What Choosing Life Really Means

September 04, 2010

This is a rewrite of an early chapter in the infrastructure section of Citizens Without Borders

Progress in Nature and Culture



By John Taylor; 2010 Sep 04, Asma 15, 167 BE



My ten-year-old son requested that I read the Book of Genesis as part of our daily study session. I had read the book before of course, silently, but never aloud to an audience unfamiliar with the text. I was quite surprised at their reaction to that obscure passage between Eden and the advent of Noah with that seemingly endless list of prodigiously long-lived and long-named patriarchs, each living for an age and then dropping out with the formula, "...and then he died." My small audience reacted with increasing puzzlement, then hilarity at the glum quietus each suffered. Humour is not something I expected to find in Genesis; it sounds like material for somebody's Ph.D. thesis...



Increase is a Meter of Obedience



Another surprise on this reading was that the formula, "be fruitful and multiply" is not confined to one passage, it is repeated throughout Genesis. God says it at the first creation, Eden, and at the second creation, after Noah. It goes out at the start of every revelation. It surely led to the principle that Baha'is call "universal education."



Some Biblical translations say, "Be fruitful and increase in number," since the mathematical idea of multiplication is a recent development. But even if it somehow did mean "multiply," God was pointing to nature in general, not to exploding the human population until ecosystems collapse and all die together. That would hardly be increase, would it? Surely what is meant is the reverse of our cancerous increase at all costs. If so, Genesis is talking about what biology now calls "species diversity," as well as what is called "biomass," the total weight of living creatures.



Saving the Oceans



I just listened to a distressing new TED speech about the harm that we are doing to the world's oceans through neglect, overfishing and pollution. The talk took place before the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, so it is worse now. It struck me even harder how unjust it is for some to place the blame for all this frenetic destruction on the divine dictum. God is pointing right at nature, He is telling us to take it upon ourselves to see that nature prospers.



The implication is that the number of plants and animals acts as an indicator of whether we are corrupt or pure in our obedience to God. God ended the first creation with a flood because, God asserts, men had become "corrupt." As this oceanographer points out in his speech, we have dredged the sea bottom to the point where over huge areas the beautiful coral now literally looks brown, like some desolate farmer's plowed field. If the land under the seas were visible as the land is to us, we would be very afraid. We have done all we could to destroy the oceans, in disobedience of divine decree.



High Surface Area Natural Spaces



Let us be optimistic. It would not be too difficult to reverse our disobedience of God's first command, to be fruitful and multiply.



The cosmopolitan condition would make it simple to reverse the depredation of the oceans. We could start by ending the corrupt subsidies that Portugal and other small countries hand out to their fishermen to underwrite dredging operations on the sea bottom. We could halt other maritime disasters as well, like ending offshore drilling for oil. By electrifying industry we would not need super tankers to ship oil around the world, ending the danger of oil spills. By switching to organic urbiculture we would end the growing dead zones caused by runoff of agricultural chemicals.



Aside from ending destructive policies, there are many positive measures that we could then take to obey God's command to increase biomass and undersea species diversity



Divers have long observed that sunken ships vastly increase the number of plants and fish just by increasing the available surface area. Wrecks and uneven ground provide hiding places for many plants, herbivores and carnivores. Artificial reefs could be built by dumping decommissioned ships and just about any other large object into coastal areas. In places where this has been tried, both species diversity and the harvest from coastal fisheries increased dramatically. With a world government this could be done on a much larger scale.



One recent proposal is to use sand structures. Researchers, including Jason De Jong at the Soil Interactions Laboratory, at UC Davis (http://www.sil.ucdavis.edu/people-jason.htm) and Stefano Ciurli of the University of Bologna have discovered that a common swamp bacterium, Bacillus Pasteurii, can initiate a biochemical reaction that changes sand into sandstone in as little as twenty-four hours. Amazingly, a sort of three-dimensional printer directed by CAD/CAM software can direct these bacteria to sculpt sand dunes into any shape they please. Magnus Larsson (http://www.magnuslarsson.com/architecture/dune.asp) has proposed that this technique be used in the Green Wall Sahara initiative, a shelterbelt of trees that is being planted across twenty-four African countries in order to hold back the spread of the Sahara. The technique may be adapted to the formation of artificial reefs as well. It would make it cheap and easy to form the sea floor into whatever surface oceanographers deem most likely propagate life under the waves.



