Transcript:Hossain Danesh/Creating New World Order

Transcript of: Creating New World Order by Hossain Danesh

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[0:03] It is indeed my honor to be able to speak at this location. The organizer's of this conference decided that focus on peace and how important it is and how much we need it, is not sufficient. That we have to move beyond the quest for peace and begin to create those conditions, circumstances, situations, prerequisites which will make possible realization of this eternal hope of humanity. The organizers did that because they were aware that the peace of humanity, world peace, its advent is very close. And certain important activities should be done on our part in order to achieve it. Because, when we think about it peace is that condition in human affairs which replaces aggression with tenderness, competition with cooperation, strangeness with solidarity, injustice with justice, domination with equality, bondage with freedom, self-centeredness with others-directedness, cruelty with kindness, differences with uniqueness, passion with compassion, ignorance with knowledge, power struggle with love relationships, distractedness with creativity, rigidity with growth, materialism with spiritual fulfillment.

[2:37] These conditions, these type of transformation is most challenging. The distinguished speaker before myself, Dr. Laszlo, outlined the pregnant conditions in the world of humanity today in the realms of science and in the realms of spiritual thinking, in the consciousness of humanity, in the goodwill of mankind, in the greater level of enlightenment that we have, the pregnant conditions for bringing about the realization of this transformation to a peaceful society. I will not repeat those conditions because I would not be able to do them as well, and besides, already we are illumined with his remarks in that respect. However, I thought that I would share with you here, briefly, a review of the attempts of the Baháʼí community over the last one-and-a-half century in creating a new world order. To see what are the characteristics of this attempt, what Baháʼí model, the Baháʼí paradigm is for this new world order, not only at a theoretical level but also at the practical level. Theories always are beautiful, or fantastic; you read about them, you get excited about them, they make sense, they feel good. But when you are engaged in putting those theories into action, a totally different process comes into motion. And it is important for us, as much as possible dispassionately, to look at the Baháʼí attempt at creating a new world order. Try to understand that new paradigm to see whether theoretically is sound, and whether in practice it has succeeded to some degree at least. In doing so, I'm aware that I am focusing on a range of time, which is approximately one-and-a-half century, a community of humanity, of Baháʼís that is spread all over the world and a host of concepts and experiences that truly are beyond my ability to comprehend them and make sense of them and share them with you. Therefore, my presentation in every respect would be inadequate.

[6:10] The Baháʼí faith began on May 23, 1844. That night, the first individual who became aware of the beginning of this new spiritual era was welcomed to the House of the Báb, the forerunner to Bahá’u’lláh by the following words: "Enter therein, in peace, secure." And he later on reflected about the first few moments of his experience that night, the first individual who became the follower of the Manifestation for this age. His name was Ḥusayn. He said: “Methinks I was in a place of which it could be truly said: ‘Therein no toil shall reach us, and therein no weariness shall touch us; no vain discourse shall they hear therein, nor any falsehood, but only the cry, “Peace! Peace!”’”

[7:40] That was the beginning of the Baháʼí era. The first few words and thoughts that were expressed and shared. Then came a very remarkable time in the history of the Baháʼí faith. That remarkable period is called the period of the Bábí Dispensation. And it is essential for us to have a knowledge of that period of Bábí Dispensation because it followed another profound change in the structure and way of thinking of Baháʼí community. The Bábí Dispensation had certain characteristics, and I talk about it you will become a little bit more aware of that. But I like to do that within the context of describing the whole Baháʼí paradigm at trying to establish a unified peaceful world. It has been already stated that the Baháʼí faith considers unity as the fundamental prerequisites for peace. The unity paradigm refers to many aspects of this concept, all of them. I share with you three dimensions of them. When we speak of unity we are speaking of unity from within, an inner unity that as human beings we have to be able to achieve which results in inner peace. A unity between our capacity of knowledge, of love, and of our will. Then there is an interpersonal unity, unity between people. And that unity will manifest itself in our interpersonal relationship, through such processes as the acceptance of others, as the eradication of prejudice, as living a life that is manifested by love and encouragement, by equality of men and women, and equality of all people. The word equality in Persian language is "Musavat". And Bahá’u’lláh said that ultimately we have to move beyond "Musavat" and achieve "Muvasat". You change the places of "s" and "v". And "Muvasat" means that state of being and human relationships that everyone would prefer others over himself or herself. This is a developmental process. Ultimately, we will achieve it, but it is a process, gradual, going first to equality "Musavat", and then to preferring others over ourselves, "Muvasat".

