On Giving

The One Percent Solution to Poverty; Singer's Proposal in "One World"

By John Taylor; 2007 September 16, 09 Izzat, 164 BE

Singer, Peter, One World, The Ethics of Globalization, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2002

I have been sporadically reviewing and assessing Australian philosopher Peter Singer's 2002 book "One World, the Ethics of Globalization," and this is the last installment. I had given great attention to Singer over many essays when, a month ago, I happened to mention "One World" to the Youth Center pastor, Richard. He pointed out how notorious this man is. He has stirred up no end of controversy for uncompromising and often outrageous opinions on animal rights, theology and euthanasia. Richard pointed me to the Wiki article on Singer, which, since it is self-explanatory, I suggest that if you want all the lurid philosophical details that you read it yourself. Since today I am interested in his ideas about world federalism and the elimination of poverty, I will only cite this Wiki excerpt:

"In `Famine, Affluence, and Morality', one of Singer's best-known philosophical essays, he argues that the injustice of some people living in abundance while others starve is morally indefensible. Singer proposes that anyone able to help the poor should donate part of their income to aid poverty and similar efforts. Singer reasons that when one is already living comfortably, a further purchase to increase comfort will lack the same moral importance as saving another person's life. (One point of contention is at what point a person may be said to be 'living comfortably' and `Famine, Affluence and Morality' does not set out how to specify this.) Singer himself reports that he donates 25% of his salary to Oxfam and UNICEF. In "Rich and Poor" ... his main argument is presented as follows: If we can prevent something bad without sacrificing anything of comparable significance, we ought to do it; absolute poverty is bad; there is some poverty we can prevent without sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance; therefore we ought to prevent some absolute poverty." (Article: "Peter Singer," in Wikipedia)

As we shall see, Singer further argues in One World that our idea of charity is unnecessarily nullified by national borders. We lump in frivolities, such as golf club fundraisers, with substantive charities that would actually save lives. Thus we diminish what moral good our money does. In the climactic chapter of One World, Singer offers several persuasive thought experiments showing how morally indefensible it really is to ignore the crying needs of the poorest in the world.

"In Living High and Letting Die, New York Philosopher Peter Unger presents an ingenious series of imaginary examples designed to probe our intuitions about whether it is wrong to live well without giving money to help hungry malnourished or dying from easily treatable illnesses like diarrhea." (Peter Singer, One World, The Ethics of Globalization, 186)

In view of Singer's own generosity in putting his money where his mouth is, it would seem fair to suggest to anybody who would criticize Singer that they first donate 26 percent or more to the poor. Otherwise they do not have his moral authority. In "One World" Singer suggests that members give to life-saving, international charity a much more modest percentage of income than his own 25 percent, as we shall see.

The unique value of One World is that it suggests that we simultaneously adopt political measures to bolster the prerequisite of charity, order. To really help the poorest humans on earth, there must first be a foundation of world order. This, no other ethicist dares think about, even though Aristotle pointed in the right direction when he held that politics grows out of ethics, not the other way around. It has to be the personal, moral imperative of our time to unite the human race under one law and one government. Any other moral speculation is mere hairsplitting, a distracting waste of time.

Because of his interest in ethics, Singer does not attempt to detail what a world government might look like; he only emphasizes its central historical importance. In the last paragraph of the book, Singer offers a capsule history of the past several centuries.

"The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are celebrated for the voyages of discovery that proved that the world is round. The eighteenth century saw the first proclamations of universal human rights. The twentieth century's conquest of space made it possible for a human being to look at our planet from a point not on it, and so to see it, literally, as one world. Now the twenty-first century faces the task of developing a suitable form of government for that single world. It is a daunting moral and intellectual challenge, but one we cannot refuse to take up. The future of the world depends on how well we meet it." (Peter Singer, One World; The Ethics of Globalization, 200-201)

This is not to say, though, that Singer is an uncompromising world federalist. Because of the possible risks, he does not advocate leaping headlong into a world government. However, "we could accept the diminishing significance of national boundaries and take a pragmatic, step-by-step approach to greater global governance." (200) He suggests starting by establishing core labor and environmental standards. But such standards, like everything else on a world level, rests upon a stable, ordered background maintained, monitored and regulated by some central authority.

"If these standards are developed and accepted, they would not be much use without a global body to check that they are being adhered to, and to allow other countries to impose trade sanctions against goods that are not produced in conformity with the standards. Since the WTO (World Trade Organization) seems eager to pass this task over to the ILO (International Labor Organization), we might see that organization significantly strengthened. Something similar could happen with environmental standards. It is even possible to imagine a United Nations Economic and Social Security Council that would take charge of the task of eliminating global poverty, and would be voted the resources to do it." (p. 200)

The degree of centralization of the world governance he has in mind is not clear, other than the fact that it should be democratic -- there is universal agreement on this because it would reduce the chances that a central government would degrade into a world-wide tyranny. But the other nightmare scenario, the growth of a massive, inefficient central bureaucracy, he suggests can be avoided by "subsidiarity." This is a mandate directing that decisions always be made at the lowest level capable of dealing with the problem. This is being actively applied in the European Union. If it proves successful "it is not impossible that it might work for the world." (p. 200)

Singer does not seem to be aware of the Earth Charter, a grassroots document that has already pounded out a broad consensus of spiritual, moral and philosophical planks for a UN Economic and Security Council to walk on, including the goal of eliminating poverty. I think if he, and all the rest of us, including Baha'is, adopt this document, we would find it much easier to come together with diverse groups in attaining the goal of "planetizing" charity.

I promised to end with Singer's proposal for ending world poverty one fat pocket at a time. As long as nationalist governments are obsessed with petty rivalries and refuse to consider even the most miserly contribution to eliminate poverty, he suggests that would-be world citizens take the matter into their own hands. He suggests a publicity campaign planting in peoples' heads the goal that everyone pay at least one percent of their income to the poor. This would be more than enough to wipe out the grossest suffering, although much more could be done with what he calls "optimal" giving. I will let Singer take over from here.

Sidgwick's point: there is a distinction between "what it may be right to do, and privately recommend," and "what it would not be right to advocate openly."
... The point is to nominate as a target the figure that will lead to the greatest amount of money being raised. For that it needs to be a target that makes sense to people. One way of looking at how much we might suggest that people should give is to suppose that the task of eliminating poverty in the world were fairly distributed among all of the 900 million people in high-income countries.
How much would each of them have to give?
As we have seen, the World Bank estimates that it would cost $40 to $60 billion per year in additional aid to achieve the development goals set at the United Nations Millennium Summit. These goals, calling for poverty and hunger to be halved by 2015, are more modest than the elimination of poverty. They could leave untouched the situation of the poorest of all, in countries where the costs of reaching poor people are higher than they are in countries with better infrastructures. But they are at least a stepping stone on the way to a more complete victory over poverty, so let us ask how much it would require, per person to raise this sum.
There are about 900 million people in the developed world, roughly 600 million of them adults. Hence a donation of about $100 per adult per year for the next fifteen years could achieve the Millennium Summit goals, even at the high end of the World Bank estimates. For someone earning $27,500 per annum, the average salary in the developed world, this is less than 0.4 percent of their annual income, or less than 1 cent in every $2 they earn.
There are many complexities that such figures ignore, but they go both ways. Not all residents of rich countries have income to spare, after meeting their basic needs; but on the other hand, there are hundreds of millions of rich people who live in poor countries, and they could and should give too. We could, therefore, advocate that everyone with income to spare, after meeting their family's basic needs, should contribute a minimum of 0.4 percent of their income to organizations working to help the world's poorest people. But to do so would be to set our sights too low, for it would take fifteen years even to halve poverty and hunger. During those fifteen years, tens of thousands of children will continue to die every day from poverty-related causes. We should feel a greater sense of urgency to eliminate poverty. Moreover there is nothing especially memorable about 0.4 percent of one's income.
A more useful symbolic figure would be 1 percent, and this might indeed be closer to what it would take to eliminate, rather than halve, global poverty.” (One World, 192-193)

