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[Page 1]

World order

WINTER 1967

The Quest for Peace

Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson

The Current Dilemma

Edwin C. Berry

The Three Faces of Harlem

Alexander Garvin

Education for What?

Darrell D. Lacock

[Page 2]

World Order

A BAHÁ’Í MAGAZINE • VOLUME 2 NUMBER 2 • 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

HOWARD GAREY

GLENFORD E. MITCHELL

Art Consultants:

GEORGE NEUZIL

LORI NEUZIL

WORLD ORDER is published quarterly, October, January, April, and July, at 112 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois 60091. Subscriber and business correspondence should be sent to this address. Manuscripts and other editorial correspondence should be addressed to 2011 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 and suggestions for articles and subjects to be treated editorially will be welcomed and acknowledged by the editors.

Subscription: Regular mail USA, $3.50; Foreign, $4.00. Single copy, $1.00.

Copyright © 1968, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, World Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.

IN THIS ISSUE

3 Violence in America

Editorial

4 The Quest for Peace

by Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson

8 And All the Atoms Cry Aloud

A Poem by Robert Hayden

10 Bahá’u’lláh’s Call to the Nations

by F. Kazemzadeh

15 The Current Dilemma

by Edwin C. Berry

20 The Three Faces of Harlem

by Alexzander Garvin

26 All Children Will Have Shoes

by Mary Fish

30 Sheep in a Ghost Town

A Poem by William Stafford

31 Education for What?

by Darrell D. Lacock

37 The Unsuspected Effects of Religion

on Your Personality, by James J. Keene

46 The Greeting

A Poem by William Stafford

47 Na’ím: A Bahá’í Poet

by Roy P. Mottahedeh

54 Authors and Artists of This Issue

[Page 3]

Violence in America

LAWLESSNESS AND VIOLENCE are part of the American scene. Unsafe parks and unsafe streets, well over ten thousand murders in a single year, last summer’s riots in the cities, all this and more alarm millions of Americans. Speaking at a ceremony marking the inauguration of the new government for the District of Columbia, President Johnson said that the time had come “when the American people are going to rise up in revolt against the lawbreakers in this country.” Increasing violence evokes feelings not only of danger but also of surprise that the citizens of the most prosperous country in the world should also be the most prone to engage in individual violence. Yet the surprise is unjustified.

Violence and crime in American life are not new. They belong to the old tradition of unrestrained individualism and disregard for the rights of others. For generations American children were raised on tales of deadly conflict and open hostility. The Indian fighter, the outlaw and the sheriff who was just as rough, the “two-fisted he-man”, have long been our folk heroes, and the Colt revolver has occupied an exceptionally prominent place in our history. Later came the “heroes” of the urban underworld: the gangster, the rum runner, and the tough detective (no relation to the intellectual and gentlemanly Sherlock Holmes).

MASS MEDIA HAVE EXPLOITED man’s taste for the vicarious enjoyment of violence. Comics, radio, and television have poured an Amazon of lurid crime into every home. Is it any wonder that so many are prepared to accept force and crime as legitimate, and perhaps emotionally satisfying, means of attaining whatever goals they set themselves?

The objective conditions which breed crimes of violence—poverty, inequality, deprivation—must, of course, be eliminated. But something more is required. The entire ethos of our society must be changed. The brute must no longer be a hero, force must no longer be accepted as an arbiter between men, the meek must no longer be disdained.

TO FREE SOCIETY OF CRIME and violence it is not enough to hire more policemen. It is not even enough to rehabilitate every slum and provide every citizen with a guaranteed minimum income. To create a brotherly society men must be brothers. To make them such is the great challenge facing America today.

[Page 4]

The Quest for Peace

By THE RIGHT HONORABLE LESTER B. PEARSON

PRIME MINISTER OF CANADA

WE ARE OFTEN TOLD that today the only constant is change—and this is true. There has been more change in the last fifty years than in the five thousand that preceded them; change brought about by the application of man’s intelligence—particularly under the forcing pressure of war—to technological and scientific development.

His fantastic success in this pursuit, coupled with his failure to make his own social and political behaviour correspond to any other moral law than that of his earliest ancestors may, in fact, make it difficult for man to survive his own intelligence.

THE MEASURE OF NATIONAL CHANGE is shown by four startling facts: (1) nearly everything that we know today had not appeared in any book when I went to school; (2) the sum total of human knowledge doubles every four years; (3) 25 per cent of all the people who have ever lived are alive today; (4) 90 per cent of all the research scientists who ever lived are alive today.

You can, if you like, draw the pessimistic conclusion from these facts that we are likely to use our increased knowledge in a way which will, before long, drastically lower the 25 per cent figure that I have just mentioned. Up to the present, however, our discoveries in science and health and production have increased the population far more than man’s capacity and determination to [Page 5] fight and kill has reduced it. But, with the substitution of the mega-missile for the bayonet, with a million victims replacing the single dead soldier of the line, man has acquired a terrifying capacity to alter the balance against further increase.

Many of the members of my graduating class were the too few survivors of a Canadian generation that had gone off to war in 1914 and 1915 to save the world for democracy. The failure of my younger generation was shown in 1939 when World War II began.

We are now the older men. The young in many countries are today in the position we were, in 1919: convinced that only by displacing us for younger men of greater wisdom and morality can the world be saved from new and threatening follies and tragedies which could have results of horror and destruction beyond anything we ever knew.

And so it goes. I wonder what the next generation 25 years from now will be saying about the “go-go’s” of today.

THERE Is A DIFFERENCE, however. The younger men and women of today are less conformist but more involved; more aware and so more concerned; not so easily impressed by old shibboleths, old loyalties, old institutions. Their revolutions are less political and more social; they are not impressed by the “inevitability of gradualness.” Their rebellious impatience shows itself at times in strange and irrational ways. Unfortunately, it is the strange and irrational and “off beat” that gets the headlines, so the total picture gets distorted.

I have no criticism of the spirit of rebellion, of the impatience and even some of the cynicism of the younger people of today. They face grimmer dangers and tensions than we ever did and in a world where the consequences of failing to deal with them will be far more catastrophic. If they didn’t protest and reject, they would be lacking in the spirit and the energy and the sense of involvement which will be essential when they have the responsibility for policy and direction.

Nevertheless, I would like to put in a word for a counter-revolution in the area of ideas; recognition of the importance of balance and moderation as a philosophical principle for political action and progress in a civilized society.

MODERATION IN THIS SENSE means something far more comprehensive than a mild neutrality of personal attitude more applicable to elderly gentlemen who have lost touch with their times. It is not an acceptance of the status quo, but a recognition that there is an inevitable and inescapable balance between human aspiration and human achievement; between the perfect and the possible. It is a recognition that progress through change cannot be imposed overnight from on high, but rises slowly and patiently from the individual’s own thought and responsible action.

It is a recognition of the fact that a student studying the causes of our present discontents in a library may be putting himself in a position to make a more important contribution to their removal than one carrying a banner of defiance or protest in a parade.

[Page 6] Today, government—more than ever before in history—has become the chief instrument in society for arbitrating its social and economic conflicts and promoting human welfare. It has been given this responsibility, unfortunately, at a time when there is less respect for, and more cynicism about, Government in democratic society than ever before. Irreverence of authority—healthy, and at times not so healthy—is the hallmark of our age. Today all across our world the demand for changes in government, in institutions, in society, which will fit the new facts about existence, is felt with increasing urgency in every aspect of our national and international affairs. Our financial and economic practices, our educational systems, our social values, our politics, our homes, our religion —every area of human thought and action, is in a ferment as we struggle to cope with powerful and bewildering new forces at work in today’s world. Ideas and concepts of the past are being swept away at a pace that is sometimes as bewildering as it is stimulating.

We cannot turn back these tides of knowledge that man’s restless intelligence has now unleashed; and which dominate every phase of human development. But we can try to harness them more effectively to the kind of progress which will bring about a better national and world society. Indeed, it is essential that we do so, because our new knowledge has brought us, not international peace, but thermonuclear weapons. We now live and work in the shadow of the Bomb. The Bomb has brought to our world a new cloud of terror. It has also confirmed beyond any further doubt or argument the universal neighborhood, if not the universal brotherhood, of man.

All of us must learn to live as one family under the sun or we will all die as separate families under the mushroom cloud.

The real liberators in the world today—and this has always been true—are not those who rebel against reality or responsibility, but those who rebel against unreality and irresponsibility; who reject Violence and extremism—reactionary or anarchic; who fight intolerance, prejudice, discrimination, and all forms of injustice.

TODAY THE ISSUES OF NATIONAL POLITICS are more closely related to those of international relations than ever before. There are very few national problems that can be solved within exclusively national terms of reference. We of the West must surely have learned—as I hope they are now learning in Asia and Africa—that while nationalism may be sacred, it is not sufficient. Like patriotism, it is not enough.

Today, people in all countries are moving closer together, despite ideological differences, in the things they actually want for themselves, in the kind of life they seek for themselves and their children.

I believe this process—aided by new and swift means of communication and transportation—will continue; unless we blow ourselves to pieces in war.

[Page 7] In this kind of situation, it is unrealistic to think of the world in terms of separated and self-sufficient sovereign states; or even any longer in terms of blocs; communist, anti-communist or uncommitted.

Communism is not a system of life or rule that our free societies will tolerate.

But it is not any longer the solid and united world political force that, with justification, we thought it to be some years back, driving towards world domination even at the risk of world conflict.

The problem should no longer be approached on the assumption that if a state goes communist by domestic action, that state now automatically becomes a satellite of Moscow—or Peking; and thereby a threat to peace.

It is no longer as simple or as uncomplicated as that.

Communist theory is now being interpreted to an increasing extent by some individual Communist governments, to mean what they consider it expedient to mean, in terms of their own national interests. Often those interests dictate increasing contact and co-operation with the West. This may give us new opportunities to develop relations with some communist countries on a more rational basis than formerly.

The aspirations of individual men for equal and greater opportunity for a better life which have been pushing privilege out of our own democratic systems, are now working to reduce the restraints on personal freedom and human rights under Communism.

IN THE WORLD COMMUNITY evolving today, the power and influence—and survival—of a political system may come to depend more on the social and economic advantage it gives to its own people than on any other factor, including its relationship to a particular ideology.

The societies most likely to endure may increasingly become those which can best meet legitimate demands of their own people for equal opportunity to realize and enjoy their fullest human capacities. This offers at least the promise of better relations and improved understanding.

If there is such a promise then surely it would be folly to let the concept of cold war get so deeply rooted as to become a way of life, something central to and dominating all national and international purpose and policy.

[Page 8]

And all the atoms cry aloud

A Poem—By ROBERT HAYDEN

[Page 9]

I bear Him witness now

Who by the light of suns beyond the suns beyond

the sun with shrill pen

Revealed renewal of

the covenant of timelessness with time, proclaimed

advent of splendor

Ecstasy alone

can comprehend and the imperious evils of an age

could not withstand

And stars and stones and seas

acclaimed—His life, His words its crystal image and

magnetic field.

I bear Him witness now—

mystery Whose major clues are the heart of man,

the mystery of God:

Bahá’u’lláh:

logos, cosmic poet, cosmic architect

of unity and peace,

Wronged, exiled One,

chosen to endure what agonies of knowledge,

what dazzling, dread

Bestowals of truth,

of vision, power, heartbreak for our future’s sake.

“O King! I was but a man

“Like others, asleep upon

My couch, when lo, the breezes of the All-Glorious

were wafted over Me. . . .”

Called, as in dead

of dark a dreamer is roused to help the helpless flee

a burning house.

I bear Him witness now:

toward Him all history moves, toward Him our history

in its disastrous rage for order is impelled.

[Page 10]

Bahá’u’lláh’s Call to the Nations

By F. KAZEMZADEH

Speech made on October 6, 1967, at the Intercontinental Bahá’í Conference in Chicago.

DURING THE MONTH of October this year Bahá’ís all over the world are commemorating the centenary of a momentous historic event.

Great events do not always attract immediate attention and this one occurred in relative obscurity. Yet its significance was such that today, a century later, hundreds of thousands of men and women of every race, every nationality, every religious background, see in it a turning point and the opening of a new era.

The series of events which found their culmination in the fall of 1867 began twenty-three years earlier in the Persian city of Shíráz. There a young Siyyid, descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, proclaimed Himself the Báb, the Gate, through which God was communicating to man an epoch-making message.

THE ESSENCE of the message was that soon God would make manifest a Prophet, a Divine Teacher, whose dispensation would fulfill the expectations of all religions of the past and who would guide mankind toward justice, unity and peace.

The Muslim clergy and the government of Persia acted swiftly and decisively. The Báb was executed, and the movement He had inaugurated was drenched in blood.

Among the Báb's disciples was Mírzá Husayn ‘Alí, known as Bahá’u’lláh. He came from a noble and wealthy family. His father held a high position in the government, and His own future seemed assured. Yet, the moment the Báb’s message reached his ears, He gave up His wealth, abandoned a life of ease and comfort and exposed Himself to imprisonment, torture and exile.

In 1853 Bahá’u’lláh was banished from His native land to Baghdad, then a provincial center in the Ottoman Empire. There He hecame the leader and inspirer of most of the followers of the Báb who had survived the massacres of the previous years. He breathed a new life into the wounded community and gave it a new direction. Soon the Persian government realized that the cause of the Báb had not perished. The Shah asked the Sultan to remove Bahá’u’lláh from Baghdad, a city too close to Persia. The Sultan agreed and ordered that Bahá’u’lláh be transferred to Constantinople and later to Adrianople in European Turkey.

But before He left Baghdad, Bahá’u’lláh revealed to a few chosen disciples that He was the One whose advent the Báb had foretold, that He was the Divine Messenger destined to inaugurate the cycle of unity and peace for all mankind.

For the next four years, the declaration made by Bahá’u’lláh remained a secret. [Page 11] Then, in the autumn of 1867, shortly before His final banishment to the Ottoman penal colony in ‘Akká, Bahá’u’lláh proclaimed His message to the world.

IN THE NINETEENTH century, when most of the world was still ruled by monarchs, each of whom claimed to incarnate the spirit of his nation, it was almost inevitable that Bahá’u’lláh should address the kings. It was to them, collectively and individually, that He first proclaimed the principles which have ever since remained the distinguishing characteristics of the Bahá’í Faith: justice as the only foundation of social order; peace based on disarmament and maintained through collective security; unity of mankind.

The great religions of the past had addressed themselves to the individual. They had inspired man and led him to adhere to a morality that governed relations between persons. Thousands of years ago man had learned to abhor murder, while continuing to accept war. For generations man had known the virtue of individual kindness and love, while living in an unjust society. For ages man had been taught to love his neighbor, but the neighbor was only he who belonged to one’s immediate group or tribe. Today, as in the past, states and nations stand above law and morality and are not subject to sanctions, except such as a victor may impose upon the vanquished. Only last summer, a distinguished political scientist at a great American university stated the sad truth when he wrote that:

The actions of states are determined not by moral principles and legal commitments but by considerations of interest and power. Moral principles and legal commitments may be invoked to justify a policy arrived at on other grounds . . . They may strengthen or weaken, depending on the particular situation, the determination with which a certain policy is pursued; but they do not determine the choice among the different courses of action.

