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World order
FALL 1975
- THE PRESENT STATE OF THE WORLD:
- SOME REMARKS
- Robert Muller
- THE GHOST OF THE WORLD FUTURE
- Richard N. Gardner
- ECONOMICS AND THE BAHÁ’Í TEACHINGS
- Gregory C. Dahl
- THE BELIEF IN NONSENSE
- Howard Garey
- SCIENCE AND THE BAHÁ’Í FAITH
- Norman A. Bailey
World Order
A BAHÁ’Í MAGAZINE • VOLUME 10 NUMBER 1 • PUBLISHED QUARTERLY
WORLD ORDER IS INTENDED TO STIMULATE, INSPIRE AND SERVE THINKING PEOPLE IN THEIR SEARCH TO FIND RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND PHILOSOPHY
- Editorial Board:
- FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH
- BETTY J. FISHER
- HOWARD GAREY
- ROBERT HAYDEN
- GLENFORD E. MITCHELL
- Editorial Assistant
- MARTHA PATRICK
WORLD ORDER is published quarterly,
October, January, April, and July, at 415
Linden Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois 60091.
Subscriber and business correspondence and
changes of address should be sent to this address.
Manuscripts and other editorial correspondence
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Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut
06520.
The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, or of the Editorial Board. Manuscripts should be typewritten and double spaced throughout, with the footnotes at the end. The contributor should keep a carbon copy. Return postage should be included.
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Copyright © 1975, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, World Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.
ISSN 0043-8804
IN THIS ISSUE
- 1 This Age of Analysis
- Editorial
- 2 Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor
- 7 The Present State of the World: Some Remarks
- by Robert Muller
- 14 The Ghost of the World Future
- by Richard N. Gardner
- 19 Economics and the Bahá’í Teachings: An Overview
- by Gregory C. Dahl
- 31 The Mute
- a poem by Janet Homnick
- 41 Science and the Bahá’í Faith
- by Norman A. Bailey
- 48 The Belief in Nonsense
- a book Rview by Howard Garey
- Inside back cover: Authors and Artists in This Issue
This Age of Analysis
WE LIVE IN AN AGE OF ANALYSIS, in an intellectual climate that demands the separation of things into constituent parts or elements. For the purpose of understanding and control, things are taken apart and examined, little or no attention being paid to their relationships and place in a larger whole. In the process of analysis the significance of that which is examined is frequently lost. This is especially true in social sciences where the whole is much more than the sum of its parts.
Present-day preoccupation with economic problems is a case in point. Economics is possibly the most advanced, the most refined of social sciences. It possesses a variety of tools which could, if properly applied, have a profoundly beneficial effect on the life of society. Why are not such tools being properly utilized?
It seems that Western civilization, the dominant force in the modern world, is no longer capable of setting long-range goals or even believing in the purposefulness of life. Politics, economics, the sciences, and the arts have become ends in themselves, pursued for their own sake or for the pleasure they afford their practitioners. All have been separated from morality. Yet “A superficial culture, unsupported by a cultivated morality, is as ‘a confused medley of dreams,’ and external luster without inner perfection is ‘like a vapor in the desert which the thirsty dreameth to be water.’”
Is it not the disregard of the moral and spiritual needs of man that is ultimately responsible for poverty, hunger, high unemployment, the energy crisis, inflation, and a thousand other social ills with which the world is sorely afflicted? Should it not be the task of statesmanship to search for the moral and spiritual components of a new synthesis that would ensure the elimination of at least those problems the solution of which is otherwise within reach?
Interchange LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR
THE DISCUSSION on the sexes, to which a large part of our Spring 1975 issue was devoted, is being carried forward with great vigor in Newfoundland, so a correspondent living there has informed us. There is a Women’s Centre in St. John’s, some of whose members have found Gayle Morrison’s article on antifeminist literature so impressive that they have taken measures to assure that all the members may have access to it.
By a coincidence, George Gilder’s name has come up several times in St. John’s recently, on the radio and in a local paper. You may remember Gilder as the antifeminist Gayle Morrison described as a “sexual determinist,” whose detestation of the movement seems as much based on fear of woman’s superiority to man as on anything else. The radio comment was made by a Toronto commentator on CBC who, having observed a debate between Gilder and Greer, allowed as how Gilder made good sense to him—and anyway poor ol’ Gilder deserved some sort of protection from the women who were jumping all over him and not letting him get a word in edgewise. The newspaper article, according to our friend in St. John’s, was of a more malicious sort. Its headline suggested that the Women’s Movement was destroying society (because its proponents were asking for daycare centers), and was the kind of statement which cries out for an answer. That answer was soon provided by a member of the Women’s Centre of St. John’s, who quoted at considerable length, with appropriate acknowledgments, from the Morrison article.
It is gratifying to observe how the balance, calmness, and good sense of Bahá’í teachings have exerted, however indirectly, a clear and demonstrable effect on some participants in one of the most intense discussions of modern times, and to see to what varied regions of the globe this influence has penetrated. The quotations from the article express the sincere belief in the equality of the sexes, not the compensating view that women are superior to men. Thus one woman (Ms. Goundrey of St. John’s, who wrote the letter to the newspaper) quotes with approbation this defense by another woman (Gayle Morrison) of the value of men: “I cannot accept that men are so inherently fragile in their sense of self, so completely governed by their physiology, that they are unable to bear the equal participation of women.” In fact, this sentence not only defends the integrity of men and the equality of the sexes, but also refutes the materialist, deterministic image of the human being as mere animal, as slave of his body.
To the Editor
MORE ON JOHN THE BAPTIST
I would like to express my gratitude for Mr.
Kazem Kazemzadeh’s kind remarks in the
Winter 1974-75 issue of WORLD ORDER about
my article on “Oriental Scholarship and the
Bahá’í Faith” [Summer 1974]. His additional
information on the station of John the Baptist
will, I am sure, stimulate great interest and a
deepened understanding of this matter among
[Page 3] Bahá’ís. I was surprised that he did not mention
one point of particular interest, namely, the fact
that the “separate group of followers of John”
to which he refers (the correct reference to
Ishráq-i-Khávarí’s commentary to The Kitáb-Íqán,
incidentally, is Vol. 2, pp. 986-87) is in
fact the Sabaeans, the Ṣábi’ún whom the Qur’án
lists three times (2:62; 5:69; 22:17) together
with Jews, Christians, and Muslims as “People
of the Book.” In view of the fact that certain
Bahá’í publications still maintain that the Sabaean
religion began in 6,000 B.C., being the
earliest religion of this Universal Cycle with an
unknown Revelator—presumably an ingenious
rationalization on the basis that the Sabaeans
had to go somewhere and would not fit anywhere
else—it is, perhaps, timely that this be
pointed out.
Bahá’u’lláh confirms this in the Tablet referred to by Mr. Kazemzadeh: “after the martyrdom of the son of Zachariah (John), some of his followers did not turn unto the divine manifestation of Jesus, the Son of Mary, and removed themselves from the Faith of God, and until this day they have continued to exist in the world, being known to some as the Ṣábi’ún. These people consider themselves to be the community of John . . .” (Qámús-i-Íqán, Vol. 2, p. 987).
The true Sabaeans are the Mandaeans of southern ‘Iráq and Khúzistán, not to be confused with the better-known “false Sabaeans” of Ḥarrán, a group whose beliefs are a mixture of Chaldaean, Greek, Gnostic, end other elements. Stanley Lane Poole in his Studies in a Mosque has done an excellent job of clearing up the numerous confusions that have arisen with regard to these two groups, as well as the Sabaeans of southern Arabia.
If I may return briefly to Mr. Kazemzadeh’s letter, I should say that I am not convinced that Browne did understand the true Bahá’í position on this matter. For example, he writes: “My surprise was great when I discovered that . . . the majority of the Bábís spoke only of Behá as their chief and prophet; asserted that the Báb was merely his herald and forerunner (those who had read the Gospels, and they were many, likened the Báb to John the Baptist and Behá to Christ)” (A Traveller’s Narrative, introduction, pp. xv-xvi). It is clear from this that Browne believed the Bahá’ís to have relegated the Báb to a position subordinate to that of Bahá’u’lláh, and that the analogy of Christ and John the Baptist (whether understood in its proper sense or not) was used to support this. Browne as a Christian, to whom John was essentially inferior to Jesus, can only have viewed this analogy as implying a lesser station for the Báb. Later European and American Bahá’ís too, not being aware of the points raised by Mr. Kazemzadeh, tended to misuse this analogy, and for a long time many of them regarded the Báb as of inferior rank to Bahá’u’lláh—hence Shoghi Effendi’s strenuous efforts to emphasize their identity of station, particularly in his translation of Nabíl’s Narrative.
- DENIS MACEOIN
- Edinburgh, Scotland
SCIENCE AND RELIGION
. . . The recent articles by Dr. William S. Hatcher [Winter 1974-75, Spring 1975] have been like soothing medicine, so different from the disconcerting materials that appear in print these days on economics and on the relationship of religion and science. However, some parts of his “The Unity of Religion and Science,” Spring 1975, are a little puzzling.
1. One would think that the characteristic
feature and the basis of science was a combination
of the object and method. Just as the
recognition of God, in His Manifestation, and
the observance of His ordinances go hand in
hand in religion, the aim and methods seem to
be prerequisites of true scientific pursuit. The
object of science, in its wider sense, as I understand
from the Bahá’í writings, is the discovery
of the reality or the mysteries of the created
things insofar as such discovery is within man’s
power in the material realm. And a true scientist
is one whose aim is legitimate, whose methods
[Page 4] are relevant to the task, and who, in the
process of such discovery, does not lose sight of
the Source of all knowledge—the Creator.
Naturally, scientific discovery, like all other
human endeavors, depends upon means. The
devising of means or methods, however, is not
entirely left to man, and when we enter the
domain of the discovery of nonmaterial realities
—spiritual enlightenment—the methods are
invariably set out by the Prophets. The problem
with magic and occultism is one of both object
and method. The object is wholly or partly
outside man’s reach in this world, and the
method is at variance with that prescribed by
the Manifestations of God for spiritual enlightenment.
2. The paragraph, “We get physics and chemistry when we turn scientific method to the study of the phenomena of nonliving matter. But if, keeping the same method, we turn to the study of living matter, we get biology. If we turn to human beings as the objects of our study, we get psychology, sociology, and the ‘human sciences.’ Bahá’u’lláh has referred to religion as the ‘science of the love of God.’ Thus religion results when we turn scientific method to the study of the unseen creative force of the universe which we call God,” needs closer scrutiny; and the definition of religion, seemingly based on the quotation from The Four Valleys, deserves further examination. The poem from Saná’í mentioned by Bahá’u’lláh in The Four Valleys warns man that his mind is likely to ensnare him unless he subjects it to the law (teachings) of God. I cannot see any attempt in that poem to define religion. The validity of our present-day “human sciences” is not beyond question either. Perhaps one of the causes of our social problems is that we have tried to apply the scientific methods of physics and chemistry, quite relevant to nonliving matter, to the study of human beings. It is possible that we have ignored the necessary compatibility of object and method and have, therefore, deviated from science to some extent.
3. Further on in the article, it appears that Dr. Hatcher identifies that “truly universal,” “ultimate mysterious force, whose existence has been so strongly confirmed by science” with God. On page 32 he concludes: “Thus we are inevitably led to hypothesize that this force is, in fact, even more subtle than man himself. Following a long-established tradition, we call this force God.” While giving credence to such a concept may be a step forward in bringing science and religion closer together, it would be rather hasty to celebrate that we have discovered God through physical science. Numerous passages interspersed among the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá show that once man conceives, in his mind or imagination, an idea as to what God could be, no matter how sophisticated that idea might be, is no closer to the reality of God than an image made of water and clay. That “energy” of which we are a configuration is part of the material creation and as such has no bearing to the reality of God other than manifesting one of His attributes, to a varying intensity, just as any other created phenomenon does. I feel that the line of argument presented by the writer can be construed to imply a pantheistic concept of the Divinity.
4. On page 33, Dr. Hatcher refers to the popular belief that one day man will be able to reproduce life in a test tube and then adds: “Thus, even if the human brain finally succeeds in discovering the secret at life, this will not change the fact that man did not create the vital process which he would then understand.” It is hard to conceive that man will be able to unravel the mystery of life but will be unable to reproduce it (and by reproducing life, I mean, say, making a grain of wheat that would grow like a natural grain). Such an assumption would mean that a vast area of human endeavor would remain without its final fruit. My understanding from the Bahá’í writings is that such comprehension (encompassing the process) is beyond man’s power. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá tells us that limitation does not enter God’s creation. This implies that we can never say that we have found the smallest particle, or the largest body, or the greatest velocity. Of necessity there must be a particle smaller, a body larger, and a velocity greater than what we have discovered. Therefore, the mysteries enshrined within every created thing are also unlimited. Experience has demonstrated that with every discovery many more unknowns come to light. There is no end in sight. It is as if man is penetrating a limitless cone of mysteries from its tip; and life, having come at the end of material evolution, must be the most subtle of all mysteries.
Bahá’u’lláh, it so appears, has put an end to useless speculation when he says, on page 62 of Gleanings, “So perfect and comprehensive is His creetion that no mind nor heart, however keen or pure, can ever grasp the nature of the most insignificant of His creatures . . .”
- SOHEIL TAHERI
- City Beach, West Australia
The Present State of the World: Some Remarks
BY ROBERT MULLER
This article is a transcription of an address
delivered to representatives of the United Church
Board for World Ministries visiting the United
Nations on November 12, 1973.
OFTEN when I am asked to speak to an
audience like yours, I remember the
time when I was a young man in the French
underground and a witness to tremendous
sufferings which made me decide to work for
peace and for international service. To speak,
therefore, is usually for me an act of conscience
and a query whether humanity is
really progressing on the road to peace. My
answer is unequivocal: I truly believe that
during these last twenty-eight years the world
has made good progress and that we may find
ourselves on the threshold of a peaceful and
cooperative period of human history. May I
attempt to give you a brief overview of the
current problems, progress, frustrations, and
hopes which seem to characterize world affairs.
First, take the human species, which is our principal subject of preoccupation. The United Nations has scheduled for next year [1973] a world Population Conference at which, for the first time in history, all governments of this planet will take stock of the evolution, the state, and the future of the human species. There is little need to dwell upon this subject which is well known to you—namely, the fact that humans have begun to proliferate, that we are currently 3.7 billion people, that we will be 7 billion in the year 2000, and that a child being born today is likely to live at the age of sixty in a world of 12 to 14 billion people.[1] This, undoubtedly, is one of the most fundamental elements in the present world situation. Any other international problems, including remaining local conflicts, are secondary compared with this crucial development. World demography will change fundamentally the conditions of our future evolution and of our relations with the natural resources of our planet.
But the mere quantity of human life is not all. Innumerable other problems concerning the human species have been brought to the United Nations. First, there is the question of length of life. In the United States and in Sweden a person can expect to live more than seventy years. But in some African countries a child may look at you and ask, “Why will I live only thirty or forty years? Why are my expectations and my rights not the same as those of my fellow humans in the North? Are we not brethren on the same planet?”
Next, you have a question of distribution
according to age. A serious problem today is
that sixty percent of the world’s population is
less than twenty-five years old. Consequently,
we have an enormous youth problem. As a
matter of fact, if the world’s population
grows to 12 billion, it is precisely because
there are so many young people today who
will found a family. These young people will
want to be employed and when you turn to
the International Labor Organization, you
learn that 500 million new jobs will have to
be created for them by the year 2000. These
young brains will want to be educated, but
when you turn to UNESCO, you will learn
[Page 8] that the world is at best standing still as
regards literacy, if not losing ground. For
example, the number of literates has increased
from 879 million in 1950 to 1,504
million in 1970, but in spite of this remarkable
progress the total number of illiterates
has actually increased by 83 million during
the period, reaching 183 million adults in
1970.
Regarding food, the situation is the same. More than a million new mouths must be fed each week. The food resources of the poor countries will have to increase more than twofold by the year 2000. Despite a tremendous agricultural expansion in the last twenty years, the number of undernourished people is still in the 300 to 500 million range. Faced with problems of such magnitude, one wonders how the world can still be retarded by the secondary and anachronistic political problems which occupy the front pages of our morning papers. Pressure of population, the competition for natural resources, the dangers to the environment, greater justice and opportunities for all, these are the real political problems of our world.
Then there is the problem of the species’ distribution over the globe. In Asia alone, at the end of this century, there will live more people than the entire world population of today. In 1976 the United Nations will convene in Vancouver, Canada, a world conference on human settlements which will look at the distribution of people and among others, at overurbanization in so many parts of the world, especially in the developing countries where between one-fourth and one-half of the population live in the capitals, attracted by the neon lights, the moviehouses, consumer markets, and often illusory employment opportunities. In 1920 there were only eleven cities of over one million people in the world. In the year 2000 there will be over three-hundred such cities. The question can be asked whether it would not be appropriate to find better policies to keep the people on the land and in the villages, thus helping to solve the problem of food shortages and of a better quality of life.
Indeed, the problem of quality of life has come to the fore in a very dramatic fashion all over the world in the last few years, not only in the poor countries, but also in the affluent ones. The world discovered that even before all the poor were decently fed, overconsumption and careless modes of production in the most industrialized countries were endangering the environment. Inhabitants in the industrialized North are causing thirty times more pollution than those in the South. They are consuming an enormous share of the world’s natural resources. This historical dichotomy in development, when added to the dichotomy in demographic growth, has created an extremely explosive situation which will require much statesmanship and a new sense of worldwide solidarity and cooperation among all governments.
Another problem is how the clusters of
people, protected and organized as nations,
big or small, rich or poor, are living with
each other. This is the problem of war or
peace, cooperation or division, understanding
or hatred. I believe that the world is not
doing too badly on that score, considering the
enormous distance we have covered since
World War II, and the dangers we did face.
Coming from a region like Alsace-Lorraine,
where I knew one war, my father, two, and
my grandfather, three, a period of twenty-eight
years without a world war, at the
precise moment of maximum complexity and
widest dimension of international affairs,
looks almost like a miracle. We seem to have
passed successfully the very dangerous period
of the cold war, during which the two atomic
powers emerging from the Second World
War were interlocked in one of the most
colossal and costly stalemates the world has
ever seen. After twenty-five years, this period
seems to have lived its life. The leaders of the
big nations are beginning to see each other,
to talk to each other, and to sort out their
problems. As a result, we have seen one local
conflict after the other being solved. There
has been a vast thaw from Germany to
[Page 9] Korea. Problems created or exacerbated by
Yalta and by the Cold War are being settled
one by one. A peace agreement has been
concluded for Viet Nam; the North Koreans
talk to the South Koreans; the East Germans
and the West Germans have come to terms
and have entered the United Nations. We
have even seen the miracle of Israelis and
Arabs talking to each other.
This is a completely new situation. I am personally convinced that the big Powers are fully aware of the type of world in which we will live and of the new dangers we will face. This is why, in their thinking, remaining local conflicts must be solved, new ones must be avoided, and cooperation must be initiated on more urgent problems. If you review the list of agreements which were signed in Moscow and in Washington, you will see that they are dealing with precisely these problems: the environment, oceanographic research, space cooperation, peaceful uses of the atom, scientific cooperation, and so on. Their other preoccupation is to try to limit the armaments race. This new process of political détente and peaceful coexistence must now be strengthened and transformed into a process of permanent peace and worldwide cooperation. China, which remained isolated for so many years, is now in the United Nations. This was imperative, for there can be no collective thinking and planetary cooperation if a mass of 750 million people is not represented in the central international organs. We must be grateful that the United Nations has become universal at the precise moment when the world is entering the age of global opportunities and menaces.
