World Order/Series2/Volume 9/Issue 1/Text
←Volume 9 Index | World Order, Series 2 Volume 9 - Issue 1 |
Issue 2→ |
Return to PDF view![]() |
World Order
FALL 1974
- THE NECESSITY OF A UTOPIA
- Gerald B. Parks
- COULD ROBERT MOSES DO IT IN THE 70s?
- Alexander Garvin
- ARCHITECTURAL IMPLICATIONS
- OF THE BAHÁ’Í COMMUNITY
- Tom Kubala
- THE WORLD MUḤAMMAD MADE
- Robert L. Gulick, Jr.
- BUDDHA AND THE ABSOLUTE REALITY
- Wesley E. Needham
World Order
A BAHÁ’Í MAGAZINE • VOLUME 9 NUMBER 1 • PUBLISHED QUARTERLY
WORLD ORDER IS INTENDED TO STIMULATE, INSPIRE AND SERVE THINKING PEOPLE IN THEIR SEARCH TO FIND RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND PHILOSOPHY
- Editorial Board:
- FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH
- BETTY FISHER
- HOWARD GAREY
- ROBERT HAYDEN
- GLENFORD E. MITCHELL
- Editorial Assistant
- MARTHA PATRICK
WORLD ORDER is published quarterly,
October, January, April, and July, at 415
Linden Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois 60091.
Subscriber and business correspondence and
changes of address should be sent to this address.
Manuscripts and other editorial correspondence
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 should be typewritten and double spaced throughout, with the footnotes at the end. The contributor should keep a carbon copy. Return postage should be included.
Subscription rates: USA and Canada, 1 year, $4.50; 2 years, $8.00; single copies, $1.25. All other countries, 1 year, $5.00; 2 years, $9.00; single copes $1.35.
Copyright © 1974, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, World Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.
ISSN 0043-8804
IN THIS ISSUE
- 1 The Báb: Signaling a New Advent
- Editorial
- 4 Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor
- 9 The Necessity of a Utopia
- by Gerald B. Parks
- 16 Could Robert Moses Do It in the 70s?
- by Alexander Garvin
- 29 Architectural Implications of the Bahá’í Community
- by Tom Kubala
- 38 Stars
- poem by Robert Hayden
- 42 The World Muḥammad Made
- by Robert L. Gulick, Jr.
- 51 Buddha and the Absolute Reality
- book review by Wesley E. Needham
- Inside back cover: Authors and Artists in This Issue
The Báb: Signaling a New Advent
ON OCTOBER 20 each year Bahá’ís celebrate the anniversary of the birth of the Báb, Whose life and actions signalized the advent of a new time in human history. As the herald of Bahá’u’lláh, the One accepted by Bahá’ís in over three-hundred countries and territories as the long-promised educator of mankind, the Báb alluded to such unprecedented benefits of the prospective revelation as world older with its implications of global unity, peace, and prosperity.
At the time of His birth 155 years ago, His native Persia was experiencing its worst decline from civilized life. Lord Curzon, in describing nineteenth-century Persia, wrote of a national administration in which “every actor is, in different aspects, both the briber and the bribed; and a judicial procedure, without either a law or a law court.” “It will readily be understood,” he said, “that confidence in the Government is not likely to exist, that there is no personal sense of duty or pride of honour, no mutual trust or co-operation (except in the service of ill-doing), no disgrace in exposure, no credit in virtue, above all no national spirit or patriotism.” Elaborating on the administration of Persian law, Lord Curzon went on to describe conditions in which “condemned criminals have been crucified, blown from guns, buried alive, impaled, shod like horses, torn asunder by being bound to the heads of two trees bent together and then allowed to spring back to their natural position, converted into human torches, flayed while living.”
Given such wretchedness, one would not have expected any good thing to come from Persia, least of all a vision of world order; and yet this was another of those marvelous paradoxes which mankind has experienced at a few crucial intervals in its checkered history: The origins of Judaism, Christianity, and Islám show compelling examples of historic figures whose birth signified the beginning or renewal of civilization. Reflecting upon these examples in the present state of the world, one might contemplate the implications of the Báb’s assertions. In a memorable address to His disciples, He variously stated: “I am preparing you for the advent of a mighty Day.” “You are the witnesses of the Dawn of the promised Day of God.” “The secret of the Day that is to come is now concealed. It can neither he divulged nor estimated. The newly born babe of that Day excels the wisest and most venerable men of this time, and the lowliest and most unlearned of that period shall surpass in understanding the most erudite and accomplished divines of this age.”
The impact of these words upon the people of Persia was like a shot in the dead of night; rather than inspire hope among the populace, they evoked fear and hostility, reactions which ensured the Báb’s martyrdom in 1850 and the subsequent slaughter of thousands of His followers in the manner of justice described by Curzon.
Persia was not alone, of course, in its debilitated state: Europe was on the
brink of disaster, despite the conspicuous but short-lived glories to which its
[Page 2] leaders aspired. Bahá’u’lláh, in a reference to the far-reaching effect of His own
Revelation, observed: “The world’s equilibrium hath been upset through the
vibrating influence of this Most Great, this new World Oder. Mankind’s
ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this
wondrous System, the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.” And
again: “The signs of impending convulsions and chaos can now be discerned,
inasmuch as the prevailing Order appeareth to be lamentably defective.”
Bahá’u’lláh’s message is meant to provide substance for the soul of man as well as standards for the prosperity of social life; it holds that His Revelation is to be identified with the collective fulfillment which humanity from time immemorial was destined to attain—a stage similar to the maturity inevitable in the life of the individual and the development of the fruit and which must have its counterpart in the evolution of the organization of human society. The watchword at this period in human history is the oneness of mankind, implying an “organic change in the structure of present-day society, a change such as the world has not yet experienced.” Shoghi Effendi says that “It calls for no less than the reconstruction and the demilitarization of the whole civilized world—a world organically unified in all the essential aspects of its life, its political machinery, its spiritual aspiration, its trade and finance, its script and language, and yet infinite in the diversity of the national characteristics of its federated units.”
The proclamation of the Báb was, indeed, a shot at midnight which found its mark. The simultaneous awareness by the world’s peoples of the crying needs of humanity, the global concern with the problems of armament, economics, population, famine, nationalism, racism, and so on, far from leading to unmitigated frustration, may well be regarded as the inevitable rousing of the masses from the deep sleep which that hopeful shot was meant to disturb.
Interchange LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR
CITIES have become a central problem of modern life. Once upon a time their very existence was synonymous with civilization, the latter word itself being a derivative of the word city, not only in Latin but in Arabic as well (Madina-tamaddum).
Mr. Alexander Garvin, who has taught urban studies at Yale for a number of years, graphically shows how the best intentions of an urban planner produced devastatingly contrary results. A metropolis laced through with highways over which cars moved rapidly and easily to parks and beaches never materialized. Instead, neighborhoods were disrupted, the poor were exasperated, the highways got jammed, the parks were abandoned, and the beaches were overcrowded.
Mr. Tom Kubala, a young architect, dreams of cities. His dream, however, includes the spirit as well as matter. He dreams of streets which converge on a place of worship, a temple which, like a sun, sheds light on schools, a home for the aged, an orphanage, a library, and other educational and humanitarian institutions. A city of his dreams does not yet exist but must come into being if civilization is to survive.
To the Editor
MORE NOTES ON WOMEN’S LIBERATION
In his “Notes on Women’s Liberation” (WORLD ORDER, Winter 1973-74) James Haden, in the guise of a sympathetic observer, dances like a boxer around the strange creature which has raised its Medusa-head out of the steaming swamp of society: Women’s Liberation. He pretends to be a spectator, but he cannot resist taking a swing. Among other things he calls this still infant creature “barren of vigorous linguistic invention.” Yet the important fact is not that the creature dribbles down its chin, or that it speaks in monosyllables, but that it got up and walked! It is alive and growing, and it isn’t a Frankenstein monster at all but perhaps more of an ugly duckling.
Mr. Haden is unfortunately distracted by some of the outward and more shocking manifestations of the women’s movement as the “new liberal cause” and finds his esthetic sense offended by certain of its terms (while on the other hand holding up as an example a word like “honky” which for a long time caused a similar offense to white esthetic sensibilities), but he devotes precious little time to the critical issues of worldwide importance which go far beyond the fledgling women’s liberation movement in the United States.
He notes correctly that “o question it [the women’s movement] in any aspect is to incur a combination of suspicion, incredulity and ire.” And with good reason. Analogies have been made between the cause of oppressed minorities and that of women (thus the similarity, in many cases, of terms). Mr. Haden makes only one rather flippant reference to this, commenting that women’s liberation has replaced racial problems as the main liberal cause. The tone of this remark seems to imply that the long-overdue interest in the welfare of mankind felt by those who have come together at last in some kind of a cause is only a kind of social-consciousness keeping-up-with-the-Joneses. Beyond this, Mr. Haden does not mention the connection between women and minorities again. I think that it is enlightening to look closer at this similarity.
Minority people are acutely sensitive to efforts
to undermine the cause by attracting attention
to the outspoken fringe elements and
thus away from the vital issues of human rights.
The women’s movement, more than any other,
has been subjected to an overwhelming and
humiliating campaign of outright sabotage
through the mass media. No one would have
ever attempted such a campaign to discredit the
[Page 5] civil rights movement. Why against women
then? Because women, it was understood, could
(and would) not fight back. Of course, the real
importance of a cause is reflected in the reaction
against it. The violent and often cruel reactions
to the women’s cause only prove how deeply it
threatens the established old order.
When Mr. Haden levels his “fuller and cooler consideration” against the movement, he seizes on some of the more far-out elements and superficialities such as terminology, projecting onto them far more significance than they deserve, while deemphasizing the crucial problems, much in the same way that antagonists of minorities pointed frightened fingers at the outspoken militants, judging the whole cause by its most visible and colorful members. While one is eventually forced to judge a cause by the actions of its members, it is unfair to judge by one member alone. Not every person who considers herself a feminist believes in the mystical disintegration of sex distinctions; not every black person is a militant. Just because one supports some tenets of a movement such as what is broadly referred to as women’s liberation does not mean that one is committed to swallowing whole whatever any person cranks out of a printing press as dogma.
It is true that large-scale movements are “fueled by . . . passions which are usually animosities.” This is an inevitable, irrefutable, and understandable fact of history, when the movement in question is created out of the desire to eradicate an injustice suffered by a particular group. If there were no animosity, there would be no movement. And it follows that when the unjust situation is ameliorated, the movement loses its raison d’etre. Such a movement, while always accompanied by a sense of common bond or brotherhood within the group, should not be confused with other kinds of “movements” such as a religious cause which has a broader base and is not devoted solely to the eradication of a particular injustice.
One of the most outstanding plusses for the women’s movement is the concept of sisterhood —a sense of identification with one’s fellow women—not based (except perhaps among the most bizarre fringes) upon hatred of men, but aiming to dispell the age-old animosity which has existed between women who have for centuries considered each other as rivals and as threats. Although some people have spoken out against the traditional family structure, most women do not want a total destruction of the family but rather a complete restructuring of it, as well as a complete restructuring of the society.
Mr. Haden devotes a great deal of attention to the language of women’s liberation. He feels that the feminists, in introducing new terms into the language are “insensitive to that astonishing and primary human phenomenon” [language]. He seems to imply, as the romantics of the nineteenth century did with folklore, that language springs pristine, pure, and unalterable out of some mystical source and that to adopt a “voluntaristic stance” toward it is tampering with Mother Nature. Language, like the primitive stone implements with which it developed in prehistoric times, is a tool of, made by, and for the use of people. Mr. Haden invokes a lot of linguistic mumbo-jumbo but ignores the axiom of field linguistics: the native speaker is always right.
Language forms do not “inexorably rule” our
thinking, but they reflect what we want them
to. What is language anyway? It is a code of
communication. When the code is inadequate,
it is changed by its users. Language, in fact, is
constantly in a state of change. Feminists object
to the “sexism inherent in language” because
they, in using their native language, feel that
the prevailing code is not communicating what
they wish to express. People have always been
free to modify and adapt their language (as
well as the rest of their tools), but whether
they do it for better or worse is something
that can only be understood in an evolutionary
perspective, looking back. This language
modification process can be conscious or unconscious,
but it is erroneous to think that the
voluntaristic modification of language is
something new. The most flamboyant and
drastic historical example was the decree in
[Page 6] 213 B.C. by the Chinese emperor, Chin Shih
Huang Ti, ordering the burning of all books,
except those in the official language
and script.
Speakers of English, not too many centuries ago, felt (without saying so) that the second person singular pronoun had outlived its usefulness, thus the “thou” form was dropped from standard speech. Probably someone complained. In Mexican Spanish, the second person plural pronoun (which is still used in Spain) has been replaced by the third person plural, and only Spaniards complain. (By the way, there is a Spanish term analogous to “Ms.”: “Sa.” which is neither senorita or senora, and presents even more problems than does “Ms.” as it is not really pronounceable.) In America today, some women feel that certain terms in the English language do not communicate what they wish to communicate. Therefore, they have changed them. Not all of them will stick, only those that prove viable. . . .
Mr. Haden glances over the vast area of inequality in employment and the monstrous waste of female resources by hitting only for a second on a term “synonymous with noncreative activity” and dismisses the entire subject (which is the most visible manifestation of the oppression of women in America) by trying to console us and resign ourselves to our inferior positions, saying that “in most or all male occupations there is the same high percentage of non-creative activity.” Oh well, back to the scrub buckets! He says, “The impression the word is used to give is that women would be freed from such work if only they could change their occupations.”
Maybe not, but they would sure make a lot more money!
He has, of course, missed (or subverted) the point entirely, which is that a tremendous amount of human resources is being wasted by confining women to inferior and subservient positions for which they are (adding insult to injury) paid inferior wages. Why should a woman with a graduate degree have to be content to work in a position inferior to that of a less-intelligent male, at half the salary?
Mr. Haden, in his article, invites us to “consider the question of anthropological evidence for any natural and necessary male-female cultural differentiation.” That is very dangerous, if he is suggesting cross-cultural comparison, the bugaboo of anthropology. Anthropologists, and other probers and priers into the clockwork of societies, have a tremendous blind spot in their microscopes when it comes to their own cultures. Other cultures, those admirably “functioning” villages in the Alps and the Andes, are “hands-off.” Anthropologists would never consider tampering with a culture. Yet their own culture is frequently (in private life, that is) viewed as an incomprehensible, chaotic mess in which very few constructive forces are at work. What does the anthropological evidence really tell us? It tells us what all the other evidence in the world tells us, that the whole world (and no culture is exempt) is in need of a profound change, a change which must begin in the very deepest center of the heart of each person and which will bring forth a new world. Bahá’ís feel that the blueprint for this new world is given to us in the writing of the Bahá’í Faith. These teachings, when implemented to their fullest degree, imply a radical change in the very personality structure of human beings, including all elements of what sociologists call sex identity and role expectation. There will be a profound change in the nature of interpersonal relationships, in the relationships between members of a family, between members of a society, and between different cultures and different countries as they come together for the first time in true unity. Now that is real “tampering” with culture in the fullest sense of the word radical: at the very roots. Yet, although it represents a very definitely voluntaristic stance toward culture and personality and the whole world, in another sense it is indeed the work of nature, of the natural evolution of humanity.
