Open Year Closed

At the Closure of My Open Year


By John Taylor; 9 August, 2004



It is almost exactly a year since I returned home after a week-long
summer vacation with an idea that had burst upon me with the force of a
revelation. I have spent a year working through this simple proposal to
apply more broadly the practical lessons of open systems in computer
programming.

Speaking generally, openness is at the heart of everything good about
enlightenment and civilized life. A century ago progress towards
openness was halting because of a series of revolutions, titanic
struggles between authoritarian, totalitarian rulers and open,
democratic governance. The intellectual roots of the conflict then were
laid out and encapsulated in Karl Popper's great work, "The Open Society
and Its Enemies."

Since "Fahrenheit 9-11" this debate has shifted and clarified. The real
clash now is no longer a simple struggle of good versus evil, of
knowledge versus ignorance. Rather now it revolves around a single
heated question: "To what extent can we have an open society and still
remain secure?"

The longer prejudice and structural injustices are allowed to persist,
the more contention and unrest there will be and the more difficult it
will be to find this balance. In the Baha'i Administrative Order the
members of the institution of the learned who specialize in protection
work harmoniously alongside their counterparts devoted to propagation.
Both aim at the same goal, the progress of the Cause of God. In the Old
Order, however, these two essential elements are engaged in a death
struggle that threatens to split democracy from within.

After working through many of the implications of universal open
systems, I realized a few months ago how close the central concepts of
openness are to the heart of the Master's own proposal for development,
the "Secret of Divine Civilization." For example, at one point
`Abdu'l-Baha cites the Qu'ran's graphic image that we will all confront,
the moment at death when our whole life, inner and outer, is laid out
before us as an open book.


"And every man's fate have We fastened about his neck: and on the Day of
Resurrection will We bring it forth to him a book which shall be
proffered to him wide open." (Qur'an 17:14) (Abdu'l-Baha, Secret, 102)


The Master understood as few in history have that progress depends upon
balancing privacy with openness, individualism with social
responsibility. Out of His Mind later evolved the twin pivotal Baha'i
principles: confidential, individual investigation of reality balanced
by an open, reciprocal, compassionate principle that He called oneness
of humanity. In Secret of Divine Civilization He states that this
dynamic balance comes of determined, selfless service by many
enlightened individuals, again citing the Qu'ran as His authority.


"If haste is harmful, inertness and indolence are a thousand times
worse. A middle course is best, as it is written: `It is incumbent upon
you to do good between the two evils,' this referring to the mean
between the two extremes. `And let not thy hand be tied up to thy neck;
nor yet open it with all openness ... but between these follow a middle
way.'" (Qur'an 17:31; 110) (Abdu'l-Baha, Secret, 108)


It is ironic and a little frightening to think that this was addressed
to correct a misconception about how to get ahead that had been insisted
upon in Persia by its Shi'ih Mullahs. This clerical cabal not only are
to this day the main persecutors of Baha'is, they are also now known to
be the perpetrators of most terrorism in the Middle East, including the
9-11 attacks, as the recent investigative commission discovered. Iran is
the axle of the axis of evil, the commission disclosed. For example,
most of the suicide attackers escaped out of Afghanistan through Iran,
and Iran's clerical government not only harbored them but helped train
and finance the project. Its symbolic act of terror on 9-11 was nothing
less than fanaticism reaching out its hand to the throat of moderate,
open government. And, as the passage above implies, such violent
extremism really attacks the heart of the Qu'ran itself.

The middle path that the Qu'ran points to is the real secret to
openness. Openness to God upholds all the visible, outer openness that
manifests itself in the social fact. Tomorrow I will explore how the
Bab, whose very title "gate" implies openness, that is, being opened in
order to go through, in His Writings laid a bridge between the Qu'ran's
idea of moderate openness and the Order of Baha'u'llah. In the meantime,
let us pray for the victory of moderate openness over its many insidious
enemies. Let us supplicate an end to the looming divorce between
progress and security. Such was the prayer of Baha'u'llah Himself.


"I beseech Thee, by Thy most excellent titles and Thy most exalted
attributes, to open to my face the portals of Thy bestowals. Aid me,
then, to do that which is good, O Thou Who art the Possessor of all
names and attributes!" (Baha'u'llah, Prayers and Meditations, 215)




John Taylor
helpmatejet@yahoo.com
 
Blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/
 
Badi Web Site: TBA