These are only a few of the most prominent problems confronting the human species. There are other issues concerning freedom, justice, equality, races, independence, migration, human rights. All of these have been brought to the United Nations, which has become the greatest think-tank on earth regarding the aspirations of humanity and its future. Meetings on all these problems are being held at the United Nations practically on a continuous basis.
LET ME NOW TURN to the second facet—the
relations of the human race with its physical
world. Here again things are changing very
rapidly. The world has discovered that it will
have to pay increasing attention to the assessment
and discovery of more natural resources
as well as to their rational use and reuse. One
crisis has been emerging after the other
lately. Others may be in preparation. Many
of them were forecast at the United Nations
as far back as fifteen years ago. When we put
together population increase and economic
growth, we knew perfectly well that there
was going to be an environmental crisis, an
energy crisis, a food crisis, and, tomorrow, a
water crisis. How else could it be, when
people multiply to such an extent and use per
person continuously increasing quantities of
natural resources? Take the problem of
energy. In 1957 the United Nations published
the first reports on new sources of
energy, and in 1960 it held in Rome the first
world conference on that subject. We were
convinced that the utilization of coal and
fossil fuels, as well as of atomic energy,
might not be in the long run satisfactory
solutions, either because they were exhaustible
or because they presented dangers for the
environment. We tried to direct attention to
new and clean sources of energy, such as
solar energy, geothermal energy, and thermal
differences of sea levels. Governments did
not really listen. Current resources seemed to
be unlimited. It is only in the last year or so
that the problem suddenly came to the fore.
The 1957 and 1960 United Nations documents
and proceedings went rapidly out of
stock and are now being reproduced in major
technical journals. And this year United
States firms went strongly into the development
of geothermal energy and solar energy.
Twenty-one major firms have recently joined
their efforts to try to make solar energy a
reality on our planet, after it had already
become a reality in outer space programs.
[Page 10]
Incidentally, in the midst of our scientific
and technological elation, we should never
forget that we humans are not little gods or
kings. True enough, we have one of the most
refined brains of all species. We are able to
modify matter and unlock secrets which
remain impenetrable to other species. But we
are not unlimited masters of the physical
world. Our planet is receiving each day from
its sun phenomenal quantities of energy
compared with which our uses of coal, petroleum,
gas, and even atomic energy are infinitesimal.
The sun’s energy is captured by
photosynthesis, and we receive it via plants
and animal flesh. How many of us in this
room remember that we are seventy percent
water, that we are chemicals held together in
sixty trillion cells, that we are part of a food
chain, of a water chain, of an energy cycle,
and of infinitely complex biological processes
which scientists are only beginning to understand
and unlock.
We must, therefore, turn to scientists and biologists for a better understanding of what is going on on our planet and draw the necessary political conclusions. Alas, life is not yet fully understood. While in the physical sphere, we have unlocked most mechanical and chemical laws and harnessed the energy of the atom, in biology, we still know very little. The full understanding of the biology of a human being will still require another fifty to a hundred years of research. The field of inquiry remains immense, but biologists have already presented us with a completely new picture of the world. They have shown us the biosphere, that thin layer of atmosphere, water and earth, only a few miles thick, in which all the life of our solar system is concentrated. They have revealed to us the complexity and fragility of the innumerable life, chemical, and energy cycles which are taking place in this biosphere and in which man is both an actor and a prisoner. Biologists have begun to show concern for man’s massive interventions in these cycles, and they have warned us to be careful. As a result political thinking on this planet will never be the same. Until recently, throughout the entire previous history, man believed that he could act endlessly. He thought that water was unlimited, that air was endless, that soil was plentiful. When I studied economics, one of the first axioms I learned was that air and water had no value because they were unlimited. Since then it seems that air and water have been ascribed a value! As time will pass, they might even become two of the most valuable goods on earth. Sometimes I think of the Aztecs and of ancient people who instinctively adored the sun, the waters, and the winds for they saw in them the masters of the human species. We had forgotten these simple truths, but we may perhaps be forced to learn them again.
When it comes to the physical surrounding
of the human species, a lot has been learned
and done by man, but we seem to be only at
the beginning. Take the largest area of our
globe, the seas and oceans, which cover
seventy percent of our planet. Until recently
they were the object of very little attention.
When, in 1966, the Secretary-General of the
United Nations submitted to the General
Assembly a report on the uses of the seas and
oceans by man, we were appalled to discover
how little research and technology was being
devoted to the world’s oceans. And yet, is it
not the prime source of our oxygen, the
reservoir of our rains and water and potentially
the main source of the protein needed
for tomorrow’s huge world population? Fortunately,
in the last few years, ocean research
and technology have mushroomed and have
opened up new vistas to man’s mastery over
his environment. An International Oceanographic
Scientific Research Programme was
established by UNESCO. Cooperation has
started between the United States and the
Soviet Union. Last summer, the United Nations
Economic and Social Council requested
a study of the world’s coastlines and a new
progress report on the uses of the ocean by
man. A World Conference on the Law of the
Sea began its sessions yesterday in New York
in order to establish a legal framework for
[Page 11] man’s cooperation and uses of the seas and
oceans, the bulk of which have been declared
a common heritage of mankind. In the future
a mining company wanting to exploit the
seabed’s riches may have to pay royalties
which will be used for better knowledge and
protection of our water masses or for the
improvement of the lot of the poor countries.
The Romans had aquaculture in front of
each of their coastal cities; if we would
imitate their example, we could multiply by
many times the yearly catch of protein from
our seas and oceans. We will have an
opportunity to review thoroughly such questions
since the United States a few weeks ago
proposed in the General Assembly that a
world food conference be urgently held next
year, in view of the food shortages which
have developed lately on our planet.
A United Nations International Advisory Council on Protein was established sometime ago to foster more effective and faster ways to produce proteins. Tree leaves can be transformed into proteins and yield per acre three times more protein than wheat or rice. These are new adventures in man’s utilization of his environment. but so much remains to be done. Take our continents. Only one-third of their surface is being utilized. We have scarcely paid attention to our vast deserts and mountain areas. The international community woke up only recently to the necessity of doing something about the vast Sahelian area in War Africa where millions of people were in danger of dying as a result of a prolonged drought and the advance of the Sahara. UNESCO concluded last year that the human race was doing appallingly little about its deserts. But it required a crisis to arouse public opinion and to get governments to react. The same happened with the environment and the world food situation. This is certainly the wrong way to deal with our planet’s problems.
The world’s natural interdependence has been revealed to us dramatically by scientists, and we have rendered it even more interdependent through travel, transport, finance, communications, aviation, satellites, and the hauling of huge quantities of foodstuffs, goods, and minerals from one corner of the earth to the other.
In such a world not enough is being done at the center, at the top, and above all together. Not only is there insufficient thinking, action, and commitment to consolidate these fragile interdependencies, but far too little is being done to improve the knowledge of our planet’s potentialities and to develop it further.
We must never forget this dominant feature of the years to come: growing numbers of people multiplied by growing rates of consumption. The figures will be staggering. Can one assume for a moment that America will stop to grow? Can one assume that the poorer countries would not wish to attain high standards of living? Well, sustaining an American over his lifespan requires today 56 million gallons of water, 37,000 gallons of gasoline, 5½ tons of meat, 5½ tons of wheat, 9 tons of milk and creams, and so on. Multiply such figures by 4 billion, 7 billion, or 12 billion; and you will see that either we need a new worldwide attack to solve our food, energy, and natural resources requirements, or we will see existing interdependencies endangered and a return to isolationism.
Take water, not to speak of the energy
problem which is on the front pages of the
newspapers. Only five percent of all water on
earth is unsalted, and the greatest part of
it—eighty percent—is frozen in polar caps.
Only 1.2 percent of all liquid fresh water is
contained in lakes, the atmosphere, and
rivers. Ninety-eight percent of it is contained
in huge natural underground reservoirs of
which governments and the United Nations
are beginning to draw up the world map.
Some of this water, a billion years old, is
being depleted, particularly in Africa; and in
other parts of the earth it is being polluted.
There is no world management of our water
resources, and only a beginning is being
made within nations. There is no world
[Page 12] attack on the problem of desalination which
could be our greatest hope for the future,
especially for food production in arid zones.
Potential conflicts must be foreseen between
nations over water resources, be it in the air
as a result of growing rainmaking activities
in the most advanced countries or on the
ground in the case of international rivers and
common underground reservoirs. In some
heavily industrialized countries, trebling of
water needs is being forecast for the remainder
of this century, while water tables
diminish, and much water becomes unfit for
human consumption.
There remains so much to be done on this planet. We must know, use, develop, and protect our resources for man’s benefit: in the deserts, in the world ocean, in the Arctic and Antarctic, in the tropics, in the atmosphere, in outer space, in relation with our sun, in the depth of our grounds, in the mountains, in the biosphere, and, last but not the least, in the human sphere where peace and cooperation must become the iron rule between governments. There is no time left for anachronistic conflicts, divisions, and alliances. Much vaster tasks, opportunities, and dangers await the human race. For the first time in his evolution, man sees his planet with an astronaut’s eyes or with the mind of a Copernicus. The only justifiable alliance in present-day circumstances is the alliance of all peoples.
THERE REMAINS so much to be done! For
example, of the more than 350,000 plants
which have been identified by botanists on
our planet, only 3,000 have been tried for
human consumption. Of all research expenditures
on this planet, only one percent is
being spent on the conditions in the poorer
regions where nature has produced some of
its greatest biological riches. The whole
energy pattern of our planet requires review.
For example, in the wake of the energy crisis,
it has become known that while U.S. corn
production per acre has trebled since 1945, in
energy terms the yield has diminished from
3.8 kilocalories of output in 1945 to 2.7
kilocalories in 1970 per kilocalorie of input.
Scientists, technologists, private firms, educators, governments are all engaged today in a vast effort to further human progress, but not enough is being done on the world’s global problems. Fortunately, the General Assembly has just approved the statutes of the United Nations University, a worldwide cooperative venture which will be able to direct many minds and efforts to the overall needs and problems of this globe.
The human adventure on earth is taking worldwide proportions. We are trying to do in the year 1973 what our forefathers have tried to do for thousands of years: to fight for good over evil, for peace over war, for justice over injustice, for order over disorder. The arena for these efforts is now worldwide. As Einstein said. “God is a basic tendency of the universe.” More complex, more intensive, and more staggering problems lie ahead of us. We must be bracing ourselves for them, and it is fortunate that we possess worldwide instruments at the precise moment of history and evolution when the human species enters its global age.
Humanity is equipping itself slowly but surely with collective analytical tools, worldwide warning systems, and a network of feedbacks and monitoring—in other words, with some kind of a brain and nervous system. There is barely a subject on earth which does not have international dimensions or repercussions and which is not the object of international study and concern. We are all part of this process, the leaders of big and small nations, people of the North and of the South, of East and West, rich and poor, black and white, in the capitals and in the villages, in our homes and in our offices.
We stand on the threshold of the greatest
period of human evolution ever filled with
immense opportunities but also with menaces.
No one can live in splendid isolation in
the new global conditions prevailing around
us. One day there is an energy crisis, and
people are affected by it in the remotest
[Page 13] places of the earth. Another time, there is a
world grain shortage due to bad crops and
natural disasters, and millions of people are
affected, either directly through hunger, or
indirectly through price increases. Environmental
dangers lurk over our common atmosphere,
oxygen, ocean, and waters. These
problems are now of daily concern to everyone
everywhere. They are in the daily newspapers.
Therefore, if we want to know what
will happen to our children, to our communities,
to our future, we are almost inescapably
forced to think about the world as
a whole. We have become so numerous, and
we are so active in transforming our natural
surroundings that the total effects may turn
against every single one of us if we are not
careful. We cannot think and act from year
to year and from hand to mouth. We must
think and act years ahead. We must begin to
manage our resources, our actions, behavior,
and interventions in a new fashion, taking
into account the new worldwide dimensions
and long term effects which are being imposed
on us with an iron fist by our own
discoveries, intelligence, and drives ahead.
We must be consistent with ourselves.
Against this background, the armaments
race, remaining local conflicts, the game of
alliances, and the reluctance to support international
cooperation and the United Nations
are not only anachronistic but will be considered
some day as one of the blemishes of our
period of transition from the industrial revolution
to the new global age. Our only hope,
which seems to be borne out by recent
events, is that the leaders in the capitals
begin to understand that we must urgently
move from détente and accommodation to
entente and cooperation. The greatest task
for our leaders and for the United Nations
still lies ahead: to think together and to act
together in peace, justice, and progress for
the human species living on its miraculous
little planet circling in the universe.
- ↑ In February 1975 the world population stood at 4 billion 29 million people. The United Nations forecasts that in a hundred years the world population will reach under a low assumption 9.4 billion people, under a medium assumption 12.2 billion, and under a high assumption 15.8 billion, with a stabilization of the world population at 16 billion.
The Ghost of the World Future
BY RICHARD N. GARDNER
Professor Gardner made these remarks at a
conference on future studies held in Moscow by
the United Nations Institute for Training and
Research. The conference recommended the
establishment of a “Commission on the Future”
to assess critical world trends. Reprinted from
The Interdependent, October 1974, p. 3, by
permission from Richard N. Gardner and the
United Nations Association of the United States
of America. Copyright © 1974 by the United
Nations Association of the United States of
America.
I HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED in the rule
that one should never speak at an
international conference after a transcontinental
airplane voyage. Since I’m breaking
that rule today, I ask you not to hold
me fully responsible for what I am about
to tell you, especially as it is so incredible
that you probably won’t wish to believe it.
I wrote it all down a few hours ago so that
I would leave nothing out.
I awoke at about two a.m. this morning —it must have been the change of time— to hear some very curious noises. There was a clanking of chains and some terrible moaning. Then my room lit up and I saw a thin, emaciated-looking man dressed in rags standing in front of my bed.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I am the ghost of the world future,” he answered.
“Go away,” I said, “you look like some silly character out of Charles Dickens.”
“Don’t make fun of me,” he said very sternly, “or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.” And with that he grabbed me with a bony hand, and by some magic we were soon flying high above the roofs of Moscow.
“Oh no,” I thought to myself, “I knew I should never have drunk that extra toast at the Praga Restaurant last night!”
The spirit took me on a long voyage through time and space until we came to a desolate wasteland where there were no trees or flowers, and human beings were all huddled in underground dwellings. We came somehow into one of these dwellings where two old people, a man and a woman, were sitting at a table.
“Who are these people?” I said.
“They are your children,” said the spirit.
“But they are old and bent, and their hair is gray,” I said.
“Of course. This is the year two thousand and thirty,” said the spirit.
“But why are they living underground, in a joyless house with no windows?”
“It is too dangerous above ground,” the spirit explained, “too much radioactivity, for one thing. You see, around 1990 a missile with one hundred independently-targeted nuclear warheads was launched by accident from a submarine—no one is sure whether it was American, Russian or Chinese, or one of the submarines operated by the Mafia—and since then atomic bombs have been exploded almost every year by nations or terrorist organizations.”
“Why is this house so bare?” I asked.
[Page 15] “It looks like a prison.”
“The world economy collapsed around 1984,” answered the spirit. “Surely you’re not surprised. Even at the time of your conference in Moscow in 1974 spending on armaments had reached $250 billion a year. By 1984, despite the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks agreement about which you were all so proud, arms spending had reached an annual rate of more than a trillion dollars. The economics of the poor nations collapsed first—particularly those who were exploding nuclear devices or buying jet aircraft when they couldn’t feed their people—and then even the advanced industrial nations began to disintegrate under the arms burden. But probably the richest countries could have survived if the Arabs hadn’t decided to withdraw 500 billion of their petrodollars from the Eurodollar market one weekend in the summer of 1984. By the way,” the spirit added with a sardonic smile, “your children are living in the Eighth UN Development Decade.”
“Why are my children all alone?” I asked. “Didn’t they marry, don’t they have children?”
“I’m sorry to tell you that your daughter’s husband and your son’s wife died in a terrorist raid on the city many years ago. There is no effective government anymore, you know.”
“But surely their children had children —surely there must be grandchildren to comfort them in their old age?”
“There are no grandchildren. When world population passed twelve billion in the year two thousand and twenty after the failure of the tenth World Population Conference, all but a relatively few privileged couples were sterilized.”
“Why are they nibbling those strange pills at the table?” I asked.
“That’s their dinner. You can’t expect them to eat bread, now that it’s selling for $300 a loaf. There’s no meat left, of course. And don’t even ask about fish. After ten years of futile negotiations, the Law of the Sea Conference that began in Caracas in 1974 broke up. By that time overfishing had depleted most of the stocks of edible fish, and the remainder were poisoned by land-based sources of pollution which the UN Environment Program was never permitted by its members to control.”
At that point an entire wall of the room suddenly lit up and the image of a man appeared about ten feet high in living color.
“What’s that!” I asked.
“It’s time for the evening television news,” the spirit answered. “You see, the one thing that people still have is television. It’s bigger and better than ever, and it takes their mind off their problems.”
The face on the wall in living color
began to speak: “Good evening, this is
Walter Cronkite the 3rd. I have good
news for you tonight. The United Nations
Institute for Training and Research
(UNITAR) is holding its 3,191st meeting
to discuss the creation of a Commission on
[Page 16] the Future that can help us all plan a
better world.”
The old man turned off the television in disgust. The old lady said, “Didn’t our father once go to UNITAR meetings?” The old man answered, “Yes, he was a fraud like everyone else. He did a lot of talking, but he never did anything.”
“Spirit,” I said, “I can stand no more. You must tell me something: is this a vision of what must be, or is it only a vision of what might be if mankind doesn’t change its ways?”
“Come now,” said the spirit, “You are supposed to be a futurist. This is only a scenario—scenario of what will happen if you go on as you are. There are other and more hopeful scenarios.”
“Then what must we do?”
“You and your friends at the UNHTAR conference in Moscow know in your hearts what you must do, though you probably will be too diplomatic to say it. You human beings must stop worshiping at the idol of nationalism and start accepting the moral and political implications of interdependence. You must stop pretending that the weak international institutions you now have will be sufficient to cope with the problems of the future.
“You must discard obsolete dogmas that prevent you from seeing the world as it is. You must reject the idea that all the troubles of the world result from the exploitation of one class by another or of one nation by another. You must recognize that the greatest difference in the world today is not between Communists and non-Communists, between rich and poor, between blacks and whites, or between young and old, but between those who can see only the interests of a limited group and those who can see the interests of mankind as a whole.
“To be more specific, you must replace balance of power politics with world order politics. You must go beyond détente, which is a good beginning but is not enough, into planning and management on a global scale. You must convert arms control agreements into genuine disarmament, give the UN real power for peacekeeping and peacemaking, double the transfer of resources to developing countries in the Second Development Decade, insist that governments in both developed and developing countries rule on behalf of all the people and not just a privileged few, establish national and international procedures to protect human rights and put into effect, through the UN, a world food policy, a world energy policy, a world environment policy and a world population policy to bring man and nature into balance.
“And,” he added, “You must also tell your friends at the Moscow meeting what you have seen tonight. Perhaps if they tell the men who run the affairs of the world about the future I have shown you, they can be persuaded to change their ways before it is too late. But there isn’t much time.”
And with that, Mr. Chairman, this strange dream ended, and I found myself sitting in my room all alone. I have obeyed the spirit’s order to tell you what happened, but as I said at the outset, it’s the day after a long airplane voyage, and I’m not responsible for what I say.
Economics and the Bahá’í Teachings: An Overview
BY GREGORY C. DAHL
The very nature of economics is rooted in nationalism.
—Joan Robinson
I should like to acknowledge my special indebtedness
to Philip Christensen, without whose
friendship and indirect encouragement much of
this article would never have been written.
The numbered footnotes are at the end of the article.