Mr. Haden’s final plea is for a return to polarities—to diversity, to “nuances.” No one wants a monolithic, bland existence, but why should such polarities as weak=woman/strong= man prevail? One of the basic ideas of the women’s movement is that each person must be allowed to develop her/his individual potential free from the rigid restraints of traditional role expectations. The demolishing of all sex identity is one of the more bizarre and frightening ideas brought up, again, on the fringes which Mr. Haden has rightly been horrified by. But women, even the most flaming militants, are not bent on the destruction of all that is good. Only the destruction of that which is bad. When you pull up weeds, the ground gets disturbed and a lot of dust and dirt fly around and get in people’s eyes. But the main thing is to pull up the weeds. Before you can plant anything new at all.
- WENDY MARISSA HELLER
- Temple City, California
The Necessity of a Utopia
BY GERALD B. PARKS
SOCIAL CRITICISM is a game anyone can play. Even the least reflective person can find things in the society around him which he does not like or which he thinks could be made better. Corrupt police forces, inadequate hospitals, continuing inflation, crowded highways and gasoline shortages, inept school systems, rampant pornography —these are only some of the problems with which everyone is faced and about which comments abound. Most of the comments, however, are only grumbling; they proceed from no reasoned analysis of the problems and arrive at no conclusions. And since they are based on emotional reactions, not on logical arguments, they may even be mutually contradictory. At the end of each such discussion of current problems, there may be a reference to the good old days when these troubles did not exist or were taken care of in a satisfactory manner.
Such unreasoned grumbling is by no means confined to private conversations, nor is it limited to any particular social class. Intellectuals fare little better in this regard than manual laborers; their grumbles and gripes may be expressed more fluently and may encompass a larger range of problems and a greater sophistication of outlook; but they are no less emotional in origin, no less unreasoned, no more constructive, and they lead only to a lament for the loss of some imagined Golden Age, which may be Periclean or medieval, Rousseauean or Byzantine.
Especially now, when Watergate has revealed to us all too clearly the limitations and defects inherent in our political system, as well as a widespread lack of traditional morals which, it may be, runs all through contemporary American society, social criticism is frequently heard and is often harsh in tone. There is a feeling that the system has somehow broken down. Yet much of this criticism seems only to indicate the confusion, mental and moral, of the critic. To say that a government is corrupt or inept gets us nowhere. To say that society is in a state of transition and confusion is, likewise, a statement without content. Societies are always in a state of transition between past and present.
Even those who try to analyze why things are in their sorry state really beg the question. So do those who try to propose solutions to what are viewed as current plights or dysfunctions. The unasked question underlying their queries is: How do we make judgments about a society? How do we know if it is functioning well or not? How do we know if it is doing what it should do?
The last statement of that question gives us a clue to the answer. We judge a society as we judge an individual (or anything else, for that matter)—on the basis of certain a priori assumptions about what it should be or do. In the sphere of individual conduct this is clear. We condemn a man who kills his fiancée, for example, because we assume murder is wrong. If the assumption should change, so would our judgment. Thus, in war, we do not condemn the soldier who kills because we assume it is right to kill an enemy. The pacifist’s judgments and conclusions are different because he assumes that it is always wrong to kill, even when the person killed is an enemy.
Our judgments, then, will depend upon
our assumptions. It follows that if our assumptions
are mutually contradictory, so will
be our judgments. Suppose our assumptions
are: (1) It is wrong to kill. (2) It is right to
kill an enemy in war. (3) It is wrong to kill
civilians in a war. (4) It is right to obey
orders in the armed forces, especially in a
war situation. (5) It is wrong to commit
suicide. Now let us suppose we have a
situation where a soldier is ordered to kill
[Page 10] civilians in wartime. On the basis of our
assumptions we can arrive at no clear judgment
because: (1) If the soldier disobeys
orders, he violates assumption no. 4. (2) If
the soldier kills the civilians, he violates
assumption no. 3. (3) If he kills himself in
desperation, he violates assumption no. 5.
There is no solution for the soldier. His
assumptions conflict and cause judgmental
confusion.
The solution, we may say, to this dilemma is that the soldier should not have been ordered to kill civilians in wartime. That is, we introduce a new assumption: (6) No orders should be given, even in war, which violate our other moral assumptions. The Army, in other words, should obey moral “laws.” This does not resolve the above dilemma but should, if applied, prevent it. To resolve the dilemma we should need another assumption which might be: (7) A soldier should always obey orders. It might equally be: (7a) A soldier should disobey an immoral order and take the consequences. Since these two assumptions are in direct contradiction, judgments based upon them will be diametrically opposed.
Though people do base their judgments of individual conduct upon differing assumptions, there is nonetheless a good deal of agreement as to basic principles. The Ten Commandments are still a good starting point for many such judgments, and most of those ancient commandments are still generally accepted. It is useless to ask why it is wrong to kill; it is an assumption, an axiom to be taken for granted. In this respect morality is like geometry: if you start with different axioms, you arrive at different conclusions.
IF WE COULD COLLECT all our assumptions
about human conduct and make a list of
them, we should have a sort of ideal person
(one who would obey all the assumptions)
which we could use as a model by which to
judge the people we meet and read about. It
would enable us to make a complete and
systematic evaluation of any individual by
comparing him to our model and judging his
conduct in terms of all our assumptions. We
could then say which of them he obeys,
which he does not, and which he does only
partially. And we could compare different
individuals by reference to our model. We
might also make a systematic analysis of our
assumptions to see if they are conflicting or
contradictory or incomplete, and we could
amend or discard those which proved unsatisfactory.
The same thing could be done for societies; we could make a list of all our assumptions about what societies should or should not do, should or should not be. This would then serve as a model, or utopia, by which to judge current societies. It is also clear we could then examine critically the assumptions upon which our judgments are based. Only then could we have a complete and systematic (that is, coherent) social criticism. Otherwise, we are likely to make our judgments on the basis of unexamined, and conflicting, assumptions; as a result our criticisms are often incoherent and virtually useless.
Revolutions have often failed because
their leaders had no clear models of the kind
of society they wished to establish. The motto
of the French Revolution was Freedom,
Equality, Brotherhood. Leaving aside
brotherhood for the moment as a concept too
vague to be defined, we can point out the
inherent contradiction in the two ideals of
freedom and equality. Freedom is by nature
anarchic; equality implies a strong element
of order. Equality (equal pay, equal treatment
before the law, equal medical care, and
so on) can only be imposed by a strong
government, since people are obviously not
born equal. So great are the inequalities of
nature, in fact (in terms of physical capabilities,
intelligence, drive), that to impose absolute
equality would be an impossibility; and
the more equality is imposed, the stronger
government must be and, consequently, the
less “free” its citizens can be. It is useless for
us to desire to be free and equal; by the
[Page 11] nature of things we can only be partly free
and partly equal. What must be decided is
how free and how equal we want, or can
afford, to be.
In making this decision we should be constructing a model by which to judge current society. Then we would know to what extent our present-day society lives up to the standards of our model and to what extent it falls short. To collect and examine the assumptions upon which societies may be criticized is, in fact, to construct a model.
Any coherent social criticism can only be made by reference to an outside model which must either be drawn from the past (a historical model) or from the future (a utopian model, which is of necessity an abstract construction). Any criticism based on a past model is bound to be nostalgic and reactionary because its fundamental assumption is that the historical model is superior to the present reality. Only a criticism based on the future (on a utopian model) is revolutionary because it measures the distance between where we are and where we want to arrive. Of course, we must be careful: a utopian model projected into the future could be based on a historical model —may, in short, be nostalgic. In that case, any criticism based on such a pseudo-utopian model will of necessity lead into a dead end. Criticism based on the past is useless because unrealistic; it is not possible to return to the past, whether that past is a primitive agrarian society or a pre-World War I Great Power concept of politics. Therefore, the prime duty of the social critic is to formulate new social models—that is, not just to say what is wrong with present-day society but how it could (and should) be right. His second duty is to formulate the means to be used in making the model a reality—namely, how the wrong could (and should) be put right.
Contemporary movements, such as those of the New Left or the hippies, have failed to provide us with coherent models of new societies which can be realized in practice; the New Frontier and Great Society were incoherent and ill-thought-out extensions of New Deal pragmatism; the concept of a pentapolar world is a return to concepts of diplomacy current a century ago and proved vain by World War I; and traditionalist constitutionalism is again a nostalgic, not a dynamic, concept. What we need, both literally and metaphorically, is not an enforcement of the old constitution, but a new constitution altogether.
Of course, the most widely known utopia in the world today is that of the Marxists. Yet the Marxist revolutions have failed not because they lacked a utopian model but because they lacked the knowledge of the means to make that utopia a reality. The doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat leading automatically to utopian socialism is a false doctrine. A dictatorship can never lead spontaneously to its opposite. Also, the Marxist critique of capitalism is much more precise than its construction of a utopian model; the model remains, somehow, too remote, to ill-defined. It is the duty of a social critic not only to create a model but to create a model which can be realized and to show how it can be realized.
In a recent book, Jean-François Revel goes part of the way toward proposing a new model. In Without Marx or Jesus he argues that a modern revolution must have as its goal the establishment of a world government and suggests that the United States can be the instrument for the bringing about of this world revolution.
- If we draw up a list of all the things that ail mankind today, we will have formulated a program for the revolution that mankind needs: the abolition of war and of imperialist relations by abolishing both states and the notion of national sovereignty; the elimination of the possibility of internal dictatorship (a concomitant condition of the abolition of war); world-wide economic and educational equality; . . . complete ideological, cultural, and moral freedom, in order to [Page 12]
assure both individual happiness through independence and a plurality of choice, and in order to make use of the totality of human creative resources.[1]
It will be obvious to Bahá’ís how similar many of his ideas are to the Bahá’í model of utopia.
He is, however, rather vague as to how this utopia is to be achieved. He puts his almost mystical faith in the American youth movements; but the quiet years which have followed the publication of his book would seem to indicate that much of the steam has gone from those movements. He fails to see that a world revolution can only be brought about by a worldwide organization. This organization will work quietly, perhaps even unbeknownst to the majority of people, but tirelessly and continuously for the achievement of its objects. It will be organized on a planetary scale and yet operate locally in dealing with local problems. It will be united by intellectual and emotional bonds and yet will be diverse in its cultural manifestations.
There are some who maintain that the Bahá’í Faith is such a society in action. It is certain that the Bahá’í Faith has been working for over a century for the attainment of many of those social goals which Revel considers essential to a new world—problems which must be solved if the world is to survive.
THE BAHÁ’Í FAITH has a utopian model—
one which is truly utopian, not based on past
history. It offers a complete social criticism.
And it proposes a means for attaining its
utopia.
The world needs a utopia. The Bahá’í Faith is the most complete critic of present-day society which the world has. It may well be that no systematic criticism has yet been made of the social assumptions of the Bahá’í model; and, if that is the case, such a criticism should certainly be made, both to define more clearly those assumptions and to resolve any possible conflicts in them. Nor does it seem that any systematic criticism of present-day society has yet been based on them; that, too, deserves to be done. Bahá’ís themselves are more concerned with expanding the base of their movement than with developing further their theoretical models of the future world. Yet sooner or later they will find such theoretical formulations a necessity as they go about trying to make their utopia a reality.
It is difficult, for example, to balance the claims of individual liberty and central authority; somehow, an organic unity must be found so that individuals can be allowed to retain their distinct personalities and independence and yet participate actively in group life. The evil of conformity must be avoided; a common faith should not mean unreasoning acceptance of dogma. Religion should be a means of promoting social cohesiveness, not of suppressing private experience. This is a problem which must be solved anew by every community in the world.
What has gone before may mislead some into thinking that in creating a future world one must reject the past. That would be absurd. The making of a utopia does not imply the rejection of the past, which is in any case an impossibility, but the retaining of all that is most valid in our past. It implies a reevaluation, a rethinking, critically and systematically, of the legacy of the world’s cultures and the preservation of those values without which true civilization cannot exist. A new world cannot spring into being out of nothing. Plato and Lao-Tse are as relevant to the future as Marx and Marcuse. Rather than rejecting the past or yearning for it nostalgically the future world will embrace it all in a vast world culture, without parochialism, holding a vision of life at once joyous, sane, and mature.
- ↑ Jean-Francois Revel, Without Marx or Jesus: The New American Revolution Has Begun, trans. J. F. Bernard (New York: Doubleday, 1971), p. 182.
Postscript
Perhaps the best and most concise definition of the Bahá’í utopia is the following passage from the writings of Shoghi Effendi, which I here append to the above article:
Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1955), pp. 203-04.
The unity of the human race, as
envisaged by Bahá’u’lláh, implies the
establishment of a world commonwealth
in which all nations, races,
creeds and classes are closely and permanently
united, and in which the
autonomy of its state members and the
personal freedom and initiative of the
individuals that compose them are definitely
and completely safeguarded. This
commonwealth must, as far as we can
visualize it, consist of a world legislature,
whose members will, as the
trustees of the whole of mankind, ultimately
control the entire resources of
all the component nations, and will
enact such laws as shall be required to
regulate the life, satisfy the needs and
adjust the relationships of all races and
peoples. A world executive, backed by
an international Force, will carry out
the decisions arrived at, and apply the
laws enacted by, this world legislature,
and will safeguard the organic unity of
the whole commonwealth. A world
tribunal will adjudicate and deliver its
compulsory and final verdict in all and
any disputes that may arise between the
various elements constituting this universal
system. A mechanism of world
inter-communication will be devised,
embracing the whole planet, freed from
national hindrances and restrictions,
and functioning with marvellous swiftness
and perfect regularity. A world
metropolis will act as the nerve center
of a world civilization, the focus towards
which the unifying forces of life
will converge and from which its energizing
influences will radiate. A world
language will either be invented or
chosen from among the existing languages
and will be taught in the schools
of all the federated nations as an auxiliary
to their mother tongue. A world
script, a world literature, a uniform and
universal system of currency, of weights
and measures, will simplify and facilitate
intercourse and understanding
among the nations and races of mankind.
In such a world society, science
and religion, the two most potent forces
in human life, will be reconciled, will
coöperate, and will harmoniously develop.
