How to be a Xenophile

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Alpheus Paradigm

Cleaning out the Grime

 

I am still working on the seventh draft of my book about the peace plan of John Amos Comenius entitled: "Persons Beyond Borders; Essays about John Amos Comenius and Universal Reform." My plan is, when this revision is finished, to hire an editor to go through it and then publish the book myself through the on-demand publisher Lulu. This firm, founded by the Red Hat Linux billionaire, who is from my hometown of Ancaster, Ontario, permits your self-published book to be sold through Amazon and other bookstores' electronic book services. After a year or so, during which I will write volume two and three of this series, I hope to have a better idea of how saleable the book series is, at which point I may approach professional publishers.

 

Here is a relatively new addition to the book, a draft of an essay about a model of Comenius often used for getting rid of corruption.

 

 

 

The Alpheus Paradigm

 

Brute force solves some kinds of problems but not corruption. Like death itself, corruption will always be with us, an irremovable shadow of life itself. Cells even in the healthiest bodies are programmed continually to die in their billions each day and be recycled in a process known as apoptosis. The only way to keep ahead of corruption is to apply wisdom and prudence. In order to illustrate this, throughout Panorthosia, John Amos Comenius refers back to the fifth labour of Hercules. For him this a perfect demonstration the cleverness required to cheat corruption.

 

"The history of mankind contains many examples of the success of wisdom and prudence where physical strength has failed. The labours of the ancient hero, Hercules, have become proverbial, and his cleansing of the Augean stables is specially appropriate to my theme." (Panorthosia II, Ch. 3, para 23, p. 77)

 

The mess that Hercules was tasked with removing in this labour is a familiar story but bears repeating. Generations of neglect at the world's largest stable had seen mountains of manure accumulate. Taking a pick and shovel to it would take too long, even for Hercules, proverbially the strongest man. There seemed no non-destructive way to plow it away, since the manure was intermingled among many fences and buildings. Fire, explosives or other quick extraction methods might destroy the stables along with the ordure. Comenius describes how this Greek hero, later a demigod, solved the problem.

 

"According to the legend, Augeas, king of Elis, had stables holding three thousand oxen, which had never before been cleaned out. But when the task was given to Hercules, he channelled the waters of the river Alpheus into the stables and so had little or no difficulty in washing out the muck of thirty years." (Panorthosia II, Ch. 3, para 23, p. 77)

 

This clever problem solving technique for Comenius is a perfect demonstration of the crucial difference between ordinary change and universal reform, between normal human measures and those of the spirit. Indeed, at one point he refers to a "divine Hercules" -- not that he imagined that this brutish Greek hero was a saint, only that his sagacious master stroke on this occasion resembles the methodology taught by God.

 

"The story as told by Homer, whether it be fact or fiction, is certainly clever, and I shall try to show how we may copy it in our plan of campaign for reform. (1) All schools, all churches, all political systems, and all human affairs at present closely resemble the stables of Augeas, a mass of sordidness which no human effort could remove. (2) Only the river Alpheus has the virtue to cleanse all this (3) Our task is simply to accept the Alpheus which God has given to us and channel it into all our Augean stables." (Panorthosia II, Ch. 3, para 24 & 25, p. 77)

 

For Comenius, the name of this river, one of two redirected by Hercules, offers a hint as to how divine principle operates. It is no coincidence that the name, "Alpheus," resembles the first letter of the Greek alphabet, Alpha. The river Alph runs up the side of Mount Olympus, and is best known to English speakers as the sacred river in Coleridge's poem, Kubla Khan.

 

 

 

 

Letters make up words, and words in themselves are a divine force. As John the Evangelist put it, "In the beginning was the Word." By redirecting this "alpha" river towards the stables, Hercules, and metaphorically all mankind, were unleashing the stupendous force of information. Once we learn to direct the power of language, the written word and other information technology in the right direction, a torrent will wash away all corrupt knowledge.

 

 

 

 

 

As soon as we inaugurate the College of Light, falsehood will be quickly and automatically erased, human worship will be purified by the Consistory, and the Dicastery will do the same with our "system(s) of government".

 

"There is mystery in the very name Alpheus. The Greeks have Alpha for the first letter of their alphabet, and so they apply it to anything that is first of its kind, in the sense in which the Latins use the terms `head' and 'fountain' for any original source. The key to our problem, therefore, is to understand the fountains and heads of our teaching, our religion, and our politics from which flow all our knowledge, worship, and system of government." (Panorthosia, Ch. 3, para 31-32, p. 78)

 

I find it ironic that this challenge given to Hercules seems to be quite literally the same thing that confronts humankind today. Hercules had to clean out ox manure, we must scrub the atmosphere of accumulated carbon. More ironic, much of this CO2, studies indicate, comes from the belching of cows. There is not much to choose between being clogged up by ox or cow excreta.

