Why Canadians do not move north

A Passage from Grey Owl's "The Men of the Last Frontier."

 

At the Wainfleet Library a few months ago, Tommy and I saw a report by an explorer and local boy. He just got back from exploring for the first time a river that runs into James Bay. In his canoe, alone, he floated by a polar bear. I was inspired by this presentation to buy and read his book about his first expedition to northern Ontario that he made as a teen. Most of this province in the north is a huge swamp, second only to the Amazon as an unexplored vastness. He tells of how he was inspired by the books of Grey Owl, one of the first environmentalist writers.

I happened to have Grey Owl's first book, "The Men of the Last Frontier," in my library, and this prompted me to read it. Here is a passage from that book explaining why this bush country is so tough, why it has never been colonized. If you ever wondered why Canadians hug our Southern Border, or why we do not have large cities in the far north as do the Russians, here is as good an explanation as any I have seen. Needless to say, this author is speaking from direct, personal experience living in this terrible (for humans) wasteland.

 

 

 

Chapter Two; The Land of Shadows

 

In the fastness of this rapidly fading frontier, the last on this continent, reigns the Spirit of the North Land. … Through them the invader must pick his way with the delicacy and assurance of one who walks barefoot amongst naked knives. Some of his weapons are merely annoyances, irritating but bearable; others are harassing to the point of obsession, wearing out the body and mind, and lessening the resisting power of a man; others, yet, bring swift death, or the long slow agonies of those who would die but cannot.

 

A stiff, wiry growth of sage brush, knee-deep and tangled, cumbers the ground over large areas. Mosquitoes, black flies, moose flies, and sand flies in relentless swarms make the forest almost uninhabitable for three months of the four of which the summer consists. The immense inland seas, shallow and exposed, are frequently whipped to fury on short notice, or none at all, by terrific storms, which, gathering force over the height of land, lash these northern latitudes with unbelievable fury. Forest fires, irresistible, all-devouring, sweep at times through the close-set resinous timber at railroad speed, leaving in their wake a devastation of bare hills and smoking stumps; desperate indeed is the plight of the voyageur so trapped far from water. Frequently miles of rapids have to be negotiated, where only the greatest skill and courage, coupled with days at a time of heart-breaking and exhausting labour, can gain the objective.

 

 

 

In winter snow often lies six feet deep in the woods and at the railroad, a hundred or so miles to the south, sixty-five degrees below zero (Fahrenheit) is no uncommon temperature. A rise in temperature often precipitates a blizzard, and these winter storms are so violent as to destroy whole areas of timber by sheer weight alone; the solitary trapper caught on the trail by one of these tempests, with little or no warning, especially if crossing any large lake, is in grave danger. His dogs, blinded and half-choked by the wind-driven masses of snow, cannot face the storm. Himself unable to break trail through the mounting drifts, or to keep his direction through the whirling white wall that surrounds him at the distance of a few feet, he may, if far from land, perish miserably.

 

Perhaps, wisely relying on his dogs to lead him ashore, he may, if lucky, find wood and shelter enough for his protection. A broken axe handle under these conditions would be not only an inconvenience, but a disaster with probably fatal results. Here, with his toboggan sheet for a windbreak, a bed of hastily laid brush, and a pile of wood sufficient to do all night, gathered with infinite labour, he can make some kind of a stand to live out the storm.

 

The howling wind fills his shelter with blinding smoke, and the fire only serves to melt the snow as it accumulates on blankets, food and clothing, wetting everything; cooking is impossible, and content with a pail of tea and perhaps some thawed-out fish intended for dog feed, he and his shivering huskies crouch by the fire all the long night. And often enough the cold light of morning breaks on a Shelter half-filled with drifting snow, a fire long since extinguished, and a pack of whining wolf-dogs waiting in vain to be harnessed up, later to run wild with the wolves.

 

From Grey Owl, The Men of the Last Frontier, Macmillan, Toronto, 1931, pages 35-37

This book can be downloaded at: http://www.archive.org/details/menofthelastfron013925mbp

Thoughts about the Peter Principle

Wisdom Before Justice

 

By John Taylor; 2011 Feb 24, Mulk 18, 167 BE

 

 

The Peter Principle and "Unsought Appointment."

 

Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull, "The Peter Principle, Why Things Always Go Wrong," William Morrow and Company, New York, 1969

 

I just finished reading once more a book that was a bestseller in my formative years, "The Peter Principle, Why Things Always Go Wrong." I remember stumbling across it in the Ancaster High School library. Since it was, ostensibly, a humor book, I gobbled it right down. However, the book also had, it seemed to me, a message that was both original and serious. The questions it deals with still fascinate me, so several months ago I pulled a copy of the Peter Principle that I had bought in a used book sale down off my bookshelves and slowly went over it again.

 

The Peter Principle, you will recall, is the observation by a "hierarchologist," a self-styled student of hierarchies, that workers always rise to the level of their own incompetence and then stay there. No matter how skilled or dedicated they may be, good workers will be promoted in their organization until they hit the brick wall of their own imperfection. If we were perfect in every way there would be no Peter Principle. Humans would just rise and rise forever until, like helium released into the atmosphere, we would soar right on out into space.

 

 

 

But nobody is perfect. We all know that. Human talent is more like hot air; we rise up into the chilly upper levels of earth's atmosphere, start to cool down and sink back down again. No matter how brilliant we may be and no matter how those around us may seek to recognize the value of our contribution and reward us with promotions, the job we do will change around us until we are called upon to do something that we are not good at.

 

Then we either sink or, in an organization, stick just where we are. We have risen to the level of our incompetence. The book lists the many elaborate and often amusing coping strategies that incompetent workers adopt in order to distract from or cover up the fact that they no longer can do what they are called upon to do in their organization.

 

Peter illustrates his point about rising to the level of one's incompetence with an organizational chart in the form of an isosceles triangle. A small number of leaders head up the organization near the pointy top of the triangle. Under them are the vast majority of support workers, most of whom reside near the bottom line. Normally, anyone who rises from the bottom to the top will hit his or her level of incompetence long before they get anywhere near the summit. That means that only incompetents are going to head up any organization.

