Freedom as Not Being a Slave

Freedom Before and After Muhammad

By John Taylor; 2009 Aug 23, Asma 04, 166 BE

Pre-Islamic Ideas about Freedom

Yesterday we started examining freedom in the dimension of politics. We looked at how Ancient Chinese, Greek and Roman thinkers worked out some basic principles of freedom, such as open access to information and letting nature take its course. The spiritual principle of "Let go, let God," gradually become the economic and political doctrine of the invisible hand, or Laissez Faire. However, I ignored one huge elephant in the room, slavery, which I will acknowledge today.

Slavery was surely the greatest burden that the Ancient world had to bear on the path to political freedom. Full and universal freedom was and still is utterly inconceivable as long as the institution of slavery exists in any of its many forms.

The Jewish law had built into its calendar certain mechanisms for the gradual removal of slavery. All Jewish slaves were to be freed in the Jubilee year, which took place every seven sabbaticals, or the fiftieth year. Since in the Ancient world slavery was both motive and fruit of wars of conquest, it was clear that the only complete end to slavery could happen at least fifty years after governments put a permanent end to war. This, it was prophesied, would come about with the advent of a Messiah, the "Prince of Peace."

The revelation of Christ cracked the foundation of slavery with its teachings about spirit, love and sacrifice. "The truth," Jesus declared, "will set you free." Conversely, what does not free, is not based upon truth. In order to be free, His actions demonstrated, we must voluntarily give up what we have. This is of the essence of love. God Himself made this sacrifice when He allowed the One titled His Son to suffer, be crucified and thus become a "ransom for many." (Matt 20:28) A ransom is a monetary equivalent for a person that is paid for the release of a slave or prisoner of war. Although this ultimate sacrifice offered a spiritual and theoretical solution to slavery, practical application was vitiated by corrupting factors such as clericalism, monasticism and asceticism. The latter two especially offered flight from the world as an alternative to the admittedly daunting practical mission of establishing peace and full manumission of slaves.

Freedom and Islam

The advent of Islam offered certain correctives to some of the corruptive factors that had crept into Christianity, such as asceticism, monasticism and the doctrine that an infinite God could literally have a son. But most of all, Islam addressed the one aspect of slavery that the ancients had always ignored, and which had kept them from paying the issue due attention: the question of social justice.

The Qur'an held up the rule of God as our ultimate exemplar in matters involving freedom. "Allah bears witness that there is no god but He ... maintaining His creation with justice..." (Qur'an 3:18, Shakir) Yes, the truth will set you free, but first we must examine how truth operates in nature. Once we understand that we have another powerful dimension in which to understand freedom: science. All the basic characteristics of modern science were collected together and first applied under Islamic civilization.

Like the Jewish scriptures, Islamic law included measures for gradual elimination of slavery; and like Christianity and other earlier religions, corruption prevented the practical ideal from being applied in practice. Slavery and serfdom persisted in Islamic lands and Muslim slave traders were the most notorious in the world for many centuries. Nonetheless, the teachings and ideals set forth in the Qur'an are noteworthy and its powerful emphasis on monotheism and divine justice changed the moral reflexes of civilization forever.

The Qur'an goes further towards complete manumission than any previous religious teaching. It assures that subject peoples of Islam would not be permanently enslaved or oppressed, as still happens in "undeveloped" countries today. They were to be treated equitably and, if they or their forebears converted, they had a chance at complete equality with other Muslims.

"Allah does not forbid you respecting those who have not made war against you on account of (your) religion ... show them kindness and deal with them justly; surely Allah loves the doers of justice." (Qur'an 60:8, Shakir)

So great was the emphasis on justice in Islam that when the first, great Iron Curtain fell, after almost a thousand years of obscurantism and isolationism, Muslims were surprised to find the very word "freedom" used frequently in Western lands. Orientalist Bernard Lewis describes what happened.

"The first Egyptian student mission went to France in 1826. Their chaplain, a sheikh from al-Azhar, learned a great deal (probably more than his student wards) and wrote a remarkable book about Paris. In it he discusses the National Assembly and the freedom of the press, among other things, and makes the very astute observation that the French, when they speak of freedom, mean roughly what Muslims are getting at when they talk of justice. With this insight, he cuts right to the heart of a key difference between European political culture and its Islamic counterpart."

