Humanity is our Business (2/7): The Vision of Civilisation-Building

 

Given that my recent sequence ended by looking at the need for concerted action it seemed a good idea to republish this sequence from many years ago. Since I first wrote this significant progress has been made in terms of the Bahá’í footprint on world affairs, but, as the Universal House of Justice admits in its letter of 28 November 2023, we still have a long way to go:

. . . despite the community’s current, all too obvious limitations when viewed in relation to its ideals and highest aspirations—as well as the distance separating it from the attainment of its ultimate objective, the realization of the oneness of humankind—its resources, its institutional capacity, its ability to sustain systematic growth and development, its engagement with like-minded institutions, and its involvement in and constructive influence on society stand at an unprecedented height of historical achievement.

If One Common Faith helps the Bahá’í community understand the current context of the vision we are seeking to implement (see previous post), Century of Light helps us see how our understanding of this vision developed by slow degrees.

Obstacles to Understanding

Secularisation partly explains the difficulty humanity as a whole has in grasping a transcendent vision of global transformation: the failure of religion makes a contribution too.

. . . the secularization of society’s upper levels seemed to go hand in hand with a pervasive religious obscurantism among the general population.

(Century of Light: Sec I, page 6)

We also all lack precedents to aid our understanding:

Our century, with all its upheavals and its grandiloquent claims to create a new order, has no comparable example of the systematic application of the powers of a single Mind to the building of a distinctive and successful community that saw its ultimate sphere of work as the globe itself.

(Century of Light: page 10)

British Museum: London

People might, for example, claim that Marx had developed what seemed to be a global vision but it is not in fact comparable. It was a muddled reductionist vision. It was reductionist in the way that it relegated ideas to the back seat and promoted material conditions to the driving seat of history. It was muddled because, at the same time, it used exhortation to enlist the persuadable to throw their weight behind the idea of a supposedly impersonal dialectic of change. Also all the attempts to implement the vision have so far been catastrophically destructive, involving Chekhov‘s pet hates of ‘violence and lies‘ in abundance. Not only that but Marx had the benefit of one of the best libraries in the world – the British Museum’s reading room – and still failed to achieve the breadth, depth, complexity, compassion and ultimate practical efficacy of  the vision expounded by Bahá’u’lláh in prison and from exile.

An Unfolding Understanding

The Guardian’s Resting Place

Even within the Bahá’í community understanding of the vision evolved over a period of  time. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in his role as expounder of the words of Bahá’u’lláh, emphasised the role of the recognition of the oneness of the human race (Century of Light: page 23). Later, Shoghi Effendi, who was appointed in his turn as interpreter of the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh and died in London in 1957, drew out the implications:

The principle of the Oneness of Mankind – the pivot round which all the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh revolve – is no mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hope. . . . . . It implies an organic change in the structure of present-day society, a change such as the world has not experienced…. 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.

(World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: pages 42-43. Quoted in Century of Light: page 50)

To one degree or another, most Bahá’ís no doubt appreciated that the Assemblies they were being called on to form had a significance far beyond the mere management of practical affairs with which they were charged (op. cit: Page 54). Century of Light again quoted Shoghi Effendi:

. . . . they were integral parts of an Administrative Order that will, in time, “assert its claim and demonstrate its capacity to be regarded not only as the nucleus but the very pattern of the New World Order destined to embrace in the fullness of time the whole of mankind”.

(Century of Light: Page 55)

A word of explanation is perhaps needed here. The Bahá’í Faith has an administrative system that involves electing local and national assemblies on an annual basis. This is done without electioneering: the Bahá’í voter in a secret ballot votes for anyone within the community, local or national as appropriate, who seems to him or her to have the necessary qualities of character and experience to execute the role of Assembly member conscientiously and well. Processes such as consultation (see the earlier post on this subject) are vital decision making tools of these institutions. The pattern can be studied and borrowed from by all, whether Bahá’í or not, and in this way the future shape of the world can be influenced by this pattern.

‘The Bahá’í community,’ it goes on to explain, ‘now embarked [on a stage of development] in which the Administrative Order would be erected throughout the planet, its institutions established and the “society building” powers inherent in it fully revealed’ (Century of Light: Pages 55-56). 

It continues with the words of the Guardian  (Page 68):

Theirs is the duty to hold, aloft and undimmed, the torch of Divine guidance, as the shades of night descend upon, and ultimately envelop the entire human race. Theirs is the function, amidst its tumults, perils and agonies, to witness to the vision, and proclaim the approach, of that re-created society, that Christ-promised Kingdom, that World Order whose generative impulse is the spirit of none other than Bahá’u’lláh Himself, whose dominion is the entire planet, whose watchword is unity, whose animating power is the force of Justice, whose directive purpose is the reign of righteousness and truth, and whose supreme glory is the complete, the undisturbed and everlasting felicity of the whole of human kind.

Moving Towards Empowerment

Century of Light speaks of the role of planning not as though ‘the Bahá’í community has assumed the responsibility of “designing” a future for itself’, but as striving ‘to align the work of the Cause with the Divinely impelled process they see steadily unfolding in the world.’ This is a purpose, of course, which can influence all peoples of good will, whether Bahá’í or not. Their duty is to align their efforts with the spirit of the age in their way just as Bahá’ís do in this particular fashion. By these combined efforts the world will change. However:

The challenge to the Administrative Order is to ensure that, as Providence allows, Bahá’í efforts are in harmony with this Greater Plan of God, because it is in doing so that the potentialities implanted in the Cause by Bahá’u’lláh bear their fruit.

(Century of Light: Page 69)

The Greater Plan of God, the spirit of the age seen as the organising principle of unity in diversity, requires the efforts of the whole of humanity. As a Bahá’í community we have to make sure that we provide a kind of catalyst by means of what we do within our administrative system and in collaboration with all people’s good will, the Lesser Plan of God.

Century of Light continues:

. . . . . The organic unity of the body of believers – and the Administrative Order that makes it possible – are evidences of what Shoghi Effendi termed “the society-building power which their Faith possesses.”

(Century of Light: Page 97)

By 1996, it had become possible, as the Faith grew, to see all of the distinct strands of this complex enterprise as integral parts of one coherent whole (Century of Light: page 108). There were still challenges though.

For the most part, however, these [new Bahá’í] friends were essentially recipients of teaching programmes conducted by teachers and pioneers from outside. One of the great strengths of the masses of humankind from among whom the newly enrolled believers came lies in an openness of heart that has the potentiality to generate lasting social transformation. The greatest handicap of these same populations has so far been a passivity learned through generations of exposure to outside influences which, no matter how great their material advantages, have pursued agendas that were often related only tangentially – if at all – to the realities of the needs and daily lives of indigenous peoples.

