Bite-sized Thoughts on Baha'i and Education
2009 Aug 14, Kamal 14, 166 BE
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Baha's Golden Rule
Marshmallow Test
Nocebos
Cone of Teaching
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By John Taylor; 2009 Aug 15, Kamal 15, 166 BE
Today I will turn away for a little while from the "Cosmopolitan Condition" and "Comenian Comments on Baha'i Principles" essay series that I have been writing this summer, and try to empty out my file of Baha'i-related quotes and ideas, which is getting pretty fat.
Here is an interesting rephrasing of the Golden Rule, which Baha'u'llah addressed to the people of Istanbul, though I expect that He would include you and me too,
"Lay not on any soul a load which ye would not wish to be laid upon you, and desire not for anyone the things ye would not desire for yourselves. This is My best counsel unto you, did ye but observe it." (Summons, Suriy-i-Muluk 5.44, p. 203)
He Himself calls this his "best counsel," so it must be pretty important. This "best counsel" lays the groundwork for dialog with secular non-believers and members of other religions about the basis of ethics and policy. For one thing, this goes beyond the Golden Rule as it is commonly understood. It is not just doing actions unto others that we would not have others do unto us, and it even goes beyond motives. This form of the Golden Rule extends to our imagination and inner thoughts, to our most intimate wishes and desires. Plus, even if Baha'u'llah had not not forbidden swearing, this would surely cover it. Profanity is in essence wishing that a burden be laid on others that we would not 1want on our own shoulders.
Marshmallow Test
Here is an interesting TED video lecture by a Latin American self-help guru by the name of Joachim de Posada called "Don't eat the marshmallow yet." Here is the TED introduction:
"... Joachim de Posada shares a landmark experiment on delayed gratification -- and how it can predict future success. With priceless video of kids trying their hardest not to eat the marshmallow." (http://www.ted.com/talks/joachim_de_posada_says_don_t_eat_the_marshmallow_yet.html)
This guy reports a truly remarkable result, a finding of long term studies that kids almost always succeed in life who can summon up the self-restraint to refrain from eating a marshmallow at very early stage, and that those who cannot stop themselves from eating it, fail. This test surely should be used in early childhood education, especially religious education (which is or should be concerned with virtues). If it is so easy to single out kids at a young age who have a deficit of self-restraint, we should do so. Then we will know to give those who fail the test a great deal of attention and extra training so that they too will succeed in life. Instead of worrying about whether kindergarten pupils can read, write or spell, we should be handing them virtue related training based on tests like this.
Nocebos
A century ago, Abdu'l-Baha was about to embark on His journeys through Europe and America. One of the things He called for most often in the lectures he gave on this momentous tour was the unification of material civilization with spiritual progress. He said,
"Instruments and means of human destruction have enormously multiplied in this era of material civilization. But if material civilization shall become organized in conjunction with divine civilization, if the man of moral integrity and intellectual acumen shall unite for human betterment and uplift with the man of spiritual capacity, the happiness and progress of the human race will be assured. All the nations of the world will then be closely related and companionable, and the religions will merge into one, for the divine reality within them all is one reality." (Abdu'l-Baha, Promulgation, 102)
What the Master is calling for here is a revolution of the mind where we all latch onto the one divine, universal truth born of God. And the point here is that you do not even need to believe it deep down to accept this OCF, one common faith. You just have to accept that it is a useful thing for all of us to latch onto. As it is, material civilization concentrates on the reverse of that, it takes broken up fragments of truth and expects us to reflect them, rather than the sun that illuminates all. One blogger I read regularly pointed to this brief quote from the Master:
"People for the most part delight in superstitions. They regard a single drop of the sea of delusion as preferable to an ocean of certitude." (Baha'u'llah, Tablets, 57)
This is both the product and the cause of the perversion of the media. The news is full of negative events, crimes, disasters, accidents, injustices, and this has a draining effect on our spirit. We should change that.
Related to this, I remain fascinated with the nocebo or voodoo effect. For example, a recent New Scientist feature talked about the negative effect of negativity and nocebos in medicine. Here is their summary,
"If you are taking medication, do you always read the label to learn about the possible side effects? It might seem like a good idea, but beware: there is growing evidence that simply believing something will be bad for you can make it genuinely bad for you. This might sound like voodoo - and indeed it is how voodoo works. But that is no reason to dismiss it as mumbo jumbo. On the contrary, it needs to be taken seriously. While it is a tricky problem to study, what we do know suggests that much needless suffering could be avoided if modern medicine paid more attention to the power of words. Doctors have a duty to inform their patients about side effects, but they should be exploring ways of doing this that minimise the voodoo effect." (New Scientist, "The science of voodoo: When mind attacks body," 13 May 2009 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227081.100-the-science-of-voodoo-when-mind-attacks-body.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg20227081.100)
This article contains a fascinating story from the history of medicine that I want to share here:
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"Late one night in a small Alabama cemetery, Vance Vanders had a run-in with the local witch doctor, who wafted a bottle of unpleasant-smelling liquid in front of his face, and told him he was about to die and that no one could save him. Back home, Vanders took to his bed and began to deteriorate. Some weeks later, emaciated and near death, he was admitted to the local hospital, where doctors were unable to find a cause for his symptoms or slow his decline. Only then did his wife tell one of the doctors, Drayton Doherty, of the hex.
"Doherty thought long and hard. The next morning, he called Vanders's family to his bedside. He told them that the previous night he had lured the witch doctor back to the cemetery, where he had choked him against a tree until he explained how the curse worked. The medicine man had, he said, rubbed lizard eggs into Vanders's stomach, which had hatched inside his body. One reptile remained, which was eating Vanders from the inside out.
