Promise of Peace, Part I

The Promise of Peace, An Appraisal Twenty Years After; Part I

By John Taylor; 2006 June 12

On the fortieth anniversary of the formation of the United Nations, 24 October, 1985, the Universal House of Justice wrote a letter on the ways and means of peace addressed to the peoples of the world. In years following Baha'is distributed this message first to world leaders, then to local people of prominence, and finally to everybody we could reach. This was by far the widest proclamation of the Baha'i peace program ever undertaken, although similar efforts to reach and influence world leaders were made less than five years after the birth of the Baha'i Faith in the mid-19th Century, as we shall see later on in this essay.

Today, twenty one years later, the United Nations has just gone through its sixtieth anniversary celebrations; this time around everything was different, though. Serious deliberations for fundamental change were undertaken, including serious consideration of surprisingly radical reforms of the international institution. There was general agreement that the UN must modernize in order to address our current political climate. Unfortunately the sense of urgency was not strong enough to summon up a collective will to act upon what everybody agrees has to be done sooner or later.

The House of Justice's letter, now known as the "Promise of World Peace," two was written, as I said, two decades ago, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. It pinpointed exactly why we are so strangely comatose. Their timing, from today's perspective, seems perfect. The subsequent fall of communism proved that our paralysis on the world level has only worsened. Economic globalization charged ahead while political pacification stalled. Instead of bringing about peace on earth, not to mention a huge peace dividend from the dismantling of the engines of war that many expected, the removal of Communism only stirred up new, decentralized and more ruthless and determined enemies. Events only served to emphasize how deeply entrenched militarism and warlike ways of thinking are in all of us, both individually and in our institutions.

Today, without the excuse of superpower rivalry and an arms race, astronomical sums are being frittered away on weaponry, both nuclear and conventional; in fact far more even than in the mid-1980's at the height of the Cold War, which until then everybody that was the peak, the most crushing expensive preparations for a non-existent war in history. Meanwhile, uncertainty, hatred, violence and terrorism spread uncontrollably. Why? Why are we helpless to uproot these searing flames of war? The Promise of Peace letter points out not only why we are so helpless before our own bellicosity, but also exactly how to overcome the paralysis that is enervating our will and distracting us from the most urgent task in the world, establishing peace. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let us begin with the memorable opening words of the Peace Message:

"The Great Peace towards which people of good will throughout the centuries have inclined their hearts, of which seers and poets for countless generations have expressed their vision, and for which from age to age the sacred scriptures of mankind have constantly held the promise, is now at long last within the reach of the nations. For the first time in history it is possible for everyone to view the entire planet, with all its myriad diversified peoples, in one perspective. World peace is not only possible but inevitable. It is the next stage in the evolution of this planet..."

In later years some curmudgeons have criticized this position, saying that if we really accept peace as inevitable, people are liable to just say, "Well, if it is unavoidable I see no need to sacrifice for it or make any strenuous efforts at all to bring it about. What will happen will happen." There are several reasons that drawing such a conclusion is wrongheaded, many of which are to be found in the body of this very letter. For one thing, as the House points out, the alternative we face is between world peace or a plunge into bloodshed and anarchy, suffering on a scale that the earth has never witnessed; "...failure to stem the tide of conflict and disorder would be unconscionably irresponsible." And, "We have a choice between a consultative act of will or the horrors of war." On the positive side, anyone who succeeds in helping form a permanent, constitutional peace would be remembered for thousands of generations as a savior of the human race. The enticements of being remembered favorably by posterity do not get any more tempting than that.

As the House of Justice points out, it is now possible for the first time to look at history from a single perspective, with peace at the summit. Certainly if we know what is good for us we will come to know and teach all history in this way. A united humanity needs a single, united history, for the way to know the next step is first to understand where we have come from and where we are right now. At last such histories are being written, notably Jared Diamond's books, the most recent of which is Collapse, which I will be reviewing here soon.

Anyway, a year after the Peace Message first came out the Association for Baha'i Studies published a prettier, annotated and footnoted version of the peace message, which included much supplemental material. Most interesting for me are the supporting comments by leading lights from past and present. I especially recommend reading the quotes that the ABS chose to bolster the above opening paragraph of the Peace Message. Truly, peace has been a dream for every major tradition, including the Six Nations, whose founder, Deganawida, originated the saying "bury the hatchet," for what we prosaically call disarmament.

I Deganawidah,
And the chiefs of our Five Nations of the Great Peace
We now uproot the tallest pine into the cavity thereby made we cast all weapons
Into the depths of the earth
Into the deep underneath ...
We cast all weapons of war
We bury them from sight forever ...
And we plant again the tree ...
Thus shall the Great Peace be established."
-- Iroquois poem, "The Tree of the Great Peace." Cited in Peace on Earth: A Peace Anthology (Paris: UNESCO, 1980), 34-35

The Peace Message then goes into the details of how to get the peoples and nations of today to agree to bury thier hatchets. They first point out that recent history offers ample reasons to hope that a new age and stage of peace is approaching. In the 20th Century institutions on the international level progressed and strengthened, colonization was replaced by independent nationhood, racial and sexual equality became universally recognized, humanitarianism increased and cooperation among formerly antagonistic groups became the norm. Perhaps most important, the advance of science and technology portends a social surge forward, as well as providing the means to administer a united world. And this the House wrote a decade before the Internet came to the fore. But we cannot put all our hope into this basket, they warn.

"Yet barriers persist. Doubts, misconceptions, prejudices, suspicions and narrow self-interest beset nations and peoples in their relations one to another."

At this point the House of Justice brings in the teachings of Baha'u'llah, who even in the early 1880's was well aware of what peace is up against. They cite a passage from the Lawh-i-Maqsud, one also included in the "Great Announcement to Mankind,"

"The winds of despair", Baha'u'llah wrote, "are, alas, blowing from every direction, and the strife that divides and afflicts the human race is daily increasing. The signs of impending convulsions and chaos can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing order appears to be lamentably defective." (Proclamation 113, Tablets, 171)

The House then says that there are four major signs of these flaws today: unstoppable war, economic collapse, terrorism and the suffering of millions. Our flagrant helplessness to stop these has given birth to an entrenched belief that we must be intrinsically aggressive. If violence is in our genes it must be ineradicable. This embroils us in a paralyzing contradiction: we all long for peace and know that we need it, but at the same time we uncritically accept that humans are incorrigibly selfish. How can we be bold and creative with that degrading self-image? How can we hope to erect a harmonious social system? The only way to peace is reassess these presuppositions festering at the root of our predicament. Next time we will go on to exactly how they propose that this debunking be done.

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John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com