This is the situation that prevails today.

Reinhold Niebuhr once pointed out correctly that there was never a Christian state, Jesus having counseled to leave to Caesar all concern with war, peace, taxation and the administration of justice.

Yet, a hundred years ago in His Tablets, or epistles, to the kings, Bahá’u’lláh proclaimed the obligation of the rulers, and therefore of states, to adhere to certain clearly defined moral norms. These norms were not a produCt of philosophical speculation, not a result of mutual accommodation and compromise; but an expression of the Will of God for mankind at this stage of its spiritual evolution.

Lay not aside the fear of God [Bahá’u’lláh wrote in a Tablet addressed to the kings collectively] and beware that ye transgress not the bounds which the Almighty has fixed. Observe the injunctions laid upon you in His [Page 12] Book, and take good heed not to overstep their limits. Be vigilant, that ye may not do injustice to anyone, be it to the extent of a grain of mustard seed. Tread ye the path of justice, for this verily is the straight path. Compose your differences and reduce your armaments, that the burden of your expenditures may be lightened and that your minds and hearts may be tranquilized.

Not only does Bahá’u’lláh teach that there exists a morality to which states are subject, He closely links domestic, social, and economic justice with international peace.

O Kings of the Earth! [He proclaims] We see you increasing every year your expenditures, and laying the burden thereof on your subjects. This, verily, is wholly and grossly unjust. Fear the sighs and tears of this Wronged One, and lay not excessive burdens on your peoples. Do not rob them to rear palaces for yourselves; nay rather choose for them that which you choose for yourselves. . . . Your people are your treasure. Beware lest your rule violate the commandments of God, and ye deliver your wards to the hands of the robber. . . . Now that ye have refused the Most Great Peace, hold ye fast unto this, the Lesser Peace, that haply ye may better your own condition and that of your dependents.

Disarmament and peace would make it possible to lighten the burden that lies heavy on the shoulders of the poor and eventually to eliminate poverty which is the consequence of two great evils: socio-economic injustice and war.

To this day, mankind has not eliminated either of these. Every nation, every city bears the marks of injustice, and we all live in constant danger of obliteration by war.

Looking far ahead into a future that none of His contemporaries even dimly discerned, Bahá’u’lláh warned mankind:

The world is in travail, and its agitation waxeth day by day. Its face is turned toward waywardness and unbelief. Such shall be its plight, that to disclose it now would not be meet and seemly. Its perversity will long continue. And when the appointed hour is come, there shall suddenly appear that which shall cause the limbs of mankind to quake. Then, and only then, will the divine standard be unfurled . . .

To the Sultan ‘Abdu’l-Azíz of Turkey, to Násiri’-Dín Sháh of Persia, to Napoleon III, Alexander II, Francis Joseph and Queen Victoria, Bahá’u’lláh pointed the way to security and peace. These could be achieved only through the unification of mankind and the establishment of what now is known as collective security, that rare ethereal substance which has, to this day, eluded humanity’s reach.

Be united, O Kings of the Earth [Bahá’u’lláh wrote one hundred years ago] for thereby will the tempest of discord be stilled amongst you, and your people find rest. . . . Should any one among you take up arms against another, rise ye all against him, for this is naught but manifest justice.

AMONG THE RULERS addressed by Bahá’u’lláh, one occupied a dual station, that of the temporal ruler of a small Italian state and spiritual ruler of the most numerous Christian church. Indeed, Pope Pius IX could be said to have symbolized official Christianity. To him Bahá’u’lláh announced the glad tidings of a new advent, warning the Pontiff not to close his eyes and mind and not to let the past bar his way to the future. The Pope’s very position at the summit of the Church made it difficult, if not impossible, for him to recognize a new Revelation. In the past, too, religious leaders and the learned have often been among the least receptive to new truths.

Call thou to remembrance Him who was the Spirit (Jesus), Who, when He came, the most learned of His age pronounced judgment against Him in His country, whilst he who was only a fisherman believed in Him.

Pope Pius IX, Napoleon III, Tsar Alexander II, Emperor Francis Joseph, Kaiser William I, these were mighty names. They and a dozen others like them wielded enormous power over the entire world. But what was Bahá’u’lláh’s authority to admonish them? Why did He take upon Himself to prescribe to them and through them to the generality of mankind? Bahá’u’lláh thus explained His authority in an epistle to the Shah of Persia:

O King! I was but a man like others, asleep upon My couch, when lo, the breezes of the All-Glorious were wafted over Me, and taught Me the knowledge of all that hath been. This thing is not from Me, but from One Who is Almighty and All-Knowing. And He bade Me lift up My voice between earth and heaven, [Page 13] and for this there befell Me what hath caused the tears of every man of understanding to flow. The learning current amongst men I studied not; their schools I entered not. . . . This is but a leaf which the winds of the Will of Thy Lord, the All-Praised, have stirred. . . . I was indeed as One dead when His behest was uttered. The hand of the Will of Thy Lord, the Compassionate, the Merciful, transformed Me. Can any one speak forth of his own accord that for which all men, both high and low, will protest against him?

The message proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh in 1867 and elaborated in His writings during the subsequent quarter century found no response from the kings. We do not know whether the Emperor William I of Germany received the Epistle addressed to him, and if he had, what his reaction was. We do know that Napoleon III disdainfully rejected Bahá’u’lláh’s advice and disregarded His warning. We do know that the Sultan ‘Abdu’l-Azíz and ‘Abdu’l-Hamíd of Turkey continued to keep Him prisoner till the end of His life. We do know that the young man who took the message to the Shah of Persia was tortured and put to death.

BUT BAHÁ’U’LLÁH did not expect the temporal and spiritual leaders, what today would be called “the establishment”, to react in any other way.

Leaders of Religion [He had written several years earlier] in every age, have hindered their people from attaining the shores of eternal salvation, inasmuch as they held the reins of authority in their mighty grasp. Some for the lust of leadership, others through want of knowledge and understanding, have been the cause of the deprivation of the people. By their sanction and authority, every Prophet of God hath drunk from the chalice of sacrifice . . . what unspeakable cruelties they that have occupied the seats of authority and learning have inflicted upon the true Monarchs of the world . . .

The source and origin of tyranny [Bahá’u’lláh wrote] have been the divines. Through the sentences passed by these haughty and wayward souls the rulers of the earth have wrought that which ye have heard. . . . The reins of the heedless masses have been, and are, in the hands of the exponents of idle fancies and vain imaginings.

Bahá’u’lláh foresaw and foretold not only the rejection of His Message by the monarchs, the religious leaders and the learned, but also the cataclysmic changes which were to occur throughout the world, wiping out ancient dynasties, weakening the hold of traditional religions, and producing the political, moral, and spiritual chaos of the twentieth century. “The face of the world,” Bahá’u’lláh proclaimed, “has altered . . . The vitality of men’s belief in God is dying out in every land.”

Only a handful of men, most of them humble and seemingly powerless, accepted the truths announced by Bahá’u’lláh. The vast majority of mankind either did not hear the call or preferred to follow other doctrines. The well-meaning have watched, in impotent horror, the rise and spread of movements that have inflicted unbelievable miseries upon the world.

The very same leaders to whom Bahá’u’lláh addressed His warnings saw their power crumble, their thrones fall, their peoples revolt. Western civilization itself lost its spiritual bearings and has nothing to offer man except mindless and heartless power. A recital of horrors which mankind has inflicted upon itself in the last sixty years alone would have to include the massacre of a million and a half Armenians, the bloodshed and organized arson of the two World Wars, the extermination of six million Jews, the uprooting of uncounted millions, the explosion of atomic bombs, revolutions, purges, race riots, and the mass cultivation of hatred.

ALMOST THIRTY YEARS ago Shoghi Effendi, the late Guardian of the Bahá’í Cause, wrote:

God Himself has indeed been dethroned from the hearts of men, and an idolatrous world passionately and clamorously hails and worships the false gods which its own idle fancies have fatuously created. The chief idols in the desecrated temple of mankind are none other than nationalism, racialism and communism, at whose altars governments and peoples, whether democratic or totalitarian, at peace or [Page 14] at war, of the East or of the West, Christian or Islamic, are . . . now worshipping. Their high priests are the politicians and the worldly-wise . . ., their sacrifice, the flesh and blood of the slaughtered multitudes; their incantations outworn shibboleths and insidious and irreverent formulas; their incense, the smoke of anguish that ascends from the lacerated hearts of the bereaved, the maimed and the homeless.

The world crisis is still unresolved. To the old dangers of bloodshed and fire have been added new dangers: the pollution of air and waters, urban blight, the technological invasion of privacy, and universal brainwashing which, whether in the interest of the state or private enterprise, turns wrong into right and deprives man of the vestiges of his freedom. Today, as before, the wealth and energy of nations are poured into war or preparation for war, while hundreds of millions live in the most appalling conditions of poverty, disease and ignorance.

Is it any wonder that so many despair? Is it any wonder that escape through alcohol or drugs seems so irresistibly attractive to youth? Is it any wonder that love fails and is suddenly transformed into savage violence?

Yet the followers of Bahá’u’lláh firmly believe that out of this suffering and chaos a new world will emerge. In over three hundred countries and territories growing numbers of Bahá’ís work day and night for the realization of “the healing, the saving” truths proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh:

The world is but one country and mankind its citizens. Bend your minds and wills to the education of the peoples and kindreds of the earth, that . . . all mankind may become the upholders of one order, and the inhabitants of one city. . . .

Our age is an age of grave crisis of civilization, but it is in such ages that “religions have perished and are born.” We are, indeed, witnessing not only the death pangs of the old order but also the birth pangs of the new.

The winds of despair [Bahá’u’lláh wrote a century ago] are, alas, blowing . . . and the strife that divides and afflicts the human race is daily increasing. The signs of impending convulsions can now be discerned, inasmuch as the prevailing order appears to be lamentably defective.

Soon, [He predicted] will the present day order be rolled up, and a new one spread out in its stead.

The whole earth is now in a state of pregnancy. The day is approaching when it will have yielded its noblest fruits.

All nations and kindreds will become a single nation. Religious and sectarian antagonism, the hostility of races and peoples, and differences among nations will be eliminated. All men will adhere to one religion, will have one common faith, will be blended into one race, and become a single people. All will dwell in one common fatherland, which is the planet itself.

[Page 15]

THE CURRENT DILEMMA

By EDWIN C. BERRY

Speech made on October 7, 1967 at the Intercontinental Bahá’í Conference in Chicago

THE SUMMER OF 1967 has just passed. The summer of 1968 is just ahead of us. You know, summers are no longer a year apart. The pressure is on to get things done now that are going to be preventive. We have got to regard today as if it were the first of July. We cannot this year say, ”Whew!” we got by that one! The rains have come, and the snow is not far behind, and we don’t have to do anything more.” The one factor that is absolutely clear to all of us now, is that there is only one right way to control a riot . . . and that right way is not to have a riot in the first place. And if we are not to have one in the first place, then we have got to go to the root causes and remove them.

I AM ASKED constantly why we did not have a riot. What kept Chicago cool when a hundred cities in the United States blew; fifty of them in a very serious way and three tragically? Well, I don’t know. It was a terrible summer for those of us who labor in the field of race relations.

The Chicago Urban League carried out its program of getting jobs, consulting with employers and counseling with youth. We also maintained a constant vigil on what we call our Race Violence Alert. This means that we maintained a 24-hour alert; Saturday, Sunday and every other day, staying in touch with the police department, the Commission on Human Relations, community organizations, and we had observers actually on the scene, whenever an incident did come up.

I think that police work had something to do with the summer. Our police did reasonably well this summer; maybe better than any of the other large cities. I think they could improve, but they did well. We didn’t have officers who were like the policemen in Newark and Detroit, who acted as if they were trying to start a riot, not stop one. And the National Guard didn’t know what they were doing when they were called in. Governor Kerner said they need more training; he was right. Anyway, the police here had something to do with the cool summer.

But, even more important have been the starts that we have made in programs that are pointed toward the root causes of unrest; that point toward correcting the ills of no jobs. So many Negroes are unemployed and many who have jobs are subemployed.

This is so well pointed out in our latest research report on the unskilled labor market in Chicago. Our report shows that Negroes working in this town, who have more years of education and who have been residents of the city longer, make less money than their unskilled white brother—doing an identical job. We have many people who are working every day trying to maintain a decent standard of living and are still below the poverty level. We need jobs for training and upgrading, and help from employers to put these people to work. This is important. We have [Page 16] done a lot of this in Chicago but we still have a long way to go.

MANY AGENCIES worked together to get people placed. The Illinois State Employment Service, the Tri-Faith Employment Service, and our own programs at the Urban League; on-the-job training, our talent and skills bank, and the pre-apprenticeship training. All of the people working on these programs are important—making real contributions.

The Jobs Now project has been going for a full year and has pulled many people out of the “gang-banging” style of living. The work that is being done by the YMCA, the Boys’ Clubs and the Federation of Settlements in some selected churches has really reached the grass roots. We were fortunate to have the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations (CCCO), a group of 45 civil rights organizations working together. Also the Joint Action Board, another group of agencies, of board and staff people who come together to work for improved race relations in the city. The Illinois Committee for a Fair Housing Law worked for open occupancy legislation. And, our Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities, which was organized to carry out the “summit agreement of 1966,” came through heavily for us with “Project Good Neighbor.” At that time, every TV station in this town gave an hour of prime time, and some stations gave more than that to talk about working for open occupancy.

Chicago’s mass media were reasonably good—one of our papers didn’t help much, but most of the others were very helpful to us. On radio and TV, we had all of the time that we could expect to “keep the summer cool.”

The Chicago Committee on Urban Opportunity did a lot of good work and The Woodlawn Organization has done a magnificent job in the Woodlawn area. TWO’s big project now with the Organization of Economic Opportunity—a million dollar deal—is to help train young men, and to bring about a truce between two gangs, the Disciples and the Blackstone Rangers.

THIS TRUCE has stood up very well. As a matter of fact, those kids quit fighting five months before the project ever got into being. Every once in a while a little thing comes up, but I don’t think that we can expect these youngsters, just because we start something new, to be better than our own kids.

Every once in a while they are going to do something; they aren’t going to be saints overnight. But then, our own kids aren’t saints, and they never had the responsibility to try to “make it” by scrounging in the street like these kids who belong to gangs. All of the gangs helped us this summer, the ones on the West Side too. They haven’t had as much attention, but the Cobras, the Vice Lords and two or three of those others all helped to keep it cool.

