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Title: The Prosperity of Humankind

Author: Baha’i International Community

Release Date: September 2006 [Ebook #19283]

Language: English

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***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROSPERITY OF HUMANKIND***





The Prosperity of Humankind


by Baha’i International Community




Edition 1, (September 2006)





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                                 CONTENTS


Baha’i Terms of Use
Universal House of Justice letter of 23 January 1995
The Prosperity of Humankind
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII






UNIVERSAL HOUSE OF JUSTICE LETTER OF 23 JANUARY 1995


23 January 1995

To the National Spiritual Assemblies of the Bahá’ís throughout the world

Dear Friends,

As the twentieth century rapidly approaches its end, there is a marked
acceleration in the efforts of governments and peoples to reach common
understandings on issues affecting the future of humankind. The 1992
Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, the 1993
World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, the 1994 International
Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, the forthcoming March
1995 World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, to be followed in
September by the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, are
conspicuous indications of this acceleration. These events are as
capstones to the myriad activities taking place in different parts of the
world involving a wide range of nongovernmental organizations and networks
in an urgent search for values, ideas and practical measures that can
advance prospects for the peaceful development of all peoples. In this
endeavor can be discerned the gathering momentum of an emerging unity of
thought in world undertakings, the realization of which our sacred
scriptures describe as one of the lights of unity that will illumine the
path to peace. The Bahá’ís around the world are, of course, heartened by
such hopeful trends and will continue increasingly to lend moral and
practical support to them as opportunities allow.

In view of the intensive attention being given to the issues of social and
economic development since the Earth Summit in Brazil, we requested the
Bahá’í International Community’s Office of Public Information to prepare a
statement on the concept of global prosperity in the context of the Bahá’í
Teachings. This statement is now ready for distribution. We are therefore
very pleased to send each of you herewith a copy of “The Prosperity of
Humankind” and to commend it to your use as you pursue activities that
enable you to interact with governments, organizations, and people
everywhere. Our confident hope is that the statement will assist you to
foster understanding of this important topic among the members of your
communities and thus vitalize their contribution to the constructive
social processes at work throughout the planet.

With loving Bahá’í greetings,
[The Universal House of Justice]

Enclosure





THE PROSPERITY OF HUMANKIND


To an extent unimaginable a decade ago, the ideal of world peace is taking
on form and substance. Obstacles that long seemed immovable have collapsed
in humanity’s path; apparently irreconcilable conflicts have begun to
surrender to processes of consultation and resolution; a willingness to
counter military aggression through unified international action is
emerging. The effect has been to awaken in both the masses of humanity and
many world leaders a degree of hopefulness about the future of our planet
that had been nearly extinguished.

Throughout the world, immense intellectual and spiritual energies are
seeking expression, energies whose gathering pressure is in direct
proportion to the frustrations of recent decades. Everywhere the signs
multiply that the earth’s peoples yearn for an end to conflict and to the
suffering and ruin from which no land is any longer immune. These rising
impulses for change must be seized upon and channeled into overcoming the
remaining barriers that block realization of the age-old dream of global
peace. The effort of will required for such a task cannot be summoned up
merely by appeals for action against the countless ills afflicting
society. It must be galvanized by a vision of human prosperity in the
fullest sense of the term—an awakening to the possibilities of the
spiritual and material well-being now brought within grasp. Its
beneficiaries must be all of the planet’s inhabitants, without
distinction, without the imposition of conditions unrelated to the
fundamental goals of such a reorganization of human affairs.

History has thus far recorded principally the experience of tribes,
cultures, classes, and nations. With the physical unification of the
planet in this century and acknowledgement of the interdependence of all
who live on it, the history of humanity as one people is now beginning.
The long, slow civilizing of human character has been a sporadic
development, uneven and admittedly inequitable in the material advantages
it has conferred. Nevertheless, endowed with the wealth of all the genetic
and cultural diversity that has evolved through past ages, the earth’s
inhabitants are now challenged to draw on their collective inheritance to
take up, consciously and systematically, the responsibility for the design
of their future.

It is unrealistic to imagine that the vision of the next stage in the
advancement of civilization can be formulated without a searching
reexamination of the attitudes and assumptions that currently underlie
approaches to social and economic development. At the most obvious level,
such rethinking will have to address practical matters of policy, resource
utilization, planning procedures, implementation methodologies, and
organization. As it proceeds, however, fundamental issues will quickly
emerge, related to the long-term goals to be pursued, the social
structures required, the implications for development of principles of
social justice, and the nature and role of knowledge in effecting enduring
change. Indeed, such a reexamination will be driven to seek a broad
consensus of understanding about human nature itself.

Two avenues of discussion open directly onto all of these issues, whether
conceptual or practical, and it is along these two avenues that we wish to
explore, in the pages that follow, the subject of a strategy of global
development. The first is prevailing beliefs about the nature and purpose
of the development process; the second is the roles assigned in it to the
various protagonists.

The assumptions directing most of current development planning are
essentially materialistic. That is to say, the purpose of development is
defined in terms of the successful cultivation in all societies of those
means for the achievement of material prosperity that have, through trial
and error, already come to characterize certain regions of the world.
Modifications in development discourse do indeed occur, accommodating
differences of culture and political system and responding to the alarming
dangers posed by environmental degradation. Yet the underlying
materialistic assumptions remain essentially unchallenged.