[11:07] And then comes the state of world unity. The state of world unity is a very complex issue and a simple issue at the same time. It is simple because all we can imagine it one way or another within ourselves. It's complex because we have to create it. To create a world unified and united in the condition of diversity, the kind of a condition that brings about all of the richness of life into it. We have to be able to do several things. First of all, we have to know how to deal with human violence. We have to become victorious over human violence. Secondly, we have to become citizens of the world and to learn how to be the citizens of the world. And the third thing that I want to describe here is to learn how to safeguard the unity in diversity, so we would not fall prey to authoritarianism, to authoritarian dictatorial forms of government, nor prey to anarchy. These are the three areas that I want to share with you from perspective of the Baháʼí paradigm and Baháʼí experience.

[12:49] Human violence is considered by many scientists and thinkers as being a fundamental aspect of human reality and the only thing that we can do about it is somehow to deal with it. Konrad Lorenz, a winner of the Nobel Prize, one of the distinguished scientists in the study of human violence says, the first and the most obvious and the most important precept in the process of trying to deal with human violence, because he considers human violence as a part of human nature, is to "know thyself". And by that, he means we must deepen our insights into those causes of our behaving in a violent manner. And then he said one way of doing this, one line is the objective ethological investigation of all the possibilities of discharging aggression in its primal form on substitute objects. What he says is that one way that we can do is to find the ways that we can show our aggression, which is a part of us, against other objects than each other. Well you know, humanity right now, every group is doing it upon all other groups in order to satisfy that need. The second is the psychoanalytic study of so-called sublimation, which means trying to find a way to deal with your violence, such as, if you are really a violent person and want to cut people up, become a surgeon. The third way of avoiding aggression is the promotion of personal acquaintance. Just try to get to know other people, not really love them, just personal acquaintance, "Hi! How are you?" kind of a thing. And if possible, friendship between individual members of different ideologies or nations.

[15:38] The fourth and perhaps the most important measure to be taken immediately is the intelligent and responsible channeling of militant enthusiasm. This way of thinking is extremely frightening because this way of thinking tells us that there is no hope about thinking at human beings in a different way than already have been decided in some psychosocial, biological schools of thought about human nature, that human nature is in and by itself violent. There is a body of information that clearly shows us that that's not the case. I would not go into details of reading quotes from you from different groups of people to prove this, but just some few examples would give us an idea of probably different way of being able to look at ourselves and issue of violence.

[17:09] Let's think about what happens to us when we face violence. Usually, we have several alternatives. First, we ignore it, if it's not happening against us. Second, we try to rationalize away. We say, probably this person did something wrong, deserved it. Or this person is emotionally disturbed and that's why he's doing it. But when violence is taking place at the level of all humanity, you cannot say all people are crazy.

[17:57] There was a study done in Manhattan, New York a few years ago in which they concluded that three out of four people living there had some kind of emotional problems and, therefore, they said that if you are standing with three other people and one of them is sane, then you know which group you belong to. The third way of dealing with violence which is very common in our society, in our world today, is to meet violence with violence. This is the paradigm that is used, the model that is used in our world today. In our world today, the concept is that if you want to control human aggression, you have to become more powerful, and more powerful, and more powerful so that the other violent individual would be frightened of you and would not show violence. This process, of course, is extremely dangerous. This has resulted in the arms race that we have in our world today. This has resulted in the circumstances of life right now that as Dr. Laszlo said there is at any given time and moment this profound danger of total destruction of the human race from the planet earth. This is remarkably sad.

