p07 The Collegium Lucis

Fuller, Comenius and Holistic Education

By John Taylor; 2008 May 06, 09 Jamal, 165 BE

 

Yesterday we absorbed some key ideas of R. Buckminster Fuller into the Master's scheme of twelve social principles. Under the last of these, principle number twelve, universal peace, we categorized the following insight of the great visionary "generalist,"

 

"In spite of all humans' innate interest in the interrelatedness of all experience, long ago these world-power-structure builders learned to shunt all the bright intellectuals and the physically creative into specialist careers. The powerful reserved for themselves the far easier, because innate, comprehensive functioning. All one needs to do is to discover how self-perpetuating is this disease of specialization is to witness the inter-departmental battling for educational funds and the concomitant jealous guarding of the various specializations assigned to a department's salaried experts on each subject in any university."

 

This rooster-like tendency of professionals to jealously guard their own turf is surely one of the biggest reasons that greenhouse gases are being spewed out on a tonne-per-minute basis, and more generally why peace and environmental purity are so elusive to this generation. The super-rich and super-powerful long ago mastered the game of divide and conquer. Zero-sum gaming, strife and competition are ingrained into education from the earliest age. Fractional thinking means makes even our best and brightest helpless before the most glaringly obvious challenges confronting the planet.

 

Jane Jacobs, the great localist genius, saw the problem too. She named it "credentialism," which refers to the gap between real qualifications and official credentials. A worker with years of experience solving a certain problem is ignored while a new graduate with paper credentials promising that he can solve the problem gets the job, often with disastrous results.

 

What Fuller is talking about is a broader, more global problem to which credentialism and specialization blind us. The degradation of the environment is a symptom of an invisible disease that, by definition, evades conventional expertise. It is axiomatic, if schools were addressing this problem, the environment would be getting better, not worse.

 

Global warming is the mother of all global problems, and our narrow epistemology is at the root of it. Nobody has ever faced the warming of an entire planet before, so no profession can claim to have experience, qualification or credentials in it. Like any problem that has never been encountered before, no matter how experienced or well-trained a worker may be, it is unlikely they will grasp it.

 

From a purely technical point of view, decarbonizing the world economy would be an easy task. Electric motors and power transmission through wires are proven technologies that have been used around the world for over a century. In the past few years a new method has been perfected to transmit direct current over any distance without the losses and degradation characteristic of alternating current power lines. Why is this not being applied?

 

Fuller, in his essay called "The grand strategy for solving global problems," wrote,

 

"Energy first: We need to develop about a dozen types of renewable sources of energy and we need to develop ways of distributing that energy. We now have the know-how to connect together all the world's electrical generating plants. That one project would almost double the amount of energy available in the world because right now most generating plants run at about half capacity and use the other half for peak demand only. By interconnecting they could all swap power (especially between the light and dark sides of the earth) and therefore be run at almost peak capacity most of the time -- without building any new generating plants."

 

George Monbiot's recent bestseller on the environment dealt with this very problem of power. The distribution of electrical power around the planet needs to be regularized, just like the human body distributes its power by means unified, interconnected networks known as the circulatory and nervous systems. Inspired by Fuller, a small number of engineers have been advocating an intercontinental power grid for decades, but they are so obscure that even Monbiot did not seem to have heard of them when he wrote "Heat."

 

Generally speaking, technical experts are servants of nations, not continents or the globe, which is exactly why the globe is in chaos. As Fuller points out, a tiny number of bosses and owners, not as driven or intelligent as those under them, dominate the wealth of the world. Born into the ruling elite, they learn the basics of power manipulation early. They easily take advantage of our frenetic culture of competition among experts for scarce resources. They throw the professions a handful of specialized chickenfeed problems while reserving for themselves world embracing policy.

 

In religious terminology, divide and rule is so easy to accomplish because our education and professional experience ignores the universality of God, Spirit and the soul. Fuller in his own way appreciated this as well,

 

"Our brains deal exclusively with special-case experiences. Only our minds are able to discover the generalized principles operating without exception in each and every special-experience case which if detected and mastered will give knowledgeable advantage in all instances." (Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, 1963)

 

Greatly as I admire Buckminster Fuller, I think it is a great pity that (like most in the English-speaking world) he did not seem to know about Jan Amos Comenius. This entire thesis of credentialism and overspecialization had already been worked out in detail centuries earlier in the thought and writings of the latter.

 

Comenius invented a scheme to unify all knowledge into a holistic singularity that he called "pansophism." He envisioned a unitary educational system aimed at the "whole person." The entirety of knowledge would be systematically simplified and taught as object lessons (a technique he invented) from the earliest years. Indeed the entire split between science and religion, not to mention the division into "two cultures" of science and art, might never have taken place if educators had universally applied the brilliant educational innovations worked out by Comenius. Jean Piaget, for example, wrote in a paper written for UNESCO that,

 

"Nothing is more moving, in following Comenius career, than the fact that this eternal exile, eternally a member of a minority group, never tired of drawing up plans for international collaboration: general schemes for universal peace, proposals for collaboration between the Churches, more specialized plans for international societies for erudite research, but, above all, plans for the international organization of public education and the final project for a Collegium Lucis, which was to be a kind of international ministry of education." (Jean Piaget, http://www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/ThinkersPdf/comeniuse.PDF)

 