As the twentieth century draws to a close, it is no longer possible to
maintain the belief that the approach to social and economic development
to which the materialistic conception of life has given rise is capable of
meeting humanity’s needs. Optimistic forecasts about the changes it would
generate have vanished into the ever-widening abyss that separates the
living standards of a small and relatively diminishing minority of the
world’s inhabitants from the poverty experienced by the vast majority of
the globe’s population.

This unprecedented economic crisis, together with the social breakdown it
has helped to engender, reflects a profound error of conception about
human nature itself. For the levels of response elicited from human beings
by the incentives of the prevailing order are not only inadequate, but
seem almost irrelevant in the face of world events. We are being shown
that, unless the development of society finds a purpose beyond the mere
amelioration of material conditions, it will fail of attaining even these
goals. That purpose must be sought in spiritual dimensions of life and
motivation that transcend a constantly changing economic landscape and an
artificially imposed division of human societies into “developed” and
“developing”.

As the purpose of development is being redefined, it will become necessary
also to look again at assumptions about the appropriate roles to be played
by the protagonists in the process. The crucial role of government, at
whatever level, requires no elaboration. Future generations, however, will
find almost incomprehensible the circumstance that, in an age paying
tribute to an egalitarian philosophy and related democratic principles,
development planning should view the masses of humanity as essentially
recipients of benefits from aid and training. Despite acknowledgement of
participation as a principle, the scope of the decision making left to
most of the world’s population is at best secondary, limited to a range of
choices formulated by agencies inaccessible to them and determined by
goals that are often irreconcilable with their perceptions of reality.

This approach is even endorsed, implicitly if not explicitly, by
established religion. Burdened by traditions of paternalism, prevailing
religious thought seems incapable of translating an expressed faith in the
spiritual dimensions of human nature into confidence in humanity’s
collective capacity to transcend material conditions.

Such an attitude misses the significance of what is likely the most
important social phenomenon of our time. If it is true that the
governments of the world are striving through the medium of the United
Nations system to construct a new global order, it is equally true that
the peoples of the world are galvanized by this same vision. Their
response has taken the form of a sudden efflorescence of countless
movements and organizations of social change at local, regional, and
international levels. Human rights, the advance of women, the social
requirements of sustainable economic development, the overcoming of
prejudices, the moral education of children, literacy, primary health
care, and a host of other vital concerns each commands the urgent advocacy
of organizations supported by growing numbers in every part of the globe.

This response of the world’s people themselves to the crying needs of the
age echoes the call that Bahá’u’lláh raised over a hundred years ago: “Be
anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your
deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.” The transformation in
the way that great numbers of ordinary people are coming to see
themselves—a change that is dramatically abrupt in the perspective of the
history of civilization—raises fundamental questions about the role
assigned to the general body of humanity in the planning of our planet’s
future.





I


The bedrock of a strategy that can engage the world’s population in
assuming responsibility for its collective destiny must be the
consciousness of the oneness of humankind. Deceptively simple in popular
discourse, the concept that humanity constitutes a single people presents
fundamental challenges to the way that most of the institutions of
contemporary society carry out their functions. Whether in the form of the
adversarial structure of civil government, the advocacy principle
informing most of civil law, a glorification of the struggle between
classes and other social groups, or the competitive spirit dominating so
much of modern life, conflict is accepted as the mainspring of human
interaction. It represents yet another expression in social organization
of the materialistic interpretation of life that has progressively
consolidated itself over the past two centuries.

In a letter addressed to Queen Victoria over a century ago, and employing
an analogy that points to the one model holding convincing promise for the
organization of a planetary society, Bahá’u’lláh compared the world to the
human body. There is, indeed, no other model in phenomenal existence to
which we can reasonably look. Human society is composed not of a mass of
merely differentiated cells but of associations of individuals, each one
of whom is endowed with intelligence and will; nevertheless, the modes of
operation that characterize man’s biological nature illustrate fundamental
principles of existence. Chief among these is that of unity in diversity.
Paradoxically, it is precisely the wholeness and complexity of the order
constituting the human body—and the perfect integration into it of the
body’s cells—that permit the full realization of the distinctive
capacities inherent in each of these component elements. No cell lives
apart from the body, whether in contributing to its functioning or in
deriving its share from the well-being of the whole. The physical
well-being thus achieved finds its purpose in making possible the
expression of human consciousness; that is to say, the purpose of
biological development transcends the mere existence of the body and its
parts.

What is true of the life of the individual has its parallels in human
society. The human species is an organic whole, the leading edge of the
evolutionary process. That human consciousness necessarily operates
through an infinite diversity of individual minds and motivations detracts
in no way from its essential unity. Indeed, it is precisely an inhering
diversity that distinguishes unity from homogeneity or uniformity. What
the peoples of the world are today experiencing, Bahá’u’lláh said, is
their collective coming- of-age, and it is through this emerging maturity
of the race that the principle of unity in diversity will find full
expression. From its earliest beginnings in the consolidation of family
life, the process of social organization has successively moved from the
simple structures of clan and tribe, through multitudinous forms of urban
society, to the eventual emergence of the nation-state, each stage opening
up a wealth of new opportunities for the exercise of human capacity.