"Doherty then summoned a nurse who had, by prior arrangement, filled a large syringe with a powerful emetic. With great ceremony, he inspected the instrument and injected its contents into Vanders' arm. A few minutes later, Vanders began to gag and vomit uncontrollably. In the midst of it all, unnoticed by everyone in the room, Doherty produced his piece de resistance - a green lizard he had stashed in his black bag. "Look what has come out of you Vance," he cried. "The voodoo curse is lifted."
"Vanders did a double take, lurched backwards to the head of the bed, then drifted into a deep sleep. When he woke next day he was alert and ravenous. He quickly regained his strength and was discharged a week later. The facts of this case from 80 years ago were corroborated by four medical professionals. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about it is that Vanders survived. There are numerous documented instances from many parts of the globe of people dying after being cursed. With no medical records and no autopsy results, there's no way to be sure exactly how these people met their end. The common thread in these cases, however, is that a respected figure puts a curse on someone, perhaps by chanting or pointing a bone at them. Soon afterwards, the victim dies, apparently of natural causes."
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I like this story so much because it illustrates how the Holy Ones cure mankind using positive love. They lay the opposite of a curse, they lay a blessing on us all. You can see and feel that spirit as you go through the Gospels or the talks of Abdu'l-Baha. The Master in his speech is laying a blessing on us, He radiates positive loving-kindness. Yet at the same time, in His principles He is also offering several mental protectives not unlike what the doctor in this story did as he cleverly cured the cursed man of his hex. This is especially true of the principle of elimination of prejudice, where cures are offered to nationalism, racism, parochialism, and any number of other contagious hexes on our worldviews.
This story also is related to a story that Abdu'l-Baha told of a doctor who comes to a very sick patient and pretends that he has been cured. "Thank God, you are all better!," he cries. Technically, this is a barefaced lie, but the placebo effect kicks in and the patient recovers. I have always puzzled over this story.
Does it mean that doctors and professionals only can lie when they know the odds are good that by saying it it will become true? Does it mean that any lie told out of the best of motives that becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy is closer to the truth than a technical truth? Scientific studies have lately shown that drugs will often not take effect unless the doctor who prescribes them talks them up, praising them and saying how great and powerful a cure they are. I guess it all goes back to the moment where Pilate says, "What is truth?" to the Man who had said, "The truth shall set you free." What really matters is that we are freed spiritually, not whether the body is cured or not.
The Cone of Teaching the Baha'i Faith
There was a popular poster called the "Cone of Learning," which reported the lifetime findings of a researcher in how people learn and remember, who worked in the 1960's. If you Google "cone of learning" you can see the poster, as well as an interesting web site examining it, including a slight distortion on the poster. The writer takes the best of this scientist's findings and writes some suggested ways to use them to learn more effectively, using yoga as an example. Since most of my readers are Baha'is, I have changed what he wrote to the example of teaching the Baha'i Faith, and added some of my own suggestions as well.
The Cone of Learning; How to use the most effective methods to learn
The best methods you could use to learn what the Baha'i Faith is and remember the necessary actions that it requires.
* Give a Lecture. Although receiving a lecture is one of the worst ways to remember what you are told, giving a lecture is one of the most effective. You could go into any college or university (or church or synagogue) and offer to give a lecture on the Baha'i Faith and the many principles that it illuminates.
* Write an Article. If you have a blog or a website you could spend time putting together an article on what being a Baha'i is all about. Additionally, you could create images to be used on the site to help explain the actions involved, such as saying the Greatest Name 95 times, or the obligatory prayers.
* Make a Video. Even if you do not have your own blog or website, there are plenty of video portals such as Youtube and Metacafe that will allow you to upload your own videos for free. This will be effective as you can teach in the lecture format but know that you are instructing to a potentially worldwide audience.
* Discuss with Your Friends. One of the easiest teaching options that you have available to you are the members of your social circle. Wherever appropriate, bring up a topic you would like to discuss and share your wealth of knowledge on it. The more people you can discuss it with the better your ability will be to remember it in the future. Additionally, there are literally hundreds of ways you can discuss it online using the likes of online forums, twitter or even niche social networks.
* Do it Yourself. Its no use trying your best to teach others about the Baha'i Faith if it is something you are not interested in and do not practice yourself. If you teach people the importance of loving God, stifling passions, stopping gossip and praying together, then when you are alone your thoughts will be less likely to stray from love and kindness. Whatever you would teach others, you need to make sure you are implementing yourself.
There are certainly more ways that you could look into teaching others and applying things into your own life. From holding classes in your house to simply creating an audio file of you speaking, see how you can apply teaching about your subject to learn more about a topic.
John Taylor
email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Friday, August 14, 2009
Participatory Democracy
Universal Participation in Public Service is the Chief Pillar of Democracy
By John Taylor; 2009 Aug 14, Kamal 14, 166 BE
The ancient Athenians understood that the great virtue of democracy is universal participation by ordinary citizens in every phase of governance. They would have been shocked by the professionalism that dominates every aspect of our nominal democracies. For them, democracy was not just the right to participate in elections. It meant a system where each citizen actively served the public good by means of rotating public service. The question as to who served when was decided not by elections but randomly, by lot. When Aristotle briefly defined democracy in the Rhetoric he did not even mention the vote, he talked about drawing lots.
Our modern representative democracy is highly specialized and reductionist compared to the Athenian kind. Our right of franchise is a sort of "fire and forget" smart bomb where citizens vote and forget their duty until the next election. In the meantime they can only hope that the person they voted in will not forget them. This maximizes freedom for the individual, but it dulls the sense of having a stake in the public thing. At the same time, it also makes the system vulnerable to evils like bureaucracy, specialization, over-centralization, tyranny and corruption.