 

The entire cycle of nature, scientists now recognize, is being corrupted by a massive, unchecked outflow of pollution, including soot and toxic chemicals as well as greenhouse gases. Like the stables of Augeas, waste is accumulating in air, land and sea, and has been doing so over many centuries. Like that negligent king, we are being bankrupted while our planet's natural coping mechanisms have been overloaded and are beginning to break down. Even if industry were to stop dumping waste, we still would be charged with the Herculean labour of cleaning it all up in order that, at the very least, Earth's climate will remain livable.

 

 

 

Is there another Alpheus river that engineers could redirect somehow to wash greenhouse gasses out into space? Probably not. This story corresponds with our present quandary perhaps closer than Comenius may have expected. However, his point that it is a parable for wisdom still applies. We may not have a physical Alpheus, but metaphorically, if we return to first principles and raise simplicity and temperance to be universal values, the problem solving would surely become as clever and effective as Hercules.

Peter Principle as Vital Energy

A Further Remark on the Peter Principle

 

By John Taylor; 2011 Feb 25, Mulk 19, 167 BE

 

Yesterday I wrote an essay about the Peter Principle, a book that influenced me greatly in my youth. I happened to check over the Wikipedia article about that yesterday and Peter's thesis is not as special as I thought. It is derived from a broader idea, the tendency to use a tool until it either breaks or outlives its usefulness.

The article states:

 

"The Peter Principle is a special case of a ubiquitous observation: anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging applications until it fails. This is "The Generalized Peter Principle". It was observed by Dr. William R. Corcoran in his work on corrective action programs at nuclear power plants. He observed it applied to hardware, e.g., vacuum cleaners as aspirators, and administrative devices such as the `Safety Evaluations' used for managing change. There is much temptation to use what has worked before, even when it may exceed its effective scope. Dr. Peter observed this about humans." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle)

 

This reminded me of a similar observation that the Master made in Paris. Just looked it up, and here it is, from a talk called "The light of truth is now shining upon the East and West," given a hundred years ago this October 23rd,

 

"When a man has found the joy of life in one place, he returns to that same spot to find more joy. When a man has found gold in a mine, he returns again to that mine to dig for more gold. This shows the internal force and natural instinct which God has given to man, and the power of vital energy which is born in him." (Abdu'l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 33)

So, the fate of every tool, appliance or idea is to be used and then in the end cast aside as soon as it ceases to serve its purpose. It applies to you and me, and the services we offer God and mankind. And it even applies to the religions, as progressive revelation teaches.

World Decade Plan

Regularity and Popularity of the Comenian Decade

By John Taylor; 2011 Jan 11, Sharaf 12, 167 BE

The plan outlined above is an implement to correct our collective vision.

A political order oriented around regularly returning principles would set up a different standard of comparison for leaders. Instead of competing with their immediate predecessor -- often even undoing the accomplishments of previous administrations -- leaders will look at where we are in relation to where we will be decades and centuries into the future. This avoids invidious comparisons and erases partisanship by fixing attention where it should be in politics, on peace and the greater good of our children and grandchildren.

But it is much more than that. The decade reminds each of us to concentrate upon our three highest reasons for being, to serve our own enlightenment, to serve others and to serve God -- which is to say, to serve life in the long term. To do this, the decade divides needs into three overarching principles of governance, based upon what Comenius calls a "parallelism of Philosophy, Politics, and Religion..." (Panorthosia, Ch. 13, para 12, p. 204) Comenian leadership divides these principles into three distinct institutions each with a special, delimited mission, separate in detail but one in purpose. These he named the College of Light, the Dicastery of Peace and the Consistory of Holiness. Franchises of these operate at every level of society, starting from the family household, proceeding right on up to the world government.

The decade also includes three ongoing, integrated election cycles of three years in length. The votes take place approximately every three years -- on years four, seven and ten. Then we vote in the membership of each of the three institutions. Thus, rather than "one man, one vote," the franchise is tripled to "one person three votes," one each for the college, the dicastery and the consistory.

I should add that cosmopolitanism operates by means of what is termed direct democracy, where elections are entirely open, without nomination or candidature (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy). This is not only less expensive but it is also inherently peaceful. Democracy in a world at peace cannot tolerate the lobbying, advertising, contention and riotous head-butting that distract voters. Such travesties are by no means essential to the electoral process. Instead, by having diverse groups work together on the goals of the decade, the most effective problem solvers will naturally rise to higher office from among their peers.