You know, some of the kids came to me and said, “Every time we do something wrong, we get lambasted in the press and everywhere else! When we do something good, nobody says anything.” So I went to radio and press people and I said, “Give them some attention. Give them some credit. They are due it. We all owe them a great deal.” And then, we got some attention for them. It is absolutely true that we cannot work toward the rehabilitation of the gang kids by staying away from them. We must understand them, work with them and remember that they too are people.

VERY OFTEN I am asked to speak for Negroes and I have to say that I cannot speak for Negroes. I can speak for the Urban League and that’s half white. I hope that at all times I speak in behalf of Negroes but I cannot speak for anybody who didn’t tell me that I can speak for him. And, no one else can either.

We have something in the Negro community —something that only the most fortunate in the white community, who have had a rich interracial experience, know. There are as [Page 17] many different kinds and classes of Negroes as there are of white people. Those who do not know this always want to judge us by the most disprivileged in our community, like the lady who called me during the Deerfield episode. She had just read about an ADC mother who was living in a foul rat trap with her little children. This mother left for a few moments, maybe for the first time, I do not know. But a fire broke out and destroyed the three little children. The mother was found drinking in a neighboring bar. The question the lady on the phone posed to me (she knew I was involved in the Deerfield project), was whether or not I expected that she would accept this ADC mother as a neighbor. This shows how simple people are.

Where in blazes is an ADC mother going to get a down payment on a $40,000 house? If anybody can tell me, I’ll go on public assistance right away. But this is the kind of foolishness we are facing at this point, in this year, 1967, trying to interpret where we are going and what we are going to do.

IF I MAY for a moment speak for the people, let me tell you what we think about the church. We think of the church as being the conscience of society. And we know that a quiet conscience is no good. We believe that the conscience should be heard. And we know that the church (and I speak of the church generically) is quiet while injustices abound.

When the church says nothing—takes no stand, what they do then is to give sanction. For most of the 103 years since the Emancipation Proclamation, the church, generically, has taken no stand about the darker brother. I’m sorry to repeat what has become a cliché in American society, but is no less true: The most segregated hour in society is 11:00 o’clock Sunday morning. It should not be so. I am pleased that in the last five years we have begun to see a renaissance. We have begun to see the church marching in front of the line with Martin Luther King. But while some marched in front, many more were backbiting behind, black and white alike.

No, I’m not just talking about the white church, but the total picture—the church, the temple and the synagogue. I hope that we can see the conscience of our nation really exerting itself before it is too late. It may already be. I don’t believe it is too late but it will be if we do not hurry.

LET ME SAY a word about something that is on everybody’s lips these days and I don’t think anybody knows what it means—Black Power. There is no definition to this; it apparently means whatever anybody wants it to mean who uses the term.

I don’t believe in Black Power. I don’t believe in White Power. I believe in Shared Power. I believe in striped power. I believe that Negroes in America and all the minorities should have their fair share of the [Page 18] power. Which we’ve never had. And I’ll fight for that until the day I die.

In Chicago, Negroes make up 28 per cent of the population. We should have 28 per cent of the decision-making power. But I will not be stampeded into arguing for anything that people get just because they are black, because I’ve spent a whole lifetime fighting against people having things just because they are white. And I will not turn back now.

THE PEOPLE talking about separatism today are nuts. I told some of my black brothers, those who are talking about a separate state and separate this and that, if you get your 40 acres and a mule on an ice cap up north of Fairbanks, Alaska, I may come and visit you, but I will not go with you.

Long before Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael were born I was telling kids and adults too, “Don’t let anybody brainwash you. Your color is all right. My color is all right. I looked at myself just before I came in here, and I looked all right. I looked good!” I am glad to see more and more kids feeling that it is all right to have negroid features; I’m glad of that.

And another thing, I don’t care much about all this loud talk people have about Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael starting riots. Rap and Stokely can’t start any riots! And Rap and Stokely never did. People call me up and want me to denounce them. I don’t mind denouncing them, but what good would it do? Rap Brown never built a ghetto; Rap Brown never bred any rats to eat little children. Stokely Carmichael didn’t invent brutality. If we did not have these kinds of things going on they wouldn’t have anything to talk about anyway. Trying to solve the problem that faces us with a minority that is preaching violence is incredible. You can’t solve anything that way. We cannot win the battle of equality with slogans or screams.

WE HAVE TOLD the story of Negroes in America upside down and we must start telling it right side up. Negroes in America have been mistreated and subjugated for 350 years. They’ve gone through the era of slavery, the era of rural peonage, the era of urban ghettoization, into what I think now is a new era—the era of tokenism. Everybody’s looking for one now—one Negro. All of the churches that are going to integrate say, “We’re going to get us one.” On jobs, people are looking for one. And they’re looking for one with high visibility. They want a good black one. They’re looking for a real Negro. They don’t want a Negro they will have to explain. Negroes have gone through these eras, and during this period of time American society has amassed every bit of its power and strength to assault Negroes.

We have used the church. We have used the full strength of government. We have used denial of education. We have used the money of the land. We’ve denied people the right to jobs. We have used the full force of the armed forces and the police to crush my people.

And you know, even today, with the problems we face, 80 per cent of the adult Negroes of this land have beat the system and are making it on their own. They are working every day. They are earning money and they are keeping their families together, sending their kids to school. They have no brushes with the law and they have no need to ask for help from the government. And this, my friends, is a modern miracle. It is absolutely impossible, but it is true. And when people try to make me ashamed of Negroes, I tell them, “You can’t make me ashamed of my people.” For Negroes in America have been a marvelous and miraculous people to have beat this rap.

AND WE ARE GOING to beat this rap for the 20 per cent that are now caught in poverty, human misery and alienation. And the 20 per cent of the adults that are caught up in this have many more than 20 per cent of the children. And this is our project. We must reach down and get them. We must help them be inducted into society. We cannot turn our backs on them. We are faced with [Page 19] problems of correcting the twin evils of segregation and discrimination that have grown for 350 years in these United States.

And, correcting them will not be cheap. It will be expensive. We must now initiate a massive program—a Domestic Marshall Plan —in housing, education, health and welfare services and job training and retraining. Business and Labor must take the major role— the out-in-front role in this program with government backing them up. Business and Labor have an important stake in healthy cities and economic progress, but few companies and unions are using the same ingenuity to include Negroes that they once used in excluding them.

We must let people work and earn their living; keep families together; improve the conditions; get rid of slums and bring about integrated living. We must help people to be able to follow the food lines and to move on out to the complex where there are jobs— around O’Hare field and in Franklin Park and in other places. There are jobs in areas that our people could do right now, but they can’t get to them without riding out there on the O’Hare bus for $1.85 or $2.00 and then walking two miles. There’s no job if it is not accessible. Accessibility has to be there in order for the job to be there.

The goals we seek are simple. We seek to build in the American Community a society where every man may become what he is capable of becoming. A society where justice prevails and one where no person is penalized for the color of his skin or the way in which he worships his God Almighty. These are the goals of the Urban League and I think they are the goals of the whole civil rights movement. This is all we seek—no more. But I promise you we will settle for no less.

[Page 20]

Row houses, West 130th Street, Harlem, New York

[Page 21]

THE THREE FACES OF HARLEM

There are Harlem the fabulous magnet, Harlem the crisis

in blade and white, and Harlem the vital community within

the fabric of a great city.

By ALEXANDER GARVIN

EXCEPT FOR an accident of history, Harlem, New York, would be a middle-class white residential district and not the most famous (or infamous) Negro ghetto in America. At the beginning of this century, Harlem was an elegant neighborhood with broad tree-lined avenues, peripheral park system, and fine old brownstones. As late as 1919, newspaper advertisements referred to the area as a “restricted residential section.” Today it remains the most convenient residential area of New York City, served by four different subway lines, a major railroad station, three highways, and the Triborough Bridge. It is less than 25 minutes by rapid transit to the Brooklyn Bridge.

For years, Harlemites have feared expulsion by rich whites. In 1930, James Weldon Johnson wrote:

Negro Harlem covers one of the most beautiful and healthful sites in the whole city. It is not a fringe, it is not a slum, nor is it a quarter consisting of dilapidated tenements. It is a section of new law apartments and handsome dwellings, with streets as well paved, as well-lighted, and as well-kept as any in the city . . . The question inevitably arises: will the Negroes of Harlem be able to hold it? Will they not be driven further northward? Residents of Manhattan, regardless of race, have been driven out when they lay in the path of business and greatly increased land values. Harlem lies in the direction that path must take; so there is little probability that Negroes will always hold it as a residential section.

Thirty-seven years later Harlem remains Negro and the threat remains. But why, if such ex-Harlemites as James Baldwin insist that Harlem “can be improved in one way only: out of existence”, should this threat concern anyone?

FIRST, THERE ARE the tangible reasons which social critics and neighborhood groups usually recite: displacement of the poor by the rich, dislocation of marginal community business, destruction of quaint nineteenth century row houses, elimination of humane neighborhoods. These reasons lead to fierce local opposition to insensitive “renewal” designations of two districts by successive city administrations: The East Harlem Triangle (Wagner) and the Millbank-Frawley Circle Area (Lindsay). To the intellectual community “urban renewal means Negro removal” may be a cliché, but to Harlemites it is a real threat.

Second, there are the objections of historians, architects, and nostalgic residents of other neighborhoods: the fine quality of many old buildings, the inevitable ugliness of new structures, the depressing lack of imagination in public construction, the lack of integration [Page 22] of new projects with existing neighborhoods. “The projects are hated. They are hated almost as much as policemen.” Scarcely do tenants move into the new buildings, “before they begin smashing windows, defacing walls, urinating in elevators, and fornicating in the playgrounds.”

Third, and most important, there are the intangible motives that center around the unique symbolic meaning of Harlem to both Negroes and whites.

Negroes understand Harlem as rejection by an indifferent white America. So there are looting, violence, and riots—such as the Harlem riots of 1935, 1943, and 1964. Pushing the Negro from Harlem will mean even more than rejection; it will mean forcible ejection by a determined white America.

But Harlem means more than just rejection. When Langston Hughes came to New York in 1921 to enter Columbia, he spent his time in Harlem and later wrote:

Harlem—looking for the Promised Land—dressed in rhythmic words, painted in bright pictures, dancing to jazz . . . Magnet Harlem.

I was in love with Harlem long before I got there and still am in love with it. Everybody seemed to make me welcome. The sheer dark size of it intrigued me . . . Had I been a rich young man I would have bought a house in Harlem and built musical steps up to the front door and installed chimes that at the press of a button played Ellington tunes. . . .

When Malcolm X came to Harlem in 1940, he already had known all about this fabulous “Magnet” and later wrote:

Up and down along and between Lenox and Seventh and Eighth Avenues, Harlem was like a technicolor bazaar . . . New York was Heaven to me. And Harlem was Seventh Heaven.

And so when Ralph Ellison was asked about Harlem recently he could say:

Harlem is a place where our folklore is preserved and transformed. It is the place where our styles, musical styles, the many styles of Negro life, find continuity and metamorphosis . . . People want Harlem improved, not torn down. They want Harlem to remain as a base.

Harlem is a base for more than Hughes, Malcolm X, and Ellison. It is the symbolic base of the Negro American and his culture. Harlem pulled Arthur Schomburg from Puerto Rico, Josephine Baker from St. Louis, A. Philip Randolph from Florida, Thelonius Monk from North Carolina, Duke Ellington from Washington, D.C., and Roy Wilkins from Minnesota. Ebony, Jet, The Chicago Defender, The Pittsburgh Courier have all covered Harlem for years. When there is a small demonstration at a local school (I.S. 201) it is reported to the entire country. Even Adam Clayton Powell was not just another Congressman. He represented Harlem and Harlem represents the Negro American.

THIS SYMBOLISM extends to white America as well. During the 1920’s and 1930’s thousands of white people went slumming in Harlem. “In ermine and pearls” they went to the Cotton Club to hear Duke Ellington, to Small’s, Connie’s Inn, the Elks Rendezvous. They listened to Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie. They danced at the Savoy Ballroom. Today few white people go to Harlem. The “Harlem Renaissance” is over, and the perceptive white American understands that many Negroes live in areas of filth, sickness, poverty, and degradation. He is aware that the Negro has passed the limits of tolerance. The riots in Watts, Hough, and Harlem are ample evidence. He also understands that if this situation continues, the Negro, like Samson, could bring the Republic crashing down on all our heads. So, students go to Mississippi to register voters, legislators pass civil rights bills, foundations underwrite tenement rehabilitation, Governor Rockefeller offers a new State office building. And all decry the horrors of Harlem. What they are really doing is reacting [Page 23] to a Harlem that is symbolic of the “Negro crisis” and not to the Harlem that represents a fabulous “magnet” to millions of Negroes.

White America has a guilty conscience. It is more interested in soothing its conscience than in analysing the problems of a small part of Manhattan or in understanding the potent symbolism it represents to millions of Negroes. If a white man is concerned about the Negro crisis, he will worry about the ill-effects of continuous unemployment, the weakness of the Negro family structure, and the failures of public education. Otherwise, he will merely want to raze a dreadful slum.

CENTRAL HARLEM, as it is geographically understood, is bounded by a string of cliff-parks on the west, by the Harlem River on the north, by Central Park on the south, and by the continually shifting boundary of Puerto Rican East Harlem on the east. Ninety-eight percent of its 225,000 residents are Negroes.

Compared to New York City in per capita figures, Central Harlem has six times as many cases of homicide, two and a half times as many cases of juvenile delinquency, twice as many admissions to mental hospitals, ten times as many cases of narcotics addiction, twice as many home accidents, 15 times as many illegitimate births, twice as many cases of tuberculosis. Half of the housing stock is dilapidated or deteriorating. Half the families have incomes of less than $4,000. More than a quarter of the children live without a father; more than a half have working mothers. Infant mortality is almost double the rate for the rest of the City.

Conditions in other American ghettoes are as apalling. But the similarity ends there for at least three reasons. First, Harlem is bigger: It is much larger than all of New Haven, Connecticut; Jackson, Mississippi; or Albany, New York. In fact, the population of Alaska is about the same as that of Central Harlem. Second, Harlem’s Negro population is a small and decreasing part of New York City’s non-white population—less than 25 per cent. New York has other ghettoes in which conditions are worse than in much of Harlem. There are the ghettoes of Corona and Jamaica-St. Albans in Queens, North Staten Island, Morrisania and other parts of the South and East Bronx, Brownsville in East New York, and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. Third, despite the number of its Negro districts, New York City has a much lower percentage of non-white residents than almost any other major American city. The non-white population of Washington D.C. is 54 per cent, Atlanta 38 per cent, New Orleans 37 per cent, Baltimore 35 per cent, St. Louis and Detroit 29 per cent, Philadelphia 15 per cent, Chicago and Houston 23 per cent. New York City’s is only 14 per cent.

