United Philosophers

Bigthink Question; Extracting ourselves from Total Trebuchet

By John Taylor; 2008 Jan 27, 9 Sultan, 164 BE

A couple of days ago I came across a discussion on a journalist's blog of an initiative hoping to become a video website alternative to YouTube. Not the first to come up with that idea, that is for sure. Anyway, this is how the reporter introduces it:

"BigThink -- a video site with big ideas"

"Since its public launch a couple of weeks ago, a new video-oriented website and community called BigThink has been called everything from snobbish to `a YouTube for smarty-pants.'"

<http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080122.WBmingram20080122112151/WBStory/WBmingram>

I checked this site out thinking that it might be a different place to upload the videos that I would like to make up to supplement the Badi' Blog. I found that it had been seeded with conversation-opening questions. The following question intrigued me and I cannot resist giving atheism a rest for a while and trying to answer it. Here is the question, placed under their category, "Faith and Belief":

 "Why is there not a "United Philosophers" or "United Religions" like the United Nations? If nations see the benefit of international cooperation, why is there not a forum where the major religious heads and the great thinkers of our time can congregate?  And if there is, why isn't anyone paying attention?" <http://www.bigthink.com/faith-beliefs/6088>

 A couple of half-hearted answers follow, including this, by someone using the handle, "Prince of this World,"

 "I think great thinkers would be able to get together, but not the heads of major religions. They would not be able to come to any agreement, or make any progress, because they would not be able to go beyond the confines of their religion."

 Here is my response to all these questions,

 Baha'u'llah called for an "all-embracing assemblage of man," which would include religion, philosophy and every other area of human endeavor in a world governing body. He said that we should strive to work out "one common cause," with the foundation of a single religious heritage of all humans. Baha'is have made an effort to cooperate with other faiths, both locally -- mostly with World Religion Day, which just occurred -- and internationally. We made a first step in the direction of a "United Religions" with our participation in the periodic inter-faith meetings called the "World Parliament of Religions" and, just after 9-11, with an open letter written by the UHJ, the ruling body of the Baha'i Faith, to the leaders of the world's religions.

 As for a parliament of philosophers, there have been Ad Hoc summits of thinkers, including the Club of Rome and the international body of climate scientists that just shared the Nobel Peace prize with Al Gore, but the idea of an official, democratically elected, standing body of philosophers is intriguing and enticing. I am involved with a popular movement of amateur philosophers called, Socrates Cafe, which strives to seed the method of inquiry invented by Socrates at the grassroots level. One hopes that professional philosophers will begin to realize their responsibility to come together at all levels, especially the international level. It was a philosopher, Immanuel Kant, who drew up what he called a "sketch" of an international constitution. This turned out to be the first draft of the covenant of both the League of Nations and the present body, the United Nations. He did see philosophers playing an important role in what he called a "perpetual peace," but unfortunately the best his colleagues have done since then is malinger and dawdle. You cannot even say that they talk about forming such a body; there is much talk about morality in their, but the most ethical act a philosopher could ever do, form a world parliament of philosophers, escapes their attention.

 To be fair, the reason the elites do not make such initiatives is that there is no perceived need on the part of most people for any sort of broad-based international institutions.

 The climate crisis is rapidly changing that.

 The climate crisis means that everything we can conceivably do to survive using present outmoded thinking and institutions only exacerbates it. In chess this kind of quandary is called Zugzwang, or "move compulsion." We have to move, but every move we have leads to swift decline and fall. The best course would be to do nothing and tough it out, but the output of greenhouse gases is accelerating daily, so we no longer have that choice. The only way out is to change the rules of the game. The problem is that, lacking the virtues that religion and philosophy instill, there is splitting on all sides, and all sides are in Zugzwang. According to the Wiki article on Zugzwang, in chess such an extreme situation of reciprocal Zugzwang is called a Trebuchet. We are talking universal dispersal ending in total Trebuchet.

Before, this would inevitably have meant talk of revolution. But our bitter experience with history. Over past centuries revolutions of all kinds, from the French to the Iranian Revolutions, have made things worse for decades and centuries afterwards. This leaves a bitter taste in one's mouth. One of the most intelligent comments I have ever seen on revolutionary change and the need to keep it as non-violent and cerebral as possible, came from G.W. Leibniz in the 16th Century,

 "As for.. the great question of the power of sovereigns and the obedience their peoples owe them, I usually say that it would be good for princes to be persuaded that their people have the right to resist them, and for the people, on the other hand, to be persuaded to obey them passively. I am, however, quite of the opinion of Grotius, that one ought to obey as a rule, the evil of revolution being greater beyond comparison than the evils causing it. Yet I recognize that a prince can go to such excess, and place the well-being of the state in such danger, that the obligation to endure ceases. This is most rare, however, and the theologian who authorizes violence under this pretext should take care against excess; excess being infinitely more dangerous than deficiency." (excerpt from a 1695 letter from Leibniz to Baron J. C. Boineburg's son Philipp, in the Wikipedia article, "Leibniz")

 Leibniz's wisdom is all too apparent. We need revolutionary change, but not the violent kind. Who better to help with that than people of faith and philosophers? We can no longer afford leave idle these powerful areas of human endeavor. A United Philosophers and United Religions would seem to be our only hope to get us out of Zugzwang, to change the rules of the game and figure out how to form a perpetual peace.