[19:40] Then, we move from the level of dealing with violence with violence to another alternative. And the other alternative is that you deal with violence through passive resistance. The whole concept of non-violent movement and the passive resistance, the kind of resistance that started with Mahatma Gandhi at one of the most important figures of it, and another one at Martin Luther King, and during the Nazi reign in Europe, the were pockets, a number of pockets of remarkable passive resistance activities and so forth, they were all remarkably effective. They were really marvelous expressions of how we could deal with human violence. But nevertheless, only a few decades later, we see that that system has also failed. That system has failed because those people who have been the greatest recipient of the benefits of this method now are engaged themselves in violent activities among themselves and with other people. It is a situation that makes us wonder whether there is another missing element in this whole process of a human being becoming victorious over violence.

[21:23] In that respect, I like to share with you a new thought, namely, that violence doesn't have an existence in and of itself. Yesterday, Mr. Taherzadeh spoke about the same concept, that evil doesn't have an existence in and by itself. Evil is a non-existence of good. If we considered that, then we can say that violence is the non-existence of what is the opposite of violence. That something fundamentally is missing and when that thing is missing, the result is violence. It's important to do this because if you think of violence having a reality, then you have to do something about that reality. But if you think that violence is the non-existence of something, you focus your energies to bring that thing that doesn't exist so that when it comes there, then everything would be all right.

[22:39] I give you a medical analogy. You can have a person that suddenly has a disease that bleeds all over, so you say "okay", we pick up all kinds of band-aids, and we put one bandage here and one bandage here and everything just to band-aid the person so that you wouldn't bleed. And then this person suddenly finds that his bones are getting very soft and cannot walk. We say "okay", we put all kind of sticks and wrap it around the bones so that he can walk. And the person becomes weak. And so we say "okay", this person is becoming weak so we find a couple of other people to carry him around or put him in a wheelchair. And then gradually the person starts not being able to breathe, and so let's give him oxygen. And if that doesn't work, we just give him a pump that constantly pumps his chest so that he can have the necessary oxygen. And it goes on and on and on, which is what's happening in the medical model today. However, if we had paused for a moment and say, "Let's see what is happening with this person? Could it be that this person doesn't have something that he should have?" And we investigate and find that he lacks vitamin C.

[24:05] Now, which route should we go? If you consider the disease as the reality, you go the route of the band-aid and of the sticks and of the wheelchairs and of the oxygen tank and so forth. If you go the route that no, the disease means that something is missing and let's find out what is missing, then you find the vitamin C, you give it to the person, the person improves. The same approach to violence seems to be in order. And it is a model that is used by the Baháʼí faith. I want to share with you two quotes, dialogues. The first dialogue is taking place in the prison between Socrates and Crito. Crito comes, this is the night before Socrates is going to die, Crito says to Socrates:

[25:15] "Nor can I think that you are justified, Socrates, in betraying your own life when you might be saved; this is playing into the hands of your enemies and destroyers; and moreover I should say that you were betraying your children; for you might bring them up and educate them; instead of which you go away and leave them, and they will have to take their chance;... I beseech you, therefore, Socrates, to be persuaded by me, and to do as I say."

[25:58] And Socrates says: "Dear Crito,..., I cannot put away the reasons which I have before given: the principles which I have hitherto honored and revered I still honor, and unless we can find other and better principles on the instant, I am certain not to agree with you; no, not even if the power of the multitude could inflict many more imprisonments, confiscations, deaths, frightening us like children with hobgoblin terrors."

[26:46] The next dialogue took place only a few years ago. There was this Baháʼí in Mahabad. He was one of the trusted merchants of the town in Iran. A fellow merchant, who was a Muslim, had been called to the Islamic Court because of some wrongs that he had done. He asked this Baháʼí merchant who was the most respected merchant in town if he would be willing to go as a character witness to the court and testify on his behalf. And he had agreed. The judge had spoken for a few minutes, and this was reported by Mark Kravitz, he said that the judge was almost completely uninterested and bored with the proceedings until suddenly he found that the witness was a Baháʼí. We pick up the dialogue there. The judge is Sadegh Khalkhali, Islamic Judge.

Judge: "So you are a Baháʼí?"

And [name of merchant given] responds, the witness responds, "yes."

Judge: "Then you must convert immediately to true faith of Islam. Otherwise, you will have to pay the sum of 500,000 tomans; approximately, 80,000 dollars."