These differences make the problems of Harlem radically unlike those of other American ghettoes. New Haven can and has begun to rehabilitate its relatively small ghettoes. To rehabilitate Harlem, New York would have to renew the equivalent of one Providence, Rhode Island, or two Little Rocks. If something on this scale were achieved, though, only a fraction of the City’s Negroes would be affected. Yet, ironically, there are hardly enough Negroes in the City to come near numerical, much less, political control of the City. Allied with New York’s Puerto Rican community, they would control less than 22 per cent of the electorate. The recent failure to institute a civilian police review board in New York clearly demonstrated that black power, a real possibility in Newark and Detroit and a serious choice in Gary and Cleveland, is only a pipe-dream in New York City.

HARLEM Is DIFFERENT in other ways, as well. In other cities the Negro was forced to [Page 24] move to the worst neighborhoods. When the Negro came to Harlem around the turn of the century, it was one of the finest parts of New York. At that time Harlem was a prosperous middle-class community. The area had been a Dutch village, originally independent of New York City. It began to grow with the construction of the New York and Harlem Railroad in 1831. By the time rapid transit was extended into Harlem during the 1880’s, full scale land speculation broke out and Harlem changed from a peaceful suburban community, similar to Bronxville, into a vibrant part of New York City. The community was the home of the famous Harlem Opera Company run by Oscar Hammerstein, Sr. Stanford White was commissioned to build 120 row houses. W. W. Astor built a half-million-dollar apartment house in 1899.

The shift finally came in 1904-1905 and vacancies appeared everywhere. Naturally, the City’s Negroes wanted to move in. At first, there was considerable opposition followed by stampede selling. But, with time, Negroes spread from 134th Street where they first moved in, and by 1925, there remained only remnants of the prosperous white community that had once lived in luxury in fine old brownstones that looked out on wide tree-lined avenues. Nobody was forced to live in Harlem.

Today, this rich heritage is, in the main, invisible. Few residents know that there were once famous trotting races along what is now St. Nicholas Avenue, that there used to be an annual festival celebrating the Revolutionary [Page 25] War Battle of Harlem Heights, that elegant ladies and gentlemen dined in luxury at Pabst Harlem.

Discrimination keeps Negroes in ghettoes. This does not mean Harlem, nor does it mean that Harlemites must remain there. Yet two-thirds of Central Harlem’s population failed to move between 1950 and 1960. Of the few who came to Harlem, 79 per cent were already New Yorkers. How different this is from Woodlawn in Chicago, which became a ghetto during the very same period because of an influx!

Compared with the rest of the country, where 20 per cent move from one state to another each year, this is extraordinary residential stability. Reasons for this are both positive and negative. Poor people find it difficult and expensive to move, and much of Harlem is very poor. Where should they move? Even with money, Forest Hills or Riverdale would be difficult. Why leave Harlem for Corona? Harlem is the “Negro Mecca.” All the civil rights organizations have offices there. The Apollo, New York City’s last vaudeville house, is in Harlem; as are Small’s, the Audubon Ballroom, and the Theresa. The Amsterdam News is there. Harlem is “where the action is.”

THERE ARE, then, three Harlems: Harlem the fabulous “magnet,” Harlem the “crisis in black and white,” and Harlem, the vital community within the fabric of a great city. They all call out for immediate action. Harlem, New York—rich in physical assets and local history, dear to many of its residents—calls out to be restored to the fine neighborhood it once was. Harlem the fabulous magnet calls out to be cured of the physical ills which symbolize and contribute to Negro degradation. Harlem the national crisis calls for a demonstration that the Negro has a vital place in American society.

Rather than tremble at the difficulties of solving the problems of the Negro, let us begin by making Harlem an affirmation of the highest human aspirations with special significance to the “American dilemma.” Hough, Watts, Newark, all demand immediate action but they do not have the right combination of elements either to insure speedy action or solutions readily visible to the whole country. Only Harlem has the plentiful physical assets, the determined and angry population, the disposition of national leaders to do something, and, most important, the unique symbolic meaning to guarantee real impact on all America.

Sunday trotting on Harlem Lane, now St. Nicholas Avenue

[Page 26]

All children. . . will have shoes

By MARY FISH

TODAY, as in centuries past, millions of people live in poverty. In the teeming cities of every continent, in New York, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, and Cairo, in the rural areas of Colombia, China, and India, many people live each day with the gnawing desire for food and shelter. Yet this does not have to be, and there is every reason to hope that our children’s children will live in a different kind of world, a world where the underlying cause of death recorded on the certificate is never malnutrition.

In the centuries to come people will be taller than we and of a different hue. Medicine will use the principle of interchangeable parts, exchanging new hearts for old, and travelers will fly around planet number three in about the time it now takes to drive to the airport. And high speed computers, which every child will learn to program, will clarify the most befuddled bank statements. Some families, certainly, will be more wealthy than others. Nonetheless, there will be books for all to read and all children will have shoes. One can see the framework of the economy of tomorrow evolving in the events of each day. The people of the twentieth century hold in their hands the transformed world of the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries, a world with an underlying agricultural and industrial base capable of eliminating poverty.

AT THIS POINT, it might be well to look more closely at what economists really mean when they seem preoccupied with the necessity of economic development and growth. An economist is often a misunderstood fellow when he talks about dreadfully low per capita incomes and slacks in growth rates. True, he believes that the wealth of all people should be increased far above the subsistence level, that people ought not to be poor. But I have never known an economist that believed the production of more cars, better highways, larger swimming pools, and more shoes should be an end in itself. Rather, he assumes that man is better off, at least not worse off, with more things than less, and that when beauty or greatness emerges out of poverty, it is in spite of it, not because of it.

An increase in economic productivity means much more than additional shoes and food. It enables man to buy the time to educate his mind and heart. Let me try to explain my point. Just over a century ago in the United States a man worked sixty hours a week and received a wage of $.42 an hour; whereas, today he generally works about forty hours a week and earns about $3.00 an hour. In the United States, as new technology and its concomitant machinery have been harnessed, man has been able to increase the amount he produced in an hour of time. We, historically, have chosen to take part of this gain in productivity in the form of more and better things and part in the form of fewer hours at work. With economic growth, man is able to buy the time to conceive of himself not only as a physical being, but also as a mind and a soul. To buy the time to allow man to go on with the real [Page 27] business of living, of course, is one of the prime reasons for economic growth and development.

In the past, as today, people have been faced with poverty and want. There has never been enough food and shelter for all. The economist, therefore, has worked on the premise that the resources available for the production of food and other things are scarce or limited. That is to say, we have only a given amount of oil, or coal, or iron ore. Slowly this outlook is changing. Today the world has only a given amount of resources, a fixed amount of cultivatable land, but tomorrow the world’s ability to produce food from the sea as well as the land and other things people need and want will change decisively. It is this way: The geological and agricultural breakthroughs of today will determine the resources available for tomorrow’s production. In turn, the rate at which scientific developments occur determines the rate at which we are able to employ new resources.

To explain my point an example might help. As Americans moved West much of the rich soil of the Middle West had to be by-passed because the rich dirt in this area clung to the crude, rough iron plow. When the steel-tipped plow was manufactured, land once by-passed was claimed, for the newly produced plow made the land cultivatable. So it also is with other resources. Which brings me to the conclusion that as far as history is concerned, resources have been scarce only momentarily. With this concept, today, for the first time, we can envision the eventual elimination of world poverty.

THUS, IT IS NOT strange that in the economic literature of the twentieth century one finds allusions to a future world of plenty. For example, interwoven in the writings of John Maynard Keynes and John Kenneth Galbraith is their belief in the eventual emergence of a world of economic abundance. Although the timing of Lord Keynes differs from that of Professor Galbraith, their thoughts on the subject appear to be much the same. Lord Keynes plainly presents his belief in a future of plenty in the Preface to Essays in Persuasion. He writes that he has “. . . the profound conviction that the Economic Problem, as one may call it for short, the problem of want and poverty and the economic struggle between classes and nations, is nothing but a frightful muddle, a transitory and an unnecessary muddle.” Lord Keynes goes on to say that he “. . . for all his croakings, still hopes and believes that the day is not far off when the Economic Problem will take the backseat where it belongs, and that the arena of the heart and head will be occupied, or reoccupied, by our real problems—the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behaviour and religion.” Moreover, Lord Keynes believes that “. . . the Western World already has the resource and the technique if we could create the organization to use them, capable of reducing the Economic Problem which now absorbs our moral and [Page 28] material energies to a position of secondary importance.” In short, he suggests that we have the resources to eliminate poverty, but as yet we have not been able to arrange our affairs to achieve this goal.

Now on to Professor Galbraith’s comments. Because he maintains that we are not only unable properly to deal with economic abundance, but also are unaware that economic affluence is upon us, Professor Galbraith sternly addresses himself to the Western World of affluence in the concluding paragraph of The Affluent Society. He uses these often quoted words: “To furnish a barren room is one thing. To continue to crowd in furniture until the foundation buckles is quite another. To have failed to solve the problem of producing goods would have been to continue man in his oldest and most grievous misfortune. But to fail to see that we have solved it and to fail to proceed hence to the next task, would be fully as tragic.” So Professor Galbraith also believes that the Western World has burst the scarcity barrier. He is deeply concerned with the way we choose to spend our wealth. To him it becomes a question of better schools in Alabama or neon lighted automobile tailfins.

In the above excerpts, Lord Keynes and Professor Galbraith are primarily concerned with the economic problems confronting Western economies, or those called developed or mature economies. What would an economist who has long been concerned with the dire poverty of developing nations say about the future economic society? India’s V. K. R. V. Rao believes in a future of economic plenty which he calls an economic utopia, but he specifies that such an economic society must and will be planned. Professor Rao in the Indian Economic Review, Volume V, No. 3, makes the following comments about the economic world of tomorrow: “My answer is clear and categorical. I do believe in an economic utopia, I know it can be realized; but it will not come naturally. . . . If humanity is to reach the economic utopia, then deliberate and planned action is required on the part of the entire human race. This includes of course both the underdeveloped and the developed world, both pre-take-off economies and the mature economies.”

Whether the vantage point is that of Lord Keynes, a British economist deeply concerned with the depression of the 1930’s, or that of Professor Galbraith, an economic historian who questions the way we in the United States choose to manage our affluence, or that of Professor Rao, an Indian economist who daily sees his country’s “vicious circle of poverty,” the answer appears to be much the same. Probably because emerging within the twentieth century is the bulwark of an economic world in which all children will have shoes. Western economies now have not only economic abundance, but the potential of even greater and greater amounts of production. The striking developments in agricultural production coupled with the greatly enhanced productivity in manufacturing for the first time make it possible to conceive of the elimination of world poverty. But it is one thing to say that the world has the productive potential to eliminate poverty, and another to say that Western society will choose to arrange its affairs to fit an economy of abundance. The latter is a bit more elusive. The manner in which tomorrow’s world will choose to use its productive resources is related to the national and international events of each day.

FOR A MOMENT, let us look at a few of the forces now being triggered by science and technology that are ominously rumbling with the twentieth century—forces that on one hand offer mankind a world without poverty, and on the other hand drastically alter the world in which we now live. Although they are inextricably interlaced, it is possible to single out two developments that are changing our way of life: first, the invention of such murderous weapons that man is being forced to realize that war is no longer an acceptable way of solving international conflicts, and second, the transportation and [Page 29] communication revolution that has physically united our planet.

When equipped with pre-modern military hardware, nations could fight among themselves with arms which had a limited effect, killing a few thousand soldiers in a day or so; but now the tools of nuclear war make almost complete annihilation of planet number three possible. Under these circumstances, world war is no longer an acceptable way to solve international problems. Although wars may break out here and there for some time, total war as has occurred several times in the twentieth century is no longer feasible. The extinction of war has vast economic implications.

Nations now spend untold amounts of resources on wars, including the cost of training and maintaining soldiers, the cost of jet planes and battleships, and the cost of the research incorporated in the hydrogen bomb. From an economic standpoint, however, the greatest loss is the diverting of nations’ most able manpower from the production of food and other necessities to the production of war. When nations no longer bear the expense of extensive war efforts, they will be able to divert war resources to the harnessing of hydrogen power for industrial use, to the building of better schools and roads, and to the training of scientists, poets, and technicians. Just as nations have mobilized for military conflict, they can mobilize to achieve development and growth. A nation has many types of wars to fight—one is called “war on poverty.”

One nation or group of people cannot starve while another has over-abundance, because this leads to war which today could lead to annihilation. Professor Rao in the article previously cited, also clearly presents the complicated interrelationship between war and economic wealth when he says: “Economic utopia cannot really emerge or last even if it emerges in a world constantly threatened by war, and if war comes, it will not only mean the end of economic utopia but may even mean the end of man himself; and the threat of war will always continue as long as there are large areas of underdeveloped countries in the world.” Poverty-stricken countries will always be the target of the propagandistic prattle of aggressor nations. And dictators will continue to appeal to their impoverished subjects to engage in a war of liberation to take by force the more abundant resources of surrounding nations.

THE REVOLUTION in transportation and communication, with its supersonic jet transports and the Early Bird Satellite television relay, is forcing peoples and nations to begin to realize that they cannot exist in isolation. In turn, it is no longer possible for the abundantly rich to live peaceably next door to the abjectly poor, as it is no longer possible for the wealthy nations to co-exist with the “have-not-countries.” A strange predicament: nations can no longer fight with each other as they used to, for fear of blowing up the whole world, nor can they refuse to participate in the complex processes occurring on planet number three. Nations, consequently, are rearranging their affairs nationally and internationally.

Whether or not one believes that the scientific and technological breakthroughs of this century are forcing man to change the way he arranges his political, social, and economic activities is not at issue. The world we live in is being transformed into a highly productive complex organism, no part of which can exist in isolation, be that part a race or a nation. Man is being forced to conceive of how he is related to mankind. This new conceptual dimension can be clearly seen in the political-economic programs that have developed within the last few years. For example, one sees it in the United States in Federal projects such as the Appalachian Development Program, dedicated to raising the level of living in the poverty stricken Appalachian Area, and in the Headstart Program for disadvantaged children.

OUT OF THE MORASS of the twentieth century, economic tools that can be used to [Page 30] guide national and international growth and development are emerging. Today economists are working with the overwhelming problems of developing nations and with the problems of maximum employment, growth, and price stability with which mature economies must cope. Even in the United States, a country oriented to private enterprise, the economic tools needed to control business fluctuations, unemployment and the level of national income are evolving. Western nations, including the Soviet Union, are planning methods to promote a number of programs in “have-not-countries.” Moreover, the institutions that a world economy of abundance would require are slowly developing; for example, institutions such as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Monetary Fund, and the many proposals for an international currency.