AMONG THOSE attracted to the nonmaterial
aspects of life—such as insight and
art, human relations, the building of family
life, psychological health, joys and sorrows,
and spiritual and moral progress—economics
has long been considered not only of very
distant concern but somehow inferior and
contaminated. Many religious traditions, for
example, teach that spiritual and material
life are in some sense antithetical and that
progress in one necessarily means retrogression
in the other. The problems of daily
living and sustenance, which undeniably
exist in the materiel plane, are either deemphasized
in religious teachings or are
regarded with distrust as a source of temptations
and error.
Economists, for their part, have not helped much to bridge the gap between their discipline and ethical questions. preferring to take refuge in self-consistent theoretical worlds of highly simplified models or in empirical, mechanistic worlds of regression analysis and statistics, all comprehensible only to themselves. Normative premises underlying these constructs are well disguised, and attention is effectively diverted from them. Even relatively technical assumptions, unrelated to moral and ethical questions, are well concealed and thus effectively entrenched, and when a highly skilled innovator such as Keynes succeeds in rooting out and overturning a weak assumption, he becomes a hero in the field because his task was so difficult. There is even very little effort in the profession to relate it to other social disciplines which deal with different aspects of the same nexus of man’s social life. It is unusual to find a Myrdal, a Galbraith, or a Hirschman, who takes a broader view of economics, placing it in the context of man’s social or political existence.[1] How much rarer to find an economist who frankly admits and analyzes his own value premises and integrates them honestly into his analysis![2]
It is thus especially refreshing and challenging
to find within the Teachings of
Bahá’u’lláh the foundations for a highly
integrated approach to economics in relation
to men’s inner spiritual life, his social life, his
community and national life, and worldwide
peace and prosperity. The Bahá’í view is
based on two categories of belief: first, that
man’s “nature” (and thus his economic and
political-social behavior) is subject to education
and change through experience, formal
education, and religion; and, second, that
man’s social organization must evolve and is
now evolving toward a unified world system
of government, in which “all the peoples of
the world [will] regard themselves as citizens
of one common fatherland.”[3] Bahá’ís
see two contrasting processes at work in the
world today. On the one hand, there are
unifying processes, which include incredible
advances during the past century in the
technologies of communications, travel,
trade, and warfare; the experiences of two
world wars; a great increase in general
education and world awareness among the
[Page 20] majority of mankind; widespread economic
“demonstration effects” (social tensions arising
from the world’s poor being exposed to
the living standards of the world’s rich); the
movement towards a “welfare state” in several
rich countries; and a vast increase in the
interrelatedness of national economies. On
the other hand, there are divisive processes
such as rising nationalism; the failure first of
colonial systems and then of bilateral aid
programs; the adverse experiences between
the wars with the linkage between economies
in times of depression; the more recent
difficulties arising from cartels in international
commodities markets; and perhaps
most important the persistence of age-old
attitudes and prejudices on the part of individuals
concerning foreign peoples, class divisions,
political ideologies, religious beliefs,
territorial rights, and human rights in general.
Bahá’ís believe that the struggle between
these two processes is the central
conflict in the social battles of our time and
that chaos, confusion, instability, physical
hardship, and outright war will increase (for
lack of any unifying counterforce) until the
nations of the world are willing to relinquish
a certain measure of their national sovereignty
to a world government capable of both
enforcing peace and representing the collective
and national interests of mankind in a
somewhat reasonable manner. Bahá’ís call
this stage the “Lesser Peace,” which will lead
in time to the “Most Great Peace,” an era of
much greater spiritual and social progress for
mankind made possible in part by the prior
establishment of world peace and security
during the “Lesser Peace,” in part by our
great scientific and technical advances (releasing
an ever greater proportion of man’s
energies for pursuits other than the satisfaction
of basic material needs), and most
especially by the recognition of the spiritual
teachings of religion, which have the capacity
to unify man’s inner as well as his social self.
It should be repeated that Bahá’ís regard this
process toward world unification as inevitable
—at least in the context of the choice
between such unification and eventual universal
destruction. The only variable is the
time needed for mankind to grow into the
new requirements of the age, to learn from
the ever-present lessons of unnecessary suffering
and conflict, and to arise for the promotion
of the principles of unity and equality.
Unfortunately, the thinking of economists has been far removed from the world view embodied in the Bahá’í teachings. Virtually all economiSts assume or take as given and immutable both the present world political system and observed human behavior. Thus both macro- and micro-economics rest on foundations almost entirely inconsistent with the Bahá’í assumptions outlined above, with the result that a Bahá’í theorist must in some ways be an even more heroic pathbreaker than a Keynes or a Marx. For a Bahá’í economist who lets his imagination roam the future, a central question would be: If a world state were to come into being tomorrow, what should be the form and shape of its economic programs and policies, both short-term and long-term? What should its economic objectives be, and how should they be reached? Of the available rather extensive body of literature on international economics very little would be of use in answering such questions. On the microeconomic level a Bahá’í economist would also wish to ask: If Bahá’í views and attitudes were to spread and widely to influence economic thinking, what would be the appropriate actions to take and how should present-day institutions be modified on the national level as well as on the level of a business firm? Once more, the current theories of economists, devoid of moral content, are only of limited usefulness.
Let us begin exploring the possible answers
to these questions by reviewing in
summary fashion the Bahá’í teachings on
economics and indicating some of the possible
implications of these teachings. I will
discuss basic principles first and develop
their implications separately, both as a matter
of intellectual honesty and because the
Bahá’í teachings themselves (as given in the
[Page 21] Writings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá)
are confined almost exclusively to principles,
their elaboration being left to Bahá’í economists
of the future.[4] It is my hope that the
following review will raise many more questions
than it will answer and will motivate or
inspire fresh forays into a vast and almost
unexplored field of tremendous importance
for the future prosperity of mankind.
Basic Principles
THE FOLLOWING, in brief summary form, are the teachings and principles of the Bahá’í Faith which I feel are most immediately relevant to a consideration of man’s economic life.
Private Ownership. Bahá’u’lláh, in one of His earliest writings, clearly establishes the right of private ownership and individual earnings, making violation of such rights a spiritual offense. Thus communism in the strict sense is definitely not envisioned.[5]
Progressive Taxation. The principle of the elimination of extremes of wealth and poverty is forcefully and repeatedly emphasized in the Bahá’í writings. The methods specifically advocated include progressive taxation and government programs to assure an adequate level of security and standard of health, as well as others detailed below.[6]
State Welfare Programs. Government programs to provide for the welfare of society and groups within it are specifically advocated, with special emphasis on universal compulsory education; care for the sick, infirm, aged, and orphans; and a satisfactory standard of welfare for the poor.[7] Consideration by the state (as well as individuals) for the needs of minorities is a fundamental principle.[8]
Profit Sharing. The need for distribution of some percentage of profits of each enterprise to the workers in that enterprise is stressed in the Bahá’í teachings.[9]
Cooperation of Management and Labor. The fundamental belief of Bahá’ís in the importance and power of the spirit of unity is specifically applied in the Bahá’í writings to labor disputes and decision making in the firm. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá stressed that management and labor benefit from each other’s endeavors, that they must recognize this fact of mutual interdependence, become imbued with a cooperative spirit, and found institutions and meetings in which full information is exchanged and the needs of each group are rationally integrated into decision-making machinery in which labor is definitely and integrally included.[10]
Arbitration of Disputes. Differences between labor and management, as between any groups in a worldwide society, if not resolved by consultation between them, should be settled by arbitration or through legal process and not through the use of force or civil disruption as manifested in strikes or war.[11]
Prohibition of Gambling. Gambling is strictly prohibited by Bahá’u’lláh.[12] Since the term as used by Bahá’u’lláh is not clearly defined in Bahá’í sources available in English, we shall assume the definition given in Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary: “to stake something on a contingency: SPECULATE.”[13] Although some speculation is inherent in any economic activity in a risky world, certain forms of speculation allowed and even encouraged in our present system, as discussed below, would not accord with this principle.
Dispersion of Inheritance. Bahá’u’lláh has made it obligatory for Bahá’ís to prepare a will, and He recommended, in cases of intestacy, a specific division of property which provides for dispersion of wealth among all offspring and immediate relatives in various proportions.[14] The maintenance of large estates is thus discouraged, independently of laws which might be enacted to limit concentration of wealth. Bahá’u’lláh included teachers among the recommended recipients of inheritance, a principle which could lead in the future to a large voluntary funding of educational institutions.
World Government. As already described,
Bahá’u’lláh envisioned a world government
[Page 22] which would come into being in stages, with
absolute control over international military
forces, limited rights of taxation, and other
authority necessary for the maintenance of
international peace and prosperity (such as
regulatory powers over international trade
and capital flows, over international emigration,
over domestic economic policies as they
affect the world system, and conceivably even
over domestic policies conflicting with international
standards of human rights and welfare).[15]
A World Currency. The need for a single, unified world currency is emphasized in the Bahá’í writings.[16] This principle implies an exceedingly high degree of world economic unification, the assumption of regulatory powers by a world authority, a world banking structure, and far-reaching programs of economic equalization of the differences between nations, as discussed below.
Mineral Wealth and Other Resources. The Bahá’í writings mention the need for the limited and unevenly distributed natural resources of the globe to be developed for the benefit of mankind, under the control of the world government to assure the equitable distribution of benefits. One of the economically most significant rights to be ceded by sovereign nations to a world government would thus be authority over the mineral wealth and energy sources within their boundaries and in the seas.[17]
Elimination of Economic Barriers. The integration of the world into a global society specifically includes, in the Bahá’í view, the eventual elimination of barriers to trade and commercial transactions.[18] To reinforce this movement, Bahá’u’lláh advocated the adoption of a single auxiliary language and script to be taught in all the schools of the world, thus eliminating one of the greatest obstacles to economic as well as cultural interchange.[19]
Individual Spiritual Principles. Numerous spiritual principles relating to individual behavior are elucidated in the Bahá’í teachings. Among the most important for economic behavior are the fundamental need for honesty as the foundation of all other virtues; service to mankind as the keynote of our lives and the source of our greatest happiness and advancement; and work (especially in the sense of a profession or occupation) as a spiritual obligation, not just a material one.[20] Implied in these principles, and specifically discussed in many places in the Bahá’í writings, is the need for the rich to become cognizant of the needs of the poor and to share voluntarily their wealth for the purpose of promoting the general well-being of mankind as well as for their own spiritual progress.[21] Fundamental to these attitudes is the belief that material conditions are only a reflection of spiritual conditions and that the foundation for economic and social reform must therefore be sought in the inner life of man.[22]
These are, then, in brief form, some of the Bahá’í principles most relevant to economics. Various observations and speculations immediately present themselves and invite discussion. These topics are most easily organized into those which treat primarily national concerns (including both microeconomic problems and some aspects of what is now thought of as macroeconomics), and those which deal with world problems.
National Economics
Distribution of Wealth. One of the most
critical problems of our time is the increasing
tension developing between the growing
forces of egalitarianism and equal opportunity,
on the one hand, and the traditional
forces of economic and political power vested
in a privileged few, on the other hand. In the
United States, where income redistribution
and the sharing of the benefits of progress
have proceeded farther than in most other
countries, wealth (as opposed to income)
continues to be extremely concentrated.
Using the most recent data available, for
1962, I have calculated that the wealthiest
2.4 percent of U.S. households own about 38
percent of the country’s private wealth, while
[Page 23] the poorest 44 percent own only 2.7 percent
of that wealth.[23] In capitalist societies such
as those of the West, wealth brings with it
power to influence the lives of others as well
as security for oneself; and the tremendous
concentration of economic power in a few
hands, though not well understood or documented,
is in my opinion one of the fundamental
causes of the uneasiness and rebellion
among many Americans in their relations
with the large organizations which control
their society. If more Americans had a greater
personal stake in these large organizations,
both in terms of financial participation and
decision making, they undoubtedly would
not only sympathize with the needs of these
organizations and cease thinking of them as
the enemy and exploiter but would find ways
to understand better the problems of large
organizations and perhaps even to change
those organizations to reflect better the overall
objectives of society. The effects of such
restructuring would of course be at least
equal, and perhaps even more dramatic, in
most other countries where the concentration
of wealth is much greater than it is in the
United States.
The political realist and the ordinary economist may immediately object that a redistribution of wealth in today’s societies is impossible and utopian except in the context of the revolutionary class struggle and a violent overthrow of existing regimes in favor of more egalitarian ones. By contrast, Bahá’ís believe that in the end human social welfare can only rest on cooperation, the recognition of harmony of interests, and the rule of legitimate law and political process. In many countries social reformers are finding that the process of moving toward an egalitarian society is an evolutionary one of growth, changing attitudes, and a gradual reform of institutions. Naturally Bahá’ís would prefer this approach as productive of greater unification, less violence, and greater welfare during the period of transition. One may even argue that it is the only realistic alternative for most of the poorest countries of the world. In the context of a world government with vast resources for development programs, a restructuring of wealth within nations might be possible without any of the violence and economic dislocation currently associated with the process.
It should also be noted that most socialists and revolutionaries advocate ownership by the state of the means of production, while the Bahá’í position is only that private wealth must be more nearly equal. Thus in a Bahá’í society the state could own a significant share of the means of production (as in India today); or, alternatively, the ownership could simply be more equally distributed in private hands. In the United States an equal redistribution of private financial assets to everyone age eighteen or over would amount to about $19,000 per person!
The elimination of extremes of poverty,
though an even more difficult problem than
the elimination of extremes of wealth, is
currently receiving much more attention and
need not be treated in detail here. Suffice it
to say that the provision of an adequate
minimum standard of living and health by
the state has tremendous implications for
individual behavior and attitudes both economic
and noneconomic. In contrast to
Darwinian notions of survival of the fittest
and competition for scarce resources even
unto death, Bahá’u’lláh teaches that every
human being has the right to a reasonable
level of personal welfare, entirely independent
of his or her ability to be economically
productive. However, Bahá’u’lláh dismisses
the concept of absolute equality as false and
unworkable, supporting rather the view that
above the assured minimum level (and below
a maximum level), economic rewards
should be roughly proportional to effort and
ability. Further, Bahá’u’lláh has made it incumbent
upon Bahá’ís to be productive and
work in the spirit of service to mankind as a
prerequisite to personal spiritual growth (entirely
apart from material benefit). The dignity
of man is thus of central importance—
an adequate standard of living is a right
[Page 24] established by the religion of God, not a
demeaning dole reinforcing the feeling of
failure in a society that measures worth by
riches. Welfare or negative income tax programs
in a society inspired by Bahá’í ideals
would of necessity reflect this philosophy in
the form and spirit of their administration.[24]
Turning now to an area which to a non-Bahá’í will seem more speculative, we can ponder briefly the impact on society and on economic theory of Bahá’u’lláh’s repeated injunction to the rich to share voluntarily their wealth with the poor. It must be understood that this Teaching, like so many others in the Bahá’í system, can only make sense in the context of the entire Bahá’í view of life. Bahá’u’lláh said that man’s highest station, his supreme fulfillment—and therefore the source of his greatest happiness—is the station of servitude. Through the desire to serve others and to increase the welfare of others, one’s own welfare (both spiritual and psychological) will be furthered. This emphasis on service is the basis for the dynamic unity, based on the freedom and encouragement of the individual rather than on conformity, which is characteristic of Bahá’í community life today and which Bahá’ís believe will increasingly become the pattern for social life on the planet as the ideals propounded by Bahá’u’lláh are more widely recognized. For a Bahá’í, then, dedicating one’s time, energy, and resources to the promotion of social good comes quite naturally. If and when these fundamentally religious attitudes spread more widely, especially among the wealthier classes and peoples of the world, a fundamental transformation of society will occur. We can imagine that wealthy individuals wishing to do good for mankind will establish philanthropic institutions and trusts for the promotion of worthwhile endeavors not otherwise funded, as the Rockefellers and Fords have done. Persons of ordinary income might well contribute shares to such trusts. In the competition to be of unique service, donors will provide financial support for all manner of interesting and novel contributions to society. One could imagine funds for the support of diverse arts, such as sidewalk music, handcrafts, beautification of the cities, or the planting of trees, as well as the more obvious promotion of basic research, authorship of all kinds, the formal arts, experimental programs of social welfare, and so forth. In essence, individuals in such a society would be making personal consumption decisions in favor of “public goods” such as these, presently grossly neglected in our “advanced” society, as opposed to personal consumption goods such as better cars, more electric devices for the kitchen, longer vacations, or fancier hobby apparatus. One can envision a simultaneous process of transformation, as inward-looking, self-centered lives become more outward-looking and society-conscious, and the economic structure of society shifts from a preponderance of personal consumption, to the provision of more services and “public goods.”[25] It is difficult even to imagine the society which would ultimately evolve if such a process were to be set in motion.
Industrial Relations. Bahá’í principles regarding the relationship of management and labor, the need for profit sharing, for cooperative decision making in the firm, and for the avoidance of strikes through arbitration or legal process, together with the elimination of extreme concentrations of wealth (and hence economic power), could by themselves revolutionize the spirit of the private enterprise system and change the lives of hundreds of millions of industrial workers. We shall turn now to a discussion of these principles.
The concept of profit sharing is not new. It
has even been tried in a small number of
firms with some success. Today, however,
profit sharing is typically restricted to executives
or salesmen and is often similar in
impact to stock options and other “fringe
benefit” incentives. Here, much research is
needed to renew interest in profit-sharing
techniques and to clarify its potential importance.
[Page 25] Many aspects need to be explored,
such as the optimum percentage of profits to
be redistributed, the magnitude of expected
increase in work incentives and possible
disincentives to investors (who may lose
income), the treatment of reinvested earnings
versus distributed earnings, the optimal
accounting practices in large corporations
with many divisions so as to maximize incentives
in each division, and the design of an
appropriate formula for distributing profits
to workers to reflect justly the magnitude of
their individual contributions to the firm. For
instance, it may be that some 20 to 50
percent of profits net of reinvestment and
taxes should be distributed to workers proportionally
according to their wages over the
preceding three years, with benefits continuing
to an employee after he leaves the
firm according to the same formula (to
reflect his previous contribution to the firm).
Reinvested profits, which add to the net
worth of the firm, should perhaps generate a
similar proportion of new stock equity distributed
to workers in like fashion, so that
workers benefit from rapid expansion of a
growing firm as well as from realization of
cash profits from past growth. Naturally, a
great deal of controversy surrounds these
questions, and there is ample room for experimentation
as well as theoretical and
historical studies.
The success of efforts at cooperative decision making and arbitration of disputes rests on less objective foundations, and undoubtedly a great deal of effort and good will on both sides will be needed to reach a reasonable degree of harmony. In any social situation where hatreds and longstanding differences have been allowed to develop, movement toward conciliation is difficult. However, Bahá’ís believe that the spirit of harmony and cooperation is essential to the well-being of society and must be promoted. Through the establishment of labor-management councils, the provision by management of more complete information concerning the conditions of the firm and decisions to be made, the solicitation of suggestions from workers and adequate reward for valuable suggestions, and above all through the continuing demonstration of good faith on both sides, a greater sense of cooperation can be created and disputes can become less frequent. Disputes which do occur can be promptly submitted to arbitration, with the government standing ready to enforce the decision.