The press will, under such a
system, while giving full scope to the
expression of the diversified views and
convictions of mankind, cease to be
mischievously manipulated by vested
interests, whether private or public, and
will be liberated from the influence of
contending governments and peoples.
The economic resources of the world
will be organized, its sources of raw
materials will be tapped and fully utilized,
its markets will be coördinated
and developed, and the distribution of
its products will be equitably regulated.
National rivalries, hatreds, and intrigues
will cease, and racial animosity
and prejudice will be replaced by racial
amity, understanding and coöperation.
The causes of religious strife will be
permanently removed, economic barriers
and restrictions will be completely
abolished, and the inordinate distinction
between classes will be obliterated.
[Page 14] Destitution on the one hand, and gross
accumulation of ownership on the
other, will disappear. The enormous
energy dissipated and wasted on war,
whether economic or political, will be
consecrated to such ends as will extend
the range of human inventions and
technical development, to the increase
of the productivity of mankind, to the
extermination of disease, to the extension
of scientific research, to the raising
of the standard of physical health, to
the sharpening and refinement of the
human brain, to the exploitation of the
unused and unsuspected resources of
the planet, to the prolongation of human
life, and to the furtherance of any
other agency that can stimulate the
intellectual, the moral, and spiritual life
of the entire human race.
A world federal system, ruling the whole earth and exercising unchallengeable authority over its unimaginably vast resources, blending and embodying the ideals of both the East and the West, liberated from the curse of war and its miseries, and bent on the exploitation of all the available sources of energy on the surface of the planet, a system in which Force is made the servant of Justice, whose life is sustained by its universal recognition of one God and by its allegiance to one common Revelation—such is the goal towards which humanity, impelled by the unifying forces of life, is moving.
Could Robert Moses Do It in the 70s?
BY ALEXANDER GARVIN
I would like to thank Hunter Morrison for his insights into the early Moses, Richard Singer for his perception of Moses’ attitudes to the automobile, Alan Beller for this thoughts on the “Moses Method” in urban renewal, and all my students for getting me into the planning game.
WE READ DAILY of our ruined shoreline
—Robert Moses preserved for public
use seemingly endless miles of beach. Our
expressways are perpetually jammed—Moses
built dozens of bridges, tunnels, and highways.
Whole neighborhoods deteriorate and
are abandoned—Moses was able to build
thousands of apartments. The litany of his
achievements fills the maps of the Northeast:
Jones Beach, Thousand Island State Park,
Niagara Power Plant, Lincoln Center, Taconic
Parkway, Triborough Bridge, Brooklyn
Battery Tunnel, The New York Coliseum,
Jamaica Bay . . . Just who was this man who
did so much to shape the landscape? How
did he manage to do it all? Do we need to
return to the Moses method and the Moses
mystique today?
The “man who got things done for New York” was born in New Haven, Connecticut, on December 18, 1888, and spent the first nine years of his life in a comfortable Victorian house on Dwight Street, a few elm-lined blocks from the Yale campus. After his grandfather died, his family moved to a brownstone on East 46th Street in Manhattan. In the manner common to all young men of wealth, Robert was educated at private schools, toured Europe, and graciously prepared to return to New Haven and Yale. There he ran track, played football, and became president of the Intercollegiate Swimming Association. He ignored the fact that at snobbish Yale young men of Jewish background did not customarily cut an active swath.
After receiving a variety of prestigious prizes he graduated cum laude in 1909 and went on to Oxford, receiving his second B.A. in 1911 and his M.A. in 1913. He became interested in British colonial administration and began work on a book examining the British Civil Service System. The book became the doctoral dissertation he submitted to Columbia, which awarded him a Ph.D. in political science, although he never attended classes at the University.
Reform Government
IN HIS DISSERTATION, The Civil Service of Great Britain, Moses made a plea for American government to “hold out opportunities— to attract the very elite into our civil services.” Then society would be turned over to be run by “our best educated young men”: no doubt by men like Robert Moses—fresh from Yale and Oxford, heady with his own competence and eager to begin making decisions for other people. But the opportunity for Moses to become a part of a powerful elite civil service, where he thought he belonged, did not exist in the New York City of 1913. Moreover, he was not about to dirty his hands in politics to gain the position he felt he deserved.
When John Purroy Mitchell was elected
New York City’s reform mayor in 1913 with
a mandate to clean up city government,
Robert Moses went to work not directly for
his Administration but for the quasi-public
Bureau of Municipal Research. His job was
to develop a program to standardize salaries
and personnel policies. What better way to
implement his goal of attracting “the very
[Page 17] elite into our civil service”? The reform
approach of the day differed little from that
of the “whiz kids” brought by Robert MacNamara
to the Kennedy Administration. A
staff of technical experts would amass all
possible data, analyze it as “scientifically” as
possible, and determine “objectively” what
ought to be done. They proposed to eliminate
an ineffective bureaucracy of political
hacks by rationally and systematically reorganizing
the structure of government. Fifty
years later Mayor John Lindsay was to propose
the creation of super-agencies on the
very same basis.
Moses’ next attempt to get things done came with his appointment as director of research for the Reconstruction Commission, established in 1919 by the newly elected Governor of New York, Al Smith. True to Moses’ ideals of efficiency, the Commission recommended the consolidation of 187 miscellaneous State agencies into fourteen departments each responsible for a specific functional area (finance, education, health, and so on), the creation of an executive budget, and the extension of the Governor’s term to four years. Smith was swept out of office by the Harding landslide and the consolidation proposals went down to defeat with him. But he was reelected two years later and his program of reform was eventually approved.
Experience with reform was having its effects. Moses was, as he later wrote, becoming “wary of salvation by organization charts and efficiency installation,” and he was growing “extremely suspicious of extravagant claims of net dollar savings in government.” Having tried to obtain better government through altering its structure, he decided that “the ideal thing, of course, is to have first-class men operating first-class machines, but first-class men can operate any machine and third rate people can’t make the best and most modern gadget work.” Moses had tried hard, as had all the reformers, and achieved little. “Getting things done” required more than a youthful fascination with government by an elite, more than scientific decision-making, and more than structural reform. Before he was to learn the art of “getting things done,” he would have to learn from those who were successful at it. Robert Moses went to work for Alfred E. Smith.
Political Apprenticeship
MOSES saw very little of Governor Smith during his first term in office. When the Republicans retired him for two years, Smith became president of a large trucking company while Moses became secretary of the New York State Association, a non-profit lobbying group set up by Smith supporters to push his reform package while he was out of office. Moses also edited the State Bulletin, the group’s public relations newsletter. It was during this period that the two really came together. Both had offices on lower Broadway and met regularly to discuss politics, planning, and the upcoming reelection campaign. When Smith was returned to Albany in 1922, he set Moses to work writing speeches, drafting legislation, and lobbying for his reform program.
By working as a lobbyist and bill drafter,
Moses learned state law and became familiar
with the halls and cloakrooms of the legislature.
Most important, he gradually recognized
the limits of legislative and administrative
knowledge. Governors, administrators,
and especially legislators had little time or
information for developing positions on
[Page 18] every issue. He observed that when presented
with a factually based plan dealing with an
important issue they had given little or no
attention to, and in the absence of contrary
facts or opinions, they would accept it. Moses
transformed his observation into a technique
for maneuvering legislation which he mastered
when he came to New York City and
began producing glossy brochures which
came to be accepted programs of action as
soon as they were published.
Second, Moses watched and understood the workings of pluralistic democracy. To accomplish anything significant in New York, one always needs support from the very people with whom he is in constant competition for funds, for publicity, and for public approval. The man who wants to plan and build must form a coalition with his competitors by convincing them that his ideas are theirs and theirs his, or at least that everyone concerned will benefit by the particular action. This constituency must be mobilized without catalyzing any significant opposition, or a person can be sure of a crushing defeat.
[Page 19]
The third element which Moses required
was a public entrepreneurial entity. The
private sector is open to anyone with land,
labor, capital, or entrepreneurial ability. To
enter the public sector one needs an established
bureaucratic base.
Until 1923 Moses seemed content to remain
Smith’s assistant, but the position was
entirely dependent upon the Governor’s remaining
in office. When Smith considered
running for President, Moses faced a dilemma.
He would go to Washington with
Smith if he was elected, or, if he failed to get
the nomination, Moses would remain with
him in Albany. But if Smith won the nomination
and lost the election, assistant Moses
would be out of the picture. While staying
with Smith, he turned to the New York State
Association of which he was still secretary.
Under Moses’ leadership the Association put
forward a “State Park Plan” in December
1922. It called for consolidation of forty-two
separate parks, monuments, battlefields,
houses, and reservations controlled by eighteen
independent organizations; the establishment
of the State Council of Parks;
[Page 20] creation of eleven regional parks commissions;
and authorization of a $15 million
bond issue to finance the plan. The proposed
legislation passed, and Moses became the
chairman of the State Council of Parks in
April 1924. He also became president of the
Long Island State Park Commission.
Until that time almost all of the State’s capital construction had been done by regular departments of government whose funds were appropriated annually by the legislature. However, the Long Island State Park Commission followed the model of the Port Authority, established in 1921. This semiautonomous public benefit agency bypassed elected officials and allowed long range funding through bonds rather than annual budget appropriations. The preservation of Niagara Falls in 1889 and the construction of the Bronx River Parkway in 1909 had been funded in this manner. Moses’ adoption of the semiautonomous agency, the vehicle he used throughout his career, allowed him broad discretionary powers to develop a system of parks and parkways within a large geographic region.
In 1926 Smith was reelected governor. He appointed Robert Moses Secretary of State, in charge of everything from the Athletic Commission to the Governor’s Committee on Public Improvements. Moses continued as head of the Council of Parks and the Long Island State Parks Commission. When Smith became an active candidate for the Presidency, Moses remained in Albany to run the government. Smith lost; and Franklin Roosevelt, who fought with Moses over patronage appointments for his cronies, became governor.
Having served his apprenticeship, Moses left state government. At the age of forty he returned to New York City to play the game on his own—to plan and develop the vast metropolitan system of parks and parkways.
Playing the Planning Game
IT SEEMS inconceivable today that there was opposition to the creation of Jones Beach or the preservation of Montauk Point. But when the Long Island State Park Commission was established in 1924, Moses faced a coalition of disparate opponents: newly-rich, self-appointed aristocrats who were rapidly preempting available beachland and unspoiled tracts for their estates, clubs, and private game preserves; residents of the old villages who watched with dismay the Sunday invasion of urban tourists motoring in Stanley Steamers and Model T’s; the potato farmers who merely wanted to continue turning over their crops. Newspapers like the New York Herald Tribune had not only applauded opponents to the creation of the parks and parkways of Long Island but also inaccurately predicted that “Long Island was on the road to escaping from the clutches of the Moses commission.”
Robert DeForest, founder of the Russell Sage Foundation, rallied fellow patricians in a vain attempt to stop the Northern State Parkway. They hired Elihu Root’s law firm. Their only success was in keeping the road out of their private province, Wheatly Hills. Further out on the Island the effort was to keep the Long Island State Park Commission from turning a private game preserve at East Islip into a site for public recreation. In 1924 Moses had obtained agreement to purchase this property for $250,000. Horace Havemayer and W. Kingsland Macy, both millionaries, organized the opposition. They established the Patchogue Land Corporation to take title to the estate and brought suit against the Commission alleging the property was really worth $800,000. The litigation proceeded through every possible court up to the Supreme Court of the United States. After all, as Havemayer remarked at a public hearing, “Where can a poor millionaire go?” During litigation money for the property could not be forthcoming. So another millionaire, August Heckscher, donated the funds for the park; the case was settled, and Governor Smith proposed to name this new park after its donor.
Opposition to Jones Beach came from
[Page 21] more than landed gentry. According to
Moses, Hempsteadites voted down the first
proposal for Jones Beach in 1925 because of
“fear that rabble coming out from the City
would create a second Coney Island.” So he
threatened to let the state collect the clam,
scallop, and wild oyster fees that had helped
to finance township government for more
than eighty years. As Moses explains it “the
swap was pretty good business on both
sides—park and parkway for clams and scallops.”
It also prevented the cottage and
bungalow subdivisions that were proposed at
the time by the Regional Plan Association.
Moses began to see that if he was to be successful in his plans he could not copy Smith’s purely political strategy of amalgamating active competitors toward the same goal: producing election of an acceptable candidate or passage of an acceptable bill. To be successful in the planning game he needed more than a coalition of competitors. The groups whose support he needed were completely separate, either economically, socially, or geographically. Moses had to provide a plan which had common ground which would benefit the disparate groups whose active support he needed.
A typical example of Moses’ temporary coalitions was the Metropolitan Conference of Parks, first held at the Central Park Arsenal in 1926. It brought together the major figures in the field and gave Moses the opportunity to develop plans and strategies which he could later persuade them to work with him to achieve. Out of the Conference, for example, came a Shore Parkway to ring Brooklyn, parks for Randall’s and Ward’s Islands, and Flushing Meadow Park. However, money for these “dreams” was not readily available, the vehicle for carrying through such ambitious projects did not exist, and there was no sense of urgency to press them.
Master Builder
THE GREAT OPPORTUNITY for Robert Moses to become an important player in the city planning game and to carry out a major effort at public works came with Franklin Roosevelt’s election to the Presidency in 1932. There was a real urgency among the New Dealers to put people to work and get things going again. Roosevelt had little use for Moses; but the new governor, Herbert Lehman, appointed Moses head of a new State Emergency Public Works commission. Funds for construction could be obtained through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). Thus, with money from Washington, Moses became the force behind the massive program of public improvements at Saratoga Springs, Niagara Falls, and the Thousand Islands and throughout the State.
In November 1933 Fiorello La Guardia was elected Mayor. At that time there were 14,827 acres of parkland occupying 7.28 percent of the City’s 203,442 acres (including 119 dilapidated playgrounds, 2 meager swimming pools, 7 run-down golf courses, and 1 mile of eroded beachfront). Not only was the parks system badly deteriorated, it was uneconomical to operate and virtually impossible to coordinate because the five Borough Departments had become encrusted with Tammany patronage.
La Guardia introduced legislation in Albany
to replace the five Borough Parks
Departments with a single agency to be run
by the Master Builder. Moses jumped in. He
adopted a strategy of structural reform and
replaced political hacks with technical experts
organized on a functional basis: topography
(mapping), landscaping, architecture,
engineering, operations, and maintenance.
These new technical offices developed a wide
variety of projects (comfort stations, menageries,
swimming pools with locker rooms,
bridle paths, boardwalks, concession booths)
and even made alterations in The Metropolitan
Museum. All construction was simple
and functional in design, avoided perishable
materials, and stressed low upkeep. These
were standardized public works designed to
accommodate rigorous use: sheathed with
common red brick, lined with glazed terra
[Page 22] cotta, and paved with concrete or asphalt.