"We could therefore propose, as a public policy likely to produce good consequences, that anyone who has enough money to spend on the luxuries and frivolities so common in affluent societies should give at least 1 cent in every dollar of their income to those who have trouble getting enough to eat, clean water to drink, shelter from the elements, and basic health care. Those who do not meet this standard should be seen as failing to meet their fair share of a global responsibility, and therefore as doing something that is seriously morally wrong. This is the minimum, not the optimal, donation.
"Those who think carefully about their ethical obligations will realize that -- since not everyone will be giving even 1 percent --they should do far more. But if, for the purposes of changing our society's standards in a manner that has a realistic chance of success, we focus on the idea of a bare minimum that we can expect everyone to do, there is something to be said for seeing a 1 percent donation of annual income to overcome world poverty as the minimum that one must do to lead a morally decent life. To give that amount requires no moral heroics. To fail to give it shows indifference to the indefinite continuation of dire poverty and avoidable; poverty-related deaths.

"In the light of such calculations of the amount of aid needed, it is indicative of the present pessimistic climate of opinion about aid that the targets set by the world leaders at the Millennium Summit are commonly referred to as "ambitious." Of course, those who are skeptical about achieving them may be right -- certainly the money that has been given or pledged to date falls far short of what is needed. The $5 billion increase in U.S. aid over three years pledged by President George W Bush in March 2002, while better than no increase at all, is nothing like the doubling of foreign aid from rich countries sought by World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn." (Peter Singer, One World, The Ethics of Globalization, 194)

"The philanthropist George Soros called it, with some justification, "a token gesture instead, of something that could successfully impact most of the poor countries." By contrast, all it would take to put the world on track to eliminate global poverty much faster than the Millennium Summit targets would be the modest sum of 1 percent of annual income -- if everyone who can afford it were to give it. That, as much as anything, tells us how far we still are from having an ethic that is based not on national boundaries, but on the idea of one world." (pp. 194-195)

 

2 prins

Two Articles Supplementing Two Principles

By John Taylor; 2007 September 15, 08 Izzat, 164 BE

We are having guests for lunch, so I do not have much time to write today. To keep you busy, here are selected parts of two magazine articles, the first about the Baha'i principle of elimination of prejudice, the second on the promotion of education. The first discusses the apparent paradox that prejudice is both natural, wired in to our brains and it is therefore universal, yet we are expected to eliminate it. This article suggests that prejudice is even beneficial, to a certain degree, in certain situations.

The second article discusses an even more puzzling paradox in religion, the fact that most of the members of a congregation or other faith group are, from a purely human point of view, far more educated and have better credentials than the Founders of their Faith. Yet, from a spiritual point of view, the qualifications are reversed. Strange as that seems, the same thing is true with teachers (A students) who teach students (mostly B students) how to go out work for C students. My only question is, where do we D students fit in? We have to be somewhere!

"Are we born prejudiced?" by Mark Buchanan, New Scientist, 17 March 2007, p. 40

(From issue 2595 of New Scientist magazine, 17 March 2007, pages 40-43)

.... the human tendency to judge others in the crudest terms - race, religion, ethnicity, or any arbitrary marker - has not been consigned to the history books, no matter how much we might wish it were so. Somewhat disturbingly, scientists now suggest that this is not really surprising because such prejudice is part of human nature.

If they are correct, then the roots of group animosity and hatred run very deep indeed, which may be depressing news for those trying to make a difference in ethnic or sectarian hotspots from Darfur and Iraq to inner cities and football terraces. Yet researchers also insist that facing up to our authentic nature is the only way to gain real insight into the forces that drive group conflict, and to learn how we might manage and defuse such urges.

"We shouldn't treat prejudice as pathological just because it offends us," says anthropologist Francisco Gil-White. "If we aim to transcend ethnic strife, we would be wise to understand the role that perfectly normal human psychology plays in producing it."

Psychologists have long known of our proclivity to form "in groups" based on crude markers, ranging from skin colour to clothing styles. Think of inner-city gangs, Italian football supporters, or any "cool" group of stylish teenagers.

"Our minds seem to be organised in a way that makes breaking the human world into distinct groups almost automatic," says psychologist Lawrence Hirschfeld of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Many experiments confirm this, and show that we tend to favour our own group, even when that group is just an arbitrary collection of individuals.

In 1970, for example, a team of researchers led by psychologist Henri Tajfel of the University of Bristol, UK, randomly divided teenage boys from the same school into two groups, and gave every boy the chance to allocate points to two other boys, one from each group. This could be done in different ways - some increasing the combined total for both recipients, and others increasing the difference between the two. The boys consistently chose options of the latter kind, favouring recipients from their own group. Experiments like these are enough to convince Tajfel and others that if you put people into different groups, call them red and blue, north and south, or whatever, a bias towards one's own group will automatically emerge.

This in itself does not make us racist. In fact it may not be such a bad thing: research published last year suggests at least one useful function of our groupist tendencies. Political scientists Ross Hammond of the Brookings Institute in Washington DC and Robert Axelrod of the University of Michigan have discovered, perhaps surprisingly, that it can promote cooperation (Journal of Conflict Resolution, vol 50, p 926). Taking their cue from Tajfel's finding that in-group favouritism emerges with minimal prompting, Hammond and Axelrod decided to try to emulate this in a simple computer model. Imagine a population of individuals, interacting in pairs at random, and engaging in some activity where both would benefit from cooperation, but each was also tempted to cheat - getting more for themselves at the other's expense. With no insight into the likely behaviour of others, individuals in such a world would have no way - besides pure guesswork - to maximise the outcome of their interactions. But add one simple element, colour, and everything changes.

People in Hammond and Axelrod's world come in four colours, assigned randomly at birth. When interacting with others, they might now adopt one of several basic strategies. An individual might act randomly, as before, ignoring colour - which would make sense as the colours say nothing about how an individual is likely to behave. Alternatively, a person might always cooperate or always cheat, regardless of the other's colour. Another option would be to follow a groupist "ethnocentric" strategy - cooperating with anyone of the same colour, but always trying to cheat those of another colour. Finally, agents might be anti-groupist - only cooperating with someone of another colour. The researchers randomly assigned one of these strategies to each agent. They also gave all agents the ability to learn from one another, so that any strategy that did well would tend to be copied and so spread.

What happened then, they discovered, was that agents of each particular colour began to gather together. At first, a few groupist agents of the same colour might find themselves together by chance. Within such a group, cooperative interactions lead to good outcomes, causing others nearby to copy their strategy, swelling the group. In the model, Hammond and Axelrod found that strongly ethnocentric groups of different colours came to fill the world, at the expense of others. Anyone who did not follow the groupist strategy tended to suffer. Even someone ignoring colour - and remember colour initially signified nothing about an agent's behaviour - would also get wiped out. In short, once people begin to act on colour, it comes to matter. What's more, it turns out that the overall level of cooperation is higher in this world where there is in-group favouritism than in a world where agents are colourless. "Ethnocentrism is actually a mechanism for generating cooperation, and one that does not demand much in the way of cognitive ability," says Hammond.