Another writer on the web offers some more background to the “College of Light”,

“… I find myself inspired by the great unbuilt British college, the College of Light. In 1641 Jan Comenius was invited to London by the Long Parliament to establish the Collegium Lucis: the last moment when scientific thought and Christian faith might have united in a modern British institution. Civil war intervened, and the Royal Society was established instead, without Comenius's (admittedly heterodox) faith.”  (http://sunlituplands.blogspot.com/2007/12/californias-own-college-of-light.html)

 

When a world government is formed, its first and most important task will surely be to found Comenius's Collegium Lucis, a world embracing institution charged to institute the first world curriculum for every child from the earliest years continuing on up to their professional practice. Its motto's should be "Crush Credentialism!" and, “One person, One World!”

p24 Fuller

Absorbing Bucky

 

Yesterday, realizing the need for original, radical solutions to the environmental problem, I got interested once more in my old hero, R. Buckminster Fuller.

 

Fuller was a great inventor, an original mind, a globetrotting teacher about what thinking globally really is. I probably owe the fact that I am a Baha'i to his "world around" view (not world-wide, since as he pointed out “wide” comes of an obsolete scientific perspective). When I came across the Faith I was so immersed in Fuller that one of my toughest tests as a new believer was the fact that Baha'is were concerned to establish local spiritual assemblies in as many localities as possible. This was awful! Fuller, asked why his housing always was mobile answered, "Because humans have legs, not roots." He talked about "local focus hocus pocus." Everything has to be world-around, not rooted. Fortunately, I survived that test, and now I can see that that the local and global viewpoint are really twin sisters; in fact they are the abused little sisters of two bullying big brothers, nationalism and corporatism.

 

Yesterday I collected together some sayings of Fuller from Wiki Quotes. As promised yesterday, I will perform an absorption of these and a few other of his characteristic ideas. I hope that this will show how small a leap it was in the early 1970's for a 17 year old devotee of Buckminster Fuller to become a Baha'i.

 

Principle One: Search for Truth

 

 "Dare to be naive."

 "The courage to cooperate or initiate are based entirely on the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth as the divine mind within you tells you (what) the truth is. It really does require a courage and a self-disciplining to go along with that truth."

 "I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing, a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process -- an integral function of the universe." (R. Buckminster Fuller, I Seem to Be a Verb, 1970)

 "The Things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see the need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done -- that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual." (R. Buckminster Fuller, Letter to "Michael," 16 February 1970; Michael was a 10 year old boy who had inquired in a letter as to whether Fuller was a "doer" or a "thinker".)

 

Principle Two: Oneness of Humanity

 

 "Our little Spaceship Earth is only eight thousand miles in diameter, which is almost a negligible dimension in the great vastness of space. . . . Spaceship Earth was so extraordinarily well invented and designed that to our knowledge humans have been on board it for two million years not even knowing that they were on board a ship."

 "There is room enough indoors in New York City for the whole 1963 world's population to enter, with room enough inside for all hands to dance the twist in average nightclub proximity." (R. Buckminster Fuller, Prime Design (May 1960). Found in The Buckminster Fuller Reader, edited by James Meller.)

 (jet: what with the geometric growth in world population since then, my bet is that the dance would be considerably more intimate in nature now.)

 "I seek through comprehensive anticipatory design science and its reductions to physical practices to reform the environment instead of trying to reform humans, being intent thereby to accomplish prototyped capabilities of doing more with less..." (R. Buckminster Fuller, Earth, Inc. 1973)

 

Principle Three: Oneness of Religion

 

Fuller did believe in God but he was at heart a secular, hard-headed engineer. Nonetheless, his idea of a "trimtab" reminds one of the power of prayer and meditation to change the world with a tiny, imperceptible impulse.

 "Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary  the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trimtab. It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trimtab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, call me Trimtab." ("call me trimtab" is engraved on Fuller's tombstone)

 

Principle Four: Harmony of Science and Religion

 

 "Einstein, Planck, and other leading scientists said, 'We are going to have to reassess and redefine the physical universe.' They defined the physical universe as 'an aggregate of non-simultaneous and only partially overlapping transformation events.'"

 "Universe is non-simultaneously apprehended." (Fuller, quoted by Robert Anton Wilson in Maybe Logic - The Lives and Ideas of Robert Anton Wilson, 2003)

 jet: which seems to imply that both scientific and religious truth are relative, the latter relativity, of course, is the thrust of the Iqan.

 

Principle Five: Elimination of Prejudice

 

 "As a consequence of the slavish "categoryitis" the scientifically illogical, and as we shall see, often meaningless questions `Where do you live?' `What are you?' `What religion?' `What race?' `What nationality?" are all thought of today as logical questions. By the twenty-first century it either will have become evident to humanity that these questions are absurd and anti-evolutionary or men will no longer be living on Earth."

 "Man is going to be displaced altogether as a specialist by the computer. Man himself is being forced to reestablish, employ, and enjoy his innate `comprehensivity.' Coping with the totality of Spaceship Earth and universe is ahead for all of us."

 

 Principle Six: Economic Equity

 

 "Every child has an enormous drive to demonstrate competence. If humans are not required to earn a living to be provided survival needs, many are going to want very much to be productive, but not at those tasks they did not choose to do but were forced to accept in order to earn money. Instead, humans will spontaneously take upon themselves those tasks that world society really needs to have done."

