Depression Cured

A Cure for Depressive Illness

 

 

"Perfection of work is man's greatest reward. When a man sees his work perfected and this perfection is the result of incessant labor and application he is the happiest man in the world. Work is the source of human happiness." (`Abdu'l-Baha, SW, Vol. 13, p. 152)

 

By popular request, I am beginning a series on the above quote, which has inspired me for decades. First, before getting into new material, I will repost some of what has already been featured on the Badi’ Blog, starting with this:

 

Work and Happiness

p18wri 2007 July 14; Baha'i Mention, and Other Mentions

Revised and reposted, May 2012

 

 

Work and Happiness

 

Back on the 20th of September, 2002 I wrote an essay called, "On the Parable of the Talents; Ethical Economics, Part IV" where I did a detailed analysis of the implications of the following reported statement by the Master:

 

"Perfection of work is man's greatest reward. When a man sees his work perfected and this perfection is the result of incessant labor and application he is the happiest man in the world. Work is the source of human happiness." (SW, Vol. 13, p. 152)

 

It turns out that scientists and medical experts have been making discoveries confirming this wisdom, according to the following report in a local newspaper.

 

"Want to be happier? Work longer hours," by Joanna Frketich

 

"You're in early. You stay late. The hours are piling up. Congratulations! Workaholics are less likely to suffer from depression. Statistics Canada reports that those working fewer than 30 hours a week suffered more depression than workers clocking more than 40 hours. Though nobody is quite sure why. Maybe because workaholics don't have time.

 

"People working 40 hours meet the norms and expectations of society and feel they're doing something useful said Vish Baba, professor of management at McMaster University.”If I'm, working less hours, my sense of self worth is threatened. I might feel the skills I have are not wanted.

 

"Others suggest it has more to do with being passionate enough about your work to put in the extra time. They have a strong sense of mission to their work:' said Peter Bieling, manager of the mood disorders program at St. Joseph's Healthcare. "It's work that matters to them. Then again, the answer could be simply that people suffering from depression can't work as many hours. "Someone who is healthy is more likely to work longer hours," said Heather Gilmour, analyst in the health statistics division of Statistics Canada." (Hamilton Spectator, A1, 13 Jan, 2007)

 

Such is the problem with scientific confirmations, you never know if people are happier because they are working, or whether they are working because they are happier. There is an element of faith in both, in being happy and in working, which is why they are of such benefit. As Paul said, "Every man's work shall be made manifest." (1 Corinthians iii. 13)

Pansophia

Corruption and Misemployment

By John Taylor; 2010 Nov 19, Qudrat 16, 167 BE

So far we have two new institutions for Cosmopolis Earth, the stele and the worker's palace. Each is a technical aid in applying justice and other principles of Cosmopolitanism. The stele is a robotic mediator and an aid in stake-holding, fitting individual effort into the overall plans of Cosmopolis Earth, and vice versa.

As we saw, the spread of steles will establish a new right to advice, an expectation on the part of all to be properly guided at every stage of human endeavor.

The second institution is an adaptation of Flora Tristan's worker's palaces, a tool for equality between women and men at the grassroots level. More broadly, the worker's palace, to be built in each locality or neighborhood, would fulfill a major social goal that is now largely neglected, to assure that everyone has a hand in the world of work, preferably by plying a trade or profession. As everybody enters fully into an organized calling, the main source of corruption in human affairs will be cut off.

The Root of Corruption

In Panorthosia, John Amos Comenius holds that the root of corruption is lack of organization. Reforms cannot last until we somehow eliminate corruption. In a prayer "for the reformed age," Comenius wrote,

"So many efforts at reform have been attempted in all ages, often apparently reaching the brink of success but always relapsing into the former state of corruption, that we mortals are now as in the past as hapless as Sisyphus, and without thee [God] our efforts always have been and are and ever shall be doomed to failure." (Panorthosia, Chapter 27, p. 248)

For Comenius, fecklessness and idleness -- what we now label as unemployment -- are both causes and results of a vicious circle of disorganization. Every time work halts or jobs are lost, a random, disorganizing element is injected into our lives. Fewer hands can touch the reins of power, wealth concentrates into fewer pockets and a vicious cycle of centralized power accelerates. So dangerous is it that he would have made unemployment socially unacceptable, indeed illegal. Nor, as he points out, was he the first to think this. He cites many precedents in history where legislators laid down obligatory work laws.

"The Egyptians of old had a wise law, like the Chinese of today, forbidding the deaf, the blind, the halt, the maimed, and even the victims of gout, from going idle, regardless of their wealth. Solon, the Athenian lawgiver, passed a special law against the idle and indolent, giving everyone the power to bring an action against them. Also God in His holy word passed the law: 'If any will not work, neither shall he eat.' The Romans had no temple to Fors Fortuna, the so-called patron goddess of the idle and unemployed, inside the city, but built one across the Tiber to demonstrate that idleness must be kept away from the boundaries of a well-established city." (Panorthosia Ch. 24, VI, pp. 103-104)

Of course, one can be overemployed as well as unemployed. Like everything in life, work is beneficial only in moderation. There is a sweet spot where one's service is fulfilling but not overwhelming. When it blocks out leisure, it is excessive because leisure is necessary to a reflective, examined life. On the other hand, too much leisure and too little work breeds dissipation and excessive pleasure seeking.