(Century of Light: pages 108-109)

This highlighted a need, the meeting of which led to the creation of the Training Institute process (page 109) that empowered people to take initiatives and persist in action even under difficult circumstances:

. . . beginning in the 1970s in Colombia, where a systematic and sustained programme of education in the Writings was devised and soon adopted in neighbouring countries. Influenced by the Colombian community’s parallel efforts in the field of social and economic development, the breakthrough was all the more impressive in the fact that it was achieved against a background of violence and lawlessness that was deranging the life of the surrounding society.

The Colombian achievement has proved a source of great inspiration and example to Bahá’í communities elsewhere in the world.

The process of transformation the Cause has set in motion advances by inducing a fundamental change of consciousness, and the challenge it poses for all those of us who would serve it is to free ourselves from attachment to inherited assumptions and preferences that are irreconcilable with the Will of God for humanity’s coming of age (page 136).

Seat of the Universal House of Justice © Bahá’í World Centre

Century of Light towards the end (pages 139-140) concludes:

. . . . With the successful establishment in 1963 of the Universal House of Justice, the Bahá’ís of the world set out on the first stage of a mission of long duration: the spiritual empowerment of the whole body of humankind as the protagonists of their own advancement.

We must not underestimate the significance of this achievement:

The process leading to the election of the Universal House of Justice . . . .  very likely constituted history’s first global democratic election. Each of the successive elections since then has been carried out by an ever broader and more diverse body of the community’s chosen delegates, a development that has now reached the point that it incontestably represents the will of a cross-section of the entire human race. There is nothing in existence – nothing indeed envisioned by any group of people – that in any way resembles this achievement.

(Century of Light: page 92)

See links below to the subsequent five posts which examine in more detail some of the specific components of this process of empowerment.

Related Articles

Humanity is our Business (3/5): Capacity Building (a)

Humanity is our Business (3/5): Capacity Building (b)

Humanity is our Business (4/5): Devotional Meetings

Humanity is our Business (5/5): (a) The Plight of Children

Humanity is our Business (5/5): (b) What can we do for our children?

Read Full Post »

Review (1/1): ‘The Road to Middlemarch’

Having just come back to reflecting upon Middlemarch again, it seemed worth reflagging this sequence, partly to help me avoid repeating myself again in the new sequence.

I recently finished The Road to Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead.

George Eliot has long been one of my favourite novelists. I tasted her first in my schooldays, even though my leisure choices were usually Byron and the Brontes. At this point, it was only her earlier work such as Silas Marner, mixed with Dickens’ more popular productions such as A Tale of Two Cities and Jane Austen’s best seller Pride and Prejudice – a bland and fairly easily digestible salad for my still developing palate.

Later at university I moved onto more demanding dishes altogether – Middlemarch, Our Mutual Friend and Emma. I can’t quite remember when I started to savour the cuisine of other cultures such as Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Conrad and even Joyce’s Ulysses, but I think it was a lot later even than that. My digestive system failed completely and irreversibly, I’m afraid, at Finnegan’s Wake.

Anyway, enough boasting.

In spite of everything, Middlemarch stubbornly remained a favourite especially after teaching it at ‘A’ level. I had resolved to read it once a year once I retired but have only managed to finish it once in those five years! Rebecca Mead’s performance puts me to shame. By my calculations, from her account on page 8, she has read it at least five times and probably more. Even so, under such light pressure, my paperback copy has collapsed – I have only the cover left to remind me of how fond I was of it! This is now kept inside my copy of Frederick Karl’s biography.

Ahead of her Time

In Mead’s treatment I was struck by how much Eliot anticipates important contemporary themes from the very specific to the broader brush. This will become the focus of much of the second part of this review. While I found her sharing of the ways that Eliot illumined her path through life, and her descriptions of the places she visited to retrace Eliot’s steps, held my interest sufficiently well, they weren’t hugely informative.

I was more gripped by the overlap of ideas that broke through the surface narrative at regular intervals.

For example, in her discussion of The Mill on the Floss Rebecca Mead touches on an interesting point when she quotes Eliot on page 38:

 . . . surely if we could recall that early bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely perspectiveless conception of life that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should not pooh-pooh the grief of our children.

That phrase ‘strangely perspectiveless conception of life’ rang important bells for me. I was back with Margaret Donaldson’s brilliant book, Human Minds, and her concept of point mode (op.cit. page 30):

The first mode, which is called the point mode, [is] a way of functioning in which the locus of concern is that directly experienced chunk of space time that one currently inhabits: the here and now.

This mode of experiencing reality is not confined to infancy and early childhood though (page 43):

. . . .  although direct concern with what is here and now is accompanied in early infancy by narrow temporal awareness, this does not have to be so. . . . . When an adult concentrates on a skilled task, such as uppholstering a chair, there is the absorption in the moment that is typical of the point mode, yet there is a great reliance on past experience and a well formulated goal that is some way ahead: the finished chair.

That Eliot was able to pinpoint this kind of experience so accurately in words in such an early novel is what gives me confidence to trust the validity of her later conclusions about other things less easily corroborated.

Possible Limitations

Mead is not naïve about Middlemarch though. She unpacks what Virginia Woolf might have meant in her praise of the novel.

Virginia Woolf (For source of image see link)

She picks particularly on Woolf’s expression “with all its imperfections.” She writes (page 46):

What are these imperfections? Woolf gives few specifics, though she cites Eliot’s unwillingness to let one sentence stand for many and contrasts it with the delicacy shown by Jane Austen’s Emma. . . . . . She says that Eliot – the grand daughter of a carpenter, as she reminds us – is out of her depth when it comes to the depiction of higher social strata, and resorts to stock images of claret and velvet carpets. Eliot’s hold on dialogue is often slack. Occasionally, she lacks taste. She suffers from ‘an elderly dread of fatigue from the effort of emotional concentration.’

She quotes (page 47) Woolf’s further comment that there is however a melancholy acknowledgement of human limitation which makes the book distinctly appropriate for ‘grown-up people.’

Mead also defends Eliot’s use of the now unpopular authorial voice (page 54) and quotes examples to prove its value:

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lives on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.’

This contrasts strongly with the experience of reading Jane Austen, for example, where her device of free indirect speech means that the story unfolds through the consciousness of her characters rather than through any kind of explicit statements of her views. As Wikipedia explains: ‘What distinguishes free indirect speech from normal indirect speech is the lack of an introductory expression such as “He said” or “he thought”.’