This regular experience serving and voting at least three times each decade is an increased responsibility that admittedly may at first overburden some. However, as we learn to use steles and PIM software more effectively, the triple franchise should become interesting and stimulating. It will create a new cosmopolitan citizen, the true Homo Universalis.

From an institutional perspective, the repeating decade gives the educational, the political and the spiritual branches of government much greater direct influence over the grassroots than has been possible to any government in the past, no matter how powerful. No need to issue press releases or whip up artificial publicity campaigns to inform the public of specific problems. The plan and its principles teach themselves.

During the decade, each responsible institution oversees three principles over three years of intense activity. During the remaining seven years it works out plans for the upcoming decade. Their nine years, plus the year for individual conscience, add up to a ten year plan.

Although the first year of the decade plan, the "year of enlightenment," concentrates upon recreation and contemplation, and is empty of outward activity, it is crucial to the years that follow because it bolsters the quintessential duty of individuals to be earnest and sincere in their search for truth. The nine principles that follow are as universal as possible and to cover a major preoccupation of modernity. Repeated, predictable contact with them encourages decision makers to take a longer view by anticipating conditions decades and centuries in advance.

Each new generation of workers can expect to run through the respective principles of the decade several times during their lifespan. Even young people entering the workforce will have lived through at least one iteration, while a worker in mid-career can look back over three or four full cycles of involvement. Even relatively young journeypersons will have long experience setting goals, assessing progress and taking into account the long term considerations of their trade. This means that their knowledge is both coherent and exportable, easily passed on to apprentices and younger colleagues.

Cyclical repetition should obligate even the most worldly and the least engaged among us to give due attention to our highest ideals. The regular repetition of principle helps us look beyond celebrity gossip, natural disasters and other essentially random events in the news. For individuals and small groups, it raises their purview above the ephemeral concerns of personal life to what affects the fate of humanity and our small, delicate planet. As Shakespeare said,

"Of your philosophy you make no use, if you give place to accidental evils." (Cassius, in Julius Caesar, Act IV, Sc. III)

The purpose of the decade's goals is to uplift our world view into what some philosophers are calling the "whoosh factor," the thrill of a universally recognized historic moment. Until now these "whooshes" have been few and far between, taking place usually at sports championships and other triumphant events. These "whooshes" tend to be incoherent, parochial or partisan. The glory of filling a goal of the decade is truly a triumph that would give all a sense of accomplishment. There are no losers, only winners. The human interest here is more than one life, or even human life in general, it takes in all life on earth.

From the average person's point of view, the advantage of the decade is that it offers drama, excitement and encourages active involvement. If organizers heed Comenius' advice to keep it simple, the plan will continually remind specialists, especially journalists and historians, to broaden their outlook and make sure that the forum of opinion, however detailed, still is comprehensible to the majority. This way it will appeal to all ages, cultures and temperaments.

In order to do this the organizers of the decade will have to enlist the press, the estate whose highest role is to raise consciousness in the public interest. These principles are admittedly challenging. They are highly philosophical. But if we persist, gradually a thousand disparate languages, cultures and ethnicities will transform into a single audience witnessing a single dramatic performance.

The great unseen obstacle to progress in planning right now is a worsening clash between special and general interests, worsened by grating tension between populism and intellectualism. Obfuscation and credentialism alienate the public and force experts into Ivory Towers where they speak only to other experts. The forum of opinion thus becomes a chaotic Babel. It is possible, though, to give an equal voice to both expert and lay, if both respect the virtues of the other. This was recognized as long ago as Aristotle's time,

"It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences -- makes them, as the poets tell us, 'charm the crowd's ears more finely'. Educated men lay down broad general principles; uneducated men argue from common knowledge and draw obvious conclusions." (Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book 22)

The expert can appreciate the eloquent simplicity of the generalist while the average person in turn should admire and embrace the specialist's knowledge and powers of analysis. And since elections are a great part of the activity in the plan, even non-experts in a work group who do not grasp all the technical details can still vote for an expert who demonstrates virtues apparent to all, qualities like reliability and integrity.

The Comenian decade is designed to harmonize and bridge this and other such gaps between elites and the general public. It calls upon leaders of thought to work out broad goals that will enlist professionals and amateurs in a common labour. Specifics should fully involve experts and specialists, while the mass media focus everyone else's attention on the big picture and on how to follow through on what science, faith groups and peace negotiators discover.

The lines of enquiry of the College, the Dicastery and the Consistory extend straight and parallel as far as the boundless reaches of human potential. Our lines of investigation should similarly, through the repeating decade, extend to infinity, liberating us from borders once and for all.

Chapter Eleven of Cosmo-Earth

A Comenian Decade

By John Taylor; 2011 Jan 05, Sharaf 06, 167 BE

Democracy's Short Horizon

An inability to carry out plans over the long term has long been among the most galling stumbling blocks of governance. Temporal considerations are the fatal flaw of democracy.

