Comenius saw that we cannot approach the problem of bigotry and
fanaticism in the same way as other social problems. The poor can be
made rich simply by increasing wealth, the ignorant can be educated,
but the prejudiced are not so easily changed. This is because at the
heart the problem of bigotry is obstinacy, a stubborn refusal to even
see that one's sense of justice has been compromised. At one point in
this chapter Comenius refers to this admonition in the Bible to avoid
obstinacy,
"A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of
understanding shall attain unto wise counsels: to understand a
proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their dark
sayings. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools
despise wisdom and instruction. (Prov 1:5-7, KJV)
The obstinate put their opinion before all else. They do not love the
common good or see that the situation requires that they repent of
earlier, sloppy pre-judgments. The only way for them to go ahead,
then, is to go back to how they were before they were corrupted. This
rule, then, is like John the Baptist, the "voice crying in the
wilderness" for repentance and justice. That is, before an error can
possibly be corrected we must always start by recognizing the problem,
finding where we wandered and starting afresh from there.
Some kind of retracing of our steps to the point of error is required
in every intervention. Patients must recognize that they are ill
before doctors can cure them, students must know they are ignorant and
desire to learn before a teacher can teach them. This was systematized
for addicts in the 1930's with the development of Twelve Step
programs, which start with a conversion experience where the addict
sees his or her helplessness before the source of corruption. If we do
not recognize that we are dirty, we will never want to be clean.
Eliminating prejudice, then, starts with the difficult but necessary
realization that we are lost sheep who have wandered and dispersed not
only from the safe path of God but also from the safety in numbers
that made them into successful herd animals in the first place.
"If this is done in earnest, we shall all have much to gain, since I.
every man will know more than he thinks he knows; II. every man will
acknowledge that men go astray like sheep, as God says in Isaiah 53:6;
III. every man will have the chance of returning from some error to
some truth. And in time the holy intention to avoid all errors will
spread to all men, when it becomes abundantly clear to all that the
only way to recover from error is to return to the point where you
went astray." (Ch. 6, para 8, pp. 101-102)
In our last essay on this theme
(http://badiblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/eps-golden-rule.html) we saw
Comenius propose that a slogan based upon this be publicized and
treated as a Golden Rule for purification from prejudice: "Let us
return to the way from whence we have gone astray!" (Panorthosia II,
Ch. 6, para 10, p. 102) The question we ended with was: "In what sense
is this a "Golden Rule" of elimination of prejudice? Before we look at
that question, let us take a small step backwards.
As we all know, the Golden Rule states: "do unto others as you would
have them do unto you." The "return to the way we were before we went
astray" rule resembles this Golden Rule in several ways. Both require
a sense of responsibility and reciprocity coming out of a leap of the
imagination. Both project personal taste and ambition into a model for
serving others in a spirit of altruism. Both assume awareness and
recognition of the problem of what is good, and both benefit from
self-assessment, from questions like, "How would I have others do unto
me?" "Do I even know what is best for me?" And both are outcomes of
the Biblical concept of integrity, where the Oneness of God is
integrated into one's entire being, both personal and social. Comenius
puts this beautifully when he says in the 13th paragraph of this
chapter,
"This means that every man should be a self-contained individual, an
undivided whole, and every family and household should constitute one
body, and similarly for every city, kingdom, and people. And finally
the whole human race, with the whole complex of its affairs and all
the choirs of angels, should be one unit under the ONE GOD..."
However the "return to where we went astray" principle differs from
the Golden Rule in other ways. In one sense the Rule of Return is a
pointer back to a point in the past where we fell short of doing unto
others as we would have them do unto us. However, in another sense the
Rule of Return is an outcome of an even higher law.
Prior to the Golden Rule is the Rule of Love, "thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy might" combined with its equivalent, "thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." This Rule of Love is at the
heart of all Western religion. It comes before the Golden Rule because
while the latter explains how to do right, the former deals with why.
Without love of one's neighbour, ethics would be mere technical rules,
what the Apostle Paul called "the tinkling of bells." It would be
better suited to regulating machines than human beings.
An interesting paper turned up this month on the "Iran Press Watch"
Website called "Iran's Islamic Theocracy and the Problem of Khashiyat
(Fear of God): A Baha'i Perspective," (Aram Anahid, June 3rd, 2009
http://www.iranpresswatch.org/post/3812#more-3812). It points out that
there is a distinction drawn in Islamic law (and the Baha'i Writings)
between "Khauf," dread of divine scourge, and "Khashiyat," fear in the
sense of awestruck recognition of the absolute greatness of God. The
latter is considered to be an outcome of the love of God rather than
fear, since it transcends all consideration of benefit or punishment.
Baha'u'llah calls Khashiyat our "true protector and ... spiritual
guardian." (Tablets, 92) The paper also cites a passage from
Baha'u'llah's Panj Kanj that makes it clear that if one falls short of
Khashiyat and retains even a hint of Khauf, which considers one's own
harm or benefit, this would make the soul unworthy to enter the divine
Presence.
Comenius's "return whence you went astray" principle is in a sense the
Golden Rule in error checking mode. But it is also more than a
technique or activity. It is Khashiyat, the kind of reverent love that
galvanizes us to become the solution to the ethical problems that
confront us. In the last paragraph of this chapter Comenius states the
goal of the principle of elimination of prejudice, to purify whatever
in ourselves is unworthy of this exalted Law of Love.
"The first solid beginning of reform would be like the removal of all
the mud of indifference, prejudice and wicked obstinacy from the
springs of the senses, the fountain of understanding, and the outflow
of the will, so that the rivulets of attention, judgment and ready
inclination towards every improvement begin to flow forth in greater
purity for the benefit of all." (paragraph 16)
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