During his tenure as Parks Commissioner, Robert Moses blanketed the City with projects. He more than doubled the City’s park acreage, increased the inventory of playgrounds and swimming pools eightfold, and created seventeen miles of new public beachfront newly accessible by miles of Moses-built parkways, bridges, and tunnels. This achievement was more than the result of hiring a first-class professional staff and providing them with a secure bureaucratic base. Nor was it entirely ascribable to Moses’ skill as a public entrepreneur. During his first three years in office Moses spent over $136 million in federal funds (CWA, PWA, FERA, and WPA) on seventeen hundred work relief projects many of which grew out of plans that had been hammered out years before at the Metropolitan Conference of Parks.
The army of 69,000 relief workers which Robert Moses inherited had been a major headache. Six thousand were assigned to ash dumps, and 20,000 were on the payroll, but nobody could trace their assignments. To transform this headache into a spectacular asset Moses announced he needed at least 500 technically trained landscape and construction work supervisors. He was told to use part of his army of relief workers as supervisors. Within a week (which included a threatened resignation) Moses had persuaded the Mayor, the Board of Estimate, and the State Administration to appropriate the funds he needed for tools, materials, and 500 technical supervisors. The following Saturday 1,300 telegrams were sent to likely candidates. At two o’clock the following afternoon round-the-clock interviewing began. By Monday 453 had received wires ordering them to work that morning.
In addition to parks Moses took on the responsibility for roads, bridges, tunnels, and a variety of other public works. Almost single-handedly, he ran a variety of semiautonomous public authorities created to control the construction and operation of these improvements. These authorities were used to build and finance the Henry Hudson Parkway and Bridge, highway and park improvements on the West Side of Manhattan, the Queens Mid-town Tunnel, the Triborough Bridge, the Bronx Whitestone Bridge . . .
Once again Moses was using the public benefit agency. It was a device which streamlined everything. Financing came through bonds which were outside the City’s debt limit. The true master at funding through bonds is not Robert Moses but Nelson Rockefeller, who spawned a series of authorities which even Moses would envy: the New York State Dormitory Authority, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the New York State Urban Development Corporation . . . With Tammany Hall out of the way he could create the elite professional staff he had written about decades earlier. The Authority’s actions were outside politics once a project had been approved. The cry of the day was to take government out of the hands of the elected politicians and put it into the hands of experts. What better vehicle for a tyranny of expertise than the Authority?
Moses even dabbled in politics. He had almost been the Fusion candidate for mayor in 1933. A year later he made an unsuccessful try for governor on the Republican ticket. He wanted to get into everything.
The World’s Fair
PERHAPS THE MOST UNUSUAL of Moses’ undertakings was the construction of the World’s Fair of 1939. A group of New Yorkers had the idea of celebrating the 150th Anniversary of Washington’s inaugural, which had taken place in New York City. Various sites were proposed but Robert Moses, who had long harbored the idea of transforming the Corona Garbage Dump into a park, promptly proposed the site which Fitzgerald described in The Great Gatsby as
- a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where [Page 23]
ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air.
Millions came to this World’s Fair to marvel at the displays which nations at the brink of war felt best reflected their arts and future. The most prophetic vision of things to come was the General Motors “Futurama,” a utopia of high-rise towers in the midst of multilane expressways. It was an attempt, inspired by the French architect Le Corbusier to deal with the “basic maladjustments in automotive transportation” by creating a city for the motor age. In “Futurama” Robert Moses saw a blueprint around which he felt he could coalesce the many groups necessary to the execution of a genuine replanning of the region. World War II inconveniently intervened before he could get things moving.
Although the World’s Fair of 1939 is remembered as a great success, in fact, it lost money. The genuinely great success was the capital improvement program which Moses administered along with the Fair. It included a new drainage system for the area, redirecting a branch of the Flushing River into a conduit the size of the Holland Tunnel, building a hugh sewage treatment plant at Tallman’s Island, erecting the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge, widening Horace Harding Boulevard, and laying out the Brooklyn-Queens Connecting Highway. These improvements cost tens of millions—dollars that would not have been spent without the Fair. It was a classic Moses combination package behind a pretty picture used to carry forward long-laid plans for the redevelopment of large sections of Astoria, Corona, and Flushing. He was to do the same in 1964 when the Fair also failed to make money but carried to reality another vast array of needed public improvements —widening the Whitestone Expressway and Grand Central Parkway, building Shea Stadium, and improving highway interchanges.
When William O’Dwyer was elected Mayor in 1946, Robert Moses became City Construction Coordinator in addition to everything else. As Construction Coordinator he had his power formalized. However, without the millions of dollars which used to come from Washington in the 1930s to fight the Depression there was little that could be done to realize the “Futurama” concept Moses felt had been accepted years earlier. So he continued a program of parks and capital projects which seemed possible within the framework of inadequate financial resources of the post-War period.
Urban Renewal and Interstate Highways
THE CHANCE to really “get things done” again came with the passage of the Federal Housing Act of 1949 and the Federal Interstate and Defense Highway Act of 1956. The new federal urban renewal program in the Housing Act of 1949 provided two-thirds of the cost of the acquisition and clearance of blighted areas within an overall program of community renewal. In December, 1948 Mayor O’Dwyer added to the growing list of Moses’ titles Chairman of the Committee on Slum Clearance—a Committee he used as his vehicle for rebuilding New York City.
The "Moses Method” of renewal was, as
usual, production oriented: prepare a plan
and acquire property based upon an agreement
with a sponsor-builder. Then provide
incentives for the builder to relocate, clear,
and rebuild as rapidly as possible. Moses
reasoned that developers, who were not subject
to political pressure, would be more
efficient managers of slum property and more
likely to find ways to expedite relocation and
complete demolition. Moreover, they could
proceed without the costly time-consuming
procedures which would be required if bureaucrats
did the job. To secure builders a 10
percent risk fee was provided as compensation
to the sponsors for maintenance and
management costs. But full real estate taxes
[Page 24] had to be paid until the property was cleared
in order to induce the sponsors to proceed to
construction as rapidly as possible.
Moses had all the elements he needed to get things done: land would be condemned by the City and paid for primarily by the federal government; capital for construction came from the private sector; city bureaucrats could be circumvented because a private builder was responsible for execution. The Mayor’s Committee on Slum Clearance provided a constituency for an agreed upon agenda of action.[1] Since no action had yet been taken there was no opportunity for opposition to develop. Handsomely illustrated brochures complete with technical data and architect’s renderings of proposed projects were issued. It was an old Moses maneuver, but it still worked. No local money was required and in the absence of alternative proposals Moses was able to get approval for his program.
The prototypical early renewal project called for a predominantly low-income population living in substandard housing to be relocated and the site redeveloped as fully tax-paying housing for middle-income families. For instance, the Harlem Urban Renewal project from 132nd Street to 135th Street and from Lenox to Fifth Avenues, which was one of the first group of sites proposed in January 1951, called for the dislocation of 1,683 families living in “solid rows of substandard firetrap tenements with littered sunless rear yards” and the construction on the site “of 1,105 dwelling units in 20-story fireproof buildings covering 10% of the land.”[2]
Median rent on the site before renewal was $29 per apartment per month; less than 2 percent of the tenants were paying more than $40 per month. The report estimated that the new project on the site would have rentals of more than $29 per room per month or almost $130 for a two bedroom apartment. While apartment rents on the site went up and the character of the tenants changed, the surrounding neighborhood changed hardly at all. A private tax-paying apartment complex had been inserted into black Central Harlem. No thought seems to have been given to utilizing this major new investment as a device for inducing desirable changes in the neighborhood. In fact, the project was three blocks in size specifically to insure that it could survive on its own without suffering from the negative impact of the surrounding area.
To the Master Builder this was urban
renewal; but to those forced to move out, to
many observers, and to others in the planning
game it was “urban removal.” Several
of the projects were managed by sponsors
who took extreme advantage of their tenants.
One project, Manhattantown, on the Upper
West Side was particularly notorious and
eventually became the subject of a Congressional
investigation. For four years, beginning
in 1952, the sponsors had squeezed
substantial profits from their buildings by
making no repairs, giving tenants neither
relocation nor rehousing assistance, but regularly
collecting rent. The public scandal that
developed, though, represented more than
disapproval of the “Moses Method.” It coalesced
opposition to urban renewal from
Blacks, Puerto Ricans, elderly, and low income
families who could not afford to move
back to the new housing that was built on
sites from which they had been moved; from
reform groups which resented the high-handed
Moses approach; from architects who
decried the insensitive design and cheap
construction of the projects; from urbanists
who were outraged at the insensitivity to the
urban landscape; and from local politicians
who objected to being screamed at by all the
[Page 25] other groups.
It is often assumed that Robert Moses could ignore the growing opposition to his renewal efforts. He could not. More than thirty of the projects he announced never came to fruition. Delancey Street, Williamsburg, Battery Park, Soundview, and others never made it to the Board of Estimate.
As Moses began to notice opposition to his housing programs in areas as disparate as the Rockaways and Greenwich Village, he ran abruptly into opposition to his arterial program as well. The Federal Highway Act of 1956 provided 90 percent funding for an authorized system of interstate highways. Moses moved to exploit these funds with a series of cross Borough expressways that would close the major gaps in the city’s highway grid. These roads—the Cross Brooklyn, the Lower Manhattan, the Midtown Manhattan, the Cross Bronx, and the Cross Harlem—were without the carefully planned amenities that had once accompanied a Moses project. The original design of the Grand Central Parkway protected surrounding communities from the noise and fumes of cars with a generous landscape of maples, oak, and flowering dogwood, while the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway required the destruction of hundreds of apartments, the permanent division of the Lower East Side into two halves, and a very high level of noise and air pollution. The Highway Act did not provide money for the usual Moses ribbon parks that buffered adjacent communities. These new roads could only crash blindly through existing communities, smashing housing, schools, factories, and stores in their attempt to link up with the Federal system. Most of them were never built.
The Fall
WHAT WENT WRONG? In dealing with renewal and highways Moses continued to use the approach which had proved so successful over the years. He had money from Washington. He had brochures filled with technical arguments with which to counter legislative and administrative ignorance. He had a program which was accepted by all the groups with which he had always worked. Why was he having such difficulty with the pluralistic democracy upon which every previous victory had been based?
The regional super-agencies might have thought there were approved plans for closing the gaps in the highway system and replacing slums. But the coalition of interests Robert Moses had carefully fostered had become an empty illusion. In the quest for the power to “get things done” Moses had become a hydraheaded bureaucrat. As member of the City Planning Commission, Chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, City Construction Coordinator, Parks Commissioner, Chairman of the Mayor’s Slum Clearance Committee, and participant in almost every major City decision, he was in partnership with himself and needed nobody else to achieve his plans. Now he had so many hats that he was in coalition with himself.
Strangely, Moses could not see the irony of using agencies which had been successful at building roads along empty but polluted shorelines, in combination with sewage treatment plants and parks, as a coalition for massive redevelopment of small neighborhoods. How could he, who designed them, see that these agencies were no longer part of the political environment, that they had become insulated by their carefully cultivated professionalism?
Times had changed. Gathering the forces in
favor of “getting things done,” was not
enough. For the first time he faced a significant
opposition that wanted to stop development.
The groups opposed to destruction of
neighborhoods (whether by roads or renewal)
were much stronger than the antiparks
people of the 1920s and 30s. Their
very lives, not just their comforts, were
threatened. Beating a few Long Island millionaires
in court to get a park was very
different from beating whole neighborhoods
[Page 26] in an election. The politicians upon whom
the projects depended needed to win elections.
The limits of information had always protected Moses from political opposition. Now community savvy produced votes to stop him, and local politicians like Manhattan’s Assemblyman Louis De Salvio could profit from saying that Moses had “done many things which may have, in their time, been good for New York City” but he still was “a stubborn old man” who had been “blinded by the arrogance of his supposedly efficient technicians.”
Robert Moses had begun his career as an idealistic reformer with the generally applauded aim of removing politics from government. Later when he set out to create a vast system of greenways and pleasure parks for the middle class motorist he was trying to bring most people’s dreams to reality. But in the attempt to achieve his goals he had surrounded himself with an elite civil service which insulated him from political pressure and had gained control of most agencies that might oppose his ambitious programs. Robert Moses had become the sort of insular planner he had always ridiculed and fought: a planner without an awareness of contemporary social priorities. As such, he became a political liability. Mayor Robert Wagner kicked him upstairs to run the New York World’s Fair of 1964, and Mayor John Lindsay followed suit in 1968 by refusing to reappoint him to the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority.
Moses may have fewer hats, but he has
remained very much in the planning game.
Nobody can ignore his proposals. When he
came forward in 1969 with a plan for forty
thousand apartments to be built at Breezy
Point, it received wide coverage in the New
[Page 27] York Daily News, Newsday, and other papers.
Never mind that moving 160,000 residents
from the Bedford Stuyvesant and
Brownsville sections of Brooklyn to an “Atlantic
Village” on the Rockaways would
require hundreds of millions of dollars to pay
for the schools, sewers, water supply, streets,
subways, and everything else required by a
new community larger than New Haven,
Connecticut. Never mind that the City had
other housing projects ready to go which
needed the funds he would take away for his
“Atlantic Village.” Never mind that the
residents of Bedford Stuyvesant were not
enthusiastic about being relocated. If Robert
Moses proposed something, he could get it
done! So everyone listened. But they were
not very enthusiastic. When he continued to
promise a bridge over Long Island Sound to
connect Rye with Oyster Bay, he could not be
ignored. But he could be defeated.
An Evaluation
JUDGING Robert Moses in miles of roadway or thousands of dwelling units or park acreage completed leaves everyone in awe. But it does him an injustice. He had a vision of “green openness . . . flowing through and connecting” buildings which opened on to “broad green belts for agriculture or forests, for great sport fields or hiking, boating, fishing, swimming, skating, or just for solitude. . . .”[3] The parks and parkways which he began laying across Long Island were intended to create just such an Elysian Garden open to the public by motor car.
In the twenties and thirties America was having a love affair with the automobile. E. B. White observes that “‘From reading the auto ads you would think that the primary function of the motorcar in America was to carry its owner first into a higher social stratum, then into an exquisite delirium of high adventure.’”[4] Since the automobile had become a symbol of freedom and power, roads were inevitable. Moses’ achievement was to avoid chaotic miles of Thrifty Gas and Norma’s Diner. Instead he created a system of parkways that was intended to provide access to the public parks and beaches he was establishing at the very time he was building roads. Without the roads, the parks and beaches would not have been available. They were but a means for providing millions with access to what had previously been reserved for millionaires. An ironic aim for a man who spent his life vocally announcing his opposition to any “program of socialistic, planned economy.”