So, instead of subsidizing fishermen to destroy the oceans, why not hire the same workers to sail along the coasts of every continent in super tankers full of sand, dumping behind huge artificial structures that sink onto the sea floor to form artificial reefs. After plying the seas this way for a few years, who knows how much biomass the oceans would support?



And why confine ourselves to the seas?



We could enlist these sandstone manufacturing bacteria to create habitats with vastly greater surface area than is usually found in nature. That way we could turn boring prairies into hilly, sculpted surfaces of whatever shape ecologists deem desirable for species diversity. With research and experience, we could replenish natural areas that now are languishing. In fact, we could probably actually create greater biomass and biodiversity than before humans took over.


More is understood now about the importance of fungi as the foundation of forest ecosystems. Armed with this knowledge, we could sculpt the forest floor specifically for the support of mushrooms and other fungi. This would make trees stronger and healthier, and supercharge the number and diversity of species living in the forest.



This way we could fulfill the prime divine order, to multiply the fruits of nature. But why restrict ourselves to nature? Christ's parable of the talents intensified the first commandment, shifting it to the human world. The parable implies that God not only gets quite irate when we fail to multiply natural diversity, He is also less than pleased when we neglect to develop our human talent as well.



Human Diversity



In order to increase human diversity, we could mix cities with supercharged rural and natural areas. Done wisely, this would increase the fruitfulness of both the human and the natural world at once. For example, occasional exposure to nature has a healing effect on the human psyche. Studies show that a five minute walk in a forest path while in conversation or solving a puzzle has a more powerful effect on our well-being than a dose of antidepressant. Hospital patients who convalesce in natural surroundings heal much faster than those in an artificial environment. By mixing nature into all landscapes we would increase human happiness to heights never before attained.


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My short daily walk with God

A Giant Step With the Short Oblig

By John Taylor; 2010 April 14, Jalal 06, 167 BE

My ten-year-old son Thomas came up with the following two aphorisms this morning as he was preparing to go to school.

 

"An apple a day keeps the teacher at bay."

"In the early stages you cannot tell the difference between a sneeze and a yawn."

Myself, I have been able to come up with nothing these past days, so let me offer this spontaneous commentary on the Short Obligatory prayer. (Baha'u'llah, Prayers and Meditations, CLXXXI, p. 313) I have been swimming around in the gap between the first and the second sentence of this prayer all my Baha'i life.

"I bear witness, O my God, that Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee."

So, let me see, we have been created to know an Unknowable Essence, to do something that is by definition utterly impossible. Our reason for being is permanently beyond our grasp. How about worship then. But if I cannot know Him how is it that I am expected to love Him? Another utter impossibility. You can only love what you are intimate contact with.

Okay, true, the teaching is that we can know and love God virtually. You can know and worship by means of His Proxy, the Manifestation. Even so, it is a pretty tall order.

This first sentence is like the first half of a step forward. As you are walking, you realize that you are almost falling, until the other foot hits the ground. Here comes the other foot.

"I testify, at this moment, to my powerlessness and to Thy might, to my poverty and to Thy wealth."

So let me get this straight. My destination is an unattainable one and I have no power to get there with. Nor do I have any spending money to burn on the way. I am chasing an impossible dream, with no means, no energy, no hope.

But all I need is enough impetus to drive me forward to the next step. What little I can know, what little I can worship only needs to be powerful enough to carry me forward to the next step. So I slap my foot down.

"There is none other God but Thee, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting."

`No other God but God.' Hmm. Nothing else in this universe is going to help me fulfil this daunting purpose. At least I know that, discouraging as standing here is, I am facing in the only direction with any hope of getting me there.

`Help in Peril' My shortcoming must be there for a reason, to bring out this attribute of my Creator. If He manages to make me succeed, it will be for His greater glory. My purpose is to highlight His power, wealth and helpfulness.

`The Self-subsisting' Another virtue I can now appreciate better now than before I set out on this unending quest. God has enough to subsist for Himself, and He has plenty left over for my substance as well. Maybe I am not as far off from my Object as I thought.

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One God

One God by Barbra Streisand

Self-Subsisting

 Defining the Indefinable, "Self-Subsisting"

 By John Taylor; 2008 Nov 15, 12 Qudrat 165 BE

 As soon as a person becomes a Baha'i and learns the short obligatory prayer, they run across the compound term, "self-subsisting." Evidently somebody tried to look it up in a dictionary, did not find it, and complained to the Universal House of Justice. As always, the supreme institution handed the answer off to its research department. The researcher replied,

 "In your second letter, you have stated that the term `self-subsisting', which Baha'u'llah often uses to characterize God, `means nothing' in the English language. It is likely that this term signifies in some way a basic concept of the Faith; namely, that creation is an emanation from God, without Whose continuing bounty and grace it would cease to exist.