Axelrod and Hammond are well aware that their model is a far cry from the complexities of real-world racism. Still, it is interesting that colour prejudice emerges even though colour has no intrinsic significance. Modern genetics has dispelled the naive notion that racial divisions reflect real biological differences. We know that the genetic variation between individuals within one racial or ethnic group is generally much larger than the average difference between such groups. As in the virtual world, race and ethnicity are arbitrary markers that have acquired meaning. But you won't get far telling Blacks and Hispanics in the racially charged areas of Los Angeles that their differences are just "superficial" cultural constructs.

"Race doesn't matter because it is real," says historian Niall Ferguson of Harvard University, "but because people conceive it to be real."

What's more, this misconception seems to be deeply ingrained in our psyche. For example, Hirschfeld found that by the age of 3 most children already attribute significance to skin colour. In 1993, he showed a group of children a drawing of a chubby black child dressed up as a policeman, followed by photos of several adults, each of whom had two of the three traits: being black, chubby and dressed as a policeman. Asked to decide which person was the boy as a grown-up, most children chose a black adult even though he was either not overweight or minus a police uniform.

"Kids appear to believe," says Hirschfeld, "that race is more important than other physical differences in determining what sort of person one is."

By the age of 3 most kids already attribute significance to skin colour

More recent brain imaging studies suggest that even adults who claim not to be racist register skin colour automatically and unconsciously. In 2000, a team led by social psychologist Allan Hart of Amherst College in Massachusetts found that when white and black subjects viewed faces of the other race both showed increased activity in the amygdala - a brain region involved in grasping the emotional significance of stimuli. Yet consciously, these subjects reported feeling no emotional difference on seeing the different faces. In another study of white subjects, in the same year, neuroscientist Elizabeth Phelps of New York University and colleagues found that those individuals whose amygdala lit up most strongly also scored highest on a standard test for racial prejudice.

Does this mean that our species has evolved to see the world in terms of black and white? Not necessarily. After all, our ancestors would not normally have met people whose skin was a different colour from their own: neighbouring ethnic groups would have looked pretty much alike. So, it's possible that our tendency to classify people by colour might simply be a modern vice, learned early and reinforced throughout our lives - even, paradoxically, by anti-racist messages. That seems unlikely, however, when you consider our attitudes to ethnicity. In fieldwork among Torguud Mongols and Kazakhs, neighbouring ethic groups living in central Asia, Gil-White investigated ideas of ethnic identity to find out whether people link it more with nurture (a child being brought up within a group) or nature (the ethnicity of biological parents). The majority of both groups saw ethnicity as a hidden but powerful biological factor, unaffected by someone being adopted into another group.

"They perceive the underlying nature as some kind of substance that lies inside and causes the members of an ethnic group to behave the way they do," he says. Like race, ethnicity has no biological significance, yet this is exactly how we perceive it.

Many researchers now believe that we have evolved a tendency to divide the world along ethnic lines. For example, anthropologist Rob Boyd from the University of California, Los Angeles, argues that our ancestors, given the rich social context of human life, would have needed skills for perceiving the important groups to which individuals belonged. Being attuned to ethnic differences would have allowed individuals to identify others who shared the same social norms - people with whom it would have been easiest to interact because of shared expectations. It would have paid to attend to cultural differences such as styles of clothing, scarification or manner of greeting, that marked one group out from another. In the modern world, colour is simply mistaken as one such marker.

That might explain why we tend to divide the world into groups and why we use ethnic differences and skin colour as markers to help us do this. It even gives a rationale for in-group favouritism. But what about out-group animosity? Is prejudice part of the whole evolved package? Gil-white believes it is. He argues that within any group of people sharing social norms, anyone who violates those will attract moral opprobrium - it is considered "bad" to flout the rules and benefit at the expense of the group. This response is then easily transferred to people from other ethnic groups.

"We're tempted to treat others, who are conforming to their local norms, as violating our own local norms, and we take offence accordingly," says Gil-White.

As a result we may be unconsciously inclined to see people from other ethnic groups not simply as different, but as cheats, morally corrupt, bad people.

Natural but not nice

"I think all this work refutes those naive enough to believe that if it weren't for bad socialising, we would all be nice tolerant people who accept cultural and ethnic differences easily,"

says Daniel Chirot, professor of international studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. That may sound disturbing, but being biologically primed for racism does not make it inevitable. For a start, what is natural and biological needn't be considered moral or legal. "The sexual attraction that a grown man feels for a 15-year-old female is perfectly natural," Gil-White points out. But most societies forbid such relations, and all but a very few men can control their urges.

Being biologically primed for racism does not make it inevitable

Besides, if ethnocentrism is an evolved adaptation to facilitate smooth social interactions, it is a rather crude one. A far better way to decide who can be trusted and who cannot is to assess an individual's character and personality rather than to rely on meaningless markers. In today's world, that is what most of us do, most of the time. It is only when it becomes difficult to judge individuals that people may instinctively revert to the more primitive mechanism. Hammond and Axelrod argue that this is most likely to happen under harsh social or economic conditions, which may explain why ethnic divisions seem to be exaggerated when societies break down, as a consequence of war, for example.

"To me this makes perfect sense," says Chirot. "Especially in times of crisis we tend to fall back on those with whom we are most familiar, who are most like us."

Knowing all this, it may be possible to find ways to curb our unacceptable tendencies. Indeed, experiments show how little it can take to begin breaking down prejudice. Psychologist Susan Fiske from Princeton University and colleagues got students to view photos of individuals from a range of social groups, while using functional MRI to monitor activity in their medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a brain region known to light up in response to socially significant stimuli. The researchers were shocked to discover that photos of people belonging to "extreme" out-groups, such as drug addicts, stimulated no activity in this region at all, suggesting that the viewers considered them to be less than human. "It is just what you see with homeless people or beggars in the street," says Fiske, "people treat them like piles of garbage."

In new experiments, however, she was able to reverse this response. After replicating the earlier results, the researchers asked simple, personal questions about the people in the pictures, such as, "What kind of vegetable do you think this beggar would like?" Just one such question was enough to significantly raise activity in the mPFC. "The question has the effect of making the person back into a person," says Fiske, "and the prejudiced response is much weaker."

It would appear then that we have a strong tendency to see others as individuals, which can begin to erode our groupist instincts with very little prompting. Perhaps this is why, as Chirot points out, ethnocentrism does not always lead to violence. It might also explain why in every case of mass ethnic violence it has taken massive propaganda on the part of specific political figures or parties to stir passions to levels where violence breaks out.

If the seeds of racism are in our nature, so too are the seeds of tolerance and empathy. By better understanding what sorts of situations and environments are conducive to both, we may be able to promote our better nature.

Do grades really matter?; A growing body of evidence suggests grades don't predict success -- C+ students are the ones who end up running the world,

(Sarah Scott, Macleans, Aug 30, 2007)

<http://www.macleans.ca/education/postsecondary/article.jsp?content=20070910_109139_109139>

Ancaster billionaire Bob Young is glad to have been a C student. "Good students figure out how the system works so they can excel within the system," he says. "As for those of us who didn't figure out how the system works, we became bank robbers or entrepreneurs. That's what makes a lot of us poor students into successful people. Typically, our success does not come from working within the system. It comes from reinventing the system."

So there's hope for the C+ student in high school. "The truth is that many indifferent students do extremely well in business because the set of skills required to be a good student does not match the set of skills to be a success in the world," says Michael Thompson, a University of Chicago-trained psychologist and co-author of the bestseller, Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys. He likes to quote the old line: "School is a place where former A students teach mostly B students to work for C students." It may be an overgeneralization, but it has "more truth than educators are comfortable with," he says.