Moses failed to achieve his vision of a garden city because he failed to foresee that, rather than protect the landscape, his roadways would open Long Island to development. They provided access to city jobs as easily as to ocean-front breaches. After the Second World War, with the Depression over and F.H.A. mortgages easily accessible to millions of middle class families, developers like Levitt made millions by building the exact opposite of what Moses had envisioned. The dormitory suburbs they created then disgorged so many thousands of automobile commuters that his pastoral parkways were soon converted into eight-lane people-movers.
In retrospect it is easy to see this result as inevitable and criticize Moses for not having had the foresight to build a system of mass transit. But would railways, as an alternative to a highway system, have been able to withstand the “exquisite delirium” of America’s love affair with the motor car?
It is unfair to say that Moses blindly built,
and built, and built. Starting in 1924, when
he obtained passage of an act controlling
advertising in Adirondack Park, he constantly
fought for the preservation of the natural
landscape from outdoor signs. When the
[Page 28] New Deal brought in the funds for public
works, he spent huge sums on sewage treatment
plants. Without his efforts the thousands
of acres of salt marsh and meadowland
of Jamaica Bay would now be tracts of
developer houses along polluted shoreline
rather than a refuge for over three hundred
species of migratory birds.
It is also unfair to view Moses as a single purpose planner. Just as he combined competing groups to obtain support for his projects, so he combined uses and motives in carrying them out. Jones Beach is not simply ocean front preserved; it is a pleasure park including an outdoor stadium, a golf course, restaurants, a boardwalk . . . Brooklyn’s Shore Parkway is not simply a road; it is a complex of promenades with views onto New York Bay, bicycle paths weaving between the road, the water, baseball fields, and a veritable forest of forsythia.
The Brooklyn Heights Esplanade is probably the best project with which to understand the complex of motives embodied in Moses’ work. An expressway connection was required between the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and Gowanus Expressway, on one hand, and the Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn-Queens Connecting Highway, on the other. Moses could have simply built another expressway. Were it not for bureaucratic and community opposition he might have. Instead he created a triple-decker, multiple-use structure that is one of the finest examples of urban design in America. The lower two decks are one-way three-lane highways while the top is an esplanade-park offering an unexcelled view of the skyline of Lower Manhattan, a promenade for strollers from the Heights, and a park for children and adults. No one from the Esplanade can see the automobiles, yet the drivers are not banished to the fumes of a tunnel. They too can marvel at the skyline.
Robert Moses left us a bountiful legacy of parks and parkways, bridges and tunnels. But the legacy of angry communities distrustful of government and continually demanding to see the “real” plans for their neighborhood leads me to believe that he could not do it in the 70s. Today the public agenda calls for decentralization, not consolidation. Independent authorities, like the M.T.A., find that, while they may be outside the legislative process, they cannot count on receiving public approval of their bond issues. Referenda result in public disavowal of further spending. Moreover, legislative mandates now ensure that single-purpose projects protect minority rights, guarantee “maximum feasible citizen participation,” and be reviewed by a multiplicity of overhead agencies to protect against negative impact on the environment.
There are now many players in the planning game. It is difficult to get agreement on any common agenda. No, with all his energy and skill, with all his planning hats Robert Moses could not do it in the 70s.
- ↑ Membership included the Comptroller, Chairman of the Housing Authority, Corporation Counsel, and Chief Engineer of the Board of Estimate. Every action they recommended went to the members of the Board of Estimate for legislative approval.
- ↑ As finally approved the project now known as Lenox Terrace removed 2,068 families who were replaced with 1,716 new apartments.
- ↑ Clarence Stein, speech to American Institute of Architects, May 17, 1956, in Robert Moses, Public Works: A Dangerous Trade (New York: McGraw Hill, 1970), p. 420.
- ↑ E. B. White, in Vance Packard, The Status Seekers (New York: David McKay Co., 1959), p. 313.
Architectural Implications of the Bahá’í Community
BY TOM KUBALA
THERE LIES within an architect’s grasp the possibility of determining the most effective way in which his skills and his life’s purpose may be realized. He has the opportunity at this time in history to participate actively in the embryonic stage of a spiritual world commonwealth. As in any embryo, patterns of future growth and form may be discerned. For architects the patterns now visible in the embryonic World Order of Bahá’u’lláh can provide a firm framework and standard on which to base architectural efforts. If architects and planners one hundred years ago had had even the slightest idea of the direction of world growth, it is certain that many of today’s problems would not have had the chance to occur. Consider the historical position in which architects now find themselves and their resultant responsibilities.
The Bahá’í Faith provides the basis for the establishment of a spiritually guided world culture, characterized by changed living patterns, and for the generation of architecture suited to that culture and those living patterns. Certain Bahá’í writings as well as the present trends in the Bahá’í world community can be useful in the projection of architecture and its cultural sources into the future. It is not possible now to surmise, much less to realize, a fraction of the potential the Bahá’í Faith holds for the generation of architecture. Only a few drops from the ocean of Writings by Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, can be gathered now and their meaning projected into the architectural setting of a Bahá’í community. In the proposals described here, the selections from the writings and the interpretation of various factors influencing the growth of this community are purely the writer’s own and do not necessarily reflect the full extent to which this Faith will grow.
A Spiritual Basis for Design
AN AWARENESS of the architectural implications of the life of the Bahá’í community depends on a basic understanding of the Bahá’í Faith. Its Author, Bahá’u’lláh, wrote that “The source of all learning is the knowledge of God, exalted be His Glory, and this cannot be attained save through the knowledge of His Divine Manifestation.”[1] Faith in the authority of Bahá’u’lláh as a Divine Manifestation, the bringer of Truth for this day, is the basis for this exercise in conjecture about the architecture of the future. This approach to architecture may seem rash, even blind; but in the Bahá’í Revelation faith is much more than a blind acceptance of a charismatic figure. Rather, it is dependent on a conscious knowledge of the tenets, history, impact, and authority of Bahá’u’lláh —on an independent investigation to determine His doctrine’s truth or falsehood. This does not mean that a total understanding of the Faith is required before acceptance—such a task would be impossible; rather it means the declaration of faith in Bahá’u’lláh is only the beginning of the development of a life based on those truths.
The Writings of Bahá’u’lláh contain a vast
range of teachings basic to any human endeavor.
On the one hand, they provide guidance
for personal spiritual development, including
[Page 30] practices which turn one inward
(fasting and prayer) and personal activities
which are directed toward the community
(for example, developing such characteristics
as honesty, kindliness, trustworthiness, and
obedience). On the other hand, Bahá’u’lláh’s
Teachings set guidelines for community activities
and community life, an important
aspect of which is the regular election of
local administrative bodies. These bodies encourage
the spiritual development of each
individual, direct the teaching work, and
coordinate activities structured around the
Bahá’í calendar. They also serve as channels
of communication to and from national and
international administrative bodies. Indeed,
the importance of the local community’s
relationship to the individual and to the
national and international communities cannot
be understated for all levels of the Bahá’í
community are inextricably interwoven.
The manner in which the governance of the world community affects each individual and each local community is of particular importance. Just as local and national Spiritual Assemblies are elected annually by their respective communities, the governing body for the Bahá’ís of the world, the Universal House of Justice, is elected by the members of the National Spiritual Assemblies every five years. The central authority of the Faith stems from Bahá’u’lláh, Who transferred it, through a written Covenant, to His son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in turn, passed authority to His grandson, Shoghi Effendi, and to the Universal House of Justice, with which it now rests. The only international body in existence today elected in the spirit of unity and purity, the Universal House of Justice is the center of the Bahá’í Faith, to which Bahá’ís throughout the world turn for guidance and direction. Bahá’u’lláh, intending His Faith to be a living, growing organism, created the Universal House of Justice to ensure the proper evolution of the Faith; it is given the authority to rule on matters not specifically considered by Bahá’u’lláh, and thus breathes fresh spirit into the everlasting framework established by the central figures of the Faith. The Teachings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and the interpretations of Shoghi Effendi and the legislation and guidance of the Universal House of Justice ensure the continuation of the Faith through time as it progresses toward its ultimate goal of world unity. These are the authority for the establishment of a spiritually guided world culture.
Having established the basis of the authority of the new spiritual world civilization, it is possible to organize a basic outline of a few specific teachings which will affect architectural decisions directly. Most of what will be taken from the Bahá’í Writings will deal with the activities and purposes of a local Bahá’í community. In order to limit the scope of this inquiry, I will focus on a single community element—housing for the elderly —with some references to other elements of the community in order to apply specific architectural design to a rather vague theoretical problem. Housing for the elderly is a part of an entire system of dependent facilities revolving around a city’s House of Worship. The House of Worship system and the structure of the rest of the city provide the setting for the placement and design of a home for the elderly.
Let us imagine a Bahá’í community, its administration, its social structure, its atmosphere, its goals, its operation, and its meaning, growing within an existing city; and let us place major emphasis on housing for the elderly. The result is a modified city structure which corresponds to the living patterns of a new community of users. Existing conditions are modified rather than a new city carved out because Bahá’í communities grow and evolve over time, slowly building their institutions as more and more people become aware of the all-encompassing potential of the Bahá’í Writings. Much building for the Bahá’í world in the next few years will probably be of this transitional type until the community as a whole can support large-scale planning and development.
[Page 31]
Architecture that is the manifestation of
Bahá’í world culture must derive its concept,
design, and form from the writings which are
the culture’s foundation and inspiration. Each
phase in the creation of architecture can find
its genesis in the Bahá’í writings; four basic
steps will be discussed here.
In the first place, at certain stages of the design process it is necessary, as well as stimulating and creative, for the architect to forgo a formal methodological approach and to trust intuition. He can prepare in advance for architectural decisions resulting from the more intuitive phases of the design by stocking his mind with the more ambiguous elements, scales, priorities, and images necessary to the project. He can then sort out this information with the aid of inspiration and direction gained through prayer and meditation on the Bahá’í writings. Actually this practice transcends the intricacies of the design process itself and can be used at all levels of thinking and acting to supply motivation, energy, and direction.
Second, the architect can derive general philosophical concepts from the basic principles of the Faith. One such tenet is compulsory education in the arts and sciences. A worldwide application of this belief will result in a society which understands how the arts, the sciences, and religious faith form a unity giving perspective to endeavors involving any of the three. Such interrelationships would necessarily call for architecture which facilitates communication on many levels of thought and action; therefore, an architect planning a building must balance functional and economic considerations with symbolic and intellectual matters.
Third, activities specified in the writings as part of life or associated with special needs and occasions have many implications for Bahá’í architecture. For example, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá writes:
- In God must be our trust. There is no God but Him, the Healer, the Knower, the Helper. . . . Nothing in earth or heaven is outside the grasp of God.
- O physician! In treating the sick, first mention the Name of God, the Possessor of the Day of Judgment, and then use what God hath destined for the healing of His creatures. By My life! The physician who has drunk from the wine of My Love, his visit is healing, and his breath is mercy and hope. Cling to him for the welfare of the constitution. He is confirmed by God in his treatment.[2]
This description of a doctor’s activities implies that designing for the spiritual uplifting of the employees of a home for the infirm has great effect in producing positive results in the patients. The proximity of the home for the elderly to the House of Worship is thus for the benefit of both healer and healed. This passage from the Writings points to the importance of proper working conditions and proper daily images associated with work; architectural environments conducive to positive attitudes and prayerfulness thus become highly desirable.
Finally, in addition to these somewhat indirect implications for architecture the Bahá’í writings are specific as to form and orientation. For example, all Bahá’í Houses of Worship must have nine sides, nine entrances, a dome, and be surrounded by gardens. In some cases specific symbology to be used in conjunction with a certain building has been given to the architect. Such directions are indicative of the fourth correlation between Bahá’í culture and architecture.
Local Bahá’í Community
MORE specific conceptual bases for decisions
about design are the Bahá’í community’s
administrative framework, its calendar and
associated activities, its spiritual qualities, and
the establishment of institutions which manifest
the spiritual structures and purpose of
[Page 32] the community. Although the community
will be described in words only, its makeup
will imply certain planning arrangements
and approaches toward appropriate architectural
solutions.
The local Bahá’í community revolves primarily around its elected administrative body, the Spiritual Assembly. Once a year, on April 21, the community gathers to elect its nine-member Assembly. As in all Bahá’í activities the election is spiritually grounded, not permitting either nominations or electioneering. Each member of the community, after prayerful consideration of the spiritual qualities required of an Assembly member, writes down the names of nine people who he thinks best fulfill the spiritual prerequisites. The nine people with the highest number of votes then become the Spiritual Assembly and proceed to elect their own officers.
The Spiritual Assembly has jurisdiction over all community activities occurring within its boundaries. Its importance to the unity and maintenance of the community cannot be overstated. Shoghi Effendi writes that “The importance, nay the absolute necessity of these local Assemblies is manifest when we realize that in the days to come they will evolve into the local Houses of Justice, and at present provide the firm foundation on which the structure of the Master’s Will is to be reared in the future.”[3]
The manner in which the Local Spiritual Assembly functions is indicative of the spirit of the Bahá’í community on a larger scale. Consultation provides the vehicle of all decision making within an Assembly. “Good” consultation, as Bahá’ís define it, can only be achieved when each member contributes his own opinions and ideas on a specific matter; when the members, once having given their opinions, no longer consider them their own; when differing ideas are allowed to clash before they are resolved; and when all these proceedings occur in a prayerful atmosphere. Adhering to these guidelines is conducive to the development of certain attitudes basic to the unity and harmony of any Bahá’í group, no matter how large or small. Among these attitudes are a healthy respect for universal participation and unity in diversity. Universal participation is of paramount importance as it allows everyone a voice and encourages individual spiritual development, which, in turn, promotes diversity within the group. Diversity keeps the group alive and fresh, promotes its growth, and becomes a measure of its strength. Indeed, the strength of the group’s unity depends greatly on how well the contributions of each diverse segment are considered and utilized.