 "We produce more than enough food for everyone, but much of it rots or is eaten by rodents because we don't have the means of storing, preserving, and transporting it. But, with adequate energy we could grow, preserve, and distribute plenty of food for everyone. In fact, if needed, we could probably grow two or three times as much as we do now. And so, if we solve the energy & food problems, how do we provide good, inexpensive housing for everyone? Simple. Shelter people in mass-produced, self-contained, surplus-energy-producing, geodesic dome homes which would be helicopter-delivered to anywhere for a tenth the cost of conventional houses." (Grand Strategy)

 

Principle Seven: Promotion of Education

 

 jet: Fuller's genius is mostly poetic, but I continue to be influenced by this brilliant observation. The implications of human oneness are way beyond what our limited view now can apprehend...

 "The most important thing to teach your children is that the sun does not rise and set. It is the Earth that revolves around the sun. Then teach them the concepts of North, South, East and West, and that they relate to where they happen to be on the planet's surface at that time. Everything else will follow." (Final interview before his death, "NewsCenter4", WNBC-TV, 1983)

 jet: Of course, only someone coached by the Master's emphasis on the spiritual significance of the sun and its dawning points would appreciate the full metaphorical force of this little dictum. Maybe Fuller did not see it either. Even the term "Mashriqu'l-Adhkar" means mentioning God turned to the East, the dawning place, implying that as the world turns, God is very much a moving target.

 

Principle Eight: Universal Language

 

 "One of humanity's prime drives is to understand and be understood. All other living creatures are designed for highly specialized tasks. Man seems unique as the comprehensive comprehender and co-ordinator of local universe affairs."

 

 Principle Twelve: Universal Peace

 

 "In spite of all humans' innate interest in the interrelatedness of all experience, long ago these world-power-structure builders learned to shunt all the bright intellectuals and the physically creative into specialist careers. The powerful reserved for themselves the far easier, because innate, comprehensive functioning. All one needs to do is to discover how self-perpetuating is this disease of specialization is to witness the inter-departmental battling for educational funds and the concomitant jealous guarding of the various specializations assigned to a department's salaried experts on each subject in any university."

 jet: The roots of war are in the shortcomings and fracture of our educational system, a fact foreshadowed as early as Plato. The idea was expounded by Comenius in his Pansophy, an attempt to lay out a universal philosophy of peace based on clarity and educational reform. Compare all this to Abdu'l-Baha's "scroll endlessly unfolding":

 "Thou hast described thyself as a student in the school of spiritual progress. Fortunate art thou! If these schools of progress lead to the university of heaven, then branches of knowledge will be developed whereby humanity will look upon the tablet of existence as a scroll endlessly unfolding; and all created things will be seen upon that scroll as letters and words. Then will the different planes of meaning be learned, and then within every atom of the universe will be witnessed the signs of the oneness of God. Then will man hear the cry of the Lord of the Kingdom, and behold the confirmations of the Holy Spirit coming to succour him. Then will he feel such bliss, such ecstasy, that the wide world with its vastness will no longer contain him, and he will set out for the Kingdom of God, and hurry along to the realm of the spirit. For once a bird hath grown its wings, it remaineth on the ground no more, but soareth upward into high heaven -- except for those birds that are tied by the leg, or those whose wings are broken, or mired down." (Abdu'l-Baha, Selections, 58)

 

p07

Children's Class Report

By John Taylor; 2008 May 04, 07 Jamal, 165 BE

 

"For every one of you his paramount duty is to choose for himself that on which no other may infringe and none usurp from him. Such a thing -- and to this the Almighty is My witness -- is the love of God, could ye but perceive it." (Gleanings, p. 261)

 

Gradually over the past several months I have been building up the amount of time I spend teaching more or less formal lessons to our two kids. It took a surprising amount of work and will power to do this. I cut off live television completely (mostly because of my own lack of defense to the waterfall of images from the plug-in drug), and I limit the kids now to an hour a day on the computer. Even so, the demands on our time are pressing, what with hobbies, meetings and school homework.

There are five years between our two kids, Tomaso is 8 and Silvie 13. As a result, only lately have they both reached an intellectual level where it is possible for an inexperienced teacher like myself to teach a class with them together. I suspect that this grace period will not last long after Silvie enters High School next year.

 

The other day I read a statistic saying that the average American spends six hours a week shopping and six minutes a week playing with their children. In the light of that little insight into other parents' lives, I have paid attention to the amount of time I am spending shopping and with the kids. By my calculation, the time we spend is more or less the opposite in this house. Okay, maybe not for shopping; I cut it down lately, though hardly to six minutes. Maybe a couple of hours. I am well aware that shopping is like television, it is a kind of drug that is much more dangerous than it seems.

 

As for quality time, I spend an hour a day in formal Baha'i classes with them. Since Marie works evenings and I am with them that whole time, I do not even want to think about how much time I spend with them, playing or otherwise. God has given me a great blessing in this time, and I am quite jealous of it. I am conscious of Baha'u'llah's words:

"Blessed is that teacher who remaineth faithful to the Covenant of God, and occupieth himself with the education of children. For him hath the Supreme Pen inscribed that reward which is revealed in the Most Holy Book. Blessed, blessed is he!" (Baha'u'llah, in Baha'i Education: A Compilation, p. 9)

 

Like any other blessing, you have to be willing to give up other apparent goods to get it. Long ago, I took it on principle to avoid any person or meeting place that is not kid friendly. A hint of a slight to our kids, and I am out of there; from then on, I avoid that person or place completely. I felt bad about that harshness at first, but after I read what Baha'u'llah says in the above, I know that I have been making the right decision.