As it is, the workplace is plagued by unemployment and the threat of unemployment and, worst of all, misemployment or crime. Comenius explains what true full employment would mean,

"No-one in the state should be allowed to be idle, in the sense of failing to make an honest living for himself and his family by serving society in general through farming, craftsmanship, trade, or politics. My argument is (1) that no-one should learn to misbehave through having nothing to do. Therefore this should be prevented in the individual's own interests; (2) that others should not be corrupted by this bad example; (3) that there should be no occasion for begging or sharp practices; (4) that in such circumstances the idle body does not nourish any of its parts."

The wisdom of this is clear. When society fails to involve young people very early in a productive trade, criminals willingly step in. Youth gangs and organized crime get a stranglehold on the lives of adolescents by offering entry positions as petty crooks, preying upon the common good. Full employment from the earliest age would help end one of the great blights on humanity, crime and misemployment, within a generation. Of course none of this would be possible if the local community did not make every effort to provide semi-skilled work for young apprentices. This would be one of the goals of Flora Tristan's worker's palace. Even if entry level jobs were heavily subsidized at first, the community would still profit overall from the savings of a steep drop in the crime rate.

Needless to say, the educational system has a central role to play. Its first duty should be to assure that every child in the world learns a trade. Having a balanced, fruitful career organizes one's life and makes it easier to hit an optimum level of work and leisure. It canalizes effort into meaningful investigation over the long term.

Vocational training must therefore start early, in primary school. Each pupil should be fully apprenticed in at least one trade upon graduation from middle school. This was commonplace until the mid-twentieth century but it for spurious reasons it was abandoned in favor of over a decade of sitting in a classroom.

Taking vocational training up once more would help both society and the youths themselves, since recent research indicates that adolescents need working relationships as early as age 15. Plying a trade would improve the general happiness and even brain development of adolescents. (see, Joe Allen and Claudia Worrell Allen, Escaping the Endless Adolescence, as discussed in, http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/nurture-shock/2009/11/05/why-teenagers-are-growing-up-so-slowly-today.html)

Once we have full employment, wisdom will become an attainable goal. Wisdom, Comenius believed, will mark our collective coming of age, the very consummation of human evolution. Once we enter into the cosmopolitan condition, it will even be possible to attain what he called pansophia, universal wisdom.

"For in the final age of the World man must come to the highest stage of all. Therefore philosophy, or the love of wisdom, is not sufficient; wisdom itself must be present, and not its shadow but its body, and its body in whole and not in part; therefore it is not merely wisdom, but Universal Wisdom, that we need. Similarly politics or poliarchy (skill in governing cities or kingdoms) is not enough; this final age requires Universal Rule, or wisdom in maintaining any human society at any time in peace and prosperity. Lastly, religion is not sufficient; what we need is Universal Religion, binding all souls to God in every way with all His virtues." (Comenius, Panorthosia II, Ch. 10, Para 43, p. 169)

In the next section we will look at an institution designed to enable universal wisdom, the stoa.

ROO Drawing Boards, the trunk of democracy

Back to the Drawing Board

By John Taylor; 2010 June 21, Nur 16, 167 BE

ROO sub-sections have standard software interfaces, connecting the individual into larger entities such as the Consultorium and the Worker's Palace.

The Hillside Labour Market

If we could visit a hillside development we would be overwhelmed by its vibrancy, creativity and complexity. Many enterprises are set close by one another, with several levels of feedback and control operating simultaneously. If these were ecosystems, it would be like walking out of a sandy desert or the frozen wastes of the Antarctic ice shelf straight into a rainforest in Borneo or the Amazon, stepping out of an environment with no visible or audible life forms to where eye and ear are confronted by a startling profusion of life, exotic species of trees, insects and birds of all kinds all around. A few steps in such an ecosystem puts the visiter into contact with a greater diversity of species than a week's journey anywhere else.

There are several reasons that a hillside neighbourhood would support such a prolific outpouring of cultural life. As we have seen, residents live in a full-service home, with cleaning and meals served on a "just-in-time" basis. This frees up time and energy for creative pursuits, especially for mothers and homemakers. Having most food grown and prepared nearby, and most other products crafted or manufactured in the neighbourhood, there is a ready and diverse labour market close at hand. Unlike our labour market, it is not a battlefield among rival trades, although there is a moderate degree of competition among guilds, unions and professional associations -- the most active and useful earn the right to a stall or office in the local Worker's Palace.

As soon as everybody was required to learn a trade in primary school and be fully apprenticed by the age of 15, there ceased to be any distinct lines between worker and non-worker. Everybody became a skilled trades-person. Even those who chose later on to get a liberal arts education and enter one of the learned professions were still expected to maintain amateur status in a trade of some kind. Thus, trades unions compete with one another for temporary, amateur work as for full time jobs. And since ownership is shared and cooperative, that means that clients, owners, managers and workers all are local people, and can even be the same person, or members of the same household, there is no room for the distancing between management and labour that leads to acrimony.

The Drawing Board

As we have seen, the individual starts off with a great deal more autonomy than now, yet learns early to work with others for mutual benefit. Each dweller of a hillside lives, works and plays in sub-sections of a modular, mobile unit called a ROO, for Room of One's Own. The living room, reception area and bedroom sub-section of the ROO module connects physically into larger family and household compounds -- which themselves move around in the hillside complex. It is possible to put one's living room ROO into an apartment in order to live alone in a single apartment. However, but many rewards, financial and honorary, are built in for those who join forces with others in a household. So in practice, single apartments are rare.