And so we are building a world economic system in which no one will taste hunger and, although some will have more and others less, all will have shoes. In the coming centuries, worn-out heart valves will be exchanged for new ones. People will fly not only around the earth but also to outer space. Fossil fuels will be obsolete, and nuclear energy will be harnessed for industrial use. And war as a solution to problems will no longer be acceptable. No longer will people accumulate goods to exalt themselves, rather, the development of their hearts, their souls, and their minds will be the criterion of success, not the lavishness of their houses or the number of pairs of shoes they own, for these are not the symbols of value of a world rid of economic scarcity. But should it happen that in retrospect they view us as being rather a base and materialistic generation, let them remember that the technology we developed and the machines we designed enable them to buy the time to think, to grow and to develop their hearts and souls.

Sheep in a Ghost Town

Sheep cried, then grayed near from hills

while boards in the sun said, “Once upon . . . .”

Those lambs were born already lost, and that town

we’ll never find again, that Sunday full of nails,

gray and still and pure. We worshipped all day,

became the still world’s, remembered many

still hands. Because they cry, the sheep can lonesome

off into the hills again, but the town continues

its act: How Time Was. And waits a later end.

William Stafford

[Page 31]

Education for What?

Some Philosophical Considerations

By DARRELL D. LACOCK

AT THIS LATE DATE in the history of educational theories, it would be naive to hope for a definitive answer to the title question. Although most philosophers of education recognize this, they still believe (justifiably) that the periodic re-assessment and reformulation of educational objectives is a task worthy of their best efforts.

Our guiding presupposition is that teachers and school officials not only should be expert (or at least competent) in their specific jobs, but also should be quite clear about the broader goals worth achieving through formal education. Moreover, since school aims and policies cannot be separated from the values operative in the wider society, it is imperative that all citizens (educators and non-educators alike) reflect upon the ends to be sought in the education of each new generation.

No attempt is made in this essay to present a comprehensive philosophy of education, even in outline. Rather, my more modest aim is to analyze a few of those large concepts that may help to clarify the nature and purpose of education. To this end, a three-fold response is given to the question ‘Education for What?’: (I) for freedom, (II) for individuality, and (III) for service. Although these objectives are (obviously) not new, it is hoped that their explication and defense in these pages will provide some relevant philosophical perspectives on education.

I. Freedom

THE WIDESPREAD use and abuse of this concept has given it an accordion-like character. Its acceptability as an educational aim depends finally upon how it is construed. For our purposes, it will be crucial to distinguish between a ‘positive’ and a ‘negative’ sense of freedom; the former being a basic aim of education, with regard to which the latter is a necessary condition.

Broadly speaking, we shall take positive freedom to mean ‘the capability to deal effectively and creatively with one’s situation.’ The negative aspect refers to a ‘freedom from external constraint.’ As these two senses of freedom are applied to the learning experience, it will become clear that although positive freedom is to be distinguished from the potential caprice or aimlessness of negative freedom, still it does presuppose a measure of freedom from constraint. In like manner, it will be shown that discipline (defined below) and positive freedom are not opposing factors in learning, but complement each other. What positive freedom is properly to be contrasted with is the mere routine that is often mistakenly equated with discipline.

[Page 32] This view of freedom is implicit in Alfred North Whitehead’s ‘rhythm of education,’ according to which learning follows a three-stage, cyclical process that proceeds from freedom to discipline to freedom. Whitehead labels these stages (a) romance, (b) precision, and (c) generalization. Although no detailed analysis of these stages can be presented here, it is important to note the difference between the meaning of freedom at stage (a) and at stage (c). In the stage of romance, a premium is placed upon the student’s unconstrained exploration of a variety of topics or fields of study, in the hope that his interest will be aroused. Since genuine interest cannot be coerced, it is crucial that what we have called negative freedom be predominant at this stage. By contrast, the freedom of the stage of generalization is positive, in our sense, because it represents the power to connect what has been learned with already-mastered information and concepts, in the effort to deal more constructively with problematic situations and with unexplored areas of learning.

The discipline of the stage of precision serves as an indispensable link between negative and positive freedom. In its best form, discipline is sustained by the romance of stage one, thus minimizing the need for extrinsic devices (such as punishment, money, or class rank) to stimulate a student to master the ‘tools’ of a certain field—for example, the grammar of language or the facts of history. Of equal importance is the connection between discipline (or precision) and positive freedom. It is only on the strength of a precise and firm grasp of the essentials of a given subject that the student is capable of successful generalization. On this view, discipline is intrinsic to the subject matter rather than being an authoritarian imposition by a teacher or parent. It is in this sense that discipline can be viewed as complementary— instead of antithetical—to positive freedom.

John Dewey is another twentieth-century philosopher who has promoted positive freedom as a fundamental educational goal. For him, freedom denotes “a mental attitude rather than external unconstraint of movements.” He explains this by asserting that “freedom means essentially the part played by thinking—which is personal—in learning: it means intellectual initiative, independence in observation, judicious invention, foresight of consequences, and ingenuity of adaptation to them.” Although Dewey also recognizes the instrumental value of what we have called negative freedom, he says of positive freedom (or, for him, ‘freedom of intelligence’) that it is “the only freedom . . . of enduring importance.”

THE REMINDERS which Whitehead and Dewey gave educators two generations ago about the value and place of freedom are still timely. Considering recent developments in the struggle for civil rights and in the ‘war’ on poverty, the critical importance of positive freedom is perhaps even more obvious now. It is not enough—though it is imperative— for all citizens to be free from discriminatory restraints in restaurants, on buses, in voting, and so forth. What more is needed is the opportunity to cultivate—largely through formal education—those skills which free a person to deal effectively with the complexities of an increasingly urban and technological culture.

Some clue to what it means to be free in a positive sense can be found if we explore the question of leisure, especially from an Aristotelian point of view. Aristotle distinguishes leisure not only from work (or occupation), but also from mere amusement. This distinction becomes steadily more relevant as the average work week is shortened. To spend all or most of one’s non-working hours [Page 33] in idle relaxation is to have a merely negative freedom, a freedom from the constraint of having to be at a certain place at a certain time. This is to seek amusements which have little purpose beyond passing the time of day in a somewhat pleasant fashion.

By contrast, leisure represents an investment of non-working hours in activities which cultivate one’s talents and/or which contribute to the well-being of one’s community. This latter aspect of leisure involves the educational goal of service, which is given separate treatment below. It is enough for the present to suggest that schools take a sustained look at this concept of leisure, since it represents a justification for educating the whole man, not merely training him for a specific vocation (see the section on individuality below). Thus the creative use of leisure is a valuable end to which positive freedom, itself a goal of education, serves as a means.

II. Individuality

THERE IS a close link between the goal of freedom and that of individuality. It could be argued that the value of freedom—both negative and positive—rests mainly upon its being a prerequisite for individuality. Without freedom, a genuine individuality is precluded.

Like freedom, the concept of individuality has no one, clear-cut meaning. Perhaps the best way to construe this concept is in dynamic and expansive (rather than in static and restrictive) terms. By this is meant a theory of the self or individual as incessantly developing and as inextricably bound up with its social context. Such a self might be labeled the ‘problematic’ self, since it defies exhaustive definition and is never fully actualizable. The English philosopher Bernard Bosanquet puts it succinctly when he says of the individual citizen that he is “not a datum, but a problem.” He means by this that no prima facie or merely quantitative assessment of the nature of the self can do justice to the complexities of human existence.

Elements of this perspective on the self can be traced at least back to Plato and Aristotle. For a number of modern philosophers as well—including such divergent thinkers as Bosanquet, Dewey, and Martin Heidegger— it is a theoretical building block. Its significance for educational theory is that it avoids the extremes of individualism and collectivism; the former minimizing the social nature of the self, the latter minimizing the subjective sources of value and social progress.

Individuality, as used in this essay, presupposes a social context, and yet underscores the uniqueness of each person in that context. What is urged is that this uniqueness be respected not only as intrinsically valuable, but also as the indispensable ground for creative approaches to social problems. In a time of growing standardization and bureaucracy in educational institutions (and in the wider society), the promotion of this kind of individuality becomes more and more urgent. It is a call to take seriously A.S. Neill’s guiding idea in founding Summerhill, namely, “to make the school fit the child—instead of making the child fit the school.”

THE HARD QUESTION is how such individuality can be fostered in educational institutions. It will not be enough simply to let students do whatever they please. Such an approach would rest on the shaky foundation of a merely negative concept of freedom. What is needed is a perspective on the self that admits a distinction—whatever its precise formulation—between what might be called a student’s ‘real’ self and his ‘apparent’ self. The thrust of this proposed viewpoint is to resist any simple account of what a person ‘really’ is or intends. For example, we need to place our currently uppermost intentions in the context of our past and our projected future (or long-range) intentions, as well as in the context of the ‘legitimate’ [Page 34] claims and intentions of our fellow citizens.

To be sure, this distinction between one’s ‘real’ self and ‘apparent’ self is to be used with caution, for who is to determine the nature of this ‘real’ self? I would be the first to admit that coercive, authoritarian measures might be attempted in the name of such a distinction. However, in spite of this potential abuse, the concept of the problematic self—a self defying exhaustive classification and a self capable of delusion and ignorance about its own best interests and the interests of others—seems necessary if we are to avoid a narrow, laissez-faire individualism, on the one hand, and a selfless, soulless collectivism, on the other.

The Aristotelian notion of ‘self-realization’ is close to the heart of what we mean by individuality. What Aristotle had in mind was a self characterized by built-in capacities (some of which might not always be apparent) and a self whose good is inseparable from the good of his community and, ultimately, of all mankind. A basic aim of education would then be to actualize the maximum amount of individual, latent capacity and to encourage in students an adequate self-perspective—i.e., one that is dynamic and expansive, in the sense described above. The achievement of this aim will require imaginative experimentation regarding the structure and conditions for learning in our schools. It will require innovations of many kinds—some iconoclastic—if we are to elicit, through formal education, a respect for and a development of this kind of individuality in each new generation of students.

III. Service

THE PROPOSAL of service as a central educational aim may well be the most controversial part of this essay. On the face of it, one might conclude that education is thus being reduced to a self-sacrificing, joyless instrumentalism, in which learning is not intrinsically valuable, but valuable only as a means to heightened social service. Such a conclusion ignores the stress on personal fulfillment in the above discussion of freedom and individuality. In fact, the treatment of service is intended to add a more obvious dimension of ‘other-directedness’ to the answers already given to the title question.

It is no narrow sense of service that is being advocated. ‘To serve,’ as we are using the term, involves being a contributing member of society by bringing one’s unique resources to bear upon human problems. This is to claim that ‘the educated man’ is not only one who is learned (to some degree), but a man whose learning is combined with an understanding of, and a commitment to correct, social injustices. To the degree that schools fail to promote this kind of engaged or practical wisdom, they are neglecting one of their basic responsibilities and reasons for existing. To this degree they are failing to cultivate what Whitehead calls ‘active wisdom’ (as distinguished from ‘inert ideas’).

This educational aim is closely bound up with the issue of professionalism in our society. One cannot deny that the carrying out of many (perhaps most) jobs constitutes some service to the community. The danger in taking this view too far is that it can lead to overspecialization in education. Formal schooling would then become narrow vocational training, losing sight of what it means to educate for citizenship or for humane living. This is not to argue that vocationalism has no place in formal education. It is to contend that there is a whole man to be educated, not merely a doctor, engineer, or business executive. As Dewey puts it, “education must first be human and only after that professional.”

The advantages to a society whose schools promote this concept of service are appreciable. Insofar as it is successful in this venture, such a society would be composed not just of specialists—which are undoubtedly important in our age of technology—but of citizens with a sense of the larger meaning of [Page 35] their specialties. Ideally, there would be a citizenry not only able to solve a wide variety of technical problems, but also able to determine what ends are worth achieving with the technology at hand.

Nearly two centuries ago, Immanuel Kant formulated the ethical axiom that ‘ought implies can.’ There is a persistent danger that this will be transposed in our day—i.e., that the guiding axiom for us will be ‘can implies ought.’ Avoiding a narrow and sterile professionalism in our schools is one way to help prevent such a foreclosure of the value question.

There is no one, exclusive way to foster this ideal of service in our schools. Methods should vary according to particular circumstances and the age of the students. One way might be to encourage students to volunteer their services and talents to various institutions for social improvement throughout the community, including such activities as tutoring, art and music lessons, companionship for disadvantaged children or for institutionalized persons. It is doubtful that this should be required of any student, but there are ways in which schools can provide incentives through freed time or even a credit towards graduation. What is important is that educators communicate their conviction that this is a valuable activity and a way to be a more responsible community member. This—rightly, I think—places a greater responsibility upon educators (and all citizens) to show by example, not just precept, their own commitment to the value of service.

IT WOULD BE a safe generalization to claim that schools have fallen far short of what they could do to promote service as one of their primary goals. Even in those colleges and high schools with significant student involvement in civil rights and related projects, educators are rarely in the vanguard, but typically play advisory roles or make campus facilities available for tutoring, athletics, and similar activities. When the generating force does not come from students themselves (for example, in the ‘silent’ generation of the ’fifties), campus activities of service tend to be minimal.

The effects of this lack of leadership by educators can be readily surmised. Students can enter and leave high school or college with this overriding and unchallenged attitude: “The chief values of formal education are that it will enable me to get a better job, perhaps associate with a ‘higher’ class of people, make more money, and live the ‘good’ life.” An educational system which does not actively promote service as a basic goal, thereby encourages students to be self-indulgent —i.e., to reap the benefits of formal education but avoid the obligations to one’s fellow men that should accompany this privilege.

If a recent, informal survey of the Yale class of ’52 is at all indicative, then there is a striking need for educational leadership in the area of service. According to that survey, “Not much time is spent by most ’52ers for church or community affairs, with 3 out of 5 spending under 40 hours a year, or less than one hour a week” (Yale Alumni Magazine, July, 1967, p. 32). Although it may be risky to generalize from this evidence, there is no reason to presume that the service record of this one Yale class is significantly worse than most other Yale classes or, for that matter, worse than classes from other colleges. At the least, it could be argued that careful attention needs to be given to the question of how schools can be more effective in instilling the value of service in their students.

Thus, according to the broad definition we are endorsing, optimal service would presuppose the attainment of both freedom and individuality, [Page 36] since these latter goals represent the conditions under which a person can serve most effectively and creatively. Moreover, it could be maintained that the value of service itself provides a further justification for the cultivation of freedom and individuality in our schools.

Conclusion

ALTHOUGH THE AIMS of education discussed in this essay are not intended to be exhaustive, it is hoped that they provide a balanced perspective on the learning experience. If this discussion has prompted the reader to reconsider some of the broader goals of the multiform and increasingly bigger business called education, then it will have served its main purpose.