Unfortunately, such measures leading toward
a cooperative and participatory spirit in
industry can only succeed if all parties are
willing to take their fair share of losses as
well as gains. At present, in some of the
industrialized countries, many organized
groups have become cognizant of their tremendous
power to halt the functioning of a
much larger economic system of which they
are only a small (but essential) part, and
they have begun to demand an ever-increasing
share of the benefits the economy has to
bestow. However, those whose share might
be reduced by someone else’s increase are
understandably reluctant to acquiesce, and
the result is a persistent tendency to price
inflation which satisfies no one in the end—a
tendency which is increasingly gripping the
industrialized countries and squeezing the
life from once-effective Keynesian remedies
for unemployment. Perhaps if labor and
management could see more clearly the
harmony of interest which binds them, and if
concentrations of economic power through
concentrations of wealth were decreased,
organized groups would feel less victimized
by “the system” and would be less rigid in
their demands.[26] Unfortunately, we may
have to look even deeper for a solution to the
problem of strikes and inflation, to the
materialistic orientation of industrialized societies
which puts such a great stress on
relative wealth and material affluence, leading
inevitably to conflict. Perhaps more equal
distribution of wealth and income would in
itself only increase these materialistic propensities,
and the real solution lies in the
more fundamental spiritual transformation
[Page 26] toward ideals of service and detachment from
worldly things propounded by Bahá’u’lláh.[27]
Size of Businesses and Work Patterns. Another significant problem arising from modern industrial organization is the alienation of workers and concentration of power resulting from the huge size of corporations, not all of which involve intrinsic economies of scale. It can be argued that patent laws, the structure of capital markets, the “every- man-for-himself-no-matter-how-big-he-is” nature of modern capitalism, and the political process itself (which responds to lobbies and other pressure) have all institutionally favored large organizations.[28] Critics of the capitalist system are quick to point out that size breeds influence, which favors size, and so forth. The point is that if political and social decisions, rather than some impelling economies of scale, have favored size (at least for many industries), society could consciously restructure the legal system and take additional steps to encourage small enterprise—if a move in this direction were seen as favorable from a social point of view. For instance, credit facilities and sound business management and marketing advice could be made more widely available to small firms through government sponsored or private organizations. Large retailing chains could be given incentives to buy from numerous small suppliers. Cooperatives of small firms in the same business could be encouraged, helping them achieve economies of size in aspects of their business (such as marketing or purchasing). The government could even sponsor a vast information system for products and prices—a sort of super yellow pages—to promote competition and marketing for small producers. Naturally, the acquisition by many people of small amounts of capital, if wealth were redistributed would be a powerful incentive to many to try their hand at an independent business and the movement toward small businesses would be given a strong impetus.
It may also be argued that the trend in Western society toward ever more immense economic organizations, while benefiting those organizations as corporate entities, is harmful to the self-esteem and initiative of the individuals who work for such organizations. If this is true, the encouragement of small businesses would yield large social returns. After decades of spectacular advance, productivity in America has recently begun to decline, and very few Americans today derive significant pleasure and meaning from their occupations. The American ideals of private enterprise, individual initiative, and hard work for high profits have all but died out—due largely, it may be asserted, to the size of businesses. Profit-sharing schemes and cooperation between labor and management can improve the situation, but the size of firms must also diminish.
It would be possible in the advanced
societies to improve working conditions in
other ways as well. The government could
sponsor an employment information system,
into which both potential employers and
employees would feed data about themselves
and their employment needs. The system
could then match files, issuing to the job
applicant a list of firms with suitable openings.
After reviewing this list the applicant
could release his confidential file to firms he
found attractive. If the system worked well,
not only would it greatly reduce the tremendous
disincentive of present job hunting,
which often requires that a current job be
abandoned to find another, not necessarily
better job; but seasonal employment and part
time employment even on a day-to-day or
week-to-week basis would become more
practical. Many businesses have only sporadic
need for certain occupations, and staff are
often maintained on the payroll even when
not needed to assure their presence or are
“laid off” only to be rehired. With a more
efficient employment system wages could be
less rigid, and unemployed persons could
work at lower-paying jobs while waiting for
a more suitable opening. Similarly, people
might well choose a combination of part-time
jobs on a daily, weekly, or seasonal basis
[Page 27] for the sake of variety: a lawyer might take
frequent breaks from his office routine to do
masonry, benefiting from the exercise and
change of pace. In a future society less class-conscious
than ours, such an arrangement
would undoubtedly be attractive.
Public Welfare Programs. In the Bahá’í writings it is clearly asserted that governments have general responsibility for the care of those otherwise unsupported, such as orphans, the infirm, and the elderly; for the provision of an adequate minimum level of living and health; for universal education; and for the regulation of money, natural resources, and other aspects of the economy in the public interest. One could add, in the spirit of the Bahá’í teachings, the responsibility to encourage employment through appropriate fiscal and monetary policies and through employment-finding services; the restriction of monopolies, of wasteful advertising, and of other harmful practices arising in a capitalist system; the funding of research in fields not adequately funded in the private sector; special attention to the advancement and development of minority groups and backward regions; and the care and beautification of the public environment, both urban and natural.[29] Most of these responsibilities of government are widely accepted today and need not be stressed, though they were quite revolutionary in the time of Bahá’u’lláh, when some of them were first enunciated.
Honesty. Turning to questions of personal
morality rather than social organization, we
may speculate for a moment on the possible
economic impact of an increase in honesty
resulting from the greater spread of religious
conviction. Bahá’u’lláh, like the Founders of
other religions, stressed the great importance
and fundamental character of honesty among
all virtues, making it a spiritual obligation. A
truly religious man will be honest in all
circumstances, even when there is no chance
of being discovered, since he is afraid of
divine chastisement, while a nonbeliever,
whose values are usually based on expediency,
can frequently find himself in a
situation in which he will compromise his
values.[30] In societies in which large, impersonal
organizations dominate many aspects of
life and in which people distinguish harm
inflicted upon another human individual
from harm inflicted upon a legal entity,
crime and cheating against organizations become
an especially intractable moral problem.
It has even become almost an act of
heroism, and certainly a demonstration of
cleverness and acumen worthy of bragging
among friends, to find a way of making a
telephone call without paying, of finding
illegal access to a toll road, or of avoiding
income tax. A leading security company
estimates the cost to United States business of
reported crime in 1972 at some $16 billion
—about the size of total net capital flows
from the rich to the poor countries of the
world in that year, and half again greater
than the expenditures on education in all
poor countries combined (excluding China).[31]
Unreported losses could swell this
figure much further as of course would the
inclusion of the staggering costs of crime
against individuals (for example, police protection,
locks and fences, alarms, insurance,
and so forth) not to mention secondary
effects on our life style, such as the growing
fear of going out for the evening, of using or
carrying expensive goods which might be
stolen, of buying art the insurance on which
is prohibitively expensive, and even of making
a nice garden, public park, or museum,
which are subject to vandalism. One cannot
change individual criminal behavior merely
by demonstrating the costs to society of such
behavior; rather the point is that the solution
of the problem of worsening crime, and the
realization of the resultant economic and
social gains of staggering magnitude, will
only be found in the religious transformation
of individual attitudes toward life and society.
Again this is a field well worthy of
further research, to identify better the causes
within a discriminatory economic and social
system and within unsatisfactory home environments
and misdirected school training
[Page 28] as well as in the general mores and tenor of
our society, which produce not only outright
crime but cheating and lying as accepted
methods of commercial behavior.[32]
Investment and Speculation. Another very intriguing and complicated problem worthy of further study concerns the possible techniques whereby Bahá’u’lláh’s prohibition of gambling might be constructively applied to the economic system. There are several general areas in which pure speculation for monetary gain, virtually identical with gambling, prevails. Most obvious, perhaps, is the stock market. But even larger in size are international currency markets (which would eventually be eliminated in a Bahá’í system of uniform currency). We also must not forget speculation in land, art, or other goods of limited reproducibility. Risk, and, therefore, some element of speculation, can never be fully eliminated from the economic system, especially so long as growth and change are important and unpredictable factors of economic life. However, pure speculation can be very harmful to productive business activity, as Keynes forcefully pointed out almost forty years ago and as more recent events in the international money markets have again demonstrated.[33] And it may be argued that the opportunity for speculative gains is damaging to man in noneconomic ways as well.[34] Thus some moderate measures would be called for to discourage speculative investments while allowing freedom in the relevant markets for price to adjust to supply and demand so that markets will clear. To this end, Keynes proposed a tax on the buying and selling of securities. Such a tax could be more steeply proportional to the length of time a security is held than are our present taxes. Other taxes, perhaps on increased value, could be levied on land, art, and similar goods when they are sold. Or most investment decisions could be institutionalized, either in the form of investment banks such as those of France or Germany of the last century, of industrial-financial groups such as prevail in Japan, or only of investment funds such as those which currently control the vast majority of business on our stock exchanges.[35] The issues involved are very complicated, and the empirical material scant and difficult to interpret, implying all the more the need for further work in this field.
Technology and Innovation. Finally a word on the general nature of economic advancement as we have known it and as it might be modified in a society with less materialistic, more human-centered values. It has been shown that the largest part of the great economic growth experienced by the West over the last century is attributable not to increased inputs to production (accumulation of capital, longer working hours, opening of new lands, and so forth) but to technological change leading to increased productivity. This technological change, in turn, has been the fruit of tremendous advance in the physical sciences—in man’s understanding of atoms and molecules and the laws which govern them. The most radical changes in our life style have thus been concentrated primarily in the most material aspects of life—transportation, communication, health, clothing, and food preparation —while services such as education, justice, and criminal detention, and even the political process remain essentially as they were a hundred years ago. Much of the change which we have experienced in our arts, entertainment, education, and other social activities can be attributed directly to the influence of this revolution in the physical sciences. (For example, television has affected education and politics.) In the process of technical advance and economies of scale in production, material products and the services of these products have become increasingly less expensive relative to human services, and our life style has adjusted accordingly, with human services both diminishing in relative size and becoming more expensive and, therefore, of greater significance in our budgets.[36]
If we pause to ponder this lack of balance
[Page 29] in our “progress,” we are immediately led to
a fundamental set of questions. Are social
problems intrinsically more complicated or
harder of solution than problems of material
science? In our concentration on material
pursuits have we simply neglected social
advance, which could now be corrected by
promoting research in the social sciences? Or
are we perhaps lacking a system of values,
such as those recognized by physical scientists,
by which to judge and identify progress
in the social sciences, with the result that
there is little agreement on what constitutes a
valuable discovery, and no cumulative process
of innovation is set in motion? Depending
on one’s view, the prescription varies,
ranging from no action (if one believes that
no solutions to social problems exist), to
massive government-sponsored research programs
(if one believes a lack of effort is
responsible), or to the promotion of discussion
of value systems which can give structure
and cogency to social science research.
Bahá’ís believe that the moral value system
provided by religion is a necessary part of
man’s social as well as personal life and that
a society in which the value System has been
allowed to atrophy is therefore at a loss to
solve its social problems. It is no wonder that
agreement cannot be reached on how to
achieve progress in social innovation, or even
what progress in social relations means, and
that social progress is thereby severely
impeded to the detriment of the balance
between man’s social and material life. It is
this balance which the Bahá’í Faith seeks to
restore.
The World Economic System
THE INSTITUTIONS envisaged by Bahá’u’lláh to support a new global order are essentially those which every nation today accepts as necessary machinery for the conduct of national affairs: a parliament to enact the laws of the land; an executive to carry out the wishes of the parliament; a judiciary to interpret the law and settle disputes; a police force to keep the peace and protect the rights of citizens; and, one may assume, a central bank to issue money, control the quantity in circulation, and regulate other aspects of the financial system.[37] Ordinary citizens of all modern nations accept the need for and the authority of these institutions in their own countries—including, of course, the right of the central government to levy and spend taxes, regulate or tax imports, intervene in labor disputes, redistribute income and wealth through its tax policies, and take whatever other actions are deemed to be in the national interest. Most people in the world, however, would be reluctant to grant the same authority to a world government. In other words, even though the economic gains from such a form of world organization might be very great, not to mention the achievement of security through the elimination of military threat, most people’s horizons extend only as far as the limits of their own countries, and they remain unpersuaded. However, many forces in the world are increasing the involvement of one nation with another—as the sudden rise in the price of oil in 1974 taught many people—and the process of integration marches inexorably onward. Bahá’ís believe that crises will worsen and the present world order will crack from the strain until at some point either a great world-shaking calamity will ensue, or people’s horizons will have in some other way been broadened to the point where they identify with the needs of the world as a whole. The choice is quite simple: either there will be a universal catastrophe, or we will have a united world; the longer we wait before organizing a durable and enforceable peace, the more suffering from war and economic disruption there will be.
These trends can clearly be seen in the history of the world since the time of Bahá’u’lláh. The First World War, arising as it did without any great ideological motivation or rationale, caused unprecedented suffering; and the countries involved, badly shaken, resolved to put an end to such
(continued on page 32)
The Mute
- she never speaks?
- she is silent
- what is she doing?
- she is dancing to the song
- of the wind in the river
- she is disappearing!
- she will go
- oh if we could reach her
- we could teach her
- everything we know
- if she spoke
- the words would bind her
- chain her here
- and she would
- have to stay?
- yes
- but she
- is going away
—Janet Homnick
(continued from page 29)
disasters. Thus the League of Nations was formed; but the lessons of war had not been well enough learned, and not only did the United States fail to give its support to the new organization, but the peace settlements carried within them the seeds of the rise of Hitler and the outbreak of a renewed conflict. After the Second World War the resolve of the nations, especially the United States, was much stronger, and a more powerful international body, the United Nations, was established; but it still was given virtually no truly supranational powers, and has been powerless to prevent wars, divert economic crises, or promote disarmament. One may hope that another, far greater conflict will not be necessary to educate the world to the imperative need for stronger world institutions, because a new conflict could very well involve the obliteration of much of mankind.[38]
Even apart from the tremendous destructive powers produced by modern technology, there is much in the present state of human organization to depress the objective observer. If one were to take the world and divide it by country into two categories—the “rich” countries, with 1.2 billion people or 29 percent of the world population, and the “poor” countries, with 2.8 billion people or 71 percent of the world population—and if one were then to look at average statistics for these groups of countries, one would get the following picture. One would observe the rich producing and consuming output worth $2,340 per person per year, while the poor would be producing and consuming only $190 per person per year. The rich would have 27 telephones per 100 persons while the poor had only 1; the rich would be tended by 164 physicians per 100,000 population and the poor by only 23; the rich would drive 228 motor vehicles per 1,000 population and the poor only 11. The rich would eat 3,090 calories and 89 grams of protein per person per day, while the poor would have only 2,191 and 56 respectively.
The rich would include 35 percent children and youth under 20 of whom 55 percent would be in school; the poor would have 52 percent children and youth of whom only 25 percent would be receiving education. The number of rich would be increasing at 1.0 percent annually while the population of the poor would be growing at 2.8 percent; 11.5 percent of the children born to the poor would die in infancy while the figure for the rich would be only 2.1 percent; and a rich man would have a life expectancy of 70 years while that of a poor man would be 47 years.[39] One could continue indefinitely with such figures. The point is that extraordinary disparities of income and opportunity exist in the world—disparities which would be intolerable in a small village or town but which somehow go almost unnoticed in today’s world, perhaps because inequalities have always existed but the expectation of equality has not. In any case disparities are increasing, and revolution is becoming an ever more present threat in many parts of the world.[40] Fundamental changes in the world system must be made for the sake of the long run well-being of everyone.
If, as Bahá’ís believe is inevitable, a world
government comes into being with rights of
taxation, control over trade, and other authority,
it would then be possible to implement
another important element of world
economic order supported by Bahá’ís: a single
world currency. The subject is too complex
to permit a technical discussion here.
Suffice it to say that before a single currency
can be established, the ability of all the
regions of the world to compete with each
other must be greatly enhanced through
programs of development; capital markets
must be freed and the capital institutions of
poorer nations greatly developed; trade must
be liberalized and eventually all restrictions
abolished; large ongoing programs of fiscal
transfer to deficit or depressed regions must
be engaged in, drawing on the taxation
powers of the superstate; a suitable monetary
authority must be created to adjust the world
[Page 33] money supply and credit conditions; adequate
programs of training, development, and relocation
must be established to help industries
and areas hurt by competition; and conceivably
a world system for the allocation of
rights to manufacture certain commodities,
or subsidy programs of some kind for the
same purpose, might be necessary for some
time to come to give now backward and
overpopulated countries a fighting chance to
compete in world markets.[41] Marketing
boards or consortia for the regulation of
trade in certain volatile commodities (especially
agricultural commodities) might also
be necessary. In addition, the establishment
of uniform business codes and laws, a fairly
consistent tax structure (perhaps designed to
increase incentives for investment in depressed
areas), and a worldwide system of
weights, measures, industrial and safety standards,
and economic statistics would add
tremendous impetus to the conduct of world
business and the integration of markets.[42]
Finally, the adoption of a world auxiliary
language, also a Bahá’í principle, would be a
powerful step in the same direction.[43]
Another important area of concern is the stability of the world economic system. The present economic order, with many and varied decision makers each playing independently and by a somewhat different set of rules, is potentially highly unstable. The recent rise in the price of oil is a case in point and is only a small example of the posibilities for crisis inherent in such a complex system. By contrast, a much more centtalized system is inherently more stable. With a single currency and monetary authority, autonomous monetary policy would in any case be lost to national governments—a trend already observable, especially in Europe, as economies integrate more fully—and most equilibrating actions of both national governments and the world government under a world order would of necessity be implemented through a stronger, more unified and rationalized fiscal system.[44] There is no reason why, in the absence of political constraints, and in the context of a single-currency regime, fiscal policy could not accomplish all presently feasible objectives of economic policy (and much more efficiently than the confusing and often contradictory jungle of minipolicies which we have now).
Another major problem facing modern industrial nations is that of the maintenance of employment, or, as the Keynesian economist would say, of aggregate demand. If at any time the general public in a market economy for some reason begins to consume less and save more, or if businessmen anticipate such a shift for any reason, the latter will perceive business prospects as diminishing and will reduce investment, cutting employment to the point at which a new equilibrium is reached with lower savings equal to lower investment. If the government intervenes by soaking up the additional savings of the full-employment economy with a debt issue and spends the money obtained, total demand can be maintained and business prospects remain good, with employment high. Thus we find that wars have frequently been a great stimulus to the American and other economies and have often been favored by influential business sectors, since most governments are more willing to run budget deficits in time of war than in time of peace. Clearly, however, there are many less destructive outlets for government spending, such as welfare programs, beautification and conservation projects, and the export of capital and expertise to assist economic development abroad. Why must we be destructive when we can be constructive instead?
As rich countries get richer, consumption
wants of the public are increasingly satisfied,
and new wants must be continually created
by a vast advertising machinery and a sense
of competitiveness among consumers (the
keep-up-with-the-Joneses mentality). Since
further output creates further savings, leading
to further investment, ever greater output,
and so on, the economic system spirals
exponentially, perhaps out of porportion to
other needs of human life. One reaction is
[Page 34] the ever greater proportion of leisure time
claimed by workers in rich countries, often
enforced by statute or by unions. Another is
the increase in spending on economically
unproductive endeavors such as defense,
space exploration, and environmental improvement.
Finally, investment abroad,
where rates of return are often higher, becomes
attractive especially for large businesses
which can absorb the risk and which
have ready access to capital markets. The
result, however, is a pattern of ownership
reaching to all parts of the earth and often
involving imperialistic elements, making
world disparities in income and privilege far
more obvious to the poor than would otherwise
be the case and creating resentments
which fuel animosities and conflict. The
current debates on multinational corporations,
which have successfully channeled
huge investment sums abroad but which are
resented for their size and visibility, is a case
in point.
A far better system, possible in a more generous world where masses of individuals truly desired the well-being of their fellowmen wherever they might live, would be for the rich countries to give voluntarily of their resources (or be taxed by the superstate) for the economic development of poorer regions. In this way the materialistic spiral of the rich countries could be restrained without loss of physical production (that is, employment could be maintained), and nonmaterial rewards of service and worldwide achievement would accrue to these countries. The amount of required transfers from the rich to the poor countries could also be adjusted periodically to meet the needs of full employment in the donor countries.