Universal public service was practicable in Athens of old, which was a relatively small city state whose voters were further narrowed down by excluding women, the poor, colonials, foreigners and slaves. Today's governments rule over millions rather than thousands, and almost every issue they deal with is more complex. On the other hand, we should expect that as information technology becomes more sophisticated, as, for example, robotic personal assistants become universal, it will soon be possible to simplify many presently intractable technical problems. This would allow us to re-introduce some of the better elements of older, purer democracies, including amateurism, universal participation and choice by lot.
Another advance, the UCS, or local government within a cosmopolis, that we have been discussing this summer, would take us much closer to the Athenian ideal without need for leaps forward in technological capability. In his 1670 masterwork, Panorthosia, John Amos Comenius predicted that the formation of a democratic world government will create a demand for two new levels of local governance, household and neighbourhood government.
Being close to daily life, these new levels of local government will take us closer to pure face-to-face democracy. Face-to-face democracy is a system where citizens serve together in many different capacities, long enough get to know one another in action, as it were, rather than just in social situations. This direct personal knowledge would make reduntant political campaigns, and especially the pre-selection of candidates by parties. Their common experience in cooperative labor and public service projects would attune local citizens to the moral demands of democratic values. Conscience would dictate that votes be based not on image, attraction or even common ideas, but solely upon ability to serve as witnessed by direct personal experience.
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Thursday, August 13, 2009
Equality, Justice and Freedom in a Democracy, Part I
Equality and Justice in a UCS Democracy
By John Taylor; 2009 Aug 13
The first fruit of a democratic world government is consultative architecture, a worldwide building standard for human shelter. Built into a large hillside superstructure are niches into which fit modular, movable building sub-units. The decision as to where to place each particular unit into the superstructure is arrived at according to an open, public plan. Within the plan's formulae, constants are determined by experts, who agree upon laws and principles, some of which are universal (common to superstructures everywhere) while others are particular (devised by resident experts). Variables are the product of democratic, local planning.
The consultative building system allows individuals and groups to change location easily in modular living units fitted into a larger superstructure. The cosmopolitan condition of citizens in a Universal Civic Society (UCS) requires of them a degree of autonomy. This means that each and all operate their lives and careers according to a compatible plan that fits them into larger groups, and groups into larger organizations.
Last time we discussed Aristotle's idea that there are four strains of government, democracy (rule of all), oligarchy (rule of money), aristocracy (rule of a few) and monarchy (rule of one). Each has its own overweening value: freedom, wealth, merit and security. Let us look at each in turn.
Democratic Freedom
The democratic element of the UCS upholds equal rights, justice and freedom. These principles, Aristotle explained, are expressed in what citizens choose, both alone and together.
"We shall learn the qualities of governments in the same way as we learn the qualities of individuals, since they are revealed in their deliberate acts of choice; and these are determined by the end that inspires them." (Aristotle, Rhetoric, translated by tr. W. Rhys Roberts, Book 8, 206)
A free community depends upon residents who express their ends in a plan that takes responsibility for their own lives and families, but also for the world. The prime goal and first choice of every citizen of a UCS, therefore, is to optimize autonomy, equality, justice and freedom themselves, and not just locally but on a world level first of all.
Equality is optimized by eliminating extremes of wealth and poverty, and by distributing wealth as equitably as possible. The end of equality, then, is to optimize the division of labour by eliminating drudgery. This is why every household in a UCS is a full service house, that provides every service to residents, from meals to cleaning and laundry. Full service frees residents of the UCS to give their most productive time to the pursuit of their career and family life. As it is now, full service facilities are restricted to a tiny number of super-rich, while the labour of the rest is dissipated in trivialities.
Once drudgery is gone and work is productive and creative, the main attention of the majority can turn to justice.
Justice is optimized by placing first things first. The most important work, farming, must come before all others, since everybody depends completely upon the food that agriculture produces. This means maintaining an agronomy in the UCS wherever possible (we will discuss this in more detail in the next section, on wealth). An agronomy -- an economy where farmers are in the majority and have first dibs on real estate with sunward exposure -- upholds all the virtues necessary for justice in a democracy. Farmers are practical, stoic realists, conservative in the best sense of the word. They understand that freedom means independence, not choosing whatever whim we please. If this come first, everything else falls together.
Architecturally, this will mean that a basic housing space is allocated as a minimum human right for each human in the world. At the same time, maintaining it is a fundamental obligation. Its basic design is standard, common to both rich and poor in consultative housing developments. Each unit is modular and easily transportable from one housing complex to another. It does not contain a bathroom, a kitchen, recreation room or garage; as mentioned, these functions are supplied by the full service facilities in the local household within the cooperative housing complex.
Once the preconditions of autonomy, equality, right and justice are underway, freedom and democracy will be possible.
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Saturday, August 08, 2009
Hillside History
Historical Precedents for Hillside Housing Projects
By John Taylor; 2009 Aug 08, Kamal 08, 166 BE
In 1972 an architect by the name of Kisho Kurokawa, a follower of the Japanese Metabolism movement, constructed the Nakagin Capsule Tower. This extraordinary apartment complex has some of the features of the hillside structures that I envision in a Universal Civic Society. Like the proverbial Greek ship which attains immortality by having its planks and entire structure replaced periodically, the living capsules within this apartment complex can be replaced with new ones at intervals, allowing the building to last for many centuries.
Unfortunately, cooperative, shared ownership was not among its features. The result is that forty years later the heirs of the original proprietors of this historic building are apathetic in the face of its imminent demolition. I have blogged a video put out by an architectural periodical featuring the architect, who has since died, explaining his building in some detail at:
http://badiblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/kurokawas-capsule-tower.html
Kurokawa's Tower has replaceable units that, like the cells "metabolizing" in a larger body, renew themselves over time. Unlike in consultative architecture, though, the capsules in this tower are not easily movable, either within the building or to other locations by a containerized transport system.