Clearly, the advancement of the race has not occurred at the expense of
human individuality. As social organization has increased, the scope for
the expression of the capacities latent in each human being has
correspondingly expanded. Because the relationship between the individual
and society is a reciprocal one, the transformation now required must
occur simultaneously within human consciousness and the structure of
social institutions. It is in the opportunities afforded by this twofold
process of change that a strategy of global development will find its
purpose. At this crucial stage of history, that purpose must be to
establish enduring foundations on which planetary civilization can
gradually take shape.

Laying the groundwork for global civilization calls for the creation of
laws and institutions that are universal in both character and authority.
The effort can begin only when the concept of the oneness of humanity has
been wholeheartedly embraced by those in whose hands the responsibility
for decision making rests, and when the related principles are propagated
through both educational systems and the media of mass communication. Once
this threshold is crossed, a process will have been set in motion through
which the peoples of the world can be drawn into the task of formulating
common goals and committing themselves to their attainment. Only so
fundamental a reorientation can protect them, too, from the age-old demons
of ethnic and religious strife. Only through the dawning consciousness
that they constitute a single people will the inhabitants of the planet be
enabled to turn away from the patterns of conflict that have dominated
social organization in the past and begin to learn the ways of
collaboration and conciliation. “The well-being of mankind,” Bahá’u’lláh
writes, “its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its
unity is firmly established.”





II


Justice is the one power that can translate the dawning consciousness of
humanity’s oneness into a collective will through which the necessary
structures of global community life can be confidently erected. An age
that sees the people of the world increasingly gaining access to
information of every kind and to a diversity of ideas will find justice
asserting itself as the ruling principle of successful social
organization. With ever greater frequency, proposals aiming at the
development of the planet will have to submit to the candid light of the
standards it requires.

At the individual level, justice is that faculty of the human soul that
enables each person to distinguish truth from falsehood. In the sight of
God, Bahá’u’lláh avers, justice is “the best beloved of all things” since
it permits each individual to see with his own eyes rather than the eyes
of others, to know through his own knowledge rather than the knowledge of
his neighbor or his group. It calls for fair-mindedness in one’s
judgments, for equity in one’s treatment of others, and is thus a constant
if demanding companion in the daily occasions of life.

At the group level, a concern for justice is the indispensable compass in
collective decision making, because it is the only means by which unity of
thought and action can be achieved. Far from encouraging the punitive
spirit that has often masqueraded under its name in past ages, justice is
the practical expression of awareness that, in the achievement of human
progress, the interests of the individual and those of society are
inextricably linked. To the extent that justice becomes a guiding concern
of human interaction, a consultative climate is encouraged that permits
options to be examined dispassionately and appropriate courses of action
selected. In such a climate the perennial tendencies toward manipulation
and partisanship are far less likely to deflect the decision-making
process.

The implications for social and economic development are profound. Concern
for justice protects the task of defining progress from the temptation to
sacrifice the well-being of the generality of humankind—and even of the
planet itself—to the advantages which technological breakthroughs can make
available to privileged minorities. In design and planning, it ensures
that limited resources are not diverted to the pursuit of projects
extraneous to a community’s essential social or economic priorities. Above
all, only development programs that are perceived as meeting their needs
and as being just and equitable in objective can hope to engage the
commitment of the masses of humanity, upon whom implementation depends.
The relevant human qualities such as honesty, a willingness to work, and a
spirit of cooperation are successfully harnessed to the accomplishment of
enormously demanding collective goals when every member of society—indeed
every component group within society—can trust that they are protected by
standards and assured of benefits that apply equally to all.

At the heart of the discussion of a strategy of social and economic
development, therefore, lies the issue of human rights. The shaping of
such a strategy calls for the promotion of human rights to be freed from
the grip of the false dichotomies that have for so long held it hostage.
Concern that each human being should enjoy the freedom of thought and
action conducive to his or her personal growth does not justify devotion
to the cult of individualism that so deeply corrupts many areas of
contemporary life. Nor does concern to ensure the welfare of society as a
whole require a deification of the state as the supposed source of
humanity’s well-being. Far otherwise: the history of the present century
shows all too clearly that such ideologies and the partisan agendas to
which they give rise have been themselves the principal enemies of the
interests they purport to serve. Only in a consultative framework made
possible by the consciousness of the organic unity of humankind can all
aspects of the concern for human rights find legitimate and creative
expression.

Today, the agency on whom has devolved the task of creating this framework
and of liberating the promotion of human rights from those who would
exploit it is the system of international institutions born out of the
tragedies of two ruinous world wars and the experience of worldwide
economic breakdown. Significantly, the term “human rights” has come into
general use only since the promulgation of the United Nations Charter in
1945 and the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights three
years later. In these history-making documents, formal recognition has
been given to respect for social justice as a correlative of the
establishment of world peace. The fact that the Declaration passed without
a dissenting vote in the General Assembly conferred on it from the outset
an authority that has grown steadily in the intervening years.

The activity most intimately linked to the consciousness that
distinguishes human nature is the individual’s exploration of reality for
himself or herself. The freedom to investigate the purpose of existence
and to develop the endowments of human nature that make it achievable
requires protection. Human beings must be free to know. That such freedom
is often abused and such abuse grossly encouraged by features of
contemporary society does not detract in any degree from the validity of
the impulse itself.