All of this is not to say that the assistance between rich and poor countries need be entirely one way. The Bahá’í writings are very clear in regarding all mankind as one body, each part with an essential role to play in the life of the whole.[45] For example, while the rich countries have primarily economic and technical assistance to offer the poor countries, there are many ways in which the harried, overstressed citizens of the fragmented and spiritually depleted industrialized world can learn about the true values of life from the often more contented, more generous, and more perceptive peoples of other countries. At present it is difficult to imagine such equality of exchange, since the elites and more visible segments of all countries (including China in its own way) have acquired “Western” values and aspirations to a remarkable degree, obscuring the true diversity of world cultures apparent to anyone who has traveled, as I have, in rural regions around the globe.[46] But surely, given good will, such an exchange can be developed in the modern world of rapid travel and communication.
Which brings us to a very critical issue: if
large amounts of aid flow from country to
country, what is to prevent some cultures,
especially those embodied in the presently
highly developed technologies, from dominating
the world (as they have dominated
the major cities of the world to date)?
Clearly a major shift is required in the
attitudes of mankind in which individual
cultures and diverse life-styles become more
highly prized—a shift which is already noticeably
taking place as the world watches
the industrialized countries encounter crisis
after crisis of their own making. With this
new motivation, vast research needs to be
undertaken (perhaps by the world government)
to adapt technologies to the varying
requirements of different cultures and
climates.[47] Most of this work would naturally
have to be centered in the recipient
countries. However, if the peoples of the
advanced countries changed their culturally
provincial views and were willing to learn
from other cultures, the process would be
much accelerated. It is my belief that such a
change in world perspective would well suit
the American people especially, who have
often in the past exhibited great capacity for
generosity and who would probably be greatly
stimulated by the increased meaning and
[Page 35] sense of reward given to life by altruistic
endeavors. One can even conceive of a level
of activity, output, and enthusiasm similar to
a war effort like that of the Second World
War, as the country geared itself to fight
ignorance, hunger, and disease around the
world. Tremendous resources could be released
for such an effort.
Let us turn now to examine the magnitude of the potential resources involved in a process of international aid and transfer such as that described above. First we must recall that it has been assumed that a world police force, maintained by the world government, would be adequate to conserve the peace and protect the territorial integrity of the nations. Thus the need for national armies would be reduced to the size required for internal order. If disarmament were successful, the world government might need only one-tenth of what is today spent by all nations on arms. Thus about $150 billion of worldwide resources, over 90 percent from the rich countries, would be released for other uses.[48] (During the period of transition the actual industries and armies presently in existence could be deployed directly for other uses. Many countries, for example in Latin America, already deploy their armies for internal development projects, disaster relief, and so forth. Such uses could be greatly expanded.) The net capital flows of all kinds from the rich countries to the poor countries of the world in 1973 was only about $33 billion.[49] So even with the best designed development programs, and assuming only that resources now spent on war would be turned to the needs of international development, it would seem that available resources would be far greater than the capacity of the poor countries to absorb such vast infusions of capital or technical expertise without serious disruption. There are clearly cultural limits to the number of Americans or Europeans one could send to Africa to assist with development without compromising the national integrity of the African peoples; similarly there are limits to the number of Chinese who could be imported to the West to study in schools or take up residence. And of course resources much greater than those now spent on war could be released voluntarily or by taxation of the rich countries if necessary. If the world truly turned its attention and resources to balancing some of the greater inequities of our time, it seems that the constraints on action would be institutional and cultural rather than economic, at least for some time to come—until a great deal more experience with and understanding of large-scale interactions of cultures is gained.
Clearly, if a world government were to be established tomorrow with the authority to implement some of the programs outlined above, and with the will of the people of the world suddenly behind it, there would still be severe problems of transition for it to overcome. The speed and timing of reforms and institutional changes would be exceedingly critical, and the welfare of millions of people would hinge on virtually every decision. If there is any possibility that these events might come to pass in our lifetimes, it is imperative that more thought and careful research be devoted to exploring the requirements and challenges of a united world and the most effective means of establishing a world society based on universal peace.
- ↑ See especially Gunnar Myrdal, Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions (New York: Harper, 1971), originally published in 1957 under the title Rich Lands and Poor, and The Challenge of World Poverty (Harmondsworth, Eng: Penguin, 1970); John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Boston: Houghton, 1958); and Albert Hirschman, A Bias for Hope (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1971), pp. 126.
- ↑ Gunnar Myrdal, Asian Drama (New York: Random, 1968), chapters 2 and 3, is an outstanding exception.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, quoted in Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: Selected Letters, 2d rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1970), p. 39; also in Shoghi Effendi, The Promised Day Is Come, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1961), p. 126.
- ↑ See letters written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to individual believers, dated 22 May 1935, in Bahá’í News, No. 102, August 1936, p. 3; dated 25 January 1936, in Bahá’í News, No. 103, October 1936, p. 2; dated 11 January 1933, in Bahá’í News, No. 73, May 1933, p. 7; and dated 19 November 1945, in Bahá’í News, No. 210, August 1948, p. 3.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, trans. Shoghi Effendi, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1954), pp. 37 (No. 43), 51 (No. 82); Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, trans. Shoghi Effendi, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1953), pp. 23, 25, 54; Bahá’u’lláh, A Synopsis and Codification of The Kitáb-i-Aqdas: The Most Holy Book of Bahá’u’lláh, [comp. The Universal House of Justice], (Haifa: Bahá’í World Center, 1973), p. 48; Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, trans. Shoghi Effendi, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1952), pp. 278, 297-99; Bahá’u’lláh, in Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í World Faith: Selected Writings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1956), p. 167; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, comp. and trans. Laura Clifford Barney, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1964), p. 316; letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, dated 19 November 1945, in Bahá’í News, No. 210, August 1948, p. 3; Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 41. See also numerous references to the impossibility of complete equality in the sources cited in note 6.
- ↑ On the elimination of extremes of wealth and poverty but the impossibility of absolute equality, see: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, pp. 314-15; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace: Discourses by Abdul Baha during His Visit to the United States in 1912, rev. ed. [in 1 vol.] (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahai Publishing Committee, 1943), pp. 128, 233, 103, 176; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks: Addresses Given by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Paris in 1911-1912, 11th ed. (London: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1969), pp. 131-32, 151-54; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity: Compiled from Addresses and Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1945), pp. 36-37 (from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation, pp. 211-12), 38-43; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, quoted in Alfred E. Lunt, “The Supreme Affliction: A Study in Bahá’í Economics and Socialization,” Bahá’í Magazine, 23, No. 4 [July 1932], 121-22 (from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “Teaching of Baha’o’llah: From Discourses Given by Abdul-Baha in London and Paris.” Star of the West, 3, No. 2 [9 April 1912], 5) and 122 (from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “Address by Abdul-Baha at Hotel Schenley, Pittsburgh, Pa.,” Star of the West, 3, No. 6 [24 June 1912], 3-4); Bahá’u’lláh, quoted in Shoghi Effendi, Promised Day Is Come, p. 38; and Shoghi Effendi, The World Older of Bahá’u’lláh, 1st ed. (New York: Bahá’í Publishing Committee, 1938), pp. xi, 204.
On progressive taxation specifically, see: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity, pp. 40, 37; and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, quoted in Alfred E. Lunt, “The Supreme Affliction: A Study in Bahá’í Economics and Socialization,” Bahá’í Magazine, 23, No. 4 [July 1932], 118-19.
On minimum security and welfare, see references above and those cited in note 7. - ↑ On the provision of a minimum standard of living, see: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity, pp. 38-41; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, pp. 131-32: Bahá’u’lláh, quoted in Shoghi Effendi, Promised Day Is Come, p. 38; Bahá’u’lláh, Synopsis and Codification, p. 63, note 31.
On state responsibility for education and the care of the sick, infirm, and orphans, see: ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation, pp. 311, 235; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity, p. 31; Shoghi Effendi, Bahá’í Administration: Selected Messages 1922-1932, 7th rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1974), p. 38; Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1944), p. 281; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, quoted in Alfred E. Lunt, “The Supreme Affliction: A Study in Bahá’í Economics and Socialization,” Bahá’í Magazine, 23, No. 4 [July 1932], 118-19. - ↑ Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice, 3d rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1969), pp. 29-30; Shoghi Effendi, in Shoghi Effendi and The Universal House of Justice, A Special Measure of Love: The Importance and Nature of the Teaching Work among the Masses (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1974), pp. 19-20.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity, p. 43; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, p. 315; letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to an individual believer, dated 19 November 1945, in Bahá’í News, No. 210, August 1948, p. 3.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity, pp. 38-44; John Ferraby, “Bahá’í Teachings on Economics,” (London: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, n.d.), pp. 12-13; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, quoted in “Miscellaneous Topics,” Star of the West, 9, No. 3 (28 Apr 1918), 27.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, pp. 315-18; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation, p. 233; and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity, p. 43.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, Synopsis and Codification, p. 47; and Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p. 214.
- ↑ The Arabic word used by Bahá’u’lláh in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, maisar, has a variety of meanings. The translation chosen by Shoghi Effendi was gambling.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, Synopsis and Codification, pp. 43-46; Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p. 214.
- ↑ Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, 2d rev. ed., pp. 40-41, 203-04; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1944), p. 13; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, pp. 155, 132; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity, pp. 32-33.
- ↑ Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, 2d rev. ed., p. 203.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 204; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity, p. 39.
- ↑ Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, 2d rev. ed., pp. 41, 204.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, Synopsis and Codification, p. 52; Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle, p. 138; Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p. 211; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, pp. 155-57; Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, 2d rev. ed., p. 203.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh has clearly stated that the private property of others must be respected. See the references in footnote 5 above. Bahá’u’lláh has even requited that found property be returned to the owner if possible. See: Bahá’u’lláh, Synopsis and Codification, pp. 47, 63. Other aspects of honesty, such as truthfulness and trustworthiness, are also stressed by Bahá’u’lláh. See, in addition to the references in footnote 5: Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, pp. 285, 290, 305.
On service see, for example, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í World Faith, p. 375.
On work as a spiritual obligation, see: Bahá’u’lláh, Synopsis and Codification, p. 46; Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p. 214; Bahá’u’lláh, Hidden Words, pp. 50-51 (nos. 80-82); Bahá’u’lláh, in Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í World Faith, pp. 167, 141. For references to work and occupation elevated to the rank of worship of God, see: Bahá’u’lláh, Synopsis and Codification, p. 46; Bahá’u’lláh, in Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í World Faith, p. 195; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í World Faith, p. 377; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, pp. 176-77; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation, pp 181-82; Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, pp. 281-82, 214; Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, lst ed., pp. xi-xii; and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “Addresses Given by Abdu’l-Baha Delivered in New York City,” Star of the West, 4, No. 6 (24 June 1913), p. 101. - ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, Synopsis and Codification, p. 63, note 31; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, pp. 317-18; Bahá’u’lláh, Hidden Words, pp. 17 (No. 57), 39 (No. 49), 41 (No. 54); ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation, pp. 211-12 (Also in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity, pp. 36-37, except for one paragraph), 128, 103, 233-34; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í World Faith, p. 288; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, p. 153; ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity, p. 30; and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, quoted in Alfred E. Lunt, “The Supreme Affliction: A Study in Bahá’í Economics and Socialization,” Bahá’í Magazine, 23, No. 4 [July 1932], 121.
- ↑ The Universal House of Justice, “The Bahá’í Attitude towards Material Suffering,” Bahá’í News, No. 525, December 1974, inside front cover.
- ↑ Dorothy S. Projector, Survey of Financial Characteristics of Consumers (Washington, D.C.: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, 1966), pp. 151, 162. The data given in this source do not directly address the question of concentration of wealth, and considerable computation has been necessary to arrive at the figures quoted. For a more careful analysis, see James W. Wetzler, “Studies on the American Distribution of Wealth,” Diss. Harvard Univ. 1973.
- ↑ It is interesting to speculate on the possible sociological impact of such a system in which a minimum level of welfare was perceived as a right. To some extent the fear of material neglect and the need for security undoubtedly motivate people to be miserly and to accumulate well beyond their needs. On the contrary, societies in which a man’s relatives and children are his greatest assets, and in which security is assured primarily by family and other social ties and obligations, produce quite different attitudes toward material possessions. In such societies the sharing of wealth—for example, through marriage, social events, and celebrations, or direct support of extended families—is of much greater importance than in Western society and serves to cement healthy human and family relations, the lack of which is a critical and growing problem in the “more advanced” countries.
- ↑ Technical economists will note that voluntary giving as a consumption decision provides a theoretically sound solution to the problem of maintaining Pareto optimality in production while redistributing incomes. Taxes distort incentives, whether of producers or consumers; and revolutions (that is, lump sum transfers) incur a great expense in dislocation and retraining (not no mention human life). However, if consumers are motivated to give voluntarily of their resources and if such giving brings them enough satisfaction to maintain (or even increase, if giving is highly pleasurable) their incentive to earn, optimality is maintained while income is redistributed. To the extent that private giving of this kind, presumably through many private institutions or directly between individuals, begins to solve the basic needs for minimum living standards or welfare programs, the government can diminish its role in these areas (while still providing for minimum standards), and economic efficiency is increased. It can be noted that even on noneconomic grounds there would be strong arguments for encouraging the growth of decentralized private philanthropic institutions for promoting community welfare, the arts, care for the infirm, and so forth, in making these services more personal, better suited to local needs, and possibly administratively more efficient and responsive.
- ↑ Greater flexibility of wages and prices would in turn imply a more favorable “Phillips curve” relationship between unemployment and unanticipated price inflation, reaching to the root of the most serious economic problem of the industrialized countries.
- ↑ For example, Bahá’u’lláh has written, “The essence of wealth is love for Me. Whoso loveth Me is the possessor of all things, and he that loveth Me not is, indeed, of the poor and needy.” (In Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Reality of Man: Excerpts from Writings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, rev, ed. [Wilmette, Ill,: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1962], p. 4).
In addition to questions of income and wealth distribution and class conflict, the most significant challenge to the “Western,” “capitalist,” or “neoclassical” system is the concept of central planning. Briefly, it is held that a capitalist system of individual decision makers, while efficient in theory, is in reality plagued with monopoly, external diseconomies, uncertainty, imperfect information, and other serious problems. A beneficent central government, according to this concept, can avoid these problems by engaging in appropriate social accounting and can allocate economic production and consumption more justly, although individual freedom of action might be curtailed.
The Bahá’í position on this question of central versus decentralized decision making is not crystallized but would appear to be a moderate one. Just as redistribution of wealth is seen as springing primarily from individual transformation of attitudes, with the assistance of government laws and regulations, so too the Bahá’í writings envision a system of private ownership and control of business in which personal motivations would be more socially oriented but in which the government would also exercise considerable authority to regulate, stabilize, and plan and would ensure the equitable distribution of the gains from economic endeavor. - ↑ Stephen A. Marglin, “What Do Bosses Do? The Origins and Functions of Hierarchy in Capitalist Production,” The Review of Radical Political Economics, 6, No. 2 (Summer 1974), 60-112.
- ↑ On monopolies, see ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity. p. 43.
- ↑ See Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings, pp. 232-33.
- ↑ Burns International Security Services, Inc., The Wall Street Journal, 6 Feb. 1974, p. 6; “The Flow of Resources to the Developing World: The 1973 Record,” The OECD Observer, No. 71 (August 1974), p. 4; expenditures on education in poor countries were about $10.6 billion in 1970, calculated from U.N. estimates and exchange rates from the U.N. Statistical Yearbook, 1973.
- ↑ For example, Western advertising is largely based on prevarication and manipulation rather than on the straightforward presentation of facts and undoubtedly has a significant impact on the moral behavior and attitudes of the populace especially in relation to commercialism and the economy.
- ↑ John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (New York: Harcourt, 1964), Chapter 12.
- ↑ One can only guess the reasons why Bahá’u’lláh prohibited gambling to Bahá’ís, but surely they were not all economic.
- ↑ For a summary of historical studies of development banks, see Charles P. Kindleberger, The Formation of Financial Centers (Princeton Studies in International Finance, No. 36, 1974), p. 5. On Japan, see G. C. Allen, A Short Economic History of Modern Japan, rev. ed. (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1972), pp. 186-89.
- ↑ Many of the ideas of this section were propounded by Richard R. Nelson, of Yale University, in a lecture at Harvard University, 28 November 1973.
- ↑ The actual method of representation in a world parliament, or of allocating votes, will of course be the main source of dispute in the forming of a world government. Presumably some formula involving population, economic resources, and status as a nation-state will have to be agreed upon, at least until the emergence of true world statesmen.
- ↑ For a statement by a prominent economist whose views most closely resemble the Bahá’í point of view on the need for and progress toward world institutions, see Gunnar Myrdal, Economic Theory, pp. 65-65.
- ↑ All figures are calculated from United Nations data. Sources were the U.N. Statistical Yearbook, 1973; Demographic Yearbook, 1972; and FAO Production Yearbook, 1971. Figures for the “poor” exclude China, for which reliable data are not available. Centrally planned economies are included with the “rich,” and “basic” (official) exchange rates were used to convert figures for these countries into dollars, while market rates were used for other countries. All data are for 1970 ot the latest available year.
It should be noted that these figures understate, by a significant margin, the true differences between rich and poor populations because the figures for poor countries are averages for those countries as a whole; and their domestic wealth distribution, as well as the distribution between poor countries, is about as unequal as the distribution between poor countries as a whole and rich countries. Unfortunately, this problem and other difficulties of comparing economies with varying price structures make the above exercise only approximate and indicative.
Figures for school enrollment do not include preprimary schools. The life expectancy figures are for the whole population, not just males. - ↑ Barbara Ward. J. D. Runnalls, and Lenore D’Anjour, eds., The Widening Gap: Development in the 1970s (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1971).
- ↑ On capital market integration, see Tibor Scitovsky, Money and the Balance of Payments (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1969), pp. 86-113, and Conference on the Implications of European Monetary Integration for the United States, European Monetary Unification and Its Meaning for the United States (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1973), especially the article by L. B. Krause, pp. 114-58.
On the development of financial institutions in less-developed countries, see R. I. McKinnon, Money and Capital in Economic Development (Washington, D.C.; The Brookings Institution, 1973).
On fiscal transfers, see European Monetary Unification, p. 117. and R. N. Cooper, The Economics of Interdependence: Economic Policy in the Atlantic Community (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), Chapter 7. Such programs might well be the only long-term answer to the process of polarization in a market economy—prosperous centers attracting ever more resources from poorer centers —described by Myrdal in Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions. See also the theory outlined by Scitovsky, Money, pp. 127-29.
One may also note J. E. Meade’s point that adjustments of trade flows to price differentials should become more sensitive as barriers to trade diminish and volume grows, thus increasing the tendency of trade flows to adjust to and counteract other economic changes. See J. E. Meade, The Theory of International Economic Policy (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963), vol. I, The Balance of Payments, pp. viii-ix. - ↑ Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, 2d rev. ed., pp. 41, 203.
- ↑ As a technical digression, it seems from present evidence that international adjustment mechanisms—that is, the balancing of payments between different economies—work well either when economies are sufficiently isolated (that is, trade is a small proportion of output, and capital markets are poorly integrated), in which case exchange rate changes are efficient and effective, or when countries are perfectly integrated, and large capital movements together with fiscal transfers and small price differentials painlessly carry out the needed adjustments (as between regions of a single country). But the present in-the-middle system is fraught with perils and difficulties. Capital movements, unless restricted, are great enough to disrupt and limit national monetary policy, the autonomy of which is one of the advantages of a system of discrete national economic units. Trade is great enough to hinder national autonomy when internal full-employment policies are applied, and inflations or depressions or both can now spread dramatically between countries. Likewise, exchange rate changes as a means of balance of payments adjustment become less effective as trade (or tradeable commodities, to be more exact) becomes a larger proportion of product since domestic prices are given a correspondingly larger pull. These arguments would all seem to indicate the strong economic benefits from complete integration of the world economies; but, of course, more research is needed to verify and quantify these conclusions.