 

 

One traditional way of getting around this problem is to draw an arbitrary horizontal line two thirds of the way up the triangle. This is known as aristocracy. An aristocratic society in effect draws an artificial line beyond which no member of the working class can cross, no matter how qualified or brilliant they may be at what they do. Only members of the nobility are allowed to take positions at higher levels of management.

 

One might expect that organizations following this practice would collapse in a second.

 

But, Peter points out, it actually worked very well for a long time, thanks to his Peter Principle. The horizontal line (also known as a glass ceiling) had the advantage of assuring that competent workers below the line did not always rise to their level of incompetence. Bad for their career path, but good for the organization. Meanwhile, a fresh talent pool was introducing new workers into the upper levels, many of whom did not have the time to rise to the level of their incompetence before they reached the point of the triangle. This meant that leaders in the higher reaches of an organization often knew what they were doing.

 

 

Here is an example from history that Laurence J. Peter does not use, but I think it works. In the First World War, only aristocrats (who had a monopoly on university educations) were allowed to be promoted in the army beyond a certain rank. This worked as long as the military stayed at a steady size. However, as hostilities broke out millions of new soldiers entered the war. There were many more positions available for generals and other brass. The aristocracy's talent pool suddenly was, relatively speaking, much smaller. In this much larger organization, there was ample opportunity for aristocrats to rise to the level of their incompetence. Thousands of upper class twits could think of nothing better than sending millions of soldiers forward to be slaughtered in the no-man's-land between the trenches.

 

By the time the Second World War rolled around, lessons were learned. The glass ceiling was smashed, the line of privilege crossing the triangle erased. Generals were better prepared and were promoted strictly according to merit. Yet the slaughter was far worse in the Second World War than in the first, even if you count the flu bug that killed millions just after WWI. What was going on? Sure, killing technology was more advanced in the second conflict, and civilians were targeted along with combatants, but the fact remains, the better soldiers are at their job, the worse off we all are.

 

 

In effect, what had come about was a sort of meta-Peter's Principle. Organizations rise to the level of their incompetence as well as individuals. The better an organization is at its job, the more likely it is that it will be promoted to a position where it is ill suited to solve the problem set before it.

 

This is what happened in ancient Athens, which started off being run by tribes. A tribe, like many nationalist organizations today, is a monolithic ethnocracy, an organization based on similar outlook and training.

 

Leaders in a tribe rise to their incompetence based on identical backgrounds, the same language, culture, etc. For a long time, Athens got nowhere fast, ridden by tyrannies and tribalism. Its tribes or family groups consisted of hundreds of fighting organizational triangles, and there was no way between them. They fought with one another and created nothing but noise and strife. Athens was in an impossible situation. Then, Cleisthenes came up with a master stroke, the brilliant idea of drawing a line across the top of the triangle of their organizational chart.

 

This arbitrary line they called the Demes.

 

A Demes was a sort of district or neighbourhood. Once the new line was drawn, the tribe was no longer the only way to advance in the Athenian hierarchy. A citizen was identified by Demes, not family group; in order to vote, you used your name and the Demes in which you lived. In this way, a new, inter-tribal talent pool was created. Nobody had heard of a Demes before Cleisthenes, but it did not matter.

 

Having that Demes line drawn made the creativity of Athens possible. Not least of this was the invention of democracy. In fact, that is what Demes means, etymologically, a common population, a People Place, a grouping based on location rather than genes. The Demes was a district or place where members of tribes walked out of their triangle of tribalism and became something new: people, citizens, cosmopolitans. The world has never been the same since.

 

As I finished The Peter Principle I was reminded more and more of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Christ was teaching the same thing with this story. It is a sort of ethical Peter Principle. If you want to do something truly moral, the parable teaches, do it to somebody outside your usual organization, your normal point of reference. Do good to an outsider, as the man in the parable did to a beaten and robbed Samaritan lying half dead on the road. From here, from acts like this, from shots in the dark come real ethical competency. Such acts have a spiritual effect far beyond the outward action. Do good, but not only in your own group to those with the same training and ways of thinking. Go outside the box, into the void where there are no rewards or punishments, go to wherever your own sense of what is right can be the only referent. Do it in the name of compassion, and do it for knowledge. For, "the heaven of divine wisdom is illumined by the twin luminaries of consultation and compassion." Here abides true moral competence.

 

 

In effect, extending succor to the Samaritan draws a line across the void, like the Demes did in Athens. It is no coincidence that once the arbitrary Demes line was drawn on the triangle of the Athenian organizational chart, a certain wise man arose, the father of philosophy. Socrates was the first in history to define clearly just what wisdom is. Socrates recognized, openly, honestly, that he had no knowledge of what wisdom is.

 

Yet the Oracle of Delphi chose him, saying, "There is none wiser." His elevation to this station was not sought, it came from outside. Already, in terms of the Peter Principle, Socrates was utterly incompetent. He himself saw that he had reached his level of incompetence, yet he pointed it out and said to one and all,

 

"This, our own ignorance, is what we should deal with first. Start with what you do not know, not with what you do know or, to speak more accurately, what you think you know. Begin by recognizing that we have no sure knowledge of the most important things (including God Himself). Then, deal with it. Begin by starting an enquiry with all, groups and individuals, and try to find out together what wisdom is. No individual will ever know the answer, but as long as we see our limitations, in our group mind maybe we can attain to wisdom. Only with such dialectic cutting across organizations will wisdom lay the groundwork for justice."

