Secrecy, Cats and the Market

Eliminating Secrecy, Military Industrial Cats, Charity as Friendship Market

On the slate today:

Eliminating Secrecy,
Military Industrial House Cats
Charity as Bargain Friendship Market

The House Cat essay I started in December, but it seems apposite here.

Eliminating Secrecy

I admit I am a bit of a spy story fan. I love cloak and dagger
activity. Secrecy gives zing to a story. Indeed, secrecy is
unavoidable, an essential part of drama. Every plot, even the plots of
fiction and poetry, involves a secret, the slow unveiling of reality
behind illusion, meaning behind confusion. God does it; we his mirrors
are born ignorant and gradually learn to reflect the secret meanings
of life. A good teacher "spies" by detecting the learning style of
students and helping them progress. Every good lesson plan is a secret
gradually unveiled. But still, my love for James Bond and his
colleagues does not mean that I think of espionage is a good thing.
True, without spies there would be no spy stories, just as without
crime and clever murderers there would be no detective novels. No
Agatha Christie fan, no matter how dedicated (like my wife Marie -- I
sometimes think that she learned English just to be able to access the
complete works of Agatha in the original) ever imagines that murder is
desirable.

But incredible as it may seem, there is a conference being put on in
Washington on the ethics of espionage. Many in the intelligence
community are dismayed as I am pointing out that "moral spy" is an
oxymoron, that spying is an inherently unethical activity. Spies lie,
cheat, steal and persuade other nationals to betray their country. One
presenter on the slate in the end could not present because her paper
was gutted by the CIA, due secrecy concerns. She told the press that
she used two handy moral rules of thumb in her decades as an operative
in the Middle East. She would ask herself, What would my mother think
of this? Or she would ask: What would this activity look like if it
were plastered on the front page of a newspaper? These are very good,
I admit, and could be used to good effect in any family or business.
But still, it seems to me that the question remains as to whether
spying should be eliminated entirely. In a united world there is
information gathering but spying can only be only spying on yourself,
since humanity is one. Espionage is a symptom of war, and as soon as
peace enters the political equation espionage must be criminalized and
expunged.

This leads to the Baha'i attitude to secrecy. Shoghi Effendi had only
been Guardian a couple of year when he wrote to us North American
believers: "They must at all times avoid the spirit of exclusiveness,
the atmosphere of secrecy, free themselves from a domineering
attitude, and banish all forms of prejudice and passion from their
deliberations." (Lights of Guidance, 32) He recognized something that
many ethicists forget, that avoiding moral compromise involves not a
single decision or set of moral choices but complete restructuring of
one's life.

"Let them so shape their lives and regulate their conduct that no
charge of secrecy, of fraud, of bribery or of intimidation may,
however ill-founded, be brought against them." (Lights of Guidance,
448)

This holistic reform applies not only to our attitude but also to our
procedure in approaching any group activity, and especially the Holy
Institutions,

"This indirect way of expressing your views to the Assembly not only
creates an atmosphere of secrecy which is most alien to the spirit of
the Cause, but would also lead to many misunderstandings and
complications. The Assembly members must have the courage of their
conviction, but must also express whole-hearted and unqualified
obedience to the well-considering judgement and directions of the
majority of their fellow-members." (Lights of Guidance, 177)

The Guardian in his personal attitudes seems to have lived up to this
ideal. May Maxwell met Shoghi Effendi in 1924 and noted later on in a
published pamphlet:

"... Shoghi Effendi discusses the affairs and conditions of the Cause
with astonishing openness and frankness; he does not like secrecy and
told us many times that this openness, frankness and truthfulness
among the friends constitutes one of the great remedies for many of
our difficulties, and he sets us the example of free and open
consultation, with a modesty and simplicity which one must see in
order to appreciate because it is foreign to our American temperament;
he invites suggestions and consultation from the visiting friends and
from those around him... The spirit of criticism is abhorrent to
Shoghi Effendi ..." (from Ugo Giachery, Shoghi Effendi -
Recollections, 190)

As noted, alienation and secrecy are symptoms of war; war in turn is
caused by tyranny and over-centralization of power. When government is
not a friend of the people, individuals defend themselves by keeping
secrets; conversely, leaders keep secrets from the people in order to
avoid insurgency and retaliation. Persia is a supreme example of such
a society, infected by the "habit of secrecy."

