Glory

Environmental Glory

By John Taylor; 2007 January 03

Why are Baha'is called "followers of the Glory"? Why did Baha'u'llah choose "Baha" for His title? I thought I knew but it turns out that I did not. I learned that when read about the role of English Revolution in the Enlightenment. This was the first of the long series of revolutions, followed by the American, the French, the Russian and the Iranian Revolutions. Why was the English one so-called, the "Glorious Revolution?" What made it so glorious? Apparently they called it glorious because at its consummation there was a turnover of leaders that was (in contrast to previous events) completely non-violent. William III of Orange and his consort, Mary II, were shipped in from Holland to take over the crown. True, these events also dealt in all the issues that characterized later revolutions (not to mention the Baha'i principles) and the English revolution was arguably more successful than any other revolution, long term; but taken all in all, the glory of this event came from its victory without bloodshed or struggle.

Glory is the ideal victory, where people have become so sick of conflict that they agree to become friends and thus end competition forever. Glory is victory over war itself. Glory is when everybody wins and their victory is a permanent one. Glory is not when a general wins a bloody, temporary battle, it is when a brilliant teacher teaches a lesson to a difficult but intelligent student. Most glorious, by this measure, was the victory of Jesus, for His was a victory over Rome was won of the Spirit, as the Master explains,

"For example, Jesus Christ, single and unassisted, educated the Roman, Greek and Assyrian nations and all of Europe. It is evident, therefore, that the greatest education is that of the Spirit." (Abdu'l-Baha, Promulgation, 330)

Glory is the mark of the Spirit. The divine spirit always makes a permanent change in the political landscape, again, as demonstrated in the accomplishments of Jesus, as explained by the Master:

"He educated them until they became united and agreed, and through His spirit of conciliation the Roman, Greek, Chaldean and Egyptian were blended in a composite civilization." (Abdu'l-Baha, Promulgation, 367)

This was a glorious victory, the first of many by Jesus the Christ. Paul understood how spirit works and explained that spirit gains its glorious victory over outer things by turning us all into mirrors reflecting the same image. Once the inner reality is one, all else is added unto that.

"Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the LORD." (2 Cor 3:17-18, KJV)

It is evident that in our time we are sinking into the reverse of glory, total ignominious defeat by climatic disaster. In rich lands this causes only nagging worries now, but sooner or later it will surely result in loss of life, probably by mass starvation. In the stock market they call it a "correction." The population of the earth, presently at 8 billion, could drop to half, or less, of what it is now. We are in this fix because, as Paul pointed out, we have missed the reflection of one spirit in the mirror of our hearts.

Environmental failure is not a big bang phenomenon, at least not yet; it is the overall result of a thousand inglorious defeats. Our fatal lack of vision provoked many small failures of restraint, minor negligence, and a multitude of tiny insults to nature. It did not seem to matter at the time. The result was corruption, corruption etched into the very structure of our world. This is epitomized for me in a satellite picture in Popular Science (November, 2001, p. 44) showing a single view of Europe at night. The whole continent is lit up, showing that virtually the whole of its land surface is now urban. The caption reads,

"Before the 19th Century, Europe was a continent of bountiful farmland. Look at it now. Marc Imhoff, a NASA biologist, is studying the way urbanization affects the Earth. He made this map of urban clusters from Department of Defense satellite data. After cross-referencing the maps with images of soil use and plant growth, he estimates that much of the earth's most fertile lands are being turned over to development - which also contributes to a worrisome increase in global carbon emissions."

Cities by rights should be built on infertile, unproductive, non-agricultural land. That would make for viable, long term survival. Failing that, at least development should be done so as to allow agricultural land use to be combined with other urban uses -- which is basically what my Instauration Manifesto is all about.

Meanwhile, the trend continues. Temperatures are heating everything up, both the physical and the moral climate, threatening natural ecosystems first and the mind and heart of man last. Deserts are spreading and drying out while development on good land continues apace. Global warming grew from a minor concern to a huge threat because government persistently ignored the warnings of both scientists and moralists. We did not want to take the bitter medicine. We thought climate change would take centuries but now even the Bush Administration has recognized the threat of melting polar ice, at least as the danger applies to polar bears. Unfortunately the split between morality and politics is so wide now that there is little likelihood that much will be done for human beings anytime soon, even with a huge swing to the left in the United States. There is no talk among the newly elected leaders there of an end to the Pax Americana in favor of a world administration. Until that happens, power politics will be the order of the day.

"...for any one nation to declare itself to be the world's policeman is effectively to reject the possibility that the world will be governed by just laws, rather than by the assertion of raw military power. As Jonathan Glover ... has pointed out, the Pax Americana assumes a ruler of the kind imagined by the seventeenth century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, one who has power but no moral authority, and a world in which conflict is merely suppressed, not resolved. Glover prefers the vision of the world offered by Kant in his book Perpetual Peace. Kant advocated a system in which the states would give up, to a world federation, a monopoly of the use of force. The world federation would possess the moral authority of a body that was established by mutual agreement, and reached its decision in an impartial manner. In the modern world, that means a reformed United Nations, with adequate force at its command, and impartial procedures to decide when that force should be used." (Peter Singer, One World, The Ethics of Globalization, xiv)

The Pax Americana marks the ascendancy of power politics. What is power politics? It is a term that apparently came into use in the 1920's meaning: "Politics based primarily on the use of power (as military and economic strength) as a coercive force rather than on ethical precepts." Power politics, then, is the reverse of rule by glory; it is when expediency overrules moral authority, the triumph of brute, animal force. Ultimately, it is the eclipse of Spirit. As Paul says above, where the spirit of the lord is, there is liberty. Power politics excludes liberty and enslaves us all to an illusion. Consider this commentary, which points directly to one of the fallacies involved.

"Not long ago American Congress voted, with much patriotic rhetoric, for the imposition of severe penalties upon anyone presuming to burn the flag of the United States. Yet the very Congressmen who passed this law are responsible, by acts of commission or omission, for burning, polluting, and plundering the territory that the flag is supposed to represent. Therein, they exemplified the peculiar and perhaps fatal fallacy of civilization: the confusion of symbol with reality".