"To Muslims, the use of `freedom' as a political term was an imported novelty, dating only from the time of the French Revolution and General Napoleon Bonaparte's arrival in Egypt in 1798. Before that, it had only legal and social connotations, and meant simply the condition of not being a slave. For Muslim thinkers, as the sheikh from al-Azhar implied, justice is the ideal, the touchstone by which one distinguishes good governments from bad." (Bernard Lewis, `Islam and Liberal Democracy: A Historical Overview,' Journal of Democracy 7.2, 1996, 52-63, at: http://calliope.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_democracy/v007/7.2lewis.html)

This is born out by an examination of the Qur'an. It has by my count only one or three mentions of the word `freedom', depending on the translation, as opposed to 27 or 41 mentions of justice. The few mentions that do occur of freedom are all to do with the condition of not being a slave. This lack of emphasis on freedom as a value in itself is, I suppose, a consequence of the complete legal equality that Islam sets up among believers. Any disputes among Muslims are resolved first by establishing peace and order, then by rectifying any unfairness at the root of the violence. There was to be no respecting persons, no prior consideration of social or religious rank.

"And if two parties of the believers quarrel, make peace between them; but if one of them acts wrongfully towards the other, fight that which acts wrongfully until it returns to Allah's command; then if it returns, make peace between them with justice and act equitably; surely Allah loves those who act equitably." (Qur'an 49:9, Shakir)

The very name "Islam" means submission to God, which from a superficial view seems to be pretty much the converse of the wholy political and unfettered freedom prevalent in the West. Even heaven is depicted in the Qur'an as a place where a Muslim abides in an order of just rulings among angels.

"And you shall see the angels going round about the throne glorifying the praise of their Lord; and judgment shall be given between them with justice, and it shall be said: All praise is due to Allah, the Lord of the worlds." (Qur'an 39:75, Shakir)

This does not depict a place where believers do whatever they please. The big difference is that in heaven God distributes absolute justice Himself, whereas here we rely upon imperfect, relative approximations to justice by fallible mortals.

It is interesting to note that even after the Revelations of the Bab and Baha'u'llah, Abdu'l-Baha in His first, great statement on reform and the political implications of religion, did not deviate from the Islamic emphasis on divine justice and morality as prime delimiters of personal freedom.

"Not until discipline, order and good government reach the degree where an individual, even if he should put forth his utmost efforts to do so, would still find himself unable to deviate by so much as a hair's breadth from righteousness, can the desired reforms be regarded as fully established." (Secret of Divine Civilization, p. 16)

Compare this to the definition of freedom given, for example, in the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man,

"Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law." (Article #4)

This is both broader and narrower than the strict, justice-bound freedom advocated by Islam and `Abdu'l-Baha. It is narrower in that it restricts itself wholly to the delimited, bounded realm of law and politics. But it is also broader because it leaves the individual completely free to do as she pleases, irrespective even of God's wishes. The Declaration places total reliance on law and external sanctions to limit human freedom, leaving only an invisible hand of Laissez Faire to work out our destinies. It can be seen why this purely political concept of freedom left enough wiggle room for vested interests to continue their highly profitable "peculiar institution" of slavery for the better part of a century after the American and French declarations of rights had been promulgated.

Even today, long after chattel slavery has been largely abolished in most countries, the vast majority of humans are as cruelly fettered by poverty as any slave of Ancient Rome. It is our thesis in these essays that the only way we are ever to free everybody will be to apply all three dimensions of freedom, political, religious and scientific. To quote the statement that set this series rolling:

"Just as we inhabit space that can be mapped in three dimensions, every choice we make in our lives must negotiate a position in three dimensions of freedom: religious, scientific and political."

We will continue next time with an overview of modern thought on political freedom.

John Taylor

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

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Iran: "Stand by Me"

On June 24, Iranian Superstar Andy Madadian went into an LA recording studio with Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora and American record producers Don Was and John Shanks to record a musical message of worldwide solidarity with the people of Iran.

Choral Fest at Willmette

Interviews with participants of the 3rd Annual Choral Festival including music director Van Gilmer.

Freedom in Politics

Feeling Around the Dimension of Political Liberty

By John Taylor; 2009 Aug 22, Asma 03, 166 BE

This summer I am writing, day by day, what I hope will become a draft of a longer book about how a world government may transform democracy, consultation and architecture. A few days ago I wrote the following sentence:

"Just as we inhabit space that can be mapped in three dimensions, every choice we make in our lives must negotiate a position in three dimensions of freedom, religious, scientific and political."