 

This is why, I think, Baha'u'llah depicts justice and wisdom as two parts of a single procession. Wisdom goes on like a flag tilted up, before the march of a just king. Only after him does justice bring up the rear. He says,

 

"Blessed is the king who marcheth with the ensign of wisdom unfurled before him, and the battalions of justice massed in his rear. He verily is the ornament that adorneth the brow of peace and the countenance of security." (Baha'u'llah, Tablets, Lawh-i-Maqsud, 164-165, Gl. 219)

 

Why wisdom first, before leadership, before justice? I think it is because heart and mind lead the body. Justice is force, reward and punishment. However, the sanctions of justice are only for those who transgress. Wisdom is love and words of love, and these are always in the van. Wisdom is learning, consultation, and it is actions of love, compassion, as Baha'u'llah tells us. Wisdom is preventive medicine. It dissipates wrongs before they can take place by washing away the cause, ignorance, the folly of imagining we are adequately competent. This is why the House of Justice so often refers to "unsought appointment" as a distinguishing mark of the Cause. They wrote,

 

"It is solely by the process of free election or by unsought appointment that the members of the institutions of this Order are assigned to their positions in it. There is no profession in either the teaching of the Faith or its administration for which one can train or to which a believer can properly aspire." (Universal House of Justice, 1992 Dec 10, Issues Related to Study Compilation)

 

For the House of Justice an entire army of the wise, of latter-day Socrates, must go on before, laying the groundwork, setting up the wisdom that is needed in order for justice, the titular, eponymous goal of the House, to be codified, promulgated and enforced. If everybody were as honest about their limitations as Socrates and a true Baha'i are, then nobody would be promoted beyond their competence. All appointments and promotions would be unsought, because all would fear going beyond their own limits. Such is the fear of God.

 

The energy for this moral courage comes from the love created by the suffering of the Manifestation himself. Baha'u'llah declared that although He Himself did not seek the high position of leadership, He still suffered more from the heedless followers of the Bab than any Manifestation before Him or after,

 

"On every side We witness the menace of their spears, and in all directions We recognize the shafts of their arrows. This, although We have never gloried in any thing, nor did We seek preference over any soul." (Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan, p. 249)

 

It is in memory of this unsought appointment by our Lord that we His followers seek not to seek any distinctions but those of the spirit.

Just back from Louhelen

Be Kind to Your Institutional Friends

By John Taylor; 2011 Feb 22, Mulk 16, 167 BE

 

We just got back from our weekend at Louhelen Baha'i School, and after that a short visit to my brother, who also lives in Michigan.

 

While browsing in the bookstore, I happened to come across a statement by the House of Justice to the effect that our society has many prejudices against institutions, and that we, as Baha'is, need to fight against any tendency to "dis" institutions per se. I was very impressed with this brief thesis. Yes, we do put down institutions. What a great book it would make if somebody expanded upon that thesis! Maybe such a book has already been written, I do not know. I hope that my learned readers will point one out to me.

 

 

I immediately bought the book in which I had stumbled across this idea and started reading it from the start. It is: "Messages from the UHJ, 1986-2001, The Fourth Epoch of the Formative Age." I have not yet reached the exact passage that impressed me. However, a search through Ocean just now uncovered a very similar passage from the Guardian, also cited by the House. It evidently is from an unpublished letter by the Guardian, (since it is the only location turned up by Ocean).

 

"Our present generation, mainly due to the corruptions that have been identified with organizations, seem to stand against any institution. Religion as an institution is denounced. Government as an institution is denounced. Even marriage as an institution is denounced. We Baha'is should not be blinded by such prevalent notions. If such were the case, all the divine Manifestations would not have invariably appointed someone to succeed Them. Undoubtedly, corruptions did enter those institutions, but these corruptions were not due to the very nature of the institutions but to the lack of proper directions as to their powers and nature of their perpetuation. What Baha'u'llah has done is not to eliminate all institutions in the Cause but to provide the necessary safeguards that would eliminate corruptions that caused the fall of previous institutions. What those safeguards are is most interesting to study and find out and also most essential to know." (Shoghi Effendi, quoted in: The Universal House of Justice, 1988 Dec 29, Individual Rights and Freedoms, p. 6)

 

So, if anybody writes such a book, they would automatically have a blurb from the Guardian, saying that this issue is "most essential to know" about.

 

This idea that we are unfairly putting down institutions had a special impact on me because, coincidentally, just before we left I had been auditing a book called, "The Company," a history of corporations by a couple of writers from the Economist Magazine.

 

 

 

I learned many things, including the fact that non-economic corporations, such as towns, schools and monasteries, are centuries older than the economic corporations who dominate today. The book also points out that economic corporations, which of course are institutions too, often get a bad rap. Sloppy use of statistics makes them appear larger and more powerful than they really are. Often, but not always, they are unfairly demonized. I must admit that I have been guilty of this at times on this blog.

 

I had also been thinking about this statement of the Master, which implies that, bad as backbiting and gossip about an individual is, it is that much worse to attack an institution.

 

"Should ye attribute a mistake to a person, it will be a cause of offense and grief to him - how much greater would this be if it is attributed to a number of people! How often it hath occurred that a slight difference hath caused a great dissension and hath been made a reason for division. ... (Abdu'l-Baha, Tablets, Vol. 1, p. 20)

 

An individual is just one soul, but an institution is composed of many people. Not only that, an institution represents the thoughts and opinions of many more people who are not directly involved in its operations. Often too, the institution serves even greater numbers of people, many of whom depend upon its integrity.

 

 

My first night in Louhelen I awoke thinking, if it is true that institutions are being unfairly put down, how do you love an institution? I remembered how the Master often praised institutions in His public talks. Next time I go through His talks, I should mark examples there where He does praise groups as well as souls.

 

Later, we had a series of drum circles -- a suggested way to supplement one's study circle activities. It was kind of strange, at first, for a non-musical type like me to be banging on a drum or other percussion instrument. Then it became a liberating experience, like a multi-directional conversation where everybody gets to talk and everybody can listen at once to one another, each and all, at once. The good drummers were doing better, of course, but everybody else was contributing. It was a new experience.

Pounding away at my tambourine-like contraption, I thought about what institutional love implies. Yes, soon there will be ways and technologies that will allow institutions to talk directly to the people. Using ARS setups (Audience Response Software is a clicker that allows an entire gathering to respond to questions) an LSA, for example, could engage in a Socratic Dialog with its entire constituency.