It is this distinguishing impulse of human consciousness that provides the
moral imperative for the enunciation of many of the rights enshrined in
the Universal Declaration and the related Covenants. Universal education,
freedom of movement, access to information, and the opportunity to
participate in political life are all aspects of its operation that
require explicit guarantee by the international community. The same is
true of freedom of thought and belief, including religious liberty, along
with the right to hold opinions and express these opinions appropriately.

Since the body of humankind is one and indivisible, each member of the
race is born into the world as a trust of the whole. This trusteeship
constitutes the moral foundation of most of the other rights—principally
economic and social—which the instruments of the United Nations are
attempting similarly to define. The security of the family and the home,
the ownership of property, and the right to privacy are all implied in
such a trusteeship. The obligations on the part of the community extend to
the provision of employment, mental and physical health care, social
security, fair wages, rest and recreation, and a host of other reasonable
expectations on the part of the individual members of society.

The principle of collective trusteeship creates also the right of every
person to expect that those cultural conditions essential to his or her
identity enjoy the protection of national and international law. Much like
the role played by the gene pool in the biological life of humankind and
its environment, the immense wealth of cultural diversity achieved over
thousands of years is vital to the social and economic development of a
human race experiencing its collective coming-of-age. It represents a
heritage that must be permitted to bear its fruit in a global
civilization. On the one hand, cultural expressions need to be protected
from suffocation by the materialistic influences currently holding sway.
On the other, cultures must be enabled to interact with one another in
ever-changing patterns of civilization, free of manipulation for partisan
political ends.

“The light of men”, Bahá’u’lláh says, “is Justice. Quench it not with the
contrary winds of oppression and tyranny. The purpose of justice is the
appearance of unity among men. The ocean of divine wisdom surgeth within
this exalted word, while the books of the world cannot contain its inner
significance.”





III


In order for the standard of human rights now in the process of
formulation by the community of nations to be promoted and established as
prevailing international norms, a fundamental redefinition of human
relationships is called for. Present-day conceptions of what is natural
and appropriate in relationships—among human beings themselves, between
human beings and nature, between the individual and society, and between
the members of society and its institutions—reflect levels of
understanding arrived at by the human race during earlier and less mature
stages in its development. If humanity is indeed coming of age, if all the
inhabitants of the planet constitute a single people, if justice is to be
the ruling principle of social organization—then existing conceptions that
were born out of ignorance of these emerging realities have to be recast.

Movement in this direction has barely begun. It will lead, as it unfolds,
to a new understanding of the nature of the family and of the rights and
responsibilities of each of its members. It will entirely transform the
role of women at every level of society. Its effect in reordering people’s
relation to the work they do and their understanding of the place of
economic activity in their lives will be sweeping. It will bring about
far-reaching changes in the governance of human affairs and in the
institutions created to carry it out. Through its influence, the work of
society’s rapidly proliferating nongovernmental organizations will be
increasingly rationalized. It will ensure the creation of binding
legislation that will protect both the environment and the development
needs of all peoples. Ultimately, the restructuring or transformation of
the United Nations system that this movement is already bringing about
will no doubt lead to the establishment of a world federation of nations
with its own legislative, judicial, and executive bodies.

Central to the task of reconceptualizing the system of human relationships
is the process that Bahá’u’lláh refers to as consultation. “In all things
it is necessary to consult,” is His advice. “The maturity of the gift of
understanding is made manifest through consultation.”

The standard of truth seeking this process demands is far beyond the
patterns of negotiation and compromise that tend to characterize the
present-day discussion of human affairs. It cannot be achieved—indeed, its
attainment is severely handicapped—by the culture of protest that is
another widely prevailing feature of contemporary society. Debate,
propaganda, the adversarial method, the entire apparatus of partisanship
that have long been such familiar features of collective action are all
fundamentally harmful to its purpose: that is, arriving at a consensus
about the truth of a given situation and the wisest choice of action among
the options open at any given moment.

What Bahá’u’lláh is calling for is a consultative process in which the
individual participants strive to transcend their respective points of
view, in order to function as members of a body with its own interests and
goals. In such an atmosphere, characterized by both candor and courtesy,
ideas belong not to the individual to whom they occur during the
discussion but to the group as a whole, to take up, discard, or revise as
seems to best serve the goal pursued. Consultation succeeds to the extent
that all participants support the decisions arrived at, regardless of the
individual opinions with which they entered the discussion. Under such
circumstances an earlier decision can be readily reconsidered if
experience exposes any shortcomings.

Viewed in such a light, consultation is the operating expression of
justice in human affairs. So vital is it to the success of collective
endeavor that it must constitute a basic feature of a viable strategy of
social and economic development. Indeed, the participation of the people
on whose commitment and efforts the success of such a strategy depends
becomes effective only as consultation is made the organizing principle of
every project. “No man can attain his true station”, is Bahá’u’lláh’s
counsel, “except through his justice. No power can exist except through
unity. No welfare and no well-being can be attained except through
consultation.”





