Rewiring Peace

Rewiring Peace

By John Taylor; 2006 June 13

Last night only our family came out to the Garfield Disher Room and my prepared talk on the Peace Message turned into an improvised children's class on the basics of the Baha'i Faith. I was thankful for that since there are so many distractions at home that we rarely have the chance to concentrate upon one thing at one time, much less discuss profundities like religion. We watched Silvie's narration of a comic book history of the Baha'i Faith and my little pastiche of pictures of the Master in America set to music; at one point Tomaso came over, sat on my knee and said pensively, "When I hear that music I feel relaxed and good." Others, older in years, have told me the same thing about that little six minute video; I think the pictures of the Master infuse a special spirit into that stock acoustic guitar piece, "Delta Fog." As often happens with these anarchic children, the evening broke down into play, with Silvie directing her little brother in two stage productions of her own devising. One she wrote about the Master's crossing to America when she was nine years old, changing history a little by having Him steer the Celtic out of its course and rescue the drowning passengers of the Titanic. Of course, He was already in New York when the sinking took place.

I have been listening to Kurt Vonnegut's memoir "Timequake" read aloud on a "books on cassette" tape during my one hour a day table tennis practice over the past few days. Vonnegut's big bugbear is the diffusion over past decades of our collective attention as all to prolific digital multimedia channels take over from older media. Time was, Vonnegut laments, people discussed short fiction in magazines; this was great for him, he could sell every story he wrote to magazines. People then were used to seeing and reacting together, as a single mass audience to what happened in the cinema or theatre; there were only a couple of television channels available, so if you went out the next morning you could be sure that your neighbor would have seen the really big show the evening before, and you had something to discuss. Now people do not witness or react together to the same thing. It is a thousand channel, a million website multi-verse, and it is breaking us apart, Vonnegut complains.

Myself, I would say that this is not the fault of the media it is just lack of discipline. We need to learn information chastity, as it were. We are much too promiscuous with data and we pay for it. As Vonnegut comments at one point, "People ask me why I have not been taken out by AIDS as so many others have. The answer is simple. I do not screw around." We screw around with information and then are surprised when our thoughts end up like rotten scrambled eggs, we cannot think alone or together, and finally we get sick. To avoid information AIDS we need to learn to focus on what matters most and take in only information to do with that. We must actively mold our data feed to our own ends. Families need to react together they also need to create together. Last night the kids were in rapt attention to those amateur Baha'i videos because they helped make them.

There should perhaps be a family television channel that the family can react together to, one that would include family events, news and the little plays and stories that children so love to produce, at least our children do. There could also be a community channel that you and your neighbors can share and participate in, a regional one, and so forth right up to the world level. Sunday night, for example, might be family media night, Monday neighborhood TV, Tuesday urban time, Wednesday regional, Thursday national night, Friday religious broadcasts and Saturday would be restricted world level news and performances.

I think Vonnegut's point is not just the to-be-expected complaint of an old man about changes for the worse since the good old days of his youth. It is absolutely essential that we know and feel things together, or we will fly apart. We are a body politic and a body has to feel and see and think all at once, or it will die. Consider the following, from a speech given this spring to a university audience by King Hussein of Jordan.

"Finally, I believe we must think of globalization not just as the spread of capitalism or deeper economic and political ties, but as the emergence of a universal consciousness, whereby `an injury to one is an injury to all' (to quote the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa)."

Actually, your majesty, you are quoting Plato, who was in turn invoking the oldest of all political analogies, that of the body politic. Humanity is a single organism and the media is its nervous system. It must serve the brain, which in turn serves the good of the whole. Nerves are built into its structure on a cellular level, especially in areas of contact, like the largest organ, the skin. So information technology begins in the family, it does not end there, it begins. Vonnegut laments that children no longer learn to use their imaginations, everything is fed to them. Why should they, when data is fed to them passively? There must be a feedback mechanism as sophisticated and responsive as the nerves are in our bodies, and the center of it all has to be the brain, the world government. But the king is spot on when he says that collective security, an attack on one is an attack on all, is what will be needed for the human race to survive. That will have to be the mark of any future media: a single consciousness for every single human being. And do not think of it in negative terms, a blow to one is a blow to all. Think: a pleasure for one is a pleasure for all; a thrill for one is a thrill for all. If there is unity in our diversity, we should strive for that sort of common, simultaneous experience as much as possible.