The recreational sub-section of the ROO fits into whatever hobby or avocation an individual has chosen at the time. If the person is playing a sport like swimming, it acts as a change room at the nearest pool. If they practice a hobby like sewing or woodworking, the ROO sub-unit fits into a local garment making factory or wood shop.

The professional sub-section of the ROO fits into the workplace, which can be in the household itself, or in a local workshop or office, or at the closest appropriate Worker's Palace, or indeed it may be moved overnight among these locations as needed. The centerpiece of this work ROO sub-unit is the drawing board. This drawing board may start off as a simple whiteboard for brainstorming. But as technology advances it will become a smart board, a sophisticated computer interface that defaults as a blank slate. The drawing board would then plug into open source software tools that the worker learned and earned during his or her apprenticeship. These ROO drawing boards are only partly owned by the worker; they are also regulated and supervised by their own chosen trade or profession.

While the drawing board starts off with this professional function, it also plugs into the consultorium. Each time a worker walks into a consultorium a virtual version of their drawing board appears at a work station in the consultorium. Changes made here also modify the physical board at work -- this auto-syncing among many computers can already be done with outlining programs like Microsoft's OneNote in Office 2010. This link to the consultorium permits the drawing board to act not only as a tool for practicing one's trade or profession, it also becomes the hub for the worker's other principal roles as citizen, believer, advisor and researcher.

This further limits and dissipates the political influence not only of corporations but also of trades unions and professional associations. Only individuals vote, and only they decide where their loyalties lie, be it their employer, their trade, their household or their neighbourhood; indeed only they decide if the situation need be understood in such a way as to see any conflict among loyalties in the first place. A trade group that treats its workers well can hope that they will support their agenda, but it can never take it for granted as now, now that our education is so narrow and our world view so conflicted. The same dependence is true for households, employers and other levels of authority.

::

Schools of Public Spirit, Plus Corvee

Hillsides as Schools of Public Spirit

By John Taylor; 2010 June 08, Nur 03, 167 BE

We have been describing a neighbourhood with dwellings that move around and whose residents enjoy full-service facilities. These provide even the poorest resident all the luxuries and time-saving services that only a tiny number of super-rich can afford today. Meals are served on time, laundry is completed and laid out, homes cleaned, and so forth. Pleasant as it is to think about what how we would enjoy this posh, leisured lifestyle, it is well to recall the parable of the servants and the master who promises to return like a "thief in the night."

"To whoever much is given, of him will much be required; and to whom they deposit much, of him will they ask more." (Luke 12:48, WEB)

This necessary, reciprocal exchange of freedom for trust and obligation has been summed up as, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." In the case of hillside residents, it is milder, "The price of being served is to serve periodically as a volunteer." Or perhaps, "In exchange for being served, I will enrol myself in the School of Public Spirit."

The idea of such a school of public spiritedness comes from J.S. Mill, who believed that a healthy democracy can only come about when everybody engages in civic activities, by which a person "is made to feel himself one of the public, and whatever is for their benefit to be for his benefit." Such work is extremely edifying and should turn every resident from a free but selfish agent into a responsible, caring citizen.

"The moral part of the instruction afforded by the participation of the private citizen, if even rarely, in public functions" results in his being able to "weigh interests not his own, to be guided in case of conflicting claims, by another rule than his private partialities, to apply at every turn, principles and maxims which have for their reason of existence the common good." (J.S. Mill, Representative Government, cited in Mortimer Adler, Mortimer, The Great Ideas, A Lexicon of Modern Thought, "Democracy," Macmillan, New York, 1952 pp. 139-140)

Mill observed that national politics even in his time did not offer much opportunity to involve everybody in direct service. He suggested that local government may be the only practical alternative. Since the 19th Century when he wrote, it has gotten worse. Democracy on the national and even urban levels has become even more dependent on bureaucracies and professional consultants. The average citizen does little more than cast a vote every few years, if that.

 

The entire purpose of the consultative architecture of hillside projects is to fill the crucial need, pointed out by Mill, for each and all to provide some service, formal or spontaneous, in a professional and amateur capacity, to the entire community. The consultorium, the nerve center and multi-media hub of the neighbourhood complex, acts as a point of departure for researching and finding needs and eliciting acts of service from local people to fill those needs. A great demand for labour will be created by dividing each neighbourhood into blocks, and blocks into households, and households into families and individuals, with each of these groups entirely autonomous, vying with its peers in service of the public good.

The by-word of hillside projects is varied, universal public service by the public itself. Many job positions alternate workers, by lot, as in Ancient Athens. Some services alternate between expert professionals and temporary amateur volunteers from the general community. The labour market is designed to see that every citizen in the hillside has ample opportunity to try out many and various jobs, as both an amateur and as part of their trade. Each will have the chance to learn from each stint in serving the general good what kind of work is compatible with his or her knowledge, interests and inclinations. Local farms, workshops and kitchens, especially those majority-owned by the hillside cooperative, will be open to many kinds of alternative work arrangements, including volunteering and jobs with alternative remuneration, such as corvee labour.

Corvee is an ancient institution that, for good reason, has largely been abandoned. In its time, it was little distinguishable from slavery. It was often a way for tyrants to draft peasants to pay their taxes not with cash but by working arduously on large projects. The Great Wall of China and the roads of Ancient Rome, for example, were built on the backs of corvee labourers.