IV


The tasks entailed in the development of a global society call for levels
of capacity far beyond anything the human race has so far been able to
muster. Reaching these levels will require an enormous expansion in access
to knowledge, on the part of individuals and social organizations alike.
Universal education will be an indispensable contributor to this process
of capacity building, but the effort will succeed only as human affairs
are so reorganized as to enable both individuals and groups in every
sector of society to acquire knowledge and apply it to the shaping of
human affairs.

Throughout recorded history, human consciousness has depended upon two
basic knowledge systems through which its potentialities have
progressively been expressed: science and religion. Through these two
agencies, the race’s experience has been organized, its environment
interpreted, its latent powers explored, and its moral and intellectual
life disciplined. They have acted as the real progenitors of civilization.
With the benefit of hindsight, it is evident, moreover, that the
effectiveness of this dual structure has been greatest during those
periods when, each in its own sphere, religion and science were able to
work in concert.

Given the almost universal respect in which science is currently held, its
credentials need no elaboration. In the context of a strategy of social
and economic development, the issue rather is how scientific and
technological activity is to be organized. If the work involved is viewed
chiefly as the preserve of established elites living in a small number of
nations, it is obvious that the enormous gap which such an arrangement has
already created between the world’s rich and poor will only continue to
widen, with the disastrous consequences for the world’s economy already
noted. Indeed, if most of humankind continue to be regarded mainly as
users of products of science and technology created elsewhere, then
programs ostensibly designed to serve their needs cannot properly be
termed “development”.

A central challenge, therefore—and an enormous one—is the expansion of
scientific and technological activity. Instruments of social and economic
change so powerful must cease to be the patrimony of advantaged segments
of society, and must be so organized as to permit people everywhere to
participate in such activity on the basis of capacity. Apart from the
creation of programs that make the required education available to all who
are able to benefit from it, such reorganization will require the
establishment of viable centers of learning throughout the world,
institutions that will enhance the capability of the world’s peoples to
participate in the generation and application of knowledge. Development
strategy, while acknowledging the wide differences of individual capacity,
must take as a major goal the task of making it possible for all of the
earth’s inhabitants to approach on an equal basis the processes of science
and technology which are their common birthright. Familiar arguments for
maintaining the status quo grow daily less compelling as the accelerating
revolution in communication technologies now brings information and
training within reach of vast numbers of people around the globe, wherever
they may be, whatever their cultural backgrounds.

The challenges facing humanity in its religious life, if different in
character, are equally daunting. For the vast majority of the world’s
population, the idea that human nature has a spiritual dimension—indeed
that its fundamental identity is spiritual—is a truth requiring no
demonstration. It is a perception of reality that can be discovered in the
earliest records of civilization and that has been cultivated for several
millenia by every one of the great religious traditions of humanity’s
past. Its enduring achievements in law, the fine arts, and the civilizing
of human intercourse are what give substance and meaning to history. In
one form or another its promptings are a daily influence in the lives of
most people on earth and, as events around the world today dramatically
show, the longings it awakens are both inextinguishable and incalculably
potent.

It would seem obvious, therefore, that efforts of any kind to promote
human progress must seek to tap capacities so universal and so immensely
creative. Why, then, have spiritual issues facing humanity not been
central to the development discourse? Why have most of the
priorities—indeed most of the underlying assumptions—of the international
development agenda been determined so far by materialistic world views to
which only small minorities of the earth’s population subscribe? How much
weight can be placed on a professed devotion to the principle of universal
participation that denies the validity of the participants’ defining
cultural experience?

It may be argued that, since spiritual and moral issues have historically
been bound up with contending theological doctrines which are not
susceptible of objective proof, these issues lie outside the framework of
the international community’s development concerns. To accord them any
significant role would be to open the door to precisely those dogmatic
influences that have nurtured social conflict and blocked human progress.
There is doubtless a measure of truth in such an argument. Exponents of
the world’s various theological systems bear a heavy responsibility not
only for the disrepute into which faith itself has fallen among many
progressive thinkers, but for the inhibitions and distortions produced in
humanity’s continuing discourse on spiritual meaning. To conclude,
however, that the answer lies in discouraging the investigation of
spiritual reality and ignoring the deepest roots of human motivation is a
self-evident delusion. The sole effect, to the degree that such censorship
has been achieved in recent history, has been to deliver the shaping of
humanity’s future into the hands of a new orthodoxy, one which argues that
truth is amoral and facts are independent of values.

So far as earthly existence is concerned, many of the greatest
achievements of religion have been moral in character. Through its
teachings and through the examples of human lives illumined by these
teachings, masses of people in all ages and lands have developed the
capacity to love. They have learned to discipline the animal side of their
natures, to make great sacrifices for the common good, to practise
forgiveness, generosity, and trust, to use wealth and other resources in
ways that serve the advancement of civilization. Institutional systems
have been devised to translate these moral advances into the norms of
social life on a vast scale. However obscured by dogmatic accretions and
diverted by sectarian conflict, the spiritual impulses set in motion by
such transcendent figures as Krishna, Moses, Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus, and
Muhammad have been the chief influence in the civilizing of human
character.