 

Never in history has it been possible to establish such a dialog and relationship between two groups like that. And indeed, if you hook up the question and response with some sort of musical activity like this, who can imagine what might happen? What a beautiful love affair will soon begin between institutions and people.

Citizen Physicians

Citizen Physicians

2011 Feb 10, Mulk 04, 167 BE; Citizen Physicians

Precis: An ordered state engages citizens in wisdom. Such is the goal of dialectic. A dialectician is an expert in making questions of right, law and ethics the main concern of popular, routine conversations. Dialectics progresses by experimenting with the logic of law. It tries this logic out in words before law informs action.

 

In the slave owning society of Ancient Athens there were two kinds of doctor, one for slaves and one for free citizens. Slaves had no right to be treated by physicians. Instead, they saw other slaves with experience as aids to trained medical practitioners. Such partly-trained slaves must have acted like field medics, handing out poorly understood remedies in a slapdash manner to all comers. The patients were menials and had no choice but to take the cure and shut up. A physician, by contrast, was expected to get to know his patients personally. Once the ailment was diagnosed, he took the time to explain what was wrong and why a particular therapy was necessary.

 

Plato compared this to political leaders, especially those who write and apply laws. The legal system, he said, is not therapy for free citizens but remedies for slaves. Its laws are arbitrary, handed down from above, along with a threat of violence for non-compliance. Judges mete out punishment with the cursory attention of a slave medic. Worst of all, one hand is tied behind the judge's back, as it were.

 

"...none of our legislators would seem ever to have remarked that they rely wholly on one instrument in their work, whereas there are two available, so far as the mass's lack of education will permit, persuasion and compulsion. Authority is never tempered in their lawmaking with persuasion; they work by compulsion unalloyed." (Laws 722c, Collected Dialogues, p. 1312)

 

There should be long explanations of the laws, which Plato called "preambles," in order to make them palatable to free thinkers. That way, lawmakers would act more like a free citizen's physician preferring persuasion to compulsion, by making laws pleasant and seeing to it that rules and regulations are accepted as enthusiastically as possible.

 

Comenius agrees, citing a Roman writer who said, "You should know that the most righteous thunderbolts are those which are worshipped even by those whom they have struck." (Seneca: Quaestiones Naturales, ii, 12) But love of laws should also be accompanied by knowledge. Such an imperative was central to the Law of Moses. For example, as a prelude to the ten commandments God ordered first of all that laws be discussed routinely, "when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up." (Deut 6:7, WEB) Society should be unstinting in paying workers well for a job well done, and in distributing credit where credit is due. This liberality, Comenius points out, pervades the Bible. For example, he cites: "Give her of the fruit of her hands; Let her works praise her in the gates." (Proverbs, 31:31, WEB) Comenius also noticed that rewards and honours are routinely meted out for sports heroes. Why not do the same for wisdom? The place to start should be in schools. In a section called "special awards for special merits," Comenius wrote,

 

"For if a civilised nation like the Greeks considered it worthwhile to award laurel wreaths and other prizes as an incentive to the prowess of their young men competing on the racetrack and practising physical fitness or skill in armed warfare, surely anything of this kind will be suitable in the arena of wisdom!" (Panorthosia, Ch. 22, Para 30, p. 53)

 

Wisdom can be made more attractive by distributing liberal rewards to all who make wise choices. We therefore should put as many people as possible in a position where they can judge the behaviour of others and distribute rewards for exceptionally good deeds. If we do that, then it would be a society not just of free citizens but also of active, wise physicians.

Cosmopolitan Leadership

Cosmopolitan Leadership; Summation and Prospect

By John Taylor; 2010 Dec 30, Masa'il 19, 167 BE

Panorthosia addresses many questions that are being skipped over in our globalizing but still un-cosmopolitan world. We have gone over Comenius' answer to the question: how do we eliminate corruption, fanaticism and partisan thinking? Other crucial questions are: how would a cosmopolitan leadership involve everyone in universal concerns? Even assuming that we are all sober, balanced, sincere and vigorous citizens, how could we coordinate our efforts efficiently? For reasons of his own, Comenius does not detail in Panorthosia how exactly to go about this. Nor does he even attempt to outline a global plan. Instead, he concentrates on the process, on how to devise the mechanisms for reasonable action at every level of leadership.

As we saw in our discussion of corruption, the most salient feature of Comenius' answer was to separate governance and social organization into three parts, and to distribute the guidance of each semi-independent part to each level of society, starting with that of the individual. The logic is something like this: In our lives every one of us is called upon to avoid the perversion (which literally means "turning away") that gives rise to corruption by facing adequately our three responsibilities and reasons for being: the good of self, that of our environment and our progress through time and space. Once we get that right, we express harmony through three chief relationships, with nature, with our fellow man and with our God.

Earlier I suggested -- in the spirit, I hope, of Comenius -- that open planning software be designed to aid cosmopolitan citizens in maintaining such a balance. This I called steles, automated, interactive displays that would be erected in every important location, starting with one's bedroom and personal work space and proceeding to every crossroads of public intercourse.

Using such steles, every world citizen could work on becoming a more effective contributing member to each of the three guiding institutions, the College of Light, the Dicastery of Peace and the Consistory of Holiness. The college is an institution dedicated to education, science and philosophy, the dicastery to peace and practical politics, and the consistory to ethics, faith and universal existential well-being.

Last essay, "Planning for the Supreme Law," suggested that, once personal good is established by individuals in communion with their stele, the good of the people, that is, of all humanity, be upheld as our universal first principle. This follows a suggestion of Frances Bacon in his essay, "Of Judicature,"

"Judges ought, above all, to remember the conclusion of the Roman Twelve Tables, `Salus populi suprema lex.'"

The welfare of the world's people, then, would become the supreme law not as defined by an unseen, faceless bureaucracy (the welfare state) but as worked out by every healthy world citizen.