What surprised me was that, as a student of English literature in the 60s in Cambridge, I had failed completely to take on board that this is how Jane Austen wrote. So much so, that when I recently read Mansfield Park (I am ashamed to say, for the first time), I was astonished to find that the whole narrative was carried along almost completely from within the consciousness of her characters. The caustic nature of her irony makes her presence felt even when she is nominally in the head of a character, especially that egomaniac, Mrs Norris. When the plan to bring Fanny, the daughter of her impoverished sister, to Mansfield Park, is being discussed, we get a typically caustic glimpse into her mind with only the faintest of obvious authorial touches at the start (Chapter 1):

The division of gratifying sensations ought not, in strict justice, to have been equal; for Sir Thomas was fully resolved to be the real and consistent patron of the selected child, and Mrs. Norris had not the least intention of being at any expense whatever in her maintenance. As far as walking, talking, and contriving reached, she was thoroughly benevolent, and nobody knew better how to dictate liberality to others; but her love of money was equal to her love of directing, and she knew quite as well how to save her own as to spend that of her friends.

Ford Maddox Ford does the same thing even more consistently in his greatest works such as Parade’s End.

The value of this approach is unquestioned. You are drawn deeply into the experience of the characters and, as in life, you can never be completely sure you have understood exactly what happened in an objective sense – all you have is a composite of subjective points of view.

I believe it is crucial that we all come to realise our interconnectedness. I therefore welcome the way the reading of novels has been shown to relate to increased empathy and social skills. Keith Oatley‘s book, Such Stuff as Dreams, tackles the thorny and long-standing question of whether fiction is pointless and a nuisance or whether it has some value. He feels that one of fiction’s most important benefits is the fostering of empathy. He defines empathy as follows (page 113):

In modern times, and on the basis of recent research on brain imaging, empathy has been described as involving: (a) having an emotion, that (b) is in some way similar to that of another person, that (c) is elicited by observation or imagination of the other’s emotion, and that involves (d) knowing that the other is the source of one’s own emotion.

He asks a general question (page 95):

If we engage in the simulations of fiction, do the skills we learn there transfer to the everyday social world?

In this book he sees fiction as (page 99)

. . . . . a kind of simulation, one that runs not on computers but on minds: a simulation of selves in their interactions with others in the social world. This is what Shakespeare and others called a dream.

And finds that the research suggests that the skills we learn there do transfer to ordinary life. After explaining a carefully controlled study by Raymond Mar, he writes that when all other variables were controlled for (and could therefore be discounted as an explanation of the effects) – page 159:

The result indicates that better abilities in empathy and theory of mind were best explained by the kind of reading people mostly did. . . . . .

Other studies he quotes all point in the same direction (page 165):

Nussbaum argues that this ability to identify with others by means of empathy or compassion is developed by the reading of fiction.

Clearly, if that is what we are after, free indirect speech would be a strong candidate for one of the best ways of enhancing empathy.

However, there are also advantages in a similar direction, as Mead points out in this engaging tour of Eliot’s thought, to the use of the author’s own voice which we will come on to next time.

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Humanity is our Business (2/7): The Vision of Civilisation-Building

 

Given the theme of my post on Monday, this seemed a good sequence to republish.

If One Common Faith helps the Bahá’í community understand the current context of the vision we are seeking to implement (see previous post), Century of Light helps us see how our understanding of this vision developed by slow degrees.

Obstacles to Understanding

Secularisation partly explains the difficulty humanity as a whole has in grasping a transcendent vision of global transformation: the failure of religion makes a contribution too.

. . . the secularization of society’s upper levels seemed to go hand in hand with a pervasive religious obscurantism among the general population.

(Century of Light: Sec I, page 6)

We also all lack precedents to aid our understanding:

Our century, with all its upheavals and its grandiloquent claims to create a new order, has no comparable example of the systematic application of the powers of a single Mind to the building of a distinctive and successful community that saw its ultimate sphere of work as the globe itself.

(Century of Light: page 10)

British Museum: London

People might, for example, claim that Marx had developed what seemed to be a global vision but it is not in fact comparable. It was a muddled reductionist vision. It was reductionist in the way that it relegated ideas to the back seat and promoted material conditions to the driving seat of history. It was muddled because, at the same time, it used exhortation to enlist the persuadable to throw their weight behind the idea of a supposedly impersonal dialectic of change. Also all the attempts to implement the vision have so far been catastrophically destructive, involving Chekhov‘s pet hates of ‘violence and lies‘ in abundance. Not only that but Marx had the benefit of one of the best libraries in the world – the British Museum’s reading room – and still failed to achieve the breadth, depth, complexity, compassion and ultimate practical efficacy of  the vision expounded by Bahá’u’lláh in prison and from exile.

An Unfolding Understanding

The Guardian’s Resting Place

Even within the Bahá’í community understanding of the vision evolved over a period of  time. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in his role as expounder of the words of Bahá’u’lláh, emphasised the role of the recognition of the oneness of the human race (Century of Light: page 23). Later, Shoghi Effendi, who was appointed in his turn as interpreter of the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh and died in London in 1957, drew out the implications:

The principle of the Oneness of Mankind – the pivot round which all the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh revolve – is no mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hope. . . . . . It implies an organic change in the structure of present-day society, a change such as the world has not experienced…. 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.

(World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: pages 42-43. Quoted in Century of Light: page 50)

To one degree or another, most Bahá’ís no doubt appreciated that the Assemblies they were being called on to form had a significance far beyond the mere management of practical affairs with which they were charged (op. cit: Page 54). Century of Light again quoted Shoghi Effendi:

. . . . they were integral parts of an Administrative Order that will, in time, “assert its claim and demonstrate its capacity to be regarded not only as the nucleus but the very pattern of the New World Order destined to embrace in the fullness of time the whole of mankind”.

(Century of Light: Page 55)

A word of explanation is perhaps needed here. The Bahá’í Faith has an administrative system that involves electing local and national assemblies on an annual basis. This is done without electioneering: the Bahá’í voter in a secret ballot votes for anyone within the community, local or national as appropriate, who seems to him or her to have the necessary qualities of character and experience to execute the role of Assembly member conscientiously and well. Processes such as consultation (see the earlier post on this subject) are vital decision making tools of these institutions. The pattern can be studied and borrowed from by all, whether Bahá’í or not, and in this way the future shape of the world can be influenced by this pattern.

‘The Bahá’í community,’ it goes on to explain, ‘now embarked [on a stage of development] in which the Administrative Order would be erected throughout the planet, its institutions established and the “society building” powers inherent in it fully revealed’ (Century of Light: Pages 55-56). 

It continues with the words of the Guardian  (Page 68):

Theirs is the duty to hold, aloft and undimmed, the torch of Divine guidance, as the shades of night descend upon, and ultimately envelop the entire human race. Theirs is the function, amidst its tumults, perils and agonies, to witness to the vision, and proclaim the approach, of that re-created society, that Christ-promised Kingdom, that World Order whose generative impulse is the spirit of none other than Bahá’u’lláh Himself, whose dominion is the entire planet, whose watchword is unity, whose animating power is the force of Justice, whose directive purpose is the reign of righteousness and truth, and whose supreme glory is the complete, the undisturbed and everlasting felicity of the whole of human kind.