In the World Belt and hillside projects, though, corvee will be used benevolently, for very different purposes. Corvee will be an accounting innovation allowing workers to change temporary service projects into permanent jobs, or else, should they desire, do the reverse. That is, a clever employee may figure out a way to automate or otherwise eliminate the need for his or her position. This would not be self-defeating, since he or she can claim corvee credit in exchange, or seek other rewards for doing well.

Corvee is a tool to help bridge the large but invisible gap between amateur and professional, between paid work and unpaid volunteering. It will permit both rich and poor to benefit from the "school of public spirit" by doing volunteer work side-by-side, on an equal basis. Nobody will know whether a worker is a volunteer or a working for some kind of credit. For instance, a volunteer worker may wish to work Pro Bono on a project that he or she believes in, or, if money is tight and times are tough, to claim the equivalent wages as credit in taxes paid. A wealthier person would not have to do this and could work un-credited for the public good, or for badges on their escutcheon (We will discuss escutcheons, as well as corvee labour, at greater length in future sections of People without Borders).

The shifting, service oriented design of consultative housing should offer residents many varied and broad opportunities to learn lessons in the school of public spirit.

::

The Leadership of Knowledge

Beautiful Balance Sheets and Trade Money

By John Taylor; 2008 Dec 10, 17 Qawl 165 BE

Last year I had one of my epiphanies. I still remember where the eureka experience hit me. It was at a talk in Dunnville by Anne Pearson about her grandfather, the former Prime Minister of Canada. Afterwards we talked about the sort of leadership we can hope for to answer the extreme demands of the hour. Will Canada ever get another world-level innovator and Nobel Prize winning peacemaker like Lester B? My revelation did not have anything directly to do with what was being said, I just remember suddenly thinking: "Eureka! That is it!" Ever since then I have been pussyfooting around, hoping for the perfect occasion that would inspire me do justice to this idea, which has to do with money. But even when the stock markets crashed this fall I still could not spit it out. For some reason I still feel deeply reluctant to expose it to the light of day; but I have determined to write about it today, no matter what.

Beautiful Balance Sheets

The background of the idea I had been mulling over for years before Anne's talk. I call it "Beautiful Balance Sheets." Pretty vague, I know. 


The idea is that you lock a group of accountants, mathematicians and graphic artists in a small room and refuse to let them out until they come up with a way of graphing the economic health of an institution -- as compared with the average for all institutions of its type -- so that the world would see its condition instantly and accurately without ever looking at a balance sheet. 


Sure, investors in stocks learn by patient study how to look down a listing of facts and figures about a public corporation (nobody knows how privately companies are doing, that is confidential) in its yearend report. Insofar as this data is reliable, an expert can assess, if not at a glance then fairly quickly, whether an organization is healthy or on the skids. 


But I am talking about a graphical representation that any untrained person, using their aesthetic sense alone, can tell at a glance whether a company is robust or not. Nature already does this, of course. You can tell at a glance whether an animal or human has good genes and is strong enough to hand them on to their progeny. All you do is look at the face and body. If they strike the eye as beautiful, then every law of evolutionary biology is telling you that this organism is a good bet. If it is ugly, its chances are slimmer.

Why would it not be possible to portray in a standard graphic the same instant picture of the health of a family, company, government or any other organization?

Having this idea in mind, I jumped for joy when I read in Comenius's Panorthosia his proposal for escutcheons. These mottos would picture the achievements and worth of individuals and institutions such as schools, families and governments. They would have to earn the right to display their escutcheon in prominent places, such as over their door or on the family website. This fall this blog looked in detail at the escutcheon for families.

For individuals Comenius proposes an escutcheon startlingly similar to the prayer in Baha'u'llah's "Great Announcement" to Humanity: "God grant that the light of unity may envelope the whole earth and that the seal 'the kingdom is God's' may be stamped on the brow of all its peoples." (Gleanings, 11; Proclamation, 112) In the last paragraph of two chapters of the Panorthosia, Comenius writes:

"Therefore no matter who you are, you must reform yourself according to God's good pleasure and with His help, so that angels and pious men are able, as it were, to read on your forehead the inscription: 'HERE IS A SPLENDID IMAGE OF GOD.'" (Panorthosia, Chapters 19 and 20, paragraph 24)

Soon I plan to look at the other escutcheons that Comenius proposed for school, church and state. Behind these earned honorifics and graphs data would be gathered openly according to transparency and other principles of open systems or the creative commons. Comenius saw this more broadly than we do now, as including opinions and ideas as well as technology. All thought must be examined, sifted and proven true. This he took from the following bon mot of Cicero,

"It is beneath the dignity of a wise man either to hold a false opinion or to defend without reservation any idea that has not been considered from every angle."

Now that we have the Internet, Cicero's "every angle" can be extended to include not only your or my "every angle" but everybody's "every angle." I never cease to wonder at the articles on the Web by larger newspapers. Even the most brilliant ideas and analyses are quickly followed up by reader comments offering insights and experience that one would never have thought of. Even with my tiny readership, I have greatly benefited from readers' ideas. Truly, there is no excuse to retain stereotyped opinions or unconsidered views in this day and age. Anyway, Comenius made this comment on the above statement by Cicero:

"Similarly it follows that churchmen, as they lead their fellow-men towards holiness, must consider it beneath their dignity to do or tolerate anything that is not holy; and politicians, as men of peace, must think it beneath their dignity to give rise to further disagreements or to tolerate them, far less to defend them." (Panorthosia, Ch. 15, para 2)

Okay, I was talking about beautiful balance sheets, integrated by means of open information reflected on a graphical escutcheon display.

