Mixed Bag

Mixed Bag

By John Taylor; 2010 Aug 26, Asma 11, 167 BE

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More on Wayfinders

Astrophysics and My Son

Uniqueness and the Master

Prayer is a Dangerous Thing

 

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More on "The Wayfinders"

Lately, I featured here a review of Wade Davis' The Wayfinders, wherein he discusses the latest findings in anthropology, as well as the rapid disappearance of ancient cultures and languages. An anonymous commenter to the Badi' Blog had this to say,

"If even some of these small unknown tribes had a vote in some international forum, it would be interesting to know what fruits their collective wisdom would produce. It reminds me of what an old professor hoped for in the 60's and 70's, as a diplomat, when he witnessed the emergence of many former African colonies. He said that there are no preconditions for being greedy. These small tribes have just as many of those as they have gentle unassuming shamans."

I think the point that Davis is trying to make is not that traditional peoples are morally superior or that they are exempt from normal human failings. Rather it is that their cultures are uniquely valuable, having survived many orders of magnitude longer than the West has. Indeed, the West is straining the limits of ecologies around the world and does not look capable of making it much longer, in spite of its vaunted knowledge and technology.

As for a vote in an international forum, it would be nice if you and I had a vote there, never mind the aboriginals. As yet, democracy is unknown anywhere beyond national borders. Can you name an international institution where people actually have a vote? That astonishing deficit is probably the main reason why we are going to hell on a handrail.

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Astrophysics and My Son

Last night the Taylor nuclear family attended a lecture at the McCallion planetarium at McMaster University. My twelve year old son has been dunning me with questions about black holes, space travel and other astrophysical ideas for so long that I am right sick of giving answers based on very scanty knowledge of an abstruse discipline. It was good to hear an explanation of the stars and their effect on humans throughout history coming from a real astrophysicist. He gave a very brief, clear explanation of what dark matter is, for example.

To my annoyance, at the end I asked Thomas if he had any questions for the expert, and he said, "No." So I asked about Wade Davis's thesis that the Polynesians knew more about navigation than James Cook did with his vaunted astrolabe and the new way of measuring longitude invented by John Harrison. To my surprise, the astrophysicist had heard of it, and gave a clear explanation of what the South Sea Islanders knew at the time as well. I was impressed.

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Uniqueness and the Master

Since the commemoration of the Master's visit to Canada is coming up in September, here is another note about His Western journeys. It is noticeable from His talks that towards the end of His time in America the Master was suddenly concerned to demonstrate what is unique and distinctive about the Baha'i teachings.

In a couple of talks on this subject given in November, 1912, He pointed out that all of the dozen or so Baha'i principles are distinct, not that the ideas were unheard of but rather that they were stuck up like ten poles holding up the tabernacle of a major world religion. The greatest of these distinctions was that signed and sealed Covenant by the Founder of the Faith. It is interesting to note that the Master counted covenant as a principle of the Faith. I suppose that means that we can treat the revelation of Baha'u'llah as a sort of constitution for everything we do, one that is reliable beyond anything before.

I am studying Plato's Laws right now, and in it Plato says, "In very truth to make a legislation or found a society is the perfect consummation of manly excellence." (708e) He goes on to point out that human constitutions are chaotic and inherently flawed because they are always reactions to some problem, accident or circumstance. A flood comes and washes away the old, but the new constitution attempts to solve the problems of the flood, or of the old ways, but not the universal human condition. The uniqueness of the principle of covenant, then, is that God has given us a solution to our spiritual need for this entire age. It is not a reaction to some specific disaster, it is a gift for the next 100,000 years. At last, we do have a perfect constitution. And note, even the super-ancient Aboriginals of Australia only made it to 60,000 years!

I just ran across this segment from the Master's last visit to Paris, not long after leaving America. Here too, he explains the principle of economic equity as a unique feature of Baha'i, qua religion, not qua set of ideas in the history of ideas.

"Baha'u'llah's solution of the social question provides for new laws, but the different social classes are preserved. An artisan remains an artisan; a merchant, a merchant; a banker, a banker; a ruler, a ruler; the different degrees must persist, so that each can render service to the community. Nevertheless, every one has the right to a happy, comfortable life. Work is to be provided for all and there will be no needy ones to be seen in the streets. The vocational labor adjustment provided by Baha'u'llah precludes there being people too poor to have the necessaries of life on the one hand, nor the idle rich on the other. In which sacred book do you find this provided for? Show me!" (Abdu'l-Baha, Divine Philosophy, pp. 83-84)

 

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Plato: The Wrong Kind of Prayer is a Dangerous Thing

Here is a passage from the Laws, which I believe is Plato's greatest work, not the Republic, which everybody seems to think. Here Plato explains why prayer, like any powerful instrument, can be used for evil as well as good. How much better an understanding Plato, who was not a conventional believer, had of prayer than scientists of today.