Moving Towards Empowerment

Century of Light speaks of the role of planning not as though ‘the Bahá’í community has assumed the responsibility of “designing” a future for itself’, but as striving ‘to align the work of the Cause with the Divinely impelled process they see steadily unfolding in the world.’ This is a purpose, of course, which can influence all peoples of good will, whether Bahá’í or not. Their duty is to align their efforts with the spirit of the age in their way just as Bahá’ís do in this particular fashion. By these combined efforts the world will change. However:

The challenge to the Administrative Order is to ensure that, as Providence allows, Bahá’í efforts are in harmony with this Greater Plan of God, because it is in doing so that the potentialities implanted in the Cause by Bahá’u’lláh bear their fruit.

(Century of Light: Page 69)

The Greater Plan of God, the spirit of the age seen as the organising principle of unity in diversity, requires the efforts of the whole of humanity. As a Bahá’í community we have to make sure that we provide a kind of catalyst by means of what we do within our administrative system and in collaboration with all people’s good will, the Lesser Plan of God.

Century of Light continues:

. . . . . The organic unity of the body of believers – and the Administrative Order that makes it possible – are evidences of what Shoghi Effendi termed “the society-building power which their Faith possesses.”

(Century of Light: Page 97)

By 1996, it had become possible, as the Faith grew, to see all of the distinct strands of this complex enterprise as integral parts of one coherent whole (Century of Light: page 108). There were still challenges though.

For the most part, however, these [new Bahá’í] friends were essentially recipients of teaching programmes conducted by teachers and pioneers from outside. One of the great strengths of the masses of humankind from among whom the newly enrolled believers came lies in an openness of heart that has the potentiality to generate lasting social transformation. The greatest handicap of these same populations has so far been a passivity learned through generations of exposure to outside influences which, no matter how great their material advantages, have pursued agendas that were often related only tangentially – if at all – to the realities of the needs and daily lives of indigenous peoples.

(Century of Light: pages 108-109)

This highlighted a need, the meeting of which led to the creation of the Training Institute process (page 109) that empowered people to take initiatives and persist in action even under difficult circumstances:

. . . beginning in the 1970s in Colombia, where a systematic and sustained programme of education in the Writings was devised and soon adopted in neighbouring countries. Influenced by the Colombian community’s parallel efforts in the field of social and economic development, the breakthrough was all the more impressive in the fact that it was achieved against a background of violence and lawlessness that was deranging the life of the surrounding society.

The Colombian achievement has proved a source of great inspiration and example to Bahá’í communities elsewhere in the world.

The process of transformation the Cause has set in motion advances by inducing a fundamental change of consciousness, and the challenge it poses for all those of us who would serve it is to free ourselves from attachment to inherited assumptions and preferences that are irreconcilable with the Will of God for humanity’s coming of age (page 136).

Seat of the Universal House of Justice © Bahá’í World Centre

Century of Light towards the end (pages 139-140) concludes:

. . . . With the successful establishment in 1963 of the Universal House of Justice, the Bahá’ís of the world set out on the first stage of a mission of long duration: the spiritual empowerment of the whole body of humankind as the protagonists of their own advancement.

We must not underestimate the significance of this achievement:

The process leading to the election of the Universal House of Justice . . . .  very likely constituted history’s first global democratic election. Each of the successive elections since then has been carried out by an ever broader and more diverse body of the community’s chosen delegates, a development that has now reached the point that it incontestably represents the will of a cross-section of the entire human race. There is nothing in existence – nothing indeed envisioned by any group of people – that in any way resembles this achievement.

(Century of Light: page 92)

See links below to the subsequent five posts which examine in more detail some of the specific components of this process of empowerment.

Related Articles

Humanity is our Business (3/5): Capacity Building (a)

Humanity is our Business (3/5): Capacity Building (b)

Humanity is our Business (4/5): Devotional Meetings

Humanity is our Business (5/5): (a) The Plight of Children

Humanity is our Business (5/5): (b) What can we do for our children?

Read Full Post »

Review (1/1): ‘The Road to Middlemarch’

I know this isn’t about poetry, my current obvious focus, but I am in the process of working towards expanding my gaze, so this seemed worth another shot. The second and final post comes out tomorrow.  

I recently finished The Road to Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead.

George Eliot has long been one of my favourite novelists. I tasted her first in my schooldays, even though my leisure choices were usually Byron and the Brontes. At this point, it was only her earlier work such as Silas Marner, mixed with Dickens’ more popular productions such as A Tale of Two Cities and Jane Austen’s best seller Pride and Prejudice – a bland and fairly easily digestible salad for my still developing palate.

Later at university I moved onto more demanding dishes altogether – Middlemarch, Our Mutual Friend and Emma. I can’t quite remember when I started to savour the cuisine of other cultures such as Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Conrad and even Joyce’s Ulysses, but I think it was a lot later even than that. My digestive system failed completely and irreversibly, I’m afraid, at Finnegan’s Wake.

Anyway, enough boasting.

In spite of everything, Middlemarch stubbornly remained a favourite especially after teaching it at ‘A’ level. I had resolved to read it once a year once I retired but have only managed to finish it once in those five years! Rebecca Mead’s performance puts me to shame. By my calculations, from her account on page 8, she has read it at least five times and probably more. Even so, under such light pressure, my paperback copy has collapsed – I have only the cover left to remind me of how fond I was of it! This is now kept inside my copy of Frederick Karl’s biography.

Ahead of her Time

In Mead’s treatment I was struck by how much Eliot anticipates important contemporary themes from the very specific to the broader brush. This will become the focus of much of the second part of this review. While I found her sharing of the ways that Eliot illumined her path through life, and her descriptions of the places she visited to retrace Eliot’s steps, held my interest sufficiently well, they weren’t hugely informative.

I was more gripped by the overlap of ideas that broke through the surface narrative at regular intervals.

For example, in her discussion of The Mill on the Floss Rebecca Mead touches on an interesting point when she quotes Eliot on page 38:

 . . . surely if we could recall that early bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely perspectiveless conception of life that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should not pooh-pooh the grief of our children.

That phrase ‘strangely perspectiveless conception of life’ rang important bells for me. I was back with Margaret Donaldson’s brilliant book, Human Minds, and her concept of point mode (op.cit. page 30):

The first mode, which is called the point mode, [is] a way of functioning in which the locus of concern is that directly experienced chunk of space time that one currently inhabits: the here and now.

This mode of experiencing reality is not confined to infancy and early childhood though (page 43):

. . . .  although direct concern with what is here and now is accompanied in early infancy by narrow temporal awareness, this does not have to be so. . . . . When an adult concentrates on a skilled task, such as uppholstering a chair, there is the absorption in the moment that is typical of the point mode, yet there is a great reliance on past experience and a well formulated goal that is some way ahead: the finished chair.