Witness: "No."

Judge: "What do you mean, no?"

Witness: "I cannot pay this sum. Even if I sold my shop and my home, I could not possibly realize 500,000 tomans."

Judge: "In that case, you will simply deny your ungodly beliefs and you will be discharged."

Witness: "No."

Judge: "You will not say no this time. Your life depends on it. Think the matter over carefully."

Witness: "I do not have the money you want from me, and if I recanted, I would be a liar before God. You surely cannot force me to do this."

Judge: "There is no God but God and Mohammed is his prophet, make up your mind quickly."

Witness: "No, I cannot deny my faith."

Judge: "May God forgive you. I sentence you to death."

The witness was taken out and shot.

[30:03] These two dialogues show us a new way of dealing with violence. Here we are dealing with the concept that the most important responsibility of us, as human beings, and as human societies, is to safeguard the integrity of our humanness. The most important thing is that we do not allow our humanness to be taken away from us. Because if our humanness is taken away, we no longer exist as a human. From the perspective of Socrates and the perspective of this Baháʼí and from the perspective of all the enlightened peoples of the world, human beings are created noble beings, beings capable of knowledge, of love, of spiritual qualities. As such the whole purpose of this creation is to allow those qualities to come to fruition. You cannot allow those qualities to come to fruition if you deny them, if you do not live the life that would support those qualities to enhance and to grow, if you don't create a society that would not do that.

[31:47] Now, adding this principle to the concept of the passive resistance or non-violence theory gives us a new energy to deal with violence. The Bábí Dispensation, which lasted nineteen years, which is the first nineteen years of the Baháʼí era, was the era of expectancy for the coming of the time when the peace would be possible, when unity would be possible. During that era, the followers of the Báb allowed themselves certain degree of violence. They defended themselves when they were attacked. And in the process of them defending themselves, on three different occasions, a number of the soldiers were killed by the Bábís. Because of that, in a span of nineteen years, thousands of the Bábís were killed. Their killing was justified in the eyes of the rulers, because here was a group extremely enthusiastic, interestingly powerful, filled with the spirit of faith and they were able to create havoc in the life of the Iranian society. The Iranian society responded to that by enormous degrees of barbaric cruelty toward these people.

[33:43] The history is written and can be read. Bahá’u’lláh however came and changed that paradigm altogether. Bahá’u’lláh came and said under no circumstances Baháʼís, the followers of Bahá’u’lláh, are allowed to use violence in order to curb violence. But he said something more, He said what the Baháʼís have to do to use exactly the opposite of violence in response. In other words, they have to use the forces of love, to harness the forces of love. In one of His remarkable writings, Bahá’u’lláh describes this process of transformation of the Bábí community into the Baháʼí community. Is called the Tablet of the World. He says "The day of service is now come". I should read a part of it before which is very interesting. Bahá’u’lláh is speaking about the transformation of the Bábí community which had this dimension of defense, violent defense, self-defense to the transformation of the Baháʼí community was totally free from violence. He said it was through the grace of God and with the aid of seemly words and praiseworthy deeds that the unsheathed swords of the Bábí community were returned to their scabbards. Indeed through the power of good words, the righteous have always succeeded in winning command over the [?] of the heart of the men. What Bahá’u’lláh did here was that He showed a way for His followers, most of whom at the beginning were the Bábís, how to transform their activities, how to deal with violence in a new way. Through seemly words and praiseworthy deeds. He describes that process. He says:

"Thy day of service is come... Thou must show forth that which will ensure the peace and the well-being of the miserable and the down-trodden. Gird up the loins of thine endeavors, that perchance thou mayest release the captive from his chains, and enable him to attain unto true liberty."

"Strife and conflict befit the beasts of the wild... beware lest your hands or tongues cause harm unto anyone among mankind."

"Arise, O people,... resolve to gain the victory over your own selves... Do not busy yourselves in your own concerns; let your thoughts be fixed upon that which will rehabilitate the fortunes of mankind and sanctify the hearts and souls of men. This can best be achieved through pure and holy deeds, through a virtuous life and a goodly behavior."