As a psychologist, Michael Thompson spends a lot of time talking to anxious parents in Canada and the U.S. about their children's performance in high school. He keeps telling them that a C+ does not mean the kid is headed for a dismal future. High school grades, after all, measure one thing -- whether the teacher thinks the student has mastered the curriculum. But some kids, especially boys, are just not interested in delivering what the teacher wants. Boys, he says, often think school is "stupid, boring and inefficient," says Thompson. "They're just waiting for it to be over." Girls, on the other hand, do better in school, even though they're bored too, because they want to impress the teacher. Boys, he says, are more active, impulsive and impatient. "They support each others' dislike for school."

Consider what psychologists have learned about motivation or drive. Successful people, Harvard psychologist David McClelland found back in the 1960s, are driven, to a greater or lesser extent, by three needs: one is individual achievement -- to start a business or make a million dollars or win a Nobel Prize, for example. The second is relationships, and the third is power. The significance of each depends on the personality you were born with and the influence of parents. But memorizing the "Six Reasons for World War I" in history class is not likely to tap into the powerful urge to make millions or wield power or lead people. That curriculum might not even appeal to future professors. So a student might be bored and unmotivated in class, but then, once he discovers something that fires him up, work so hard that he becomes a resounding success.

Drive is crucial. Without it, even the most brilliant kids will fall short of expectations. Rena Subotnik noticed this when she checked up on 210 graduates of Hunter College Elementary School, a Manhattan school for intellectually gifted children. These kids had a mean IQ of 157 -- higher than over 99 per cent of people. They came from economically advantaged families. If raw intelligence predicts career success, they would surely have it. But when Subotnik checked how the kids turned out, she found that in middle age they had become happy, prosperous, community-minded citizens. But they hadn't aspired to achieve great things. "It was really eye-opening for me," said Subotnik, director of the Center for Psychology in the Schools and Education at the American Psychological Association. "If we do want greatness, IQ is clearly not sufficient." Why they fell short of expectations is not clear, but Subotnik, a Hunter graduate herself, has a theory. "They weren't hungry. They didn't have the drive to prove themselves, which is so necessary to be a force of nature."

These sorts of people share traits that are rarely appreciated in the classroom, according to U.S. research. They can be stubborn. They forget details, challenge the teacher, question the rules. They can be disorganized and impulsive. Yet the qualities that drive teachers crazy catapult them to fantastic heights.

Some schools are getting it. In Toronto, for instance, Greenwood College School was launched in 2002 with a $10-million donation from Richard Wernham, a former lawyer and money manager. Wernham, the son of educators, says he started the private school because he noticed, in his professional and business career, that the top performers were not necessarily A students in high school. They were often people who had struggled. Success, Wernham thought, was driven by personal qualities like resilience, determination, initiative, the ability to work in a team. Greenwood sets the tone from the start when Grade 7 and 8 students head out for a two-week camping trip. Canoeing teaches perseverance, resilience, interdependence and integrity, says David Thompson, the principal. "It's an incredible leveller. It doesn't matter if an A student is in the bow, and a C+ student is in the stern. Marks are irrelevant. It's how you are."

Meanwhile, Ontario's Education Ministry is trying to instill "character development initiative" in all provincial schools. Teachers will be encouraged to show kids how to read other people's feelings from non-verbal clues, says Avis Glaze, Ontario's chief student achievement officer. Kids might not get a grade for empathy, but it will help them in later life, she says. "In my career as a teacher, I always said: 'Do not write kids off because their marks are not high. They will be stars in the workplace. Why? Because they have the qualities that will assist them.' "

 

Great Ethering

Istiqlal Roundup

By John Taylor; 2007 September 14, 07 Izzat, 164 BE

Abdu'l-Baha advised somebody or other in a book I read long, long ago to take a tablespoon full of honey every day. Through the years I have sporadically taken that advice; at worst it reduces the guilt and remorse when I raid the kitchen and dip my spoon into the honey pot, rather than, say, the cookie jar. Then this morning I came across evidence that this advice may not come from as far out in left field as I had thought. In an article called "Honey is the bee's knees for staying young" New Scientist reports that a study found that supplementing the diets of rats with honey found positive benefits, including increased curiosity, more lively behavior and longer lives. The reason?

"`Diets sweetened with honey may be beneficial in decreasing anxiety and improving memory during ageing,' says Starkey, whose work was funded by Fonterra, a dairy company interested in sweetening yoghurt with honey. She suggests the findings may be due to the antioxidant properties of honey, which have previously been demonstrated in humans." (New Scientist, 14 September 2007; <http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19526216.100?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19526216.100>)

Here is an interesting site devoted to Baha'i humor. Some of it is clumsily adapted from other humor, but some of it, especially the comics, look very professional and hit the nail on the head.

<bahaijokes.blogspot.com/>

Last Wednesday the family attended the September "meet the creature" encounter at the kids' school. I had looked forward to this parent teacher meeting more than any before because I wanted to share with the teachers John Mighton's books, as well as the JUMP (Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigy) lesson plans that I had bought. I talked to four teachers and not one had heard of either JUMP or Mighton, but they seemed pleased and interested to hear about this guy's idea that we can save the environment by increasing the efficiency of education and enabling children to make more rational decisions than the older generation has made. If you want to hear Mighton's story from his own mouth, go to:

http://www.booklounge.ca/multimedia/mightonjohn/index.html

This site, "Booklounge.ca for people who love books," features interviews with several other authors. Their blurb for this video is: "Don't miss John Mighton's revolutionary call for a new understanding of how people learn as he talks about his important book, The End of Ignorance."

Last night I attended our first Philosopher's Cafe meeting for this season. Now that I have both kids with me I was worried that I would be interrupted often, but they had a great time on their own in the Wainfleet library while our adult conversation went on in the back room.

We discussed the tragedy of the commons, the idea that the earth, oceans and air are possessions of all, and therefore become the possessions of nobody. Without supervision, they are exploited by the first person who can exploit them, destroying the resource for latecomers, not to mention the rest of us who have to breath the air, drink the water and walk on the land. I was surprised at how committed to the environment some of these people are; one refused a gift of a twenty thousand dollar car because its engine was too big. At the end of the meeting there was a feeling that we had not plumbed the depths, so we agreed to repeat the topic next month.

It was annoying much of the time to have to listen to long speeches about what -- it seemed to me -- missed the point completely, but it was also good to have my say about things that I normally do not have the chance to talk about. Having read so much lately about how the media mavens flatter "the people" while at the same time muzzling us, it is good to participate in a movement designed to give the average joe a chance to mix and match thoughts actively, if not skillfully. In spite of my overpowering sense of frustration most of the time, I felt at the end an emergent feeling of commonality forged from all the fervent jawboning.

Tomaso and I watched together John Huston and Dino De Laurentiis's epic 1967 film, "The Bible" over the past two days. It includes the creation story, Cain and Abel, the story of Noah and the Ark, the Tower of Babel, and a surprisingly effective portrayal of Abraham by a young George C. Scott. The climax of the film is the almost-sacrifice of Isaac. Again, surprisingly effective, since it shows how the suggestion that God would have Him sacrifice His only begotten son was not only traumatic on a personal level, but it was a religious test as well. The rival pagan religions of the time demanded the same thing, fathers had to offer their firstborn sons as blood sacrifices.

Thomas's favorite story was the ark. He was full of questions about the animals, both trivial and too hard to begin to answer. An eight year old is the perfect companion for such a story, because he jogs perspectives that you would never think on your own.