East-west orientation for solar independence
In consultative architecture a planetary building code stipulates a standard superstructure designed to maximize exposure to sun and wind, for both renewable energy and local agriculture. The inside support structures of what looks from the outside like a giant mound are hidden away and designed exclusively for hosting outer, moveable, standard-sized building units. Like giant furrows in a newly ploughed farmer's field, streets and long block rows run in an east-west direction to catch the maximum sunlight on the southern face (or, in the Southern Hemisphere, the northern face). This gradual sunny slope is covered with ornamental gardens, parkland, agriculture and solar collectors.
The shady northern side is steeper and consists of high density housing and mixed-use building units running down its much steeper incline. Many stories high, the overall superstructure has fit into it many multi-layered compartments in niches down its side. There are factories, commercial structures, schools and apartments, all in close proximity. Only the noisiest industrial activity is carried on inside where the sound is contained and dampered.
There are many forgotten advantages to building an entire city block at once according to a single, shared plan. For example, in Turkey archaeologists discovered an entire ancient city covered over by a single, shared roof. Another example is the three thousand year old but still-inhabited city of Yazd in Iran. This city has a public air conditioning system that uses renewable energy to alleviate a desert climate of extreme summer heat combined with only 2.4 inches of rainfall a year. A cleverly designed system of wind towers combined with underground canals or water tunnels called qanats, blows air over cool water and into the buildings.
"The wind gets sucked in (by the wind towers) and pushed down over water below, and the cooled air is circulated through the house. In the ancient homes I saw, the room at the bottom of the wind shaft had a little pool of water and the sides of the room were often built-in brick benches covered with carpet, where the dwellers would spend the hottest part of the day." (Heirloom technology: Yazd's windcatchers, http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/08/heirloom_technology_yazds_windcatch.html)
In some respects, this is more efficient and uses fewer resources than the most advanced heat pumps. Combine this with the custom, common throughout the Middle East, of sleeping outside in summer in the cool night air on a flat roof, and you have zero-energy air conditioning built directly into the infrastructure.
John Taylor
email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/
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Baha'i Jazz Vocalist Tierney Sutton
As Sutton explains in the liner notes, “Desire” is a concept album of sorts, the songs all focusing on the titular emotion. But not just at the usual intersection of love and lust: “…to anyone who knows me, it’s no surprise that ‘desire’ quickly became a meditation on materialism.”
Sutton goes on to inform her audience that she has been practicing Baha’i for more than 25 years; indeed, the disc opens with an atmospheric chant derived from Baha’i texts. This, she adds, has long informed her approach to lyric: “I have often interpreted songs … from a spiritual perspective.” -http://www.examiner.com/x-12458-Oakland-Jazz-Music-Examiner~y2009m8d6-Tierney-Sutton-brings-her-Desire-to-weekend-San-Jose-Jazz-Festival
Tierney is truly an unrecognized talent and beauty with a phenomenal voice. Her humility is genuine and is why she will continue to be an example of greatness." -youtube comment
Charter Cities
http://www.ted.com How can a struggling country break out of poverty if it's trapped in a system of bad rules? Economist Paul Romer unveils a bold idea: "charter cities," city-scale administrative zones governed by a coalition of nations.
Friday, August 07, 2009
Millennial Education
The Millennial Meaning of Universal Schools
Series: Comenius On Education
By John Taylor; 2009 Aug 07, Kamal 06, 166 BE
As we have seen, the 16th chapter of John Comenius's Panorthosia discusses the College of Light, a sort of ministry of education for planetary governance. In Comenius's universalist view, a world government would have three branches, each independently elected, the College of Light, plus an interfaith religious body and a political parliament. Each of these institutions has a distinct task.
"Scholars should enlighten men, Churchmen should make them holy, and Politicians should protect all men from Confusion, including themselves." (Panorthosia, Ch. 10, para 35, p. 166)
Later, in the 22nd chapter, he goes into the "particular" reform of schools, the specific ways to make schools more efficient. Schools must be reformed first because they will immediately be tasked with making up a world curriculum, including the choice of a world language, which they then will teach to the entire human race. Even ignoring this tremendous task, he held in this chapter that it is essential in principle to reform schools before anything else.
"The first argument for putting school reform in the fore-front of Universal Reform is that schools are the factories of light. Moreover, the light or darkness of the intellect, and knowledge or ignorance of the natural world, is surely the first motive of any private or public reform and the original cause of order or confusion in human affairs generally." (Panorthosia, Ch. 22, para 3, p. 39)
The image of schools and universities as "factories of light" implies that positive knowledge comes before the elimination of error. "Therefore truth must be taught before errors are untaught." (Ch. 18, para 16, p. 246) The main goal of schools, then, is not to spread propaganda or indoctrinate in any specific ideology but rather to spread wisdom and enlightenment. Wisdom can save humanity from the confusion of imitation and plug minds directly into the original source of enlightenment.
"You must understand that education must be reformed first and true wisdom instilled into the minds of men; then we must reform religion, and lastly politics. The reason for this order is that mankind cannot possibly reach agreement within its own ranks before agreeing with God, and this in turn is impossible until it agrees about the natural world, which comes from God, exists with God, and is related to God. But man cannot even agree truly about Nature until each individual agrees within himself and knows how to know and apply himself, and this is attained by the light of true wisdom." (Panorthosia, Ch. 19, para 13, pp. 14-15)
We are in a climate crisis now because the world is confused and gets more contorted the more knowledge we discover. The intellectual, instead of seeking universal wisdom scrabbles for second hand information, trying to mine the thoughts of others instead of the truth within. The result is imitation, the mental equivalent of greenhouse gases. Comenius saw this starting up in its early stages.
