Baquia has invited me to write some columns here and in way of introducing myself, I’ve chosen this YouTube clip as inspiration for my beginning:
I chose this also in way of response as a non-American living in Europe, to the current presidental run-up. I am not belitteling this, just noting how these candidates are dominating the airways and news in a small distant European country.
Note the “tongue-in-cheek” reference in the few first minutes, the video artist is also reminding us, he intends this as a light-hearted commentary on recent world events and perhaps on politics itself. My take on this video is that it is reminder of how easy it is to get caught up in fear or feel confused by things that seem black or white, right or wrong or whatever. So I wish the American voters who read this, greyness and nuance 
It must be tough to maintain a sense of involvement when politics, in this case, is just a choice between two (one or the other), when it would be easier to switch off completely, however as Bahais we are obliged not to switch off.
Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.
Baha’u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah, p. 212
…as the government of America is a republican form of government, it is necessary that all the citizens shall take part in the elections of officers and take part in the affairs of the republic.
Abdu’l-Baha, Tablets of Abdu’l-Baha v2, p. 342
The tone of this video is a bit like Baha’u'llah’s where the first part is a quotation from the Qur’an:
“Pharaoh said: ‘Let me alone, that I may kill Moses; and let him call upon his Lord: I fear lest he change your religion, or cause disorder to show itself in the land.’ And Moses said: ‘I take refuge with my Lord, and your Lord from every proud one who believeth not in the Day of Reckoning.’”
Men have, at all times, considered every World Reformer a fomenter of discord, and have referred unto Him in terms with which all are familiar.
Baha’u'llah, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 63
You could see the Pharaoh as Bush and Moses as a symbol for change - for a new voice. Baha’u'llah turns the day of reckoning into world reform. It is a positive spin on the apocalyptic approach.
The dominant text in the video “this is the end of the world (as we know it)”, as I see it, is about a fear of change.
Abdu’l-Baha wrote:
Note thou carefully that in this world of being, all things must ever be made new. Look at the material world about thee, see how it hath now been renewed. The thoughts have changed, the ways of life have been revised, the sciences and arts show a new vigour, discoveries and inventions are new, perceptions are new. How then could such a vital power as religion — the guarantor of mankind’s great advances, the very means of attaining everlasting life, the fosterer of infinite excellence, the light of both worlds — not be made new?
Abdu’l-Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Baha, p. 52
And just to hammer this idea of ‘change’, here’s Baha’u'llah:
In this journey the seeker becometh witness to a myriad changes and transformations, confluences and divergences. He beholdeth the wonders of Divinity in the mysteries of creation and discovereth the paths of guidance and the ways of his Lord. …
When once the seeker hath ascended unto this station, he will enter the City of Love and Rapture,
Baha’u'llah, Gems of Divine Mysteries, p. 27
…the seeker, at the outset of his journey, witnesseth change and transformation, as hath already been mentioned. This is undoubtedly the truth, as hath been revealed concerning those days: “On the day when the earth shall be changed into another earth.” These are indeed days the like of which no mortal eye hath ever seen.
Baha’u'llah, Gems of Divine Mysteries, p. 61
If you make it to the end of the video you’ll see Churchill say: “this is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end (as we know it) but it is perhaps the end of the beginning.”
This is my end. Till next time and all comments however grey (and even white or black) are most welcome.
The Lone Ranger was a hero for me for years — in fact he still is.
Clayon Moore and Jay Silverheels played characters one could count on. They always sided with the underdog and what was right. They could shoot straight — The Lone Ranger shot the guns out of the bad guys hands. The stories were interesting with ghost towns and silver mines where The Rangers bullets came from. Clayton Moore’s voice was a deep and resonant as Darth Vader’s (but he used his voice for good not evil!)
Even long after he stopped playing the part, Moore made public appearances as The Lone Ranger and kept the Ranger’s do-gooder philosophy alive. But no one dared call hi a doogooder to his (masked) face! (No don’t take the mask off the old Lone Ranger and you don’t fool around with Jim.)
If Clayton Moore had run for president he would have won.
I wish he could run now…
BTW — All things are made new each day and some say with each breath. Especially just before dawn.
Hi Ho Silver, Away!
Frank
After the soul of the nation teetered on the brink of Idiocracy, Peter Pan spoke thusly about the GREAT Lollypop paradox:
“There are no red lolly pops and blue lolly pops, there are only the UNITED STATES of lolly pops”.
Thus, Obubba will usher in a 40 year cycle of modern postmodern postpartisan partisanship, and, as in Lake Wobegon, “All the children will be above average” and hedge funds will only be about saving money for gardening (organic, sustainable, biodynamic).