Going so closely over the peace message I noticed something that I had not seen before. The House begins and ends the message by citing the last sentence of the following section of Gleanings. I had no idea that it was so important. Consider it:

"The All-Merciful hath conferred upon man the faculty of vision, and endowed him with the power of hearing. Some have described him as the "lesser world," when, in reality, he should be regarded as the "greater world." The potentialities inherent in the station of man, the full measure of his destiny on earth, the innate excellence of his reality, must all be manifested in this promised Day of God." (Baha'u'llah, Gleanings, CLXII, 340)

Having said what I just did, Baha'u'llah seems to be telling us not to be passive information consumers, we must see and hear for yourselves. It is God's promise that all our potential will flower in this age. Your senses are no "lesser world" dominated and preempted by famous stars and media darlings, you must seize the day and make it the "greater world." The multiverse is within you. We undergo growing pains, but the information explosion is designed to us get us to see the "innate excellence" of our reality. Again, it is God's promise that we will bring out all our potential. Or maybe I am reading too much into it. In any case, the House repeated it twice, using it as bookends for its treatise on peace, so it is an important quote to consider.

To my readers in Ontario, TVO tonight at 10 PM is broadcasting the second and last installment of "The Corporation," an expose of the most vital but irresponsible player on the world stage. Do not miss it. There will be a quiz, or at least a review, coming up on the Badi' list. As I mentioned yesterday, the first big job of the world government will be to domesticate the multinational corporation, an institution that right now is little better than a rabble of pirates.

The film bends over backwards to show both sides of the issue, to present the case of think tankers who defend corporate capitalism and of executives who work in large corporations. In the first program last week, they documented an unforgettable moment in the history of conflict. A bunch of protesters found the home of the CEO of Shell oil and pasted a banner over the roof calling oil companies planet killers. The exec came outside and talked with them, politely explaining to them his side of the issue; his wife hospitably offered them drinks and refreshments. My Baha'i heart was warmed by this resolution of a potentially violent conflict. The protesters had not considered that the head of the corporation might be as concerned as they are about the environment, that it is the structure of the organization, not evil people that does the damage. Even the head of the company has little power to effect the kind of reforms that are required to make them into a force for good rather than evil.

I must say whenever I have made such protests the protestees do not have this fellow's guts and integrity to come out debate the complaints to my face, much less offer me refreshments. Real world, people take protests and complaints as insults, as attacks, and respond in kind. Except that it is not kind, or even sensible. It is the low way out, the coward's retaliation of evading justice by launching a gossip and backbiting campaign designed to ruin your reputation. You get no chance to have your say and hear the other side of the issue, as those Shell oil protesters did.

Instead dear friends who used to respect you and who had nothing to do with the issues of the protest suddenly refuse to look at or speak to you. It is like watching a shooting gallery with one duck going down after the next, only you turn around to see who is shooting them, and they have disappeared. They call it backbiting because it hides, it ambushes love and kills it before it can defend itself. One lost friend in particular I recall, she took bitterness and ill will sparked by backbiters to the grave... she never forgave me for making enemies of her other friends by protesting their behavior to their faces, or at least to their mailboxes (I wrote them a series of protest letters). The Writings say that the tongue is a fire that burns a century, but for me a friend made an enemy who dies, who takes her wrath to the next world, is a fire that will burn as long as I live. That is as close to eternal fire as I ever want to see.

Having this direct, personal experience with backbiters I saw politics with new eyes. Really all we need is love, yes, love, but love nurtured by consultation. Without communication love short circuits and becomes a danger. And protest is just failed, disconnected attempts at communication. If you cut an electric wire it will hit the ground and spark all over the place. That is the political scene today, a live wire flashing, sparking and threatening to shock anyone who comes close. The more protest the quicker we must act. But remember, most electrical fires start out of sight, hidden behind the walls. So, seeing sparks is a good sign, a chance to save the situation before fire burns the whole place down along with everybody there, implicated or not. It is the job of leaders safely to see that every wire is properly connected to the system so that fire cannot break out. In the case of the corporation, we are looking at a major rewiring job. In the case of religion, what can I say. A more fundamental rewiring could not be imagined than that which Baha'u'llah has blueprinted.

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John Taylor

badijet@gmail.com