For example, one principle of investment is diversification. If a portfolio represented by a graphic of a human body is not diverse, it might look unnaturally thin. If investments were too spread out, the body would become obese. If they are overinvested in one industry, that imbalance would make the body tilt to one side, and so forth. Following Comenius, similar displays could represent our opinions, our balance of diet and exercise, and other long-term measures of peace, health and well being.

Geez, I am still pussyfooting around. Let us get on with this Eureka idea, which I will call Trade Money.

Trade and Professional Money

So, we were talking about Lester B. Pearson and the sort of leaders we need today. It hit me that the sort of leader we need today is not an individual at all. Okay, we need individuals too, but we focus in on them far too much. The real default of leadership today, I realized, is in the trades and professions.

How do we increase the sway of bodies of expert opinion? Yes, a trade or profession can earn its own escutcheon and prove its worth as compared to other types of expertise; but we need the knowledge of experts to lead, not just passively serve, advice and obey. We need our farmers, doctors, teachers and other experts to be taking the initiative, not only telling us what to do but taking us to task when we fall short of fundamentals.

Take the Science Advisory Panel on Climate Change; its problem is that it is just that, an advisory panel. We need a leadership panel with teeth, that could say to governments, do this and that, or else. Or we are all cooked, literally. And climate science is just one of a thousand areas of expertise where we are not doing the right thing, or even the sensible thing. How can we possibly get leadership from our experts?

Then it hit me. The trades and professions can print their own money! They can stage ongoing simulated virtual worlds like Second Life and use virtual currency to run them. That virtual money could, just like Second Life, have either fixed or floating exchange rates that can be changed into outside legal tender. The value of its currency would be partly linked to the beauty of their escutcheon. If a trade were run by corrupt bosses, its virtual currency in terms of outside bank notes would automatically be devalued, along with the influence of the experts running it.

If a science or trade were overvalued, that is, it became more popular than its value to society really warrants, "inflation" might set in. As trades improve by becoming more scientific, helpful and democratic, their simulated world would "gain currency," that is, be used by more and more people. As a result their respective money would rise in value.


Then concerns or social goals that a trade or group of trades approve of, they would not only be in a position to praise and recommend it, they could offer substantial, direct funding to set them going. They could reward anybody who promotes projects or policies that they approve of, and even offer disincentives to damaging behaviour. Tradespersons would fund projects with their own money, both virtual and "real;" that is, not money given to them from outside but money that they literally made, earned and printed for themselves.

Trades could even stage their own virtual polls and elections. These might decide matters of concern semi-democratically (that is, in order to vote or be polled for your opinion, you must demonstrate current knowledge of the issue by passing periodic tests). Such internal educational activity would bring in more funds and promote informed opinion about their area of expertise in the public at large.

For example, farming. Last year's food crisis was caused by the fact that there are few farmers in our society (over the past century in North America they dropped from 95 percent to less than 5 percent of the population). The few farmers we do have get little influence in decision making, in comparison with the vital importance of food in keeping us all alive. When clumsy checks and balances do allow farmers a say, it is distorted by bribes and subsidies and becomes unconstructive, especially on a world level.

With farmer bucks would be possible to make farming as cool as it already is important.

If farming needs were bolstered by a powerful currency and strong leadership by farmers, there would soon be long lines to learn about and vote on farming issues. Strong leadership from local farmers would have local voters jostling to prove that their opinion about agriculture are worth something, that is, backed up by adequate, current knowledge. Farmers could use their simulation games and virtual world to teach and certify these voters in the general public who want to certify as a farming observers. 


Similar activity would make sure that professional farmers know what they are doing too. Being a qualified farming observer would allow you to participate in virtual gaming and simulations, vote and be polled for your informed opinion. For many the right to play in the best simulated farming games and virtual worlds would be incentive enough to qualify.

The next most important profession is education.

Teachers, like farmers, would issue their own educational dollars, redeemable for privileges in educational games and simulations, as well as the real-world school system. Edu-dollars they might be called. The same thing for medicine. It is one thing for doctors to say over and over to reluctant patients at their annual check-up: "Eat a varied diet of fruits and vegetables and get more exercise," and quite another for the patient to come to the check-up avid for a diet and exercise bonus paid in "Doc Bucks."

Law enforcement

The police already issue citations to members of the public for unusually good behaviour, why not actually put cop kopeks into their hands? If the police supervised a popular "cops and robbers" game on the internet and every cop carried around a bundle of Cop kopeks to hand out for cooperative behaviour, their relations with the general public would be lubricated, especially among the 95 percent of youths who are avid gamers. Who can doubt that a beat cop walking around with a fist full of cop kopeks could do more to stop crime among young people than any number of moles, informers and undercover agents?

When my nine-year-old son Tomaso came up with his idea for "mom-bucks" all on his own, I was astonished. He had invented exactly what I was stewing over and afraid to share on these essays, a monetary reward scheme for his own "boss" (or if you prefer, "employee"), his mother. Why not have real “mom-bucks,” not only money that can be used between mothers and children but that all mothers could make and distribute in their own, and their children’s interest? That way an otherwise vulnerable and unsupported mother might support herself entirely on "mom-bucks" by serving the professional interests of other mothers.