- ↑ See, for example. R. N. Cooper, “Monetary Unification in Europe: When and How?” Morgan Guaranty Survey, May 1972, in R. E. Baldwin and J. D. Richardson, eds., International Trade and Finance: Readings (Boston: Little, 1974), pp. 411-20.
- ↑ The Universal House of Justice, Wellspring of Guidance: Messages, 1963-1968 (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1969), pp. 37-39. See also, Shoghi Effendi, in The Universal House of Justice and Shoghi Effendi, Special Measure of Love, pp. 1, 5, 6, 8-9, 12, 12-13. For example, on page 6 we find the following excerpt from a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi, dated 21 September 1951: “It is a great mistake to believe that because people are illiterate or live primitive lives, they are lacking in either intelligence or sensibility. On the contrary, they may well look on us, with the evils of our civilization, with its moral corruption, its ruinous wars, its hypocrisy and conceit, as people who merit watching with both suspicion and contempt. We should meet them as equals, well-wishers, people who admire and respect their ancient descent . . .”
- ↑ Gregory C. Dahl, “Indian Bahá’ís of Bolivia,” World Order, 4, No. 1 (Fall 1969), 41-46.—Ed.
- ↑ At present only about 2 percent of world research and development expenditures is spent by poor countries, according to Paul Streeten, The Frontiers of Development Studies (London: Macmillan, 1972), p. 394.
- ↑ In 1970, defense budgets in the developed market economies and centrally planned economies together totaled $149 billion while those of the rest of the world, excluding China, totaled $11 billion. These figures were calculated from budgets and exchange rates in the U.N. Statistical Yearbook, 1973.
- ↑ Eurodollar lending of about $9 billion is included, but the total figure is optimistic because it omits unrecorded capital flight from poor countries, which could be substantial. See “The Flow of Resources to the Developing World: The 1973 Record,” The OECD Observer, No. 71 (August 1974), p. 7.
[Page 36]
[Page 37]
[Page 38]
[Page 39]
[Page 40]
Science and the Bahá’í Faith
BY NORMAN A. BAILEY
To merit the madness of love, man must abound in sanity . . .
—Bahá’u’lláh
Out of the essence of knowledge I gave thee being . . .
—Bahá’u’lláh
FOR CENTURIES the world of the mind (the principal manifestation of the
divine in man) has been rent by a sterile, damaging, and violent schism
between the partisans of “religion” and the partisans of “science,” the former
accusing the latter of “materialism” and the latter accusing the former of
“superstition,” “ritual,” and unsupported “dogma.” This controversy, marked by
ignorant fanaticism and mental rigidity on both sides, has done incalculable
damage to the search for truth.
For years I was engaged in the study of human conflict, and this study led me necessarily into an examination of the question of the applicability of the scientific method to the study of human action, itself an area of controversy among social scientists.[1] This search, in turn, required a study of the philosophy of science, and through that study I came to a belief in a personal God, although for all of my previous adult life I had been an irreligious, not to say antireligious, agnostic. In August of 1973 my father, a world-famous scientist, passed away.[2] Reprinted in the program of the memorial service held in his memory on August 15 of that year was his personal Credo. To my astonishment, it paralleled exactly the conclusions I had reached through my own independent investigations. Following is the concluding portion of that Credo:
- Faith in a personal God is reasonable, because it is illogical to suppose that the universe in all its infinite variety is the result of chance.
- Chance leads only to increasing entropy.[3] Negative entropy is the result of purpose.
- Now purpose we know only in persons. Therefore there must be a personal God who is akin to us.
Science is the search for, and discovery of, systematic true knowledge
concerning the structure, functioning, and interrelationships of the various
constituent elements of the material universe. Practically all scientists, whether
[Page 42] physical, biological, or social, will agree on this definition or a very similar one.
They will also agree on the purpose of the scientific endeavor—that is, giving
man the ability to predict scientifically, and thus to order the material universe
to man’s purposes with greater efficiency than could be achieved through trial
and error.[4] There is no agreement, however, on the epistemological basis
underlying the scientific endeavor. Although there are many variants, the two
principal philosophies of science may be termed the probabilistic and the
systematic.
The probabilistic attitude towards science, associated with the distinguished American philosopher Ernest Nagel, claims that all material reality, its structure and interrelationships, whether causal or otherwise, is the result of chance couplings which in turn have resulted historically in other related couplings, and so on ad infinitum.[5] As a result, all valid scientific knowledge is probabilistic, although there is a vast difference in the degree of probability that, for example, if hydrogen and oxygen are combined under certain conditions, water will result; that given certain coaditions certain birds will build their nests in particular ways; and that groups of human beings under certain circumstances will be likely to react in certain ways. Therefore, only inductive reasoning has validity in science as demonstrated by a greater or lesser degree of statistical probability.[6]
The contrasting systematic philosophy of science is associated, at least in the
modern age, with the German philosopher Karl Popper, who spent the most
productive years of his life in London, following his self-exile from Nazi
Germany.[7] In accordance with this view of the basis of scientific knowledge
and discovery, knowledge is indeed a seamless web, an endless chain of
deductive reasonings concerning causal relationships among and between the
multifarious elements of the material world. As each set of propositions is
deductively derived from a logically preceding set of axioms and verified by
empirical testing, it becomes a set of axioms for a further line of reasoning
leading to another set of testable propositions.[8] Ultimately, working backwards,
all branches of science—physical, biological, or social—rest upon an
ultimate set of axioms which define the different classes of phenomena under
[Page 43] consideration and are the most basic axioms concerning the material universe
comprehensible to man with his limited and circumscribed mind. It is clear,
however, that these axioms, “ultimate” to man, must, in their turn, be derived
from still more basic primitive postulates which man is incapable of
discovering: “All things are involved in all things. For every single phenomenon
has enjoyed the postulates of God, and in every form of these infinite
electrons it has had its characteristics of perfection.”[9] In systematic science
induction only has a place as a stopgap until causal relationships can be
established deductively.[10]
It will be clear from the above that the systematic view of science is that which was held by my father, and the one which I myself espoused after long investigation, after working within both traditions at various times.[11] It is also the view of the reality of material phenomena held by all the revealed religions, although nowhere as elegantly and clearly stated as by Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, as we shall see below.
THE SPIRITUAL IMPLICATIONS of the systematic philosophy of science are
clear. There is something beyond man and beyond his limited comprehension
that is similar to man, at least in the power of reasoning, which results in man’s
ability to “order” things and concepts, and, therefore, in his ability to create,
whether buildings or theories or works of art. We know, if we follow this line
of reasoning, that there is a universal organizing mind at work which is capable
of a creation beyond our wildest imaginings, and which has endowed us, and
undoubtedly other species in the universe, with a reasoning and creative ability
similar to His, but on an infinitely more limited plane. It would be ludicrous to
assume that He did this out of caprice or whim or that He creates without
purpose. It is, indeed, the glory and privilege of the scientist to discover aspects
of His design, as it is the glory and privilege of the craftsman and artist to
create in imitation, and of the administrator to organize, each in his own way
thus exercising those faculties which demonstrate the attributes of divinity. The
Biblical phrase usually given as “In the beginning was the Word, . . . and the
Word was God” can just as well be translated from the original Greek, and
perhaps more accurately and meaningfully, as “Logic was inherent in the Most
Ancient, and that Logic was God.” “Every one of the eminent divines both
[Page 44] studies and teaches the science of logic. . . . Most of them have insisted that if a
scholar has thoroughly mastered a variety of sciences but is not well grounded
in logic, his opinions, deductions and conclusions cannot safely be relied
upon.”[12]
The revelations of God through the millennia can thus be thought of as the progressive unfolding of the understanding of the cosmic experiment, at each stage of man’s history bringing him to a closer and more detailed understanding of the material and spiritual manifestations of the divine. Whether man will respond by approaching as closely to God as his nature will allow him, or whether his ultimate response will be to destroy himself through those bits and pieces of the divine scheme which he has been allowed to know, and with which he puffs himself with pride, remains to be seen.
The complete congruence of the revelations of the Bahá’í Faith with the systematic view of science is manifest:
- It is indubitably clear and evident that each of these afore-mentioned instruments [sight, hearing, etc.] has depended, and will ever continue to depend, for its proper functioning on this rational faculty, which should be regarded as a sign of the revelation of Him Who is the sovereign Lord of all. Through its manifestation all these names and attributes have been revealed, and by the suspension of its action they are all destroyed and perish.[13]
And according to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: “The human spirit which distinguishes man from the animal is the rational soul; and these two names—the human spirit and the rational soul—designate one thing.”[14]
The Bahá’í revelation refers constantly, as above, to the “names and attributes” revealed by God through the rational faculty of man. God is also referred to frequently as the “King of Names.” The reference here is to the same deductive process of deriving propositions from a set of operative axioms referred to in paragraph five above: “By my life, O friend, wert thou to taste of these fruits, from the green garden of these blossoms which grow in the lands of knowledge, beside the orient lights of the Essence in the mirrors of names and attributes. . . .”[15]
- In all the Divine Books the promise of the Divine Presence hath been explicitly recorded. By this Presence is meant the Presence of Him Who is the Day-spring of the signs, and the Dawning-Place of the clear tokens, and the Manifestation of the Excellent Names, and the Source of the attributes, of the true God, exalted be His glory. God in His Essence and in His own Self hath ever been unseen, inaccessible, and unknowable.[16]
[Page 45]
The references to the “seamless web” of science and revealed reality are
manifold. In referring to the sevenfold path to spiritual realization, Bahá’u’lláh
says that “every man may thereby win his way to the summit of realities.”[17] In
the same work he refers to “those who journey in the garden-land of
knowledge, because they see the end in the beginning, see peace in war and
friendliness in anger.”[18] He also refers to “these [who] have passed over the
worlds of names, and fled beyond the worlds of attributes as swift as
lightning.”[19]
‘Abdu’l-Bahá makes frequent and extended reference to the chain of logical causality: “Science is the discoverer of the past. From its premises of past and present we deduce conclusions as to the future.”[20] Note especially the following passage—in a few lines he utterly destroys a whole hoary set of sophistic philosophical arguments against divine creation:
- Now, formation is of three kinds and of three kinds only: accidental, necessary, and voluntary. The coming together of the various constituent elements of beings cannot be accidental, for unto every effect there must be a cause. It cannot be compulsory, for then the formation must be an inherent property of the constituent parts and the inherent property of a thing can in no wise be dissociated from it, such as light that is the revealer of things, heat that causeth the expansion of elements and the (solar) rays which are the essential property of the sun. Thus under such circumstances the decomposition of any formation is impossible, for the inherent properties of a thing cannot be separated from it. The third formation remaineth and that is the voluntary one, that is, an unseen force described as the Ancient Power, causeth these elements to come together, every formation giving rise to a distinct being.[21]
Many people still believe that the doctrine of creation is antiscientific and superstitious. In this regard it is interesting to note the following passage recently written by Robert Jastrow, Director of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, Adjunct Professor of Geology at Columbia University, and Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth College:
- More interesting than the precise age of the universe, however, is the extraordinary conclusion that our world began at a definite moment and has not been here forever. With this result, based on hard facts in astronomy, scientific cosmology comes full circle; its twentieth-century instruments and theoretical labors have produced a description of the history of the world that, like the Book of Genesis, begins suddenly, sharply, with an act of creation.[22]
Beyond the realm of human science and knowledge lies the realm of the spirit,
[Page 46] the essence of which is unknowable to man and will ever remain so: “Never
shall mortal eye recognise the everlasting beaury. . . .”[23] “For God is, in His
Essence, holy above ascent and descent, entrance and exit; He hath through all
eternity been free of the attributes of human creatures, and ever will remain so.
No man hath ever known Him; no soul hath ever found the pathway to His
Being. . . . His proof is His signs; His being is His evidence.”[24] ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
makes the same point, coupling it with a restatement of the logical path to the
Divine:
- Such process of causation goes on, and to maintain that this process goes on indefinitely is manifestly absurd. Thus such a chain of causation must of necessity lead eventually to Him who is the Ever-Living, the All-Powerful, who is Self-Dependent and the Ultimate Cause. This Universal Reality cannot be sensed, it cannot be seen. It must be so of necessity, for it is All-Embracing, not circumscribed, and such attributes qualify the effect and not the cause.[25]
This is not the place to detail the many statements of both Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá which seemed to contradict the scientific “knowledge” of their day but which have since been amply demonstrated by more advanced scientific research and techniques. Suffice it to mention such matters as the unity and uniqueness of the species of man and the antiquity of both man and of life in general.[26]
There is an absolute congruence between science and the Bahá’í Faith (and revealed religion in general, when stripped of the dogmatic and superstitious incrustations of centuries or millennia of priests, “commentators,” “doctors,” and “divines”). It is the destiny and duty of the scientist, as indeed it is of all mankind, to reach ever upward, striving to attain that mystic interface where human logic blends imperceptibly into Divine Logic.
- The virtues of humanity are many, but science is the most noble of them all. The distinction which man enjoys above and beyond the station of the animal is due to this paramount virtue. It is a bestowal of God; it is not material, it is divine. Science is an effulgence of the Sun of Reality, the power of investigating and discovering the verities of the universe, the means by which man finds a pathway to God. All the powers and attributes of man are human and hereditary in origin, outcomes of nature’s processes, except the intellect, which is supernatural. Through intellectual and intelligent inquiry science is the discoverer of all things. . . . By intellectual processes and logical deductions of reason, this super-power in man can penetrate the mysteries of the future and anticipate its happenings.[27]
- ↑ Norman A. Bailey and Stuart M. Feder, Operational Conflict Analysis (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1973).
- ↑ Percival Bailey, M.D., Ph.D. (1892-1973), was a distinguished Professor of Neurology and Neurological Surgery and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois and an Officer of the French Legion of Honor and of the German Order of Merit. He was the first man to classify the tumors of the brain, map the brains of man and the higher apes, and identify the physiological bases of mental disorders.
- ↑ Entropy is the state of equilibrium or inertia toward which everything tends. Negative entropy is motion or action.
- ↑ A distinction should be made here between scientific prediction, which takes the form of “If A and B, all other things being equal, then C,” and prophecy, which takes the form of “At such and such a time in the future, such and such will happen.”
- ↑ See, for example, Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation (New York: Harcourt, 1961) and other works. Obviously in a short paper description of complex philosophical theories must result in oversimplification.
- ↑ Reasoning from a discrete set of material facts to derive general conclusions concerning the properties of that set.
- ↑ See Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York: Basic, 1959) and other writings.
- ↑ Technically, the proportions cannot be verified by empirical testing; they can only be falsified—that is, all you can say is that they “work” (can be put into practice). Theoretically the propositions might be derived from a different set of axioms, as in non-Euclidean geometry and non-Newtonian physics.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity: Compiled from Addresses and Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1945), p. 52.
- ↑ The difference between the two concepts can be simply illustrated by the controversy over the health effects of cigarette smoking. Significant statistical correlation has been found between heavy smoking and lung cancer. However, an even better correlation could undoubtedly be found between the drinking of water and lung cancer. The only reason for believing that one may be the cause of the cancer and the other not at this point is common sense, and experimentation with animals. However, common sense would also tell us that the sun revolves around the earth and that human beings are not animals. In short, until now, no causal relationship has been proven between smoking and lung cancer. Nevertheless, there is, of course, a strong presumption of causality until proven otherwise.
- ↑ See, for example, Norman A. Bailey, “The Political Process and Interest Groups,” in Portuguese Africa, ed. David M. Abshire and Michael A. Samuels (New York: Praeger, 1969), pp. 146-64.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Secret of Divine Civilization, trans. Marzieh Gail and Ali-Kuli Khan, 2d ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Bublishiug Trust, 1970), p. 31.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, trans. Shoghi Effendi, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1952), p. 164.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í World Faith: Selected Writings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1956), p. 317.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, The Seven Valleys and the Four Valleys, trans. Ali-Kuli Khan and Marzieh Gail, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1952), pp. 3-4.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, trans. Shoghi Effendi, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1953), p. 118.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, Seven Valleys, pp. 1-2.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 15.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í World Faith, p. 242.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 342.
- ↑ Robert Jastrow, “How Old Is the Universe?” Natural History, 83, No. 7 (August/September 1974), 82. Although not entirely clear, it would appear that Dr. Jastrow is espousing a doctrine of creation from nothing, which would contradict Bahá’í belief in continuous creation.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, trans. Shoghi Effendi, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1954), p. 25.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, Seven Valleys, p. 23.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í World Faith, p. 343.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has written that “Man was always a distinct species, a man, not an animal” (in Bahá’í World Faith, p. 300). The most recent research indicates that man is at least 2,500,000 years old and life on earth at least 3,500,000,000 years old. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has also written: “. . . we have before proved by argument that life on this earth is very ancient. It is not one hundred thousand, or two hundred thousand, or one million or two million years old; it is very ancient . . .” (Foundations of World Unity, p. 54).
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity, p. 60.
The Belief in Nonsense
A REVIEW OF CHARLES FAIR’S The New Nonsense: The End of the Rational Consensus (NEW YORK: SIMON AND SCHUSTER, 1974) 287 PAGES
BY HOWARD GAREY
There have been many books expounding a skeptical point of view, usually in a jocose, sarcastic style, compensating for lack of subtlety and impatience with nuances by an active employment of humor. Voltaire, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken come to mind as masterly practitioners of this genre. The point of view is unambiguous: a down-to-earth pragmatic materialism, with a metaphysical base in atheism, or in a vague deism in which the Creator, having made the universe, has washed His hands of it. Charles Fair’s The New Nonsense seems at first glance to fit into this comfortable category. Since a previous work, From the Jaws of Victory, presented the military aspect of the History of Stupidity,[1] the present writer would clearly be in the tradition of trenchant skepticism and idol smashing.
The second glance modifies one’s expectation: in spite of a few really funny passages, this book has a deep and thoughtful seriousness. Like the works of its predecessors in this vein, it is a defense of reason and humanity.
But it is not exuberantly and insensitively destructive, nor is it carried away by the sheer sport of puncturing balloons and debagging pompous idiots. The positive values are more explicitly stated than simply suggested by dwelling on their opposites.
Charles Fair keeps his mind open; he
treats seriously every “far-out” theory by
subjecting it to a scrupulous and exacting
analysis. If Velikovsky, for example, claims
that Venus came dangerously close to the
earth a few thousand years ago, causing
innumerable disasters of which vestiges supposedly
remain both in ancient records and
in geological anomalies, Fair examines the
claim in painstaking detail. For every indication
contrary to Velikovsky’s hypothesis,
even if Fair himself discovers it, he finds
counterarguments in Velikovsky’s favor, only
to demolish them with still more facts and
more reasoning. And so he proceeds; whether
for Reich’s Orgone box, or for flying saucers,
or various do-it-yourself psychotherapeutic
systems, Fair examines all their claims and
arguments and, in general, demonstrates that
indeed the evidence in their favor is inadequate
and full of internal contradictions.