That Eliot was able to pinpoint this kind of experience so accurately in words in such an early novel is what gives me confidence to trust the validity of her later conclusions about other things less easily corroborated.

Possible Limitations

Mead is not naïve about Middlemarch though. She unpacks what Virginia Woolf might have meant in her praise of the novel.

Virginia Woolf (For source of image see link)

She picks particularly on Woolf’s expression “with all its imperfections.” She writes (page 46):

What are these imperfections? Woolf gives few specifics, though she cites Eliot’s unwillingness to let one sentence stand for many and contrasts it with the delicacy shown by Jane Austen’s Emma. . . . . . She says that Eliot – the grand daughter of a carpenter, as she reminds us – is out of her depth when it comes to the depiction of higher social strata, and resorts to stock images of claret and velvet carpets. Eliot’s hold on dialogue is often slack. Occasionally, she lacks taste. She suffers from ‘an elderly dread of fatigue from the effort of emotional concentration.’

She quotes (page 47) Woolf’s further comment that there is however a melancholy acknowledgement of human limitation which makes the book distinctly appropriate for ‘grown-up people.’

Mead also defends Eliot’s use of the now unpopular authorial voice (page 54) and quotes examples to prove its value:

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lives on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.’

This contrasts strongly with the experience of reading Jane Austen, for example, where her device of free indirect speech means that the story unfolds through the consciousness of her characters rather than through any kind of explicit statements of her views. As Wikipedia explains: ‘What distinguishes free indirect speech from normal indirect speech is the lack of an introductory expression such as “He said” or “he thought”.’

What surprised me was that, as a student of English literature in the 60s in Cambridge, I had failed completely to take on board that this is how Jane Austen wrote. So much so, that when I recently read Mansfield Park (I am ashamed to say, for the first time), I was astonished to find that the whole narrative was carried along almost completely from within the consciousness of her characters. The caustic nature of her irony makes her presence felt even when she is nominally in the head of a character, especially that egomaniac, Mrs Norris. When the plan to bring Fanny, the daughter of her impoverished sister, to Mansfield Park, is being discussed, we get a typically caustic glimpse into her mind with only the faintest of obvious authorial touches at the start (Chapter 1):

The division of gratifying sensations ought not, in strict justice, to have been equal; for Sir Thomas was fully resolved to be the real and consistent patron of the selected child, and Mrs. Norris had not the least intention of being at any expense whatever in her maintenance. As far as walking, talking, and contriving reached, she was thoroughly benevolent, and nobody knew better how to dictate liberality to others; but her love of money was equal to her love of directing, and she knew quite as well how to save her own as to spend that of her friends.

Ford Maddox Ford does the same thing even more consistently in his greatest works such as Parade’s End.

The value of this approach is unquestioned. You are drawn deeply into the experience of the characters and, as in life, you can never be completely sure you have understood exactly what happened in an objective sense – all you have is a composite of subjective points of view.

I believe it is crucial that we all come to realise our interconnectedness. I therefore welcome the way the reading of novels has been shown to relate to increased empathy and social skills. Keith Oatley‘s book, Such Stuff as Dreams, tackles the thorny and long-standing question of whether fiction is pointless and a nuisance or whether it has some value. He feels that one of fiction’s most important benefits is the fostering of empathy. He defines empathy as follows (page 113):

In modern times, and on the basis of recent research on brain imaging, empathy has been described as involving: (a) having an emotion, that (b) is in some way similar to that of another person, that (c) is elicited by observation or imagination of the other’s emotion, and that involves (d) knowing that the other is the source of one’s own emotion.

He asks a general question (page 95):

If we engage in the simulations of fiction, do the skills we learn there transfer to the everyday social world?

In this book he sees fiction as (page 99)

. . . . . a kind of simulation, one that runs not on computers but on minds: a simulation of selves in their interactions with others in the social world. This is what Shakespeare and others called a dream.

And finds that the research suggests that the skills we learn there do transfer to ordinary life. After explaining a carefully controlled study by Raymond Mar, he writes that when all other variables were controlled for (and could therefore be discounted as an explanation of the effects) – page 159:

The result indicates that better abilities in empathy and theory of mind were best explained by the kind of reading people mostly did. . . . . .

Other studies he quotes all point in the same direction (page 165):

Nussbaum argues that this ability to identify with others by means of empathy or compassion is developed by the reading of fiction.

Clearly, if that is what we are after, free indirect speech would be a strong candidate for one of the best ways of enhancing empathy.

However, there are also advantages in a similar direction, as Mead points out in this engaging tour of Eliot’s thought, to the use of the author’s own voice which we will come on to next time.

Related

The film of Mansfield Park lacks the depth and subtlety of the book but it was the impact of this film that helped me overcome the resistance engendered by the negative critics, go back and read it for myself.

 

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Healing our Divisions (5/5): The Road to a Higher Self

In the spirit of what I wrote in the previous post I needed to check with my holistic self whether I was on the right track with this next post. I got the cryptic hint ‘diaries.’ Again I was tempted to bin the suggestion. After a short period of reflection I decided to take a look at my oldest diary to see if there was anything worth remembering there. There was a lot – too much for now – so I’ll just share one relevant insight. Good advice though from my right brain.

In December 1975 I wrote in that diary, ‘Violence and lies[1] are the twin pillars of our temple of exploitation, power, inhumanity, barbarism and self-destruction. Only without lies and without violence, can we win a free society against an enslaved one – the best in our civilisation derives from truth and charity. But in a world of power and wealth how does truth win without murder and charity prevail without deceit? What are our weapons?’

These kinds of questions haunted me almost completely unanswered until December 1982 when I discovered the Bahá’í perspective which helped me make sense of the fragmented insights I had stumbled across until then, and to find further gems of understanding that strengthened my grip on the value of the path I had chosen to tread from that point on.

This, the final post in this sequence, will attempt to convey some of the most important of those insights in terms of achieving the inner unity essential to our being able to work effectively towards healing the divisions in the society surrounding us. It’s not going to be easy.

Why is inner unity so important?

While I may resonate strongly to the exhortation of Bahá’u’lláh in the Hidden Words, which convey to me the imperative necessity of becoming united within ourselves, not all may see them as so powerfully compelling. He wrote:

Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest.

Jean Hardy in her excellent book A Psychology with a Soul helps move some way towards understanding why this truth matters. She refers[2] to Roberto Assagioli’s key concept as synthesis:

This is the understanding that at the individual level, at the level of the group, society and the world as a whole, we are fragmented socially and spiritually.

However, quoting Martin Buber and then U Thant, she explains that[3] ‘The world of humanity is meant to become a single body,’ and ‘we cannot end the war between nations unless we end the war in the hearts of man.’

Towards the end of her book she expresses the core truth succinctly:[4]

. . . the possibility of redemption for the world and the possibility of redemption for each person were part of the same process; one could not happen without the other.