As presently organized, the system does not permit programs or policy to look forward much further than five or ten years. This is the maximum length of a party or head of state's term of office. At best, a career parliamentarian who is re-elected several times in succession benefit from slightly longer hindsight. However, since the outcome of each election is uncertain, even this fortunate leader does not have the luxury of planning more than a few short years ahead.

Our utter blindness to the long-term is especially dangerous as we confront the challenge of global climate destabilization. We need a complete turnaround of thinking followed by painful sacrifices, and not just right now but over many decades and centuries.

It is ironic that an individual who is shortsighted can buy glasses or undergo laser surgery, but we have no corrective for shortsighted leadership, even in the face of dire threats to survival. Traditionally, royal houses and aristocracies took a longer perspective over several generations by including leadership as part of a family's heritage. In business, family owned concerns, if the heir proved competent, could take a longer view as well. Short of reintroducing such institutions, which have alas been largely discredited, political science is completely out of ideas for corrective techniques.

A Triadic, Cyclical Decade

Panorthosia, or Universal Reform, starts out declaring that it is not enough to reform a part of the human condition. We must lay aside all prejudice and complacency, be it in science, religion or politics. Reform must be universal and all-embracing if it is to work at all.

"Come, let us proceed to draw up plans of action, all intent upon reform, and with God's help restoring salvation and glory to all things universally." (Panorthosia II, Author's Introduction, p. 43)

Later on, Comenius argues against co-religionists who would take the following directive of Christ to a nascent church as an excuse to reject planning, "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in His own power." (Acts 1:7) This has to be understood in the light of eschatology, he asserts, the teaching that in the "time of the end" there would be a grand unification. This too is God's will. People of faith one day soon must come together in common cause with philosophers and worldly powers to inaugurate a an age of peace, a time where conditions will be "on earth as it is in heaven."

At the end of Panorthosia, Comenius suggests that leaders hold a global constitutional convention, which they could repeat regularly at ten year intervals thereafter. At this global conference elections would be held among delegates from continental governments. At the same time, they would engage in detailed discussion about retrospect and prospect, and what plans and policy to devise to reflect that. Here they would share their experience serving on continental governments, and out of that perspective would emerge planetary policy.

The fact that this all-important gathering takes place every decade is, I think, a stroke of genius, perhaps Comenius' greatest contribution. The publicity surrounding this epoch making event will be the perfect opportunity to broaden our stunted vision. As long as a global constitutional conference is being held every decade, it is only natural to carry the procedure further. It can be the starting point for a full scale, global ten year plan.

Based on my study of Panorthosia, and inspired by many other cosmopolitan thinkers, here is how a cyclic global plan might be organized.

The first year of the decade is devoted exclusively to personal reflection. Individuals are encouraged to spend time alone, reflecting on their lives and their potential contribution to the progress of earth. The title of this year is the Year of Enlightenment, or Release from Tutelage -- after an expression of Immanuel Kant in his suggested sketch of a world constitution.

The following nine years take off from this point to wider service to humanity. Each of the three Comenian institutions is given three successive years in which to bask under the full glare of global publicity. This regular progress consummates an election campaign held during the last year of the institution's three year cycle. Here is how the decade, divided into three triads, looks:

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The Comenian Planning Decade

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Year One: Enlightenment (run by each individual world citizen)

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First Triad; Philosophy (under the aegis of the College of Light)

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Year Two: Human Oneness, Unity in diversity

Year Three: Nature, Science and Research

Year Four: Advancing Education, Determining a Universal Language

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Second Triad; Politics (under the aegis of the Dicastery of Peace)

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Year Five: Equality, especially of the Sexes

Year Six: Removal of Dogma, Prejudice and Racism

Year Seven: Ethics and Universal Peace

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Third Triad; Religion (under the aegis of the interfaith Consistory of Holiness)

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Year Eight: Love, Compassion, Hope, Freedom

Year Nine: Reciprocity, Charity and Economic Equity

Year Ten: Religious Cooperation

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At the Table or on the Menu

Planet Wide Planning

redacted: 2011 Jan 03, Sharaf 04, 167 BE

The most brilliant and pregnant idea arising out of Panorthosia is its suggestion that world leaders stage a comprehensive planning conference every ten years. Consider what has happened on the world stage without such a policy. Lacking a regular, open planning process, for several decades world leaders have gotten together on their own to work out policy together on a purely Ad Hoc basis in what are called "summit" meetings. As the name implies, heads of state of the most powerful nations address problems, policies and issues determined exclusively by themselves.