Never did I have the impression that the
argumentation was forced, that Fair had “set
up” certain chains of reasoning for the purpose
of knocking them down. However,
Fair’s purpose is not simply to demonstrate
the wrongness of certain theories or manifestations
of nonsense. Rather he undertakes
—for the most part successfully—to trace
the history of faith in Reason since our
emergence from the Middle Ages, and the
history of the attempt to arrive at what he
calls in his subtitle a “rational consensus,” to
define rationality, to discover the historical
conditions which favor reason and those
which favor nonsense, to define nonsense, or
more accurately to characterize the comportment
and attitudes which go with the belief
in nonsense—since it is not the subject
matter of the nonsensical theory which lends
itself to identification as such, so much as the
behavior, needs, and ways of thinking of the
apostles of nonsense. In the process of explaining
nonsense, Fair elaborates a rather
original, though Freud-derived, theory of the
[Page 49] psyche that makes a serious attempt at explaining
the great spiritual ills of our age:
the alienation, the hollowness, the otherdirectedness,
the image orientation, the brutality,
the dropping out, the quest for security in
simple ideologies—in short, every kind of
escape from life and responsibility. And his
explanations hang together very well.
It is this theoretical side which gives the book its importance. If one reads it for amusement (as it is eminently possible to do), one can learn much about UFO literature and other speculations about extraterrestrial beings. There is a good rundown on current parapsychotherapeutic techniques, which go by such fascinating names as Primal Scream; Vomit Therapy (!); Mind Control; orgone therapy; and Scientology, a recent development from Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics.
ON A HIGHER LEVEL of analysis, Fair exposes
a historical theory of nonsense, according
to which new varieties of nonsense
abound just as a revolution is about to take
place. For him, the roots of revolution are
not so much economic and social as they are
psychological. “Men do not become revolutionary
because inflamed by nonsense, or
nonsense-prone because caught up in revolution.
Both states of mind have a common
origin and tend to appear together.” The sure
thing is that revolution is not simply the
result of intolerable conditions; in most instances
people have borne, without revolting,
conditions worse than those prevailing on the
eve of revolution.
- A revolutionary era . . . is one in which a huge surplus of emotional energy has piled up to the point at which it must find an object. The first result is an epidemic of the New Nonsense; the second, a series of splinter revolutions; and the third, perhaps, the revolution.
- . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
- . . . what I have called the New Nonsense is essentially an interregnum occurring between the collapse of the Old Faith and the forcible establishment of the New—the “ideology.”
In addition to describing its dynamics, Fair enumerates the characteristics of nonsense, which turn out to be those of the people who believe in it. Thus, the first principle of nonsense is that it “is not self-correcting.” In this way nonsense can be distinguished from science, whose name it often preempts; for science incorporates within its body of techniques methods for correcting its own errors, for refining, or, when necessary, rejecting its own hypotheses. For in science, truth is recognized as relative, not absolute.
Religious nonsense most effectively illustrates this first point:
- . . . religious men often have a serenity of spirit which is highly deceptive. They appear to accept small reverses or even large ones equably, to move through life as though invisibly armored. But if one makes the mistake of questioning certain key notions on which that psychic stability rests, the man only a moment ago so calm and reasonable may turn into a most dangerous maniac.
The second trait by which nonsense may
be recognized is the rigidity of its structure:
It is distinguished “from ordinary simple
error [in] that it tends to become an edifice.
[Page 50] . . . Religious and political beliefs grow into
complicated structures and (in the case of
religions) may then endure for centuries, in
the face of the most threatening evidence or
even of overt heresy and insurrection.”
A third characteristic of the adherent to nonsense is that deep down he never quite believes, however passionately he may appear to believe. Although this evidence is buried in the psyche of the “believer” and is not accessible to direct observation by an outsider, Fair justifies his thesis as follows:
- Our intelligence is alert to its own mistakes. And since error, as such, can be a threat to our survival, it is logical that our own psyche should be so organized that when we become even vaguely aware of our own mistakes, we react with anxiety. This circular arrangement, in which fear may generate systematically erroneous wishful notions, which in turn generate an awareness of error and so, by feedback, still more fear from another source, may explain why “conflict” or emotional unease is so inescapable a feature of our lives.
A last feature (but certainly this list cannot be exhaustive) is the tendency for nonsense to resort to the most awful violence in its attempt to maintain itself. This is not characteristic of all forms of nonsense but is a recognizable feature of many.
- . . . the inner conflicts bred by nonsense readily become outer and often on a colossal scale, resulting in those holocausts in the name of the True Faith of which history is so full. Nor is it surprising that religion in particular should inspire this sort of militancy, and that generations of clerics should busy themselves creating huge superstructures of dogma out of the (usually simple) utterances of the saints.
A BAHÁ’Í reading this book, cannot fail to notice how closely Fair’s ethical stance, his psychological theories, many of his views on traditional religion and the history of religion, accord with Bahá’í teachings. There is no indication that he is acquainted with the latter, and so the resemblance is all the more arresting. Therefore, in this review I will endeavor first to present Fair’s general philosophy as objectively as possible and then to make some comparisons of his views with corresponding Bahá’í teachings.
The basis of Fair’s thought is his theory of the human self, or psyche, which corresponds roughly to what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá refers to as the soul. It is divided by Fair, as by Freud, whose terminology Fair adopts, into three parts: the Superego, the Ego, and the Id. The Superego corresponds to that conscience which has been instilled in individuals from babyhood, through reward and punishment, or what behaviorists call positive and negative reinforcement. The pattern of predilections and aversions to various acts established by parents, peers, teachers, and society in general is almost random, since codes vary so much from one society or subsociety to the other. Fait regards the Superego as nonrational, since it impels the self to actions as a result of conditioning, not of conscious and reasoned choice. The Id is more predictable, more of a given, more uniform from one individual to the next, since it is the pattern of urges and impulses which result directly from our biological makeup. It is the job of the Superego to overpower the urges arriving from the Id when they would be manifested in a socially undesirable manner.
For Fair, both the behaviorism of Skinner
and the psychoanalytic theory of Freud and
especially of his disciples exaggerate the roles
of the Superego and the Id respectively as
explanatory of the experience of being human,
at the expense of the Self, which is
reduced practically to zero. The Ego, or
“waking self,” as Fair sometimes calls it, is
something more, he feels, than the resultant
of the forces exerted by the Id and the
Superego. The difference between Skinner
and Freud would, then, be based largely on
the degree of emphasis on the Superego or
the Id. The Self, the Ego, the Soul would
have for most psychologists no role except
[Page 51] perhaps the purely passive one of resting, if
only momentarily, at some point on the
behavioral spectrum extending from basic
urge to conditioned response.
- . . . the trend of many psychological theories especially in America . . . has been toward the conclusion that the mind or the waking “I” is a sort of fiction. The Real You lies elsewhere—in the Unconscious, in reflexes, hormones, the Id. . . . For over fifty years, before the radically enfeebled, automatized self had become a general phenomenon, the prophets of the age were foretelling it, in the shape of theories as intellectually impoverished as twentieth century man himself was soon to be.
Nowhere in the book does Fair say what the waking self is; apparently he is willing to accept it as a given, starting, like Descartes, from the evidence of his own consciousness. He has no powerful argument to set against the behaviorists’ position that the “I” is an illusion, that free will is part of the self-image resulting from the interplay between the Superego and the Id. In a sense, Fair seems to be operating on faith. His axioms would be the following: The Self is real; it can free itself, through intelligence, of the harmful urges of the Id and of the useless impositions of tradition (the Superego) when they are clearly not in his interest; man is not truly human unless he is “in possession of himself,” as he says in a quotation soon to follow. There is no doubt as to how the behaviorists and the Freudians would greet these statements. They would probably say that his psychology is cryptoreligion; that what he calls Ego, another, unafraid of being called superstitious, would call Soul; that he has not answered the claim that what he perceives intuitively as true is not necessarily so, since many of our convictions and opinions are the result of cultural impositions and other nonrational forces, a point which Fair himself makes repeatedly. As a Bahá’í, I feel tempted to say that Fair does not recognize the essential truth of what he is writing; that his implicit assumptions are in the main identical with some Bahá’í principles. But I am reluctant to ascribe to him positions which he quite possibly does not hold.
The existence of the “waking I” is treated, then, by Fair almost as an axiom. He does not define it, he does not prove its existence, but he does operate with a concept which gains in clarity as he uses it. Furthermore, the concept itself is central to his explanation of the moral and intellectual decadence in which civilization is now foundering, an explanation which seems to me as good as just about anything I have read. Let us see how he describes the withering away of the healthy Ego under the assault of psychological theorists who simplify their models of the psyche by doing away with it, and how he illuminates the role of the active Self when it achieves self-mastery through conquest of the Id and the Superego:
- In reality, the three major divisions of the psyche may be organized to work on a balance-of-power principle, an equilibrium in which the waking conscious self not only may play as active at part as the other two but, in man, must do so, if he is to be truly sane or in possession of himself. The difficulty, for us, is that the instincts are simply there. So too is conscience, which, along with other forms of conditioning, we acquire willy-nilly during childhood. More than either of these, the waking “I” needs to be developed, actively by its possessor as well as passively through external influence. Its strengths are not only the least given but the last to come into effect.
- Unlike conscience, which can arise from blows and kicks, the waking self in its feeble formative stage needs the most extensive and detailed encouragement if it is really to take shape. Whereas conscience involves acquiescence, mind involves learning how to think—which means in the end to be nonacquiescent, to move about freely in one’s head regardless of internalized prohibitions.
In the rest of this passage, he describes how
[Page 52] the Superego may be brought under the
control of the waking self, which in effect
results in the “deautomatizing” of the psyche.
- If the “I” fails in that task, Superego and Id thenceforward remain alive in the sense that each, acting through the same machinery of feeling, can manipulate reason while being largely proof against control or manipulation by it. Faced with this combination of forces the “I,” in short, is decisively defeated; from which arises the apparent paradox that the automatically moral man, the perfect conformist, is often not moral at all but merely one obedient to internal force majeure and as such a tireless rationalizer. If the tics of instincts prove stronger than those of conscience, causing him to do something bad, his guilt will at once ease itself through the agency of his subjugated intelligence: i.e., he will allow his thoughts to be falsified by his wish to feel less emotionally uncomfortable; nor will he be troubled by an awareness that there is something subnormal, not to say subhuman, about the whole process. Guilt of that sort, or what one might call true responsibility, is quite beyond him.
This notion of the self is indispensible to certain other ideals which Fair cherishes: the Universal Man, or as he likes to call him in fond reminiscence of the Renaissance, l’uomo universale; an old-fashioned and humane liberalism; faith in Reason as the instrument by which the waking self can to a large degree shape its destiny. It is perhaps, in a strictly logical sense, begging the question for Fair to affirm the existence of one thing that he believes in (the waking self) in order to permit the existence of other things which he would like to promote. But is it, really, any less logical than the use of axioms by mathematicians? If the complex of suppositions and ideals proposed by Fair holds together, if from time to time in the history of man or even of one’s individual experience manifestations of humane, liberal, ethical, and rational behavior have occurred, it is perhaps unwise to deny all that on theoretical grounds. It is particularly unwise in view of the alternatives which we are offered on all sides: the life styles, the meager pleasures and satisfactions, the emptiness and alienation in a world whose policies are based on the rather mechanistic view of a blind Id modified by a randomly developed Superego. And this is the nonsense to which Fair devotes such careful attention.
LET US LOOK at some of these ideals, just to
see if we can recognize them. Fair describes,
with apparent approval, the Jeffersonian
ideal in the following terms: “a rationally
self-possessed being, capable of deciding who
should govern him, what form his institutions
should take, and how and on what scale
his children should be educated.” On the
same page he describes the Universal Man:
“in the Renaissance, as l’uomo universale
began to be a hope and in some small degree
a reality, there was, says [D. H.] Lawrence, ‘a
great outburst of joy,’ and properly so. For by
then the long, if often betrayed and perverted,
effort at man’s inner improvement
which had been the declared object of Christianity
was showing signs that it might work,
which in turn meant that mankind might, in
a very real sense, be delivered—that a humane,
imaginative lucidity might one day lie
within reach of all. . . . The psychological
stunting to which a majority of men had had
to submit since the beginning of history
might at last come to an end and an era of
freedom in the truest sense set in—a Golden
Age in which Everyman, to the limit of his
native abilities (and regardless of class)
might enlarge the powers of his waking self
to the point at which he was fully human.”
Another ideal which owes nothing to
conflict between Id and Superego is that of
Justice: “Justice at law, greater consideration
for the weak or the afflicted, concessions in
general to those who lacked the power to
exact them—in a word, liberalism, in the
sense in which Ortega y Gasset understood
the word fifty years ago—were natural descendants
[Page 53] of the union of the ‘God of Aspiration’
with the ‘God of Knowledge’ [a reference
to D. H. Lawrence].”
The Jeffersonian ideal—what David Riesman would call Inner-directed—has given way to the Other-directed; the Universal Man to the specialist; concern for Justice to preoccupation with image. Fair’s theory of the tripartite psyche offers a plausible explanation of these phenomena.
The general loss of belief on the theoretical level in the integrity of the self has been reflected in a general sense of unreality, of alienation, of anomie, in more recent years. This is the age of hollow men, of the image become more real than the underlying substance. Thus we have come into one of the three phases through which societies pass, according to still another subtle theory of Fair’s. It classifies societies as static, growing, and declining, according to whether the fathers pass on to their sons exactly what they have learned from their fathers, more than they have received from their fathers, or less. The static societies are exemplified by the tribal peoples, whose techniques, often ingenious, are maintained without appreciable change through countless generations, as are their beliefs and their arts. History provides many examples of dynamic societies in which each generation adds enormously to the store of knowledge and methods. not to mention a dynamically developing artistic, literary, and philosophical production. The fifth century B.C. in Greece, Rome in the late Republic and early Empire, the Islamic world in its first several centuries, the Renaissance in Europe, the Age of Science and Technology in modern times—these are just a few examples.
As for shrinking societies, we do not have far to go to find one. We are living in a paradoxical time, for even as knowledge of a scientific and technological sort continues to increase at a bewildering rate, there is nevertheless from generation to generation a growing deficit—a deficit of self-awareness (in spite of frenzied efforts to develop exactly that), of self-confidence, of morals, of culture. Such a statement may appear to be a facile and fashionable doomsaying, but if we examine the kinds of nonsense which Charles Fair adduces as characteristic of our time, we will find a number of common traits which all militate against the use of the mind, of the critical faculty, of the incisive power of language well-used, and against a clear basis for ethical choice.
In the shrinking society, “ideals or principles about to be dropped from the repertoire are not explicitly dismissed. On the contrary, they may be spoken of with greater reverence than ever, which only underscores the increasing contrast between official belief and reality.” This is what we mean when we call the fin de siècle Victorians hypocrites; it would be just a matter of time before the empty forms were themselves abandoned.
- This latter process began after World War I with the so-called Moral Revolution of the 1920s, and has continued at a gradually accelerating pace ever since. The old forms, even as such, ceased to be maintained—in particular those relating to God and right conduct. Along with the notion of the immortal soul, a whole structure of moral convictions commenced to crumble, to the point that no matter what the fathers said, no matter how they tried to keep up some semblance of the former state of things, the sons got the message, leaving out their own beliefs, and so out of the repertoire of the “I,” what the examples of their elders told them was no longer real.
During this period we were dropping more from our heritage than we were adding in the way of “thinking devices,” which Fair defines as “principles capable of producing men with a large view of themselves and the world.” Our tradition had risen to its height and was beginning to decline, at a rate of acceleration like that of the growth of a dynamic civilization.
One wonders at this point whether Fair
has not forgotten to take into account the
[Page 54] continuing spiral of scientific and technological
activity. Are we really in an age of
rapid decline? Here is his answer:
- . . . it is just in such epochs, as the doubts of the fathers begin appearing as deficits in the sons, that the civilization itself is reaching a climactic complexity, becoming more urban and sophisticated and technologically more advanced than it may ever be again. In a world in which the “I” needs more than ever to be fully developed, it increasingly fails to become so. Given too little to start on, it cannot, at adolescence or later, win the battle for its own freedom and assume its proper role as the dominant part of the self. Instead, Id and Superego combine against it, the psychological type that results being the revolutionary mass man of today—the man who, regardless of his actual class, finds he is not up to the intricacies of the world he has inherited and so starts yearning for a simple one.
Thus, Fair explains, the “revolutionary mass man” becomes first a “radical egoist” and then a “radical subjectivist.” As I understand these terms, which Fair does not explicitly define, the former is one whose whole morality lies in his own, usually animal, satisfaction, the latter, one whose metaphysical basis is essentially solipsist—only I exist, the rest is illusion. For such a one, the constraints of the past have lost all power, creating the illusion within him of having chosen thus to break with the past, whereas in fact he has been “inwardly driven to do so” by the urges arising from the uncontrolled Id.
This process is proceeding with such rapidity that “sexual mores and institutions . . . that have lasted for centuries begin to weaken or disappear overnight.” It is this atrophy of the self that leads him either to mystical nonsense, which allays his fear of death, or to ideological nonsense “because it promises (at the cost of a freedom he will never miss, since he has already lost it) to simplify his earthly life for him, relieving him at last of his ‘anomie’ by giving him clear brutal directives and a new togetherness in the Movement.”
Another way out, widely adopted in the America of the turn of the decade, is to “drop out,” finding others like oneself with whom one can play at returning to the soil. Now he can indulge his “compulsive sexuality,” again fostering the illusion of freedom, or “manage” his uncontrolled feelings with drugs.
- [He] can convert his anxiety into rage by pouring hatred on the “straights” and playing at revolution; can indulge in “ripoffs” on the rationalization that in doing so he is really being a brave guerrilla; can develop a primitive creativity . . . and an impoverished “in” language of his own because they are “now,” are his “thing”; eat brown rice diets because they promise him long life and allow him, in the meantime, to “trip” on ketosis [the effect on the brain of ketones, a metabolic byproduct of fat deficiency]; and talk “guru babble” because it reassures him that there is another spirit world in which he may live forever.
NONSENSE, whether mystical or ideological,
has no faith in the integrity or autonomy of
the self. Mystical nonsense (the kind of
mysticism to which Glenn A. Shook, in his
book Mysticism, Science and Revelation,
denies the status of “true mysticism” and
which he calls occultism) is based on the
proposition that the human soul is only
temporarily severed from the All, the Cosmic
Consciousness.[2] The use of a mantra in
meditation to still the consciousness, to stop
the process of thinking, is an example of the
scorn in which thinking is held. Surely
tranquillity of spirit is possible without the
cessation of thought. Many myStical disciplines,
whether of the ancient sort which,
typically, uses the mantra, or of the more
[Page 55] modern variety that uses biofeedback, have as
their purpose the stilling of individual
thought. The biofeedback device is used to
teach the adept to hold on to the alpha
rhythms, to avoid the beta brainwaves which
are associated with active thought. Fair does
not mention the possible benefits which
might be derived from such practices.[3] That
there might be physiological rewards—relaxation,
tranquillizing, preparation for subsequent
activity—does not impair Fair’s contention
that, as these techniques are used by a
certain number of their proponents, promises
are made which most probably cannot be
kept. Does one really “plug into” the Source
of all knowledge?
Shook quotes ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to the effect that meditation is about something.[4] Thinking or meditation is not necessarily entirely verbal, but it is usually focused on something more substantial than a nonsense syllable or two. It is true that when verbal thinking bogs down in the course of complex problem solving, intuition can be encouraged and indeed proves indispensable to the discovery of a solution; but such intuitive insights must be followed by a check against reason, since intuitions have been known to be wrong. It is interesting that an abstract theological position like pantheism can have such far-reaching effects on behavior and on practical results. Thus pantheism leads to an exaggerated reliance on intuition and in turn to nonrational behavior. In this way we are increasingly urged to abandon what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has called “God’s greatest gift to man . . . intellect, or understanding.”[5]
Fair explains that there have been, in the last decade or so, an impressive number of psychotherapeutic methods of an unprofessional nature, based on painfully simple notions of the human psyche, and on equally simple and often absurd “therapeutic” techniques.