[37:42] This Tablet, this statement of Bahá’u’lláh goes on to describe many dimensions of the new approach to violence. It is an approach in which you harness the forces of love. And by harnessing the forces of love, by responding to aggression with love, with the opposite, you create a totally different milieu. A good example of it is the situation of the Baháʼís in Iran during the last six years, seven years. In Iran, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. The Islamic Revolution in Iran has killed many, many of its enemies. When they came to power, they considered the Baháʼís as one of their most important enemies that they wanted to destroy. Two hundred and four or five Baháʼís have been murdered so far. I like to put before you that one of the reasons that this has happened is because the Baháʼís of Iran have harnessed the forces of love in the face of this absolutely brutal condition. The dynamics of this process are very complex. I will not have the time to describe them in-depth nor am I fully capable of doing so. But I like to suggest that one area of the study for us is the study of these dynamics, of how the dynamics of love, the forces of love are used to become victorious over human violence.

[39:40] Then, the Baháʼí community moved from this process of developing a new paradigm, a new way of dealing with violence by trying to establish a community, a world community of people, first. The way that the Baháʼís did for creating a world community of people was first, focusing on the notion of unity. The notion of unity, any time that you want to unite, you need a point of unity. You need a center of unity. For the Baháʼís, that center of unity was their fundamental resolve, recognition, realization, understanding that this is the age and era of bringing about the concept of oneness of mankind. So the Baháʼís began to struggle with this concept. If you want to establish oneness of mankind, you cannot avoid other people. You cannot create homogeneous societies. You have to become heterogeneous, you have to go everywhere. Baháʼís began to go to other lands, they called themselves pioneers. These pioneers were the beginning movement of the Baháʼís throughout the world. And from there on, developed a vast program of pioneering that Baháʼís from Canada would go to fifty other countries, and from England to fifty other countries, and from North America to a hundred countries or two hundred countries, and from Iran to almost everywhere in the world, and they just come, and from Africa, they come here and back and forth, in order to create that interaction interface coming together of people so that you begin to develop that concept of becoming the citizen of the world. Trying to put it from the realms of thought into the realms of action.

[42:02] This has been a remarkable process. The study of Baháʼí pioneering in attempting to create a sense of the world citizenship is really merits study. In the process we have had, of course, funny experiences. We have become aware of our enormous prejudices. We have had to eat foods that we never thought that we will. We had to sleep in places that we never thought that we would do that. We had to hug and kiss and be allowed to be hugged and kissed by people that we thought never would be done. But it was done, and it was nice. In the final analysis, it was. We also developed a worldwide program of traveling. We call them the traveling teachers. The whole concept was to go around the world and tell peoples of the world that we are one. This is the era of realization of that oneness. And then we added that the challenge of our integration, because we began to have communities of people. Again, Dr. Laszlo mentioned that we don't have a global village, we have a village that is divided by numerous barriers. Even within the Baháʼí community right now, where we have a relatively large numbers of people, where, for example in Canada in cities when we have the Anglo-Saxons and the French and the Persians and the Indians and the Eskimos and the people of the Far East and all of those things, we find it very difficult to create an integrated community. We are struggling with the process, we are trying to learn how to do it. But definitely we know that one of the challenges before us to become citizens of the world is that we have to overcome this process of integration, and we have to achieve it. Without it, we wouldn't be able to do. We sing about it, we smile about it, but when it comes to action we have a challenge that still we have to achieve.

