in God, your Lord, and verily God will not forgive disbelief in Himself, though He will forgive other sins to whomsoever He pleaseth. [4:51] Indeed His knowledge embraceth all things..." (Qayyumu'l-Asma', SWB, 48)


Baha'u'llah revealed one tablet especially for this Holy Day. It includes a special prayer for the occasion at the end. Here is a paragraph from that work,


"This glorious Tablet hath been revealed on the Anniversary of the Birth [of the Bab] that thou mayest recite it in a spirit of humility and supplication and give thanks unto thy Lord, the All-Knowing, the All-Informed. Make thou every effort to render service unto God, that from thee may appear that which will immortalize thy memory in His glorious and exalted heaven." (Baha'u'llah, Tablets, 234)


This seems to indicate what our goal should be for today, and more broadly for our whole lives. We should aim to do something worthy of "immortalizing" our memory in the heaven of the Bab. This may include a good deed, a visit to a person in need, a meal for the poor, a gift to the fund, a payment to the Huququ'llah, or even the thoughts and prayers we have about the Bab today.


In another late Tablet, written to a member of the Bab's family, Baha'u'llah says,


"Say: This is the Day of meritorious deeds, did ye but know it. This is the Day of the glorification of God and of the exposition of His Word, could ye but perceive it. Abandon the things current amongst men and hold fast unto that which God, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting, hath enjoined upon you. The day is fast approaching when all the treasures of the earth shall be of no profit to you." (Baha'u'llah, Tablets, 231-232)


Speaking of the Bab in an early, mystical work, the Javahiru'l-Asrar Baha'u'llah discusses at length the station of the Bab. He was among other things the consummation of the 12 Imams or disciples of Muhammad, a lineage that started with Muhammad and continued to Ali, Hasan, Husain, and nine others. The Mission of the Bab, Ali Muhammad, was the consummation of that spiritual heritage.


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 "But as to Him Who appeared in the year sixty, He standeth in need of neither transformation nor interpretation, for His name was Muhammad, and He was a descendant of the Imams of the Faith. Thus it can be truly said of Him that He was the son of Hasan, as is undoubtedly clear and evident unto thine eminence. Nay, He it is Who fashioned that name and created it for Himself, were ye to observe with the eye of God." (Javahir, paragraph 50)

 "It is Our wish at this juncture to ... extol His remembrance, that perchance thou mayest gain into all things an insight born of Him Who is the Almighty, the Incomparable. (paragraph 51)

 "Consider and reflect upon His days, when God raised Him up to promote His Cause and to stand as the representative of His own Self. Witness how He was assailed, denied, and denounced by all; how, when He set foot in the streets and marketplaces, the people derided Him, wagged their heads at Him, and laughed Him to scorn; how at every moment they sought to slay Him. Such were their doings that the earth in all its vastness was straitened for Him, the Concourse on High bewailed His plight, the foundations of existence were reduced to nothingness, and the eyes of the well-favoured denizens of His Kingdom wept sore over Him. Indeed, so grievous were the afflictions which the infidels and the wicked showered upon Him that no faithful soul can bear to hear them." (Paragraph 52)

 "... Indeed, should a soul be acquainted with these mysteries, he would grasp that which none other hath fathomed." (Paragraph 57)


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Yet More Escutcheons

Groups, Boffins and Beauty

By John Taylor; 2009 Oct 19, Ilm 05, 166 BE


Escutcheons for Groups and Institutions


We have been looking mostly at personal escutcheons so far, but in reality that is only the beginning. Personal escutcheons are the foundation for a set of standard reforms to be introduced at every level of society, from the individual to the household, company, school, neighbourhood, city, region, nation, continent and the world.


Group escutcheons are a much more complex proposition individual ones. In a democratic meritocracy, groups depend utterly upon the initiative, goodwill and consensus of opinion among individuals in order to progress. Institutional escutcheons plug into the dashboard displays and escutcheons of many individuals, both within their membership and without. But they also interact closely with other groups at all levels of society.


Like a personal escutcheon, each family, company, government or other organization has some freedom to decide upon what plans, measures and criteria to display on their escutcheon, according to their current needs and priorities. However, whereas individuals design their escutcheons autonomously, setting up their own self-monitored goals and criteria of success, group escutcheons must adhere to many rules and standards imposed from within and without. Group policies must be open, their goals determined by free elections and progress verified by qualified outside parties.


As mentioned, the mottos and displays on escutcheons act as interfaces from one person or group to all others. Many of these interfaces are obligatory. Institutions, unlike individuals, are required to display their escutcheon in public. By law, schools, companies, faith groups, families, neighbourhoods and governments, must place their escutcheon in a prominent place over their door, on membership cards and their website.