 "The term thus underscores the immense contrast between our reality, which is related to the contingent world, and His reality which is independent of any cause and which entirely transcends the world of being. Indeed, the point is that He is the Cause of being itself. There is a way to deduce such a meaning, however, solely from the common meaning of the words." (letter from UHJ Research Department, 21 January 1993, http://www.bahai-library.com/file.php?file=uhj_translation_subsisting)

 In other words, then, the dictionaries available at the World Centre apparently do not have the term "self-subsisting" in them either. The UHJ RD's anonymous author simply looks up the separate words "self" and "subsist."

 "According to its primary dictionary definition, "to subsist" means to have existence, to persist or continue. The addition of "self" makes it reflexive. Knowing just these two things, can we not then say that if God is self-subsisting it means that there is nothing other than Himself upon which He depends for His continuing existence? In other words, He exists in and of Himself without being dependent on any other cause: He has no creator and there is nothing prior to Him."

 Fortunately, we have better tools available now than way back in 1993. A microsecond after I typed "define: self-subsisting" into Google, a dictionary entry responded: "see self-subsistent." As soon as you look up `self-subsistent' an overwhelming cornucopia of definitions fills your screen. The Guardian's choice of the present participle apparently throws people off the scent, even at the World Centre. A cursory look at the definition reveals that "self-subsistent" is the English form of an ancient philosophic term going back to Aristotle and beyond. It means quite a bit more than just "self" and "subsist" stuck together, even reflexively.

 We get the word "substance," for example, from the scholastic term, "Res Ex Tensa," literally, thing reaching out, or more commonly, extended matter. From that we get "substance," literally standing under, the reality that holds up what the senses perceive. Subsistence, in short, is part of an extremely complex and sophisticated set of concepts that, like modern physics I forget several seconds after I learn it, if in fact I understand it in the first place. Could it be that Shoghi Effendi chose that confusing present participle "self-subsisting" to emphasize a self-subsistent beyond the bounds of time that transcends past and future? As it has been understood historically, subsistence does refer more to matter than to time, and since Einstein we know that space and time are two sides of one coin.

 At the end of this post, I will include the balance of the UHJ RD's letter. Briefly, it warns that spiritual understanding does not depend on scholarly learning. Then, strangely in view of the fact that the enquirer is challenging the Guardian's choice of terminology, it goes on to talk about overcoming the difficulties that the average person has with his literary style.

 I am hardly qualified to talk about a specialist term of metaphysics authoritatively, but I want to look over how "self-subsistent" has been used by some great thinkers. In his Physics, Aristotle says,

 "Some, as the Pythagoreans and Plato, make the infinite a principle in the sense of a self-subsistent substance, and not as a mere attribute of some other thing."

 Aristotle's reference to his predecessors points to a difference between self-subsistent as a term in itself and certain other synonyms such as "principle" or "independent." Self-subsistent is something that does not have substance -- other things standing under it, or standing under other things -- it is in fact it own substance or essence. This was brought out by Plato's dalliance with forms, things in themselves. In the sixth chapter of the Republic, for example, pictures the Good as a sun that illuminates the world -- ordinary substance is the flickering light in the cave, while self-subsistence radiates all with its own light. Good with a capital "g" is a different order of existence from good with a small "g". This is the difference between having an attribute of goodness and being the essence of Good itself. Aristotle refers to this indirectly in the Nichomachean Ethics,

 "Now some thought that apart from these many goods there is another which is self-subsistent and causes the goodness of all these as well." (paragraph 5)

 Plato dropped calling the self-subsistent by the inanimate sounding word "form," perhaps because once you get this high above us on the chain of being it is counterproductive to think of it as an "it" rather than a "He" or a "She." For example, Baha'u'llah personifies it when He says,

 "Tear asunder the veils of human learning lest they hinder thee from Him Who is My name, the Self-Subsisting." (Summons, 56, 1.106)

 Aristotle brings up "self-subsistent" at least four times in the Metaphysics, but I am so intimidated by that book that will leave it aside. It would only strain my brain, tire my readers and bring us further from where we wish to be with this.

 Self-subsistence plays a central role in Cartesian philosophy, and I must admit that that is where I was familiar with the term. I did not realize until today how important it was in Greek philosophy too.