However difficult it might be to determine when and to what degree freedom, individuality, and service, are being actualized through formal education, we need such large aims—in addition to smaller, more concrete ones—if we are to have an adequate educational theory. Such broad concepts can help us to detect and direct larger-scale trends and patterns that might go unnoticed or be left unplanned if we are preoccupied with specific achievements in given subjects at certain grade levels.

If by promoting freedom and individuality we have seemed overly concerned with the uniqueness of man’s subjective existence, then the inclusion of the goal of service should have redressed the balance. The intention throughout this essay, however, has been to construe freedom, individuality, and service in such a way that each goal would include a private and a public side, since these are finally inseparable.

No one formula or set of guidelines will do in educational philosophy, nor are any formulas self-interpreting or self-applying. We need to re-examine carefully and continually what we are about as educators and as citizens with a vested interest in educational institutions. Only in this way can these institutions fulfill their role in the discovery, transmission, and evaluation of knowledge, and in the cultivation of such values as freedom, individuality, and service.

[Page 37]

The Unsuspected Effects of Religion on Your Personality

By JAMES J. KEENE

RELIGION as commonly understood and practiced has become a most prolific source of contention and confusion. It is not only the clergyman who is baffled. As old-time religion recedes before the onrush of industrial civilization, sociologists and psychologists, too, disagree among themselves about its role in the life of modern man.

For example, Freud thought that religion was an illusion about reality which stunts personality growth and which therefore must be discarded. In contrast the famous psychologist Carl Jung thought that notions such as sacrifice and rebirth, which are universals in religion, are involved in the most basic processes of personality development. In general, some social scientists think that religion is an integrating and constructive influence on human endeavor and an important and meaningful force in its own right, while others think that religion is a disintegrating and destructive phenomenon, or merely a secondary one, that can only be understood in terms of “more basic” events, such as the exchange of libido or economic goods. Nor is confusion confined to social scientists: laymen —rich, middle class, or poor; next-door neighbor and all—are skeptical, confused, or uncertain about the effects of their own religious activity on their lives.

Since today’s confusion is a cumulative consequence of centuries of religious speculation, there was a need for a reasoned, scientific analysis of the interaction of the religious activity and the personal well-being of an individual. With the help of systematic methods in the social sciences, I examined information from almost 700 people in five religious groups about 35 aspects of their religious life, such as praying, attending services, and believing in God, and about 74 facets of their personalities and social relationships. With a little addition (35 + 74 = 109) and multiplication (109 x 700 = 76,300), it is easy to see that this amounts to over 70,000 bits of information about the religious, personal, and social activity of a great many people. If one tried to analyze and understand all of the possible relationships among the religious and psychosocial activities that were studied, one would have to deal with some 5,886 relationships 109 x 108/2 = 5,886). With this suggestion of the immensity and complexity of religious phenomena, it is easy to imagine how individuals can differ widely in their perception and understanding of religion.

In an effort to develop a few simple, yet basic concepts about religion in their lives, people try to condense and summarize in their minds surely much more than 70,000 bits of human experience. However, a person often gives attention to a small selection or only one aspect of religious experience—that consistent with his own personal biases or preconceptions about what religion should be [Page 38] like. The result is that this partial selection of experience relevant to religion leads to an incomplete conception or mistaken understanding of religion in all its aspects. This is usually true of popular concepts of religion and generalizations about religion, which are therefore bound to conflict with experience sooner or later, and to differ greatly among individuals.

This research is objective and scientific not in any exclusion of important and meaningful human experiences, but in its empirical analysis of such experiences without personal biases and preconceptions. Done on a computer with mathematical precision, the project employed a statistical technique called factor analysis which does just what it says. It analyzed all of the 5,886 relationships based on the 70,000 bits of experience and identified the factors, trends, or issues which best describe all facets of the phenomenon. By examining the interrelationships among these factors in each of five religious groups, I have tried to construct a more comprehensive and comprehensible picture of the interaction of religion and personality than, to my knowledge, has been done in the past. It is important, then, for the reader considering these findings to realize that this study does not necessarily deal with the views and concepts of the recognized exponents of any of the religious groups studied here. Rather, it is based on the actual life experiences and observations of practitioners of these religions, my objective having been to discover the effects that religious behavior actually seems to have on personality and social groups.

FOUR IMPORTANT issues (or factors) in the life of modern man were found and are described with the following short-hand labels.

1. Neurotic/Adaptive. More than one half of the individuals currently in hospitals are there because of some behavior disorder. The mental health problem is both a personal and a social issue. For the individual it is continuous and integrated development of his talents and capacities through widening interests and insight into his own life, versus self-defeat in which a person unknowingly puts himself through the torture of his own fragmented, narrow, and petty concerns. Many people consistently fail to face directly the tensions or challenges that they encounter, and so their energy is squandered in the conflict itself or dissipated in attempts to avoid the challenge. Behavior indicative of this lack of growth will be called neurotic. The healthy person is not necessarily the one who is without conflicts, but the one who is able to deal with conflict and anxiety by channeling, through conscious exertion, the energy involved into constructive activity.

For society the issue of mental health is social integration in which the society and individual are mutually growth-fostering, versus social disorganization in the form of war, mass persecutions, divorce, delinquency, and life-time commitment to mental institutions.

2. Spontaneous/Inhibited. Spontaneity is the expression of emotional or unconscious experiences, such as a laugh, a feeling of warmth or joy, a sudden inspiration or new idea. When associated with adaptive behavior, spontaneity is perhaps best characterized as creativity. When connected with neuroticism, spontaneous expression of feeling at its best may represent attempts to make internal, adaptive reorganizations in the personality. At its worst the spontaneity associated with neuroticism, as seen in undisciplined sex, the unsupervised use of drugs, and thrill seeking, is merely escape. The opposite of spontaneity is psychological and social rigidity and inhibition, and fear of an inability to deal with the non-rational side of life.

3. Worldminded/Ethnocentric. This key issue facing modern man at the present stage in his social evolution is developing a consciousness [Page 39] of himself as a citizen of the world as opposed to identifying solely with just one nation, religion, or race.

4. Self-accommodating / Group-accommodating. This is a cultural issue in the relation between the individual and the group. Self-accommodating behavior involves competition, individuality, independence, and freedom of expression, while group-accommodation involves cooperation, efforts to live up to group standards, interdependence, and discipline of emotion. Self- and group-accommodation can each be desirable or undesirable depending on the situation. Self-accommodation at its worst is seen, for example, in anti-social behavior by which a person does something that he wants to, in spite of the fact that this may have negative consequences for others. Self-accommodation at its best is involved in standing up for what one thinks is right in spite of group pressure. Most will agree that group-accommodation is undesirable when it involves loss of personal identity through extreme conformity or mob action and is desirable in the form of kindness, courtesy, and concern for others. We might say that the best interests of both the individual and group are realized in personalities which embody the positive aspects of both self- and group-accommodation. It shall be seen later how the conflict between the individual and his society, which is prominent [Page 40] in much of the popular philosophy of the day, is resolved in one of the religious groups studied.

It was found that the way people resolve these four psychosocial issues in their daily lives was closely related to (1) the kinds of religious activity in which they participate and (2) the religious group with which they are affiliated. What follows is a description of my basic findings as they might be seen from the point of view of a reader interested in the unsuspected effects that his own religious activity may have on his personality and social relationships. The odds are that what was found to be true for the 700 people studied is also true for any reader of this article.

What Is Religion?

BEFORE THE EFFECT of religion on personality can be clarified one needs to know what is producing these effects. What indeed is religion? A great diversity of beliefs and practices has been called religious by many people in many places. These findings indicate that religion is more different in different religious groups than people may think.

For example, Catholics tend to believe in the afterlife, the soul, and God and to participate in religious activity that they perceive as primarily doctrine, creed, and ritual. In spite of this general activity, Catholics tend to be skeptical of religion. Protestants are as skeptical of religion as Catholics. However, Protestants do not believe in the afterlife, the soul, and God as strongly, participate in religious activity as much, or value doctrine and ritual as highly. A conception of religion which emphasizes doctrine, creed, and ritual is almost as prevalent among Jews as among Catholics. However, Jews tend to participate in religious activity, believe in the afterlife, the soul, and God, and question the validity of religion less than Catholics.

Among Jews, Catholics, and Protestants were found four main issues or areas of disagreement about religion:

1. Should one participate in religious activity?

2. Should one accept the intangible notions invariably associated with religious activity, such as the afterlife, the soul, and God?

3. Should there be religion at all?

4. Should religious participation be based on doctrine, creed, and ritual or on personal, inner experience? I have described this last issue as an orthodox as opposed to a personal approach to religion. The term orthodox ordinarily refers to agreement with the accepted standards of a religious group. I use the term with a restricted meaning in my research to refer to compliance with, or valuing of, outward religious forms—doctrines and rituals—to such an extent that an understanding of the essential purpose of the religion seated in personal experience and conviction is sacrificed.

THESE FOUR issues refer to the areas of religious life about which there is the greatest controversy, the greatest difference of opinion or practice. Each evoked varying degrees of agreement or disagreement among the several religious groups studied. Take, for instance, the first issue: should one participate in religious activity. It was found that neither Jews, Catholics nor Protestants agreed among themselves on it.

Furthermore, Jews and Protestants each tend to disagree among themselves on the religious issues about which Catholics tend to agree most. For both Jews and Protestants, there is little agreement on whether they should accept or reject the afterlife, the soul, and God, and on whether they should adopt an orthodox or a personal approach to religion. Yet, Catholics are in relative agreement that they should believe in the afterlife, the soul, and God and should value positively doctrine, creed, and ritual as the most important part of their religion. It is curious that the Catholics disagree among themselves more than Jews and Protestants on whether they should participate in religious activity, in spite of their relatively definite position on the soul, God, and the importance of doctrine and ritual.

[Page 41] Thus various religious groups differ in the religious activities and beliefs (1) in which a member would most typically take part, and (2) about which he would encounter the most controversy or difference of practice among his fellow members. These differences are important for understanding the psychosocial effects of religion, because a person’s particular resolution of the religious issues identified above will have different consequences for his personality and social relationships depending on his religious filiation.

Professional Well-Being in an Old Established Religion

LET US CONSIDER a typical member of the Jewish group. If he values mostly the doctrine, creed, and ritual of the religion in which he participates, and believes in the afterlife, the soul, and God, more often than not he will also be group-accommodating, ethnocentric, and inhibited. However, if he decides to give up his orthodox conception of religion, as well as his belief in the afterlife, the soul, and God and his religious participation, he will tend to be more self-accommodating, worldminded, and spontaneous. Hence, the choice is between full religious participation and worldminded attitudes.

The situation of a typical Catholic is somewhat different and perhaps surprising. His participation in religious activity fosters adaptive behavior in him, yet his orthodox valuing of doctrine, creed, and ritual fosters neuroticism and a provincial outlook on the world. Hence, the growth of his personality is caught between the opposite influences of his orthodox outlook and his religious participation. A good deal of the motivation behind current ecumenism is probably an effort to reduce this intrinsic tension in contemporary Catholicism.

Indeed, there does not seem to be evidence in my data that the ordinary Catholic is handling this conflict within his religion very well. It is characteristic for Catholics to “live with” this conflict by maintaining religious participation, with full acceptance of doctrine and ritual and with belief in the afterlife, the soul, and God. This pattern of religious activity is usually accompanied by a combination of ethnocentric, group-accommodating, neurotic, and spontaneous behaviors. This adjustment seems unsatisfactory because its neurotic and ethnocentric components indicate that the negative influence of the orthodox conception of religion has prevailed.

Another approach to this conflict, which a good many Catholics take, is to continue to view doctrine and ritual as the most important part of their religion, but to decrease greatly their religious participation and to lose faith in the afterlife, the soul, and God. These Catholics tend to have a neurotic, self-accommodating, ethnocentric, and inhibited character pattern. In this clearly undesirable adjustment, the negative effects of the orthodox outlook are again prevalent. In sum, these data suggest that the personal welfare of Catholics is contingent on decreased emphasis of doctrine and ritual. This implies that the ecumenical movement might improve the life of the rank and file Catholic, not by merely changing one doctrine or ritual to another, but by decreasing the importance of doctrine and ritual in general in the eyes of Catholics.

The major consequence of the religious activity of a Protestant lies in his social relationships as described by the self- versus group-accommodation issue. If he participates in religious activity, believes in the afterlife, the soul, and God, approves of religion, and has a personal approach to religion, he will probably be a group-accommodating kind of person. If self-accommodation is his major mode of social adjustment, he will probably question both his belief in the afterlife, the soul, and God and his religious participation, which for this kind of person is irrelevant and perceived as doctrine, creed, and ritual. Perhaps the most important thing for a Protestant to think about is why his religious activity is not directly relevant to the other [Page 42] three core issues: mental health, spontaneity, and worldmindedness.

ALL IN ALL, in spite of published idealistic theories, most Jews, Catholics, and Protestants tend to view religion as primarily doctrine and ritual and to have an ethnocentric view of the world, regardless of the extent to which they participate in their respective religions. Two variations tend to occur within this context. First, those for whom religion is irrelevant and questionable tend to be also neurotic and self-accommodating. Second, those who participate in and approve of their religion and believe in the afterlife, the soul, and God, are also group-accommodating. This is the most accurate description that can be made on the basis of my data. In the context of the doctrine, ritual, and ethnocentrism of an old established religion, an individual’s personal well-being turns either (1) toward self-accommodating neuroticism if he lapses into a skeptical lack of religious participation, or (2) toward a group-accommodation which tends to exclude other groups due to the accompanying ethnocentric attitude, if he continues to participate in the religion.

Religion Itself in Purgatory

SINCE THE CENTRAL dynamics of the old established religions operate in the context of doctrine, ritual, and ethnocentrism, individuals who no longer affiliate with these religions are probably seeking a more personal orientation to religion or a more world-minded outlook. It is not surprising that a person would prefer to discontinue formal affiliation with a religion if his skeptical lack of participation brings him self-accommodating neuroticism in return, or if he was not satisfied with the exclusive social activity which accompanied his participation because of the prevailing ethnocentric attitudes.

For non-affiliates, then, religion and the intangible notions associated with it are questioned and have become irrelevant, since non-affiliates and members of the old established religions pervade all of our data, and seem to reflect a larger cultural condition in which the foundations of major religious organizations are being undermined by excessive materialism and rationalism born of the industrial and scientific revolutions.

Religion as an active force in men’s lives has been temporarily banished and condemned to purgatory, the intermediate state where not only the soul, but now religion itself, is made fit for future life by expiatory suffering. The journey through purgatory begins when the soul has departed from this life, as religion indeed has departed from the life of non-affiliates. Then, as the story goes, the soul as well as the religion of love, unity and justice, cannot be reborn in the life of modern man until it has been cleansed and purified of what in the judgment of non-affiliates are the “sins” of excessive doctrine, ritual, and ethnocentrism. In this sense, the old established religions themselves have entered purgatory, where they are suffering to modify their doctrine and ritual in such a way that they might again be fit for the “paradise” of playing a crucial role in the lives of men.

