Destined Goal

Our Destined Goal; More from the Fifth Cosmopolitan

By John Taylor; 2007 Mar 25

Yesterday it took a long time to persuade Silvie to come out and get some fresh air. Left on her own she will stay inside writing and drawing all day. When finally after much coaxing I got her outside, we walked by way of the streets around to the other end of Winfield Park in order to end the walk with a view of the river. When we arrived, something magical was about to happen. We happened to enter just as a large, free-floating ice flow began a slow-motion impact with the shore. The ice had been subject to several alternating cold and warm weather spells over past weeks. It had melted and refrozen in the up and down manner of glaciers and ice sheets, described so unforgettably in An Inconvenient Truth. You could see the vertical striations in the block, and when they broke the ice sheet did not break into normal chunks but shattered into piles of long, dagger-like needles.

So as we stood by the Grand River's rocky bank, ice needles of about six inches in length began piling up around my ankles. Silvie stood back at a safe distance. When the needles finally reached my knees I finally took a step back. All the while the grinding rub of ice shattering onto rock gave off a wonderful, lilting, tinkling music. After several minutes the ice sheet finally stopped moving, jammed against the shore. The whole thing must have taken about fifteen minutes from start to finish. I lamented not having a camcorder on hand to record it.

This phenomenon struck me as a pretty demonstration of how historical trends sometimes work. Overall, a great natural transition is relentless, like the transition of winter to spring, or from earth's presently cool atmosphere to what is being called the gas chamber effect. But this lulls you into thinking that because it is big, inevitable and slow-moving that it must always be gradual and imperceptible. But sometimes changes are quick and devastating and at other times, as in this case, strange and beautiful.

I believe that Immanuel Kant in the following was describing the vastest movement of history imaginable, of which global warming is just one symptom of many, when he wrote:

"The greatest problem for the human race, to the solution of which Nature drives man, is the achievement of a universal civic society which administers law among men."

I have already devoted at least one essay to this opening sentence of the fifth thesis of the cosmopolitan history and no doubt could easily write much more. This supreme goal of a universal civic society (UCS) is the sole object of our evolution and the ultimate expression of our nature as human beings. It cannot be ignored or put off. Every movement of history pushes towards this with the slow, relentless energy of a glacier. The UCS is the only conceivable way to have justice, the rule of law, and the prosperity a free economy.

Among many benefits of a UCS will be the adoption everywhere of standard, high-density, modular housing and an integrated transport system. I have been working out a detailed plan on the Badi' blog over the past few years. Only that kind of re-designed way of populating the countryside will reduce to a minimum the harm of human activity on the environment. Another effect of the UCS will be an end to the world's most pernicious evil, nationalism. Our nationalist world deprives all of the freedom to live and travel wherever we wish, to go to the place where we will be of most service to humanity. Freedom of movement is the first fruit of world citizenship, the most basic right to both education and democracy. The establishment of a right to live anywhere, be it in our native land or on the other side of the planet, is essential to the UCS.

Kant then continues the fifth thesis, saying,

"The highest purpose of Nature, which is the development of all the capacities which can be achieved by mankind, is attainable only in society, and more specifically in the society with the greatest freedom."

This is ground covered by the Baha'i principle of the promotion of education. In a remarkably parallel passage early in the Tablet to Maqsud, Baha'u'llah says that, "Man is the supreme Talisman. Lack of a proper education hath, however, deprived him of that which he doth inherently possess." (Tablets, 161) He goes on to describe "three words" spoken by God in creating human beings, two of which are "post-production" or processing of the original being. His point seems to be that God is not an absentee, deistic Maker, He expends two thirds of His time and energy sustaining and protecting the soul that He has created; in the case of a human being, in order to bring him or her to awareness of the enormity of what He has done. Thus education is at least as sacred and as much under divine purview as the original act of creation.

Then Baha'u'llah cites for the first time the "Great Being," who says to, "Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom." (Tablets, 162) This, of course is not the first time that human tractability has been compared to mining excavations and the processing of precious stones and metals. Joseph Addison, for example, wrote on November 6, 1711,

"I consider a human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shows none of its inherent beauties, till the skill of the polisher fetches out the colours, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot and vein that runs through the body of it. Education, after the same manner, when it works upon a noble mind, draws out to view every latent virtue and perfection, which without such helps are never able to make their appearance." (Addison, Spectator, No. 215)

Baha'u'llah goes beyond Addison's idea that education digs unfinished souls out of the ground and polishes them. Baha'u'llah is, I think, closer to Kant's point that education will not progress if it is restricted just to making individuals better. Groups have to improve and broaden their scope in order to take advantage of the benefits to be derived from the diverse expressions of individuals raised in freedom. In order for there to be a Bach or a Shakespeare there must be millions of non-geniuses with the leisure to read and listen to them, and the necessary training in music, poetry and theatrical appreciation. Society is improved by the same educational process and reforms itself right along with its youth in the educational system. Both improve at once, never one without the other.

A citizen of the world no doubt will undergo long schooling in order to function well in the knowledge economy born of a complex, diverse and united world. We have no choice about this; it is an ineluctable demand of history.

"Nature demands that humankind should itself achieve this goal like all its other destined goals." (Cosmo, 5th Thesis)

Compare to this the UHJ's statement in the Peace Message that peace is not only desirable but also inevitable. But the fact that it is a matter of historical necessity begs some big questions: if individuals are to be prepared so long and meticulously, where does freedom enter in? In what way is a highly polished gem, an educated world citizen, free? Is he not corrupted, as Rousseau had pointed out that he very often is? Is a primitive child of nature not better and more pure? Is there such a thing as a "diamond in the rough?"

Kant, an admirer of Rousseau, deals with these questions quickly and succinctly.

As Kant says, the higher education of a citizen of the UCS is "attainable only in society, and more specifically in the society with the greatest freedom." As long as order is kept lawful and universal, civilization cannot be corrupted. The UCS will foster education based upon freely expressed talents and loves balanced among its individuals. This will fulfill the highest ideals of freedom, justice and equality because freedom is not exclusively in the individual or in society, but in the combined advance of both, in melding their mutual freedoms. A universal civil society would optimize freedom without undue compromise for either.

In the same paragraph from the Maqsud, Baha'u'llah deals with this problem of necessity and freedom, and throws peace and equality into the mix for good measure. The touchstone, He says, is the love of God,

"If the learned and worldly-wise men of this age were to allow mankind to inhale the fragrance of fellowship and love, every understanding heart would apprehend the meaning of true liberty, and discover the secret of undisturbed peace and absolute composure. Were the earth to attain this station and be illumined with its light it could then be truly said of it: 'Thou shalt see in it no hollows or rising hills.'" (Qur'an 20:106)

This is where the ice hits the shore, where all the processes of history are pushing: unity in diversity, creativity in order. Kant sees this benefit of a UCS as the product of an ongoing tension among competing individuals,

"Such a society is one in which there is mutual opposition among the members, together with the most exact definition of freedom and fixing of its limits so that it may be consistent with the freedom of others."

The human race's single goal and destiny is to live under a perfectly just world government. The forces of education are those of justice, and all justice boils down to proper education. We were made for it, but we have to learn how to make it ourselves.

"Thus a society in which freedom under external laws is associated in the highest degree with irresistible power, i.e., a perfectly just civic constitution, is the highest problem Nature assigns to the human race; for Nature can achieve her other purposes for mankind only upon the solution and completion of this assignment."