"(Some) work strenuously towards a knowledge of serious matters, but fall short in their effort at examining them. For although they never rest from considering, grasping, and exploring things by themselves, they only attach themselves as camp-followers to other thinkers, accepting their every statement as valid. These are men who seek to gain wisdom only from books, and browse through libraries, filling their minds with other men's opinions about things. I say that they are looking at things through the eyes of others, and behaving exactly like one who wears various spectacles in the hope of increasing his power of vision. (Panorthosia II, Ch. 9, para 5, p. 145)
When all three branches of this world government cooperate in their three respective tasks, enlightenment, inspiration and protection, the result will be childhood's end. In wisdom and light, each individual will come of age and collectively we will think in mature ways. This maturity will mark the consummation of what the prophets of old predicted for the human race. In the last chapter of Panorthosia Comenius points to the high spiritual significance of the founding of "universal schools."
"If we are given universal schools, (which will mean the introduction of universal education, so that all men are taught to read and understand the books of God) the extension of light to all men will be universally possible, so that all men shall know the Lord, from the least of them unto the greatest of them (Jeremiah XXXI, 34), and 'the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea' (Isaiah XI). There shall be no more thence an infant of days' (Isaiah LXV, 20), but 'all will come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, that henceforth they be no more children' (Ephesians IV, 13, 14). (Comenius, Panorthosia, Ch. 26, para 5, p. 156)
email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/
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Wednesday, August 05, 2009
More Incumbency
Baha'i Incumbency, Revisited Once More
By John Taylor; 2009 Aug 05, Kamal 04, 166 BE
When I last wrote about incumbency in Baha'i administration I got more comments from Badi' Blog readers than anything else for a long time. This is a popular topic. So today, I plunge in once more. But first:
A Non-Baha'i Columnist Discusses the Democratic Model of Baha'u'llah
This summer I have been writing about democratic reform while steadfastly avoiding any mention of my prime inspiration, the Baha'i Faith. I have done that enough in previous years. However one non-Baha'i columnist and blogger, Brian Ashmankas in the U.S.A., has been doing it for me. His third and latest article is at:
Proportional Representation: Pros and Cons; August 2, http://www.examiner.com/x-16804-Worcester-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner~y2009m8d2-Proportional-Representation-Pros-and-Cons
Here he writes that, "A comment has been made on one of my articles regarding a third take on democracy, distinct from both the Baha'i-based system that I suggested and the current system we use in Massachusetts." He goes on to describe his former favourite ways of democratic reform before discovering the Baha'i model: party list, proportional representation and multi-member districts, some of which are used in Europe. He correctly points out that these types make democracy even more dependent upon the contentious party system than it already is.
"My greatest concern with (suggested alternatives to gerrymandering) is the power it places in the hands of political parties. It is the parties that select the candidates and who usually select the order in which they will receive seats. The party also sets the campaign issues and organizes the campaign. The candidates become merely tools of the party rather than individuals. Gone would be the grassroots outsider fighting to put new ideas on the table."
As our blogger perceptively points out, the Baha'i electoral system is determinedly free of either parties or partisan thinking. There are infinite advantages to the Baha'i avoidance of campaigning. Although we Baha'is should probably point out that this is a religion, not a political system, his praise for Baha'u'llah's Order is highly perceptive and a welcome break from all the press we have been getting about the persecution of Baha'is in Iran. He writes:
"It also concerns me that it doesn't address the problems arising from campaigning the way the Baha'i system does. As long as campaigns remain, deception, bribery (mostly in the form of campaign donations), and influence peddling will remain as well as the election of those who seek power rather than those who can be trusted with it."
At the same time, we should also point out that the Guardian did consider proportional representation to be a basic part of the democratic element in Baha'i Administration.
"Resting on the broad base of organized local communities, themselves pillars sustaining the institution which must be regarded as the apex of the Baha'i Administrative Order, these Assemblies are elected, according to the principle of proportional representation, by delegates representative of Baha'i local communities assembled at Convention during the period of the Ridvan Festival; are possessed of the necessary authority to enable them to insure the harmonious and efficient development of Baha'i activity within their respective spheres; are freed from all direct responsibility for their policies and decisions to their electorates; are charged with the sacred duty of consulting the views, of inviting the recommendations and of securing the confidence and cooperation of the delegates and of acquainting them with their plans, problems and actions; and are supported by the resources of national funds to which all ranks of the faithful are urged to contribute." (Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p. 332-333)
Although Shoghi Effendi uses the term "proportional representation" here, he probably means something closer to the technical fact that delegates are elected in districts that are calculated according to numbers of electors. This might be termed "voting according to population" rather than proportional representation, since as he goes on to point out, the bodies elected are not directly responsible to those who voted them in -- in other words, they are leaders, not representatives of the "will of the people," as Rousseau conceived it and as many non-Baha'i democracies actually apply it. Baha'u'llah in His letter to Queen Victoria made it emphatically clear that anyone elected to office has a prime responsibility not to the people who voted him or her into office but rather to God and all humanity. You might call that "disproportionate representation," since God and the entire human race are disproportionately greater than any number of electors.
As I have often pointed out, this principle of representation by population applies only in electing the convention that elects the National Spiritual Assembly. On the international level it definitely does not; the Universal House of Justice is elected by many NSA's that represent hundreds of believers while the NSA of India (and, if it were allowed, the NSA of Iran) represent millions of Baha'is.
This lack of due proportion at some levels could conceivably be adjusted in future by the House of Justice. Last time I read the UHJ's constitution I noticed something spectacular in the last paragraph. I had just read an article about the extremely long, expensive, traumatic, divisive and ultimately failed attempts that Canada went through in the 1980's and 90's in order to make relatively minor changes to its newly adopted constitution. The constitution stipulated unanimous votes among all MMP's in all ten provincial parliaments. That was a big order and proved impossible when just one MPP opted out. So I really pricked up my ears when I noticed that the UHJ can make a change to its constitution simply by a majority vote among its own members. They do not even have to be unanimous (though I am told that in practice they do wait until all of them agree upon a decision) among themselves, and they need not seek approval of anybody outside their own numbers, as every do all other democratic constitutions in the world.