In this way we would form a truly cosmopolitan government, not a mere monolith, a supreme autocracy that arbitrarily dominating earth and all its dwellers. Cosmopolitan leadership is not political in the narrow sense that we understand politics today. Instead, its ruling principle is just that, principle, not dictatorial authority. Its division of powers derives from our essential purpose and our three basic relationships, relation with self, with others and with one's God.

Each separate institution acts as a tripod, each leg independent of yet supporting the other two.

Although the members of the continental and world government may at first be appointed, as they become democratically elected these three parliaments will comprise the first institution in history with a comprehensive mandate to oversee the progress of all humans by all humans, comprehensively, everywhere on the planet.

Next time I will look at the Cyclical Decade Plan, a plan that Comenius only hints at but which I think could become the tune to which cosmopolitans sing the song of unification.

Justice Leaks Out

By John Taylor; 2010 Dec 03, Qawl 12, 167 BE

I just started attending an institute on the Baha'i Covenant (the new Book VIII) being held for tutors in my old home town of Ancaster, Ontario. At the same time, I have also been auditing a series of lectures on the history of freedom. This I do, wearing earphones, as I paint part of our basement. At the same time, the news is full of this Wikileaks affair, which, it strikes me, is part of the whole theme of this age, the tension between security and freedom, between obedience and expression, between individual right and social conformity.

Cosmopolitanism, the theme of the book I am trying to write, is all about this very theme, the need for strict rectitude in universals, and a concurrent faith that universals will translate into optimum good for individual souls. This is what Immanuel Kant talked about with his Categorical Imperative, the duty strictly to adhere to duty by turning the implications of the Golden Rule into universal laws. And Baha'u'llah seems to seek the same balance in the Kitab-i-Ahd, the Will and Testament of Baha'u'llah, which is the main concern of Book VIII.

Abdu'l-Baha, in Paris, laid out the Baha'i version of Kant's C.I. with astonishing purity. Although this is not, strictly speaking, Baha'i scripture (the original text in Persian was lost), it is still astonishing that the Master seems to have spoken in such Kantian terms about the need for duty in universal and particular undertakings.

"In the human world there are two kinds of undertakings, universal and particular. The result of every universal undertaking is infinite, and the outcome of every particular undertaking is finite. In this age all the human problems which create a general interest are universal and their results are likewise universal, for humanity has become interdependent."

"Today international laws have great influence, international policies are bringing nations nearer to one another. Therefore it is a general axiom that in the human world every universal affair commands attention, and its results and benefits are limitless; therefore let us say that every universal cause is divine and every special matter is human." (Address by Abdu'l-Baha at the Esperanto Banquet, given at Hotel Moderns in Paris, France, February 12th, 1913, Divine Philosophy, p. 141)

The Master says, "Every universal affair is divine." Think about that, what it implies for the amoral Realpolitik that dominates the international stage today. In effect, the current nationalist mind set turns every universal affair into what Baha'u'llah calls the "metropolis of Satan." Morality is irrelevant, only so called practical matters of competing interest. Compare that cynicism and what the Master says above to what Kant says in his own "peace message" (Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, 1795), which is one of the backbones of my book-in-perpetual-progress, Cosmopolis Earth.

"Since the narrower or wider community of the peoples of the earth has developed so far that a violation of rights in one place is felt throughout the world, the idea of a cosmopolitan right is not fantastical, high-flown or exaggerated notion. It is a complement to the unwritten code of the civil and international law, necessary for the public rights of mankind in general and thus for the realization of perpetual peace." (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant)

The fact that, as Kant points out, civil and international law remains unwritten, that is, that there is no written world constitution, is the great flaw and downfall of our current world.

This is one reason that the Wikileaks affair has gripped me harder than any news event since Watergate, which played out way back when I was in High School. I remember at the time being glued to the television, watching the hearings for days on end, devouring every article in the press about the characters of the senators and lawyers running those senate hearings. They were heroes to me, and the climax came when Richard Nixon resigned. Then he was pardoned and everything went back to normal. I longed to become a lawyer at the time. This chase for justice in high places that seemed to be happening in those hearings seemed the noblest thing in the world.

Only later did I read Noam Chomsky, who pointed out that all that fuss was just a reflection of the fact that the crime committed at the Watergate complex, bugging backroom dealings of members of the Democratic Party -- activities that were themselves highly illegal and scandalous, by the way, but that somehow never got discussed --was committed against powerful people. Nixon had already committed dozens of worse crimes, including out-and-out assassinations, against less powerful groups, but as always that barely merited a headline. Then I felt ashamed to have been sucked into watching what amounted to a show trial that had nothing to do with real justice.

Still, the diplomatic dispatches being released by Wikileaks have many of the elements that made Watergate so compelling. There is the high-tech angle, the fact that the Internet seems to be beyond the clammy claws of censorship -- although some say that censorship is just being delayed and privatized. There is the fact that powerful officials of the American superpower are being flouted in the same way that outliers are, the sort of schlep they openly torture and routinely kill as an object lesson to the powerless.

There is the secrecy angle, the fact that although only about six percent of these dispatches were officially secret, so pervasive is the cloak and dagger culture that it is provoking the most comical reactions, including apparatchiks threatening employees and potential employees of the State Department that if they dare read any of the leaks they are doomed, even if the leak mentions them, or in fact was written by themselves. One Canadian stooge even suggested sending a cruise missile against Julian Assange, the head of Wikileaks -- let no American claim that they have a monopoly on whackos.

Then there are the actual revelations, which are not insubstantial in the skullduggery they uncover. The loss in America of the right of habeas corpus is a grave one, a loss for every human being, and the leaks show that the spooks are taking full advantage of their new powers. They flout the law by secretly transporting terror suspects beyond borders. In one case, a German national with the same name as a terrorist was transported to Pakistan and tortured for months. Then, when the blunder was undeniable, the U.S. Secretary of State had to intervene before the C.I.A. did what they were inclined to do, rub him out with extreme prejudice to cover up the embarrassment permanently. This is criminality at the highest levels. It of course will go unpunished, as always.