With all due respect, it does not sound like Mr. Wilson “really” understands how things work in bahai. Celebrities like Wilson tend to live in a bubble in the bahai community, and are insulated from the creepy fundamentalists, weirdos and thought police that really run things in bahai.
http://winstondelgado.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/9808-days-in-the-life/
(http://www.bahai.us/rainn-wilson)
bahai is not a “progressive” or “liberal” religion, except on a superficial level. many people that believe in it are wonderful, altruistic, compassionate people, but the underlying religion is rotten, and is a failed attempt to graft a western/modernist paradigm onto a reformist shia/sufi framework that is full of outmoded and discredited metaphysics.
I’ve known many of the counterculture bahais, dissident intellectuals, etc., for over 20 years that attempted to reform bahai (in the usa) into a more democratic, mystical religion, and am sad to say that many of them were viciously attacked by the forces of rigidity and bureaucractic orthodoxy in bahai.
bahai was originally run by a cozy clique of insiders. who, from the 1930s, were dominantly upper class snobs and racists. like most organizations, it eventually became dysfunctional, and unable to engage in unvarnished, honest, open discussion of problems. as a result, a hardened, cultish attitude set in that is intolerant of nonconformists and critics. almost everyone I’ve known for 30+ years in bahai becomes very comfortable with marginalizing and demonizing anyone that asks real questions about the corrupt, inept bahai bureaucracy. especially those that gets jobs in bahai, or marry into the “important” families. yes, racism is not unusual. whites [or any other non-persians] can’t marry into the “important” persian bahai families unless they are from equally snobby white backgrounds.
most of my good friends that are still members in bahai try to maintain some ethical integrity by avoiding the obsession that bahais have with “organization”, and just live by the mystical aspects, doing social justice stuff, environmental, etc., and avoid the spiritually vacant, but pervasive “administration” as much as possible.
what happens with bahai administration is that it is almost invariably inept, and can’t get anything done. some critics claim that it is financially corrupt. in any case, similarly to other inept, dysfunctional organizations, it periodically engages in ridiculous attempts at distracting the “followers” from its failures by engaging in what I call “bureaucratic reinvention”. Some great new plan, method, etc., is developed, and all energy is put into “unifying” the followers around the new old thing. lots of money is spent on glitzy “PR”. hope springs eternal. renewal is in the air. eventually all of the bright promises of utopia dim and reality sets in. scapegoats are found to take the brunt of collective unhappiness. usually the scapegoats are the very nonconformists, dissidents and critics that could have provided better solutions in the first place.
people’s hopes to belong to a group that is working for good, beauty and truth (world peace, justice, etc.) are dashed. they realize they have been exploited by the same kind of disgusting and morally corrupt religious leaders that they thought they had gotten away from. bahai becomes just another source of cynicism and hoplessness.
to sum up: the organizational culture of bahai is sick and dangerous.
bahai flubs evolution badly.
it is completely missing anything like Jungian psychology/archetypes, and has a very bad model of human development.
A much better alternative is Integralism, which is a movement that seeks to develop a transrational/holistic culture, or paradigm, which integrates spirituality and science.
The integral approach to “spirituality and evolution” is far better than the silly (historically untenable) bahai “principle” of “progressive revelation”.
Progressive revelation assumes prophetology, which is, as Ken Wilbers says, is a “middle man scam”. that scam plagues most western religions.
what has happened to bahai critics, nonconformists and dissidents over the last 20 years is very similar to what happened to the Cathars in Spain/France 900 years ago. The high church sent crusaders against the “heretic” Cathars (who dared to openly accuse the high church of corruption), the only crusade against europeans.
bahai is perfectly happy to have people whose ideas about religion, spirtuality and social change are warm, fuzzy, feel-good and superficial, who will never ask questions about the authorities.
all of that is perfectly reflected in the “interview” of Mr. Wilson. It is vacuous, and is empty of meaning, at least to anyone that has seen how things really work in bahai culture, where being obsequious, groveling and obsessive about “saving face” are paramount.
bahai is just another example of a bad religion full of dysfunctional people that has absorbed the worst of postmodern culture.
have a nice day!
Eric P.
Sacramento
XL-ex-bahai (after 30+ years)
re: BoBos in paradise (not so much paradise anymore)
Sonja - Dear and Blessed Light - of many worlds, asks for feedback on “fear of change” and american politics.
If you lived in Germany just before the Nazis took over, you would have been perfectly correct to “fear change”. Or before the mullas seized power in Iran in the late 1970s. Or when communists were taking over Cuba, Russia, China, and killing more human beings in a few decades than ever before in history.
The main dynamic that exists at this point in history is the crisis of legitimization of social institutions. Habermas’ “colonization of lifeworld by systems”.