Ours is a very corrupt society, and prejudice against families and children is a symptom of corruption. I have been surprised at the antipathy I have encountered, even from otherwise exemplary Baha'is, especially towards my boy. It is a very boy unfriendly world out there, I must say! Tomaso is among the best behaved kids I have known, and if he is getting heat I hate to think what rowdies and rebels are going through.

 

Although I have gone through the Ruhi children's teaching book, I have not begun using it with these kids yet. My Ruhi guru, Tim Woodward, gave me a disk of supplemental children's class material, and on it I found the following story about `Abdu'l-Baha. It is the perfect story for kids, all of whom put PETA to shame in their loving defense of animal rights. I can hardly wait to tell it to Silvie and Tomaso,

 

"One of Abdul-Baha's gardeners had a dog. One day, the gardener decided to punish the dog by keeping it in a room for the whole night without any food, because of something the dog had done. The next day, at dawn, when the gardener was still asleep, Abdul-Baha came to his house. The gardener woke up suddenly and bowed down respectfully in front of Abdul-Baha. Abdul-Baha asked him why he had punished the dog and had not given it food.

"Don't you know that it is a sin to hurt the animals and we should never harm them? Hurry up and free the animal."

"The gardener immediately opened the door of the room where the dog was imprisoned and freed it. The dog came out and lay at Abdul-Bahas feet. Abdul-Baha asked the gardener what he had in the house to give to the dog. The gardener said he had nothing except a few sugar cubes. Abdul-Baha asked for some and gave them to the dog. The dog was so hungry that it swallowed the sugar cubes and rubbed itself on Abdul-Bahas feet. Abdul-Baha told the gardener to prepare some food for the poor dog and to never punish it in that way again." (Ali-Akbar Furutan, Baha'i education for Children, book One)

 

I do not recall coming across this story before in the biographies of the Master that I have seen. Maybe one of my learned readers can point me to a source; or maybe it comes directly from the Hand's own sources of anecdotes. Could be that he knew the gardener personally.

 

Thinking on what has happened so far in our classes, I think my goal has been to establish that love that Baha'u'llah says, in the opening quote of this essay, is something nothing can take away from you. The old saying is that education is a possession nobody can steal, but it is not quite true, as I realized after reading Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine." With modern torture methods they routinely use shock attacks to reduce people to cringing babies in a fetal position, with no memory of their past as adults at all. But even they, presumably, can still love God, if it is there in the first place.

 

Anyway, of late I have realized that in our classes I have concentrated almost exclusively on Baha'i virtues and history, and was neglecting my life's work, the Baha'i principles. So yesterday I took advantage of their ardent desire for me to purchase the latest "Ben 10 Season III" DVD and made them earn it by memorizing the twelve principles. Actually, I did not plan it that way, it was mostly laziness and a fat credit card bill that kept me from ordering the DVD. It just worked out that just as I was trying to get them to memorize the principles they assumed that the purchase was conditional on that. They tried so hard and did so well remembering the principles that I upped the bar and required them to memorize them in the particular order in which I order them in my own work. Sure enough they did, and now the DVD is on order from Amazon.

 

My plan is to use a sort of game to train Silvie and Tomaso in what I call "absorption" or dialectic, that is, to pick apart and classify quotations, problems and newspaper headlines under one or more of the principles. An upcoming Badi' essay will use that method to illuminate some ideas of my old guru, Buckminster Fuller.

 

 

tenv Solutions to Environmental Poverty

The Poverty of Environmentalism, IV

By John Taylor; 2008 May 03, 06 Jamal, 165 BE

 

Environmentalism has been around a long time. Ever since Darwin elbowed out Wallace, issues like the spirituality of nature and the need to limit greenhouse gases have failed to make the impact they should. A sense of helplessness, inevitability and a pessimistic mind-set are understandable. In every book that you come across on the environment there is a long list of symptoms and problems followed by a short, brief list of solutions, if at all. Since the best part, the solutions are always hidden at the end I find it productive, not to mention less depressing, to just cut to the chase. In every book on the environment I come across I turn immediately to the last few chapters where the sage environmentalist finally ends his task of systematically pounding every last ounce of hope out of the reader's living soul, gets around to the question, "What can we do about all this?" The ideas seem too little, too late, but at least you are not on the brink of suicide.

 

In this spirit we have been considering Tim Flannery's The Weathermakers, starting with a latter chapter called, "2084: The Carbon Dictatorship?" Flannery writes,

"Inevitably, one day some commissioner will suggest that their work would be more effectively done were they to concentrate on the root cause of the issue -- the total number of people on the planet. And with such a move the Earth Commission for Thermostatic Control will have transformed itself into an Orwellian-style world government with its own currency, army and control over every person and every inch of our planet. As horrific as such an outcome is, if we delay action to combat the climate crisis, the carbon dictatorship may become essential for our survival." (Weather Makers, 294)

 

Finally, the elephant in the room, world federalism, is mentioned. Naturally, a strong world government has to be a dictatorship, since after all, if we have not got perfect government on the national level how can we expect it to be any better on the international level? This is the logic of the fellow standing out in the Antarctic snow wearing only his underwear, who, when you offer to give him a parka refuses, saying "No way! If this underwear is not doing me any good, why should even more of the same sort of solution change anything?"

