Baha'i Polity

Spies, Baha'is and Polity

By John Taylor; 2007 May 23

Nationalist polity is embroiled in war and covert struggle, which means that secrecy trumps clarity, enlightenment and openness. Though future historians will no doubt find many turning points away from the old nationalistic polity toward a new order, the following headline caught my eye as significant:

"US spy chief backs study on impact of global warming."

It seems that the head of the CIA, though almost everything he knows and pays for is a closely guarded secret even from his own government, had to defend a nod to the dangers of global warming. "Stepping into the middle of a partisan debate on Capital Hill," the article writes, "the United States' top intelligence official has endorsed a comprehensive study by spy agencies about the impact of global warming on national security." Here we see Judas betraying his Lord with a kiss, or, to use an analogy from nature, the snake beginning to swallow its own tail. A world issue, the atmosphere of the planet, is handled by nationalists on corrupt, partisan grounds, and even their own spooks must come in and remind them that security and order depend upon dealing with this now. Nobody is betting on it, you can bet on that.

Speaking of America, the Guardian emphasized that the crisis of the present hour is designed by God to purge and merge the current, corrupt polity into a more universal form,

"Many and divers are the setbacks and reverses which this nation, extolled so highly by 'Abdu'l-Baha, and occupying at present so unique a position among its fellow nations, must, alas, suffer. The road leading to its destiny is long, thorny and tortuous. The impact of various forces upon the structure and polity of that nation will be tremendous. Tribulations, on a scale unprecedented in its history, and calculated to purge its institutions, to purify the hearts of its people, to fuse its constituent elements, and to weld it into one entity with its sister nations in both hemispheres, are inevitable." (Shoghi Effendi, Citadel of Faith, 36-37)

As the Guardian says, the inherent "structure and polity" of nationalist government is inadequate. The most powerful of them all is demonstrating even to its own spymasters its own poverty and ineffectiveness in the face of challenges that are planetary in scope. This fiasco leaves only one option open, to weld them all into "one entity."

Traumatic as it is to live through this transition, we must have faith in the answer given by God, and believe strongly that we have but to turn to His Teachings to find our role in His plan. As things are, polity of nation-states predominates. It effectively blocks out the true and natural polity of the human race, that is, planetary polity, divine polity and principle.

The Guardian, in his masterwork on Baha'i history, "God Passes By," uses "polity," the word that we have had under the microscope for the past two essays of this series, to sum up what the Master taught in His public contacts. There are, Shoghi Effendi said, fourteen points that "stand out as the essential elements of that Divine polity which He (Abdu'l-Baha in His Western journeys) proclaimed to leaders of public thought as well as to the masses at large in the course of these missionary journeys." Shoghi Effendi places these fourteen teachings into a single paragraph, which you can read for yourself in God Passes By. For purposes of easy reference, I have broken them up into fourteen numbered points, retaining his original wording, as follows,

1. Independent search after truth, unfettered by superstition or tradition.
2. Oneness of the entire human race, the pivotal principle and fundamental doctrine of the Faith.
3. The basic unity of all religions.
4. The condemnation of all forms of prejudice, whether religious, racial, class or national.
5. The harmony which must exist between religion and science.
6. The equality of men and women, the two wings on which the bird of human kind is able to soar.
7. The introduction of compulsory education.
8. The adoption of a universal auxiliary language.
9. The abolition of the extremes of wealth and poverty.
10. The institution of a world tribunal for the adjudication of disputes between nations.
11. The exaltation of work, performed in the spirit of service, to the rank of worship.
12. The glorification of justice as the ruling principle in human society.
13. And (the glorification) of religion as a bulwark for the protection of all peoples and nations.
14. The establishment of a permanent and universal peace as the supreme goal of all mankind.