"Only a close and unbiased observer of the manner and habits of the
Persian people, already familiar with the prevailing tendencies of
different sections of the population, such as their apathy and
indolence, the absence of a sense of public duty and of loyalty to
principle, the lack of concerted effort and constancy in action, the
habit of secrecy and blind surrender to the capricious will of an
ignorant and fanatical clergy, can truly estimate the immensity of the
task that faces every conscientious believer in that land. He will
moreover readily testify to the high standard already attained by the
Baha'is of Persia in their efforts to inculcate in the minds of their
fellow-countrymen the principles of the Divine Civilization ushered in
by Baha'u'llah." (Shoghi Effendi, Baha'i Administration, 172)

The institutions of God and those serving on them have as part of this
war recovery mandate the goal of eliminating any contagion of secrecy
and intrigue that enter it from the broader community.

"Theirs is the duty to purge once for all their deliberations and the
general conduct of their affairs from that air of self-contained
aloofness, from the suspicion of secrecy, the stifling atmosphere of
dictatorial assertiveness, in short, from every word and deed that
might savor of partiality, self-centeredness and prejudice." (Shoghi
Effendi, Extracts from the USBN)

Military Industrial House Cats

Wherever humans go, cats go too. Kittens are winsome, and grow into
pleasant companions as adults. What is wrong with that?

The problem is that cats are wreaking havoc on the local ecosystem
wherever humans live. Some cats kill as many as three or four small
birds and rodents each outing. When told of the depredations of their
feline charges, cat owners say, "Well, that is the balance of nature."
Which is fine, except that the creatures in the wild have to stay out
in the cold and fend for themselves often under famine conditions.
Meanwhile pampered house cats are fed scientifically designed diets
and kept in peak hunting condition. There is no balance of nature for
them and killing is a pleasant hobby for them. Some domestic felines
may be sated by the easy life and are content and lose their hunting
edge, others learn to be experts at killing for sport.

The same depredation occurs in the economy with what Dwight D.
Eisenhower, himself a former general, called the greatest threat to
the world, the military industrial complex. Defense contractors and
academic researchers, indeed large sectors of the economy of so-called
"developed" nations are protected by the threat of war from the
competitive discipline of a "wild," decentralized market. There is no
"balance of nature" for large corporations with ties to the defense
industry.

Like lean and mean house cats, these large corporations invade areas
considered strategic (including most notably the automobile, oil,
nuclear and other energy industries) are pampered by their
governmental keepers and kept in peak killing condition. Big
government sees to it that, as Chomsky puts it, risk and cost are
socialized while profits are privatized. Well fed but still ferocious
corporations then go out and "compete" with smaller companies that
have to survive on their own in the wild of real competition, who must
pay for their own basic research and underwrite their own startup and
marketing costs.

This sloping playing field is difficult enough to play on in wealthy
lands where literacy and education are virtually universal and the
English language predominates. For all others, justice is unknown. The
obligatory prescription of the World Bank until recently has been what
they termed market liberalization. Such liberty is unknown in the home
economies of those pushing the idea, but the fat cats are too content
and are having too much fun killing to split moral hairs.

Market liberalization means that no investment by taxpayers in their
own economic infrastructure is allowed -- that is "unfair" --much less
putting their own money into building up their own military industrial
complex. Just stand aside and let free market forces weed out the
inefficient players; just be sure to permit our housecats,
multi-national corporations, into the mix. They need to compete with
locals on a level playing field. Oh, you need to defend yourselves? We
have just the thing, piles of second generation arms here that our
taxpayers have already researched and paid us to make in huge
quantities; we will sell that to you at a discount. Ditto for energy,
transportation, and other strategic industries. It is only fair, we
help you, you help us.