This private, closed way of operating got started during the Second World War when there was an urgent need for close, intense cooperation among allied leaders to work out strategy for the first war whose theatre of operations embraced the whole planet. After the war, what Churchill called the confused "Babel" of the United Nations did not allow for effective cooperation. So the practice of periodic get-togethers among statespersons gradually took over many of the functions of a global executive. In the past few decades these summits have broadened to include leaders from the eight most powerful nations, the G8, and most recently to the G20. Without even a pretense of democratic roots, these summits are inevitably targeted by activists and demonstrators protesting stridently on behalf of the excluded majority of humankind.

Comenius' suggestion makes a great deal more sense. Broaden the planning process to include everybody, and make every step entirely democratic and above board. As the saying goes, "anybody who is not at the table is on the menu." Let everyone get together every ten years -- not only those at the summit of the mountain but the entire mountain, leaders and "followers" alike.

Once together, we can work out all of our problems together; there will be no demonstrations because everybody will busy, everybody will be fully invested in a successful outcome. As the executive meetings take place, stage elections to renew the membership of the global and continental parliaments. At the same time let everybody, not just those at the summit, discuss each policy and priority to be implemented over the coming decade. If a problem seems too thorny to be dealt with right away by the current executive, in an open gathering you could admit your puzzlement and hand it back for the entire resources of the human race to work out next time. Then we would set our best minds to solving the quandary in time for the next encounter.

The Debacle of Limited Plans

Today if you mention the idea of regular plans, such as an industrial five year plan, most people recall the horrors of Marxism in the Soviet Union. This is not entirely fair, though. First of all, Soviet goals were not even nominally universal. Communist theory was materialistic, holding that humans are essentially economic, our nature follows the stomach wherever it leads. Worse, the plans were made up by a monolithic state on behalf of the working class, or proletariat. They excluded business or the bourgeoisie; this is especially problematic when a plan starts and ends with economic concerns. Although nominally scientific, historians of science now agree that by and large communist plans were profoundly anti-science in spirit. Furthermore, these plans were openly anti-religious, persecuting believers and faiths of all stripes, and imposing a single style of expression on artists.

When the inevitable happened and central planning regimes collapsed throughout Eastern Europe in the late 1980's, market fundamentalists enthusiastically leaped into the breach. They tried to persuade executive planners that we would all be better off if planning were eliminated completely and we let the "invisible hand" work everything out on its own.

In spite of vast wealth being created by the invention and spread of computers and the internet, in the two decades since the fall of the Berlin wall the idea of letting an invisible hand run the economy has failed. Deprived of a central planning mechanism, only the wealthy and powerful had the resources to carry out executive plans on their own, limited and autocratic though they were. Like the summits of heads of state, executive decisions were carried out by a few behind closed doors. Whatever plans were carried out always coincided with the interests of the ownership elite. Banking was deregulated and the mechanisms of high finance obfuscated, leading to economic collapse.

However, such is the corruption of the present nationalist and corporatist order that market fundamentalists continue to dominate policy long after the merit of their ideas was tried and discredited. Without an open, official process for setting goals, corporations and cabals of powerful individuals have a free hand to implement whatever is in their own limited interest. Meanwhile billions of poor are excluded from sitting at the planning table, while the natural resources of the land they are living on are most definitely on the menu.

The Simplification project

In effect, by putting forward his suggestion of a repeating decade plan for world governance, Comenius invented the ten year plan. The keynote of such a plan, Comenius suggested, should be simplicity.

"Let our Philosophy be simplified, provided that it satisfies moderate minds and circumstances. Let our Religion be simplified, provided that it satisfies God, the source of simplicity, and men of upright conscience. Let our Political System be simplified, provided that it serves its purpose of peacefulness in human affairs." (Panorthosia II, Ch. 10, para 3, p. 152)

In this, Comenius was probably inspired by a day-long interview and debate that he once had with Rene Descartes. Briefly stated, the Cartesian method, an early version of what we now call the scientific method, stipulated laying out all the elements of a complex problem, placing the simplest first, and solving these before proceeding to more difficult challenges.

Unlike Descartes, Comenius envisioned a much broader application of simplicity. This procedure should be worked out systematically in all three of the major branches of human endeavour, starting with science, continuing with faith and ending in the ultimate goal of politics, world peace. The philosophical stance of universalism he called "pansophy," or universal wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to see all knowledge simply, as a single whole. Universal wisdom goes beyond knowledge to faith, will and action as well.

Several times in Panorthosia Comenius compares the universal abilities given by universal wisdom to a skeleton key. A narrow thinker has a key allowing him to get into one or two rooms of a palace. However, the universally wise holds a master key that lets him into all rooms. Specialists have keys for a few rooms but universal minds feel at home anyplace, even if they do not plan to live there indefinitely.