Nonetheless, the unique and interesting thing about Baha'i voting is not the basic fact that it tries to keep the voting proportional to the number of voters. Every democracy at least aims at that, though changes are all but impossible because the area is, pretty much by definition, politicized.
What truly is unique is that it all but invents what might be called "meta-democracy." We vote in not only people who perform administrative duties, we also vote in voters. That truly is a brilliant innovation. It means that my vote at the regional convention is only twice removed from the voters of the UHJ, and nobody votes for anybody that they do not know by direct experience, preferably face-to-face -- as opposed to public image or professed ideas. I have been spending this whole summer exploring some of the implications of this for future governance.
Another virtue of Baha'u'llah's teaching is that it is a religion, and, along with science and education, it is designed to serve as equipoise to some of the excesses of politics and political thinking. The net effect of His Teaching, then, is to "de-politicize" the motives of everybody touched by it, both voters and officials voted in. Baha'u'llah quite literally does not mention the word "politics" in any of His writings. He delegated all discussion of the relation of the Faith to politics to His son, Abdu'l-Baha. Policy and actions are not valuable in and of themselves, their value is mostly in the divine confirmations they attract. In the Lawh-i-Dunya He warns His followers:
"O people of God! Do not busy yourselves in your own concerns; let your thoughts be fixed upon that which will rehabilitate the fortunes of mankind and sanctify the hearts and souls of men. This can best be achieved through pure and holy deeds, through a virtuous life and a goodly behavior." (Tablets, 86)
I could go on about such wonderful traits, but I want today to address a comment that a less-than-informed Baha'i made to the following comment our blogger makes about incumbency (the tendency to be elected over and over) in Baha'i Administration. Ashmankas's first point is about various suggested alternatives to "first past the post" elections.
"A final concern I have is that incumbents have a significant advantage because the long-time seat holders would remain at the top of the party list, immune from being tossed out for questionable decisions because they would remain within the group of guaranteed seats. Of course, this is no different than in our system, where incumbents are challenged very rarely and replaced even more rarely."
Ashmankas continues, turning to incumbency in the Baha'i system.
"It has also been mentioned in some of the comments I have received that the Baha'i system also favors incumbents. I certainly admit that this is a major concern with the system that I have laid out in the past. The obvious solution is term limits. Although this would certainly help in any of the three systems discussed, it seems to me to be too artificial."
A reader by the name of Ed Price, probably a Baha'i, rather hastily replied, saying:
"I noted your comment that the Baha'i electoral system favors incumbents. While it is true that the Baha'i community currently often tends to elect incumbents, it would be an error in my opinion to suggest that the system "favors" incumbents. It is important to keep in mind that, since there is no nominating or campaigning - in other words, no partisanship and no office-seeking behavior - in Baha'i elections, the meaning of incumbency differs greatly from other elections where individuals seek to get themselves elected. The Baha'i system, by its prohibition of any electioneering activity and by the fact that positions are usually unpaid, is actually not a "friendly" environment for personal ambition. Office holders thus view being elected as being a spiritual call to service and not a vehicle for status or power. For these reasons it would not be correct to say the system favors incumbency due to any inherent bias in the system, nor would there be any advantage to limiting terms either."
If this is coming from a Baha'i I find it rather strange that he does not notice that there are far more restrictive "term limits" in the Baha'i electoral process than any other in the world. How many democratic countries can you name that have annual elections? How many leaders are elected for a period of only one year? Any country that tried to hold an election campaign every year would exhaust itself and probably go bankrupt to boot. The reason that we can do this is that we kill several birds with one stone, so to speak. God and the voters "sacralize" their votes. An election is how we start off our holiest festival, Ridvan, which we celebrate during 12 days every single year. In effect, voting for Baha'is is what Christians would call a sacrament, it is how we celebrate Baha'u'llah's declaration and second exile. By voting in an atmosphere charged by God -- rather than heated debate -- and by doing so smoothly, often and regularly, the commonwealth of Baha'u'llah in fact highly disfavours incumbency.
However, at the same time voters can vote however they blessed-well please. The point is that they reflect the divine Will, not Rousseau's reified "will of the people." At the same time, in the Aqdas Baha'u'llah makes a point of formally removing power from kings and putting it into the hands of the people. An election is strictly between the voter and God, and nobody else. As the Guardian points out:
"Shoghi Effendi has never said that the members of the National Assembly have to be renewed partially every year. The important thing is that they should be properly elected. It would be nice if there should be new members elected, for new blood always adds to the energy of the group and will keep up their spirit. But this depends entirely upon the will of the delegates as represented in the result of their voting." (Written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, letter dated October 1932)
At the same time, on at least one occasion Shoghi Effendi went out of his way to "recommend" that German NSA voters choose a certain individual that he thought especially worthy of the office. By doing so, he recognized a problem in the infancy of the faith that may go away as we mature (having just housetrained a puppy, I am very aware of this possibility).
To the blogger, I made the following comment about incumbency, referring to something I just learned this summer from press accounts of the present, rather notorious Canadian parliament:
"There is nothing wrong with incumbency. As a rule, experienced people are better at a job than inexperienced ones. That is no less true in a democracy. Canada is in a situation where the ruling party has the only experienced people, and voters keep voting in so many new members of parliament that the turnover rate in opposition parties is very high. The ruling party ends up mocking the embarrassing mistakes of the neophytes in opposition, most of whom do not even have a college education, and parliament ends up a name-calling free-for-all that gives democracy a bad name."