Both conservatives and liberals, left/right, modernists/postmodernists, etc., are EQUALLY GUILTY AND WRONG.
Any one of those groups that claims to be “for change” or “reform” is completely full of crap. They are just engaged in the same old sick game of grabbing power for their “tribe”. Liberals, progressives and postmodernists have been waiting for an “opening” such as exists right now to make a big move.
To the extent that they accomplish such a “big move” they will cause enormous damage, and further plunge the planet into cultural and psychic “fragmentation” as the “mean green meme” spreads in the wake of the collapse of “tradtional values”. Capitalism, which originally played a major part in freeing the planet from slavery and superstition, will be increasingly seen as an “evil universal’. Tribalism within postmodern culture will spread and bring with it chaos, disorder and poverty. no one wil be “celebrating diversity”, they will be loathing it, in the absence of a higher set of ordering morals/principles.
I’ve seen, since the 1960s, many major swings back and forth from liberal to conservative to liberal in the USA:
JFK->Nixon->Carter->Reagan->Clinton->Bush
Clearly both “sides” have failed to deal with a number of deep, unresolved problems. They tinker around the edges, but leave a broken system in place as the global economic oligarchies take over and screw over the poor, working, and now middle classes.
Bill Clinton sold out the “progressives” and “liberals”, basically telling “Democrats” that “wouldn’t you rather have a Democrat in bed with the wealthy corporations than a Republican?”.
But, people “cling” to the mostly useless “label” of being “liberal” or “progressive”, hoping that old rituals will conjure the ghosts of REFORM, HOPE, CHANGE.
Others stupdily cling to “traditions” and “conservatism”, hoping to go back to the good old days.
All those old labels and categories are being washed away from within people’s thinking. Many of the vast numbers of uber-wealthy do not wish to be seen as “bourgeois”, rather they are “bohemian” (in their consumer ad “lifestyle” choices). The damage caused by their greed, self-absorbsion, and filthy rich values is unfathonable.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2000/may/28/focus.news1
The further left or right one goes, the more insanity is present.
The political choice should not be “just” about the left or the right, it should also be about “something else entirely”.
That “something” is about the integration of all aspects of human consciousness. It should be about abandoning the tendencies of both liberals and conservatives to regress to earlier, now dysfunctional, modes of being refusing to admit that the other “side” has anything valid to say or contribute, and so forth.
http://www.formlessmountain.com/collage.html
Obama steps up to the edge of human evolution, but does not boldy tell the people to move past what is currently known, and to embrace a fuller reality for the future.
—
The “big question” is: if Obama is elected, which seems likely, how fast will the liberals corrupt him?
—
http://integral-options.blogspot.com/2006/08/clare-graves-and-question-facing-us.html
http://www.clarewgraves.com/theory_content/CG_FuturistTable.htm
excerpts:
Human nature prepares for a momentous leap
By Dr. Clare Graves
~ from The Futurist, 1974, pp 72-87.
Briefly, what I am proposing is that the psychology of the mature human being is an unfolding, emergent, oscillating, spiraling process marked by progressive subordination of older, lower-order behavior systems to hewer, higher-order systems as man’s existential problems change. These systems alternate between focus upon the external world, and attempts to change it, and focus upon the inner world, and attempts to come to peace with it, with the means to each end changing in each alternatively prognostic system. Thus, man tends, normally, to change his psychology as the conditions of his existence change. Each successive state, or level of existence, is a state through which people pass on the way to other states of equilibrium. When a person is centralized in one state of existence, he has a total psychology which is particular to that state. His feelings, motivations, ethics and values, biochemistry, degree of neurological activation, learning systems, belief systems, conception of mental health, ideas as to what mental illness is and how it should be treated, preferences for and conceptions of management, education, economic and political theory and practice, etc., are all appropriate to that state.
In some cases, a person may not be genetically or constitutionally equipped to change in the normal upward direction when the conditions of his existence change. Instead, he may stabilize and live out his life at any one or a combination of levels in the hierarchy. Again, he may show the behavior of a level in a predominantly positive or negative manner, or he may, under certain circumstances, regress to a behavior system lower in the hierarchy. Thus, and adult lives in a potentially open system of needs, values and aspirations, but he often settles into what appears to be a closed system.
…
We are now at one of those times in human history when the dominant systems (human behavior as a result of life conditions) are being stretched to the breaking point. The question facing us is this: will we activate emergent systems to deal with the new challenges, or will we regress to earlier stages in a fear response, trying approaches the worked in previous times but that are no longer appropriate to the current challenges?