Descartes proposed mathematics as the key to science, but Comenius asked, why not work out keys for religious faith and practical politics as well? This is the substance of their disagreement. There is no reason that principles, such as the Golden Rule, cannot be master keys for a reformed, purified faith (Comenius uses the expression "One Common Faith") that applies for all believers, Jews, Muslims and Eastern Religions included. Certainly this applies for Christians, Comenius believed, since Christ had said, "My Father's house has many mansions..."

Comenius agreed that simplicity is also a consequence of the new science. But its methodology has to be made universal by implementing an educational system for all -- Comenius was practically the inventor of adult education, of education for girls as well as boys, and for the poor along with the rich. Once education was universal the flood of knowledge would hand tremendous intellectual power over to the people, while at the same time tearing down the ivory towers of professional privilege.

Everybody would be as close as they can be to Homo Universalis. Everyone would be trained and prepared to deal with the elements of a new trivium, three fundamental disciplines, philosophy, politics and theology. These would take the place of the ancient trivium that every pupil was expected to know -- hence the word "trivial" for information we expect everybody to know already.

In this way the summit gathering would include teachers tasked with working out this simplification project so that the essentials of knowledge can be taught efficiently to all. At ten year intervals the College of Light would meet, representatives of teachers and professors elected by their peers from the best schools around the world would work out this new trivium and agree upon how to convey it to the next generation of children. At the same time, faith leaders, ethicists and artists in the consistory of holiness would work out how to make that knowledge attractive to the next generation by inspiring them with the beauty of love and reciprocity. This would shame politicians into showing their mettle by raising their goals from mere realpolitik and pragmatism to their ultimate ideal: peace.

Making Reform Universal

John Amos Comenius was a progressive and an idealist, but not a utopian dreamer. He was aware that a better society can only come from better individuals. As an innovative educator, he had seen with his own eyes the power that good teaching has to improve each generation over the one before it. Comenius advocated raising young children to be curious, first-hand investigators of the world around them. As they grow older, they should be encouraged to become fully balanced individuals, not overly studious nor excessively athletic, neither fanatical in expressing faith nor extreme in their political leanings. Cruelty and compulsion are to be avoided, for freedom is the mind's reason for being.

"For the mind was made to be free (it will not and cannot be compelled in any way without being destroyed), and to preserve a balance with that of its neighbour which is equally free in all respects. This balance takes us back to the saying of Christ 'Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you',' or negatively 'Do not unto others that which ye would not have them do unto you.' This is the keynote of God's law affecting morals, commerce, and the rights of all nationalities." (Panorthosia, Ch. 12, para 5, pp. 187-188)

Comenius' emphasis on the Golden Rule as the basic unit for teaching universal morality has been strengthened by modern scholarship, which has uncovered instances of the Golden Rule, phrased both positively and negatively, in every major religious tradition.

Comenius advocated teaching girls along with boys, and poor children alongside the rich. Both policies were controversial at the time. Although universal education is accepted now in prosperous countries (indeed this is the main reason they are wealthy and powerful in the first place), it is far from fully implemented on a global level.

Like any good teacher, Comenius himself embodied the qualities he taught. As mentioned last time, he himself achieved distinction in all three of the fields of endeavour that he sought in Panorthosia to introduce into governance. He was an experienced leader and peace negotiator, a renowned educational reformer who wrote a school curriculum for Sweden, an advocate of the new science -- his ideas helped inspire what later became the Royal Society -- and a leader of his religious community, the Moravian Brotherhood.

During his long career he straddled all three of what he considered to be the three great pillars of peace and the three sources of human potential: politics, science (or natural philosophy, as it was called at the time) and religion. This is a reflection of our three basic human responsibilities, our duty to self, to God and to our fellow man. He calls upon each of us to answer in our own lives and in our own way, each of these three callings, science, religion and the politics of peace.

A Renaissance Man's Plan

Panorthosia goes into great detail on how to strike this balance in our work, as family members, as believers, as supporters of our local community and of humankind. In the first chapter it says,

"My purpose is to enable men to see God and serve Him so that His Kingdom exists on earth as it is in heaven... Then the light and peace would return to the world, which would work like an elaborate clock with all its components well-connected, well balanced and functioning together for a common purpose. Every man in creation would return to the image of God within him (1 Colossians 1, 26-29) and similarly every family group, every state and church, and finally the entire world." (Panorthosia, Ch. 1, para 13, 15, p. 50)

Perhaps surprisingly, it is only in the final two chapters of a twenty-six chapter book that Panorthosia details the organization of his suggested world government.