But for me most edifying was the story of Adam, Eve, and the serpent. I had just viewed a documentary, "Dangerous Knowledge," by David Malone, describing how the greatest discoveries of mathematics, logic and physics in the 19th and 20th Centuries were all basically repetitions of the lesson of this myth: do not try to take a bite out of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Such knowledge is forbidden. Once you think you know what is good and evil, you fall, and fall fast, into fanaticism and hypocrisy. The promo for Malone's film says that he,

"looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Godel and Alan Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide. The film also talks to the latest in the line of thinkers who have continued to pursue the question of whether there are things that mathematics and the human mind cannot know. They include Greg Chaitin, mathematician at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center, New York, and Roger Penrose. Dangerous Knowledge tackles some of the profound questions about the true nature of reality that mathematical thinkers are still trying to answer today."

If you want to see the BBC documentary for yourself, go to:

<http://bestdocumentaries.blogspot.com/2007/09/dangerous-knowledge-full-documentary.html>

The comments about the film on this blog are pretty skeptical about the thesis of the film that these geniuses were driven insane by their discovery that knowledge is self-limiting. But for me that is not the point, the point is that hubris, arrogance, the belief that we have certain knowledge, is the mark of corrupted science, as it is the mark of corrupted religion, as the story of Adam and Eve's eating of the apple proves. The filmmaker Malone also wrote an article in New Scientist which starts off:

"You might think that no one could argue with the value of certainty. It has the air of one of those indisputably good things, like world peace or motherhood. But I would argue that the pursuit of certainty has become a dangerous addiction. Like alcohol, it makes us feel safe, but it is also making us stupid and belligerent. Few notions have become as deeply embedded in our culture as the belief that there is a perfect certainty to be had -and the desire to have it. It has survived virtually intact the transition from religion to rationalism as the touchstone of our society. Even as science squeezed out belief in God and scriptural certainties, a perfect law-governed creation remained; it was just under new management. Science has become, in the minds of many, the new guarantor that there is certainty and that we can attain it." ("Are we still addicted to certainty?" New Scientist, 04 August 2007)

Let me repeat: the certainty that we know what is good and bad for us is false faith; like booze, it lowers our intelligence and makes us aggressive. We can maintain our sobriety and our innocence and live in the garden of Eden if only we refuse to accept the forbidden fruit, the false belief that we know what is good or bad for us while God does not. This belief is insidious, it is a temptation almost impossible to resist. But we have a few examples of minds who succeeded. This, I think, is what Baha'u'llah was talking about when He spoke of the "power of the Great Ether." The ether is the vacuum that enters in when the soul is humble enough to recognize that it does not know. Socrates, Jesus, Abdu'l-Baha, Einstein, they all had it, and demonstrated how to get it. We had better take that ether in too, and not go mad, if we hope to survive as a race.

Maybe I should have included Mo Tzu as an initiate of the great ether. In the following exchange he demonstrates an essential quality of a great teacher, the ability to recognize a proper test, the right criterion, and the humility to know when an indicator does not suffice.

"The Lord of Lu consulted Mo Tzu, saying: "Now I have two sons. One likes learning and the other likes dividing property for people. Which one should be crowned Prince?"

"Mo Tzu said: We cannot tell. It may be that they behave so just for the praise and reward of it. The fisherman's bait is not intended to feed the fish. Trapping a mouse with worms is not for the love of the mouse. I wish your Lordship would observe both their intention and their consequences." (The Ethical and Political Works of Mo Tzu, tr: Yi-Pao Mei, Arthur Probsthain, London, 1929, #14, at: http://www.humanistictexts.org/motzu.htm)

All this explains why I think John Mighton's teaching method hits on something revolutionary, an essential part of what comes from the great ether. As it is, teachers make up tests for frivolous motives and only encourage failure. Tests must test the right things, what leads to expertise and discovery. But they do not. They weed out those who happen to be primed at that time for an irrelevant skill. Tests must be part of the learning process, and their aim to build confidence, especially at first. Otherwise the myth of ability, the belief that only a few can learn what has to be learned, will obscure what is needed in order to progress. A learner must not take the forbidden fruit, she must think of what is not known, and summon up courage to find that out. As Mighton says,

"... the debate about intelligence misses the point. The results of JUMP suggest that we can raise the level of even the weakest students sufficiently to enable them to appreciate and master genuine mathematics. At this level, sheer intelligence is almost secondary. In the sciences, factors such as passion, confidence, creativity, diligence, luck, and artistic flair are as important as the speed and sharpness of one's mind. Einstein was not a great mathematician technically, but he had a deep sense of beauty and a willingness to question conventional wisdom." (John Mighton, The Myth of Ability, p. 22)

 

Boo

Terrifying Words

By John Taylor; 2007 September 13, 06 Izzat, 164 BE

A couple of servers somewhere on the Net send me a new word and a new quote every day. Today's two examples fit together and supplement yesterday's discussion of Al Gore's book, and Lo Tzu's idea that fatalism, excuses rather than action, is the ultimate evil. So, here they are. First the vocabulary supplement:

roué \roo-AY\, noun: A man devoted to a life of sensual pleasure; a debauchee; a rake. From the French, rouer, "to break upon the wheel" (from the feeling that a roué deserves such a punishment), ultimately from Latin rota, "wheel."

And the quote of the day:

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, `I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" (Ronald Reagan)

The quote from Ronald Reagan is truer than he ever realized himself. The wealthy elites to whom he and his ideological successors, Bush I and Bush II, came to offer their terrifying aid are just what the word for the day describes: roués. No doubt about it. Their life of sensual pleasure is all the more culpable because it is corporate; it feeds on corruption, on unrestrained growth that turns wealth and power into cancers. Now they are getting what they asked for, to be broken on the wheel. And the rest of the world is on the wheel with them. If you doubt, check out this audio recording of a talk that Stephen Lewis gave at McMaster University,

 http://www.tvo.org/TVOsites/WebObjects/TvoMicrosite.woa?bigideas

 According to the blurb, "Lewis refocuses his progressive energy (from AIDS in Africa to) ... the cause of climate change." He describes how he attended the first ever conference on climate change in the mid-Reagan era, the 1980's, and how even then the Third World countries were saying, "If you think we are going to sacrifice our growth when the Western leaders are giving up nothing, you are crazy." You hear that, and you think "a plague on both your houses!" A leader should not be considered a leader if his only qualification is that he is the biggest pig with its face buried deepest in the feeding trough.

 A leader is someone with a solution. A leader is the reverse of a fatalist; it is someone willing to act, to persist, to sacrifice the lesser for what matters most. And what does God value most? Just that, sacrifice. He, our beautiful Beloved, loves this more than anything else, including his own construction of the universe, as Baha'u'llah points out:

 "By My beauty! To tinge thy hair with thy blood is greater in My sight than the creation of the universe and the light of both worlds. Strive then to attain this, O servant!" (AHW 47)

 Let me put it in milder terms. Positively: God would be vaguely pleased if the hog would draw its head back and give the piglets a chance at the feed trough. Negatively: God might rap the knuckles of a roué caught with his hands in the cookie jar.

 As Lewis points out, if at the time of that first climate control conference governments had adopted the modest goal proposed: just not increasing their carbon footprint, the climate crisis would never have grown into the hydra it is today. Today our most starry-eyed, idealistic goals for reducing emissions do not dare aim at the low levels they were at back in the 1980's. Instead, the American president was in fatalistic denial, negating his own power by openly declaring that government initiatives are the problem rather than the solution, while at the same time he was yelling "Sooowieeee!" to the elites who had put him where he was. In the perspective of history, his words were terrifying, just not for the reasons he imagined.