For her and Assagioli these are reciprocally reinforcing and absolutely essential processes concerned with[5] ‘recognizing and working with the fragmented parts of the great whole, whether they are subpersonalities or nations, and working with these parts in the context of [a] larger perspective.’ As a result ‘it becomes increasingly clear… that we are part of a personal, social and spiritual whole and how lethal the present fragmentation is.’

The Genuine Value of the Higher Self

When I was exploring Jeremy Rifkin’s brilliant exposure of the destructive dynamics of our civilisation I was made very aware of how crucial it is that we have some source of inspiration that will enable us to make the prolonged and arduous efforts required to transcend our divisive limitations and work in as sufficiently sustained way to save ourselves from self-destruction. Rifkin’s solution to meeting this need is outlined when he begins to explain his full model:[6]

The more deeply we empathise with each other and our fellow creatures, the more intensive and extensive is our level of participation and the richer and more universal are the realms of reality in which we dwell. Our level of intimate participation defines our level of understanding of reality. Our experience becomes increasingly more global and universal. We become fully cosmopolitan and immersed in the affairs of the world. This is the beginning of biosphere consciousness.

If we could extend our compassion of compassion and our sense of identity to embrace the planet earth and all the life forms that inhabit it, he feels, we would have the necessary motivation to do what is needed for long enough and diligently enough to rescue our selves and all life on earth.

It might possibly enable us to transcend our inner and outer divisions sufficiently to save the planet.

I am still left with two questions:

• Would we be even more effective if we believed in a transcendent reality of which this world is just a pale reflection?
• Is our Western mind’s denial of this possibility, rooted as it is in a dogmatic materialism that embraces competition rather than co-operation and acquisition rather than sharing, more likely to undermine such efforts, delaying their efficacy and prolonging the agony, if it is not uprooted and replaced by a deeper warrant for protracted sacrifice and service than the planet can provide?

Some people, but only too small a minority in my view, would be sufficiently empowered by the idea of Gaia alone. Most of us wouldn’t. We need something more, but does something more exist?

The Mind/Brain issue

Unfortunately, it is impossible to prove (or disprove, as well of course) the existence of a God. Fortunately, though, there is strong evidence, for those who can be bothered to examine it dispassionately, that should be sufficient to convince most of us that the mind is not reducible to the brain, and that life is possible after the death of the brain.

There are many posts on this theme throughout this blog. I’ll just quote briefly here from the most recent one, focusing on the work of Bruce Greyson.

First there is his wake up call.

Fifty years ago, at the start of his career in psychiatry, Greyson’s default scepticism received a resounding blow. A patient called Holly had seen a conversation he’d had with her flat mate, Susan, in another room while she was still unconscious after a probable overdose. The torpedo point, in terms of his scepticism about such phenomena, was that she had seen a stain on his tie from the spaghetti he’d splashed in his haste to respond to the emergency call he’d received in the staff canteen.

The impact of this improbable incident wouldn’t relinquish its grip on his mind:[7]

. . . through all those years, in the back of my mind, were the nagging questions about the mind and the brain that Holly raised with her knowledge of that stain on my tie. My personal need as a sceptic to follow the evidence kept me from closing my eyes to events like that – events that seemed impossible – and led me on a journey to study them scientifically.

In the end, he managed to move from denial to a kind of scepticism more conducive to a genuinely scientific approach. He explains the reasoning behind that shift:[8]

Far from leading us away from science and into superstition, NDE research actually shows that by applying the methods of science to the non-physical aspects of our world, we can describe reality much more accurately than if we limit our science to nothing but physical matter and energy.

The purpose of his book is[9] ‘to show that science and spirituality are compatible, that being spiritual doesn’t require you to abandon science.’ And he defends himself against the a priori attack that some scientists make on the very idea of exploring such a topic by arguing that[10] ‘what makes an investigation scientific is not the topic being studied. What makes an investigation scientific is whether it’s based on rigorous observations, on evidence, and on sound reasoning. In support of that he quotes the neuroscientist Mark Leary: “The fact that some people do not believe that a phenomenon is real does not make research on that phenomenon pseudoscientific.”

The shift in his position is clear,[11] ‘I knew that immersing myself in near-death experiences was pushing me to grow and changing my view of the mind and the brain and who we really are as human beings.’ He ended up in a very different place from where he started:[12]

I don’t have any alternative explanation of the evidence. We may eventually come up with another explanation, but until then, minds and brains as separate things, with brains acting to filter our thoughts and feelings, seems to be the most plausible working model.

Jean Hardy seems to feel that such possibilities might be enough. She quotes Peter Russell in support of this:[13]

The problem of the person is the problem of evil and suffering on the earth. If we lived from our souls rather than from our personalities, ‘we would begin to feel for the rest of the world in much the same way as we feel for our bodies. This would almost certainly have a profound effect on how we treat the environment.’

John Rowan appears to be singing from much the same hymn sheet, quoting Frances Vaughan (née Clark – 1977):[14]

The concept of the transpersonal self as that centre of pure awareness which simultaneously transcends and observes conflicts at the level of ego and personality is useful here in giving a point of reference for the newly awakened sense of self (1977).

Before I begin to address the challenge of how we might access our ‘transpersonal self’ I need to briefly address what I suspect may be what causes some readers to stop reading. An eloquent exponent of the kind of scepticism that might trigger such a reaction is  Guy Claxton, for example in his book The Wayward Mind. He has a lot to share about the mind that is valuable, but not ideas like this, I think:[15]

This figment of the human imagination – the immortal, animating, conscious soul – neatly mops up quite a few of the core mysteries of human existence, and provides a measure of reassurance, in the midst of all kinds of seemingly chaotic and senseless events. Not least, the fear of death is mitigated by the belief that it is not, after all, The End. Immortality also helps with the blatant conundrum of inequity. The vicissitudes of life make a mockery of any simplistic belief in fairness. Bad deeds go unpunished; tyrants frequently prosper; the virtuous get cancer and their children go off the rails for no apparent reason.… Life after death helps to even up the score: to preserve faith in ultimate fairness – in two ways. It holds out the promise that virtue will be rewarded, and evil punished, in the ‘afterlife’.

He speaks with an unwarranted level of certainty bordering on arrogance. If that was all that could be said in favour of an afterlife then wish fulfilment might be a fair description of the attempt.