Responding more generally to the columnist's analysis itself, I commented:
"I have been blogging on just this subject of Baha'i elections and their value as a model for democracy all summer, starting around the first of July. My blog is badiblog.blogspot.com. Although I am a Baha'i myself, I have to admit that the idea of not actively campaigning and seeking out a post is not unique to us. As an article in the NY Times for the fourth of July pointed out, it was regarded as beneath the dignity of a politician to seek votes for most of U.S. history. Only recently has this become the rule. This is an extremely interesting topic and I agree that you are on to something."
Most intriguingly, the columnist Ashmankas ends his article with the following request for input.
"I would like to finish by asking for suggestions on how we can solve the problem created by the massive advantage given to incumbents that seems to exist in any democratic system. I will consider these comments and delve deeper into the problem of incumbency and possible solutions at a later date."
Readers of the Badi Blog can respond straight to him, or direct their comments to me if they want. Myself, as I mentioned, I do not think that incumbency is necessarily a bad thing. Everything in moderation. Perhaps politicians are like surgeons. A study found that the sweet point of surgical expertise is seven years after graduation. At that time the guy or gal has lots of real world experience, but still has not forgotten all that he or she learned in school -- nor has what they learned become wholly obsolete yet.
But then again, there is no school for politicians, is there? How can there be a sweet point for them? So-called "political science," like most academic so-called "disciplines," is not a praxis. It therefore cannot be a science as long as there is no such thing as "clinical political science," including apprenticeships, as there is in medicine. That is another problem with democracy that is rooted in education. I have been wrestling with that this summer too.
email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/
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Monday, August 03, 2009
Consultative Architecture
Four Forms of Consultative Architecture
By John Taylor; 2009 Aug 03, Kamal 02, 166 BE
We have been discussing in this series the invention of two new levels of government, each of which is more local and intimate than anything we currently are acquainted with. The household is the nearest level to the individual; it is the closest to face-to-face democracy in its purest form. The household may comprise an extended family of blood relations, or a group of others with a common interest or who work well together.
The second level is the neighbourhood, composed of several dozen families who live in close proximity to one another. They meet in what we are calling a neighbourhood "war and peace room," a specially designed conference space where they work out policy together. These two levels of governance could not exist in our present urban layout of freehold architecture marked by sole proprietorship. They certainly would not arise spontaneously on their own. Rather are the result of a specially designed city planning regime that I call "consultative architecture."
Consultative architecture, briefly, is where the outer form of peoples' living space is a direct outcome of their own decisions, both autonomous and collective. Being owned cooperatively by residents, the specific form of a home or city block is the outcome of millions of negotiated decisions by the individuals, households and neighbourhoods who live and work there. The design of each building in these hillside developments is standardized to allow many modular living units to move around, to coalesce and come apart easily.
This highly protean and flexible physical set-up is designed to engender something very similar to the Hellenic ideal of democracy, perhaps for the first time since Ancient Athens was in its heyday. Let me digress a little on Athenian democracy.
When the Athenians thought of democracy, they did not think, as we do, of selection of a few representatives by a popular vote. They thought, rather, of random choice in the context of universal participation in public service. Every free male citizen had a civic duty to perform serious governmental work, including judging civic and criminal court cases, regularly. The particular time when they served was often determined by lot -- a system we still use in selecting for jury duty.
This combination of randomness and universal participation addresses a fundamental flaw that remains in our present representative democracy. In an election, how do I know that the person I am voting for will do well if they have never done it before? A person may do well in one job situation and poorly in another only slightly different post. A household and neighbourhood government, like the Athenians, will place everyone at one time or another in a responsible position of service or leadership. Within households individuals take turns randomly, and in a neighbourhood entire households assume rotating positions.
Not only democracy but three other forms of government balance one another in a UCS's consultative architecture. This too was understood in ancient times.
Aristotle in his "how-to" book on public speaking, the Rhetoric, advised the orator to make a special appeal to the needs of each audience. Listeners in each type of society have their own particular motives and goals, which are important to them. "For all men are persuaded by considerations of their interest, and their interest lies in the maintenance of the established order." (Aristotle, Rhetoric, translated by W. Rhys Roberts, Book 8, 206) There are, for Aristotle, four kinds of established order, democracy, oligarchy, aristocracy and monarchy. Because society today is a more complex, multi-ethnic mixture of all four elements, Aristotle's advice applies even more today.
Each of the four types has its own supreme authority that rules the hearts and minds of its members. First, democracy. As mentioned, democracy then had nothing to do with campaigns or even elections. For Aristotle, "Democracy is a form of government under which the citizens distribute the offices of state among themselves by lot." Democracy is egalitarian in spirit, but its primary aim is freedom.
The next type of government is oligarchy. An oligarchy is concerned with property as qualification. A modern corporate audience of managers and salespersons, for instance, would be concerned with wealth, competition and success above all. An aristocracy is "rule of the best," and they are concerned with education. Not just any education but one that maintains institutions in power, what has been called `ruling ideas.' Aristocrats uphold the ideas of "those who have held office ... and are regarded as the `best men.'" A current university audience of scientists and academics, then, would be more aristocratic in its reflexes than anything else. The third type is kingship, or rule of one person.
"Monarchy, as the word implies, is the constitution in which one man has authority over all. There are two forms of monarchy: kingship, which is limited by prescribed conditions, and 'tyranny', which is not limited by anything."
Even today, every nation, even those without kings, still places great power in the hands of individuals, from heads of households to corporate CEO's to presidents or prime ministers. Many modern audiences, such as parents, small businesspersons, teachers, police officers, bosses and other officials tend to have a monarchic frame of mind.
Each of these four types of governance is fundamentally conservative, but they tend to have a slightly different emphasis on what leads to security and prosperity.
"The end of democracy is freedom; of oligarchy, wealth; of aristocracy, the maintenance of education and national institutions; of tyranny, the protection of the tyrant."