Going over my notes on freedom it has become clear that I will have to forget about the book for the time being and write in my normal way about these three dimensions. I will start today with a chronological overview of the political dimension of liberty.

Political Freedom

The first brief but brilliant experiment in democracy took place in Ancient Athens. Pericles, in his famous Funeral Oration praising the freedom that he had helped his city attain, declared that the freedom to know is one of the foundations of democratic freedom.

"We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy, than to the native spirit of our citizens." (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Book II, 39)

The open access to information that Athens pioneered has now become the heart and soul of the computer and internet revolution.

Another foundation of freedom is moderation. The Golden Mean always was and still remains the basis of any successful religion and pious life. In a play written for a religious festival, Aeschylus wrote,

"Neither a life of anarchy nor one beneath a despot should you praise; to all that lies in the middle a god has given excellence."

In politics, the same rule applies. A swing to the far left or the far right lands up in the same place: slavery and tyranny. Plato in the Republic explained how this principle extends throughout nature, from the balance of nature in an ecological system to the ways of men,

"The excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction; and this is the case not only in the seasons and the vegetable and animal life, but above all in forms of government. The excess of liberty, whether in states or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery." (Republic, Book IX. p. 311)

Unfortunately, in any group, the immoderate tend to outnumber the temperate, and even when they are few they inevitably shout louder. Thus, the strident easily dominate the discourse and the next step is reaction against the free discussion that is the foundation of democracy. Aesop told a fable about this called "The frogs desiring a king." The frogs tired of the anarchy of their life and petitioned Jove to send them a king. Jove threw them a log, but they soon lost their fear and jumped all over it.

"But this did not suit them, so they sent another petition to Jove, and said to him, `We want a real king; one that will really rule over us.' Now this made Jove angry, so he sent among them a big Stork that soon set to work gobbling them all up. Then the Frogs repented when too late. Better no rule than cruel rule."

Nor is there any need for cruelty. The very fact that the fate of a people is entrusted to the hands of an individual is usually enough for injustice to be done, especially when that people confronts a larger, far wealthier developed country. For example, I live on land that in the 18th Century was granted by the British to the Six Nations Confederacy. Title to the land was entrusted to its leader, Joseph Brant, who gradually sold most of it off to white settlers. Today Brant's name is understandably anathema to his people, in spite of the fact that what he did was understandable, since he had something like 16 children to feed. It would have taken great integrity to keep his hands off his people's heritage.

This story of graft, greed and corruption by trustees has been retold throughout the so-called Third World. The precious wealth of hundreds of hapless peoples and sovereign nations are routinely exchanged for a surreptitious suitcase of cash. Truly, Pericles was correct when he said that benefits of open access to information far outweigh the losses.

However, assuming that there is honesty and dependability in individuals, we often best serve freedom by letting others go about their business unhindered. The Laissez Faire approach so prevalent in capitalism today has its philosophical roots in stoic philosophy and Far Eastern sages. For example, Lao-Tzu wrote,

"If a ruler abides by its [the Tao] principles,

then her people will willingly follow.

Heaven would then reign on earth,

like sweet rain falling on paradise.

People would have no need for laws,

because the law would be written on their hearts.

(Tao Te Ching, Lao-Tzu, J. H. McDonald, tr., ch. 32)

The contribution of Christianity to our understanding of political Laissez Faire was its emphasis that freedom is an essential element of love. "Set free that you may be freed." God makes us free, so we in gratitude should follow the same example,

"Which of you, by being anxious, can add one cubit to the measure of his life? Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They do not toil, neither do they spin, yet I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these." (Matt 6:27-29, WEB)

Although Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor and a persecutor of early Christians, he reflected this spiritual principle of freedom as letting human nature run its course when he wrote,

"The universal cause is like a winter torrent: it carries everything along with it. But how worthless are all these poor people who are engaged in matters political ... All drivellers. Well then, man: do what nature now requires. Set thyself in motion, if it is in thy power, and do not look about thee to see if any one will observe it; nor yet expect Plato's Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter. For who can change men's opinions [or: principles]? And without a change of opinions what else is there than the slavery of men who groan while they pretend to obey?" (Meditations, 9:29)

Marcus was a philosopher with the power, theoretically, to be the philosopher king to which Plato's Republic was dedicated. Yet here he renounces even the dream of the Republic coming about in his lifetime. As he says, human power, especially in the hands of an individual, is severely limited and has little influence over the principles by which politics operate. The only choice we have as individuals is to look to what little freedom is given us. Beyond that, let God or nature do the rest. Such is the greater part of political freedom.