[44:38] Now, as we did that, we began to create also machinery for the creation of new world order. The creation of a new world order now required different kind of organization at the local level, at the national level, and the international level. We began to create, elect... It is remarkable what the Baháʼí did in this respect, for example to bring to the smallest villages in the far-off lands, places that people had never heard the word democracy, a new model of government in which empowered people at all levels to take their affairs in their own hands. Somebody should study the processes that we have achieved these and the remarkable way that democracy suddenly manifests itself in a small village in India, in the hearts of the forest in Africa, in the Amazon or mountains in South America, and so forth. In the process of creating this world citizenship and this world community of people, we have of course always have focused on unity. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has told us that whenever a group of people are disunited, that assembly of people would be dispersed and would go different ways. Throughout this experimentation that we have had with creating world order, we have seen many a times, whenever a Baháʼí community was disunited, it gradually or suddenly dispersed, became nothing, became ineffective, became dead. Whenever the forces of unity were at work a different process was happening altogether. But also, whenever you try to achieve a major objective, there would be forces from within and from without to challenge, to see how true that objective is, and how true your claim is of what you're trying to achieve. One of the most fundamental claims of the Baháʼí Faith that has been proven is that it has been able to safeguard its unity. All other religions and all other groups of people in the world have been ultimately disunited. Religions have gone into many sects and so forth. This process has been challenged over and over in the course of the Baháʼí faith. But nevertheless, the Baháʼí faith has emerged victorious in respect to maintaining its unity and maintaining diversity of that process.

[47:50] My time is very short, so I have put aside all of these things. Just want to share with you some unique features of the new world order, the Baháʼí paradigm, as I understand it. I probably wouldn't describe most of them, I would just mentioned it. The first one, and it's a note that has been repeated by a number of people here, of course, the first few one, is concept of the collective growth of humanity. The second one is the harmony of science and religion. The third one, and these are not necessarily in order of importance, is equality of men and women. The fourth one that I want to just briefly focus on is the Baháʼí politics of transformation. If you want to transform human societies, you have to have certain politics of transformation. And the Baháʼí politics of transformation is to harness the forces of growth and the spiritual progress of humanity to create a new society. The Baháʼí revolution, therefore, is not a revolution by force, but it is a revolution that harnesses the forces of growth, that ultimately makes the human being to free itself from the bondage of the animal heritage that we have and start a totally new era in our history, which is the age of our collective maturity.

[49:46] Then, there is another dynamic here, and that is the issue of the conflict resolution. How are we going to resolve conflicts in human society? The laws of human interactions, of trying to resolve problems, resolving to decisions at best in our society have been those of compromise. Usually, the forces of power are used, and whoever is more powerful that idea becomes acceptable. This is true in our world today. We are engaged in power politics at all levels. At best, for example, what we are trying to achieve at the United Nations forums and so forth are the powers of trying to reach some compromise. But reality doesn't accept compromise. Truth is one, and therefore we cannot go about resolving human problems through compromise. Here is the process that brings into dimension, into focus, the Baháʼí art of consultation. I was trying to see how I can describe the Baháʼí art of consultation to people in general, those who are not familiar with the Baháʼí teachings, and I decided that one way of calling it is to call it conflict-free, conflict resolution. At least it makes people to think about what you're saying. But the whole idea is that is not necessary to have conflict in order to resolve disagreements that exists between people or reach to some kind of agreement.

[51:42] But most important in this respect is the whole issue of power. The world of humanity, throughout history, has been dominated by power. Power fundamentally has been in the hands of men because they had physical power. They began to rule human society along the paradigm, the model of power, of force, of the person who is an authority demanding obedience from the people who were below them and then accepting at whatever order is given from people who were above. This authoritarian system has resulted in creation of a world that is characterized by competition, by power struggle, by use of force. There is a problem with this authoritarian mode. The authoritarian mode doesn't want change, but we need change because change and life go hand in hand. The authoritarian mode doesn't accept new ideas, but new ideas are necessary because human societies are growing and evolving, maturing, they are complex organisms. The authoritarian mode only shows affection and love those who belong to the group that are considered the in-group. The authoritarian world divides the world into good guys and bad guys. That is the concept of the authoritarian mode. The ultimate nature of it of course is the Hitler fascist model that we saw in many other dictatorial systems that humanity has experienced.