In the light of my data, it does not seem either coincidental or inappropriate that the concept of purgatory was invented in the religious group which is making the most publicized efforts to change its doctrine, and in which was observed the most conflicting operation of religion in the personal lives of its members. An orthodox outlook was found to conflict with religious participation, because each has opposite effects on the adaptivity of Catholics.

Thus the first issue between the religious groups studied is whether there should be religion at all. The old established religions say yes, and the disenchanted say no. While the banished religions are struggling to save themselves from the purgatory into which they have been placed by the forces of modern society, the non-affiliate can be worldminded, and enjoy some adaptivity even though he tends to disbelieve in the notions of the afterlife, the soul, and God so closely [Page 43] associated with the orthodox religion that he has rejected.

However, the following reasoning suggests that this common adjustment among non-affiliates may not be the most inviting solution to the problem. In the experience of the non-affiliate, the belief in the afterlife, the soul, and God has been consistently associated with an unacceptable ethnocentrism and orthodoxy in the old established religions. But these same beliefs are also related to his spontaneous expression of feeling. Hence, when the self-accommodating adjustment typical among non-affiliates is coupled with the emotional inhibition associated with his disbelief in the afterlife, the soul, and God, the result may be to stifle his relationships with other people.

Remaking Yourself Through Remaking Religion: A Personal Note

A SECOND DIFFERENCE among the religious groups that I studied reappears in every data analysis that was made and distinguishes between members of the old established religions and members of the Bahá’í World Faith. Bahá’ís consistently differed from Jews, Catholics, and Protestants in the following ways.

1. Although the Bahá’ís studied were more diverse than the other religious groups in race, nationality, and religious background, there was little disagreement among Bahá’ís on the two major issues for the other groups: should one participate in religious activity and should one believe in the afterlife, the soul, and God. Thus the Bahá’ís show greater religious unity amid their greater demographic diversity.

2. Bahá’ís display greater strength in their relatively unified position. In the Bahá’í Faith, individual participation in religious activity is much greater, belief in the afterlife, the soul, and God is stronger, skepticism of both one’s own and others’ religion is much less, and the approach to religion is more personal.

3. Adaptive behavior is associated with the Bahá’í approach to religion which is personal by de-emphasizing doctrine, creed, and ritual.

This list will have to be completed later after more detailed treatment of some of my findings. However, since the Bahá’í Faith is a new religion historically with a large proportion of first-generation members, the above three ways in which it differs from old established religions are enough to suggest that an alternative to the baby-and-bathwater rejection of religion by many non-affiliates is the construction of a new life through a new world religion. My major findings about the Bahá’ís are most simply described in the context of the new kind of social organization as well as the transformation of individual life in this new religion. The Bahá’í community which results from the synthesis of these innovations on the social and individual levels has the characteristics of a living organism.

What are the parts of this new organism? Just as one needs a strong heart, a good pair of lungs, a stout pair of legs, and so on to function well physically, what does a new religion need to assure its social and spiritual efficacy in a society which is threatening to move the old established religions from “purgatory” to “eternal hell”? I found empirically that the Bahá’ís differentiate among more parts of their religious activity than the other religious groups do. This is fortunate because the five components of religion that distinguish the Bahá’ís in my analysis can help us to understand what kinds of religious activity are necessary to make a new religion which is also a society and way of life.

FIRST, I found a cognitive component which involves ideas and concepts commonly held by Bahá’ís, particularly the belief in the soul and God. One thing that the belief in the soul asserts for Bahá’ís is that man in pursuing his destiny can choose to make high aspirations and noble qualities such as love, justice, and mercy take precedence over the motivations described in purely economic, sexual, or power-struggle theories of man. Bahá’ís believe in a non-anthropomorphic God Who is unknowable in essence. However, [Page 44] since empirical investigation alone is insufficient to solve world problems, Bahá’ís feel that God provides the necessary knowledge and authority through great religious teachers, such as the founder of the Bahá’í Faith.

A second distinguishable ingredient in this new religion is the meditative aspect of religious life. The Bahá’ís are the only religious group studied in which the members pray and meditate frequently in addition to believing in God.

Bahá’ís are also distinguished by two aspects of their religious participation. The administrative component involves participation in Bahá’í community life, such as taking part in certain regular Bahá’í meetings, contributing to the Bahá’í fund, voting, and serving on elected or appointed administrative bodies. On the other hand, religion for Bahá’ís also deals with problems and solutions which are primarily daily and personal. This experiential mode of religious participation reflects the Bahá’í belief that the value of Bahá’í teachings can be demonstrated most effectively to those who are skeptical when these teachings operate to improve and enrich the personal lives of those who uphold them.

The fifth major ingredient in this new religion is simply people who are willing to put the four given components into action. I call this the self-defining component of a new religion because it involves the process by which its members have adopted their religion by sacrificing old ties and ideas when necessary and establishing new commitments to expanding and developing the Bahá’í world community at the international, national, and local levels.

Now that the major parts of the anatomy of this new religion have been identified, it remains to be known what each part does and why it is necessary. Since circulation, respiration, and all of the other systems in a living organism like a man are interrelated and interdependent, it was not too surprising to find that the above five components of Bahá’í religious life are also functionally interrelated in another living organism, namely a new religion.

The self-defining component functions to increase the membership of the Bahá’í Faith and to introduce new members to the functioning of the other four components. This involves an individual’s active decision to rise above limiting identifications, such as with only one race, social class, or nation, and to discover his own potential and identity by experiencing the joy in the achievement of Bahá’í goals, as well as the difficulty in working for them.

Figure 1

	Organizational	Emotional
Personal	COGNITIVE	EXPERIENTIAL
Social	ADMINISTRATIVE	MEDITATIVE

FIGURE 1 illustrates the four emphases that we found in the psychosocial functions of the four remaining components of Bahá’í religious life. Perhaps the major function of the administrative component of the Bahá’í community is social organization. Bahá’ís who participate in the administrative aspect of Bahá’í life tend to develop an identity as a citizen of the world, to live as they please rather than as someone else pleases, to feel friendly toward people, to put others at ease, and to get enough praise. The belief in the soul and God in the cognitive component was found to organize, control, and discipline the behavior of an individual, so that he did not consistently, for example, do things that damage his sense of self-respect, get upset easily, have spells of the blues, nor waste time. Within the context of the personal [Page 45] organization fostered by the cognitive component, the experiential aspect of religious activity, which includes the serious attempt to live Bahá’í teachings, deals with the flow of emotional energy and creativity in day by day personal development. The meditative component is associated in this analysis with a sense of strength, independence, confidence, and peace of mind in social relationships. Thus, somewhat to my surprise, I found that the meditative aspect of religious life functioned mainly to increase the effectiveness of the individual in social situations by consolidating his emotional forces.

This brief summary suggests what each of the Bahá’í religion components does in the lives of Bahá’ís. These functions of the religion components can combine so that collections of individuals can develop into creative communities when their members are active in all of the five Bahá’í religion components. The reason why each component is necessary is that a deficit in any one of the religion components results in a breakdown of the organic integrity of the community. Social upheavals and increasing mental illness are just two symptoms of such deficits and community pathology.

Thus a full community life requires the integration of the organizational and emotional components on both the personal and social levels (see Figure 1), so that the individual and group function together harmoniously. Such a balanced community life characterized by activity on all five religion components is a new religious phenomenon because it was found only among Bahá’ís. Furthermore, this total religious participation has a unique consequence for the manner in which Bahá’ís are able to resolve the four psychosocial issues discussed earlier, namely by becoming at once worldminded, spontaneous, and adaptive! This personal orientation, which tends to emerge as Bahá’ís develop total religious participation, is not typically found in the other religious groups, and hence is a unique characteristic of the Bahá’ís. All in all, Bahá’ís are remaking themselves through remaking religion. By developing aspects of their character which were not generally as apparent when they first began working together, Bahá’ís are assembling in their lives today the parts of the new religion designed over a century ago by Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Bahá’í Faith.

THIS NEW RELIGION will reach its maturity as more and more people work together to build it and are transformed in the process. If you are contemplating remaking yourself through remaking religion, one last finding will be of interest. If you overlook putting any one of the Bahá’í religion components into action in your life, the unique pattern of worldminded, spontaneous, and adaptive behaviors is less likely to emerge in your personality. It makes sense that the energy generated by the emotional components would lack context and goal orientation without the direction provided by the organizational components. On the other hand, without the emotional components, you might not see meaning in the organization and might not be strongly motivated to achieve your goals. If the personal religion components operate to improve your personal organization and functioning, the absence of these components would probably lower your effectiveness in Bahá’í group life. Without the social components, the Bahá’í Faith could probably have little effect on society. Thus the total effect is lost if any religion component is missing.

Having said all that, I can return to the summary of the differences that were found between members of the Bahá’í Faith and members of old established religions (see page 43).

4. Bahá’ís give more differentiated attention to various aspects of their religious behavior as described by the cognitive, experiential, self-defining, administrative, and meditative components.

5. These aspects of religious behavior play unique roles in the lives of Bahá’ís. For example, only in the Bahá’í Faith is belief in the afterlife, the soul, and God associated with adaptive behavior. With the absence of [Page 46] this positive relationship in the old established religions, it is no wonder that belief in man’s spiritual nature and in God is dying Out in these religions and among non-affiliates.

In addition, only in the Bahá’í Faith are meditative and administrative religious activities associated with worldminded attitudes. Thus, far from resisting trends toward world unity, the Bahá’í Faith is the only religious group in this study which is actively promoting, both in its social structure (administrative) and in the deepest aspirations of its members (meditative), a consciousness of the full oneness of mankind.

6. Participation in all five religion components at once—total, balanced religious activity—was found only in the Bahá’í Faith.

7. Bahá’ís are characterized by a unique personality-religion interaction in which their total religious participation fosters a pattern of worldminded, spontaneous, and adaptive behaviors. A deviation from this total religious participation is associated with disruption of this unique personality pattern, and vice versa.

8. Total, balanced religious participation is the basis for creative communities in the Bahá’í Faith. Deficits in community life or community pathology can be traced to inadequate performance of one or more of the Bahá’í religion components.

THIS IS a condensed list of the ways in which Bahá’ís were found to differ from the old established religions. “I can’t believe that . . . one can’t believe in impossible things” you may say, as Alice did to the Queen in Through the Looking-Glass. Our reply would be something like the Queen’s to Alice, “I daresay you haven’t much practice . . . Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” By their unique characteristics, Bahá’ís redefine religion. I have simply reported what I found empirically, so if it sounds impossible, you have stumbled as I did over a religion which does the impossible.

The Bahá’í Faith does impossible things not through the looking-glass, but in the real world. These are things which at least seem impossible before they are actually done by people who can believe in temporarily “impossible” things. If you have ever dropped in on a group therapy session, you have heard many Alices who were sad because they thought their personal improvement was impossible, at least until they had improved. In addition, you can read of popular opinion that world peace is one of those impossible things. The Bahá’ís are people who hold the considered opinion that it is worth your effort to try to do the impossible for the world and for yourself.

The Greeting

Sun at the door today: “Found you!”

But who ever thought escape? I just

wanted the dark if it was the truth,

and it’s good here at the door again, the sun.

Sun at the door today: Welcome.

William Stafford

[Page 47]

Na’ím: A Bahá’í Poet

By ROY P. MOTTAHEDEH

“IN THE YEAR 1881,” writes Na’ím, “I declared myself a Bahá’í. In Sidih (or Furushán, his native town) the word Bábí (as Bahá’ís were generally called) became widely current, and people began to show contempt. Gradually it became impossible for us to come out of our house since people began to say obscene and shameless things; and in those days this affair was the talk of the mosques and of social gatherings. People were excited and wanted to fight and kill. We lived through a year of disgrace and humiliation and bore troubles uncountable and incalculable until the Sayyids, (Síná and Nayyir, two merchants descended from Muḥammad and both Bahá’ís,) returned from their trip.

“Taqí Abul went to their house to visit them. Bahr al-Ulúm, (a mujtahid and therefore an important religious lawyer,) asked him in the mosque ‘Why do you go to the house of the Sayyids and become the occasion for the incitement of trouble?’ Taqí answered severely, ‘Zill us-Sultán, (prince-governor of Isfahán) has given them a letter saying that no one should bother them. I too would like a cause for complaint (so that I could ask for such a letter.)’ Bahr al-Ulúm excitedly ran up the minaret of the mosque and cried, ‘Religion is dying, religion is dying, oh Muslims!’ People gathered, and having surrounded Taqí, they beat him excessively and wanted to kill him. Hájj Amín Khán ‘Yávar’, by throwing himself over him, kept him from being killed.

“A letter was sent by the Ulamá (or religious leaders) of Furushán to Shaykh Muḥammad Báqir, the ‘Wolf’ (so called for his violent persecution of the Bahá’ís). The latter, having spoken with Rukn ul-Mulk, the representative of the central government, sent two attendants towards Sidih to bring Taqí to the (nearby) city (of Isfahán). News was received that an attendant was coming. Before he arrived they sent to have me brought to the house of Bahr al-Ulúm since Taqí was there and tied up. They said ‘Taqí says you led him astray.’ I said, ‘He spoke under duress and constraint.’

“We were in the midst of this discussion when attendants came in. They were told, ‘This man Na’ím and some others must come to the city with Taqí.’ An attendant got up and with great severity tied my shoulder and, raising up Taqí, took us with a crowd of spectators to my house which was very far away. From there they went to the houses of Nayyir, Síná and Sayyid Muḥammad, took them too, and brought them tied up to my house.

“Someone came from the mayor saying ‘Prepare a gift for the attendants and start now for the city.’ Bahr al-Ulúm, (probably to prevent such a quick departure) [Page 48] immediately sent someone to my house to move us. Men with clubs and sticks walked ahead of us saying ‘Move! Move!’ and the five of us were bound by the shoulders so closely to one another that we had to step forward simultaneously like a single person. That day there was a Friday market. There was always a crowd but that day especially spectators had gathered from all the villages in the surrounding region. They took us in this surprising condition barefoot and bareheaded, and the streets and roofs were so thronged with spectators that one could not see where the crowd started or ended.

“First, they walked us around the circumference of the village. Then, in the public square at the crossroads, which was a vast space, they took us to the upper storey of a building and tied us to (the upper part of) the columns of the wooden platform which was next to the square. The attendants took up sticks and for two hours beat us as much as they saw fit. After that, at the beginning of sunset these half-dead people, (the other Bahá’ís and I,) were taken to Taqí’s house; and throughout the night till morning the attendants continually beat us. So for the fourteen hours of the night, each prisoner could rest only while the other four were being beaten. At the first sign of morning, they led us through the snow, again barefoot. At the gate of the mosque they tied us to poles and beat us on the soles of our feet. Then they took us to my house, shot five chickens they found there, and while they roasted them, they used their sticks on me, though they left the others alone, since there was no hope of getting money from them. Anyhow, in the afternoon notification came from Rukn ul-Mulk, the Governor, ‘to bring the criminals to the city.’”