The military industrial house cats have done very well by this policy
until now; as long as the mass media was under control and their
resold second hand weapons were a threat to nobody, world order and
prosperity at least for the few, were assured. Until recently it was
impossible for upstart, low budget terrorists to compete with state
sponsored terror. Retaliation was rare and ineffectual.

For better or worse, this is changing rapidly. I follow technology
news closely and in the past five years almost every new invention
favors not centralized armies but small insurgency forces. I used to
read tech news to keep up the fires of hope for a better world, but
even this area is becoming too frightening to read. The big guys,
seeming unaware of the trend, are arming the little guys with
frightening weapons. What will it be like when small groups of ten or
twenty people with a tiny budget can bring order and civilization to
its knees? Suitcase a-bombs, biological doomsday weapons in a test
tube, the list goes on and on.

O God, let us give peace a chance! Save us from the house cats, and
from the rats that the house cats are arming!

True, the Internet is a hopeful sign in the long term. It is making it
very hard any more to keep dirty tricks under wraps. And we have to
believe that spiritual progress is going on. It may even catch up with
material advance. One hopeful sign is that, as the normally
pessimistic Noam Chomsky pointed out, in recent years American
citizens are actually going to live with the victims of their own
government's state terror operations. This makes it very hard to keep
mass upheavals from the home press corps, who tend to show rebellious
concern when their own citizens fall victim to CIA trained operatives.
Such a thing has never happened under any Imperium in history. This is
an astonishing credit to the spiritual perceptiveness of Americans.
Imagine, for an imperial power to have its own members join in
solidarity with its victims. This is a sign of the end of power
mongering, a sign of the spiritual leadership that `Abdul-Baha foresaw
for the Americas.

Will it be enough, or is the genie out of the bottle, never to be
tricked back in again?

Charity as Bargain Friendship Market

Zenophon's Memorabilia of Socrates Book II, Part X

Here is an excerpt on friendship from Xenophon's Socrates, the last
one slated for inclusion in our Badi' essays. I have called it
"charity as a bargain friendship market" because it suggests that when
times are tough those in a position to help out should rush to do so,
for the same reasons that low prices or a sinking stock market are
attractive to bargain hunters. Would it were so...

Again I may cite, as known to myself for which I can personally vouch
the following discussion; the arguments were addressed to Diodorus,
one of his companions. The master said:

Tell me, Diodorus, if one of your slaves runs away, are you at pains
to recover him?

More than that (Diodorus answered), I summon others to my aid and I
have a reward cried for his recovery.

Soc. Well, if one of your domestics is sick, do you tend him and call
in the doctors to save his life?

Diod. Decidedly I do.

Soc. And if an intimate acquaintance who is far more precious to you
than any of your household slaves is about to perish of want, you
would think it incumbent on you to take pains to save his life? Well!
now you know without my telling you that Hermogenes is not made of
wood or stone. If you helped him he would be ashamed not to pay you in
kind. And yet--the opportunity of possessing a willing, kindly, and
trusty assistant well fitted to do your bidding, and not merely that,
but capable of originating useful ideas himself, with a certain
forecast of mind and judgment--I say such a man is worth dozens of
slaves. Good economists tell us that when a precious article may be
got at a low price we ought to buy. And nowadays when times are so bad
it is possible to get good friends exceedingly cheap.

Diodorus answered: You are quite right, Socrates; bid Hermogenes come to me.

Soc. Bid Hermogenes come to you!--not I indeed! since for aught I can
understand you are no better entitled to summon him that to go to him
yourself, nor is the advantage more on his side than your own.

Thus Diodorus went off in a trice to seek Hermogenes, and at no great
outlay won to himself a friend--a friend whose one concern it now was
to discover how, by word or deed, he might help and gladden Diodorus.

--
John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com