 

I must admit, though, Flannery makes a very good point about the problem of overpopulation. The fact is that with present infrastructure and technology, we already have far too many people. The only way to feed them all is to destroy nature wholesale. My "people without borders" solution is to completely rebuild infrastructure from the ground up, but that is literally out of the question. Barring better infrastructure, as soon as you try to limit the birth rate of one nation, people or culture, all the others will cry foul. The only viable way would be total universality, all at once or none at all. Otherwise laws limiting new births might trigger a competitive stampede to increase the numbers (and therefore power and influence) of one over all others.

 

Plus, as the legal limit of one child per couple in China demonstrates, a non-comprehensive approach can easily be nullified by other considerations. India, which does not limit family size but which is largely vegetarian, has less of an ill environmental impact than the meat-eaters of China. Of course, it is not inconceivable that a world government might concern itself with restraining diet as well as family size and carbon emissions.

 

Flannery, an Australian, then offers an argument to the fiercest and most powerful opponents of environmentalism in the world, American conservatives. It is they who cling to freedom and equate world governance with tyranny. He says to them, hey, in Scotland they had a tough like that had far more freedom, but they traded it for all the luxuries and other benefits of civilization. Similarly, the United States was formed when gambling, drinking, theater-loving, Southern slave owners joined with Puritans who were violently opposed to all those "works of the devil." They formed a "more perfect union" in the face of a dire threat, English tyranny. In the same way, the danger of atmospheric degradation may force us all to swallow the bitter pill of a "carbon dictatorship." Survival and security often mean trading one kind of freedom for another.

 

"every one of the thirteen signatory states ceded a significant portion of their sovereignty. The Founding Fathers created -- with great success -- a political entity of sufficient mass to meet the challenges at hand, yet with sufficient safeguards to allow liberty to flourish." (Weather Makers, 294-295)

 

Part of the problem, Flannery cedes, may be,

 

"now obsolete national identities or ideologies. And because our imaginations still dwell in these vanished landscapes, our response to the threat of climate change can seem nonsensical. It is this fact, I think, that has prompted some conservatives to ignore the threat of climate change, while at the same time so jealously protecting our 'freedom'." (295)

 

As far as policy making, the only thing that will keep us from catastrophic heat loss is a parka. The result of standing exposed in only a flimsy bit of underwear is that body heat is sucked away by bitter Antarctic winds. Similarly, the problem with nation states is that their money and authority are blown off by the corruptive force of corporations without borders. These economic powerhouses already work freely on a planetary level picking away like hungry vultures at the remains of political will.

 

You may say that since global warming is in question, I am using a bad metaphor. After all, we are threatened by hellish heat, not frigid cold. But if institutions of governance take on a parka with a reflective outer coating it would reduce the external overheating problem at the same time as we solve the internal corruption problem. Flannery continues,

 

"If big coal, big oil and their allied interests continue to prevent the world from taking action to combat climate change, we may soon have an Earth Commission for Thermostatic Control. The only way to avoid both tyranny and destruction is to act as America's Founding Fathers did, by swiftly heeding the call to action and by ceding just enough power to a higher authority to combat the threat. And this will only be effective if we act now, before the crisis becomes full blown."

 

One thing that I think people do not realize about forming a world government is that the first result would be an immediate, huge increase in wealth, wealth that could be invested in climate stabilization. Like our demented fellow standing naked in the cold, we are shedding wealth much faster than we produce it. The international banking structure allows the richest of the rich, the corrupt and the criminal to evade taxes and launder huge sums in so-called "offshore" banks. Even the reality check of 9-11 slowed the bleeding only briefly. Starting a world currency by a real global bank would immediately stop that loss. Then we could reinvest the money in whatever mega-projects would save us, nature and our planet.

 

A most valuable point that Flannery makes is that Alfred Wallace, co-discoverer of evolution, over a century ago saw where climate change was going. While Wallace did, if anything, more than Darwin did in working out evolutionary theory, he never got the attention that Darwin did for several reasons, including the fact that he came from the working class, he believed in disreputable things like God and spiritualism, and he went on and on about crazy things like the heating up of the world's climate. Flannery quotes Wallace as writing in 1903,

 

"It has been the consideration of our wonderful atmosphere in its various relations to human life, and to all life, which has compelled me to this cry for the children and for outraged humanity ... Let everything give way to this ... Vote for no one who says 'it can't be done'. Vote only for those who declare 'It shall be done'." (Alfred Russel Wallace, Man's Place in the Universe)

 

Reflecting this, Flannery ends his "what you can do to stop global warming" chapter, called "Time is up," with these words,

 

"Finally, government is unlikely to do anything unless people demand it. To stiffen the resolve of your government in respect to climate change, you must put the issue at the top of your agenda when it comes time to vote. As Alfred Russel Wallace said over a century ago, 'Vote for no one who says "it can't be done". Vote only for those who declare "It shall be done".' And don't just ask your politician what their position is. Ask them what they, personally, are doing to reduce their own emissions." (301)

 

Nobody can deny that a change in public opinion will be key to change. But we are talking about a multi-pronged issue, and you have to focus on what will bring the most results overall. Besides, even with public opinion, what guarantee is there than anything will change? Since "Inconvenient Truth" there has been as vast a sea change in opinion about warming as you could wish for, but action on our realization is, at best, imperceptibly slow. The flames of hell lick at our bottoms and nobody is jumping.

