Uplands

Towards the Sunlit Uplands of Good Government

By John Taylor; 2007 Apr 27

After France fell, Hitler's war machine turned towards England. Winston Churchill in his famous "sunlit uplands" speech rallied England for the fight of its life, a struggle known soon after as the Battle of Britain. Not unexpectedly, he mentioned as reasons for resisting the Nazi invader their tyranny, injustice, contempt for minorities and their many violations of human rights. Listening over the recording of Churchill's speech yesterday, though, I was surprised to hear him mention, as among the Nazi's greatest atrocities, what he calls a "perverted science."

How ironic is that?

The great man holds forth a vision of a happier future, calling it the "sunlit uplands" of freedom from a perverted science. But the free world won out, and now look at what is happening to science today. Talk about perverted! We have the reverse of sunlit uplands, now light barely penetrates our atmosphere to get to the uplands, which are smogging over with frightening rapidity. Long term studies measured all of the elevated regions of the planet and found visibility reduced by over a third in the past three decades, and at the same time rainfall diminished by a similar proportion. Sunlit uplands are no more sunlit but are dank, sooty deserts. The tip of our collective nose is stuck straight into the rectum of global warming.

Scientific knowledge is more advanced and widespread than ever before, nor is it in the hands of malevolent Fascists but democratically elected governments. Yet nobody can gainsay its perversion. Why is it killing us?

The answer is clear.

Our battle today is no less dire than Churchill's Battle of Britain. Only now it is not death from the skies sent down by Adolph Hitler, it is death from the skies sent down by Adolph Nobody. Nobody controls science. Nobody sees that science is good rather than evil. Nobody is exclusively responsible for making science, well, responsible. As long as mankind is not represented by the single voice of a strong world government, science will continue to be mad, bad and out of control.

At the beginning of the Battle of Britain, Churchill was not at all certain of final victory. In spite of his bluster, you can feel the tension in his voice and choice of words. If our planet had a Churchill to rally us now in our hour of crisis -- in actuality we do not have a world government at all, much less one with a bulldog like Churchill at its head to rally us -- I am sure that this leader would be even more shaken at our dim prospects of victory. The latest UN report coming in bears ill tidings indeed. Now it seems clear that stopping the growth of emissions, or even biting the bullet and substantially reducing them, are not going to cut it. By 2050 we will have to be net reducers of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, in the air. And even then there are no guarantees that it might not just be too late to tip the balance.

How will science, even under the strong hand of a world government, ever figure out how to reverse this climatic disaster?

The challenge is technical but mostly it is ethical. Ethics must not only be made into a science, it must be crowned queen of the sciences, for at the heart of the scientific method is a firm faith, an iron conviction that knowledge is a boon to mankind. If knowledge harms, science demands that we back up and change what we are learning. If ethical misunderstanding perverts science and technology, we must rapidly become very clear on what is ethical and what is not.

Peter Singer is one of the few philosophers and academic ethicists who has shown the faintest concern for the fate of our planet, as opposed to hairsplitting and pet theorizing. He begins his book, "One World," by saying,

"Consider two aspects of globalization, first, planes exploding as they slam into the World Trade Center, and second, the emission of carbon dioxide from the exhausts of gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles. One brought instant death and left unforgettable images that were watched on television screens all over the world; the other makes a contribution to climate change that can be detected only by scientific instruments. Yet both are indications of the way in which we are now one world, and the more subtle changes to which sport utility vehicle owners unintentionally contribute will almost certainly kill far more people than the highly visible one." (One World, The Ethics of Globalization, 1)

If ethics were a science, we would automatically distinguish between atrocities that make big waves on the surface but do not affect our general survival, and universal moral concerns that are worthy of our close and constant attention. If ethics are primitive, surely that is where we need to make the biggest changes. Later in his book, Singer continues this thought,

"All of this forces us to think differently about our ethics. Our value system evolved in circumstances in which the atmosphere, like the oceans, seemed an unlimited resource, and responsibilities and harms were generally clear and well defined. If someone hit someone else, it was clear who had done what. Now the twin problems of the ozone hole and of climate change have revealed bizarre new ways of killing people. By spraying deodorant at your armpit in your New York apartment, you could, if you use an aerosol spray propelled by CFCs, be contributing to the skin cancer deaths, many years later, of people living in Punta Arenas, Chile. By driving your car, you could be releasing carbon dioxide that is part of a causal chain leading to lethal floods in Bangladesh. How can we adjust our ethics to take account of this situation?" (Peter Singer, One World, The Ethics of Globalization, 19-20)

It is not surprising that we should be so easily duped. In spite of the abundance of technological advances and scientific findings, a depressingly small proportion of the world's population even understands what science is, much less distinguishes between what beneficial and what is perverted science.

Singer wrote this six years ago, and since then the moral situation has changed. Vehicle emissions, bad as they are, are now known to be a lesser contributor to greenhouse gasses than eating meat, especially beef. Cow farts produce methane, which is a far worse greenhouse contributor than carbon dioxide. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization calculated last year that they contribute 18 percent of greenhouse gasses, more than all vehicles combined. We burn masses of fuel to make the fertilizer to feed them, and their solid and liquid effluent is straining the environment, breeding killer bacteria, putting us in danger and, even when we think we are rid of it, it runs off and makes "dead zones" in the oceans and destroys coral reefs.

No matter how you look at it there is only one solution: change what we eat. If we are perverted ourselves, how can we expect science to be otherwise? If Churchill were here now to urge us how to fight against Adolph Nobody, it is pretty clear that he would still be warning against perverted science. He would be saying:

"Become a vegetarian, or as near to one as you possibly can. Form a world government now, and form policy based upon science and reality. But first, get rid of the perversions in your own minds. Sunlit uplands are found first in the heart."

Once we get our own tastes and desires under control, then we will be worthy of being led to the sunlit uplands of freedom; then, and only then, can we think about how to solve the technical problem of quelling a climate gone mad.

Not long after Baha'u'llah wrote the Book of Laws in the early 1870's, He commissioned Abdu'l-Baha to write the Secret of Divine Civilization. Here the Master laid out to the world's most fanatical and reactionary society the secret to successful reform. It was a secret then, and remains so today, now more than ever. This book is the ultimate manifesto for development, for all of our salvation. His strong medicine would have worked for Persia, but now that Adolph Nobody has his grip on the throat of the planet, we need it now more than ever. In this passage from the Secret, Abdu'l-Baha explains exactly how to go about reforming a corrupt, perverted, inert world order:

"Should anyone object that the above-mentioned reforms have never yet been fully effected, he should consider the matter impartially and know that these deficiencies have resulted from the total absence of a unified public opinion, and the lack of zeal and resolve and devotion in the country's leaders. It is obvious that not until the people are educated, not until public opinion is rightly focused, not until government officials, even minor ones, are free from even the least remnant of corruption, can the country be properly administered. Not until discipline, order and good government reach the degree where an individual, even if he should put forth his utmost efforts to do so, would still find himself unable to deviate by so much as a hair's breadth from righteousness, can the desired reforms be regarded as fully established." (Secret of Divine Civilization, 16)