 Ever since I read Descartes I understood the short obligatory prayer as having me declare that God, as a Self-Subsisting Being, is His own substance, His own cause, the ground of His own Being. The Godhead is thus utterly unlike all other kinds of stuff, whose base of being is always external. In prayer, I mirror that condition of being too, where my thought reflects and is the outcome of my own essence. Hence the Hidden Word, which would have us turn unto ourselves and "find God standing within, Mighty, Powerful and Self-Subsisting." (AHW 60) I remember being annoyed when, back in the 1980's, a Creole translation of the Short Obligatory prayer said "Self-Sustaining" instead of Self-Subsisting.

 A bit more about the Cartesian idea of self-subsistence.

 Descartes agreed with the schoolmen, who on other points opposed him, that the mind is a "thinking substance," and the external world an "extended substance." Spinoza held that strictly speaking, though, the self of God is the only real substance, since the word "substance" itself means standing under or outside.

 "In Spinoza's view, Descartes came close to a correct understanding of God when he said that, strictly speaking, he was the only substance, since he was the only being which was entirely self-subsistent (or cause of itself in Spinoza's terminology). But for Spinoza, we must always speak strictly, and it is not good enough to say that (an) extended thing and thinking thing are substances in some secondary sense. They are not substances at all, if substance is defined in terms of its self-subsistence. Consequently, it makes no sense to say that God created two substances (or kinds of substance) characterised by the attributes of thought and extension, which are somehow existentially separate from him, even if still dependent on him for their continued existence. Instead we have to say that thought and extension are attributes of God himself." (http://www.philosophy.leeds.ac.uk/GMR/resources/summaries/spinoza/spinsum.html)

 The Quran, distinctively from the Western philosophic tradition, emphasizes creation as an act of Will. The Bab and Baha'u'llah follow this lead. Seeing creation as willed means that "self-subsisting" is God's condition of willing existence out of His own Nature.

 This is a different kind of Self-Subsisting.

 In an essay I wrote on 24 June, 2006, called "Notes on an Unnamed Tablet of the Bab, Inner meaning of the principle of Oneness of God" I talked about how important self-subsistence is for the Bab's concept of "Manifestation." Another essay on this Badi' Blog talked about "self-subsisting" in the Writings of the Bab, where it seems to express the birthing or fruition period between the creative missions of the Manifestations,

 The Bab also began the Book of Names with a tree metaphor ... He carried it further, even calling himself by the appellation "Tha," the first letter in 'Thamarih' or fruit, following through on this idea that each Revelation is the fruit or consummation of the tree of all previous Teachings. He addresses Baha'u'llah, the first "manifester," as opposed to prophet, in the following terms,

 "This is an epistle from the letter 'Tha' unto Him Who will be made manifest through the power of Truth -- He Who is the All-Glorious, the Best Beloved -- to affirm that all created things as well as myself bear witness for all time that there is none other God but Thee, the Omnipotent, the Self-Subsisting; that Thou art God, there is no God besides Thee and that all men shall be raised up to life through Thee." (The Bab, Selections, 2)

 In a word, the Bab taught that what is past is prophesy, what is future is Manifest. ("Some Primal Points About Trees," 21 September, 2004)

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 From the UHJ RD's answer to a question about "self-subsistent" in the Writings:

 "A few comments may serve to provide a perspective in which to view the issues you have raised. First, it is essential to recall that, as we are told in the Writings, the comprehension of the Sacred Writings is not dependent upon scholarship or learning. This should encourage every believer, no matter what his attainments, to delve into the Revelation with determination and confidence. In the Book of Certitude, Baha'u'llah says:

 "The understanding of His words and the comprehension of the utterances of the Birds of Heaven are in no wise dependent upon human learning. They depend solely upon purity of heart, chastity of soul, and freedom of spirit."

 "But, in addition to needing the proper spirit, it requires concentration and meditation to unravel the meanings which lie enshrined in the Revealed Word. Nowadays, however, the lives of most people are busy and crowded with distractions, so it requires great discipline to devote the time, attention and care necessary to study the Teachings in the way they deserve. Deepening is like a skill or art which must be acquired through effort. And, just as there are millions of Christians who would not trade the King James Version of the Holy Bible, once one has caught the flavor of the English translations done by Shoghi Effendi -- or done in the style he developed -- the beauty and power of expression become appealing and inspiring. One comes to fall in love with that style.

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John Taylor
email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/

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