BIC is Back

The BIC is Back and On Track

By John Taylor; 28 October, 2005

The Baha'i International Community, the UHJ's presence at the UN, has
issued a new statement called "The Search for Values in an Age of
Transition" to mark the international body's 60th birthday. Check it
out at: <www.onecountry.org/e172/BIC_UN_60th.htm> These periodic
statements are for Baha'is like encyclicals or Vatican councils for
Catholics, a challenge and a stimulus to thought, not to say
controversy. This one may be the best timed statement yet. Just about
everybody is saying that there have to be major changes in the
structure of the UN, so who knows?, this time somebody in high places
may pay attention. There is an excellent summary of the BIC's main
points at the Baha'i World News Service:

<http://news.bahai.org/story.cfm?storyid=391>

Reading over what the BIC says here I was quite startled at the
boldness of their proposals. There is nothing mealy mouthed about this
statement! The only way they could have improved it would have been to
hire a cartoonist or a Michael Moore-like documentary filmmaker to
illustrate their points and bring them to life before the masses. But
the masses are not at all what the UN is all about, and that is part
of the problem. Anyway, today let us go through the parts that hit me
the hardest. Here is one proposal they put forward:

-- That "healthy democracy must be founded on the principle of the
equality of men and women" and efforts by member states to promote
democracy must therefore "vigilantly work for the inclusion of women
in all facets of governance in their respective countries."

A few weeks ago I suffered through an excruciating two hour PBS
documentary, a blow-by-blow history of the disastrous Middle East
negotiations for settlement of the Palestinian question during the
past decade. The political football went to one male leader who would
fumble it and it the next man took it and he would fumble again, and
the next and the next. It did not matter who had it, he would let it
slip out of his hands and they would all be back at square one, or
worse. It did not matter if the male maven was an American, an Israeli
or a Palestinian, they were all messing up and the tougher they got
the worse blunders they made.

If this was a football match the bleachers would be empty long before
the whistle blew. Yet it was a show run by men in the testosterone
charged style that men love. Their maleness dug right into the
atmosphere of violence and made it worse with every move they made; it
acted like poles of a magnet, pushing them all apart no matter how
much they pretended to push to get together. Both of the past two
administrations of the world's superpower were utterly determined to
enforce some kind of a peace and both failed miserably. I kept
screaming at the television screen:

"Why am I seeing only men on both sides here? For God's sake, why not
just pick out a group of ten women from both sides and let them take a
shot at it? I don't care if it is the least educated five Israeli
women and the five least qualified Palestinian women, no matter how
bad they are they cannot possibly be worse than these clowns!"

Okay, John, calm down. Let us take it slow and start back at the start.

Not surprisingly, the BIC start off their statement with oneness of
humanity. Nations that ignore the interests of all nations are
ignoring their own best interest. The UN itself and its
accomplishments over six decades are part of an overall evolution away
from absolute state sovereignty towards shared sovereignty, in other
words, peace and universal democracy. In other words, female-style
leadership. Don't get me started.

Here is a shocker, especially for anybody who has even heard of the
Middle East: the BIC calls for "the United Nations to affirm
unequivocally an individual's right to change his or her religion
under international law." Yeah, right. Let us say the UN does adopt
this resolution and it transpires that it was the Baha'is who
suggested it. The next thing that will happen is that a Baha'i from
anywhere in the world will be able to fly to just about anywhere in
the Middle East and as soon as they get off the plane they will be
immediately hoisted onto the shoulders of a grateful population and
carried about to cheers and general acclaim. We will be feted and
dined and there will be tears of affection in every eye, a feast of
wit, reason and soul all around. I can hardly wait to see it happen.

Anyway, the BIC say that failure to place unity first, to make oneness
our first principle and the main talking point at every meeting just
strengthens the forces of division. You cannot get rid of fruit flies
by throwing fruit at them; if we treat problems that feed and breed on
isolation separately, if you think of them in complete isolation from
each another and from our fundamental oneness we only strengthen their
destructive force. Issues they specifically bring up as examples are:
poverty, AIDS, environmental degradation, terrorism, proliferation of
weapons, the role of women, global trade, religion, environmental
sustainability, the well-being of children, corruption, and rights of
minority populations. Bad as such conditions are, they are so only
because we are neglecting the principle two-step: one, seek truth for
yourself, and two, work out what you discover with others, in unity
with the whole.

Living up to our Baha'i reputation as optimists who emphasize the
positive, the BIC points out about a dozen important new international
institutions and conventions founded only in the past 15 years alone.
It is an impressive list and proves that oneness cannot be rationally
debated or questioned, it can only be lived up to.

The big challenge for the UN, and everybody, is that everywhere unity
is being negated and denied. To paraphrase Rousseau, we are born one
but everywhere people are in chains of multiplicity. The BIC ask a
series of questions, like: "Why ... given the dramatic increase of
mechanisms and fora for cooperation is the world so deeply divided
against itself?" Good question. Not because we do not want to be rich,
that is for sure. So we have to realize that conflict ends wealth.
Peace -- they say in effect -- is prosperity and prosperity is peace;
one does not come at the expense of the other. This historical lesson
can be drawn from those sectors of the world economy that are still
thriving: whatever economic progress we have is a direct result of
peace and harmony worked out on levels beyond the national. The Dow
dips when we fight, it soars when we agree.

"The blurring of national boundaries in the face of global crises has
shown, beyond a doubt, that the body of humankind represents one
organic whole."

Our oneness is not globalization, it is not narrow, artificial or
forced, it is the truth, the very nature and essence of the human
condition. If you want a stronger whiff of that essence, check out
this document on the BIC website.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com