Since, then, the challenge is the empowerment of humankind through a vast
increase in access to knowledge, the strategy that can make this possible
must be constructed around an ongoing and intensifying dialogue between
science and religion. It is—or by now should be—a truism that, in every
sphere of human activity and at every level, the insights and skills that
represent scientific accomplishment must look to the force of spiritual
commitment and moral principle to ensure their appropriate application.
People need, for example, to learn how to separate fact from
conjecture—indeed to distinguish between subjective views and objective
reality; the extent to which individuals and institutions so equipped can
contribute to human progress, however, will be determined by their
devotion to truth and their detachment from the promptings of their own
interests and passions. Another capacity that science must cultivate in
all people is that of thinking in terms of process, including historical
process; however, if this intellectual advancement is to contribute
ultimately to promoting development, its perspective must be unclouded by
prejudices of race, culture, sex, or sectarian belief. Similarly, the
training that can make it possible for the earth’s inhabitants to
participate in the production of wealth will advance the aims of
development only to the extent that such an impulse is illumined by the
spiritual insight that service to humankind is the purpose of both
individual life and social organization.





V


It is in the context of raising the level of human capacity through the
expansion of knowledge at all levels that the economic issues facing
humankind need to be addressed. As the experience of recent decades has
demonstrated, material benefits and endeavors cannot be regarded as ends
in themselves. Their value consists not only in providing for humanity’s
basic needs in housing, food, health care, and the like, but in extending
the reach of human abilities. The most important role that economic
efforts must play in development lies, therefore, in equipping people and
institutions with the means through which they can achieve the real
purpose of development: that is, laying foundations for a new social order
that can cultivate the limitless potentialities latent in human
consciousness.

The challenge to economic thinking is to accept unambiguously this purpose
of development—and its own role in fostering creation of the means to
achieve it. Only in this way can economics and the related sciences free
themselves from the undertow of the materialistic preoccupations that now
distract them, and fulfill their potential as tools vital to achieving
human well-being in the full sense of the term. Nowhere is the need for a
rigorous dialogue between the work of science and the insights of religion
more apparent.

The problem of poverty is a case in point. Proposals aimed at addressing
it are predicated on the conviction that material resources exist, or can
be created by scientific and technological endeavor, which will alleviate
and eventually entirely eradicate this age-old condition as a feature of
human life. A major reason why such relief is not achieved is that the
necessary scientific and technological advances respond to a set of
priorities only tangentially related to the real interests of the
generality of humankind. A radical reordering of these priorities will be
required if the burden of poverty is finally to be lifted from the world.
Such an achievement demands a determined quest for appropriate values, a
quest that will test profoundly both the spiritual and scientific
resources of humankind. Religion will be severely hampered in contributing
to this joint undertaking so long as it is held prisoner by sectarian
doctrines which cannot distinguish between contentment and mere passivity
and which teach that poverty is an inherent feature of earthly life,
escape from which lies only in the world beyond. To participate
effectively in the struggle to bring material well-being to humanity, the
religious spirit must find—in the Source of inspiration from which it
flows—new spiritual concepts and principles relevant to an age that seeks
to establish unity and justice in human affairs.

Unemployment raises similar issues. In most of contemporary thinking, the
concept of work has been largely reduced to that of gainful employment
aimed at acquiring the means for the consumption of available goods. The
system is circular: acquisition and consumption resulting in the
maintenance and expansion of the production of goods and, in consequence,
in supporting paid employment. Taken individually, all of these activities
are essential to the well-being of society. The inadequacy of the overall
conception, however, can be read in both the apathy that social
commentators discern among large numbers of the employed in every land and
the demoralization of the growing armies of the unemployed.

Not surprisingly, therefore, there is increasing recognition that the
world is in urgent need of a new “work ethic”. Here again, nothing less
than insights generated by the creative interaction of the scientific and
religious systems of knowledge can produce so fundamental a reorientation
of habits and attitudes. Unlike animals, which depend for their sustenance
on whatever the environment readily affords, human beings are impelled to
express the immense capacities latent within them through productive work
designed to meet their own needs and those of others. In acting thus they
become participants, at however modest a level, in the processes of the
advancement of civilization. They fulfill purposes that unite them with
others. To the extent that work is consciously undertaken in a spirit of
service to humanity, Bahá’u’lláh says, it is a form of prayer, a means of
worshiping God. Every individual has the capacity to see himself or
herself in this light, and it is to this inalienable capacity of the self
that development strategy must appeal, whatever the nature of the plans
being pursued, whatever the rewards they promise. No narrower a
perspective will ever call up from the people of the world the magnitude
of effort and commitment that the economic tasks ahead will require.

A challenge of similar nature faces economic thinking as a result of the
environmental crisis. The fallacies in theories based on the belief that
there is no limit to nature’s capacity to fulfill any demand made on it by
human beings have now been coldly exposed. A culture which attaches
absolute value to expansion, to acquisition, and to the satisfaction of
people’s wants is being compelled to recognize that such goals are not, by
themselves, realistic guides to policy. Inadequate, too, are approaches to
economic issues whose decision-making tools cannot deal with the fact that
most of the major challenges are global rather than particular in scope.

The earnest hope that this moral crisis can somehow be met by deifying
nature itself is an evidence of the spiritual and intellectual desperation
that the crisis has engendered. Recognition that creation is an organic
whole and that humanity has the responsibility to care for this whole,
welcome as it is, does not represent an influence which can by itself
establish in the consciousness of people a new system of values. Only a
breakthrough in understanding that is scientific and spiritual in the
fullest sense of the terms will empower the human race to assume the
trusteeship toward which history impels it.