Today it is recognized that we can influence men's principles, albeit slowly and indirectly, by means of universal public education. At the same time, though, public education serves the interests of the state, which are not the same as those of the people, or for that matter, of freedom. Let me close with the warning that J.S. Mill gave in the last paragraph of his classic, On Liberty.

"A government cannot have too much of the kind of activity which does not impede, but aids and stimulates, individual exertion and development. The mischief begins when, instead of calling forth the activity and powers of individuals and bodies, it substitutes its own activity for theirs; when, instead of informing, advising, and upon occasion denouncing, it makes them work in fetters or bids them stand aside and does their work instead of them. The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a State which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of administrative skill or that semblance of it which practice gives, in the details of business; a State, which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish." (Mill, On Liberty, p. 186)

John Taylor

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

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Let Them Prove It

Some Aspects of the World Curriculum Proposed by Comenius

By John Taylor; 2009 Aug 19, Kamal 19, 166 BE

The twenty-second chapter of John Amos Comenius's Panorthosia, "The Particular Reform Of Schools," discusses why the reform of education should be undertaken first and some ways to remove corruption in schools. Finally, it tackles the problem of replacing corruption with improvements, and how to turn these changes into permanent reforms.

In an extended after note to this chapter Comenius also discusses how to improve textbooks and other course materials. Here he notes that the purpose of learning materials is to direct the attention of students to what is most important, "... unless we are to suffer forever from the old complaint 'We do not know the essentials because we are learning nonessentials.' (Seneca, Epistle 66) (Panorthosia, Note on the Reform of School Text Books, pp. 53-54) In devising a world curriculum, how can an entire society, especially a multicultural one, decide what is essential and what is not? This chapter, written by one of the first world federalists as well as a major educational theorist, offers many helpful clues.

Comenius starts explaining why education must be the first priority for reformers. We can change at any age, but our malleability is at its greatest in early years. Any corruption that sets in in our youth is all but impossible to remove later on. The longer our contact with corruption the greater the likelihood that we will catch it (paragraph 6). The religious doctrine of original sin itself, Comenius implies, is a metaphor for the early onset of corruption in human development.

"Moreover, of all the instruments for corrupting the tender age of youth none serve (Satan's) purpose better than parental indulgence and faulty education, which is a far more damaging affliction than some wicked Fury ... In my view faulty education is the greater evil inasmuch as the Soul is more sublime than the body ... and since he who passes the best part of his life very badly (through cowardice, licentiousness, idleness, and luxury) loses his whole life as a result. As a rule it is true to say that the end depends upon the beginning and all things bear the stamp of their early existence. 'The jar will retain the Smell of the first contents which it held when new'." (Horace, Epistles I, II, 69, also quoted ... by St. Augustine in Civitas Dei 1, 3) (Panorthosia, Ch. 22, para 4, p. 39)

On the other hand, any improvements we can make in our teaching methods will also have a decisively potent effect in improving the lives of children, since they have the longest time to apply the lesson. This is why teachers devote most of their time and effort to teaching children and young people.

Unfortunately, teachers themselves tend to be corrupt, a situation that Christ warned against when he asked, if the light in you becomes dark, what hope is there? In order to counteract this danger Comenius suggests an elaborate system of outside inspections and surprise inspections by expert instructors and outside guests. Quality control in the human resources of education begins first of all in the critical faculties of every individual, and especially in those who teach. Teachers, principal and school governors who fail to live an exemplary life should either change or be dismissed from their post. It would be hypocritical to expect a high standard of students but not of their models and instructors.

"As for pupils, the utmost care must be taken to prevent them from lapsing into bad temper, laziness, or indifference (for the earliest age-group is made of wax and can be moulded for better or worse).'" (para 15, pp. 43-44)

Religion and Education

As a religious leader as well as an educational reformer, Comenius understood that the educator has to depend upon the support of religion in conveying the all-important moral dimensions of what they seek to instil in young people.

"... the Schools will be put right by means of a strict moral discipline, so that pupils destined for heaven, whose learning on earth is confined to the things which must continue to be known in heaven, should show themselves wise and endued with knowledge by good conversation with meekness of wisdom (James III, 13)." (Comenius, Panorthosia, Ch. 22, para 25, pp. 49-50)

For their part, faith groups should regard it as their main duty to offer their full resources to support the mission of educators.