 

I am thinking of the researchers who set up the experiment to see if praying for someone with a heart condition improved the patients or made it worse. Their finding was that it had no effect, except when they knew that somebody was praying for them. In that case the patients recovered much more poorly, probably because such an expression of concern as having strangers pray for them implied that they were in deep danger.

Instead, Plato identifies here the real power of prayer. Prayer is the engine of our moral advance, or our decline into immorality and vice. My hope is that someday some legislator will read the following and ban advertising forever. Every advertisement we are exposed to is like a little prayer of the devil, tempting us to jump into the slough of moral decrepitude. One result? The main cause of death today is heart disease; researchers wonder if prayer helps heart patients, without wondering why we tolerate advertising for foods that cause heart disease in the first place. What we should pray for is changes in lifestyle that will eliminate the causes of such moral and physical preconditions of human ills. We need, that is, prayer is a way of writing a personal constitution or covenant that takes us beyond knee-jerk reaction to specific problems.

 

 

ATHENIAN: And, again, when a man's notice is attracted to a great fortune, or pre-eminent family distinction, or the like, and he expresses the same commendation, he speaks from the same point of view; his thought is that the advantage will enable its possessor to gratify all desires, or the most numerous and considerable of them?

MEGILLUS: So I should suppose.

ATHENIAN: So it follows that there is a certain desire, that indicated by our argument, which is universal in all men, as the argument itself asserts.

MEGILLUS: And that is?

ATHENIAN: That events shall fall out in accord with the bidding of a man's own soul, all of them, if possible, but if not, at least those which depend on human agency.

MEGILLUS: Of course

ATHENIAN: Now if this is what all of us, from boyhood to age; are wishing all the time, it will necessarily also be our standing prayer.

MEGILLUS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: And, again, I suppose, our petition for our dear ones will be that they may receive what they ask for themselves.

MEGILLUS: Of course.

ATHENIAN: Now a son, who is a boy, is dear to his father, a grown man.

MEGILLUS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: And, mark you, there is much a boy prays to befall him, of which his father would beseech heaven that it may never fall out as the son prays.

MEGILLUS: You mean when the petitioner is thoughtless and still young?

ATHENIAN: Yes, and what of the case when the father is old, -- or only too youthful as you please to consider him -- has no sense of good and right, and prays from the heart in a passion akin to that conceived by Theseus against his unfortunate victim, Hippolytus, but the son has such a sense? Will the son, think you, second the father's prayer in such a case?

MEGILLUS: I see your point. You mean, I apprehend, that the object of a man's prayers and endeavors should not be that the universal course of events should conform to his own wishes, unless his wishes further conform to his sober judgment. It is the possession of intelligence [reason] that should be the mark of prayer and aspiration for the community and every individual of us alike.

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ATHENIAN: Yes, and I am particular to remind myself that it is this which a statesmanlike legislator should always have in view in framing his enactments -- as I would also remind you, if we have not forgotten how our conversation began -- that whereas you both agreed that a good legislator must devise all his institutions with an eye to war, I, for my part, urged that this is an injunction to legislate with a view to one single virtue out of four.

He should keep them all in view, I said, but chiefly and in the first place that virtue which brings all the rest in its train, that is, judgment, intelligence, and right conviction attended by appropriate passionate desire. So our argument has come back again to the old point. I, its mouthpiece, say once more now what I said before, in jest or earnest, as you please to take it.

I look on prayer, I say, as a dangerous instrument in the hands of the man without intelligence; it defeats his wishes. If you please to consider me in earnest, pray do so. I have every confidence that if you follow up the story we have just set before ourselves for consideration, you will directly discover that the cause of the ruin of the three kings and their whole design was no cowardice and no military ignorance on the part of commanders or commanded; what ruined them was their abundant vice of other kinds, and, above all, their folly in the supreme concerns of man.