The principles of universal participation and unity in diversity are extremely important when considering the role of the community’s infirm elderly, a definite minority group. The ingrained awareness on the part of a Bahá’í community of its minorities establishes the principal means by which today’s problems with the elderly are overcome. In a passage discussing racial minorities, Shoghi Effendi writes that “If any discrimination is at all to be tolerated, it should be a discrimination not against, but rather in favor of the minority . . .”[4] He further describes one way in which diversity is recognized in the Bahá’í community:
- So great and vital is this principle that in such circumstances, as when an equal number of ballots have been cast in an election, or where the qualifications for any office are balanced as between the various races, faiths or nationalities within the community, priority should unhesitatingly be accorded the party representing the minority, and this is for no other reason except to stimulate and encourage it, and afford it an opportunity to further the interests of the community.[5]
[Page 33]
The consultation vital to the functioning
of the Local Spiritual Assembly is also vital
to the community at large. A forum for
community consultation is provided through
what is known as the Nineteen Day Feast. It
has been described as “the recognized and
regular occasion for general consultation on
the part of the community, and for consultation
between the Spiritual Assembly and the
members of the community.”[6] ‘Abdu’l-Bahá
writes that
- The Nineteen-Day Feast was inaugurated by the Báb and ratified by Bahá’u’lláh in His holy book, The Aqdas, so that people may gather together and outwardly show fellowship and love, that the divine mysteries may be disclosed. The object is concord, that through this fellowship hearts may become perfectly united, and reciprocity and mutual helpfulness be established. Because the members of the world of humanity are unable to exist without being banded together, cooperation and helpfulness is the basis of human society. Without the realization of these two great principles no great movement is pressed forward.[7]
The Feast occurs on the first day of each Bahá’í month and breaks the year into nineteen months, each containing nineteen days. It enables very small groups, such as the infirm elderly, to contribute their skills and talents to the betterment of the community; consequently, the elderly receive the bounties of due attention, respectability, and acceptance of their wisdom and experience.
Other community activities associated with the Bahá’í calendar are the nine anniversaries commemorating important events in the history of the Bahá’í Faith as well as the Bahá’í New Year which occurs on the vernal equinox. Certain of these days are designated as days on which work is suspended and involve activities and gatherings of the entire community.
Apart from the activities of a Bahá’í community, there are physical institutions which will manifest spiritual activities and characteristics specified in the Writings. In the future the spiritual center of a city or town will be embodied in its House of Worship, a structure symbolizing and fostering the unity of God, religion, and man. In the life of a Bahá’í, belief, prayer, and meditation are balanced by worthy deeds and actions. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá writes that “. . . all effort and exertion put forth by man from the fullness of his heart is worship, if it is prompted by the highest motives and the will to do service to humanity. This is worship: to serve mankind and to minister to the needs of the people. Service is prayer.”[8] The spirit generated by a House of Worship is manifested by institutions which serve the needs of both community and visitors. Adjacent to the gardens surrounding the House of Worship are service institutions such as a hospital, a home for the infirm elderly, schools and universities, an orphanage, and a hostel.
The arrangements of these institutions and other associated activities are the only physical specifics deducible at this time from the Bahá’í texts. Thus the masterplan for a typical, river oriented city is necessarily sketchy, although, it does provide a basis for placement of the home for the infirm elderly, offices, other service dependencies, and gardens around the central Bahá’í House of Worship. A diagram on page 35 will show how the plan works.
Of course, the construction of such a complex would depend upon a Bahá’í community large enough to support it. The construction, too, would be phased, priority being given to the most important parts.
Home for Infirm Elderly
THERE are specific functional needs and requirements and desirable spiritual characteristics for housing for the elderly in a Bahá’í community. The design of the housing serves only as an example of the ideas and concepts developed through research in the Bahá’í writings. We are concerned here with architectural implications of the Bahá’í community, not housing for the elderly in the Bahá’í community.
A wide variety of people comprise the group called the “elderly.” They range from those who are totally independent to those who are bed bound and need constant care and attention. This range results in extremely varied needs in housing. The Bahá’í Writings specify that the home for the elderly (as well as the schools, the orphanage, the hospital, and the hostel) must be close to the House of Worship. The reasons for this proximity are apparent when one considers that both the physical and spiritual sources upon which serving the infirm depend are embodied in the home for the elderly, the hospital, and the House of Worship. The interconnections and separations between these three institutions and their consequent relation to the physical setting will govern the choosing of a site for the home for the infirm.
The problems of the elderly in today’s society are many and varied, for rapid change has affected them greatly. Reaching pension age today means having to stop work, rather than, as in the past, lightening the work to correspond to reduced capacities. In addition, old people with fixed incomes are hindered economically by devaluation. Many, too, are no longer included in three generation families. Society, itself, conspires against the aged by glorifying youth and refusing to acknowledge the inevitability of growing old and the advantages of doing so. The spiritual problems underlying the many other problems of the elderly are made clear by F. H. J. Nierstrasz:
- If people have spent the whole of their lives doing monotonous work, and if they have always spent their spare time in a passive way by indulging in light forms of amusements it is very doubtful if they will succeed in giving their life a deeper purpose in their old age. The same applies to the man whose sole aim in life has been material gain, and who, after having retired from business, no longer knows what to do with his life. Here the fault lies with the attitude of our society, which as a rule [emphasis added] attaches more value to skill and know-how than to wisdom.[9]
Attempting to solve basically spiritual problems with only the material means of architecture will lead to frustration, disillusionment, and seeming impotence. Instead, the architect must align himself with the spiritual agent which will effect positive change and growth within the elderly population and design structures which further stimulate and facilitate that changed attitude. Correlated with socio-spiritual reconstruction, architecture can use its powers to the fullest and find its highest possible constructive effectiveness.
These concerns are reflected in the following
list of criteria for design in housing for
the elderly in the Bahá’í community. Many of
the criteria must be different from criteria
gleaned from normal sources because the
architecture of facilities for today’s elderly is
usually directed toward fulfilling those needs
of the elderly that result from problems in
today’s society rather than their spiritual
needs. Consequently, existing facilities for
the elderly cannot be used as good or bad
examples of design and can only be useful in
a minimal way for detailed physical needs
and safety requirements. More specific criteria
can be easily attained in familiar published
references such as HUDPG46 minimum
property standards—housing for the
elderly, Time Savers Standards, and Graphic
[Page 35] Standards; the criteria listed here form only a
basic outline of required and desirable design
features.
Living Normalcy. The elderly must be a part of the surrounding neighborhood. Thus the setting of the home for the elderly should be residential. It should have easy access to stores and public places—both physically and visually; and the community should have easy access to the home. The building should enhance existing patterns of movement and activity. Above all, a “hospital” image should be avoided. Areas devoted to normal living activities should be as separate as possible from areas devoted to nursing and physiotherapy facilities.
Community Activity. The home for the elderly must be planned and located so that its residents can participate in Feasts and holy day commemorations. In order to maintain a useful position in the Bahá’í community the elderly must have easy access to gathering places. For those who are restricted to the building, a central meeting area should be provided. Adequate sound amplification should be provided for those hard of hearing.
The home must also be planned in such a way that it facilitates interaction among residents, volunteer workers, students, and community members. It should have spaces conducive to conversation ranging from small intimate quarters to rooms for larger group meetings. It should be easily accessible to students, who as a part of their education, provide services for the home; and it should provide space for the residents to display their work and art.
Since social activities are essential to the
well-being of the elderly, appropriate space
should be provided for various types of social
interaction among residents and among residents
and non-residents. These spaces should
be within the normal activity area and should
be easy to reach. They should, because of
[Page 36] noise, be separated from private personal
spaces.
Personal Activity. The home for the elderly should take special care to provide quiet, private space for personal prayer and meditation. Such spaces should include visual access to passive areas outside the building, such as gardens and areas designed for little or quiet activity.
Facilities designed for cleanliness should promote the dignity of the elderly. W.C.s and lavatories should afford as much privacy as possible for those who can move about by themselves. As much privacy as is possible should be provided for those who need help in baths and showers.
The safety features of the home for the elderly should be an integral part of the building’s design. There should be appropriate handrails on doors, around W.C.s and lavatories, and in circulation areas. Alarms to alert the nursing staff should be within easy reach of every bed and bathtub.
Areas devoted to crafts should stimulate the elderly to use them and should, at the same time, provide the maximum amount of privacy. Thus all residents wishing to maintain hobbies, crafts, or artwork should have a personal place in which to work and to store their work. Areas devoted to occupational therapy should be available to all residents but should not be an obvious part of the complex. Again, the “hospital” image should be avoided.
Nursing Care. A nursing station staffed by two registered nurses should be provided for each forty beds in the home for the elderly, though more personalized care and contact can be achieved by reducing the number of beds.
Each nursing station should include a pantry which receives prepared food in large quantities from the central kitchen, breaks it down to a single meals, and distributes the meals to those who cannot eat in the central dining room; a utilities room for distributing clean linens to the rooms and collecting soiled linens for the laundry; a bath and shower room for assisted cleaning; an examination room; an office for records and papers; a closet for nurses’ articles; a toilet for the nursing staff; and adequate space for rest and relaxation for personnel manning the station.
Care should be taken in planning the proximity of nurses to residents. The more independent residents should be placed furthest from the nursing stations, while the more needy residents should be placed closest to the station. The nursing facilities should be kept out of the normal residential living area except for those residents who need constant and/or special attention.
The physical therapy department should be centrally located and act as a unit in itself in order to obtain the most efficient use of its equipment. Yet it should be maintained as a separate unit or “clinic” out of the normal living area of the residents and should be considered a facility to be visited.
Dietary Care. Since in the future most treatment for illnesses will be through dietary means, the kitchen and its staff are very important. The kitchen office must supervise the kitchen very carefully so that the right foods get to the right people. There must be an efficient means of getting food from the kitchen to the residents inasmuch as the value of the food depreciates quickly after it is cooked. The kitchen must, of course, be serviced by a loading dock for food delivery and waste removal.
The kitchen itself should be supplemented with wing pantries which serve as small dining rooms (with one to three tables) as well as centers for receiving and distributing food to rooms.
Building Maintenance and Service. Building service facilities should be consolidated in order to isolate noise and increase efficiency. For example, a storage area should be very near the service dock. If the service dock and the main storage areas are not on the same floor, a service elevator should be provided.
Janitor closets should be placed at regular
[Page 37] intervals throughout the residential wings. A
central office and locker room should be
provided for the maintenance staff.
Building services should include a laundry capable of handling all of the building’s bed linens, towels, nursing linens, and so on, and storage space for yard and garden maintenance equipment.
Conclusion
ARCHITECTURE can be described as an expression of beliefs, an outgrowth of culture. Bahá’u’lláh revealed divine Teachings and laws for the establishment of a world culture. An understanding of the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh that form the basis of His World Order will lead to a higher sensitivity and greater capability in designing to meet the needs of such an Order. A new culture, of course, not only affects its homes for the elderly but also its schools, hospitals, homes, places of work, houses of worship, and assembly halls. To answer the needs of a new race of men, to stimulate and consolidate its activities, to assist in the actual building of the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, today’s architect must prepare now for a not-too-distant future.
- ↑ Bahá’u’lláh, in Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Bahá’í World Faith: Selected Writings of Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1956), p. 141.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in J. E. Esslemont, Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era: An Introduction to the Bahá’í Faith, 3d rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1970), p. 112.
- ↑ Shoghi Effendi, Bahá’í Administration, 6th ed., rev. and enl. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1968), p. 37.
- ↑ Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice, 3d rev. ed (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1969), p. 29.
- ↑ Ibid., pp. 29-30.
- ↑ National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, comp., The Bahá’í Community: A Summary of Its Organization and Laws, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1963), pp. 16-17.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “The Meaning of the Nineteen Day Feast,” Bahá’í News, No. 33 (Jul. 1929), p. 1.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in Esslemont, Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era, p. 79.
- ↑ F. H. J. Nierstrasz, Building for the Aged (New York: Elsevier Publishing Co., 1961), p. 4.
Stars
POEM IN FIVE STANZAS BY ROBERT HAYDEN
- i.
- Stood there then among
- spears and kindled shields,
- praising Orion.
- ii.
- Betelgeuse Aldebaran
- Abstract as future yesterdays
- the starlight
- crosses eons of meta-space
- to us.
- Algol Arcturus Almaak
- How shall the mind keep warm
- save at spectral
- fires—how thrive but by the light
- of paradox?
- Altair Vega Polaris Maia
- iii.
- (Sojourner Truth)
- Comes walking barefoot
- out of slavery
- ancestress
- childless mother
- following the stars,
- her mind a star
- iv.
- Pulsars and blue receding
- quasars—their pulsing
- radio waves.
- Cosmic Ouija,
- what is the
- mathematics of your message?
- v.
- (The Nine-Pointed Star)
- Stable stars, variable stars—
- hydrogen-into-helium
- fusions, radiations, spectral fires.
- And the Nine-Pointed Star,
- sun star in the constellation
- of the nuclear Will;
- fixed star whose radiance
- filtering down to us lights mind and
- spirit, signals future light.
The World Muḥammad Made
BY ROBERT L. GULICK, JR.
AS A GUEST LECTURER, the author recently asked a graduate class whether any American in the group could name the place of birth of Muḥammad. None could.
It is difficult to establish an exact date, but it appears that Muḥammad was born in Mecca, on August 20, 570, in the year of the Elephant when Abraha vainly sought to destroy the Kaaba or “Cube,” a regional place of pilgrimage for idol worshipers. Mecca was an important center of entrepôt trade between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean lands, a sealess Beirut.
As Muḥammad grew up, He became known for his industriousness and extraordinary integrity. He was selected by Khadíja, the most noble, wealthy, and respected lady of Mecca, to undertake a trading mission in Syria and was accompanied by Maysara, a young man in her employ. En route, Muḥammad stopped under the shade of a tree near the cell of a Christian monk. The holy man asked Maysara who his companion was, and was told that the traveler was of the tribe of Quraysh, the custodians of the Kaaba in the Ḥijáz. The astonished monk cried out, “None but a prophet ever sat beneath this tree.”[1]
When Muḥammad was forty, on one of His regular visits to Mt. Hira overlooking Mecca east of the Red Sea, He heard a voice commanding Him, “Read!” Who gave the order? How could He, an unlettered man, read? Even if He could, what was He to read? Odes, filled with boasting and exaggeration, “Read,” the voice commanded, “in the name of thy Lord, who hath created all things; who hath created man of congealed blood. Read, by thy most beneficent Lord: who taught the use of the pen; who teacheth man that which he knoweth not” (Qur’án xcvi). These words, spoken, Muslims believe, by the Angel Gabriel, became the opening verses of the Qur’án (or Reading). The year was 610 and the month Ramaḍán, since then the time of fasting for Muslims. It was a night of destiny, the hour of birth of a new world.
The first believer in the Arabian Messenger was Khadíja, Muḥammad’s only wife from 595 to her death twenty-four years later and the mother of all but one of His children. Ibn Isḥáq, one of the earliest biographers of Muḥammad, paid her this tribute: “By her God lightened the burden of His prophet. He never met with contradiction and charges of falsehood, which saddened him, but God comforted him by her when he went home. She strengthened him, lightened his burden, proclaimed his truth, and belittled men’s opposition.”[2] The first male to believe Muḥammad’s message was a ten year-old boy named ‘Alí, who later became the husband of Muḥammad’s daughter Fáṭima.