Such wrongdoing is an outward symptom of a deeper cancer. You cannot engage in the behavior that the international order demands of its minions without soiling yourself, without losing all your better principles and ideals, without sinking in the ordure floating around you. The biggest secret that these over-secretive officials and heads of state are keeping is that they have lost their principles. As Kant points out, you may have a personality but you cannot have character without holding to high moral principle.

"Character means that the person derives his rules of conduct from himself and from the dignity of humanity. Character is the common ruling principle in man in the use of his talents and attributes. Thus it is the nature of his will ... A man who acts without settled principles, with no uniformity, has no character. A man may have a good heart and yet no character, because he is dependent upon impulses and does not act according to maxims. Firmness and unity of principle are essential to character." (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant)

I long for the strict moral standard that Kant held up for world statespersons.

I am happy that the information revealed by wikileaks is out in the open so soon. I do not imagine that it will change much but at least it allows future historians to understand the mind set of our cynical leaders. These mistakes are probably the worst of any generation of leaders, ever. This generation of leaders (and followers) are willfully ignoring climate change, the most basic threat to our survival. They are therefore putting the human race in the gravest peril. Speaking of recent climate talks, George Monbiot put it very well,

"What all this means is that there is not a single effective instrument for containing manmade global warming anywhere on earth. The response to climate change, which was described by Lord Stern as a result of the greatest market failure the world has seen, is the greatest political failure the world has ever seen." (http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/09/20/the-process-is-dead/)

It is frightening. In spite of all the affected concern for security, there is no single instrument for basic justice anywhere on earth ... other than the Universal House Justice, of course, which, as its name implies, is all about universalizing justice. And their true splendor will not shine for all to see until we all see the light and form a world government.

Paul Farmer, Doctor in Haiti

On Haiti and the Day of the Covenant

By John Taylor; 2010 Nov 28, Qawl 06, 167 BE

Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains, Random House Trade Paperbacks, New York, 2003

Long ago I read Tracy Kidder's early book about the computer company Data General, one of his first books. Then Kidder turned to themes that were less interesting to me. At our library's annual summer book sale, I came across a recent book by Kidder, called Mountains Beyond Mountains. It is about Paul Farmer, an amazingly saintly American doctor in Haiti who learned Creole, then in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere invented techniques for controlling difficult-to-handle diseases like tuberculosis and AIDS.

Until he came along everybody thought it was impossible to deal with them in a poor country, and planners blithely left the world's most destitute to die in the dirt. Aside from the ethical issues, this unthinking lack of policy let the disease spread unchecked, and it inevitably spread to what really matters in the minds of rich planners, home, in rich countries.

So effective is Farmer the doctor's approach that it is now the model for epidemiology around the world. What Farmer and his organization, Partners in Health, do is they train local talent to work in their health clinics. They go out on house calls to the homes of anybody who gets sick and, if they judge their situation desperate enough, they see to it that they get a job, a new house, whatever it takes to assure that they will actually take their treatment in its full course, and that they get better before the disease can spread further. This targeted approach nips epidemics in the bud, and takes a major swipe at the scum of poverty as well.

Farmer's approach is now standard practice.

He took the technique to the prisons of Russia (which had become breeding grounds of TB). This proved that Haiti was not an isolated case. His approach works anywhere, it is transferable. This eventually persuaded "smart charity" groups like the Gates Foundation and that of George Soros to finance it around the world.

The local, community-building approach of Paul Farmer reminded me of our local, non-Baha'i Persian physician in Dunnville, Reza Kazemi, who has started a community based organic farm. Every week I go there and pick up fresh veggies from the farm. Anyway, after I finished reading Kidder's book, I passed my copy on to Reza to read.

Since I am fascinated with democracy, I chose the following amusing incident that took place when Paul Farmer was in Russia, trying to arrange a loan to pay for TB drugs for prisoners there.

The chief of the Russian doctors -- a colonel -- laughed. A woman doctor said gravely, "We have lots of TB and no labs." More toasts, more vodka. The colonel reached in his pocket, began to take a pack of cigarettes from it, then paused and asked Farmer,

"Is America a democracy?"

Paul's face grew serious.

"I think whenever a people has enormous resources, it is easy for them to call themselves democratic. I think of myself more as a physician than as an American. Ludmilla and I, we belong to the nation of those who care for the sick. Americans are lazy democrats, and it is my belief, as someone who shares the same nationality as Ludmilla, I think that the rich can always call themselves democratic, but the sick people are not among the rich."

I thought he was done, but he was only pausing for the interpreter to catch up.

"Look, I'm very proud to be an American. I have many opportunities because I'm American. I can travel freely throughout the world, I can start projects, but that's called privilege, not democracy."

As Farmer had talked, the colonel's face had begun showing signs of exertion. Now he let his laughter out. He said,

"But I only wanted to know if you would permit me to smoke a cigarette."

Goldfarb made a face.

"Paul. He wanted to know if he could smoke, and you gave heem a speech on socialism and democracy."

"But the speech was marvelous," said the colonel, smiling at Farmer, who seemed on the verge of falling asleep.

Goldfarb turned to the colonel. "Tomorrow Paul will represent your interests at the World Bank."

Farmer shook himself alert.

"The only thing wrong, I don't think it should be a loan. But for the international community of healers it will be a good thing.

"I pray," he put his hands together in a steeple, "that it will go well." (Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder Random House Trade Paperbacks, New York, p. 229)

I have expressed this opinion before on this blog: if we had real and open democracy, without candidature, if there were any justice in the world (this is just two ways of saying the same thing), then Paul Farmer (and others of his moral caliber) would be elected to the parliament of the Americas, even if he did not "run" for office. Once you get people like him representing us all, then you would see government start doing good, start being good. Farmer is the perfect choice for office. First of all, his activism follows the divine principle of "go for the greatest need." That is why God chose the places that He did to receive His Manifestations.

That, consciously or not, is why Farmer chose to concentrate on Haiti.

