Polity IV

From Politics to Polity; Polity IV

By John Taylor; 2007 July 13

Back in May I wrote a fair bit about polity. Some of that writing material was left over. It has been taking up space in the back of my refrigerator and is starting to go bad. So, dear friends, let me serve up a dish of leftovers today. Do not worry, though, I have added extra spices to smother the smell.

Polity is Unitarian

Polity is by nature unitary. It is the unity in diversity. There is only one polity, just as there is only one God and one humanity; polity is the one good among them all. It hovers, like spirit. A lover of the polity follows Jesus' teaching to "seek first the Kingdom, and all else will be added unto you." To even think of polity is daunting.

Let us pray for intercession to Thornton Chase, first Western Baha'i, a nondescript insurance salesman so transformed by contact with the Master that his coworkers -- now they would be called cubicle denizens -- remembered years later how he shot electricity into a room whenever he entered, how he infused a new life into the atmosphere wherever he went. Unlike most white collar workers in his mileau, Chase did not run the rat race in sole search of the almighty dollar. He was, as a Hadith cited by Baha'u'llah puts it, "hidden in the clothing of radiant poverty,"

My daemon in the Abha Kingdom -- I suspect -- is in cahoots with Thornton Chase. It has been urging me to explore "polity," a word, it tells me, that fills a crucial need in understanding the relationship between the Baha'i Faith and politics, and in understanding authority and infallibility. I have learned the hard way to pay close attention to my daemon. I do what it asks, no matter what, no questions asked. When I ignore it, everything gets blocked and is frozen in place. So, whether I want to do it or not, here is my latest attempt to butt down the brick wall of polity.

The Spirit of our Times

If you want to sum up the spirit of the age in a four word slogan, here it is: "From politics to polity." Take political relations, throw them in the processor of consultation, and you get polity. If we are ever going to get over this climate crisis, we have to do this, see this. Polity is the party of all parties, parties without borders, or the party that is a wholly, or a holy if you will; or, as Victor Hugo famously put it, the party of civilization:

"I represent a party which does not yet exist -- the party of ... civilization. . . There will come from it first a United States of Europe, and then a United States of the World. . . There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come."

Well, it exists now. This party, if any party ever was, is the party of God. At least Baha'is think so. Ruhiyyih Khanum wrote,

"The Baha'is, as Shoghi Effendi said so aptly, belong to no political party but to `God's party'. They are the agents of His Divine Polity." (Ruhiyyih Khanum, The Guardian of the Baha'i Faith, p. 185)

According to this definition, then, a Baha'i is an agent of divine polity; and like any agent, Baha'is have special training. We are privy to knowledge that others do not have. As the Guardian put it, "...They alone are aware of the silent growth of that orderly world polity whose fabric they themselves are weaving." (Shoghi Effendi, World Order, 194) Unlike the organization of other institutions, this ordered polity is organic. Organic growth is more difficult to grasp than mechanical expansions. Organic growth expands and grows at the cellular level, it lives, excretes and breaths according to its own needs, not the whim of the people within.

Thus a Baha'i, an "agent" of the polity, must care about polity first. If ego or lower interests eclipse our first loyalty, the basis of our statesmanship, one is a Baha'i in name only. Polity defines "Baha'i-ness." Similarly, Aristotle insisted that a king should not be called a king if he looks to his own interests before that of the polity. That makes him a mere tyrant.

"For a man is not a king unless he is sufficient to himself and excels his subjects in all good things; and such a man needs nothing further; therefore he will not look to his own interests but to those of his subjects; for a king who is not like that would be a mere titular king. Now tyranny is the very contrary of this; the tyrant pursues his own good. And it is clearer in the case of tyranny that it is the worst deviation-form; but it is the contrary of the best that is worst." (Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics)

Polity and Infallibility

Consider the following passage, which I think is one of the most brilliant and original analogies that have been drawn by the collective mind of the House of Justice. They say that organic growth is a fundamental principle to understanding the pattern that Baha'u'llah wishes society to evolve towards. This,

"... requires that detailed developments, and the understanding of detailed developments, become available only with the passage of time and with the help of the guidance given by that Central Authority in the Cause to whom all must turn. In this regard one can use the simile of a tree. If a farmer plants a tree, he cannot state at that moment what its exact height will be, the number of its branches or the exact time of its blossoming. He can, however, give a general impression of its size and pattern of growth and can state with confidence which fruit it will bear. The same is true of the evolution of the World order of Baha'u'llah. (UHJ, letter, "Separation of Church and State, 27 April, 1995)

What better explanation than this could there be of the nature of leadership and authority in the Baha'i Faith, of the divine, infallible guidance that we get from the Center of our Faith? The House guides us without being endowed with the absolute omniscience of the Bab or Baha'u'llah, but, in the sense explained above, they are still infallible.

The technical term for this kind of organic growth that natural processes like stars, clouds and tree branches undergo is, I believe, stochastic. Stochastic processes happen when reason embraces the randomness of ephemeral being and gently guides it towards order. Human institutions and constructions are not stochastic. They are static, brittle and unchanging. They are built on a crackling pile of twigs, human opinions. Human opinion is, as a pre-Socratic philosopher put it, "the mere play of children."

Stone buildings, and human derived institutions cannot grow stochastically because they are made of inorganic materials, the hard, unyielding rock of finite, limited, material understanding. The "foundation" of a tree is its living root system, which goes down into unseen earth and living rock; by so doing it also supports the trunk and all above. In the same way, the roots of Baha'u'llah's organic polity run deep into another World, where human understanding dare not presume to go.

As a result, its processes resemble a tree, not a building. It grows and changes. At the same time that the roots deepen, the visible tree slowly rises to the heights, like the mustard seed in the parable.

The only way to radically change a stone building is to tear it down and build a new one. That is why human reform is so often violent, impulsive, continually repeating the same cycle of revolution and reaction. Aristotle explained exactly why this happens: we are more attached to our passions than to truth.

"For he who lives as passion directs will not hear argument that dissuades him, nor understand it if he does; and how can we persuade one in such a state to change his ways? And in general passion seems to yield not to argument but to force. The character, then, must somehow be there already with a kinship to virtue, loving what is noble and hating what is base." (Aristotle, Ethics)