[53:40] Mankind, and I used man here not meaning humanity but meaning men, by virtue of being in control of the affairs of humanity created a world which was totally taken by violence and aggression. On the other hand throughout history let's see what women did. When the processes were divided, men said we are going to be strong and we are going to go and kill animals and our enemies and carry big pieces of lumber and stone and build the house and so forth, and we are big machos. They told women, "Now you be responsible for creating the home, raising children, taking care of the sick, being kind, being loving, being creative. So men became busy with their activities, and now they have a world with enough bombs to kill humanity seventy times over, and that was a few years ago. And women have created human families, have raised generations of children, have shown us the ways of love, have shown us the ways of affection, have shown us the ways of the spirit, have sung the songs of the human spirit. Men have done some good things also. But nevertheless, the world of humanity now has reached to the point that it has to become more feminine. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá makes that statement very clearly. He says that the world of humanity has been raised, has been governed up to this time through force, and by men. And masculine qualities have been predominant in the world of humanity. And he said now it is the era that the world of humanity has to become more feminine. The feminine qualities have to take ascendancy until comes a time that an equilibrium between these two qualities are established.

[56:08] The Baháʼí experience, the paradigm, one of the major efforts that we have done during the last hundred and fifty years or so is to try to create a kind of situation that hopefully, those qualities predominant. It was in response to this authoritarian mode of behavior that since about after first world war and definitely since second world war, a different approach to human behavior developed which best could be put as the indulgent move. Suddenly, people say, forget about power, forget about war and focus on whatever feels good. They said if it feels good, do it. The 60s and 70s were characterized by these qualities. The whole generation of people began to raise a generation of people who are self-centered, who are asking for more and more and more, need to be gratified constantly and instantly and without any moment to wait. This is happening because this development of this process has been a reaction to that situation of the power that has been dominating the world of humanity. This kind of lifestyle, the indulgent lifestyle, creates anarchy, creates hedonism. It creates promiscuity in human behavior and human society. And it does not reflect the various dimensions of diversity that exist in the world of humanity.

[58:09] The Baháʼí model is a model that wants to create an integrated human society, integrated in every sense of the word, integrated in the sense of its people, integrated in the sense of men and women, integrated in the sense of science and religion, integrated in the sense of forces of love and forces of power, integrated in all dimensions of our existence. That once we begin to create that kind of a world, then that world would have at least four characteristics. First, it will be a growth-oriented rather than power-oriented of the authoritarian system or pleasure oriented of the indulgent system. Second, it would establish unity in diversity. Unity in diversity in place of dichotomy, dichotomous conceptions. Us versus others that you find in authoritarian systems and the indiscriminate disregard of the identity of unique cultures of the world that you find in the indulgent system. Third, this society, this new model of the world order would be creative. Creativity would be its sign, instead of rigidity of the authoritarian system and the promiscuity of the indulgent system. And fourth, this human society, this new world order would not follow what is called the authoritarian submission, which means that you obey anything that is told you to do. Socrates didn't do it, [?the witness referenced earlier] didn't do it. Great humanitarians, they don't do that. They obey much higher principles than that. And second, that the anarchic system, the anarchy that you find in indulgent societies has to give way to a society which is responsible, cooperative, and compassionate. These are some of the characteristics of a new world order.

[1:00:48] I was going to read a statement from Shoghi Effendi, and I want to profoundly thank Mr. Laszlo because he read it for me, about some of the characteristics of this new world order. However, I would like to end my presentation with a story about the model of a new world order. This person died and went to the next world. And they came and said, "Welcome, how are you? Did you have a rough journey?" He said, "No, thank you. It was easy, fine, fast." They said, "Do you want to have the truth of the next world?" And he thought to himself, "Well, I must be important that they would give me a truth." He said, "Yes, of course. I would be very grateful." They said, "Do you want to rest before?" He said, "No, no, it's all right." They said, "Do you want to see hell first, or heaven first?" And he thought to himself, he said, "Well, I better go, I'm going to heaven anyway, so I better go to hell and see it and get the hell over with it, you know". So he said yes. So they took him to the doors of hell and there was this huge island door that neon sign says, "Hell, hell, hell" so that you wouldn't make mistakes. They wouldn't let you in and they had to make a number of codes and so forth, and finally, they opened the door. And he arrived, and he walked in, and lo and behold, it was beautiful. It was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. The trees were burdened, there were beautiful rivers and waters everywhere. The birds were singing. The temperature was perfect. They told him that the temperature here ranges between seventy and eighty, they haven't yet changed to the metric system there. It's a little bit behind...

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