 

The way to get people to value long-term survival over short-term hedonism will be a change in our entire outlook, our world-view. And even with a new story of our place in the universe, how many will be ready to make the most radical move of all, sacrifice of self? Just pressuring local politicos for outer adjustments is not going to cut it.

 

At the heart of all is the need to aim at peace first. Climate change and environmental degradation, and even widespread poverty, are all outward signs of inner, invisible conflict, a silent, undeclared war in our heads among competing ideologies, interests and imitations. We all glory winning over others more than the victory of all. Compare Flannery's narrow, status quo solution with the values oriented approach offered by Abdu'l-Baha in his solutions book, written in the mid-1870's,

 

"It is clear from what has already been said that man's glory and greatness do not consist in his being avid for blood and sharp of claw, in tearing down cities and spreading havoc, in butchering armed forces and civilians. What would mean a bright future for him would be his reputation for justice, his kindness to the entire population whether high or low, his building up countries and cities, villages and districts, his making life easy, peaceful and happy for his fellow beings, his laying down fundamental principles for progress, his raising the standards and increasing the wealth of the entire population." (Secret of Divine Civilization, 67)

A film and a music festival

Pangea and Feedback

By John Taylor; 2008 May 01, 04 Jamal, 165 BE

 

I am getting so much material for the Badi' List lately that I know I will be hearing complaints. Remember, you do not have to have this all sent to you, if you join Google Reader you will get it all without any clogging of your mailbox. That is how I keep up with the even more prolific Baha'i Views Blog. Google Reader is free, and easy enough even for the likes of me to figure out.

 

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 Pangea Day

 Reader Feedback

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As a fan of both movies and lectures, I think the following upcoming event should be a lot more fun than sitting in the dark for an hour, like people did for Earth Day. You can have your own mini-film festival for the four hours in your own living room by connecting to the world wide webcast at the site included below. What a great way to introduce Baha'i ideas to your neighbor without pushing them down anybody's throat!

 Pangea Day

  Pangea Day is a global event bringing the world together through film. Over 2,500 movies were submitted from 102 countries; the Pangea committee winnowed them down to 24 short movies, which will all be shown on May 10 in a four-hour marathon. In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference, and conflict, it's easy to lose sight of what we all have in common. Pangea Day seeks to overcome that  to help people see themselves in others  through the power of film.

  Starting at 18:00 GMT on May 10, 2008, locations in Cairo, Kigali, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro will be linked for a live program of powerful films, live music, and visionary speakers. The entire program will be broadcast  in seven languages  to millions of people worldwide through the internet, television, and mobile phones.

  The 24 short films to be featured have been selected from an international competition that generated more than 2,500 submissions from over one hundred countries. The films were chosen based on their ability to inspire, transform, and allow us see the world through another person's eyes. Details on the Pangea Day films can be viewed here.

  http://www.pangeaday.org/

 

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 Reader Feedback

  Here in reverse chronological order, are some of the latest responses to essays featured on the Badi' Blog.

 

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  From Jimbo, in response to my comments about the race of members of the UHJ

  Hi John!  I would think that it would be more important to look at the amazing services that these elected individuals have rendered over time, and also where they have served.  A person who has served in a certain community most of his life would be as one molded by and representing that region of the world.  No doubt in time God will raise up outstanding members from all races and ethnic backgrounds to remarkable and memorable Baha'i services in all Administrative and Counselling roles.  I've heard it stated that the highest station of service in the Baha'i Religion is Counselor, which is represented by all racial backgrounds and both sexes, so it is decisively and vitally all-inclusive.  And by the way, there is only one race, the human race, with thousands of cultures I would guess.  As for the Persians, they mostly have been and continue to be amazing servants of the Cause of God. And I am so grateful for that.

  Check out this talk by Peter Khan on "Unique Features of Baha'i Service" or "the Baha'i view of the model of our universe" from Auust 2, 2006 if you haven't seen it already. I think I read it before, but it is worth the second read.

  http://www.scribd.com/doc/2362742/Unique-Features-of-Bahai-Service-Peter-Khan

 

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  Ed, in response to a recent essay about the virtue of courtesy, the "prince" of virtues,

  >>> As to your point about Courtesy being necessary for others to be acquired, in fact it's truthfulness and trustworthiness that hold that position, and are referred to as the "foundation of all virtues"

  I know the Ruhi program puts great store in that quote about truthfulness being the foundation of all virtues. It comes from a letter the Master wrote to the early Washington believers (I enclose the relevant section below) where it is listed as one of seven qualifications of divine enlightenment. This was not retranslated in Selections, so the authenticity of this letter and its translation are unknown. Although it was evidently not re-translated by the Guardian, he certainly lends authenticity by including this section of the letter in Advent of Divine Justice (p. 26).