Depending upon their purpose, an institution can earn the right to add certain features and distinctions to their escutcheon. Badges and emblems are designed to be a recognizable, open set of standards, determined by data gathered according to strict regulations. Badges are standard, audited by licensed specialists, and change automatically according to received criteria. Like a policeman's badge, the escutcheon serves as public notification of licensing and accreditation. Their visualizations are designed to ensure transparency, to discourage nepotism or favouritism in awarding grants and contracts. They assure that every bidder's qualifications are clear and accessible by the public, who have a right to view and analyze their escutcheon.


Rise of the Boffins


Future political scientists will surely look back on this time as having the biggest, most dangerous power vacuum ever. Our lack of leadership is staggering. Leaders at all levels do nothing but dawdle while temperatures and sea-levels soar and glaciers melt. It is unlikely that any individual leader, no matter how wise or charismatic, can possibly fit the bill. This is because the sort of leader we need today is not an individual at all.


Undoubtedly, we need good individuals to take the lead; we always have and always will. But pay too much attention to individual leaders. This is unhealthy and in fact contributes to the power vacuum. No, the real default of leadership today is not that leaders in themselves are lacklustre or inadequate, is in a sad lack of influence of experts and expertise. We leave our trades and professions forlorn, banished from the halls of power.


Everything comes of opinion, so it only makes sense that the opinion of our best experts should come before that of others. We cannot expect professionals to serve, advise and obey passively. The problem with the UN's Science Advisory Panel on Climate Change is that it is just that, an advisory panel. True, this body has increased greatly in prestige as more thinking people realize that stopping greenhouse gas emissions is vital to our collective survival.


What we really need are panels of experts with teeth. Give them power to tell governments what to do. Right now, the panel on climate change is telling the world: "Stop these emissions or we are all cooked, literally." But that is not enough. They need power to act directly, not just sit on the sidelines. Then the boffins can take the initiative and lead from the front lines in humanity's battle for survival.


What is more difficult, though, is that we need the opinion of some, those expert in important disciplines, to have more sway than others, whose knowledge is in areas that are less crucial to human survival. Some professionals, such as actors and celebrities, hog the limelight while climate scientists are allowed on only as extras. Nor is climate alone among sciences being ignored. It is just one of a thousand areas of expertise where we are not doing the right thing, or even the sensible thing. We need farmers, doctors, teachers and other experts not to be content with telling us what to do, they must be in unalienable positions of honour where they can take political leaders to task as soon as they begin to ignore fundamentals.


Here are some examples. There are thousands, if not millions of soldiers, arms merchants and spies for every expert in peace studies. The number of agriculturalists has dwindled from over half to less than one percent of the population in many regions. As a result, farmers have little influence and in their work remain dependent upon hydrocarbons for fertilizers. This threatens the world with famine at the first rise in oil prices. There are thousands of linguists, chroniclers of languages and literary lights for every educator working to remove the language barrier. The list goes on.


Beautiful Balance Sheets


In high technology industries official bodies come together periodically to adopt standards for the next generation of products. This use of the consensus of expert opinion is pretty much the definition of the scientific method. Yet this process has more influence in some areas of human endeavour than others. It is all but unknown in religion, for example, yet it is commonplace in rapidly advancing high-technology industries. The problem with the latter, though, is that technical standards tend to be comprehensible only to highly trained specialists. The lay public is not consulted.


For example, investors in stocks learn after years of patient study how to read a balance sheet. Assuming that the data are reliable in a year-end report, they can look down the listing of facts and figures about a public corporation and rapidly assess its health.




With escutcheons bodies of experts will similarly agree upon what data are important, but they will cross the line of specialist knowledge and ask what graphics could represent the meaning of this information.


Collaborating with artists, they will find ways of summarizing health that are so intuitively obvious that any untrained person using their aesthetic sense alone can tell at a glance how robust a person, company or other institution is. The financial part of an escutcheon, for example, may not display the exact amount of savings or where investments are, but it will show a graphic attesting that the party in question is in good economic shape and has adhered to accepted norms in the industry.


Of course, nature already does this with organisms. Usually any viewer can tell at a glance whether the body of a plant, animal or human is a pretty or ugly example of its kind. If it has good genes it will have a strong and elegant enough constitution to pass them on to their progeny. In such cases, the face, flower or body an organism invariably strikes the eye as beautiful. When it looks symmetrical and harmonious, then every law of evolutionary biology says that this organism will be a good bet. If it is ugly, its chances of survival are probably slim.