Go to the poorest, treat them, and if it works there the treatment will work anywhere. To prove oneself capable of office, one must do so by helping the poorest, most desperate place. Anybody who does not succeed, or does not try, is a poseur, unworthy of the high station of leadership.

For another blogger's view of this book, go to:

http://eileens52review.blogspot.com/2010/03/book-8-mountains-beyond-mountains.html

Three Temporal Loves

by John Taylor; 2010 Nov 17, Qudrat 14, 167 BE

God as Conservative, Liberal and Progressive

The nature of time is such that people orient themselves around three possible worldviews, each of which is rooted in the past, the present or the future. Conservatism is all about the past, liberalism the present and progressivism the future. In essence, each is a type or phase of love. Each is love playing itself out at a certain beat to the dance of time.



Conservatives Love What is Dead and Gone

Those who put the past first tend to be conservative. Conservatism is concerned with the ghost of culture past. It takes on the daunting challenge of learning from the experience of the Great Majority (it is estimated that, in spite of the recent spurt in human population, at least seven persons lived and died in the past for everyone living today). A conservative wants to carry the lessons of history into both present and future. Unless we do that, there will be no good at present or the future.

The prototypical agent of conservatism is the teacher. Many teachers, indeed perhaps most teachers may be liberal or progressive in personal taste and outlook, but professionally their burden is to see to it that the essentials in past knowledge are not lost. Imagine what would happen if all teaching and learning somehow stopped today. There would be a sudden collapse of civilization followed by a massive die-off. If any humans survive at all, they would be hunter-gatherers numbered in thousands rather than, as now, billions.

Who wants to be a conservative?

Conservatism is attractive to the powerful, anyone insulated from questions of brute survival. A conservative tends to be wealthy, since the rich are free to make many minor decisions in the here and now, choices that are rarely matters of life and death, at least not for themselves. Conservatives are happy with how life is treating them. They have enjoyed a prosperous life in the past and have secure prospects for the future. Anyone content with where they come from and where they are going will tend to be conservative. This is why conservatives tend to be older, and usually come from the dominant culture and speak the language of the majority. For them, the greater part of the struggle for influence and hegemony is already won.

What is the Conservative Value?

I think that wisdom is the great value that conservatism teaches. As one ancient philosopher puts it,

"Wisdom is a condition in a being that possesses repose. Think what happens when one has accomplished the reasoning process; as soon as we have discovered the right course, we cease to reason. We rest because we have come to wisdom." (Plotinus, qi Wisdom, Mortimer Adler, the Great Ideas, p. 939)

Liberals Love the Here and Now

The characteristic ability of intelligent beings is the exercise of free will. No decisions, no rational mind. If one cannot decide freely and independently, one is not entirely human. Decisions, right, wrong or indifferent, are part of our very reason for being. Our goal in life is to express ourselves, to exercise our personal freedom, and by that means to become fulfilled.

And when are decisions arrived at? Right now. Spend your time with the ghost of time present. That is the only time when it is ever possible to exercise the will. It is impossible to decide about what happened before or about what we think may come about sooner or later. That is why we ought to adore the present most of all. We should maximize what can be changed in the here and now. If everybody makes a sound free choice now, all other goods must come together for the best. Look to what is important at this moment and past and future will take care of themselves. Try to make free choice the default for every issue, for each social concern.

They tend to be individualists, happiest when alone with their own thoughts, living a solitary life of the mind. Personal choices matter more than socially derived decisions, if only because the latter cannot be done at this instant while social mores take a long time to determine. Like a ponderous, slow-turning supertanker, group decisions take even longer to alter course.

Who wants to be a liberal?

Liberalism is attractive to those who did not inherit great goods or lands from their ancestors, to anybody who is not nostalgic and has few memories, good or bad. That is, to youth. The decisions of the young have the greatest, longest lasting results. The old have already made the most important long-term choices, for better or worse.

Liberalism is also attractive to intellectuals. The learned are not heavily invested in past goods or future windfalls. They discount as uncertain the prospect of better things to come. Thought is more real than memories or expectations. They are confident that knowledge can make up for shortfalls in past or future. They delight in abstractions, look down on worldly goods and are willing to invest everything in the fleeting will-o-the-wisp that is the present moment.

What is the Liberal Value?

The virtue for liberals is justice, for what good is a decision if it is not the right decision? Justice takes in all other virtues, except for the conservative virtue, wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to see what was right in the past, justice is what is right at the moment. It is, as Baha'u'llah puts it, a kind of torch to be shone on what is right now.

"The light of men is Justice. Quench it not with the contrary winds of oppression and tyranny. The purpose of justice is the appearance of unity among men." (Baha'u'llah, Tablets, 66-7, Kalimat-i-Firdousiyyih, 6th leaf)

Progressives Love What is Coming Our Way

The belief in progress assumes that things now are better than they were, and we can make our future better than things are now. The future is the soul of past and present; whether we want to or not, we only see the past or the present in terms of what good it will do in future. Anyone who accepts such presuppositions as valid -- or at least desirable -- will value the future more than the past or present. Forced to make a choice, they will pick the future.

Progressivism, then, is a kind of optimism. However, a progressive does more than idly hope for a better future. He or she works to assure that the best is yet to come. Furthermore, a progressive believes that we spend our time most productively if we are anticipating future good and ameliorating what we have now. This means sacrificing what we had in the past and what we have now for future benefit. This is not easy to do. It is far easier for a progressive to show cowardice, to drop out or slip into hypocrisy than for a conservative or liberal.

Who wants to be a progressive?

Progressives have often had a miserable past. They tend to be excluded from participating in decision making in the here and now. They have good reason to invest everything in the future. The poor majority of humanity, I think, are progressives. Hence the saying, "Blessed are the poor." God is a progressive. The supreme example of a progressive is the Manifestation of God. Baha'u'llah said, "My object is none other than the betterment of the world and the tranquillity of its peoples." (Gl 286)

What is the progressive's virtue?