"But now we must see that the classroom is a place where the church gives birth to the sons of God and where it will be a pleasure for teachers to perform the kindly task of the midwife and to nurse the infant offspring of wisdom." (para 18, p. 45)

In his childhood Comenius had been beaten and abused by authority figures from both school and religion. In reaction, he thought that the removal of cruelty and bullying should be a central mission for both religion and education. Teachers and the faithful should learn always to be kind and nurturing, and especially when they teach young children.

Science and Education

Centuries before renewable energy sources became a central concern, Comenius compared this technical change to the removal of abuse in schools.

"Of course, it is generally hard to give up bad habits and by no means easy to see their disadvantages once we have grown accustomed to them, but it is my considered opinion that most of our previous schools have really been places of drudgery, workshops of sweated labour under the rod and the lash. Would it not be a welcome change to convert them into automatic mills powered by the wheels of nature? The schools of the past have been like sculptors' workshops where master-masons found it necessary to teach their toilsome craft by using the hammer and the chisel to vent their spleen and try the endurance of their pupils." (para 18, p. 45)

Slavery, then, is not confined to menial labour, it is endemic in academe. Instead, he says, learning should be like a mill running automatically, using the energy of the river running beside it. Instead of weeding students out by regurgitating theory and second hand thoughts in mindless examinations, teachers should expect students to demonstrate competence first hand, by actually doing what they have been taught. The teacher's motto, then, should be: "Let them prove it." Because it is one of Comenius's most brilliant strokes of genius, I will cite this passage in full. If educators had taken this advice to heart, today the world of science and education would not be dilly-dallying in the face of climate change, it would have been solved before it came to this perilous point of no return.

==========

Let Them Prove It

"Thirdly, the method of transplanting wisdom from books into minds should be kindly and pleasant, but solidly effective through an attractive course in which the individual is seeing and saying and doing things himself, as described at some length in my 'Universal Education.' As for the Academies, I should like them to be renowned for Wisdom like that of Solomon to the exclusion of reading contests, disputations, and rhetorical exercises.

Things should preferably be taught in a realistic way. For when men expound each other's opinions they incidentally pass on their errors from one hand to another; and so long as they seek after knowledge in human handbooks instead of in the textbooks of God, they are only disputing without proving anything.

The cult of vain pagan wisdom should cease, and we should begin to advance towards wisdom like that of Solomon. Real things should be looked at individually and in their own context as arranged with divine skill in the fabric of the world, the structure of the human Mind, and the eloquence of the word of God.

The academies in their wisdom should speak of trees, from the cedar tree even unto the hyssop, also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes (I Kings IV, 33 and Job X11, 7). They should teach about how the world was made, and the operation of the elements; the beginning, ending, and midst of the times; the alterations of the turning of the sun, and the change of the seasons; the circuits of years, and the positions of stars; the natures of living creatures, and the furies of wild beasts; the violence of winds and the reasonings of men, Wisdom VII, 17-20; and finally they should know how to teach all such things as are either secret or manifest, being taught by wisdom, which is the worker of all things.

In a word, brutish imitation should cease in schools all over the world, and lively contemplation begin. Tricky disputations should cease, and firm proofs begin, and this would be a source of lasting benefit to all who receive school education.

For every pupil would see that he is learning real things instead of nebulous opinions, and so would become an industrious collector of wisdom for himself; and a self-reliant teacher instead of a rigid admirer of wisdom at second hand.

Therefore our Academies should constantly observe the motto `GIVE THEM THE CHANCE TO PROVE IT'.

For example, if anyone claims to be a doctor, let him prove it by healing the sick, and then, and only then, grant him the right to practise medicine; or to put it in philosophical terms, nothing should be admitted unless it has been proved beyond the possibility of contradiction so that the Christian population consists not of silly women, ever learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth (II Timothy 3:7), nor of children forever but of men who put away childish things (I Corinthians 8:11).

(para 24, pp. 48-49)

John Taylor

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

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Cartesian Coordinates of the UCS

Using Our Emptiness; Organizing the space where will and planning take place.