MUḤAMMAD’S TEACHINGS provided detailed guidance for group and interpersonal
[Page 43] relationships and called for a wider loyalty than to family or tribe. The
privileged and powerful wanted no part of the new faith. The young, the
imaginative, and the underprivileged felt ready for change and liked the basic
democracy of Islám. No longer was the Kaaba to be a place of pilgrimage only
for desert-dwellers from part of the Arabian Peninsula. Muḥammad claimed
that Islám was a “mercy to all creatures” (Qur’án xxi), and that included
Christians and Jews. Also, while on pilgrimage in the precincts of Mecca,
peasant, king, nomad, and merchant alike wore the simple iḥrám. Abú Yúsuf
Ya’qúb b. Isḥáq al-Kindí (c. 800-867), the “philosopher of the Arabs,”
described this challenging ideal:
- The followers are exalted above the chiefs,
- So close your eyes or lower them.
- Make small your person and restrain your hands,
- And seat yourself in the interior of your house.
- In the presence of your King seek the heights,
- And enjoy society today in solitude.
- For it is in the hearts of men that wealth is found
- And in our souls that greatness lies.[3]
Muḥammad summoned people to unity, to a brotherhood in which white, yellow, and black were all equal before their maker. According to a popular hadith, “The muslims are a single hand, like a compact wall whose bricks support each other.” As taught by Muḥammad, patriotism transcended tribal loyalty and became identified with divine worship. Loyalty to a universal cause replaced lesser, narrower bonds of neighborhood and race. This broader allegiance and the rejection of the theory that white skin was superior to dark facilitated racial intermarriage in Asia and Africa. All the Berbers in Libya were not driven into the hills, for many remained near the Mediterranean as wives of immigrant Arabs; a similar process of intermarriage took place in Egypt. Indeed, changes in ethnic composition are traceable to the universal doctrines of Islám.
Oneness of God and oneness in religion were central to Muḥammad’s teachings. The first pillar of Islám is the Shaháda, or declaration of faith: “There is no God but God and Muḥammad is the Messenger of God.” Perhaps Muḥammad’s most revolutionary act was the replacement of hundreds of manmade idols with one God. From 610 to the present, Islám has affirmed the oneness of God and the divine origin of the Apostleship of Muḥammad. God is the Omnipotent to Whom everyone who is in the heavens or on the earth resigns himself consciously or otherwise (Qur’án iii). No king or prophet is to be worshiped.
Muḥammad taught that faith was a divine bestowal: “And if thy Lord
pleased, he would have made all men of one religion” (Qur’án xi) .
Muḥammad could instruct, advise, and warn; but the individual was responsible
for his own salvation. God revealed through Him these words: “Let there
[Page 44] be no compulsion in religion.”[4] Bahá’u’lláh expressed a similar thought in the
Tablet of Aḥmad: “He hath but to deliver this clear message. Whosoever
desireth, let him turn aside from this counsel and whosoever desireth let him
choose the path to his Lord.”
Jerusalem was the first city in whose direction the early Muslims turned in prayer; it was the Kiblah, or point of adoration, for more than thirteen years. About seventeen months after Muḥammad made Medina the first capital of Islám, He changed the Kiblah to Mecca. Why was it changed, and why not to Medina? According to Muslims the answer is simple: God did it. If Muḥammad had been a self-seeking politician, Mecca might have been the Kiblah from the beginning; instead, God’s will was done. Many Medinans told Muḥammad that their allegiance to Islám was contingent upon the return of the Kiblah to Jerusalem. Muḥammad refused, observing that the change was a test to distinguish “who followeth the apostle, from him who turneth back on his heels” (Qur’án ii).
Once Mecca had become the Kiblah, the Muslim veneration for Jerusalem was sustained, in part by the Mi‘ráj, or Night Journey. Sura 17 of the Qur’án begins with this description of the Mi‘ráj: “Praise be unto Him, who transported his servant by night, from the sacred temple of Mecca to the farther temple of Jerusalem [now the Aqṣá Mosque], the circuit of which we have blessed, that we might show him some of our signs; for God is he who heareth and seeth.” The traditional story is that Muḥammad was carried in the company of Gabriel from the Kaaba in Mecca to the Aqṣá Mosque in Jerusalem, where He led in prayer such notables as Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Ibn Isḥáq’s account of the Night Journey includes this description of His companions, allegedly made by Muḥammad: “I have never seen a man more like myself than Abraham [His ancestor]. Moses was a ruddy faced man, tall, thinly fleshed, curly haired with a hooked nose as though he were of the Shanu’as. Jesus, Son of Mary, was a reddish man of medium height with lank hair with many freckles on his face as though he had just come from a bath.”[5] Legends relate that from Jerusalem, Muḥammad ascended beyond the seventh heaven, reaching the very gateway to Paradise. Some of the Muslims in Mecca at the time regarded the happening as a vision or journey of the soul. ‘Ayisha, the Prophet’s wife, allegedly stated that the body did not leave the house but that God moved the spirit that night. Another report claimed that Muḥammad slept in the house of Umm Hání‘ that night, after repeating the last evening prayer. Some literal-minded people confused poetic truth with practical truth, and as stated by the Qur’án, the “vision which we showed thee” was a test to men’s faith and “an occasion of dispute unto men” (xvii).
THE RECITATION of the creed and the reception of the Qur’án, the first book to
be copied and written in Arabic, led to the study of language. Franz Rosenthal
[Page 45] and other researchers of Islamic history have written about the crucial
importance of ‘ilm, or knowledge, in early Islám. No other concept has been
equally operative. God Himself is the Omniscient, the All-Knowing. Knowledge
is God’s greatest gift to man. The Qur’án includes the prayer, “Say, O
Lord, increase me in knowledge.”[6] The Islamic Review (January 1917)
furnished this quotation from Muḥammad: “That person who shall pursue the
path of knowledge, God will direct him into the land of Paradise; and verily
the superiority of a learned man over an ignorant worshipper is like that of a
full moon over all the stars.”[7] The Prophet is also reported to have said, “He
who honors the learned honors Me.”[8]
‘Ilm has no rival in the Muslim scale of values, but it must be functional. According to an Arab proverb, “Knowledge without practice is like a bow without a string.” The Islamic Review also quoted Muḥammad as saying, “The knowledge from which no benefit is derived is like a treasure from which no charity is bestowed in the way of the Lord. Who are the learned? Those who practice what they know.”[9] Muḥammad also termed the good learned man the best of men and the bad learned man the worst of men, and the Qur’án warned man of the imperfect state of his knowledge: “ye have no knowledge given unto you, except a little” (xvii).
Muḥammad found theological disputes distasteful. The Qur’án says, “Why wrangle over that which you know not? Strive to excel in good deeds; when you return to God, He will inform you about that in which you have differed.”[10] Muslims were urged to vie with one another in praiseworthy actions, and Muḥammad commended those who did good. The Qur’án told men to “Turn aside evil with that which is better” (xxiii) and warned that “God will not change his grace which is in men, until they change the disposition in their souls . . .” (xiii).
The acquisition of knowledge was to have no barriers of age or place. A popular ḥadíth counsels, “Seek ye learning from the cradle to the grave.” Muḥammad also is supposed to have said, “Seek ye learning even unto China.” The Islamic cultural landscape encouraged Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians to come forward with their intellectual offerings; thus the foremost Jewish scholar of the Middle Ages, Moses Maimonides, flourished as philosopher and physician in an Islamic environment. The free interplay of ideas among diverse peoples appears to have been conducive to the advancement of civilization in centers of communication; indeed, Mecca became a global center for intellectual cross-fertilization as Islám spread into distant regions in the first century of its existence.
Pilgrimage clearly seems to have been the Islamic pillar that provided the
best vehicle and strongest motivation for expansion of knowledge in the
[Page 46] Muslim world. Every Muslim who could afford to was required to go to Mecca
once in his lifetime.
The most obvious influence of the pilgrimage was in the field of geography. Travelers found out first hand where places were—places whose locations previously had only been postulated by armchair geographers. This was, in fact, an application of scientific method, Islám’s greatest single stimulant to the Renaissance in Europe. Alfred Von Kremer paid this tribute to one of the greatest Muslim geographers:
- I know nothing which brings home to us a picture of the Muslim zeal for truth more clearly and emphatically than an account of the travels of the last great Arab geographer—Yaqut-i-Hamwi. The Mongol menace, which was to destroy the throne of the Abbasids and the old Bagdad, begins its steady forward course, but does not in the slightest degree interfere with the quiet work of our author in the libraries of Merv. In his flight he saves the greatest portion of his gathered materials and, though hardly at leisure or in peace, he sets to work to complete his task before he embarks on his last journey—never to return.[11]
A person interested in pharmacy or botany, if setting off for Arabia from Spain, could collect plants and drugs along the Mediterranean littoral. Ibn al-Baytar did precisely that and from his experience produced the greatest Arabic book on botany of that age; Collection of Simple Drugs described approximately 1,400 medicinal herbs and drugs and quoted 150 other authors’ writings about some of them. He and other pilgrim scholars benefitted from the opportunity to compare notes with colleagues while en route.
Pilgrimage also became a mainspring of commerce and trade. Textiles whose names testify to their origin were of particular interest: fustian from Fustát (Cairo’s predecessor); taffeta from the Persian táftih; damask from Damascus; gauze from Gaza; and Muslin from Mosul. Persian carpets were, and are, cherished works of art. Other articles introduced or brought into Europe by the Arabs included sugarcane, paper, sesame and carob, rice, lemons, melons, apricots, coffee, spices, dyestuffs, mattresses, mirrors, and brassware. The word tariff, too, is a legacy of the Arabs: many twelfth-century pilgrims often found customs inspections in Alexandria as aggravating as those in many countries today.
Restricted to Arabia during Muḥammad’s lifetime, Islám’s subsequent spread
to other regions was dramatic in pace and extent. Arab conquerors quickly
spread the domain of Islám to areas Rome had failed to conquer. W.
Montgomery Watt pointed out that the weakness of the Persians, Byzantines,
and Greeks and the desire of the nomads for the luxuries of the Sown “would
not have produced the Arab empire but for the unification of the Arabs
achieved by Muḥammad. Such unification was in no sense inevitable. It only
occurred because Muḥammad had a rare combination of gifts.”[12] He combined
[Page 47] in Himself the functions not only of Messenger and Prophet but also of Head
of State, Supreme Judge, and Chief Legislator. In keeping with these functions,
He established the pillars of Islám as the basis of Muslim life. One of these
pillars was Jihád, or Holy War, which included the greater Jihád—the daily
struggle for personal salvation. This pillar effected profound changes and
stimulated much research.
ARAB CONQUESTS led to the writing of accounts of battles and changes of
government. However, the first efforts in historical writing in Arabic did not
center on battles but on the life of Muḥammad. Ibn Isḥáq (d. 768) was the
first such historian. A variety of Muḥammad’s enactments, judgments, and
instructions were passed on in written or oral forms. The ḥadíth or sayings
ascribed to Muḥammad were accepted or rejected on the basis of the credibility
of the chain of narrators (isnád). Thus the need to evaluate the ḥadíths greatly
encouraged the development of historical writing.
Interest in ḥadíth literature undoubtedly was a strong motivating force for Abú Ja’far Muḥammad b. Jarír at-Tabarí, a great early historian (839-923). His Annals or History of the Meuengers and Kings, has monumental worth. D. M. Dunlop appraised it thus: “For the history of Islám the Annals is no doubt the best single native work we possess, for its scope (fifteen volumes in the Leiden edition of DeGoeje and others), for the efforts which the author made to report only reliable information, and also, it may be said, for the nearness at which he stands to the events related.”[13]
Travels to India, East Africa, and Southeast Asia enriched the historical writings of Abu’l-Ḥusayn ‘Alí b. al-Ḥusayn al-Mas’údí, described as the “Herodotus of the Arabs.” From his pen came the twenty-volume News of the Time, unfortunately lost, Meadows of God, and Book of Instruction. Probably born in Baghdád around 890, he was not a historian’s historian, but by the time of his death in Cairo in 956 he had included in his writings material on the Caucasus and other areas not available elsewhere.
Highly renowned among Arab historians was Ibn Khaldún (1332-1406). A native of Tunis, he developed a philosophy of history which was among the first to stress the influence of climate on the shaping of man’s physical, mental and moral traits. He noticed the tendency of despotic governments to use education to instill servitude and dependence and doubted that any ruler could succeed without the support of the tribes and the communal spirit. He felt that means of livelihood influenced human customs and institutions and found that civilizations, like people, are born, develop, decline, and die. Ibn Taghribirdí (1412-1469) gave a detailed account of developments in Egypt from the acceptance of Islám to 1468, in his seven-volume work, The Brilliant Stars in the Kings of Egypt and Cairo.[14]
Their lives guided by a book, the Qur’án, Muslims attached great importance
[Page 48] to facility in reading and, in turn, to the study of problems affecting vision, the
science of optics. The Arabs were pioneers in many branches of medicine
including opthalmology. Jábir b. Hayyán (c. 720-815) is credited with the
composition of nearly 3,000 medical and related works. He condemned
fraudulent alchemists in his Book of Mercy: “I have seen people giving
themselves over to the search for the art of (transmuting) gold and silver, in
ignorance and without consideration, and I have seen that they are of two
classes, the deceivers and the deceived. I am filled with feelings of mercy and
compassion (faraḥimtu) because they waste their money which God has given
them and weary their bodies in a fruitless search. . . .”[15] Preeminent among
scientists in optics was Abú ‘Alí al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham (965-1038) of
Basra, known in Europe as Alhazen. It was he who discovered that the retina
was the seat of vision and that rays of light struck the eye from external objects,
not the other way around. Dr. Max Meyerhof commented that al-Haytham
greatly influenced European writers and Leonardo da Vinci and concluded that
the meridian splendor of Muslim science was the field of optics, where the
mathematical ability of al-Haytham and Kamálu’d-Dín outshone that of Euclid
and Ptolemy.[16]
ANOTHER PILLAR of Islám is fasting. Occurring annually in the month of
Ramaḍán, the Fast is a time for the remembrance of God and for reflection
upon the sufferings of the poor and hungry. It begins at dawn, the time when
one can distinguish between a black thread and a white one, and ends at sunset.
The need for calculating the time of the month of fasting—and that of
pilgrimage—placed great importance on the Muslim calendar, which dates
back to the Hegira, Muḥammad’s flight on July 15, 622, from Mecca to
Medina, where the Medinans were more receptive to the new faith than the
Meccans had been. The intricate calculations for the dates of the Fast provided
challenges to astronomers and mathematicians and in turn focused interest on
both astronomy and mathematics. The term “algebra” is derived from an
Arabic expression meaning “calculation by symbols.”