When we have wisdom and justice established in heart and mind, we can turn towards our ultimate purpose, the love of progress. Baha'u'llah makes it abundantly clear that whereas in the dispensation of Christ "God is love," today in effect, God is progress. The virtues that progressivism calls for are, socially, wisdom and justice. But for the individual, they are the "female" virtues of dignity, forbearance, mercy, compassion and Muhabat, or loving-kindness.

"All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization. The Almighty bearest Me witness: To act like the beasts of the field is unworthy of man. Those virtues that befit his dignity are forbearance, mercy, compassion and loving-kindness towards all the peoples and kindreds of the earth." (Baha'u'llah, Gleanings, CIX, p. 215)

Beyond Monolithic Power

By John Taylor; 2010 Oct 01, Mashiyyat 05, 167 BE

John Amos Comenius proposed that we consciously make power structures diverse and inherently decentralized, in accordance with the dictum of Christ to "call no man master" or father, only our Father in heaven. Otherwise, power is unrestrained as a cancer; it becomes an idol by arrogating to itself the absoluteness of God. And, as we saw in Plato's teaching last time, absolute or disproportionate power inevitably results in corruption. Because of this constant danger, we must see ourselves as servants to all humanity, remove all emphasis on individual, charismatic leaders and subsume narrow loyalties to universal ones.

Comenius would have all educated comprehensively, trained as world citizens comfortable with each of the big three human needs, our need for contact with nature, for contact with others and contact with God. Each must learn to balance them in all phases of life. No matter how wrapped up in friends, family or work, we still keep a hand in politics, religion and philosophy -- science is too narrow a term, since it does not cover non-natural philosophy and the art of teaching.

"Philosophy deals with books and knowledge and the reasons for things for the purpose of enlightening mankind. Politics deals with rule and authority for the purpose of keeping mankind in order. Religion deals with God and conscience for the purpose of kindling in mankind the flame of faith, charity and hope (or keeping it alight)." (Comenius, Panorthosia, Ch. 13, para 12, p. 205)

This places a heavier burden on individuals than what is expected of us today. Everyone must become, in effect, a Renaissance Man. Instead of being either a "man of faith" or a "man of science" or a "man of action," a Comenian world order lays all three responsibilities on our shoulders. What is more, every individual initiative or group enterprise requires all three, knowledge (science), volition (faith) and action (politics).

It would be impossible for everybody to excel at all three -- by definition. However, we have a duty at least to keep a hand in each; parents and teachers should make each generation more competent and concerned with them than the generation that came before. Otherwise, corruption will set in. Leaders and experts will be prone to becoming unbalanced, narrow, parochial and overspecialized. The general public will be susceptible to fanaticism, fundamentalism and distorted worldviews.

The Abdication of Homo Universalis

I called an early draft of this chapter, "The Plan of a Renaissance Man," but moderns are uncomfortable with the generic sense of "man" that was fashionable in Comenius' day. Today, "man" is commonly misunderstood as excluding women and children. So I looked up the term, "Renaissance Man." Various synonyms turned up, including "jack of all trades," "generalist," "polymath" and "Homo Universalis." "Polymath" and the others describe someone who achieves prominence in several areas of knowledge; it describes a kind of knowing that is more technical than what Comenius had in mind for the world citizen. The most comprehensive term seems to be "Homo Universalis," which does not have sexist overtones. It is also a Latin term, and that is appropriate since Comenius wrote mostly in Latin, although he himself would probably have preferred his own Latin neologism, "pansophism," or universal wisdom. He believed that only by concentrating upon on wisdom in its most universal guise can we strike the needed balance. Still, I will use the term "Homo Universalis" because it is more widely understood today than "pansophist."

The ideal of Homo Universalis is all but lost in modern times. Individuals tend to guard their rights jealously, forget social obligations and remain content if government keeps out of their hair. To us, that is what good government means. It is difficult to picture anything else. As a result of this abdication, we are used to living under a monolithic state where politicians jealously guard their own bailiwick.

Politics is the sole, central power and others are dependents. They make the big decisions, and all taxes go to them. Even in a democracy their power is, if not absolutist, at least predominating. In religious matters, the state either withdraws completely from ethics and faith concerns, allowing groups to dissipate their energy by fighting with one another, or it interferes, setting the rights of one religion over all others. Every other expression of human nature, even essentials like science, economics, education and the arts, must go hat in hand to government for financial support.

Tripartite Governance

The distinctive object of Comenius's proposal is to break up the monopoly of the monolithic state by dividing it into at least three parts. This in my opinion is a stroke of genius as revolutionary for human governance as what Copernicus, Darwin or Einstein did for our scientific worldview. Rather than a single world body, a global constitution would institute three parliaments. In accordance with the triple duties of Homo Universalis, these parliaments address each of the three main concerns of human life, enlightenment, ethics and peace.

One parliament he called the "college of light;" its members are charged with the reform of science and education. The second parliament, the "holy consistory," acts as a parliament of religions. Its job is to encourage cooperation among religious groups while removing fundamentalism and interfaith conflict. A third parliament, the "dicastery of peace," addresses the basic purpose of politics, laying the groundwork for peace on earth.

"These will serve as three universal antidotes to the plagues which have afflicted us in the past... For the college of light will purify the light of understanding ... The holy consistory with intent to maintain the zeal for piety will salt ... against elements of moral corruption (such as impiety and hypocrisy). Lastly, the dicastery of peace will keep the whole political world in order, so that no power either succumbs in face of danger to its possessions or degenerates into tyranny by destroying the possessions of others." (Panorthosia, Chapter 25, p. 142)

Thus, in a Comenian democracy all three houses would be independent and equal, yet cooperating closely with the others -- as the "call no man master" principle demands. Each body is elected and raises taxes independently. Constitutional stipulations assure equality and balance among them. Firm legal protections keep one from lording it over the others. In this way, with power divided externally, citizens can be robust, balanced and unified within themselves and society. Homo Universalis will walk through the broad gates of Cosmopolis Earth.

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