Consultative architecture dynamically balances all four of these essential factors, freedom, wealth, merit and security. We will discuss each of these successively next time.
email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/
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Saturday, August 01, 2009
Hot Air
Hot Air in a State of Discord
By John Taylor; 2009 July 31, Kalimat 18, 166 BE
The following exchange takes place in the Futurama film, Bender's Big Score. The Planet Express crew are called to make a delivery to the Nude Beach Planet. While sunbathing the dissipated robot Bender is accosted by a new character in the series, Nudar, a member of the alien race known as the Nudist Alien Scammers. Nudar hands Bender a clipboard.
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Nudar: Sir, would you like to sign our petition?
Bender: Oh, I support and oppose many things, but not strong enough to pick up a pen.
Nudar: That's just the thing that the guys who oppose the things you support want you to do.
Bender: Really? Down with those guys! (signs)
Nudar ask for Bender's email address, Bender demurs, saying, "They say you should not give out your email address..."
Nudar: Right, that is just what those same guys said.
Bender: Them again? ... I hate those guys.
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Bender then writes down on Nudar's form the following URL: www.ilovebender.com, which, to the delight of my kids, is an actual location on the web.
When I first saw Bender's Big Score I laughed derisively at this negative motivating technique of the Nudist Alien Scammers. What kind of a muggins would fall for such a blatant ploy? Then, in a humbling flash of insight, I realized that the same scam had worked on me in an actual election. Back in '07 I read about a proposal for electoral reform that was being decided upon in the next Ontario election.
A commission of citizens chosen randomly among Ontario electors had studied and deliberated upon how to improve the present "first past the post" system. They settled upon an alternative that gave each voter two votes, one for the local candidate and one for the party. I wrote about it at the time in an essay called "One Ballot, Two Votes," dated July 25, 2007. Then, to my surprise, a member of the commission wrote a response to what I had said, and I included it in a Badi' Blog entry for July 29, 2007 called "Dogma, Baha'i Dogma and Intuition." After reading more about this than the average Ontarian, I was all ready to vote "yes" for the electoral change that the commission had arrived upon. Thinking like Bender, I reasoned that two votes has to be at least twice as good as one! True, this change would make the party system even more ensconced than it already is, and I oppose parties on principle. But even if I did not use my second vote for the party, I would not be losing anything; I would still have one vote.
But then just before the election an article was published using the same argument that Nudar used on Bender. This commission is undemocratic, it said, because it had been appointed by an anonymous shadow group with motives unknown to the general public. "You know, those guys." Sure, the motives of the author of the article were no clearer than those of the commission. And sure, any change coming from outside the democratic system is going to be undemocratic by definition. And, yes, a random choice of members on the commission is, also by definition, a shadow group with unknown motives. But just the same, the seeds of doubt had been planted in my mind. In the end, I did not vote for the suggested two vote system. The suggested reform did not gain enough votes in the election and the system stays the same. We still only get one vote and the party with the most MPP's forms the government. For all its imperfections, the "first past the post" system stands.
So it is that I still shudder at how effective it was to say, "This is just what those guys whom you oppose want you to do," even if you did not realize that you opposed them until just now. The ploy worked on me perfectly, even though it was clear what the opponents were trying to do -- that is, keep the path they took to power and influence unchanged. It does not matter how fallacious his argument is or how rotten Nudar's motives are, the ploy still works. You react just the way he wants.
Here is why Baha'u'llah forbids outright anything with a trace of gossip or backbiting. Fora of opinion, left to themselves, become overgrown verbal battlefields where aggressive ploys and negative techniques are freely used to tear ideas and people apart. Plato, in his last major work, "The Laws," refuses to give even the name "government" to an institution where such arbitrary negativity prevails. They are rather "states of discord,"
Athenian Stranger: "I say that governments are a cause -- democracy, oligarchy, tyranny ... or rather governments they are not, for none of them exercises a voluntary rule over voluntary subjects; but they may be truly called states of discord, in which while the government is voluntary, the subjects always obey against their will, and have to be coerced; and the ruler fears the subject, and will not, if he can help, allow him to become either noble, or rich, or strong, or valiant, or warlike at all. These two are the chief causes of almost all evils, and of the evils of which I have been speaking they are notably the causes." (Plato, Laws, Book VIII)
Global warming is bringing our state of discord to a head. We clearly have to do something right away to curb greenhouse gases. But all we do in response to this grave threat to our survival is to carp and procrastinate.
I have been going through a book that demonstrates the carping response perfectly. It is called "Hot Air; Meeting Canada's Climate Change Challenge." As the authors point out, our addiction to burning carbon makes us like the chain smoker who not only cannot curtail tobacco purchases, he cannot even slow his accelerating increase in the number of cigarette packs he buys. The first nine-tenths of the book are devoted to criticism of dillydallying politicians. The authors effectively demonstrate that the only sensible course of action would be for the Canadian government to institute simple measures, such as carbon taxes and laws to prevent increases in greenhouse gases by halting new construction, such as new coal-fired generating stations. It does not seem like much but it would make a difference in twenty or thirty years.
But our leaders fumble the ball on climate change every time they touch it. For twenty years global warming has been an increasingly obvious scientific certainty, yet they consistently evade the issue. So devastating is the excoriating onslaught by the three experts who wrote this book that you almost pity the poor politicians. Yet is clear from the last election that real change is out of the question. Even the mention of a carbon tax in the charged atmosphere of an election is political suicide. This climate disaster was all done democratically, by the will of the people. Who is to blame but ourselves? If we were being forced to pollute by a tyrannical government it would be a different story; we might well feel outrage.
I have come to the conclusion that it is useless to blame politicians. If anything is to blame, it is the system itself. If the poor fellows who rise to the top in our system do not address climate change, then so much the worse for the human race. What is destroying the environment is having a state of discord instead of a true government.
email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/
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