- The spiritual disciplines of today, including such things as Mind Control, are all aimed at releasing powers, tapping subliminal forces which are the Real You. . . . Unloose the Primal Scream, roil up the oceanic depths, set aside the ordinary supernatant self with LSD or mescaline or by means of alpha control or Transcendental Meditation, and amazing revelations will follow: new powers, greater health—automatically. Has that not been the wisdom of the East for centuries? (And with what result? one might ask—although the question is now considered Philistine. Salvation is not always visible in the form of things like justice or capability—sometimes not [Page 56]
even in the art or philosophy or character of those who have achieved it.)
In this wry passage, a Bahá’í is reminded of the principle enunciated by Bahá’u’lláh as follows: “The essence of faith is fewness of words and abundance of deeds; he whose words exceed his deeds, know verily his death is better than his life.”[6]
Amoral theory is sooner or later translated into immoral practice. This principle has particularly poignant application to psychotherapy. A clinical psychologist of my acquaintance has told me that he considers his job to make his patient feel comfortable. Guilt, which makes you feel bad, has to be “resolved.” Since psychotherapy makes no moral suppositions (in appearance; actually, the moral vacuum becomes a moral code according to which it is bad to feel bad), psychiatrists and other workers in psychotherapy often lose their own moral and emotional footing.
- Dr. [Phyllis] Chesler quotes one Greenwich Village psychologist to the effect that doctors should sleep with their patients but only “‘very rarely. If they do they should send them to another doctor. You lose your objectivity. I know I do.’” In fact, psychiatrists themselves have been seeking psychiatric help on this question. The Greenwich Village man just quoted “says that he often treats other psychotherapists who sleep with their patients and who come to him for help in resolving the ‘guilt’ and ‘conflict’ precipitated by these relationships.”
Of course Fair does not mean that these examples should serve as a demonstration of the practice of most psychotherapists; but they do delineate the process by which value- free, moral-free theoretical assumptions about human behavior tend toward valueless, immoral behavior, or “acting-out.” “The issue,” says Fair, “is not the ethics of psychiatry as such but the future of the modern world, given that rock-bottom realism is now pretty much everyone’s position. . . . What is to keep us from lapsing either into an anarchic animalism or into some politically organized form of it, in which the police do finally control everything?”
FAIR’S CYCLICAL VIEW of history—the progression
of societies through the three phases,
dynamic, static, and shrinking (not necessarily
in that order), mirrors the tripartite
structure of the psyche:
- An analyst of nonsense might . . . be inclined to say that if history is really cyclical, it is so because it represents a kind of inner battle—mind’s successive, and as yet always unsuccessful, attempts to fight its way clear of the ancient rule of conditioning and the id. For reasons I have described, this struggle begins with the great religions, which, nonsensified and perverted as they always are [apparently, if I understand Fair’s intention, having started free of nonsense, unperverted[7]], nonetheless contain certain essential psychological truths. Of these, the most basic is that man, alone among creatures, is inwardly divided and can unify himself only at a cost of continual pain and effort. He alone is self-made; to aspire is not his option, but his fate.
Here is a glaring logical contradiction but
one that can perhaps be made good with a
more accurate formulation. If man is truly
“self-made” it was a “self” (subject) that
made “man” (the object). To say that aspiration
is his fate, not his option, is to say that
the subject (self) imposed aspiration upon
the object (man) against the latter’s will.
But since this is a reflexive operation. self =
man, that is, subject = object; hence, the
choosing, unconditioned, creating subject =
the created, determined victim of the fate of
[Page 57] its own choosing. Clearly contradictory.
Now, either Fair is wrong; or he is right
except for some detail; or Fair is right, but
the formulation is faulty, possibly because of
implicit but changing definitions of certain
terms. Here are some possible solutions to
Fair’s dilemma:
(1) He was wrong in saying that man is “self-made.” God made man. If you do not know who or what God is, perhaps this very problem offers a clue to at least an attribute of God. As we have just remarked, man cannot create himself; he cannot impose freedom upon himself; he is not the author of his own dilemma. I would agree with Fair that man, “alone among creatures” (it would be unfair to attack Fair on etymological grounds—that a creature requires a creator, unless he really had that meaning in mind when he chose the word) aspires; that the need to rise above his present condition, to give significance to his life beyond the mere perseverance in biological being is a need which can be ignored only at the greatest peril. If it is ignored, psychological, social, and physical existence are gravely threatened.
(2) He was not wrong to say that man is self-made, but he meant something other than the obvious, literal sense of made. It can mean that “making” (a human function) is different from “creating” (a divine function), that “making” involves the modification of materials at hand, in the sense that one “makes a cake.” So, man, a nonfurry primate or however a zoologist would describe him, at some point in the history of the species, became aware of the problem created by intelligence, by language, by tradition and acculturation, in conflict with the urges he shares with his anthropoid cousins. The possibilities opened to an intelligent animal to leap beyond the givens of his biological nature, the multifarious choices offered to him—hence imposed upon him—are a source of freedom and of a new servitude, called responsibility. This new awareness is the loss of innocence symbolized in Genesis by the eating of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. The solutions to the dilemma —theoretically infinite in their variety—are for man to select; the process of choice, of shaping, with more or less prescience and deliberation, his destiny, is quite possibly what Fair refers to in the expression, “self-made.” Man is clearly not responsible for his unique ability to make choices. Therefore, he did not create himself, but he is responsible for what he makes of his opportunities.
(3) One could see in Fair’s statement an existentialist expression: Man, an accidental, evolutionary product of a goalless, senseless universe, has become a sentient and intelligent being who imposes sense upon a world previously deprived of it. Thus man would be the only creature for whom the world makes sense. But he is equally the only creature to fight the anguish of recognizing its absurdity, to fight it by fostering the illusion that the world as a whole has a purpose, or by recognizing its overall absurdity and persevering in creating a rational, meaningful world for himself. If he takes the latter course, he may be considered to have created a world on his own, without the intervention of God. There are subtle hints here and there in the book that Fair might accept this analysis, but there are also strong indications that he regards the world as making sense, and considers it man’s job to find the sense in it. And yet there is no clear indication that he believes the world was created or is directed by a supreme Will or Intelligence. There is, in fact, no visible metaphysical or epistemological underpinning to Fair’s beliefs. There is no doubt, however, of his respect for the Founders of the great religions, nor of his belief in the reality of the “I” or of the self’s freedom of choice, nor, in his terms, of the necessity of freeing the self—which bears a close resemblance to the soul of man as described by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá—from the trammels of blind obedience to tradition on the one hand and of bondage to the animal nature of man on the other, and of the role of the great Prophets in pointing the way to this kind of freedom:
- Because a few men in every civilization, including the saints or true founders of its faith, have recognized that fact [that inwardly divided man seeks to unify himself], great religions, no matter how abused, have always brought great achievements and at least a few Universal Men in their train.
The “Universal Man,” we have seen, is a favorite concept of Fair’s, the very incarnation of the “rational consensus,” of the belief in the indispensible role of reason in the realization of man’s highest destiny.
- They have also brought a hope of freedom, but not freedom in the sense in which Everyman understands it. It is not the freedom to do as he likes that is crucial, but the freedom to be what he feels he should—a human no longer ruled by the Skinnerian beast within him.
This passage is an affirmation of being as against doing, which is to say a recognition of the spiritual (not behaviorist or mechanist) reality of man. The behaviorist, who starts from the methodological proposition that the only objective knowledge of man must come from observation of his behavior, ends with the assumption, no longer purely methodological, that behavior is the only reality of man; that platonic notions of being, or subjective notions like feeling or spirit, that value judgments, as implicit in Fair’s “should [be],” not subject to scientific observation, are best treated either as if nonexistent or as having no meaning. Fair, it seems to me, is clearly on the side of the humanist, in what looks like a conflict between humanism and science but is really between humanism and a pseudoscience riddled with contradictions and gross simplifications. It would appear that Fair’s perception of the “reality of man” is in no essential way different from the Bahá’í view. Let us turn once again to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá for instruction:
- The reality of man is his thought, not his material body. The thought force and the animal force are partners. Although man is part of the animal creation, he possesses a power of thought far superior to all other created beings.
- If a mancs thought is constantly aspiring towards heavenly subjects then does he become saintly; if on the other hand his thought does not soar, but is directed downwards to center itself upon the things of this world, he becomes more and more material until he arrives at a state little better than that of a mere animal.[8]
Is not this statement surprisingly like the following one by Fair?:
- At bottom, this is what the notion of Free Will comes down to. We sense that the “I,” the rational-imaginative self, has an autonomy proper to itself, which can and must be won if we are not to live perpetually in the “darkness of sin”—which is to say as animals driven by our own adaptiveness and haunted by the notion of our servitude, our partiality.
- Stripped of its supernaturalist nonsense, what the idea of soul and salvation—of grace—really stands for is this state of inner completeness. If so it was Rousseau, not the Puritan fathers, who was deluded. It is not by surrendering the “I” but by achieving it that man arrives at the “oceanic sense” [the mystic experience of union with the All], through a self-possession which opens both inner and outer worlds to the eye of the mind. Falling short of that state, as we find we are doing today, we console ourselves by repeating, endlessly, that really it was never in us to achieve it.[9] We despair of “intellectualizing” and seek the oceanic sense in the only other way open to us: through release and a passive experiencing of the unconsciousness—in drugs, in TM, in the “dark otherness” of sex.
It is not hard to find a great many points
of agreement between Fair’s understanding
[Page 59] of history, society, and the human psyche,
and expressions on the same subjects in the
Bahá’í Writings. But the two sets of ideas are
not identical. The difference seems to reside
in what, in comparison to Bahá’í teachings,
appears to be a lacuna in Fair’s thought—or
at least an area in which he has preferred not
to declare himself. I find no evidence that
Fair is explicitly aware of any power higher
than man. He describes man as “self-made,”
in the sense that man alone is responsible for
the traits which distinguish him from the rest
of animal creation. On the basis of whatever
evidence there may be for his positive beliefs,
one is almost obliged to classify him as an
atheist existentialist. And yet there is occasionally
an expression of respect for the
Founders of the great religions and for the
role which these religions have played in the
advance of civilization, as well as of regret
for the severe distortions which these religions
have invariably undergone at the hands
of their official promoters. Logically, this
argues at least a degree of concurrence with
the pure message of the “saints”; but nowhere
in the book does Fair acquaint us with
his religious ideas. What does he think was
the burden of the Teachings of the “true
founders”? What did they tell us about a
personal God? About His help in time of
need? About His knowledge, vouchsafed to
Divine Manifestations (that is, to the “saints
or true founders of . . . faiths” of whom Fair
speaks)?
Many of the agreements we have noted concern man’s psyche, the importance of a reasoning intellect, the integrity of the individual soul, the essential difference between men and animals, the tendency of men who lack respect for that which is most human in them to become like animals, the danger of the influence of the animal nature, and of the power exerted by mere custom (Fair calls it the Superego; Bahá’u’lláh warns us against “imitation”). Further, there is agreement that meditation, to be efficacious, must be focused on something; that merit is best measured by deeds and good character; that exhortations to a virtue which is not exemplified by its promoter can be worse than useless.
But there are also either disagreements, or
points of the Bahá’í Faith relevant to the
questions raised by Fair but not dealt with by
him. Would Fair admit, for example, that
divine succor is directly available to men
engaged in prayer or meditation? ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
has said: “The spirit of man is itself
informed and strengthened during meditation;
through it affairs of which man knew
nothing are unfolded before his view.
Through it he receives divine inspiration, and
through it he partakes of heavenly food.”[10]
Again (we have touched on this before),
would Fair consider with his customary fairness
and detachment the proposition that the
Founders of the great religions of the world
received complete, systematic revelations,
called Dispensations (unlike the partial, specific
revelations vouchsafed to most prophets)
directly from God, and that they may,
therefore, be considered to be speaking with
His full authority? Although Fair nowhere
delineates such a theory, even for the purpose
of disproving it, he would have to take it
seriously if it were called to his attention. He
would probably be inclined to deny it as an
infringement on the right of the free intellect
to perceive the truth directly. To a Bahá’í,
such an objection would not be serious, and
its resolution would in no way limit man’s
freedom. Quite the contrary, for, man being
incapable of knowing God unmediated (a
proposition to which Fair would probably
assent), to be admitted to the presence of
God to the degree that the Manifestation
makes it possible is an extension of man’s
knowledge, hence of his freedom to know.
Unaided, man would surely not have gotten
so far, however penetrating his intelligence.
As for other knowledge, a prime tenet of
the Bahá’í Faith is the independent investigation
[Page 60] of reality.
Fair stakes all on the importance of the rational faculty. In the world of the mind, there is nothing, as he sees it, outside of the automatic Superego, the human Ego, and the animal Id. The Ego is, of course, the domain in which the intellect, or reason, operates. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in Some Answered Questions, explains the “Four Methods of Acquiring Knowledge”: through the senses, through reason, through tradition, and through turning to the divine Manifestation. The senses are subject to error; if reason were a sure guide to true knowledge, the philosophers would be in agreement; the traditional method, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains, involves the interpretation of Scripture, which has the disadvantage already adduced for reason— numerous and confusing differences of opinion. This leaves recourse to the Manifestation of God—for this day, let it be specified.[11]
The tripartite division of man’s psyche proposed by Fair (via Freud) is a useful model, but others are conceivable. Again, it is ‘Abdu’l-Bahá who has so much to tell us about the human mind. In addition to the vegetable spirit (the power of growth) and the animal spirit (the power of all the senses), there is the human spirit—the rational soul, which distinguishes man from the animals. This much is inherent in Fair’s thought. But there are two more elements to be taken into consideration, which do not appear in Fair’s scheme of things: the spirit of faith and the Holy Spirit. “The human spirit, unless assisted by the spirit of faith, does not become acquainted with the divine secrets and the heavenly realities. It is like a mirror which, although clear, polished, and brilliant, is still in need of light. Until a ray of the sun reflects upon it, it cannot discover the heavenly secrets.”[12]
The New Nonsense is a spirited defense of reason, respect for which has fallen on dark days. It is conducted with humor and intensity. Fair has resisted the temptation simply to make fun of human stupidity; his message is serious and constructive. He holds up for our contemplation in these days of flabby morals and feeble minds an ideal of a sturdy realism, respect for competence, compassion for one’s fellow, and a renewal of a sense of responsibility. His marksmanship is on the whole excellent. But his range is perhaps a little short, in that his exclusive reliance on reason deprives him of an assistance which mere men, not capable of bearing the problems of the universe on their shoulders alone, have at their disposal, if they would but know.
- ↑ Charles Fair, From the Jaws of Victory (New York: Simon, 1971).
- ↑ Glenn A. Shook, Mysticism, Science and Revelation, rev. ed. (London: George Ronald, 1964; Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1967), p. 34.
- ↑ It is only in respect to Yoga and to Transcendental Meditation that he is unfair, in that he simply mentions them in enumerations of nonsense, without subjecting them to examination or searching criticism. The fact is that there is much of value among the many disciplines which go under the name of Yoga, as well as numerous opportunities to indulge in nonsense and exploit the credulous crowd. Fair shows a respect for Freud which he denies to his disciples. He might also exhibit the same respect, or at least a sense of fair play, toward ancient and honored disciplines. As far as TM is concerned, the evidence is not all in yet, although I must confess that passages from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s book Transcendental Meditation: Serenity without Drugs (New York: NAL, 1968) smack of the pure nonsense of tautologies disguised as wisdom—for example: “This is the glory of the discovery that the Being is the essential constituent of creation” (p. 23).
- ↑ Shook, Mysticism, Science and Revelation, pp. 104-07, especially 106: “‘The meditative faculty is akin to a mirror; if you put before it earthly objects, it will reflect them. Therefore if the spirit of man is contemplating earthly objects he will become informed of them.’” “‘But if you turn the mirror of your spirit heavenwards, the heavenly constellations and the rays of the Sun of Reality will be reflected in your hearts, and the virtues of the Kingdom will be obtained.’” To these quotations, Shook adds the following reflections: “There is an underlying unity in all meditation in that he who meditates, whether religious genius, creative artist or inventor, turns the mirror of his soul toward the object of his meditations” (p. 107).
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Reality of Man: Excerpts from Writings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1962), p. 10.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, in Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Reality of Man, p. 4.
- ↑ Fair is at pains to make this distinction at other places, for example, p. 244: “religious nonsense [is] not the word of saints and prophets but the official theology supposedly inspired by them: the claptrap of professional ecclesiastics.”
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Reality of Man, p. 9.
- ↑ Hence our innumerable theories proving the feebleness of the Ego, the superiority of gut knowledge, etc. Hence Skinner. [Fair’s footnote]
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in Shook, Mysticism, Science and Revelation, p. 105.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, comp. and trans. Laura Clifford Barney, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1964), pp. 341-43.
- ↑ Ibid., pp. 243-44.
Authors & Artists
NORMAN A. BAILEY, who holds a master’s
degree in international affairs and a doctorate
in public law and government from
Columbia University, is a professor of political
science at Queens College of the City
University of New York and a partner in a
consulting firm, Bailey/Tondu, Associates.
He has published five books and over one-hundred
articles on international politics,
economics, and business. He has, in the past,
been an actor and has had some of his plays
produced.
GREGORY C. DAHL received a bachelor’s
degree in electrical engineering from Harvard
University, where he is now completing
a doctorate in economics. He has
traveled extensively visiting Bahá’ís in some
seventy-five countries. His interests include
music (he performs and has produced record
albums) and various aspects of the
audiovisual field.
RICHARD N. GARDNER is the Henry L.
Moses Professor of Law and International
Organization at Columbia University. He
has long been active in the United Nations
and in promoting international understanding;
he has served on many advisory bodies,
among them the President’s Commission on
International Trade and Investment Policy
and the United States Advisory Committee
on the Law of the Sea. His many publications
include In Pursuit of World Order, Blueprint
for Peace, and The Global Partnership:
International Agencies and Economic Development,
which he coauthored.
HOWARD GAREY is an associate professor of
French and Romance Philology at Yule University.
He has published a number of articles
on French linguistics and now has at
press an edition of a fifteenth-century
French songbook “The Mellon Chasonnier.”
Dr. Garey is an associate editor of World
Order.
JANET HOMNICK is a freelance writer, a
wife, and a mother, who is living on the
Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico.
Her interests include writing, music, art,
and dramatics, especially creative dramatics
for children.
ROBERT MULLER, a native of France, holds
a law degree from Strasbourg University
and degrees in economics from the universities
of Heidelberg and Columbia. He has
served with the United Nations since 1948,
with the exception of one year, and is now
Deputy to the Under-Secretary-General for
Inter-Agency Affairs and Co-ordination in
the Secretary-General’s offices. His interests
range from the environment, space communications,
water problems, the handicapped,
solar energy, and biology to art,
folklore, and cultural diversity.
ART CREDITS: P. 5. photograph by George
O. Miller; p. 6, photograph by Glenford E.
Mitchell; p. 17, photograph by Hooper Dunbar;
p. 18, photograph by Glenford E.
Mitchell; p. 40, photograph by Hooper Dunbar;
p. 47, photograph by Glenford E.
Mitchell; back cover, photograph by Adam
Thorne.
HOOPER DUNBAR, an actor by profession,
served for many years as a Bahá’í teacher and
administrator in Central and South America
before assuming his present post as a member
of the Bahá’í International Teaching
Center in Haifa, Israel.
GEORGE O. MILLER, a student of zoology,
made his most recent appearance in the
Spring 1974 issue of World Order. His ambition
is to combine the study of zoology
with nature photography.
GLENFORD E. MITCHELL is managing editor
of World Order.
ADAM THORNE appears in World Order for
the second time. His first appearance was in
the last issue. He is studying toward a bachelor
of education degree in England.