By John Taylor; 2009 Aug 17, Kamal 17, 166 BE

I am contemplating a building system whose structures are designed to easily come together and be taken apart as the individuals within move around, and groups within grow, prosper or fail. The extreme difficulty of changing more than one building or property at a time has frustrated reformers from the beginning. Rene Descartes, for example, adopted his subjectivist philosophy after he grew frustrated with this problem. No reformer demolishes a whole town's streets and buildings, he said,

"rebuilding them in a different way to make the streets more beautiful; but one does see many people knock down their own in order to rebuild them, and that even in some cases they have to do this because the houses are in danger of falling down and the foundations are insecure. With this example in mind, I felt convinced that it would be unreasonable for an individual to conceive the plan of reforming a State by changing everything from the foundations up and by overthrowing it in order to set it up again ... And I firmly believed that, by this means, I would succeed in ordering my life much better than if I built only on old foundations and leaned on principles inculcated in me in youth without having ever examined them to see if they were true." (Descartes, Discourse on Method, F. E. Sutcliff, tr., Penguin, Middlesex, 1972, p. 37)

John Amos Comenius, who met and discussed his ideas with Descartes, was not so pessimistic. He held that it is not impossible to make the built world reflect reforms and improvements in the foundation of our ways of thinking. The trick is to concentrate on the same fundamental truths -- including world government -- while trying to be as flexible as possible in secondary matters. Along with Bacon, he also thought it important to be systematic in throwing out false and superstitious ideas. We need, in other words, a consistent philosophy for every world citizen.

"If we inquire into the cause of our confusions, we shall find that they are mainly due to the fact that our philosophies, religions, and political systems, like our opinions and our books, have hitherto been miscellaneous patchworks by various authors without any attempt to make them conform to the universal laws of harmony." (Comenius, Panorthosia II, Ch. 10, para 8, p. 155)

Comenius took the three factors mentioned here very seriously. In order to make our world reflect a consistent cultural vision, each and all will have to build from the ground up a consistent philosophy, religion and politics. Each world citizen will have a vote for each of these, and will therefore have to gain some original, direct experience in each of these basic human concerns. The mistake that Descartes had made was to separate body from mind as if one had nothing to do with the other, as if there were no "universal harmony" that abides in all things.

"The observation has recently been made by the distinguished philosopher Descartes in his `Discourse on Method',' that 'works taken in hand by different craftsmen who disagree amongst themselves cannot possibly be made perfect,' as for example in the case of a house which had its foundations laid by one builder but was completed by others adding different walls at different times, and similarly in the case of those ancient city-states which began as small unknown villages, but gradually grew into large cities with streets so winding and irregular that their position would appear to have been due more to the blind accident of chance than the deliberate choice of men with the gift of reason.

"He goes on to say `Much the same applies to the state of philosophy (and, we might add, of politics and religion), since haphazard ideas, expressed in speech or action or writing have been established or tacitly adopted, and are now accepted as valid without further amendment despite their various glaring deficiencies'.

"It is a fair verdict that by dabbling in particular theories or by handing them down as traditions, men of ancient and modern times alike have dealt with particular situations but have had no thought of universal Harmony. But now God offers us opportunities for thought, and unless we take them, and destroy all the forces of disorder and confusion, and try to establish all our affairs in order and harmony, we are guilty of ingratitude." (Id.)

As mentioned, every move and disposition of property in a Comenian order is determined by the interplay of these three factors, religion, philosophy (including science and education) and politics. Each citizen has a triple franchise, according to each "dimension" of decision-making.

In this sense, the thinking of Comenius was closer than Descartes was himself to his greatest innovation in mathematics, Cartesian coordinates. These coordinates map the location of any point in three dimensional space using three axes, x, y and z. In the same way as every thinking person needs to consider three factors in every decision, how it will work out according to known factors (philosophy), how it fits into eternal harmonies (religion) and whether it contributes to peace, order and security (politics). If every decision we made, both as individuals and groups, could be mapped out using this simple system of coordinates to determine where we are in relation to the needs, rights and decisions of others, our built world could indeed follow a single, universal harmony.

Descartes failed to realize the implications of his coordinates because he had driven a wedge between mind and body. Instead, they could have been used to map out the space between them, the space in which the will decides to act, the space in which social planning takes place, the soundscape in which the music of the spheres can be heard. As the Daoist philosopher put it:

"We fashion wood for a house,

but it is the emptiness inside

that makes it liveable.

We work with the substantial,

but the emptiness is what we use."