 

Plato, Collected Dialogues, Laws, 687-688, pp. 1282-1283

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Wayfinders

Finding My Way through "The Wayfinders"


 By John Taylor; 2010 Aug 23, Asma 03, 167 BE


 The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World, by Wade Davis, Anansi, 2009


 Such is the pull of many competing media, and the energy it takes for me to keep a wife and two computer addicted kids away from screens at least a few hours each day, that my reading has diminished far more than it should. This spring I slowly worked through just one book, The Wayfinders, by Wade Davis. I was very impressed with it. How did I stumble across it? What happened was that I was writing some essays about wisdom and I thought of searching for the word "wisdom" in the titles of books in the local library. This was the only one available, and it was on the "New Books" shelf. I read the first few pages and was disappointed to find that I had already heard much of the book on the radio. But I plodded on regardless. Here is how one reviewer started off assessing this book,


 "It seems odd that we need to be reminded that there are many ways of knowing the world, and that all of them are valuable. I know a carpenter in Ontario who has built dozens of houses, and yet is illiterate; one of the most successful farmers in our area has never read a book except the Bible. These are everyday examples. Wade Davis, in the 2009 Massey Lectures, now published in book form as The Wayfinders, goes further afield and presents many more striking cases of so-called primitive cultures that made mind-boggling contributions to the sum total of human knowledge, before being overrun by the juggernaut of progress." <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/review-the-wayfinders-by-wade-davis/article1379145/>


 Davis describes how these far flung islanders in the Pacific figured out how to navigate the hugest ocean on the planet, using only the knowledge and dead reckoning of one "wayfinder," sitting silent at the rear of an outrigger. He describes the strange world view of a tribe in the Amazon whose shamans tell them, "Do not fish or hunt here because the gods say we should not." Unlike the West, for which nothing is sacred, these untouchable areas allow the local ecology to recover from the impact of their hunting and fishing in other places.

 He tells of the Aboriginals of Australia, the hunter gatherers of South Africa, each of which has a unique and amazingly ancient heritage -- the South African tribe is more diverse, genetically and linguistically, than anywhere else. The Australian Aboriginals have been in the same place for some sixty thousand years, by far the oldest continuous language and culture in the world, all the more tragic because they were hunted to the brink of extinction by white English speaking newcomers in the 19th Century. The above reviewer adds,


 "The aboriginal peoples of Australia, once a million strong, now reduced to about half that, spoke 270 languages. They are the closest descendants of the first human beings to leave Africa and so represent one of the great experiments in human thought. But they were hunted like animals by white settlers. Today, we are losing those languages at the rate of one per year; only 18 are now spoken by more than 500 people."


 The story of this loss of languages reminded me why I am an Esperantist. We think of English as the international language and universal culture, and forget that we are speaking the language of imperialism, the language of genocide.

 If the international language were Esperanto, local languages like these would be free to thrive without angering speakers of nationalist languages, which are in direct competition with far older and richer aboriginal languages. For example, where I live the tribe who were here originally, the Neutrals, were wiped out completely by the non-neutrals living around them, and their language is now long dead too. Most folks around here could not even name the tribe, much less speak their language.

English and other national languages are the tongues of the perpetrators of cultural, linguistic and literal genocide around the world. I speak Esperanto to my kids not because it is useful but as a political statement. Nobody is listening, least of all my kids, but it is a statement nonetheless. We cannot afford not to have a neutral language internationally. We cannot afford to say, with Zap Brannigan, "Your neutrality sickens me!"


 "Why does ancient wisdom matter? Because these people lived on Earth for millennia without destroying it, whereas Europeans have been improving the New World (having already trashed the Old) for barely 500 years, and have brought it to the edge of ecological extinction. The entire purpose of humanity, according to aboriginal thought, Davis writes, is not to improve anything. It is to engage in the ritual and ceremonial activities deemed to be essential for the maintenance of the world precisely as it was at the moment of creation."


 As I got into the book, I thought that surely this is one of the most important books of our time. It is the book that Ruhiyyih Khanum would write if she were around today. It even traces the sad story of the Mentawi, a nomadic tribe in Borneo among whom one of my favorite Hands of the Cause, Dr. Muhajir, cut his teeth. I plan to scan in the two stories, one of Dr. Muhajir among them and the other Davis' account of what happened to the Mentawi in the 1990's -- when I get my scanner going again.

 Davis speaks of one proposal in British Columbia to extract hydrocarbon by utterly trashing the headwaters of three major rivers, a place sacred to native peoples for millennia.