A fourth pillar of Islám is Zakát, or Alms. The donation for the poor has been set at two-and-one-half percent of one’s income; endowments have been established for religious and humanitarian projects, such as a schools of arts and crafts for orphans. There is concern for the poor, rather than exaltation of poverty or a defeatist attitude toward it.
ONE OF THE MANY SOCIAL REFORMS instituted by Muḥammad was the
abolition of infanticide. In comparison to tribes in the time of Muḥammad that
[Page 49] practiced female infanticide, the American Indians were as “advanced as a
Plato,” wrote ‘Abdu’l-Bahá: “The savages of America do not bury their
children alive as these Arabs did their daughters, glorying in it as being an
honourable thing to do. Thus many of the men would threaten their wives,
saying, ‘If a daughter is born to you, I will kill you’”[17] Reuben Levy affirms
that this odious practice did exist: “Artificial restriction of the number of
females was then being practised and consisted in the burial of unwanted girl
children at birth.”[18]
Muḥammad also improved the status of women but recognized that the world was not ready for the concept of the equality of men and women. The Qur’án provided that women should share in inheritance: “women also aught to have a portion of what their parents and kindred leave, whether it be little, or whether it be much; a determinate part is due to them” (iv). According to Levy, “it is on the whole clear that Muḥammad succeeded in bringing about a definite reform when he permitted women the handling of their own property.”[19]
Muḥammad did, however, introduce spiritual equality: The gardens of Paradise were as available to believing women as to believing men. The Qur’án states: “I will not suffer the work of him among you who worketh to be lost, whether he be male or female: the one of you is from the other. They therefore who have left their country, and have been turned out of their houses, and have suffered for my sake, and have been slain in battle; verily I will expiate their evil deeds from them, and I will surely bring them into gardens watered by rivers; a reward from God . . .” (iii).
Law and order are prime prerequisites for the advancement of human civilization; international pilgrimage required stability and safety, and economic development could not have taken place in the absence of personal security.
In the administration of justice, Muḥammad always took into consideration the intention of the accused; for example, He distinguished between premeditated murder and accidental homicide, between an innocent mistake and an attempt to defraud. He instructed his son-in-law, ‘Alí, always to hear both parties in a dispute before deciding in favor of one of them. He also stated that a person was innocent until proven guilty and placed the burden of proof on the plaintiff. The practice of amputating the right hand of a thief effectively eliminated theft in countries that used it.
Any man could make a mistake or break the law, but no man was above the
law. Muḥammad even permitted suits against Himself, and it seems that He
uniformly decided such cases in favor of the claimants. To further counteract
the notion that the law did not apply to the “right” people, the outstanding
theologian Abú Ḥamíd Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazálí (1059-1111)
[Page 50] wrote his immortal Revival of the Sciences of Religion, for which he is often
called the “Socrates of the Muslims.”
Muḥammad also succeeded in eliminating alcoholism, a drug problem that plagues America and other parts of the world.[20] So enduring is the influence of Muḥammad that Algeria is presently converting half its vineyards, mementoes of French colonialism, back to pastures and fields to feed an expanding population.
Watt has summed up Muḥammad’s influence this way: “the rapid Arab expansion, with the ensuing spread of Islam and growth of Islamic culture, was the outcome of a complex of historical factors; but the set of ideas and the body of men capable of giving a unified direction to the expansion would not have existed but for the unique combination of gifts in Muḥammad himself.”[21] Muḥammad established law and order over a large portion of the known world and anticipated a significant number of the great social movements of the twentieth century: equality of opportunity unrestricted by color; greater freedom for women; emphasis on universal education; consultation as the bedrock of sound administration; even-handed justice; spiritual competition; and, on the personal plane, the mastery of self. A few of the great figures of Islamic culture have been mentioned to illustrate the connection between the Teachings of Muḥammad and the profound changes resulting from their acceptance. According to Max Meyerhof, “Looking back we may say that Islamic medicine and science reflected the light of the Hellenic sun, when its day had fled, and that they shone like a moon, illuminating the darkest night of the European Middle Ages; that some bright stars lent their own light, and that moon and stars alike faded at the dawn of a new day—the Renaissance. Since they had their share in the direction and introduction of that great movement, it may reasonably be claimed that they are with us yet.”[22] The world we live in is, in some of its better aspects, the world Muḥammad made.
- ↑ A. Guillaume, The Life of Muḥammad: A Translation of Ishaq’s Sirat Rasúl Allah (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1955), p. 82.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 111.
- ↑ In D. M. Dunlop, Arab Civilization to A. D. 1500 (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971), p. 178.
- ↑ Cf. Sura ii, in The Koran, trans. George Sale (London: Frederick Warne and Co., Ltd., n. d.), p. 37, and The Koran Interpreted, trans. A. J. Arberry (New York: Macmillan, 1955), I, 65.
- ↑ In Guillaume, The Life of Muḥammad, pp. 183-84.
- ↑ Cf. Sura xx, in The Koran, p. 313, and in The Koren Interpreted, I, 347.
- ↑ N. Stephen, “Muhammad and Learning,” Islamic Review, 5 (Jan. 1917), 44-47.
- ↑ Jama’ al-Akhbar, in Syed Ameer Ali, The Spirit of Islam, rev. ed. (London: Christopher’s, 1955), p. 362.
- ↑ Stephen, “Muhammad and Learning,” p. 48.
- ↑ Cf. Sura xxii, in The Koran, p. 334, and in The Koran Interpreted, II, 35.
- ↑ In Robert L. Gulick, Jr., Muḥammad the Educator (Lahore: Institute of Islamic Culture, 1962), pp. 61-62.
- ↑ W. Montgomery Watt, “Muḥammad,” in P. M. Holt, Ann K. S. Lambton, and Bernard Lewis, ed., The Central Islamic Lands, Cambridge History of Islám (Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1970), I, 55.
- ↑ Dunlop, Arab Civilization, p. 89.
- ↑ The distinguished Bahá’í scholar Mrs. Marzieh Gail, author of Six Lessons in Islám, studied under the late William Popper of the University of California at Berkeley, who devoted much of his life to translation and annotation of the writings of Ibn Taghribirdí.
- ↑ In Dunlop, Arab Civilization, p. 211.
- ↑ A Teuton of titanic proportions, Dr. Meyerhof was an Arabist of Jewish background who supported his research of the history of optical science with a lucrative practice in Cairo as an eye specialist. He sought the assistance of Shaykh Faraju’lláh, a Bahá’í publisher, in locating ancient and rare manuscripts in Arabic and Persian that pertained to the Islamic legacy in ophthalmology.
- ↑ ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions, comp. and trans. Laura Clifford Barney, rev. ed. (Wilmette, Ill.: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1964), p. 23.
- ↑ Reuben Levy, The Social Strutcture of Islam (Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1965), p. 91.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 98.
- ↑ In America alcoholism causes an estimated annual loss of $15 billion and is involved in half of all fatal accidents. This richly blest and beautiful land is estimated to have almost ten million alcoholics.
- ↑ Watt, “Muḥammad,” in Holt, Lambton, and Lewis, The Central Islamic Lands, p. 56.
- ↑ Max Meyerhof, in Sir Thomas W. Arnold and Alfred Guillaume, ed., The Legacy of Islam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931), p. 354.
Buddha and the Absolute Reality
REVIEW OF JAMSHED K. FOZDAR’S The God of Buddha (NEW YORK: ASIA PUBLISHING HOUSE, INC., 1973), XII, 184 PAGES
BY WESLEY E. NEEDHAM
THE SUBJECT of Jamshed K. Fozdar’s The God of Buddha is indeed a welcome surprise and its excellent treatment long overdue. Through careful research and perceptive analysis of many Buddhist and Hindu scriptures the author has successfully refuted an erroneous belief concerning the Buddha, long accepted as factual. The title is unique—unexpected and paradoxical because Buddhists and students of Buddhist literature are aware that in the Buddha’s discourses he did not attempt to define a supreme Being, a divine Creator, a personal Deity, a heavenly Father to be worshiped. For that matter, he did not even mention God. Unfortunately, it is a common opinion that anyone who does not believe in God, as conceived by a believer, must be an atheist: hence the long-standing assumption that the Buddha and his disciples were atheists. It is, therefore, because of his attitude of silence about God that the Buddha is completely misrepresented.
In The God of Buddha the author offers abundant evidence, ably presented in numerous quotations from translations of Hindu texts selected from the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, which reveals how the religious heritage of the Buddha Gautama, born a Hindu, made him aware of the indefinable Eternal Reality behind phenomenal existence. Although the Buddha was well versed in his ancestral religion, he was strongly opposed to the Hindu preoccupation with an Indian Olympus of gods and goddesses invented for popular acceptance and worship as orthodox substitutes for righteous behavior.
Throughout the book Mr. Fozdar has included with many quotations from Hindu sources a comparable selection from Buddhist texts such as the Dhammapada, the Udana, the Mahavagga, and others arranged in parallel columns. Here we can see how the Buddha’s teachings and those of the older Faith were analogous in most essentials and terminology, although the emphasis had changed. The Absolute of the Indian Upanishads was a concept far too incomprehensible and remote for the Buddha to stress as a beacon for his followers. He taught reliance on the Dharma, the law of infallible righteousness, as the path to perfection. His teachings concerning righteous behavior were summarized in the Four Noble Truths (Suffering, The cause, Its elimination, The way) and in the Eightfold Noble Path.
As the new religion founded by the Buddha emphasized ethical striving instead of worship, it would be pointless and lead nowhere if devoid of a divine source, a substructure of Reality. The author points out that the Buddha, while never in doubt about the existence of the Absolute Reality, the Causeless Cause, was concerned about how to communicate its significance to his disciples. To teach atheism would have no appeal to anyone who would become a convert, nor could any form of atheism attain the preeminent position of a major religious tradition.
Mr. Fozdar has made the fact unquestionably
clear that the concept of God as the
impersonal primordial Source was no mystery
to the Buddha, who had often implied its
existence. The natural question then occurs:
“Why did he keep silent and leave no clear
record?” He refrained only from any attempt
to define God with words that would either
[Page 52] delimit the indefinable Supreme or describe
in finite terms a concept or image far from
the truth he knew. But the Buddha said, as
record in the Udana, an ancient canonical
text, “There is O monks, an Unborn, Unoriginated,
Uncreated, Unformed,” leaving
no doubt what the Buddha meant. We are
constantly reminded of the importance of
this quotation, as it is repeated several times
in The God of Buddha.
Here in less than two-hundred pages is an impressive, soundly reasoned thesis, complete with a glossary of Hindu and Buddhist terms, a selected bibliography, and an index. In addition to these useful aids, the author devotes many pages to a chapter entitled “Point and Counter-point” in which he clarifies misinterpretations and misunderstandings which developed out of the Buddha’s original teachings. The reader will also gain new insight in chapters concerning the Buddha’s teachings on Dharma, Faith, Renunciation, Duty, Detachment, Selfless Action, and other subjects including Nirvana.
Exceptional scholarship is in evidence throughout this challenging study of the Enlightened One and what he knew but did not teach. The book, therefore, can be recommended as an eminently reliable reference work. Yet it is a disappointment in this profound and admirable contribution to the enlightenment of interested readers, to discover only a few brief references to the fundamental Buddhist doctrine of Rebirth, more commonly referred to as Reincarnation. Although the author has given quotations from the Buddhist texts—Dhammapada, Jataka Tales, and Milinda Prasnaya—he explains his unfavorable opinion of the doctrine of Reincarnation in a footnote on page 75.
Authors and Artists
ALEXANDER GARVIN, a graduate of Yale
College and the Yale School of Architecture,
is an associate professor in urban studies at
Yale. He has served as city planner and
adviser in urban problems in New York, a
city he knows and loves and about which he
has written a number of articles, including
“The Three Faces of Harlem,” in World
Order, in Winter 1967.
ROBERT L. GULICK, JR., holds a bachelor’s
degree from California State University at
Chico and master’s and doctorate degrees
from the University of California at Berkeley.
He is a past president of the Arizona
College Association and is now dean of
admissions, foreign student adviser, and professor
of international studies at the American
Graduate School of International Management,
Thunderbird Campus, Glendale,
Arizona. He has contributed a number of
articles to World Order.
ROBERT HAYDEN is a professor of English
at the University of Michigan where he
teaches creative writing. He was recently
poet-in-residence at Connecticut College
and has read his poetry at many colleges and
universities, including Yale, Brown, and
Iowa. He is a consultant and editor for Scott,
Foresman. In 1971 he was awarded the
Russell Loines Award for poetry by the
National Institute of Arts and Letters. Mr.
Hayden’s works include The Night-Blooming
Cereus, Words in the Mourning Time,
Kaleidoscope, and Selected Poems. He is
included in Interviews of Black Writers and
reads his poetry in volume 3 of Today’s
Poets. Mr. Hayden has work forthcoming in
a number of magazines and has a new book
scheduled for 1975.
TOM KUBALA, who earned a bachelor of
architecture degree from the University of
Illinois, is an apprentice architect to Baker
Associates in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He
hopes eventually to go into business with
his father who is also an architect.
WESLEY E. NEEDHAM is a student of
Buddhism and its influence on the culture of
and history of Asian countries, particularly
Tibet. In 1953 he was apponted adviser in
Tibetan literature at the Yale University
Library. His Master of Arts degree from
Yale University was awarded for his studies
of the people and culture of Tibet. Mr.
Needham has lectured at Yale and other
universities and colleges, and he tutors undergraduate
students in Tibetan Buddhist
art. His book review and articles have appeared
in religious periodicals and other
publications, and three articles have been
published in the Encyclopedia Americana.
He serves as a director of the Tibetan Foundation,
Inc.
GERALD B. PARKS is a writer and poet
whose work appeared in the anthology of
poetry in the Spring 1971 issue of World
Order. He is living in Trieste, Italy, where
he teaches.
ART CREDITS: p. 3, photograph by George
O. Miller; p. 7, photograph by David L.
Trautmann; p. 8, drawing by Tom Kubala;
p. 15, photograph by George O. Miller; pp.
18, 19, 26, and 28 photographs of views of
New York City by United Press International;
p. 41, photograph by Glenford E.
Mitchell; p. 52, photograph by David L.
Trautmann; back cover, photograph by Glenford
E. Mitchell.
GEORGE O. MILLER, a nature photographer and graduate student of zoology at the Unversity of Texas, is appearing in World Order for the second time. He contributed two photographs to the Spring 1974 issue.
GLENFORD E. MITCHELL is secretary of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and managing editor of World Order.
DAVID L. TRAUTMANN, a professional photographer, contributed to the Summer 1972 issue of World Order.