  On the other hand, Abdu'l-Baha also said that OH is the foundation of virtues:

  "Consider the virtues of the human world and realize that the oneness of humanity is the primary foundation of them all." (Promulgation, p. 32)

  In a much more important and better known Tablet translated by the Guardian himself the Master seems to include the entire body of principles and teachings of Baha'u'llah as the foundation,

  "But the essential basis of all the Divine Religions which pertains to the virtues of the world of mankind and is the foundation of the welfare of the world of man, is found in the teachings of His Holiness Baha'u'llah in the most perfect presentation." (Tablet to the Hague, p. 9)

  The Master also held trustworthiness to be a sort of co-foundation:

  "Our meaning is that, in the sight of God, trustworthiness is the bedrock of His Faith and the foundation of all virtues and perfections." (AB, Tablet translated from the Persian, in, Compilation of Compilations vol II, p. 339)

  Tablet to Washington Believers:

  As to the seven qualifications (of the divinely enlightened soul) of which thou hast asked an explanation, it is as follows:

  1. KNOWLEDGE. Man must attain the knowledge of God.

  2. FAITH.

  3. STEADFASTNESS.

  4. TRUTHFULNESS. Truthfulness is the foundation of all the virtues of the world of humanity. Without truthfulness, progress and success in all of the worlds of God are impossible for a soul. When this holy attribute is established in man, all the divine qualities will also become realized.

  p.  460

  5. UPRIGHTNESS. And this is one of the greatest divine attainments.

  6. FIDELITY. This is also a beautiful trait of the heavenly man.

  7. EVANESCENCE or HUMILITY. That is to say, man must become evanescent in God. Must forget his own selfish conditions that he may thus arise to the station of sacrifice. It should be to such a degree that if he sleep, it should not be for pleasure, but to rest the body in order to do better, to speak better, to explain more beautifully, to serve the servants of God and to prove the truths. When he remains awake, he should seek to be attentive, serve the Cause of God and sacrifice his own stations for those of God. When he attains to this station, the confirmations of the Holy Spirit will surely reach him, and man with this power can withstand all who inhabit the earth.

  (Abdu'l-Baha, Tablets of Abdu'l-Baha v2, p. 459)

  In reply, Ed responded,

  Thanks so much for all this. It's really helpful. It's logical that a well-functioning community would nurture and protect virtues. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the world would begin to understand that, to have that vision of things instead of the more physically and financially based idea of community security.

  A poem:

  Running to virtue

  Cold and hot, cold, hot, cold

 

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  In response to our recent interest in environment, Jimbo offered the following suggestions:

  Here is an environmental project that I just received word of in which a number of Baha'is are involved. In looking at their web site - www.twofest.com, I see that most of the performers are talented musical artists well known in and among the Baha'i community, and that this is being sent out to the Baha'is for our support. Some of the environmental TV clips are quite interesting, especially of the one of David Suzuki in an interview with WWF Australia from Sept 2006 which is quite telling of our environmental situation today.  The project looks quite audacious and well planned. What do you think?

  TwoFest (Music Festival)

  TwoFest is a grass-roots, collaborative event in three locations (Victoria, Nanaimo, Vancouver). It goes beyond the 3 R's. It ramps up a 'social pressure' to get involved. TwoFest is an experience that goes beyond just awareness-building. Results will come with education, actions and structures to support new and enlivening behavior.

  We want to swarm all over the problem' of global warming on the web, in schools, non-profits and the media. We are creating sustained commitments!

  We feel that it is imperative to bring awareness of cultural similarities in light of what is happening to the environment around the world. If we as a species do not grow beyond what we perceive to be unbending differences and begin to recognize one-another with, at the very least, a degree of acceptance, tolerance and respect, then we will soon see the demise of our environment and ultimately the planet as a whole.

  To this end, Two Fest embraces cultural diversity and environmental consciousness by blending music with an educational, environmental and grass roots orientation.

  For more information, go to www.twofest.com

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Fitting into my Stereotype

By John Taylor; 2008 May 01, 04 Jamal, 165 BE

 

Announcement of May's public meeting in the Haldimand community

 

Tuesday, May 13, 2008: a talk will be given on the subject "An End to Religious Fanaticism," by Joseph Woods at the Garfield Disher Room in the Dunnville Library - 8:00 pm.  All are welcome.

 

Our community has extensive coverage of our public meetings in the local press. Here is Betty Frost's report on last month's talk by Anne Pearson about her grandfather, former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson:

 

<http://www.dunnvillechronicle.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=988028&auth=Betty+Frost>

 

While I was researching that in our local paper, I came across the following article about the influx of pilots from China into our small town.

 

FAIR SKIES OVER DUNNVILLE FOR FLIGHT STUDENTS

http://www.dunnvillechronicle.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=997992&auth=Bob+Liddycoat

 

Reader Ed sent me the following anecdote about the late Hand of the Cause. It makes the rounds every once in a while.

 

A real story (Dr. Furutan)

"It seems a group of Jewish women from NY City came on tour to Israel and were visiting the Baha'i Shrines. All the women except one, removed their shoes and went into the Shrine of the Bab to say prayers. The one outside was talking with Mr. Furutan.

"Why did they take off their shoes?" she asked him. "Out of respect for the Prophet" responded Mr. Furutan. "Well *I'm not taking off my shoes. I'm going to stay outside." "That's fine," said Mr. Furutan, "We're having a good talk here."

