Polity
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Consider this headline: "Bush stalls action on global warming; More research needed into `greenhouse effect,' he says." The article, coming out of
What is going wrong here? The human race is in a malaise, its most powerful elite are sunk in stubborn refusal to look at reality. It goes way deeper than honest differences of opinion; this is a mental blindness, spiritual illness. We need to act now but somehow religion, science, and education have massively failed to mold public opinion into anything close to what conduces to collective survival.
The standard Baha'i answer to this can be summed up in one word, unity. Baha'u'llah said, "The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established." I say this right off because I am aware that some friends of the Faith have just joined the readership of the Badi' list, and I do not want any misunderstandings. And certainly when Baha'u'llah talks of unity He is not talking about the narrow clinging together in which nationalists indulge, and which allowed the leader in this headline so frankly and openly to shirk his duty as a world citizen.
This portrait Marie took of me this morning...
Unity in the Baha'i conception of world citizenship is an impulse to act together on what is right for all, not for a few, as Abdu'l-Baha makes clear in His masterwork on development,
"Senses and faculties have been bestowed upon us, to be devoted to the service of the general good; so that we, distinguished above all other forms of life for perceptiveness and reason, should labor at all times and along all lines, whether the occasion be great or small, ordinary or extraordinary, until all mankind are safely gathered into the impregnable stronghold of knowledge." (Abdu'l-Baha, Secret of Divine Civilization, 3)
Unity in service to the "general good," then, is what is going to save us. And it seems to me that in order to get within shouting distance of the kind of unity that would allow us to act so decisively on the crying needs of this time (of which global warming is just one), we will need to learn the meaning of another word: "polity." It is a new word for me, I must say. The word is like a bucket into which I looked and found no bottom; I am gazing down into a deep, deep well of meaning. This one measly word will, therefore, fill up the rest of this essay, and probably several more.
For one thing, I think that when people praise democracy the thing that they really are praising is usually polity, not democracy. Polity comes from polis, or city state and indeed the Wikipedia traces the term to Ancient Greece. There polity referred to the "many Greek city states that had an assembly of citizens as part of the political process. This did not include women, slaves, serfs, or metics. Thus, voting citizens usually included only a minority of the adult males." So the original polity, then, was a political organization somehow conditioned by consultation, however incomplete and imperfect it may have been, especially in the childhood of the race. We can say broadly that the present time has widened participation in education and decision-making to all of the groups that were excluded in Ancient Greece. But that is not to say that either polity or democracy are anywhere near as advanced or effective as they must be.
The Greeks put that word, polity, to yeoman service. Socrates, although his daemon counseled him to avoid involvement in political questions, still held an almost personal love for the polity and its laws. He believed that by staying in a polis, and not leaving for other, alternative cities, we are implicitly entering into a relationship that is not unlike a marriage. When the law of
"`No one,’ he would say, `who wishes to manage a house or city with success: no one aspiring to guide the helm of state aright, can afford to dispense with aid from above. Doubtless, skill in carpentering, building, smithying, farming, of the art of governing men, together with the theory of these processes, and the sciences of arithmetic, economy, strategy, are affairs of study, and within the grasp of human intelligence. Yet there is a side even of these, and that not the least important, which the gods reserve to themselves, the bearing of which is hidden from mortal vision.’" (Memorabilia)
The "helm of state" that Socrates spoke of is run not by me, not by you, not even by God, but by a polity combining all in concord and close consultation. The steersman analogy was carried further by Plato in his Statesman. Here he has a character address Socrates, saying,
"And shall we say that the violence, if exercised by a rich man, is just, and if by a poor man, unjust? May not any man, rich or poor, with or without laws, with the will of the citizens or against the will of the citizens, do what is for their interest? Is not this the true principle of government, according to which the wise and good man will order the affairs of his subjects? As the pilot, by watching continually over the interests of the ship and of the crew -- not by laying down rules, but by making his art a law -- preserves the lives of his fellow-sailors, even and in the self-same way, may there not be a true form of polity created by those who are able to govern in a similar spirit, and who show a strength of art which is superior to the law? Nor can wise rulers ever err while they, observing the one great rule of distributing justice to the citizens with intelligence and skill, are able to preserve them, and, as far as may be, to make them better from being worse."
Garbled as this is, I take it to mean that polity is the "true principle of government," which acts on our behalf like the specialist's skill of a helmsman or ship's captain. The captain's knowledge by definition assures his own safety and best interests, but it also covers those of his crew, passengers, and the owners of any goods he may be transporting. Now we would add further responsibilities to his art, for example, avoiding pollution and carbon emissions, not killing birds, fish or animal life on the way, increasing energy efficiency, avoiding the spread of non-native species in his bilge water, and on and on.
Next time we will go on to explore what Aristotle and others added to the idea of polity. But before I stop for the day I want to hark back to the last words of that 17 year old article that got me going this morning.
"Some scientists argue there is no solid proof of global warming. Others warn the earth may warm by 5 to 7 degrees C within the next 100 years unless carbon dioxide emissions are reduced. Such a rise in world temperatures could cause the polar ice caps to melt, coasts to flood, crops to fail and many animals to die."
Here you see the "balance" of "objective" reporting churned out by our statist press machine. On the one hand this and on the other that. Same thing with religion, the unseen aspect of affairs that Socrates says is "reserved for the gods." On one hand Jesus says He stands for truth and on the other Pilate says, "What is truth anyway?" Sometimes, to insist on two sides, or more than one view of an issue is to obliterate action and risk the polity itself. Instead we all need to focus on principle, the one thing most important, and have faith that the rest will be added unto that. The Master said,
"When water is distributed through various channels or founts, none of the fountains shall have sufficient strength and power, all of them will be meager. But when you shut off the sources and force the water in one direction, you will see a tremendous outflow. Even so it is with the thought of mankind." (quoted in, Elaine Lacroix-Hopson, Abdu'l-Baha in
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