A Rudimentary Version of Trade Money is Being Researched

A recent edition of Macleans has an interesting interview with Roland Fryer, an economist and head of Harvard's Education Innovation Laboratory. He has been experimenting with "pay-for-performance," where kids are paid cash or cell phone minutes for getting good grades. He says that he came up with this idea when he realized that the reason it is so hard to motivate children and youth to try hard at school is that the rewards are so distant, usually ten or twenty years into the future. Although the results of his tests are not in yet, Fryer has already noticed that the idea is universally popular among kids, who are usually the last to be consulted on educational issues.

"Part of the resistance (to pay for performance) echoes part of the [problem] with public education: we consult mainly adults, and do things that are comfortable for adults. I think if the answer lay there, we would already have found it. One thing we are trying to do at Ed-Labs to push the envelope is to ask children how schools can better serve them. And the most important thing is that I never met a kid who did not like it. Though in D.C. a few weeks ago, there was a kid who surprised me. He said, `I do not think we should be paid for school. I think I should pay to come to school, because it is such a valuable resource.' I was so impressed. An hour later, we were giving out the first cheques in the auditorium, and this kid's name was called, so I put his cheque in my pocket. He said, `What are you doing?' I said, `You told me you did not believe you should be paid, so I would like to honour that.' He looked at me in a way that only a 13-year-old could, and said, `I never said that!'"

If this initiative among inner city children is proven scientifically to be effective, it would also validate the idea of simulated currency and trade bucks.

Nor can I think of a reason that kids should not be able to make up their currency too. As soon as my son Tomaso learned to make graphs, the first thing he did was start charting my progress as a father. For example, on Christmas day, my line went through the roof, then it plummeted when I asked him to pick up his clothes, and so forth. Maybe not the best application of his new knowledge from my point of view but I was pleased to see him applying it so fast to immediate practical purposes.

It is my observation that money, even fake money such as reward points, silly and insubstantial as they may seem to adults fixated on long-run values, are extremely effective as short term motivators. After all, was it not the economist J.M. Keynes who said that in the long term we are all dead?

Next time I will ask: what would happen if economists made up their own spending money?

--
John Taylor

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

::

p22 Summing up

Worker's Constitution and Obedience to Government

By John Taylor; 2008 Aug 11, 11 Kamal, 165 BE

The reason we all have global warming to deal with right now is simple. Imagine how Los Angeles is run today, under the combined hand of an urban, a state and federal government. Imagine how much worse it would be in L.A. if its sole authority were its notorious street gangs. Lawlessness, a reign of terror, drive-by shootings, anarchy, would prevail and mere survival would be the best that its residents could hope for. That gives you an idea of what it is like on the international scene. When it comes to protecting the air and oceans, it is hopeless. Anybody can dump their effluent to their heart's desire and no central authority can say boo. Anybody who dares care about the environment had better become a world federalist. It is either that or join one of the gangs. A pundit recently wrote,

"multipolarity means that more groups have effective veto power over collective action. In practice, this new pluralistic world has given rise to globosclerosis, an inability to solve problem after problem."

My flow of essays has been slowed severely this summer but not stopped entirely. A reader pointed out yesterday that she has not received anything since the end of July. I have done a few essays and posted them on the blog, but it seems that some technical glitch in my mailing program has been keeping them from going onto the list. I will solve that problem ASAP. Meanwhile, check out badiblog.blogspot.com to get the full poop. Today let us go through some remainders and reminders of various series of essays featured recently on this Badi' Blog.

Two essay streams written over the past year converged in the following point, which combines and resolves them both. One was about the Baha'i principle of obedience to government, the other consisted of speculations about a future constitution for workers and the workplace. Like two tributaries combining into a single flow near the mouth of a great river, these two series converged and ended in the following thought of the Lord of the Age. First, recall that the Will and Testament (Kitab-i-Ahd) of Baha'u'llah was named by the Master number three in importance among the works of His Father,

"The principal works of Baha'o'llah are the Kitab-ul-Ighan, the Kitab-ul-Akdas, the Kitab-ul-Ahd, and numerous letters or tablets addressed to sovereigns or to private individuals." (Abdu'l-Baha, Tablets, vol. 3)

One of my purposes not only in these series but as a Baha'i scholar generally is to remind my fellow believers of the importance of this brief but crucial document. It is easy to get buried in detail and forget how important the principle of obedience and subservience to government is. In the Ahd it is laid out in no uncertain terms,

"O ye beloved of the Lord! It is incumbent upon you to be submissive to all monarchs that are just and to show your fidelity to every righteous king. Serve ye the sovereigns of the world with utmost truthfulness and loyalty. Show obedience unto them and be their well-wishers. Without their leave and permission do not meddle with political affairs, for disloyalty to the just sovereign is disloyalty to God Himself. This is my counsel and the commandment of God unto you. Well is it with them that act accordingly." (Abdu'l-Baha, Will and Testament, 14)

Furthermore, we are enjoined to love and pray for our leaders. If we speak negatively of a leader we should take it as a sign that we have not been praying sincerely or ardently enough for that leader and that we should move that soul higher up on our prayer list. We should take it as an axiom: it is impossible to speak ill of someone we have prayed for ardently enough. This is of the essence of our reason for being in the universe, for if anybody ever was one, God is a leader. He first of all is sympathetic to the difficulties of leadership. To meet God is to come away with an appreciation of the lofty calling of guiding and helping our fellows. Baha'u'llah reminds us clearly that knowing and meeting God is the big reason He brought us into existence.