I believe that Panorthosia should be studied carefully by anyone who aspires to world citizenship. Although it is a difficult work with many meanderings, it is impossible to read it and not be changed, and not to find in it hope for the future of humanity. My own book series, Cosmopolis Earth, is a humble attempt to respond creatively to the many possibilities opened up by Comenius' revolutionary masterpiece.

Service First

Servant Authority

By John Taylor; 2010 July 05, Rahmat 14, 167 BE

Service is the fundamental imperative of free enterprise. The entrepreneur's motto is "find a need and fill it." Plato rightly called business the "nursemaid of society." Like a nursemaid suckling a baby, the purpose of business is to care for us and nurture our tenderest, most urgent needs. No matter how complex, computerized and mathematical it becomes, the economy can never replace the creative ability of individuals to innovate and make new wealth as they profit by serving real needs of society.

Service, working for peace and the general good, is even more fundamental to politics, not only for leaders but followers as well. As Niccolo Machiavelli's masterpiece, "The Discourses," asserts, no theory, no system or political mechanism can ever take the place of involved, responsible and committed citizens.

Unfortunately, some corporations grew larger, more centralized and powerful, and learned to corrupt the nation state in their favour. The corporatist, state capitalist changed the motto to, "make a perceived need in the mind of the people and get government to help you fill it." The younger George Bush expressed this bluntly when still U.S. president. According to a South American head of state, they were discussing how to advance their nations' economies when Bush concluded, "For us, the greatest stimulus is war." Whatever the immediate American war aims in Iraq and Afghanistan, enrichment of influential businesses was always the overweening goal.

Here we see the main goal of business -- service -- and the main reason for being of politics -- peace -- betrayed and subverted in a single blow. How did this happen? How did George Bush, a professedly believing Christian, come to believe that war was the life of the economy? How did Barak Obama, a liberal democrat as well as a believing Christian, come to the same conclusion, evidently, since he is following an identical war policy in his administration? Has religious belief become so disconnected with religious teaching and moral principles that they are no longer speaking?

Surely service is every bit as fundamental to the message of Christ as it is to free enterprise. Did not Jesus say,

"The greatest among you shall be your servant." (Matt 23:11)

Certainly the context in which this was said -- a discussion of who was to take first place among the disciples -- makes the idea of distinction by usefulness of service -- servant authority -- even more emphatic. Just as the best entrepreneur is the one who has found the greatest need and filled it, and the best politician serves the people best by fulfilling their greatest need, that is, ending the addiction to war, so it is the role of religion to serve our greatest unperceived need, the need for a God of love to vivify our hearts. This indubitably is the Baha'i teaching.

"Universal benefits derive from the grace of the Divine religions, for they lead their true followers to sincerity of intent, to high purpose, to purity and spotless honor, to surpassing kindness and compassion, to the keeping of their covenants when they have covenanted, to concern for the rights of others, to liberality, to justice in every aspect of life, to humanity and philanthropy, to valor and to unflagging efforts in the service of mankind. It is religion, to sum up, which produces all human virtues, and it is these virtues which are the bright candles of civilization." (Abdu'l-Baha, The Secret of Divine Civilization, p. 98)

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Democracy as Scam

Come the Postliminium

The following was written in response to this news report,  http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/22/arundhati_roy_on_obamas_wars_india

By John Taylor; 2010 March 23, Ala' 03, 166 BE

In his peace plan, John Amos Comenius suggested that the time after a world government forms should be proclaimed the "Great Postlimininum." A postliminium is the time when a knight returns home after long years fighting military campaigns in foreign parts. Relieved of the military life, he takes over his farms, lands and estates from their stewards. Described in the parable of the talents, the Postliminium is a time of reckoning, when lower management gives account of their stewardship and the new boss rectifies past wrongs.

Among the worst of these wrongs are being committed by the world's large democracies, including the world's largest, India. Activist Arundhati Roy describes democracy as little more than a scam, a way for the elites to bilk the majority of their wealth. In a recent broadcast she describes how she became an eyewitness to the wholesale murder and uprooting of hundreds of thousands of "tribals" throughout central India. This genocide is committed by the national government on behalf of what she calls "corporates," mining companies who have bought mineral rights directly under the feet of thousands of villages.

Come the Postliminium, all this greed and injustice must stop. The natural wealth of our planet will come under the ownership and purview of the entire human race. The exploitation of mineral resources will no doubt continue, and may even increase, but only after the entire wheel of human governance is rolling smoothly. That is, the tread of the wheel, local people, must have a say and gain a share in ownership of the project. The hub of the wheel, the world government, must also have a veto and a controlling share in every such project.