THUS AT THE AGE of twenty-five Na’ím was driven from his village, to which he would never return. He had been born there in the spring of 1856 and, as he was the only son of his family, his father wanted him to have a good education. He had made progress in Persian and began Arabic, but when he married at the age of fifteen in a famine year he could no longer afford to continue his studies. At first he worked in agriculture, and later a cousin, who was a respected merchant in the nearby city of Isfahán, made Na’ím his representative in Sidih.

From his early youth Na’ím composed long poems in all metres; but his greatest pleasure was in composing the short and often amatory poems of the kind called in Persian “ghazal”.

He wrote:

The ghazal is the most pleasant of the poetic arts,

For in the ghazal, the writer’s nature is turned to the Beloved.

As he was deeply religious, most of his early poems honored the Prophet and his descendants, the family of ‘Alí. By chance in the same period in the village of Furushán there were two brothers, both poets, with the pen-names Síná and [Page 49] Nayyir; Na’ím was soon friends with them. The association of these three poets was an opportunity for them to compare and enjoy each other’s works.

Nayyir and Síná were merchants and travelled often. On October 26, 1880, when Síná returned from a trip to Tabríz, a city in the North-West of Írán, he told about his meeting with Mírzá Ináyat ‘Alí-Abádí, a man of pleasant manners and entertaining conversation. Síná described the scene for Na’ím: “As soon as we were seated in one of the rooms of the caravanseray of Tabríz, Mírzá Ináyat entered the building on horseback and dismounted in front of our room. After greeting us and hearing our answer, he came into the room, sat down, and directed his conversation to us: ‘Behold, oh descendants of the Prophet! See, I bring to you the good news of the rising of two Great Luminaries in the heaven of the human world, the first of whom shone forth in the year 1844 with the name of “the Qá’im” (the Promised One “Who-shall-arise”), and the second of whom nine years later illumined and made bright the horizons with the name of “the Return of Husayn.”’ Then, he discussed basic reasons and proofs, and made the charger of eloquence and rhetoric gallop into the arena with the utmost ability and courage. Then he said, ‘Listen attentively and willingly while I read to you from the tablets, verses and prayers of the Blessed Beauty, the “Return of Husayn”’. He immediately reached under his arm and brought out a tablet known as the Tablet of the Bell and in a remarkable, fresh, and at the same time awesome voice he began to read; and it is true that all sense, intelligence and awareness left everyone because of that heavenly reverberation and divine melody. After the conclusion of that august book, he recited to us the noble verse from the Qur’án ‘Oh my people, follow Those sent by God.’ He kissed that blessed discourse, the Tablet of the Bells, touched it to his forehead as a mark of respect and then gave it to us as a present. Then he mounted and rode off to his destination.” When Ináyat left the room, a lively discussion started among those who had heard him and one of the travellers, Sayyid Mírzá, immediately left for ’Akká in Palestine to visit Bahá’u’lláh and determine the truth.

Na’ím was moved by Síná’s description and with great caution began to seek out the Bahá’ís. He and his fellow poets soon felt that they had no choice; they accepted Bahá’u’lláh. Na’ím gives a shorter account of the consequent persecution in another passage: “In those days when this transient one and four others were tied, or better joined in a row, and of course with more than five or six thousand onlookers around us throwing stones and shouting obscenity and curses and pouring refuse from the roofs on our heads, we passed through the crowd talking and smiling. My friend said, ‘God has tied our hands and has brought us in the midst of this crowd as a proof for all people;’ and after a few more steps he said, ‘We have become believers united like one person’; again, he said, ‘This dominion and glory have been prepared especially for us’; again: ‘God has commanded this hurling of water and oil, this cursing and this annoyance only for those he loves:

[Page 50]

The hunter’s nature must be firmly founded

For when facing the lion he will experience a flood.’”

For a while they remained in prison in Isfahán; then they were set free and the governor told them to leave the city immediately. They had nothing. Not only had all Na’ím’s property been taken, but Bahr ul-Ulúm had declared his marriage invalid; and though his wife had a daughter and two sons by him, she was immediately married to someone else. Yet their loss seemed nothing to what they had gained. Na’ím later wrote:

Our dealings are with God,

We have committed our labors to God.

Body and life, which were an offering to perishability,

We have sacrificed in the path of the Beloved.

Power and respect, which were only illusory

We have spent for the condemnation of the wretched.

Money and property which meant envy and pain

We have made an endowment for the oppressive plunderer.

The mud and brick of this passing home.

We have paid for a dwelling in eternity.

We have uprooted our heart from family and household,

We have abandoned kindred and relations;

In the end, we like others must put all a side;

So from the start we have labored on our final task.

In this market, with willing dispositions

We have had joyous transactions with God:

There is no commerce better than this;

This is a commerce in which there is no loss.

With great difficulty they came to Tihrán. Once, on the way, in extreme hardship they borrowed a single qeran, a small coin, from a dervish. Later, after a long search they found him, returned it, and invited him to the Bahá’í Faith; he accepted.

Na’ím lived in a garden which in those days was a gathering place for the Bahá’ís of Tihrán. He copied Bahá’í books and taught the children of the Bahá’ís; but the Bahá’í’s themselves were so poor that he received only a very [Page 51] small salary as a schoolmaster. Slowly he was able to find jobs teaching Persian and to live more comfortably; and he continued to devote a great portion of his time to Bahá’í work.

PERSIANS HAVE traditionally felt that anything expressed in verse, even the contents of a cook book or medical textbook, was more pleasant to read than prose; so Na’ím who had a genuine poetic talent wrote almost all his poetry to explain the Bahá’í Faith. He tried, as he says in one of his poems, to make his soul a tablet and his mind a pen, his eye an inkwell and men his ink. Poetry was in any case so close to the spirit of the Bábís and early Bahá’ís that they often sang verses while under the most frightening torture. The Bábí, Hájjí Sulaymán Khán, whose body had been pierced with wounds into which lighted candles had been inserted, was mockingly ordered by his executioners to dance. He immediately recited a verse from the great Persian mystic, Jalál ad-Dín Rúmí:

In one hand the wine-cup, in the other, the tress of the Beloved:

Such a dance in the midst of the market-place is my desire.

Persian poetry was an ideal instrument for expressing religious ideas. Many centuries before Na’ím Persian poets had developed a system of images which could be used interchangeably for human or divine love, physical or spiritual intoxication, and so on. Therefore, the poet could move easily between the worlds and antiworlds of different realities, seizing a marginal aspect of one image to suggest another image or even to suggest a purely philosophical idea.

Thus the “whirling” of the poet’s head from love might suggest a whirling polo ball; the shape of the polo ball might suggest that the Beloved’s eyebrow, which was shaped like a polo stick, was causing his head to whirl. All this might in turn suggest some observation on the cruel effect of any love on the lover. Yet despite the delicate alternation between these different worlds an overall congruity of images, and an overall meaning would be preserved throughout the poem.

One of Na’ím’s best poems in the traditional style illustrates this alternation:

Again spring has come, and flowers have come,

The tulip and jasmine and lily and hyacinth.

The king of spring has leaned back upon his throne,

The nightingale like a court preacher sings congratulations.

The cloud has sprinkled water and the wind has swept the world,

Lightning has struck with its sword and thunder pounded its drum.

In the meadow the army of blossoms and flowers

Has formed the battle line of cavalry and infantry;

Then to every side he sent breezes and fragrances

As prophets and messengers,

To say to every dead branch “Arise”,

To call every sleeping bird to “Speak”.

They travel the roads toward their goals

So that mineral existence may hasten toward the plant,

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So that all parts of the world of being may he present

In the Presence of his Holiness the Flower

That they may see the word of their Merciful Lord

How it gives life to bones when they are decayed.’

THE BAHARIYYIH, another poem on spring, is probably Na’ím’s most successful long poem. It is a “musammat” or “threaded” poem, so called because the final lines of all stanzas rime with each other, and so tie the poem together. This form of poem was used very effectively by early classical Persian poets and had been revived in the 19th century. Na’ím in fact looks directly to a magnificent poem of the 11th century poet, Manúchihrí, for his model. The following three stanzas give some idea of the character of Na’ím’s poem. Many parts of the poem, like the second stanza quoted below, are famous riddles, well known to Persians who have no idea that they were composed by a Bahá’í poet.

The infant spring has taken on the glory of youth;

Once again the suckling blossom’s lips have been weaned of milk,

Once again the trees have become bearing and fruitful.

Time has revealed whatever secrets it had kept;

As if today God’s secret had been revealed.

Once again nature, the ruby cutter, has cut its gems,

Once again it has strung cut rubies next to each other in rows,

Once again, strung in rows, they have been knotted with silver,

Once again, knotted with silver, they have been hidden in a box,

That which has been hidden in a box has been named the “pomegranate.”

When the sun of your beauty lit up the world,

It taught each person some way of being a Lover:

One was like the chameleon, its eyes fixed on the light of the sun,

Another was made into a candle, burning from head to foot,

Still another flew moth-like seeking to burn.

Na’ím’s poetry takes its subjects from an enormous variety of sources. In some poems he reasons out an argument line after line, while in others he quotes prophecies from the Bible, the Qur’án and the Avesta. He also deals with specific events as in the following poem about ‘Abdu’l-Bahá's visit to America in 1912:

The kingdom of Iran sends its congratulations to America

For its good fortune,

Saying: “May the footsteps of the Center of the Covenant

Be welcome in your country.”

The sun of the East has come up in the West,

But the East has not therefore become dark,

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For the Sign of the true oneness of God,

Who has no substitute or like or companion,

Has made one land of East and West,

Has made one people of the Daylam and the Tajik,

And has given hearts such a close tie,

That they will never find separation.

If by way of land and water they are far,

Still by way of heart and soul they are near.

He has said—and the words of the King are abroad and spreading

Among his subjects and in his kingdom,—

“This is the time for the promised love of mankind;

The time for the unity of men has come.”

IN CONTRAST, most nineteenth century Persian poets seem to have been in desperate rivalry to find the least desirable subjects for poetry. Qá’ání for example, who was technically probably the most skillful poet of the century, wrote several lines of hyperbole in praise of the Queen Mother’s feet. Na’ím, however, was one of the first Persian poets to admit that the modern world existed, and to mention such hitherto unmentionable things as steamships and the telegraph. In one poem he writes:

Cities have become close to each other;

Why have hearts remained far apart?

Fire has driven ships upon the water [its opposite];

Why does one man avoid another [who is his like]?

All [material] things have accepted the [divine] decree;

When it came to man, he rebelled.

Na’ím died in 1916 during the First World War. His last poems express a horror of war and are as impressive and relevant now as when they were first written:

All these regiments, cannons, and planes,

These bullets, swords, and grenades,

These javelins, rifles, and cartridges,

Mausers, pistols, and broadswords,

All these bombs and all these blimps,

All these forts and endless ramparts,

All this surging of troops with daggers drawn,

All this frenzied activity of battleready armies

So that we may make each other

Abased, miserable, prisoners and vagrants.

Half of us spill the blood of the other half

For the desires of three or four bloodthirsty men.

Therefore we are forced to seek a solution

For the take of wretched mankind.

For sixty years this Revelation has said,

“Oh company of oppressors,

A peace-seeking parliament of man is needed;

Above the kings of the world, a king is needed!”

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Authors and Artists

LESTER B. PEARSON has been the Prime Minister of Canada since 1963.

ROBERT HAYDEN. The readers of World Order are familiar with the poetry of Mr. Hayden. “And All the Atoms Cry Aloud” was written for the Bahá’í Intercontinental Conference held in Chicago last October. Here it makes its first appearance in print.

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH, a graduate of Stanford University, holds a Ph.D. from Harvard, and is Professor of History at Yale University. He has taught at Harvard, Stanford and Columbia universities, and lectured widely both in this country and abroad. Professor Kazemzadeh is the author of books and articles on Russian and Persian history. His latest book, Russia and Britain in Persia, 1864-1914: A Study in Imperialism, has just been published by the Yale University Press.

EDWIN C. BERRY, Executive Director of the Chicago Urban League, is considered one of the nation’s leading experts in human relations. In 1963, he was selected as Chicagoan of the Year in the Field of Social Welfare by the Chicago Junior Association of Commerce and Industry. A graduate of Oberlin College and Duquesne University, Mr. Berry also serves as guest lecturer at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University and other colleges and universities in the Chicago area.

ALEXANDER GARVIN is an architect-planner born and brought up in New York City and trained at Yale University, where he received his B.A., M.Arch. and Master of Urban Studies degrees. He teaches several courses in city planning at Yale.

MARY FISH, who holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Oklahoma, is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Alabama and a member of the research staff of the State Investment Plan for Appalachian Alabama. Dr. Fish was a recipient of the American University Women’s Doctorial Fellowship.

[Page 55] WILLIAM STAFFORD has now made his third consecutive appearance in World Order. A widely published poet, he teaches English at Lewis and Clark College.

DARRELL D. LACOCK, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Education at Wesleyan University, graduated from Illinois Wesleyan University and received a B.D. degree from the Yale Divinity School as well as an M.A. and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale University. His main interests lie in political and educational philosophy, and he is now working on a book dealing with the political philosophy of Bernard Bosanquet.

JAMES J. KEENE is a researcher in religious behavior and mental health, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, and a graduate of the University of Chicago.

ROY P. MOTTAHEDEH, a graduate of Harvard University and currently a member of its Society of Fellows, specializes in the history and cultures of the Middle East.

ART AND PHOTO CREDITS. p. 4, George Neuzil; p. 6, George Neuzil; pp. 15 and 17, Martha Dick; p. 18, Alexander Garvin; p. 22, The Iconography of Manhattan by I. N. P. Stokes; p. 23, Currier and Ives print, Yale Gymnasium; p. 37, Martha Dick.

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FORTHCOMING ARTICLES

ETHICAL THOUGHTS AND ETHICAL ACTION by James C. Haden, Professor of Philosophy, Oakland University. In this article Professor Haden writes: “No convocation of the wisest men of our time will be of any help unless it merely supplements the thoughts and the acts of the most ordinary of us. The important distinction is not between the expert and the common man but between those who think and act in honesty, responsibility, and humility and those who do not.”

RELIGION AND CULTURAL CHANGE by Hossain Danesh, M.D. An evaluation of two cultures in a nomadic tribe.

NOTES ON PERSIAN LOVE POEMS by Marzieh Gail.

A NEW UNIONISM by A. L. Lincoln. This article analyzes the militant community organizations among city slum dwellers.