The Goal of all is Happiness
By John Taylor; 2009 June 03, Azamat 17, 166 BE
After many years being stymied by what I call my "video curse," yesterday I made some progress. I had collected some good footage on our camcorder of a new skateboard park that Tomaso and I visited last weekend in Hamilton, but neither our Mac nor Vista computer would recognize its Firewire connection. The camcorder was as good as invisible. Meanwhile I had found an excellent video tutorial on the Web about how to use the video editing program that I bought last week, Final Cut Express. It was very helpful and cleared up basic things about cutting video that had utterly mystified me.
Unfortunately, with an invisible camcorder there was no way to try out what I had learned. Then I remembered that I had tried out the recording function of our new little digicam and that its compressed files had loaded onto the iMac perfectly. So I spent an hour or two splicing this limited material together into an eight minute demo, which I immediately uploaded to YouTube before the curse could catch up with me. This first episode of what I hope will be a series of Badi' Vlog videos is not going to win any Academy Awards, but I hope it will break the logjam of FUBARs that has sapped my confidence as a videographer for so long. You can see the video on the Badi Blog at:
Or on YouTube at:
My other videos are at:
We went to the cinema in Welland for the evening and when we got back eight people had already viewed the video, and it had no fewer than two comments. For me, that is a lot. I can go several months of daily essays without getting two comments for a submission. Sure, I could easily get more than two responses by talking about something controversial, like homosexuality or some inflammatory public figure, but that would be cheap and superficial. I prefer to earn my notoriety through laboured and profoundly stupid themes.
Anyway, I want to talk about the movie I watched. Tomaso and Marie took in the new Pixar release, "Up," while I watched "Terminator 4, Salvation." If that is salvation, give me perdition any day. When the early Christians went around offering salvation, I do not think this is what they had in mind. What a bleak, flinty, iron hard vision of a future of war and oppression gone wild! The Skynet terminator machines collect together human beings like cattle and -- I never thought I could say this -- the glowing-red eyed prison guards make the Nazis look warm and cuddly! And the music, or sound effect theme, or whatever it is of the soundtrack is truly unnerving. It had me jumping out of my skin every few minutes. That is just what the human race needs, super-intelligent machines determined to exterminate us. I got out of the cinema, jumped straight into my car and pounded my fist into the radio, so angry I was with machines and technology. My fist hurt, but my soul felt better. How could they do this to us?
I have been mulling over the following words of `Abdu'l-Baha, and the Terminator vision of a future where military means of destruction get so sophisticated that they become independent and take command seems like only a slight exaggeration of what we are up against right now.
"However, until material achievements, physical accomplishments and human virtues are reinforced by spiritual perfections, luminous qualities and characteristics of mercy, no fruit or result shall issue therefrom, nor will the happiness of the world of humanity, which is the ultimate aim, be attained. For although, on the one hand, material achievements and the development of the physical world produce prosperity, which exquisitely manifests its intended aims, on the other hand dangers, severe calamities and violent afflictions are imminent." (SWA 283-284)
This is important for two reasons, one, because it assumes that the ultimate aim of all, and especially of God, is human happiness, and two because it projects the same trend that Terminator takes to an extreme, "severe calamities and violent afflictions." All we need to do to avoid them is to back up our material progress with spiritual virtues and mercy. Throughout the film I kept thinking, "If that really happened, humans would not stand a chance." For example, main characters walk away impervious from a full-scale mushroom cloud at least three times in the film (I missed the first part so there might have been more). In reality the result would be cancer, radiation sickness and who knows what all else. Flimsy humans, what hope do we have against the Machine?
We need to start what Comenius called the Great Postliminium (a return to one's former home to resume one's ranks and privileges after war or exile) while there is still a home to come home to. Those means getting rid of all warlike ways of thinking, not negatively by banishing bad thoughts but positively, by holding in mind and heart the vision of a God who loves us and wants our happiness. At the same time, we need to assert our right to be world citizen. Consider what the Baha'i declaration of rights, written in response to the newly formed United Nations' "Universal Declaration of Human Rights," declares:
"World order has become legally possible, socially imperative, and divinely ordained. The principle of federation has already united previously independent communities diverse in race, language, religion and size of population. The nations can find just expression for their legitimate rights and needs through proportionate representation in a supranational body. Until world citizenship is guaranteed as a social status, the human rights and privileges developed in the past are undermined by the disruption of modern society." (Baha'i International Community, 1947 Feb, A Baha'i Declaration of Human Obligations and Rights)
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