"The purpose of God in creating man hath been, and will ever be, to enable him to know his Creator and to attain His Presence. To this most excellent aim, this supreme objective, all the heavenly Books and the divinely-revealed and weighty Scriptures unequivocally bear witness. Whoso hath recognized the Day Spring of Divine guidance and entered His holy court hath drawn nigh unto God and attained His Presence, a Presence which is the real Paradise, and of which the loftiest mansions of heaven are but a symbol. Such a man hath attained the knowledge of the station of Him Who is `at the distance of two bows,' Who standeth beyond the Sadratu'l-Muntaha. Whoso hath failed to recognize Him will have condemned himself to the misery of remoteness, a remoteness which is naught but utter nothingness and the essence of the nethermost fire. Such will be his fate, though to outward seeming he may occupy the earth's loftiest seats and be established upon its most exalted throne." (Gl XXIX)

So, if God, Baha'u'llah and the other Manifestations of the Divine are leaders too, when we meet them too must appreciate and love leadership and followship, and mention our own, living leaders today, however inadequate we feel they may be in the face of what confronts us in this era. If they are inadequate, it is our fault first of all, for good followers make for good leaders, or, as the saying goes, "A people gets the leader they deserve." If we want better leaders, become a better person first, and the best and quickest way to become a better person is to know and meet God in prayer and reflection...

The best place to show better leadership and followership is in the workplace. All work, and all have a chance to act on this where they work. This location should ideally be seen as a place of worship, for we all know that work is worship if done in the right spirit. There should be a constitution for all workers to assure that work can be worshipful. But this very constitution should apply to companies and corporations too. If it does not, it would not be worth the paper it is printed on.

The first line of that worker and corporate constition should be the words of Jesus, "The sabbath is for man, not man for the sabbath." If any group or job violates the purpose of all groups, the common good, it should be immediately dissolved and expunged from memory. That should be article one. George Monbiot suggests some more rules for corporations, rules meant to stop their present gang rape of the majority of mankind,

"There are, however, a few standards we might wish to add to the list. One of the prerequisites of justice, for example, is that producers and consumers should carry their own costs, rather than dumping them on other people. Those who do the dumping tend to be the rich and powerful, while those who are dumped upon tend to be the weak and indigent. Environmental and social 'externalities', in other words, typically represent the theft by the wealthy of the natural and material wealth possessed by the poor. They amount to a monumental subsidy for the rich. It is a source of constant astonishment to me that those who profess to support free market economics routinely overlook this distortion." (Monbiot, Age of Consent, p. 230-231)

"This theft has reached so great a scale that it is arguable that the majority of the world's large corporations depend on it for their continued existence. The American professor of business administration Ralph Estes found that one took into account only those costs which had been properly established by authoritative studies in 1994 corporations in the United States were permitted to inflict 2.6 trillion dollars worth of social and environmental damage, or five times the value of their total profits. Many companies object that if they were forced to pay the full price for the resources they use and the damage they cause, they would be driven out of business. To this the only sensible answer is `good.' Wealth, in this case, would cease to be stolen from the poor and handed to the rich. The price of the most damaging goods would rise enormously, but this should surely please the practitioners of free trade, as it provides a classic `market response' to a social and environmental problem. Unlike localization, it punishes only those who cause the damage, and offers relative rewards to those who export less harmful goods." (Monbiot, Age of Consent, p. 230)

But a turning to God also would wipe out the intransigence of workers too. Corporations exploit, but lazy, slavish contentious workers probably cost the world's economy even more trillions of dollars in losses even than cynical, ruthless corporations do.

A few days ago I took on the boring job of picking the currents from our bountiful black and red current bushes. While picking them, I listened on the old iPod an old address by the recently deceased Alexander Solzhenitsyn, given at the start of his exile in the West. I well knew that if I did not keep my mind occupied I would soon give up again, and the currents would rot on the branch. Postcasts are a great way to overcome one's own fickleness, and one of my favorites is a series of famous speeches reenacted. The Solzhenitsyn speech was one of these. Most of the way through his speech I felt a growing sense of annoyance. Clearly, here is a contentious fellow, a Russian dissident proud of the superior spirituality of his nation, lecturing the West on its materialism. Buried in politics, urging on a course of action that, for better or worse, Americans have taken on, largely as he suggested here. But then, just towards the end, he suddenly proved how well he really understood what spirituality is. I have never seen it better and more succinctly summed up than he does here. Arguing against godless communism and godless capitalism at once, he says,

"If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism."

While I was pleased to hear the great man express this point so well, my question was, why did he leave this point to the end? Why indulge in petty squabbling first, and leave this all important thought as an afterthought? I suppose if he had said this first, his talk would have had to go where the Master took His talks, to spiritual things, to obedience to government rather than blind opposition. Anyway, here is how the great novelist and opponent of communism ended this very important speech,

"It would be retrogression to attach oneself today to the ossified formulas of the Enlightenment. Social dogmatism leaves us completely helpless in front of the trials of our times. Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man's life and society's activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity?

"If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era. This ascension will be similar to climbing onto the next anthropologic stage. No one on earth has any other way left but -- upward." ("A World Split Apart" an Address by Alexander Solzhenitsyn at Harvard Class Day Afternoon Exercises, given June 8, 1978, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/solzhenitsyn/harvard1978.html)

In the same podcast there is a speech given at around the same time by then-president Jimmy Carter laying out a series of bold goals as part of a ten year plan to end America's dependence on foreign oil. This "lofty" goal has been mentioned by every President since Nixon, but it is surprising to hear how strong and determined Carter sounded.