 

Sovereignty III

Comments about "Assault on Reason," Fatalism

By John Taylor; 2007 September 12, 05 Izzat, 164 BE

I have a long line of audio books to listen to during my daily exercise session, but as soon as Al Gore's "Assault on Reason" came into my hot little hands I bumped it to first in line. I am now on the third chapter. There is a book excerpt from the book, courtesy of Time Magazine, at:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051707R.shtml

And the Wikipedia offers its usual objective, reliable review of the book at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Assault_on_Reason

Although I normally would not touch a US politician with a ten-foot pole, anybody who could produce the world-view exploding "An Inconvenient Truth" has to be of prime interest. In "The Assault on Reason" Gore offers the not unexpected criticisms of the present US Presidential administration, but goes beyond that to point to a stomach-churning decline in the tone of debate in the public forum. Instead of journalists and commentators, we now have propagandists dressed up as reporters. Instead of voters, we have zombies. Instead of leaders serving the public interest, we have corporate stooges. The mental meltdown parallels the outward, physical changes going on in the world's climate.

Gore points out that television broadcasting has an astonishingly strong grip on the minds and imaginations of Americans, who spend virtually all of their discretionary time in front of the boob tube. This explains some puzzling things about what passes for political discussion south of the border, for example, why there was such endless talk of the Iraq invasion's casus belli, its supposed nuclear weapons program. To anybody familiar with the facts, it is strange that anybody could go on and on endlessly about that spurious lie. "That was a lie, wasn't it? Bush lied about Saddam Hussein being involved with Qaida, didn't he?" Evidently a strong majority of Americans believed and still believe that Saddam was cooperating with his sworn enemies in stockpiling nuclear weapons and handing them out like candy to terrorist groups everywhere.

Gore explains why this could be very graphically. Reason has been assaulted by systematic mesmerizing. He tells of how as a kid he learned how to hypnotize a chicken. You hold its head and move your finger around so its eyes follow the finger. This forced attention direction controls what neuroscientists are calling the "orientation response." Television grabs and manipulates this response on a second by second basis, which is what makes it so addictive to the human brain. Anyway, a few seconds of finger waving renders the chicken immobile. You can use it as a paper weight, a doorstop, but not, he warns, as a football. If it flies through the air some sort of reflex kicks in, and it regains full consciousness.

I have been a vegetarian too long, I think. I was a little shocked that, sensitive as Gore otherwise is, he could talk about using a living bird as a football. Imagine if he had said the same thing about a kitten! On the other hand, we are not inured to cruelty to what my 13 year old daughter Silvie calls "cutes" by having institutions like "Kentucky Fried Puppy" or "Southern Fried Bunny." But I guess, cruel as it is for a young boy to kick poultry around, it is far crueler to kick around a stultified nation of three hundred million human souls. It is beyond shocking that, as Gore points out, systematic torture of human prisoners is perpetrated by this soon-to-be Ancien Regime, both openly and in secret. But I cannot help but think that the crisis of compassion runs far deeper than Gore realizes. The fact that he can openly talk about kicking chickens demonstrates that.

Generally speaking, the rot that this book declaims eats far deeper than its author realizes, in the same way that the climate crisis has gone further than he, optimist that he is, dares contemplate. Even -- dare I say it? -- Gore's faith in reason is not entirely iron-clad. Reason has to be combined with several other pillars of humanity, including faith, tradition, inspiration and reverence for life, which now translates as sustainability.

I cannot help but wonder what will come after, what the alternatives are that progressives like him are offering. In my opinion many of his fundamental presuppositions are bankrupt, if not patently fallacious; for example like most non-Americans I do not share his cherished belief that the American political system with its checks and balances is all but divinely revealed. The strict separation of church and state that he treasures (admittedly for good reason in the present climate) is not one that Canadians, or Baha'is for that matter, share. In the long run we are best served if science, religion and government cooperate closely and affectionately. Drawing lines in the sand does not help anything.

In preparing for this mid-book book review, I looked over some of this book's discussion and commentary on Amazon.com. This was, if anything, more distressing than the contents of the book itself. Liberal and conservative in the States have become so fractious and added in so much hatred and denial of each others' point of view that instead of acting like two legs to help their country walk forward, the legs are trying to walk in entirely different directions. Unless something happens to reconcile them, I see imminent collapse for the world's unilateral superpower.

I have read about some frightening possible scenarios for their military forces in Iraq, presently shored up defending to the death the entrenched interests of well-connected corporations like Haliburton. If tensions with Iran flare into open war, their fleet could find itself trapped in the Persian Gulf. Combined with imminent bankruptcy, this could rapidly become a disaster that would make ancient Athen's failed adventurism in Sicily seem minor in comparison.

The book that I set aside for a while to listen to Gore's Assault is a fascinating biography of Abraham Lincoln and his "Cabinet of Rivals." Until I read this book, I had no idea what a genius Abraham Lincoln was. He had as high an IQ as anybody, but so do a lot of complete losers. What he had was very rare, an extremely high EQ and SQ, that is, emotional and social intelligence. He had the unheard of ability to draw together enemies and get them to work together, as he did with his cabinet.

Every man-jack of them had hated Lincoln himself, and each others' guts even worse; but Lincoln somehow persuaded them of a duty to do the impossible, to forget their pettiness and establish a dynamic tension, a unity in diversity that would do a Baha'i consultative body proud. That is the kind of leader we need now, even more than back then (great as was the need then)! That kind of leadership is what women, given half a chance, excel at, and what the present political machinery in the US does more than anywhere else to exclude. Mark my words, once women get a chance to show what they can do given real power, working together synergistically, it will be very hard for a long time for any man to get a job in politics.

Anyway, the biography drew my attention Lincoln's first inaugural address, where the just-elected American president set out a prolonged argument against secession, already well underway as he spoke. This was way back when leaders wrote their own speeches, when speeches therefore meant something beyond spin doctoring chickens into footballs.

In this statement Lincoln made what I think is an essential point. He argued that the reason the founding fathers got together to form a union was to improve the situation, not make it worse. A union, like the Sabbath, is for man, not man for it. The slave states, by breaking up this union, were not improving things. They were not addressing the causes of their grievance. It would still be there when the divorce had gone its course, either way. They were therefore destroying a greater good in order to attain a lesser. A nation union, like a marriage, does not contemplate an end to itself by definition. Love is love, it never dies, it is eternal even in the face of the assault of this ephemeral world. Lincoln said,

"I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever -- it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself."

But this reasoning that Lincoln held so basic, the idea that those founding fathers formed the union for improvement, has to apply to further unions beyond that, to the union of nations into a world entity. If holding to exclusive national sovereignty harms those unions, and if their unification offers the greater benefit of solving problems that national unity cannot, a fundamental duty follows, to modify present sovereignty into something more mature, something compatible with and subordinate to a higher benefit, a more universal unity of all men and women. Everything else is just excuses. Mo Tzu understood and warned against the fatalism that substitutes whining for responsible initiative,

"If the people of the world really desire to have the world rich and do not want to have it poor, desire to have it orderly and dislike to have it in confusion, the doctrine of fatalism must be rejected. It is a great calamity to the world."

In saying this, Mo Tzu showed that he had his finger on the pulse of every political quandary that we are in right now; fatalism, apathy, TV-induced stultification, moral stagnation, failure of will to act on reality behind illusion. I love the Confucian thinkers because they understood that tradition, every bit as much as reason, is a fundamental pillar of order and right. I will close with the great Chinese philosopher's argument leading up to what he said above against the conscious rendering of the human brain into a doorstop or paperweight.