Then the woman asked, "What do they do inside there?" Mr. Furutan: "They kneel or prostrate themselves and say prayers." "Well, *I'm not kneeling or prostrating myself. I'm staying outside." "That's just fine," said Mr. Furutan, "We're doing just fine visiting here."

During the whole conversation, Mr. Furutan had been flipping an American quarter and catching it.  He made another flip of the quarter and dropped it. The quarter rolled under a hedge. The woman, seeing that Mr. Furutan was an old man, said, "I'll get it for you."

So she knelt on the ground and got the quarter for him. As she handed it up to him, Mr. Furutan, with that wonderful twinkle in his eyes said, "Madam will not kneel down for the Manifestation of God, but she will kneel down for a quarter?" "You're RIGHT!" said the woman. "We think too much of money. I'm going inside to say prayers." And she did."

 

When reading that, I was expecting Dr. Furutan to say something like, "You just went down on your knees in order to help an old man, but not to pay your respects to One far greater than I or any other senior citizen." His comment was better, of course. It plays on the stereotype, and the wish to escape it. In my case, the wit of the staircase is not always an improvement. Coincidentally, my word for the day, arriving in the same email batch, was "salad days," meaning when we are young and crispy, like a fresh, cool salad. Old folks like me are, by the same logic wilted, rotten and unappetizing. But it comes from Shakespeare, so one dare not complain:

 

"In Antony and Cleopatra, Cleopatra praises Marc Antony's valor and demands that her serving woman do the same. When the servant instead praises her former consort, Caesar, Cleopatra threatens her until the woman notes that she is only echoing Cleopatra's own effusive past praise of Caesar. Cleopatra's reply marks the first English use of "salad days":

"My salad days,

When I was green in judgment, cold in blood,

To say as I said then."

 

Green in judgment, cold in blood, that pretty much sums up not only the days of our youth but the entire world of politics, policy and decision making, right now. There is a brutality about youth, as well as an incisive wit; little wonder they use the word "cool" so much. Somehow we need to get mature decisions that are crispy, not wilted.

 

New UHJ Elected

 

Speaking of votes and voting, most will have heard by now that the newly elected members of the House of Justice are Farzam Arbab, Kiser Barnes, Peter Khan, Hooper Dunbar, Firaydoun Javaheri, Paul Lample, Payman Mohajer, Shahriar Razavi, Gustavo Correa.

Now that the voting is over, I can speak more freely about the membership.

 

Judging just by names and faces, we have a believer of African ancestry, three Whites, a Latin, and four members of the Persian Diaspora. Lately I discussed the ethnic mix of the UHJ with a believer who is far more current and intimate with the Administrative Order than an isolated fellow like me. He suggested that this is not the right way to look at it, that the Baha'i Faith is not a democracy, the House is not supposed to represent the membership of the world at large or that of the Baha'is, la, dee, dah, dee dah. Actually, he did not say "la, dee, dah, dee dah." I added that in because it sounds appropriate.

 

Actually, my understanding is that it is important for voters to bear in mind such things as sex and ethnicity in their choices. For example, other things being equal, minorities are favored over others, Persian voters are encouraged to favor non-Persians, and in the case of a new NSA, delegates are encouraged to choose native over pioneer administrators. Similarly, the mix of women to men is a legitimate consideration. Surely the men of the House should in some way at least indirectly reflect the ethnic makeup of the whole human race.

 

So, looking at the ethnic mix of the UHJ, the most striking deficit is the complete lack of an oriental face among the membership. There are over a billion Chinese, and if you count Indonesia and the Far East, probably more like two billion overall. Considering that, it saddens me that there are no Chinese on the House. Of course the ones to blame for that are Baha'i teachers. Distressingly, that includes you and me, and since "you and me" includes someone I would never blame, I have no choice but to swerve away from blaming anybody.

 

Okay, so let us consider the makeup of the Baha'i community as it already exists.

 

In that case, the lack of representation from the Indian community is perhaps even sadder. The number of Indians is catching up rapidly with the population of Chinese in the world. Within the Faith itself, East Indians are already by far the largest Baha'i community in the world. I have heard estimates of between a third and four sevenths of all Baha'is are in India. Which raises the question, why four Persians, four Whites, and no Indians? It is to be hoped that NSA members will bear this in mind when they vote in the next UHJ.

 

None of this is intended as anything other than constructive criticism. Mostly, it is just an observation. Here is an example of an observation that led to change.

 

In the late 1980's the Canadian government introduced wage equity laws that assured that female dominated professions, such as nurses, were paid equally with traditionally male professions with similar training, such as truck drivers. Somebody observed that the paid positions at our National Center did not conform to wage equity. Although I do not know the details, our NSA appears to have acted in an exemplary manner, considering the Baha'i principle of equality of the sexes. They had a formal study done, and the wages were changed, at some expense to the fund. They did the right thing in the face of constructive criticism.

 

I am interested in hearing any feedback readers may have about my comments on the ethnic makeup of the House.

 

Looking over what I just wrote, I realize that I am just being a typical Whitey. According to the website, "What white folks like," people with light skin like to have at least one gay friend in order to prove that they are NOT PREJUDICED against gay people. By looking at the makeup of the UHJ and complaining that there are too many Whites, I am being a stereotypical White liberal, desperate to prove that I do not like the fact that my skin color is over-represented on the Supreme Body.