 "Environmental concerns aside, think for a moment what these proposals imply about our culture. We accept it as normal that people who have never been on the land, who have no history or connection to the country, may legally secure the right to come in and by the very nature of their enterprise leave in their wake a cultural and physical landscape utterly transformed and desecrated." (Wayfinders, pp. 117-118)


 Unfortunately, since this book is based on Massey lectures on the CBC, and considering the fact that Wayfinders was published in Canada, I figured it hardly likely that Davis' book would have the impact on the world that it deserves. I was wrong. The latest Scientific American, September 2010, has a photo essay based on The Wayfinders, called, "Last of their Kind, The world's cultures have been disappearing, taking valuable knowledge with them, but there is reason to hope." If you cannot get ahold of Davis' book, at least check out this brief article on your local magazine rack.


"By their very existence the diverse cultures of the world bear witness to the folly of those who say we cannot change, as we all know we must, the fundamental manner in which we inhabit this planet."

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United Way Season's Greetings with words of Baha'u'llah

Reforming ethnics and proprietors

Democratizing Ethnicity and Ownership

By John Taylor; 2009 July 23, Kalimat 10, 166 BE

Precis: Democratic and cosmopolitan reform under a UCS (universal civic society) would allow us to build from the ground up for complete efficiency in travel and buildings. This would not only avoid negative impact on the environment but also maximize the freedom, welfare and security of UCS residents.

Our present infrastructure is grossly inefficient. Houses, buildings and transport churn out prodigious quantities of greenhouse gases. Our present setup is so wasteful of energy, water and other resources that without huge government debts and heavy subsidies it would be prohibitively expensive to live, work and travel. Sooner or later the results of this folly become unavoidable: social unrest, a polluted environment and destabilized climate. Long term survival requires us to overhaul not only government but also the physical infrastructure, the food, clothing and shelter that keep us alive.

This summer we have been discussing on the Badi' Blog how to go to the root of it all by improving democracy. If we reform elections and other democratic processes we could revitalize and spread democracy into areas as yet untouched by the will of the people. Combined with a cosmopolitan condition under a world federation, an improved democracy would permit what Kant called a universal civic society (UCS). A UCS would look entirely different from the artificially subsidized landscape witnessed today as one tours through town and country.

A UCS city would be densely populated to enable economies of scale, which reduce the per capita ecological footprint as close as possible to zero. The land is not flat but runs in high furrows oriented in east-west rows that maximize exposure to the sun. Surfaces with solar exposure are fully farmed by professional farmers and amateur gardeners, so as to come as close as possible to complete local subsistence, with residents on a "100 metre diet." Built along and into the slope of the shaded, vertical sides of the high furrow are mixed-use buildings, each housing many modular, portable units and sub-structures. High speed travel is buried safely underground, leaving the street between each furrow to pedestrians, bicycles and low-speed public transit.

We have already mentioned several reforms that would make this ideal structural rebuild possible. These include the formation of new levels of democratic governance on the family, household and neighbourhood levels, erecting in each locality dynamic displays called war and peace rooms to aid in planning, applying face-to-face voting in education and peer review in the workplace, dashboard displays and escutcheons, localized media (an LBC, or Local Broadcasting Cooperative) and elections among experts (democratic meritocracy). Each of these will be an outcome of the spread of democracy, the investment of power in the hands of the people.

There are several more regions of virgin territory in which democratic pioneers would have to settle. I want briefly to outline two of these, ethnicity and ownership, today and look at others later.

Democratic Ethnicity

Each neighbourhood in a UCS arrives at decisions by holding votes among local experts and by polling the general public in real time in a "war and peace room", a multimedia planning center placed at the heart of every city block. Whereas higher levels of government use force and legislation, at the grassroots neighbourhood level subtler methods are possible. Local planners -- which includes all residents -- respond to incentives and sanctions built into escutcheons, which are public displays of merit for both individuals and groups. Devising plans involves trading and negotiating fine adjustments to one's escutcheon.

In the midst of all this activity, a neighbourhood government actively juggles quotas for cultural, ethnic, linguistic diversity and uniformity. The standard aspects of these quotas are determined by policy at higher levels of government, where experience is broader. As long as neighbourhood planners apply quotas fairly and transparently and allocate local assets equitably based on the proven enterprise of a given group, it is unlikely that minorities or majorities will be aggrieved or feel rivalry towards one another. Briefly, here are the main philosophical considerations that these quotas would be designed to uphold.

