Swarms of Fragments
By John Taylor; 2008 Jan 14, 15 Sharaf, 164 BE
Let us take a break from the proofs of deity today and go back to my usual, discursive approach, though I will be edging back in the general direction of the topic I left hanging before, justice and the search for truth.
In our talk last Wednesday the question of the number of Baha'is in the world came up. I had read the numbers before but misquoted them by memory in the talk. Sorry. Here are the best figures I could find on the net. We come in lucky number 13, and it is interesting to note that there are only twice as many Jews as there are Baha'is. On the other hand, several religious groups that I know next to nothing about are much larger. One, Juche, I have never even heard of. And the group I have been dialoging with lately, the "non-religious," clock in as the third largest "faith" in the world! Now I do not feel so bad about letting this topic edge out all others during this month, and probably another month to come.
Major Religions of the World, Ranked by Number of Adherents
Christianity: 2.1 billion
Islam: 1.5 billion
Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
Hinduism: 900 million
Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
Buddhism: 376 million
primal-indigenous: 300 million
African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
Sikhism: 23 million
Juche: 19 million
Spiritism: 15 million
Judaism: 14 million
Baha'i: 7 million
<http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html>
Here is a video of Tahirih Naylor, daughter of one of my spiritual parents, Gordon Naylor, who is now the BIC representative (the BIC is the Baha'i non-governmental organization at the UN) talking in Ottawa about climate change.
<http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=gVw-gf0ymYA>
I found the following headline very interesting, called "Swarming Strategy." The teaser for yesterday on the New York Times electronic edition was a quote from a
"The sheer numbers involved overloaded their ability, both mentally and electronically, to handle the attack. The whole thing was over in 5, maybe 10 minutes." - LT. GEN. PAUL K. VAN RIPER, a retired Marine officer who took part in a war game where small, agile speedboats devastated
The article explains the provenance of this sudden new threat to the American military machine.
"In a telephone interview, General Van Riper recalled that his idea of a swarming attack grew from Marine Corps studies of the natural world, where insects and animals from tiny ant colonies to wolf packs move in groups to overwhelm larger prey. It is not a matter of size or of individual capability, but whether you have the numbers and come from multiple directions in a short period of time, he said." <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/washington/12navy.html?th&emc=th>
Hmm. With all due respect General, it seems to me that Scientific American featured an article, and I reviewed it here on the Badi Blog, about a decade ago, that attributed this discovery to the first completely computerized, realistic war game between humans and a computer. The computer, not being prejudiced towards size and firepower like human -- that is to say, macho male -- strategists, came up with the swarming strategy all on its own. It sent out a mass of the largest number of the smallest boats that the rules allowed it to make, and it easily beat any combination of warships that navy strategists could come up with. But the discovery, it seems to me, goes much further back than that. It is a standard lesson from the naval battles of World War II that the little PT boats, like the one which John F. Kennedy served on, were extremely effective wherever they were used. I assure you, I am not party to military secrets, this is just public knowledge, well known to anybody who cares to investigate.
The question arises, why then are navies made up of large ships that can easily be crushed by a swarm of low-tech small fry? The answer is clear: small boats do not appeal to the men who dominate the military, nor do they fill the pockets of the corporate owners of the military industrial complex.
This is not a question of military strategy but of government corruption.
Big ships are built, in spite of their uselessness from a military standpoint, for the same reasons that the space program was ruined. They were designing a space shuttle, and a few of these military superbrains stepped in and said, "Hey, we want you to make it much, much bigger so that we can put in our huge, secret military spy satellites. From that moment on the budget skyrocketed and our hopes to get beyond this planet were crippled.
If the World Supercop wishes to avoid the humiliation that is clearly in store sooner or later, it has no choice but to immediately surround every one of its huge battleship, cruiser and aircraft carrier fleets with crowds of small speedboats. The only way to defend against swarms of bees is to send out another swarm of bees. Run that through your war game simulators and see what happens! I suspect that sooner or later somebody will start asking, why have the big ships in the first place? Are they worth the vast sums of money? Do not computers always win by restricting themselves to speedboats? But then again, why bite the hand that signs your paycheck? But the fact remains, in a war between remotely equal powers, the one that buys the most speedboats will win the prize of stewing about the responsibilities of being World Supercop.
This article in the November issue of Scientific American attracted my attention: "A Need for New Warheads?" by David Biello,
"The
No, no, no, no! That is not the question! What kind of a question begging question is that? The question should be, should we be thinking in terms of national defense at all? Is it not nationalism that has got us in this fix in the first place? Why not form a secure world government, destroy all offensive weapons and eliminate the need for defense in the first place? Those are intelligent questions. Throw out the "can" and the "how" questions and start asking "why?" The survival threats are piling up higher than our eyes and sooner or later we are all going to have to stop tolerating dumb questions and start asking just smart "why" questions.
The Globe and Mail had this headline in its electronic edition: "TASER Seeks to Zap Safety Concerns," The precis says, "The maker of the electrical incapacitating weapon is developing its next generation technology and touts the device's safety in the wake of three Canadian deaths possibly linked to police use." Here is my comment: what this company is really trying to do is build an on/off switch for the human body. A switch like that is extremely convenient for story tellers, which is why you see people getting bopped on the head so often. Invariably they wake up and are none the worse off for it. The reality is what happened to me. I fought a bigger guy in a Judo contest in
When I helped hand out in Dunnville the UHJ's message to our local religious leaders just after 9-11, I wondered why this was not being touted on all the headlines: "Baha'is write world's faith leaders, urge getting together to resolve differences and end persecution and abuses among followers." Now another positive attempt at harmonizing has been made, this time among the two most populous religions, and even that is not getting the publicity it deserves. What happened was that moderate Muslim leaders got together and wrote to the Christians a document called "A Common Word Between You and Us." It pointed out the many commonly held ideals and teachings between these faiths. Then some Christian leaders responded, in the following terms (I include only the preamble):
A Christian Response to "A Common Word Between You and Us"
"In the name of the Infinitely Good God whom we should love with all our Being"
"As members of the worldwide Christian community, we were deeply encouraged and challenged by the recent historic open letter signed by 138 leading Muslim scholars, clerics, and intellectuals from around the world. A Common Word Between Us and You identifies some core common ground between Christianity and Islam which lies at the heart of our respective faiths as well as at the heart of the most ancient Abrahamic faith, Judaism. Jesus Christ's call to love God and neighbor was rooted in the divine revelation to the people of
"Muslims and Christians have not always shaken hands in friendship; their relations have sometimes been tense, even characterized by outright hostility. Since Jesus Christ says, "First take the log out your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbors eye" (Matthew 7:5), we want to begin by acknowledging that in the past (e.g. in the Crusades) and in the present (e.g. in excesses of the war on terror) many Christians have been guilty of sinning against our Muslim neighbors. Before we shake your hand in responding to your letter, we ask forgiveness of the All-Merciful One and of the Muslim community around the world." http://www.yale.edu/faith/abou-commonword.htm
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