Mo Tzu said: At present, in governing the states the rulers all desire to have their countries wealthy, their population large, and their administration orderly. But instead of wealth they obtain poverty, instead of an increase in population they obtain a decrease, instead of order they obtain chaos. That is, they lose what they like but obtain what they dislike. What is the reason for this? It is due to the large number of fatalists among the people.
The fatalists say: "When fate decrees that a man shall be wealthy he will be wealthy; when it decrees poverty, he will be poor; when it decrees a large population, it will be large; and when it decrees a small population this will be small; if order is decreed, there will be order; if chaos, there will be chaos. If fate decrees old age, there will be old age; if untimely death, there will be untimely death. Even if a man sets himself against his fate, what is the use?"
This doctrine is promoted to the rulers at the top and keeps the people below from their work. Hence fatalists are not men who care for humanity. And their doctrines must be clearly examined.
Now let us look at some of the writings of the early kings. The writings of the early kings that were issued to the whole country and distributed among the people were the laws. Did any of the laws of the early kings ever say: "Blessing cannot be invoked and disaster cannot be avoided; reverence will not do any good and cruelty will not do any harm"? The standards according to which lawsuits were tried and punishments were meted out were the codes of punishment. Did any of the codes of punishment of the early kings say: "Blessing cannot be invoked and disaster cannot he avoided; reverence will not do any good and cruelty will not do any harm"? . . .
Mo Tzu said: I have not enumerated the good books of the empire completely. As they cannot be exhaustively enumerated, I limit myself to the most prominent ones . . . And try as we may, we cannot find any belief in the doctrine of fatalism. Should it not then be abandoned?
Now how do we know fatalism is the way of the wicked? In the past, wretched people indulged in drinking and eating and were lazy in their work. Thereupon their food and clothing became insufficient, and the danger of hunger and cold was approaching. They did not acknowledge: "I was stupid and insolent and was not diligent at work." But they would say: "It is but my lot to be poor."
In the past, wicked rulers did not control the sensuality of their ears and eyes and the passions of their mind. They did not follow their predecessors and so they lost their country and ruined their state. They did not know that they should confess: "I am stupid and insolent and was not diligent in attending to government." But they would say: "It is but my fate to lose it."
If the doctrine of the fatalist were put to practice, top leaders would not attend to government and subordinates would not attend to work. If superiors do not attend to government, jurisdiction and administration will be in chaos. If the subordinates do not attend to work, wealth will not be sufficient... The eccentric belief in this doctrine is responsible for pernicious ideas and is the way of the wicked. (The Ethical and Political Works of Mo Tzu, tr: Yi-Pao Mei, Arthur Probsthain, London, 1929, at: http://www.humanistictexts.org/motzu.htm)
 

Mona

Mona in My Morning, Research Inquiry, Agriculture

By John Taylor; 2007 September 09, 1 Izzat, 164 BE

We slept in this Sunday morning. Marie was woken by her ride and rushed to get ready and run off to her choir practice with Cheryl. I rushed Tommy downstairs to Grandpa's place, and escorted Silvie to her choir performance at St. Paul's Anglican church down the street. I got back home and realized I had forgotten to read the writings and pray. Being lazy, I let Youtube do the reading and praying for me. I fed it the keywords "Baha'i" and "Writings" and got "A wonderful mingling of inspirational song and profound excerpts from the Baha'i Writings," a song by singer and guitarist Joe Crone at this URL:

<http://youtube.com/watch?v=vOj4P_SR3eE>

Among the writings highlighted in this song featuring a medley of selections from the Writings is a "Great Being" statement from the Lawh-i-Maqsud,

"The Great Being saith: The Tongue of Wisdom proclaimeth: He that hath Me not is bereft of all things. Turn ye away from all that is on earth and seek none else but Me. I am the Sun of Wisdom and the Ocean of Knowledge. I cheer the faint and revive the dead. I am the guiding Light that illumineth the way. I am the royal Falcon on the arm of the Almighty. I unfold the drooping wings of every broken bird and start it on its flight." (Baha'u'llah, Tablets, 169)

For me the highlight of the music video (made up by Penny Filias of London, Ontario) comes when, at an emotional peak, it shows two shots that I think are of Mona, the Martyr of Shiraz, arms outspread in joyous praise of God. She is dancing in the first picture, in the ocean waves -- relating back to the quote at the start about immersing thyself in the ocean of my words, while he sings the lyrics:

"You give meaning to my life. I offer it to you a sacrifice.

And I love you more than I can say, I want to be with you..."

The tears flow like wine, I tell you. I have heard with my own ears the testimony of a sister of Zarrin about her life. Zarrin was one of the seven young girls who taught Baha'i classes in Shiraz who were killed together with Mona. In Zarrin's case, she knew from the earliest age that she had been chosen for martyrdom, and she prepared for it diligently during her entire education. No doctor ever studied harder in medical school to become a healer as she did to become a martyr. She spent all her spare time memorizing tablets, studying the Writings and the Qu'ran, knowing that soon her time would come. Mona too must have known what was coming, and seeing her so happy here in her anticipation, as if she had sent these photos of herself to her divine fiancee ... I think I can see how martyrdom is like giving the Huqquq: not acceptable to God unless it is given from a heart overflowing with joy, the feeling that makes you feel cheated at only being permitted to give 19 percent of equity. The feeling you get from this song. For God's sake, Mona and Zarrin gave so much more than 19%, then why can't I?

Time for my morning prayer, Youtube style. I punch in "Baha'i" and "prayer" and get, "Prayer for mankind. The Celtic harp and angelic voice of Caroline Mackay make this Baha'i prayer perfect for interfaith devotionals, World Religion Day, etc..." at:

<http://youtube.com/watch?v=Xv2WmaD8l28>

The prayer that this singer has put to music was revealed at the end of a talk on the unity of God that Abdu'l-Baha gave at Unity Church, in Montclair, New Jersey, on 12 May, 1912. A superficial web search reveals that there is still a Unity Church in Montclair, but they are in a new building and seem to be a different group that came there in the 1930's. Whether the original building in which the Master spoke is still standing is not clear. Anyway, here is the complete prayer, not all of which is included in the song,

"O Thou kind Lord! O Thou Who art generous and merciful! We are the servants of Thy threshold and are gathered beneath the sheltering shadow of Thy divine unity. The sun of Thy mercy is shining upon all, and the clouds of Thy bounty shower upon all. Thy gifts encompass all, Thy loving providence sustains all, Thy protection overshadows all, and the glances of Thy favor are cast upon all. O Lord! Grant Thine infinite bestowals, and let the light of Thy guidance shine. Illumine the eyes, gladden the hearts with abiding joy. Confer a new spirit upon all people and bestow upon them eternal life. Unlock the gates of true understanding and let the light of faith shine resplendent. Gather all people beneath the shadow of Thy bounty and cause them to unite in harmony, so that they may become as the rays of one sun, as the waves of one ocean, and as the fruit of one tree. May they drink from the same fountain. May they be refreshed by the same breeze. May they receive illumination from the same source of light. Thou art the Giver, the Merciful, the Omnipotent." (Promulgation, 115)

Here I find that -- doh! -- I have spent my whole writing day on the morning reading and prayer. But still, how wise it was of Baha'u'llah to require us not just to hold His word sacred, but to pick up the books and use them every morning and every morning. And for the lazy lumps, we now have them on Youtube. Mo Tzu said something wise about doing enough reading and listening to understand the situation.

"Mo Tzu brought numerous books in his wagon drawers on his southern journey as an envoy to Wei. Hsien T'angtse saw them and was surprised. He inquired: "Sir, you have instructed Kung Shang Kuo just to consider the right and wrong of any case, and do no more. Now you, sir, bring very many books along. What can be the use for them?"