One cannot help but wonder what would have happened if Carter had been able to carry out this determination. "Not one drop of foreign oil shall be imported after ten years." Imagine how much further we would be right now in our fight against global warming. Nor was this an impossible undertaking. A spate of articles by the press is featuring Denmark, which made the same determination in the 1970's to end its total dependence on oil and actually carried it out. Now their economy is flourishing and their industry cannot keep up with demand for its green technologies. All America had to do was summon up the spiritual resources to help their leader Carter carry out this goal when he proposed it, and they would not be in their present tailspin to oblivion. It is just as Baha'u'llah said, obey a just leader. Just leaders must have good followers or nobody gets anywhere.
I still remember the day Reagan won the election and Carter and goals like this were rejected. I remember it because at the same time somebody drove by our house on Upper Paradise Road and chucked a brick through our front window. I remember looking at the destruction in our living room and thinking that surely now the world is going down the tubes. It has happened slower than I expected, but with global warming baking us all well done, I do not think I was wrong in that gut feeling. If only we had prayed harder for our leaders we might be in a universe where our bacon was not cooked.

The effect of our prayers for our leaders would be, among other things, an increase in our "followership" abilities. John Lock wrote,

"If we look into the causes of our problems, we find that they come from the fact that people are able neither to govern nor to be governed. They do not know how to govern others, and they do not know how to govern themselves. They do not know how to be governed by others; they do not know how to be governed by themselves." (unfinished General Treatise on the Remedy of Human Affairs, De Emendatione Rerum Humanarum Consultatio Catholica)

Lock's sentence structure implies that leadership and followership act as mirrors to one another, each amplifying the other with each refraction. The story of the Manifestation, retold repeatedly on holy days throughout the year, gives just such a feedback effect.

The perfect demonstration of ignorant leadership and followership is in our ubiquitous habit of gossipping and backbiting one another. A journalist from Wired Magazine recently featured an interview with a "troll," an insidious variant of a hacker. Trolls take advantage of the wild west world of cyberspace to persecute and harass anybody they decide not to like. This troll, who uses the handle "Fortuny," demonstrates the perverse logic behind the troll's urge to attack and justify the attack. This urge and this logic we all use sometimes,

==========

"We walked on, to Starbucks. At the next table, middle-schoolers with punk-rock haircuts feasted noisily on energy drinks and whipped cream. Fortuny sipped a white-chocolate mocha. He proceeded to demonstrate his personal cure for trolling, the Theory of the Green Hair.
"You have green hair," he told me. "Did you know that?"
"No," I said.
"Why not?"
"I look in the mirror. I see my hair is black."
"That's uh, interesting. I guess you understand that you have green hair about as well as you understand that you're a terrible reporter."
"What do you mean? What did I do?"
"That's a very interesting reaction," Fortuny said. "Why didn't you get so defensive when I said you had green hair?" If I were certain that I wasn't a terrible reporter, he explained, I would have laughed the suggestion off just as easily. The willingness of trolling "victims" to be hurt by words, he argued, makes them complicit, and trolling will end as soon as we all get over it.

==========

This Wired journalist points out that the internet is built on Postel's Law, "Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others." The troll, and the backbiter, takes the opposite philosophy in dealing with others. The result is a constant state of low level war. Since God is love, this anarchy is the direct effect of rejecting Him.

One ill effect of rejection of God is not only that we reject his presence, but also his knowledge, and knowledge in general. An essay by one of my favorite economists, Paul Krugman, recently introduced me to the "knownothing" movement. The history of this kneejerk, racist movement in American life is given here: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_nothing). It is given a broader meaning by Krugman,

"... know-nothingism (is) the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there's something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise - has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party's de facto slogan has become: `Real men don't think things through.'" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/opinion/08krugman.html?ex=1375848000&en=6db4d4511be41efb&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink)

Krugman sees this attitude, not of rednecks but the ruling class in Washington, as the real reason behind this decade's Iraq attack,

"Why were the elite so hawkish? Well, I heard a number of people express privately the argument that some influential commentators made publicly - that the war was a good idea, not because Iraq posed a real threat, but because beating up someone in the Middle East, never mind who, would show Muslims that we mean business. In other words, even alleged wise men bought into the idea of macho posturing as policy." ("Know-Nothing Politics By Paul Krugman, New York Times, August 7, 2008)

This is at the heart of all war: know nothing but do all as a bully, intimidate, attack, besmirch. Forget about leading by example, if you do not whack somebody around you are not going to have an effect.

Right now the American President is basking in the Olympic sun while Putin is taking advantage of that distraction to attack Georgia. How can the American leader respond to an attack like that, with righteous indignation? Attacking another sovereign nation, in any other time that would be a capital crime worthy of vigorous action in defense of world order. But not now. Putin kicks at the international house of cards and the superpower dare not object. Before the house of cards topples, let us all learn to pray for leaders, for leadership, and for ourselves as followers. Let us be worthy of the vision of Abdu'l-Baha for us all in this age,

"One of the great events which is to occur in the Day of the manifestation of that incomparable Branch is the hoisting of the Standard of God among all nations. By this is meant that all nations and kindreds will be gathered together under the shadow of this Divine Banner, which is no other than the Lordly Branch itself, and will become a single nation. Religious and sectarian antagonism, the hostility of races and peoples, and differences among nations, will be eliminated. All men will adhere to one religion, will have one common faith, will be blended into one race and become a single people. All will dwell in one common fatherland, which is the planet itself." (Abdu'l-Baha, quoted in WOB, 204-205)