It is a general principle that racial, linguistic, ethnic and cultural diversity contribute to a free, dynamic and creative culture. Language and culture of minorities thrive when they crowd together to some extent in order to increase the number and variety of personal contacts with one another. On the other hand, spreading out is good too. While some neighbourhoods may specialize in one culture, such as Chinatowns or Little Italy’s, generally speaking a mix of cultures is the most beneficial to a neighbourhood, offering variety, stability, peace and order to the body politic. However, in order for variation to exist there must be a degree of overall uniformity too. All must conform to standards, especially in language. A common second language would allow minorities to contribute fully to the wider cosmopolitan culture while guarding the overall society against stagnation or a tyranny of the majority.

In our present pre-cosmopolitan, order by far the worst bone of contention among ethnic groups is the obsolete notion of absolute sovereignty. Wealth and property are immutably tied to traditional location. Ethnic groups who happen to live on land with richer fields, a more benign climate or more oil and mineral resources than others enjoy boundless riches, while others are left in penury. This incites every group to do all it can to stack the deck in its own favour. Racial and ethnic harmony seem like a naive dream. This dangerous situation can be eliminated by our next topic, democratic ownership.

Democratizing Ownership

Our present system of possession, sole proprietorship, was devised in a pre-computer age when dynamically negotiated, shared ownership would have been prohibitively slow, complicated and expensive. Sole proprietorship is extremely clumsy and wasteful; in the midst of widespread homelessness, empty lots and derelict buildings blight the landscape of a cityscape scarred by endless sprawl and dismal slums. Even the wealthy suffer anxiety and fear from the burden of buying and caring for an embarrassment of possessions.

Computers and other developments in high technology make it possible for ownership to be divided among all users and concerned parties of every large item of property with the slightest usufruct (shared, public use). By dividing title into shares that can by owned and traded by everybody concerned, including casual onlookers, far more people and groups can be stakeholders. As in a joint share company, important decisions about an item's use can be arrived at by democratic election among all part-owners with a legitimate stake. This would include most notably the world government, which should have a say in every decision that can affect, for example, global warming.

There is no technical reason not to divide every large possession into shares. We already have highly complex, computerized exchanges where items of virtual currency, stocks, futures and bonds are reliably and fairly exchanged at a moment's notice. For example, a dollar is no longer merely a hunk of metal or paper. It is a virtual entity that can be sent around the world in a second. Why not extend this flexibility to shares of real estate, large buildings, roads and other items of property in a neighbourhood?

Within certain limits, then, in a UCS shares in local real estate, businesses and other large property in the community can be freely exchanged by residents in the neighbourhood's war and peace room. As a result an individual in a UCS need be sole proprietor of only a few small, personal items. Shared ownership would greatly simplify their existence and allow them to concentrate fully on their special part of the division of labour, their own career and family. At the same time, each would be in a better position than now to grow personal wealth by investing in shares in neighbourhood assets and real estate. For the first time in history everybody, groups and individuals, would be in an equal position to gain a fair stake in local land, goods and enterprises.

Ending sole ownership would also permit personal and collective interests to combine harmoniously in common proprietorship. For instance, with judicious investment an enterprising family business might increase its shares in strategic area assets and along with that, its influence on policy making in its neighbourhood. An efficient farming household, for example, might move from a small home to a large homestead as its profitability increases. Since neighbours are part owners of their enterprise, the farmer might plant berry bushes and fruit trees throughout the neighbourhood without fear that their harvest will be pilfered.

Indeed, an argument can be made that every resident should be required by law to own a minimum number of shares of neighbourhood assets in the local commodity exchange. This would instil in all the proprietary attitude of a responsible homeowner and eliminate attitudes that lead to vandalism, graffiti and looting during disasters and emergencies. Australia, witnessing Hitler come to power in a democratic election with low voter turnout, instituted a law requiring citizens to vote by law. Anybody who decides not to vote in a general election is subject to a one hundred dollar fine. Similarly, the UCS, witnessing the extremes of wealth and poverty of today, might well institute a similar minimum ownership requirement of its citizens. Any resident owning fewer shares than he should must pay high enough fines to make non-involvement uneconomical. Since shares are virtual, residents who move into another community can easily transfer their minimum shares to the new local commodity exchange from their former neighbourhood, without penalty.