The Master Rhetorician
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The Badi' Blog entry for yesterday provoked an anonymous comment. I have always admired Anon's poetry, which is among the best in the English language, but I also read that with the growth of the Internet many blogs have had to block out Anon's responses. Anon tends to totally uninhibited, scurrilous and so off-the-wall that the bad negates the good. So it was with some trepidation that I turned to this comment, but it turned out to my relief that Anon's main concern this time seems to be that I did not call in enough backup. Backup from the Writings, that is.
"What a brilliant commentary. Thank you. I had the same impression that you did during the last scene in the film,
"As citizens of one planet, may we all realize that we are one people, please. Each of us has a great purpose and responsibility to promote the principle of the oneness of humanity, coming into a more loving, forgiving, compassionate relationship with each other, everywhere. Let it begin with each of us, in our hearts and souls, extending to our families, our neighbors, our communities, our cities, states, nations, and ultimately the whole world.
"As revealed by Baha'u'llah, "The earth is one country, and mankind its citizens." "The well-being of mankind, its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly established."
"And, as forewarned by The Universal House of Justice in its message to the peoples of the world in October 1985: `Whether peace is to be reached only after unimaginable horrors precipitated by humanity's stubborn clinging to old patterns of behavior, or is to be embraced now by an act of consultative will, is the choice before all who inhabit the earth. At this critical juncture when the intractable problems confronting nations have been fused into one common concern for the whole world, failure to stem the tide of conflict and disorder would be unconscionably irresponsible.'
"This message is as timely today, if not more so, than it was then in 1985. It can be read in its entirety at <http://www.reference.bahai.org/en/t/uhj/PWP>
Yes, the Peace Message. I am a great admirer. When it was written I was inspired to write a book on its implications. Like all my writing efforts, I never came close to finishing that book. I have such a short attention span that long before the Internet existed, I was a blogger at heart. If I cannot do it in a day, it does not get done.
But now looking back at the Peace Message with the perspective of decades, I can see that basically what the House set out to do was update the public talks and official letters of the Master to official bodies and dignitaries, such as the Tablet to
As for updates to the Master's message, lately I listened to an audio book with advice from a professional rhetoric coach and one point there made a big impression, something that I had never understood about public speaking. What she said was that there is a crucial difference between a good presentation and an effective one. A good talk you can give anywhere, but an effective talk accomplishes a specific purpose. Before you can give an effective talk you have to settle upon a certain goal and tailor everything to that. It is only possible to give an effective talk in a specific place and time.
People do not go to the effort of blowing a hole in their schedule, fighting traffic and sitting down for hours in hard seats to hear what they could much easier sit down in a comfortable sofa at home and read in a book. In giving a talk you put all your effort into accomplishing a specific goal. Addressing the right goal is crucial to making it effective. Preferably the goal will be harmonious with what the listeners came to find out. If it is not, explain why it should be. You are there to address either the concern that brought these people out, or to help them solve a problem that is bothering them. If that problem is not uppermost on their mind, you need to point out the need and why it should be of concern. Once you accomplish that, you are not done yet. You need to tell them what to do and how to make the changes that the situation requires. Effective talks set out to make specific changes. They are not theoretical, they are not public readings, they are movers to action.
Thus, and I have always felt this very strongly, you could stand up and read one of the Master's talks word for word, and it would be very good. Rhetorically, it would be a good talk. In fact it is safe to say that that would be far better than anything you or I could possibly write, no matter how good we think we are. The Master, after all, was the Perfect Exemplar. But the question is, would it be effective? From a rhetorical perspective it most emphatically would not be. The Master was talking to different people with different needs; they came out for different reasons than people come out to meetings today. There was no television, radio, video games or Web to compete for their attention. Racism, parochialism and jingoism were rampant, even among scientists and other highly educated people. In most important respects their ways of thinking we would find utterly foreign.
But this is not to say that we cannot learn from His example in His public talks and letters. He spoke before groups and organizations that still exist today. Not everything about what put bums into seats then is different today. And of course, the problems and challenges of the age are the same, if not worse.
For example, Abdu'l-Baha spoke before feminists, though at the time they were called Suffragettes, reflecting their main goal at the time, getting full suffrage, that is, a vote for women.
I recently heard a reading of a speech given by Emiline Pankhurst right around the time of Abdu'l-Baha's visit, and her big issue was pushing for the vote, and why. She was a very effective speaker. She was then, but would not be now. Her words are dated. It makes you see why the Master did not talk directly about suffrage to Suffragette meetings, as one might expect. As always, He addressed the broad, general principles involved, the equality of women, the fact that sex makes no difference in the Eyes of God, and so on. In speaking to Pankhurst individually, He emphasized the need to avoid violence. In fact, long before Gandhi and MLK, feminists were breaking windows, disrupting horse races and otherwise exercising civil disobedience.
How would an effective talk, using the Master's methods, sound today? Suffrage is no longer a concern for feminists in the West. An effective talk given by a Baha'i today might bring up the question of suffrage as a matter of historical perspective. Is suffrage the non-issue that present day feminists think it is? An address might show charts and graphs displaying world-wide statistics, not bounded by political borders, showing the proportion of women who can vote in the entire human race. They may be as disenfranchised today as they were in 1912, or even worse, I do not know. But the fact would be made clear that what real progress has been accomplished in developed countries has been done through the very peaceful means that the Master advocated, such as consciousness raising and broader education, both material and spiritual.
The fact remains, considering all of the Master's talks to many diverse audiences, that if more of our leaders and prominent figures spoke in the general, loving, conciliatory, principle-centered way of the Master, things would be changing much faster. Nor was the Master chary of giving advice directly to public speakers as to how to do their job. He makes it clear what we should be talking about, and that we should restrict ourselves to that, and only that. In a letter of March 5, 1914 --in other words, just after his Western journey and just before He wrote the Tablets of the Divine Plan, which changed everything for the Baha'i world -- Abdu'l-Baha laid out "fourteen points" to which Baha'is should restrict themselves in our public addresses.
"In those public meetings, universal and not particular principles must be discussed; those principles which I have expounded in the public meetings. Only that identical program must be followed:
(1) The oneness of the world of humanity.
(2) The investigation of Reality.
(3) The essential unity of the Religions of God.
(4) The abandonment of religious, denominational, racial and patriotic prejudices.
(5) The conformity of divine Religion with reason and science.
(6) The Religion of God must become the cause of amity and love amongst mankind, otherwise it is better to forswear it.
(7) Equality between man and woman.
(8) The essential necessity of the confirmation of the Holy Spirit.
(9) The demonstration of divinity and inspiration.
(10) The power of the (spiritual) influence of BAHA'U'LLAH.
(11) The underlying unity of all existing faiths.
(12) The dawn of the Sun of Reality from the horizon of
(13) Universal peace.
(14) Universal language: The education of the children of all the Religions, under a universal standard of instruction and a common curriculum.
Questions of this nature must be propounded in the public meetings." (Star of the West, Vol. 9, p. 172)
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