In the meantime, we need an Einstein of ownership, a legal genius to work out standard, universal formulas for distributing wealth, for encouraging enterprise without trampling on anybody's rights. Once such a revised proprietary order is established, a world government will arrive at decisions without conflict, and locals will have a stake in whatever is going on nearby.

Roy describes the agony of these hapless villagers, who are forced to either leave or starve. Come the postliminium, the increased mobility of hillside housing will enable large populations to move to where the action is without dislocation -- the very word "dislocation" implies the hurt of being uprooted, but if entire homes and estates can be moved smoothely and easily anywhere in the world, suddenly the trauma of mobility will be removed. Suddenly, one of the most fundamental democratic rights, freedom to roam, will be a reality for everybody.

 

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Pneumatic Street Covers

Planning for the Refugee Crisis

By John Taylor; 2009 July 10, Rahmat 16, 166 BE

Precis: Global warming changes everything, including the requirements of buildings and travel. The ominous prospect of an influx of billions of refugees is already putting tremendous pressure on planners. In the meantime, the weather is getting more severe. Architecture and city planning must adopt designs that can protect us from severe weather by covering We can solve many chronic infrastructure problems at once with improved property laws, more high density housing, renewable energy, local agriculture and less wasteful transport.

We all know by now that rising temperatures caused by greenhouse gases are melting the polar icecaps. This will raise sea levels around the world by several metres. Coastal regions are heavily populated, and some of the world's largest cities are ocean trading ports. As they are flooded out there will be dislocation of Biblical proportions. Possibly as many as a billion people will become homeless, penniless refugees. At the same time, global warming is already shifting the monsoons and causing desertification inland. This will erase croplands and permanently reduce our already strained food supply. The result will be soaring food prices and possibly mass famine. At the same time, a massive influx of refugees is likely to degrade natural regions even more, further reducing the population that the land can sustain.

Under the best of circumstances, it would be daunting to provide food, clothing and shelter for huge crowds at short notice. If, as is likely, an influx of flood victims happens concurrently with crop failures and mass starvation, violent confrontations will break out. Military, intelligence and other security professionals are well aware of this looming disaster and are already training for it. The destabilizing effects of global warming are already evident in the most populous affected regions, such as Pakistan, India and North Africa. Even regions that are tranquil and prosperous now are likely to collapse into war, famine and pestilence.

Even with careful planning and preparation, basic infrastructure in inland areas will be strained. The rich will flee early, leaving the poorest refugees to languish in huge refugee camps where hygiene will fall below minimum standards. Nor are the political consequences any more encouraging.

Even wealthy, stable, democratic and freedom-loving nations, forced at short notice to house a large percentage of their population in crowded tent cities, will have no choice but to apply harsh laws and Procrustean emergency measures. Arbitrary measures are notoriously habit forming. An already threatened elite may suspend elections and resort to some kind of authoritarian regime. Even if freedom, democracy and human rights do somehow survive outside the refugee cities, it will be only nominal if, as in Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany, millions of citizens are permanently segregated behind barbed wire in concentration camps.

For many years, I have been thinking about radical changes to infrastructure that can turn a rapidly approaching disaster into an opportunity. I have combined some far-out proposals for better building and travel made during past centuries by visionaries like Jules Verne, Buckminster Fuller and John Amos Comenius. Some of them clashed with ruling ideologies, and others were deemed too grandiose and expensive, or without sufficient advantages over existing, traditional ways.

However, global warming is already changing the ground rules for everything, whether we want to or not. So now is a good time to reconsider these proposals.

Domed Cities

In the 1960's Buckminster Fuller proposed that large areas of New York be covered over by his new invention, the geodesic dome. Aside from the savings in heating, roofing and other cost savings gained by complete protection from rain, cold and wind, he suggested that a domed-over city would be immune to nuclear fallout. Now that we are finding out that climate change means in large part climate de-stabilization, we are aware of the need for better protection from the elements. The increased severity of storms, tsunamis and heat waves is making planners appreciate the advantages of covering over large urban areas.

As recently as this spring researchers at the University of Toronto announced that, according to their calculations it is possible to build an elevator to near space on a mountain-top using the same pneumatic techniques that are used to make those bouncy children's play structures to be found at carnivals, fairs and festivals. A platform at the top of this airy tower would give observers a panorama almost as impressive as what astronauts see from the International Space Station. The researchers have patented their idea, which could possibly be made into an elevator to space without the need to invent new, exotic materials required by older elevator designs.

This announcement set me thinking. If it is possible to build an extremely tall tower out of glorified plastic balloons, why not make temporary pneumatic structures to cover over street corners and intersections in city blocks? If it is too expensive to build a permanent geodesic dome, why not cover parks and public spaces over with pneumatic structures? If there is an influx of climate refugees, why subject them to the elements while they wait for a home and job inland?