The Mashriq

Neighborhood Utopia

By John Taylor; 2008 March 22, 03 Baha, 165 BE

All praise be to the Mashriq! The Lotus Temple long ago surpassed the Taj Mahal in number of visitors, and is beginning to rival the Eiffel Tower and other world class tourist magnets. Every day, I pray for a Mashriq, that the day soon will come when one will be built in a neighborhood near me, so I can visit it every morning for dawn prayers. There is a blank space, yearning for this to take its place. Here is the Master's explanation of their effect, spiritually, upon the world:

 "For just as the external world is a place where the people of all races and colors, varying faiths, denominations and conditions come together -- just as they are submerged in the same sea of divine favors -- so, likewise, all may meet under the dome of the Mashriqu'l-Adhkar and adore the one God in the same spirit of truth; for the ages of darkness have passed away, and the century of light has come. Ignorant prejudices are being dispelled, and the light of unity is shining." (Abdu'l-Baha, Promulgation, p. 65-66)

The Mashriq is a dream, life is a dream, and the reality lies beyond; the Mashriq will be a kind of fulcrum that will take us to the utopia hoped for by thinkers throughout the ages. In the following proto-essay, written during the fast, I continued the dream of a neighborhood that would be synchronized to the spirit of the Mashriq.

Neighborhood Spectra

My generation was raised under the shadow of thermonuclear war. We knew we could at any minute be exterminated by the clash of two economic ideologies, communism and capitalism. As a child, my naive questions were: why the death struggle? Why not have the best of both worlds? What would be wrong with a full spectrum economy, with one economy in one location being communistic, another more capitalistic, another socialist, another mixed, and maybe even another based on an aboriginal lifestyle and a hunter-gatherer's diet?

 It seemed silly to argue constantly over freedom versus equality, as if they were mutually exclusive, as if balancing them like two sides of an equation were not inevitable. Another false dichotomy was conformity versus rebellion. Why not take your choice, use a buffet model? Surely that would be more scientific. If you give people a choice among many degrees of freedom or equality, we could evaluate the results and see what works for each kind of personality. Testing might find that one side of the spectrum suits human nature best, but my bet is that the chart would be very scattered, that a variety of different preferences would make for a more productive economy overall, as well as a more satisfying one for the individual.

In fact, the existence of a Mashriq at the center might change the dynamic; why not put the broad spectrum of varied lifestyle and economic choices in the same neighborhood? One apartment building might be communal, with everybody sharing space and facilities, sharing all goods and services in common, while the building next might be designed with the individualist in mind, with separate living areas, independent kitchens, bedrooms, and so forth.

That would give a real choice.

We might find that at one point in our lives it suits us to live a solitary life, free of distractions, and at another we may need to be sociable and cooperative, free of loneliness. Or it may be that one personality type always leans to the communal apartment, while another thrives only in an individualistic arrangement. At least we would know.

Judging by the leanings of my parents, my mother constantly chatting up neighbors and befriending strangers, my father preferring to be alone and friendless, a mixed neighborhood with such choices could become sexually segregated in time. It would be mostly women in the communal condos and mostly men in the discrete, independent domiciles. However, judging by the extremely high mortality rates due to suicide and addiction among senior men living alone, it would seem to be wise to discourage this leaning to isolation in men while they are still young, flexible and habits are being formed. At the same time, it might be beneficial to encourage social butterflies at certain times to buckle down and focus by living alone with their thoughts for a while.

Surely offering a variety of householding styles, starting on the level of families and neighborhoods, would be a good start on a Mashriq inspired utopia. Right now we are living in a private, oligarchic dystopia.

 A recent study found that people are increasingly lonely in the U.S., the place where capitalism, materialism and individualism have the most sway, and where the economy, transport and housing reflect this most directly. One quarter of the population cannot name a trusted confidante, for instance, and this isolation is having a measurable adverse effect on their health. ("Aging and Loneliness: Downhill Quickly?," summarized in Popular Science, April, 2008, p. 78) Another study found that a poor self-image is related to materialism in youths aged 12 to 13 years old, who use "material possessions as a coping strategy for feelings of low self-worth." If their self-esteem was boosted by kind words from an acquaintance, an experiment found, their materialist obsessions could be lifted, albeit briefly, for a day or so. ("Growing up in a material world," in Ibid.) The self-loathing of these children is clearly the result of exposure to advertising, the propaganda machine of unfettered capitalism, long before they were ready for it -- if one is ever ready for systematic mind control by parties who profit from creating false desires, who cut down our self image in order to encourage us to compensate by blind consumption.

The first fruit of every worldview is how it either bolsters or undercuts the identity of those who subscribe to it. Materialism, commercialism, and unfettered capitalism by nature undermine our sense of self-worth. This is perhaps the most persuasive reason why materialism is untenable, psychically as well as environmentally. It undercuts human identity and undermines the freewill, in both individuals and groups.

I have encountered nobody, no thinker or leader of thought more directly concerned with bolstering our high identity and destiny as human beings than Abdu'l-Baha. His genius was to elevate our self-worth, to make us proud of ourselves as creatures of God beloved of God, but not so complacent that we did not desire to act for change. He portrayed the forces of materialism as spent, as products of a former age of heteronomy, what He called "epochs of oppression." He beckons to a new, more intimate relationship with one another, as varied but unified members of one human family.

"We will become as fathers and sons, as brothers and sisters living together in complete unity, love and happiness; for this century is the century of light. It is not like former centuries. Former centuries were epochs of oppression. Now human intellects have developed, and human intelligence has increased. Each soul is investigating reality. This is not a time when we shall wage war and be hostile toward each other. We are living at a time when we should enjoy real friendship." (Promulgation, 222-223)

Abdu'l-Baha is the new Odysseus. His odyssey started not in war but on release from bondage, when He traveled across Europe and America, the breeding grounds of materialism, and gave forth a new vision of who the human is, and what is possible. We are not blind consumers, not citizens of one land but of all lands; we are followers of the light. He did not see America as the soul of materialism; He saw it as the emerging progenitor of a new assurance of how high we can soar. May we live up to the glories He saw in us.

"O ye friends of God! Through the Appearance of the Blessed Perfection the theories are abrogated and the facts established. The time of superficiality is gone by and the cycle of reality hath appeared. One must become the incarnation of Servitude, the personification of Love, the embodiment of Spirituality and the mirror of Mercy." (Abdu'l-Baha, Tablets of Abdu'l-Baha v2, pp. 430-431)