Theodicy, I admit, is a problem for believers in a compassionate and omnipotent God. I’ve struggled with it myself in An Angle on Suffering. My conclusion partly maps onto the position he mocks:

In the end though . . . any consideration of suffering that fails to include a reality beyond the material leaves us appalled at what would seem the pointless horror of the pain humanity endures not only from nature but also from its own hands

What Claxton fails to even begin to address is the wealth of carefully collected evidence that calls into question any purely material explanation for consciousness. The mind is simply not reducible to the brain, as the excellent collection of evidence testifies in Irreducible Mind and also in Bruce Greyson’s book, to which I have already referred. While this does not constitute absolute proof for the existence of an immortal soul it certainly requires any materialist with genuine scientific credentials to admit that uncertainty is in this case the best policy by far. To believe there is no soul is as much an act of faith as to believe there definitely is one.

I’ve inserted this preamble at this point in the hope that sceptics will be encouraged to continue reading what might seem an unforgivably flaky conclusion to this sequence.

So let’s pick up the threads.

This newly awakened self, described by Frances Vaughan, enables us to lift ourselves to higher levels of understanding and action. The question then becomes how do we bypass the filter of the brain, how do we learn to wake up?

How to Gain Greater Access to the Higher Self

We’ve been here before many times on this blog, so I don’t intend to labour it here.

John Rowan roots the best means of beginning to access our higher selves in a form of meditation. In the first edition of his book he terms it ‘the Facilitative Way’[16] which ‘both Wilber and Southgate say [is where] real change and development can take place.’ It is basically Vipassana meditation, the oldest of Buddhist meditation practices, which involves observing your thoughts and emotions as they are, without judging or dwelling on them.

In his second edition he quotes Frances Vaughan again (1977) to explain the stages of development that begin with the Facilitative Way:[17]

Three distinct stages can be distinguished in the process of awakening to one’s transpersonal identity. The first stage could be called the stage of identification, characterised by the development of self-awareness… The second stage of transpersonal awakening, in contrast to the first stage of self identification, is one of disidentification… [. . . Psychosynthesis has a good deal to say about this.] The third stage of transpersonal awakening is one of self transcendence… At this stage the concept of a transpersonal self or witness may also be dropped.

Which in effect brings us back to what I have already dealt with in some detail in this sequence (link) so I won’t rehearse it all again. The only other point I feel is worth adding to the insights is derived from my understanding of the quote I’ve previously used from Bahá’u’lláh’s Hidden Words:

Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest.

Without the kind of detachment that disidentification/reflection can help us to achieve we will be unable to connect with others constructively enough to fix the problems that we face collectively at this challenging time. Even at the most basic level, without this capacity to reflect, we cannot set aside our prejudices sufficiently to consult effectively. We can’t creatively compare our different understandings in a way that will enable us to enhance our collective understanding. We’ll be too attached to our own perspective to listen carefully enough to any point of view that differs significantly from it.

Paul Lample explains it like this:[18]

[C]onsultation is the tool that enables a collective investigation of reality in order to search for truth and achieve a consensus of understanding in order to determine the best practical course of action to follow.

Then, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says, this will show us ‘that the views of several individuals are assuredly preferable to one man, even as the power of a number of men is of course greater than the power of one man.’[19] He also emphasises that detachment, of the kind I have attempted to describe, is one of the essential prerequisites to the effective use of consultation. Which is why, as Lample explains, ‘‘Reflection takes a collective form through consultation.’[20]

In the end, the purpose of this sequence has been to try and convey that the road to a better self is also the road to a better world for everyone, for every living creature and for every plant as well in fact. The more people climb on board the better the chance we will have of turning things round in time and saving the earth which is our home.

Heaven only knows whether or not it has succeeded!

Footnote and References

[1]. This reference to ‘violence and lies’ may seem to have been inspired by a remark by Chekhov in a letter of October 1888 to Aleksey Nikolayevich when he included in his list of ‘my holy of holies’, ‘freedom from force and falsehood.’ However, this seemed unlikely because it was a few days later in my diary that I expressed my perplexity at reading such a closely related sentiment for the first time in my recently purchased copy of Avrahm Yarmolinsky’s Letters of Anton Chekhov. Just now, I tracked down a New York Times article of 1973 reviewing two editions of his letters – the one I had by Yarmolinsky and the other by Michael Henry Heim, edited by Simon Karlinsky. The quote from the latter text reads in the immediate context, ‘Chekhov mistrusted abstractions, rejected stereotypes, hated fanaticism and loved life. As he said in a letter dated Oct. 4, 1888: “My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence and lies, no matter what form the latter to take.”’ I’m now fairly sure I must have come across that exact phrasing somewhat earlier than 1975.
[2]. A Psychology with a Soul – page 86.
[3]. Op. cit. – page 92.
[4]. Op. cit. – page 209.
[5]. Op. cit. – pages 209-11.
[6]. The Empathic Civilization – page 154.
[7]. After – page 9.
[8]. Op. cit. – page 11.
[9]. Op. cit. – page 12.
[10]. Op. cit. – page 91.
[11]. Op. cit. – page 207.
[12]. Op. cit. – page 220.
[13]. A Psychology with a Soul – page 215.
[14] The Transpersonal (First Edition) – page 89.
[15] The Wayward Mind – page 68.
[16]. The Transpersonal (First Edition) – pages 82-83.
[17]. The Transpersonal (Second Edition) – page 115.
[18]. Revelation and Social Reality – page 215.
[19]. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá cited in a letter written by Shoghi Effendi, to the National Spiritual Assembly of Persia, 15 February 1922.
[20]. Revelation and Social Reality – page 212.

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Humanity is our Business (2/7): The Vision of Civilisation-Building

From time to time it comes to seem appropriate to republish a much earlier sequence from 2009 on the Bahá’í approach to healing our wounded world. My recent republishing of the sequence on Jeremy Rifkin’s The Empathic Civilisation seemed an appropriate trigger. The posts will appear interwoven with the Rifkin sequence.

If One Common Faith helps the Bahá’í community understand the current context of the vision we are seeking to implement (see previous post), Century of Light helps us see how our understanding of this vision developed by slow degrees.

Obstacles to Understanding

Secularisation partly explains the difficulty humanity as a whole has in grasping a transcendent vision of global transformation: the failure of religion makes a contribution too.

. . . the secularization of society’s upper levels seemed to go hand in hand with a pervasive religious obscurantism among the general population.

(Century of Light: Sec I, page 6)

We also all lack precedents to aid our understanding:

Our century, with all its upheavals and its grandiloquent claims to create a new order, has no comparable example of the systematic application of the powers of a single Mind to the building of a distinctive and successful community that saw its ultimate sphere of work as the globe itself.

(Century of Light: page 10)

British Museum: London

People might, for example, claim that Marx had developed what seemed to be a global vision but it is not in fact comparable. It was a muddled reductionist vision. It was reductionist in the way that it relegated ideas to the back seat and promoted material conditions to the driving seat of history. It was muddled because, at the same time, it used exhortation to enlist the persuadable to throw their weight behind the idea of a supposedly impersonal dialectic of change. Also all the attempts to implement the vision have so far been catastrophically destructive, involving Chekhov‘s pet hates of ‘violence and lies‘ in abundance. Not only that but Marx had the benefit of one of the best libraries in the world – the British Museum’s reading room – and still failed to achieve the breadth, depth, complexity, compassion and ultimate practical efficacy of  the vision expounded by Bahá’u’lláh in prison and from exile.