"Mo Tzu said: In the past, Duke Tan of Chou read one hundred pages every morning and received seventy scholars every evening. Therefore his achievements as minister to the emperor have lasted till this day. I have no superior above me to serve, nor any farm below to attend to. How dare I neglect these books?

"I have heard that different ways may lead to the same end but they are not presented without deviations from one another. And the common people do not know how to place proper importance in what they hear. Hence the large number of books. When one has reviewed the ideas and has thought deeply on them, then he understands the essentials which lead to the same end. Then he no longer needs to be instructed by books. Why should you be so surprised? (The Ethical and Political Works of Mo Tzu, tr: Yi-Pao Mei, Arthur Probsthain, London, 1929, at: http://www.humanistictexts.org/motzu.htm)

Word got out that the readers of the Badi list are venerable scholars like Duke Tan, so here is a research request for you from Jim:

"I was wondering if you could ask your readers if they know of any downloadable pamphlets that could be modified for local use.  I did have an outstanding one but I lost it.  I believe it was from Montreal and advertised the Core Activities, it was really neat.  It would be great to have a repository where this type of material could be shared."

All I have found myself is the rapidly ageing pamphlet, "The Baha'is." Oh yes, and this site listing introductory Baha'i material of all sorts set up by Bill Huitt of Valdosta State University in Georgia:

<http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/religion/bahai.html>

None of this seems exactly what Jim is looking for, something rapidly adaptable for local use. I remember back in the late 1980's there was a group in Dundas who went to great effort to make up a unique pamphlet, a sort of folder with several leaflets inside. What happened to that initiative I do not know. Certainly it would not take much knowledge of perl or xml to devise an interactive Web application that would automatically adapt general material to local use by filling in an online questionnaire. Has anybody done it?

Agriculture

As members of the "farmer comes first" Faith, we all have to have an ongoing interest in the fortunes of agriculture. Macleans has had several interesting articles on this lately. One is "The Garden of Eating; McGill leading the way in urban food production," (by Joey Coleman, Macleans.ca, Jul 23, 2007), which describes an initiative to grow food on roofs and donate the veggies to the Meals on Wheels program, food for seniors. You can read the full article on the web at:

<http://www.macleans.ca/education/postsecondary/article.jsp?content=20070723_141420_9172>

My father has meals on wheels sent to him three or four times a week, and believe me, they could use fresh veggies. The Dunnville meals come from the local hospital cafeteria, whose food, while acceptable to some, is not exactly what I would call health food

I conclude with most of the text of an article about Cuba. Whatever you may think of its politics, the agriculture of Cuba is exemplary. Now that "local is the new organic," suddenly the isolated agriculture of Cuba is what the rest of the Americas should have become, if we had not been afflicted by virulent corruption. The following Macleans article describes how suddenly the Cuban system of eating locally-produced produce is being understood to be the healthiest possible, with the smallest carbon footprint of anywhere else on the continent. Not only that but, as you will see, farmers make more than doctors and lawyers. If there is any justice in the world, that alone proves that some of it is alive and living in Cuba!

Why don't we have gardens like this?  (Macleans, September 03, 2007, p. 60)

Canadians are just starting to think about eating locally. Cuba's been doing it for years.

CANADIANS SPEND up to 12 calories of non-renewable energy to produce one calorie of food on our plate. In Cuba, the ratio is reversed.

BY JENNIFER COCKRALL-KING  Jorge Carmenate edges his stocky, mid-40s frame under the canopy of a neem tree and our small, pink-cheeked group follows suit. Even in the mid-morning, the heat in central Cuba is searing. Carmenate welcomes us to El Rabanito, a three-hectare market garden in a mixed commercial and residential neighbourhood in the city of Ciego de Avila. He's thrilled that yet another group of Canadians and Americans have come to see what is one of the nation's top-producing organoponicos, the urban organic farm co-operatives that are the cornerstone of how Cuba manages to feed its 11.4 million citizens, using as little as five per cent of the energy that it takes its neighbours to the north.

EI Rabanito is one stop on a 14-day food tour of Cuba, organized by Bowen Island, B.C.-based agronomist Wendy Holm. She coordinates sustainable agriculture exchanges between Cuban and Canadian farmers and organizes a yearly tour specifically designed for chefs and foodies curious about how Cuba has emerged as a world leader in community-based agriculture, urban farming, and organic food production. It's not a gourmet tour de force, rather a frank look at the reality of the Cuban food production and distribution system. Largely state-orchestrated with a few free market concessions, it's also state-supported. Farmers in Cuba are at the top tier of state salaries, some earning more than doctors and lawyers. And the state provides incredible resources to farmers. As such, it was the only country in the World Wildlife Fund's 2006 living Planet report that even came close to meeting targets for sustainable living and development. In the same report, Canada had the fourth-heaviest per-capita ecological footprint.

Canadians spend up to 12 calories of non-renewable energy to produce one calorie of food on our dinner plate. In Cuba, the ratio is reversed. Welcome to "slow food," Cuban-style, born out of economic constraints rather than philosophical ideals: it was the Cuban economic crisis in the early '90s that forced the country to buckle down and grow over 80 per cent of the fresh produce it consumes. Cubans eat only what they grow within a reasonable proximity to where they live (fuel for transport is scarce); they eat only what's in season (energy to freeze and refrigerate is expensive and unreliable); and food is produced using labour-intensive organic farming methods (chemical inputs, which would be too expensive anyway, are unavailable, and the farms are located within the cities, so people don't want the pollution of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides).

"The public decides what we plant," says Carmenate, pointing out some 50 vegetables North American chefs would fall over themselves to get. Picture-perfect Chinese cabbages, tomatoes, lettuces, cucumbers, culinary herbs and medicinal flowers drip over beds raised less than a foot off a flat, rubble-covered lot. Sunflowers stand at the end of beds to attract pests away from the other plants; marigolds are interspersed to control unwanted bugs.

The leaves from the neem tree, soaked, macerated and mixed with lime, are sprayed as a homegrown biopesticide. A compost bin of California red wigglers turn decaying plant matter into nutrient-rich loamy soil.

This 13-farmer co-operative supplies local schools, hospitals and daycares as its "social contribution" quota, but the rest is sold freemarket-style, at a small kiosk at the entrance. With so many organoponicos (there are 31 in Ciego de Avila alone), competition keeps quality high and prices reasonable. Last year, EI Rabanito sold 227,000 pesos' worth of produce, leaving the co-op a profit of 97,000 pesos. Half the profits at EI Rabanito are reinvested in infrastructure, the other half are split between the 13 workers. The land is rent-free courtesy of the state.

It's hard not to chuck our cellphones, grab a spade and join Cuba's "green revolution." The system attains ideals we are just beginning to wrestle with: lessening the ecological footprint of the food we consume and ensuring a secure food supply, one driven by nutritional needs, not profits for multinationals. But then Carmenate and the other farmers gratefully accept our seemingly odd tokens of appreciation for their time: bars of soap, disposable razors, pencils, pads of paper, deodorant, shampoo, and small household trinkets that will be shared with their families. Yes, there's good food on the table in Cuba these days, but other basic comforts, it seems, are few and far between in this workers' paradise.

(here is the bonus mini-article on the same page. Not unrelated in spirit.)

Today's Special: A Coronary-themed Grill. Patrons who manage to stuff down one of the 8,0OO-calorie "quadruple bypass burgers" and "flatliner fries" are delivered to their cars in wheelchairs pushed by sexy waitresses dressed as nurses. In the ultimate in-your-face response to healthy eating, the Heart Attack Grill in Arizona serves up artery-clogging food with the slogan "taste worth dying for." Cigarettes and beer with your meal are not just permitted but encouraged.