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As it is now, organizations are expected consciously to manipulate their public face with paid advertising, in effect bribing the public to listen. This is done at prodigious cost, not only financially but to the truth, which is routinely distorted. Meanwhile, the public has little official, unbiased, verifiable information about what a company stands for, its qualifications and past achievements.



The advantage of escutcheons is not just that they bridge the chasm between specialists and lay, but mostly that they extend open standards to areas that have stubbornly resisted change for centuries. Some of the most hidebound include morality, religion, philosophy and politics. However, even accounting, a discipline where standards are highly advanced, would be revolutionized by escutcheons.


With an escutcheon display hooked into its balance sheets, anybody with minimal training would see the most important features of an organization's escutcheon at a glance, without referring to a single statistic or number. Right over its doorway a constantly updated graphic shows the relative well-being of an institution, whether it is keeping up to its stated goals and purposes, and so forth. As graphic standards are finalized for escutcheons, more and more indicators of an institution's budgetary and financial condition can gradually be incorporated into its escutcheon displays. As it is shown across the industry to be official and reliable, clients will be inclined to pay attention to each new indicator.


When a given badge has withstood scrutiny and feedback for a decade, it will be integrated into the world curriculum. In time, any educated person in the world will be able to walk through the portals of any institution whose escutcheon shows this badge posted over its doorway and gain an instant picture of its health, its plans and accomplishments. Passers-by who want more details can use HUD's or mobile devices to drill down using its wireless feed and pass beyond iconography to the raw numbers and statistics that form them.


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Dashboards and Escutcheons

More on Escutcheons for the Individual


Families and other institutions often connect themselves with medieval tradition by adopting a coat of arms, also called an escutcheon. This sometimes includes a Greek or Latin saying along with a set of symbolic images in the visual language of heraldry. In his posthumous work, "Panorthosia or Universal Reform," John Amos Comenius proposed that a world government take up certain mottos or slogans to place on the escutcheon of groups at each major level of society, from the individual to family, school, faith groups and, at the most universal level, the world government itself. Enhanced by sophisticated information technology, this device would make the goals and ideals of a cosmopolitan order more friendly, coherent and understandable.

For better or worse, the upcoming generation of children born after the advent of the internet are virtually all gamers. Electronic games are so compelling and even addictive for them because game designers long ago learned how to make what is little more than a display, a database and a data feedback mechanism appealing to young children. As an educational theorist, Comenius understood this psychology well. In his over 150 book oeuvre he often suggested ways that educators can make learning as natural and enjoyable as play. The mottos that he devised for families and governments in Panorthosia demonstrate that he understood how important this can be for governance as well as education.
Like a computer game or simulation, an escutcheon is nothing more than a display, a database and a set of feedback mechanisms. Unlike the augmented reality "dashboard displays" that we have discussed elsewhere, an escutcheon is permanent, official and relatively static. The escutcheon is a tally of the results of many lessons, games and simulations, both formal and informal. Like the list of top ten scorers in a computer game, it is essentially a record of goals accomplished and an emblem of the ideals, virtues and honours that one aims for in life.

An inherent part of the world curriculum, they begin in early childhood, starting with standard peer and parental assessments and report cards from teachers. However, with maturity they gradually become autonomous, self-regulated measures of virtue and self-education. They are the summary of a life displayed in as artistic a way as possible. Indeed as escutcheons are applied universally, they will create an entire industry for artists, graphic designers and illustrators.

An escutcheon has both a public and a private face. For an individual, the private face is a visualization designed to aid in reflection and meditation. It also acts as a memory aid and tool for the critical self-assessment that is essential to an examined life. The public face of an escutcheon shows to clients and employers qualifications and accomplishments gained in one's line of work.


The Difference between Escutcheons and Dashboard Displays

Whereas the dashboard display monitors dynamic lifestyle factors like diet and exercise, the escutcheon considers goals and accomplishments in relation to long-term measures of peace, health and well being.

For example, in personal finance a dashboard display features dials and graphs showing one's financial state designed to aid in budgeting and financial planning. If an investment portfolio is diversified, a display of a human face or figure takes on pleasing proportions. If it is less diverse or over-invests in a single industry, the figure loses symmetry or tilts to one side. Similarly, if spending is too munificent, income insufficient, savings too small or charitable giving not at recommended amounts, the figure might become too squat or tall, too thick or thin.

An escutcheon, on the other hand, takes a longer perspective of financial health. If a dashboard figure remains symmetrical and beautiful over a long enough period of time it begins to feed points, "energy" or "virtual money" into the escutcheon, depending on the type of game the user prefers to play. These, in turn, furnish colours and embellishments that artists can use in making up a beautiful escutcheon.

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