Oneness of Humanity

Note: I have completed our Haldimand LSA's website to the point where I
do not feel too embarrassed to announce it on this list. I stole much of
the design from the website of the believers of Bradford, England, God's
blessings be upon them. The new Haldimand website is
http://www.mountaincable.net/~ronspeer, or,
http://www.mountaincable.net/~ronspeer. Now for the usual essay.



Oneness of Humanity As Open Secret

First of a series on the Oneness of Humanity



By John Taylor; 11 July, 2004



Scholars working for a doctorate are obliged to prove their expertise by
discovering something new in their chosen field. An independent scholar
like myself, though, is under no pressure to produce original work at
all. Far from publish or perish, we are not obliged to write a word if
we do not feel the need. So it was when I started off on my writing
career, such as it is, I decided that I would take advantage of my
independence by consciously concentrating on what is *not* new and
original. Far from narrowing down the amount of labor that I had taken
upon myself, I soon found the reverse, that I had opened up the field
dauntingly. Integrating the massive discoveries of this age, even in
theory, is the most arduous and lonely of challenges. Millions of
brilliant students put out new discoveries daily and, outside the
frantically overworked teaching profession, few thinkers are concerned
with integrating that into common knowledge, with making wisdom out of
raw data.

In the image of Isaiah, we are in a massive flood of information; our
concern is not how to drink or irrigate or pipe the water into sewers,
it is just keeping from drowning, how to keep our heads above water. A
flood kills quicker than a drought. In Jesus's parable, we suffer from
the "wineskin" problem, whether to put new wine in old wineskins (which
burst with too much new wine) or into new ones, and what these new
wineskins should look like. Right now almost all new wine is spilling
out onto the ground. There is massive waste of the knowledge that could
be used in saving the world from itself.

We need integrating knowledge most desperately in the area of self
improvement, both physical and mental. The findings of social science
are not being included in daily life. We work on slapdash, badly
obsolete assumptions about who and what we are. Worse, there seems to be
open season on common sense. We accept fads and superstition as normal,
ignoring even the possibility of a consensus about how to be successful
and happy. Instead of working on what is known and sure, we accept
substitutes, welcome superstition, imitation, and feed upon plausible,
contradictory generalizations.

You would think that physical health would be the first area to be
integrated. Whatever our diversity in thinking, bodies tend to be
largely the same in every important way. Health is important to every
one of us, literally a matter of life and death. You would think there
would be few arguments about how to be healthy and free of disease since
virtually every discovery about the workings of the body underlines the
fact that differences among bodies are minor to negligible. Genetics,
for example, has found that even the use of the word "race" to describe
the widest differences among bodies is a misnomer; there is far more
genetic variation among members of the Black "race" than between
Aboriginals and Whites, between Orientals and Blacks. With very minor
exceptions, what helps and aids one person is the exact same thing that
will assist any other human being on earth. In `Abdu'l-Baha's wording,
we all breathe the same air and ingest the same food.

Now the principle I have just outlined is the one known as "oneness of
humanity" in the schema of the Baha'i principles. I am taking the corner
now in these essays, turning from investigation of reality to the
oneness of humanity, from what I call ST to OH. The Oneness of Humanity
is, as I hint above, a principle of consensus, of common agreement upon
commonalities among all human beings.

But it is also a principle of compassion. We are all one, so we should
treat others, even the weak and infirm, as we would ourselves. One and
all deserve the love, the rights and the respect that any creation of
God merits. The Oneness of God must reflect Itself in the oneness of His
creation, the image of God; if it does not, we have broken our covenant
with our creator at the most fundamental level, for His is a covenant of
love.

I think it is clear that in the current debate over public policy the
closest apologist outside the Baha'i Faith for this principle is Michael
Moore. His "Bowling for Columbine" made more money than any documentary
film in history for very good reason. It documents the use by narrow
interests of fear, hatred and racism to manipulate the public to their
shallow advantage. He documents the human cost of brutal, anti-liberal,
anti-welfare policies that are so popular among other American White
men. A recent editorial in the New York Times points to the irony that a
working man's working man like Michael Moore should be the main
apologist for a policy that the right is in the habit of stigmatizing as
the product of a "liberal elite." Truly, the old lines between right and
left, liberal and conservative are breaking down.

I haven't yet had the chance to see "Fahrenheit 911," his latest effort
but in preparation I viewed the earlier film last night for the second
time, which I came across in DVD format. A friend of the believers in
our community works for the production company that made "Columbine,"
and before it was generally available we had the chance of viewing
together a pre-release version complete with time codes. As patriotic
Canadians we cheered at parts of the film that were obviously intended
to draw a stunned silence. We felt reinforced in our liberality, never
thinking of it as a proud national attribute before. As Baha'is, we
cheered these same parts too, though of course guiltily aware that
probably we should not identify ourselves so completely with any
political stripe. But then again, in view of the advice Baha'u'llah
gives here in the Suriy-i-Muluk, maybe we should not feel so guilty
about feeling this way.


"It behoveth every king to be as bountiful as the sun, which fostereth
the growth of all beings, and giveth to each its due, whose benefits are
not inherent in itself, but are ordained by Him Who is the Most
Powerful, the Almighty. The King should be as generous, as liberal in
his mercy as the clouds, the outpourings of whose bounty are showered
upon every land, by the behest of Him Who is the Supreme Ordainer, the
All-Knowing." (Summons, 5.70, p. 213)


But going through my mind as I watched "Columbine" for the second time
last night were questions like, Why? Why are the elites so fearful and
the masses so easily manipulated by less than noble, illiberal motives?
What causes us to betray our humanity? Why cannot we come to a consensus
on obvious basics? Why in spite of the advance of knowledge is humanity
as reflections of a loving God so weak? What makes us prefer to express
our nature as reflections of a warring, competitive, exploitative
nature? These are some of the questions I'll try to work through in
essays to come on the principle of the oneness of humanity.

In the meantime enjoy where we are now, at the crux of the matter. This
is a sublime point indeed, where search for truth passes over to the
oneness of humanity. I had a wonderful vision of this the other day
watching the climax of Akira Kurosawa's film, Ran, an adaptation of King
Lear. I had heard that Kurosawa had made the best film adaptations of
Shakespearean tragedy ever done, and I watched to see how that could be
done without using the main power of the Bard, the English language. I
was very impressed with how Ran staged Lear's battle scenes, which go on
behind the scenes in the stage play.

But the wonderful climax comes after the action of the film is over. The
clown reviews and assesses the events that brought down his master; he
laments the tragedy of life, how the gods crush us at their whim and
then laugh at our weakness and suffering. No, responds the noble, its is
not the gods who are to blame, no, they are in tears at how we cast
aside love and peace and choose for ourselves war, hatred, personal
tragedy. We unthinkingly choose hate and intrigue and then when the
consequences arrive we lament the tragedy. They lament the folly of
mortals on a deeper level than we can imagine.

In my mind, this almost universal human leaning to folly and violence
demonstrates what a hidden secret the Open Secret really is. I am
devoting my career to opening it up.


John Taylor
jet@linetap.com

Blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/

Badi Web Site:
http://linetap.com/www/jet/index.htm

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