Since each of these fourteen points falls under one or more of the twelve Baha'i principles, it is safe to conclude that "polity" is to some extent synonymous for principle in the Baha'i understanding. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the Baha'i principles cover the essential, divine elements of a world polity. A Baha'i, the Guardian says, is an agent of that polity,

"Let them affirm their unyielding determination to stand, firmly and unreservedly, for the way of Baha'u'llah, to avoid the entanglements and bickerings inseparable from the pursuits of the politician, and to become worthy agencies of that Divine Polity which incarnates God's immutable Purpose for all men." (Shoghi Effendi, World Order, 64)

A spy is an agent of nationalism, and must by the very nature of this mission act secretly. A Baha'i is an agent of world polity, and must by the very nature of her mission act openly and without malice. It is for that reason, the fact that a spy and a Baha'i, though their names rhyme, are in essence mirror opposites, that I watched that Spielberg film "Munich" with such utter fascination. It struck me forcefully that the head of the undercover agency, a former French resistance agent, was fascinated with the subtleties of high cuisine. Here he was, the main supplier of secret information, the chief purveyor of non-principle, CEO of the European Wal-Mart of undercover shenanigans, and he spends most of his time cooking. He justifies his organization's crimes and backstabbing by plucking a fruit off a tree in his orchard, saying,

"One does what one must in order to feed one's family."

The film shows the flesh and blood members of his family, but it makes it clear that the family that spies serve is nebulous; its very existence is lost in layer after layer of secrecy and duplicity. Look into it and good becomes bad, bad good, and madness seeps into mind and heart. Hearing him speak I thought: just as our Master called himself the "servant of the servants," this Frenchman here is servant of the spies and here he is, utterly preoccupied with cuisine. This shady character expatiates on trivial details of the culinary art and, suddenly, I recalled how Plato in the Gorgias had so heatedly condemned the art of the cook, refusing even to defile the word "art" with its name,

"Cookery simulates the disguise of medicine, and pretends to know what food is the best for the body; and if the physician and the cook had to enter into a competition in which children were the judges, or men who had no more sense than children, as to which of them best understands the goodness or badness of food, the physician would be starved to death. A flattery I deem this to be and of an ignoble sort ... because it aims at pleasure without any thought of the best. An art I do not call it, but only an experience, because it is unable to explain or to give a reason of the nature of its own applications. And I do not call any irrational thing an art..."

Nationalism and spying are false arts, just like cooking, because, as Plato says, they are not based on rational grounds. An art has to explain how it serves the general good, and spies, nationalists and partisans can do nothing of the kind. How many chefs refer their recipes to dietitians? How many dieticians check the particular needs of the body, and the world, before every meal? How many spies report to the United Nations? If they did, they would not have to be secret agents. Though national polity may have had validity in the past, it no longer serves the interests of humankind; worse, it opposes them. It is no art, only fraud. Speaking of the World Order of Baha'u'llah, the Guardian said,

"The divers and ever-shifting systems of human polity, whether past or present, whether originating in the East or in the West, offer no adequate criterion wherewith to estimate the potency of its hidden virtues or to appraise the solidity of its foundations." (Shoghi Effendi, World Order, 152)

The film "Munich" is based on real events, and the fact that its spymaster is a chef is, as I say, of immense symbolic significance. Same thing with my gazpacho soup, I made it and continue to make it not because it tastes good or seems good or because it flatters my pleasure sensations but for one reason only: a scientific experiment showed that it upholds the health of the human body. In other words, it is the art of the physician and not of the culinary fraudster. If my entire diet were supervised by physicians and not con men, I would be healthy, and the world would be too.

But that is not enough to call my diet an art, that is, scientific, set on entirely rational grounds. Educators would have to supervise too, and farmers. Farmers would look at where the food is coming from. Somebody lately calculated that the average bit of food on our plate travels an average of a thousand miles to get there. How did that happen? No need for details, suffice to say that secret agents who, in Plato's words, "simulate the disguise" of polity, stepped in to block the general interest on behalf of particular, partisan, corrupt interests.