An Unfolding Understanding

The Guardian’s Resting Place

Even within the Bahá’í community understanding of the vision evolved over a period of  time. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in his role as expounder of the words of Bahá’u’lláh, emphasised the role of the recognition of the oneness of the human race (Century of Light: page 23). Later, Shoghi Effendi, who was appointed in his turn as interpreter of the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh and died in London in 1957, drew out the implications:

The principle of the Oneness of Mankind – the pivot round which all the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh revolve – is no mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hope. . . . . . It implies an organic change in the structure of present-day society, a change such as the world has not experienced…. 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.

(World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: pages 42-43. Quoted in Century of Light: page 50)

To one degree or another, most Bahá’ís no doubt appreciated that the Assemblies they were being called on to form had a significance far beyond the mere management of practical affairs with which they were charged (op. cit: Page 54). Century of Light again quoted Shoghi Effendi:

. . . . they were integral parts of an Administrative Order that will, in time, “assert its claim and demonstrate its capacity to be regarded not only as the nucleus but the very pattern of the New World Order destined to embrace in the fullness of time the whole of mankind”.

(Century of Light: Page 55)

A word of explanation is perhaps needed here. The Bahá’í Faith has an administrative system that involves electing local and national assemblies on an annual basis. This is done without electioneering: the Bahá’í voter in a secret ballot votes for anyone within the community, local or national as appropriate, who seems to him or her to have the necessary qualities of character and experience to execute the role of Assembly member conscientiously and well. Processes such as consultation (see the earlier post on this subject) are vital decision making tools of these institutions. The pattern can be studied and borrowed from by all, whether Bahá’í or not, and in this way the future shape of the world can be influenced by this pattern.

‘The Bahá’í community,’ it goes on to explain, ‘now embarked [on a stage of development] in which the Administrative Order would be erected throughout the planet, its institutions established and the “society building” powers inherent in it fully revealed’ (Century of Light: Pages 55-56). 

It continues with the words of the Guardian  (Page 68):

Theirs is the duty to hold, aloft and undimmed, the torch of Divine guidance, as the shades of night descend upon, and ultimately envelop the entire human race. Theirs is the function, amidst its tumults, perils and agonies, to witness to the vision, and proclaim the approach, of that re-created society, that Christ-promised Kingdom, that World Order whose generative impulse is the spirit of none other than Bahá’u’lláh Himself, whose dominion is the entire planet, whose watchword is unity, whose animating power is the force of Justice, whose directive purpose is the reign of righteousness and truth, and whose supreme glory is the complete, the undisturbed and everlasting felicity of the whole of human kind.

Moving Towards Empowerment

Century of Light speaks of the role of planning not as though ‘the Bahá’í community has assumed the responsibility of “designing” a future for itself’, but as striving ‘to align the work of the Cause with the Divinely impelled process they see steadily unfolding in the world.’ This is a purpose, of course, which can influence all peoples of good will, whether Bahá’í or not. Their duty is to align their efforts with the spirit of the age in their way just as Bahá’ís do in this particular fashion. By these combined efforts the world will change. However:

The challenge to the Administrative Order is to ensure that, as Providence allows, Bahá’í efforts are in harmony with this Greater Plan of God, because it is in doing so that the potentialities implanted in the Cause by Bahá’u’lláh bear their fruit.

(Century of Light: Page 69)

The Greater Plan of God, the spirit of the age seen as the organising principle of unity in diversity, requires the efforts of the whole of humanity. As a Bahá’í community we have to make sure that we provide a kind of catalyst by means of what we do within our administrative system and in collaboration with all people’s good will, the Lesser Plan of God.

Century of Light continues:

. . . . . The organic unity of the body of believers – and the Administrative Order that makes it possible – are evidences of what Shoghi Effendi termed “the society-building power which their Faith possesses.”

(Century of Light: Page 97)

By 1996, it had become possible, as the Faith grew, to see all of the distinct strands of this complex enterprise as integral parts of one coherent whole (Century of Light: page 108). There were still challenges though.

For the most part, however, these [new Bahá’í] friends were essentially recipients of teaching programmes conducted by teachers and pioneers from outside. One of the great strengths of the masses of humankind from among whom the newly enrolled believers came lies in an openness of heart that has the potentiality to generate lasting social transformation. The greatest handicap of these same populations has so far been a passivity learned through generations of exposure to outside influences which, no matter how great their material advantages, have pursued agendas that were often related only tangentially – if at all – to the realities of the needs and daily lives of indigenous peoples.

(Century of Light: pages 108-109)

This highlighted a need, the meeting of which led to the creation of the Training Institute process (page 109) that empowered people to take initiatives and persist in action even under difficult circumstances:

. . . beginning in the 1970s in Colombia, where a systematic and sustained programme of education in the Writings was devised and soon adopted in neighbouring countries. Influenced by the Colombian community’s parallel efforts in the field of social and economic development, the breakthrough was all the more impressive in the fact that it was achieved against a background of violence and lawlessness that was deranging the life of the surrounding society.

The Colombian achievement has proved a source of great inspiration and example to Bahá’í communities elsewhere in the world.

The process of transformation the Cause has set in motion advances by inducing a fundamental change of consciousness, and the challenge it poses for all those of us who would serve it is to free ourselves from attachment to inherited assumptions and preferences that are irreconcilable with the Will of God for humanity’s coming of age (page 136).

Seat of the Universal House of Justice © Bahá’í World Centre

Century of Light towards the end (pages 139-140) concludes:

. . . . With the successful establishment in 1963 of the Universal House of Justice, the Bahá’ís of the world set out on the first stage of a mission of long duration: the spiritual empowerment of the whole body of humankind as the protagonists of their own advancement.

We must not underestimate the significance of this achievement:

The process leading to the election of the Universal House of Justice . . . .  very likely constituted history’s first global democratic election. Each of the successive elections since then has been carried out by an ever broader and more diverse body of the community’s chosen delegates, a development that has now reached the point that it incontestably represents the will of a cross-section of the entire human race. There is nothing in existence – nothing indeed envisioned by any group of people – that in any way resembles this achievement.

(Century of Light: page 92)

See links below to the subsequent five posts which examine in more detail some of the specific components of this process of empowerment.

Related Articles

Humanity is our Business (3/5): Capacity Building (a)

Humanity is our Business (3/5): Capacity Building (b)

Humanity is our Business (4/5): Devotional Meetings

Humanity is our Business (5/5): (a) The Plight of Children

Humanity is our Business (5/5): (b) What can we do for our children?

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