All people will have sooner or later to recover, for example, the capacity
for contentment, the welcoming of moral discipline, and the devotion to
duty that, until relatively recently, were considered essential aspects of
being human. Repeatedly throughout history, the teachings of the Founders
of the great religions have been able to instill these qualities of
character in the mass of people who responded to them. The qualities
themselves are even more vital today, but their expression must now take a
form consistent with humanity’s coming-of-age. Here again, religion’s
challenge is to free itself from the obsessions of the past: contentment
is not fatalism; morality has nothing in common with the life-denying
puritanism that has so often presumed to speak in its name; and a genuine
devotion to duty brings feelings not of self-righteousness but of
self-worth.

The effect of the persistent denial to women of full equality with men
sharpens still further the challenge to science and religion in the
economic life of humankind. To any objective observer the principle of the
equality of the sexes is fundamental to all realistic thinking about the
future well-being of the earth and its people. It represents a truth about
human nature that has waited largely unrecognized throughout the long ages
of the race’s childhood and adolescence. “Women and men”, is Bahá’u’lláh’s
emphatic assertion, “have been and will always be equal in the sight of
God.” The rational soul has no sex, and whatever social inequities may
have been dictated by the survival requirements of the past, they clearly
cannot be justified at a time when humanity stands at the threshold of
maturity. A commitment to the establishment of full equality between men
and women, in all departments of life and at every level of society, will
be central to the success of efforts to conceive and implement a strategy
of global development.

Indeed, in an important sense, progress in this area will itself be a
measure of the success of any development program. Given the vital role of
economic activity in the advancement of civilization, visible evidence of
the pace at which development is progressing will be the extent to which
women gain access to all avenues of economic endeavor. The challenge goes
beyond ensuring an equitable distribution of opportunity, important as
that is. It calls for a fundamental rethinking of economic issues in a
manner that will invite the full participation of a range of human
experience and insight hitherto largely excluded from the discourse. The
classical economic models of impersonal markets in which human beings act
as autonomous makers of self-regarding choices will not serve the needs of
a world motivated by ideals of unity and justice. Society will find itself
increasingly challenged to develop new economic models shaped by insights
that arise from a sympathetic understanding of shared experience, from
viewing human beings in relation to others, and from a recognition of the
centrality to social well-being of the role of the family and the
community. Such an intellectual breakthrough—strongly altruistic rather
than self-centered in focus—must draw heavily on both the spiritual and
scientific sensibilities of the race, and millenia of experience have
prepared women to make crucial contributions to the common effort.





VI


To contemplate a transformation of society on this scale is to raise both
the question of the power that can be harnessed to accomplish it and the
issue inextricably linked to it, the authority to exercise that power. As
with all other implications of the accelerating integration of the planet
and its people, both of these familiar terms stand in urgent need of
redefinition.

Throughout history—and despite theologically or ideologically inspired
assurances to the contrary—power has been largely interpreted as advantage
enjoyed by persons or groups. Often, indeed, it has been expressed simply
in terms of means to be used against others. This interpretation of power
has become an inherent feature of the culture of division and conflict
that has characterized the human race during the past several millenia,
regardless of the social, religious, or political orientations that have
enjoyed ascendancy in given ages, in given parts of the world. In general,
power has been an attribute of individuals, factions, peoples, classes,
and nations. It has been an attribute especially associated with men
rather than women. Its chief effect has been to confer on its
beneficiaries the ability to acquire, to surpass, to dominate, to resist,
to win.

The resulting historical processes have been responsible for both ruinous
setbacks in human well-being and extraordinary advances in civilization.
To appreciate the benefits is to acknowledge also the setbacks, as well as
the clear limitations of the behavioral patterns that have produced both.
Habits and attitudes related to the use of power which emerged during the
long ages of humanity’s infancy and adolescence have reached the outer
limits of their effectiveness. Today, in an era most of whose pressing
problems are global in nature, persistence in the idea that power means
advantage for various segments of the human family is profoundly mistaken
in theory and of no practical service to the social and economic
development of the planet. Those who still adhere to it—and who could in
earlier eras have felt confident in such adherence—now find their plans
enmeshed in inexplicable frustrations and hindrances. In its traditional,
competitive expression, power is as irrelevant to the needs of humanity’s
future as would be the technologies of railway locomotion to the task of
lifting space satellites into orbits around the earth.

The analogy is more than a little apt. The human race is being urged by
the requirements of its own maturation to free itself from its inherited
understanding and use of power. That it can do so is demonstrated by the
fact that, although dominated by the traditional conception, humanity has
always been able to conceive of power in other forms critical to its
hopes. History provides ample evidence that, however intermittently and
ineptly, people of every background, throughout the ages, have tapped a
wide range of creative resources within themselves. The most obvious
example, perhaps, has been the power of truth itself, an agent of change
associated with some of the greatest advances in the philosophical,
religious, artistic, and scientific experience of the race. Force of
character represents yet another means of mobilizing immense human
response, as does the influence of example, whether in the lives of
individual human beings or in human societies. Almost wholly unappreciated
is the magnitude of the force that will be generated by the achievement of
unity, an influence “so powerful”, in Bahá’u’lláh’s words, “that it can
illuminate the whole Earth.”