(Tao Te Ching, Lao-Tzu, J. H. McDonald, tr., 11)

John Taylor

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

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School Reform

Reforming Schools

Chapter 22 of Panorthosia

By John Taylor; 2009 Aug 16, Kamal 16, 166 BE

In Panorthosia or Universal Reform, John Amos Comenius proposed that we institute a democratic world government consisting of three pillars, each elected independently and work separately but harmonious in spirit and aim. The three are a political senate, a department of science and education and a parliament of religions. The 16th chapter describes the second of these, a combined research institute and department of education that he called the "College of Light." I discussed this chapter recently ("The College and Factories of Light, 29 July, 2009 http://badiblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/college-of-light.html).

Today I want to go over the more specific proposals he makes for improving schools in the 22nd chapter of Panorthosia, "The Particular Reform of Schools." Unlike the College of Light, which is devoted to the general question of how to educate the entire human race, this chapter concentrates on specific reforms that would make schools more effective not only in teaching the next generation but also in laying the groundwork for further reform.

Every specific proposal in this chapter is part of a set of standards similar to what we now call quality control. Quality control standards are common in industry but for various reasons they have been resisted in education. This lack persists today mostly because we have no world language, nor is there a single world government to devise universal standards or to oversee their implementation. Worse, there no common vision among educators as to what schools should seek to accomplish.

As he does for other institutions, including families and neighbourhoods, Comenius suggests a combined mission statement and reward that I have been calling an escutcheon. If it succeeds in institution these reforms and maintains a high standard a school would earn the right to post this escutcheon above its front door. As elsewhere in Panorthosia, Comenius states the motto and declaration for his proposed escutcheon in the last paragraph of the chapter.

"Every school that is reformed in this way will deserve to be honoured with the following inscription over its door: HERE IS THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT AND THE DELIGHTS OF HEAVENLY WISDOM among the sons of men, and we shall live to see the day when the noble and the humble, the highest and the lowest alike, will have feelings of shame and sorrow that they did not attend here to receive their training for life." (Ch. 22, para 33, p. 54)

I think the spirit of this declaration is that with a world educational authority any school would have an equal chance at entering the first rank of educational institutions. Today only the best endowed schools in the richest countries get a shot at this honour. Under a Comenian world government, a village school in China, India or Africa would have the same opportunity to compete with the wealthiest private finishing school. As long as a school strives to uphold these standards it would earn the right to post the above declaration above its front door as a mark of excellence.

For the rest of today's discussion I will look at the general aim of schools that Comenius envisions, and leave the specific reforms to a future date.

Comenius begins this chapter by stipulating that learning is not an end in itself and that multiplying the number of schools is not the same as spreading education. The chief purpose of schools should be to bolster human happiness. "I maintain that we have multiplied schools and studies and selfish scheming for advancement, but we have not yet added to the true joys of life." (Ch. 22, para 1, p. 38) To my mind, the divorce he perceived between joy and learning in schooling explains why today our lives are dissipated by an obsession with idle pastimes and recreation.

Even as we face some of the gravest crises ever, we persist in devoting our lives to sports, gambling, cinema and computer gaming, pleasures that are designed to have as little as possible to do with the high ideals of education. As Comenius puts it, educators "have not yet added to the true joys of life." Just as medicine in its primitive stages imagined that the more bitter the medicine the more likely the cure, so educational theory held (and to some extent still does) that the more violent, forced, theoretical and unpleasant the studies, the more educational they are. Education concentrates mainly on intellectual prowess and ignores the fear expressed by Seneca that, "Many of those who come out well-educated cease to be good." (quoted in Ch. 22, para 1, p. 38) When we cease to take our main joy from goodness, the only pleasure left is blind pursuit of money.

"For what is this modern education which (more) schools are going to multiply? At the highest level it produces philosophers, doctors, lawyers, and politicians, that is, inhabitants of the world, who admire and administer its vanities. But it also produces theologians, you may say. My answer is that this, too, has now become a money-making career and a contract for worldly vanity." (Comenius, Panorthosia, Ch. 22, para 1, p. 38)

This is the observation of an educational genius of the first order, and if anything it applies more now than in Comenius's day. It is not so much commercialism and the capitalist system that fills our best trained minds with greed, it is an educational system that divorces practice from theory, that itself worships money and selects its students for their ability to gain high marks while ignoring how they apply virtue, ethics and ideas in actual service.

John Taylor

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

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