The institutions of society will succeed in eliciting and directing the
potentialities latent in the consciousness of the world’s peoples to the
extent that the exercise of authority is governed by principles that are
in harmony with the evolving interests of a rapidly maturing human race.
Such principles include the obligation of those in authority to win the
confidence, respect, and genuine support of those whose actions they seek
to govern; to consult openly and to the fullest extent possible with all
whose interests are affected by decisions being arrived at; to assess in
an objective manner both the real needs and the aspirations of the
communities they serve; to benefit from scientific and moral advancement
in order to make appropriate use of the community’s resources, including
the energies of its members. No single principle of effective authority is
so important as giving priority to building and maintaining unity among
the members of a society and the members of its administrative
institutions. Reference has already been made to the intimately associated
issue of commitment to the search for justice in all matters.

Clearly, such principles can operate only within a culture that is
essentially democratic in spirit and method. To say this, however, is not
to endorse the ideology of partisanship that has everywhere boldly assumed
democracy’s name and which, despite impressive contributions to human
progress in the past, today finds itself mired in the cynicism, apathy,
and corruption to which it has given rise. In selecting those who are to
take collective decisions on its behalf, society does not need and is not
well served by the political theater of nominations, candidature,
electioneering, and solicitation. It lies within the capacity of all
people, as they become progressively educated and convinced that their
real development interests are being served by programs proposed to them,
to adopt electoral procedures that will gradually refine the selection of
their decision-making bodies.

As the integration of humanity gains momentum, those who are thus selected
will increasingly have to see all their efforts in a global perspective.
Not only at the national, but also at the local level, the elected
governors of human affairs should, in Bahá’u’lláh’s view, consider
themselves responsible for the welfare of all of humankind.





VII


The task of creating a global development strategy that will accelerate
humanity’s coming-of-age constitutes a challenge to reshape fundamentally
all the institutions of society. The protagonists to whom the challenge
addresses itself are all of the inhabitants of the planet: the generality
of humankind, members of governing institutions at all levels, persons
serving in agencies of international coordination, scientists and social
thinkers, all those endowed with artistic talents or with access to the
media of communication, and leaders of nongovernmental organizations. The
response called for must base itself on an unconditioned recognition of
the oneness of humankind, a commitment to the establishment of justice as
the organizing principle of society, and a determination to exploit to
their utmost the possibilities that a systematic dialogue between the
scientific and religious genius of the race can bring to the building of
human capacity. The enterprise requires a radical rethinking of most of
the concepts and assumptions currently governing social and economic life.
It must be wedded, as well, to a conviction that, however long the process
and whatever setbacks may be encountered, the governance of human affairs
can be conducted along lines that serve humanity’s real needs.

Only if humanity’s collective childhood has indeed come to an end and the
age of its adulthood is dawning does such a prospect represent more than
another utopian mirage. To imagine that an effort of the magnitude
envisioned here can be summoned up by despondent and mutually antagonistic
peoples and nations runs counter to the whole of received wisdom. Only if,
as Bahá’u’lláh asserts to be the case, the course of social evolution has
arrived at one of those decisive turning points through which all of the
phenomena of existence are impelled suddenly forward into new stages of
their development, can such a possibility be conceived. A profound
conviction that just so great a transformation in human consciousness is
underway has inspired the views set forth in this statement. To all who
recognize in it familiar promptings from within their own hearts,
Bahá’u’lláh’s words bring assurance that God has, in this matchless day,
endowed humanity with spiritual resources fully equal to the challenge:

O ye that inhabit the heavens and the earth! There hath appeared what hath
never previously appeared.

This is the Day in which God’s most excellent favors have been poured out
upon men, the Day in which His most mighty grace hath been infused into
all created things.

The turmoil now convulsing human affairs is unprecedented, and many of its
consequences enormously destructive. Dangers unimagined in all history
gather around a distracted humanity. The greatest error that the world’s
leadership could make at this juncture, however, would be to allow the
crisis to cast doubt on the ultimate outcome of the process that is
occurring. A world is passing away and a new one is struggling to be born.
The habits, attitudes, and institutions that have accumulated over the
centuries are being subjected to tests that are as necessary to human
development as they are inescapable. What is required of the peoples of
the world is a measure of faith and resolve to match the enormous energies
with which the Creator of all things has endowed this spiritual springtime
of the race. “Be united in counsel,” is Bahá’u’lláh’s appeal, be one in
thought. Let each morn be better than its eve and each morrow richer than
its yesterday. Man’s merit lieth in service and virtue and not in the
pageantry of wealth and riches. Take heed that your words be purged from
idle fancies and worldly desires and your deeds be cleansed from
craftiness and suspicion. Dissipate not the wealth of your precious lives
in the pursuit of evil and corrupt affection, nor let your endeavors be
spent in promoting your personal interest. Be generous in your days of
plenty, and be patient in the hour of loss. Adversity is followed by
success and rejoicings follow woe. Guard against idleness and sloth, and
cling unto that which profiteth mankind, whether young or old, whether
high or low. Beware lest ye sow tares of dissension among men or plant
thorns of doubt in pure and radiant hearts.






FOOTNOTES





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