—
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-10-10/the-conservative-case-for-obama
“Let me ask you, as we’re passing the time here, how many ordinary people do you think an evil authority would have to order to kill you before he found someone who would, unjustly, out of sheer obedience, just because the authority said to? What sort of person is most likely to follow such an order? What kind of official is most likely to give that order, if it suited his purposes? Look at what experiments tell us, as I did.”
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Obubba/Biden ‘08
Hi ep
I am going to try and respond to more of the things you raise in your postings but to start with I’ve just picked this:
“bahai is not a “progressive” or “liberal” religion, except on a superficial level. many people that believe in it are wonderful, altruistic, compassionate people, but the underlying religion is rotten, and is a failed attempt to graft a western/modernist paradigm onto a reformist shia/sufi framework that is full of outmoded and discredited metaphysics.”
Please give me a few examples to help me understand what you mean so I can respond to that.
sonja,
I would suggest rephrasing the question:
does bahai exhibit “antipatterns” that send up exploiting the followers of the religion?
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern)
the answer is “yes” most of the time.
the religion simply does not “deliver the goods” for most people. as studies have shown, most people join a religion like bahai because of a need for “group belonging”. the price to belong to the group is terrible: false beliefs, accepting lies as truths, and becoming “disconnected” from their own humanity in order to support a dysfunctional bureaucracy full of sociopaths.
anyone that dares to wonder why things don’t work is accused (or self censors) of being “spiritually weak”, lacking “discipline”, “can’t follow laws”, “had bad manners”, “has body odor”, poor digestion, sports an inferior haircut, dresses poorly, has failed to improve their handwriting, only went to trade school, doesn’t follow traffic rules, thinks politically incorrect thoughts in secret, and so forth.
the number of dysfunctional aspects of the bahai religion is so long and outrageous that at some point people start wondering what is wrong, missing, etc., from the underlying scriptures and theology. I know that you and Sen and Terry and Juan and others (Tony and Steve, Kalimat, etc.) have worked very hard for a long time to find cool, progressive stuff in the religion as the basis of attempts at reform, but I do not think there is any evidence that you will prevail. that is sad. I’m not aware of any significant trend to the contrary, and most people that battle it out working for reforms for a number of years and refuse to conform will eventually get sick of the futility of fighting against a larger force that has become increasingly resistant to constructive change. 25 years ago, in the early days of Kalimat/Dialogue, there was hope, one would actually meet “underground” bahai dissidents, and the illusion of the possibility of reform seemed real. those days are long gone. I’ve been amazed by the number of people that used to at least pay lip service to “intellectual integrity and honesty” that have become become quite willing to overlook the bullying and thought policing that goes on very regularly in the bahai community. many of these kinds of people work for administration (in some fashion or another), and eventually lose any sense of outside reality or perspective. they are smart, capable, well educated, etc., but eventually get assimmilated into the “borg” (administration mentality).
the manner in which bahai administration (and its minions and apologists, fundamentalists, etc.) operates with a fascist mentality, hunting down and attacking reformers, dissidents, nonconformists and critics is appalling. the attack on a bahai theologian in omaha was the most egregious example that I’m personally aware of, but I’ve seen many other variations on the theme. even when the attackers are called on the carpet, there are rarely any apologies from the higher ups, and no significant course corrections. the problem is that there is “something” in bahai scripture that seems to justify a very cold, heartless, spiritually disconnected attitude of people that, as Dr. John Cornell put it, makes people think that “assemblies can do no wrong”. Dr. Cornell fought against the conformist version of bahai culture for over 50 years, and probably ought to be listed as one of the most important bahai intellectuals in the history of the american bahai community, but he will probably never be remembered.
the “missionary” orientation of bahai, where followers are pressured into “converting” their family and friends is outrageously out of control and exploits people in various ways. the fervor for conversions (which is mostly faked by the ridiculous leadership elites) is usually in inverse proportion to the extent that bahais actually “serve” humanity.
the exclusion of women from the universal house of justice is probably the most glaring, obvious and ridiculous contradiction in the bahai writings.
bahai writings are wrong on evolution. keven brown and eberhard von kitzing tried very hard to retranslate/reinterpret what abdul-baha said to make it conform to science, but they only partially succeeeded. many fundamentalist bahai find evidence in the bahai writings to oppose scientific evolution and advocate for some kind of “intelligent design” that has NO SCIENTIFIC BASIS. that is a giant embarassment.
infallability is wrong. I know that Sen has tried hard to reverse the stupid position taken by bahai administration on the issue, and was rewarded by getting kicked out of the religion.
progressive revelation is wrong, as is prophetology in general. there are no “manifestations” or “revelations” as described in the bahai writings. prophetology and progressive revelation are a continuation of the “middle man” scam that has existed from early in the judeo-christian-islamo-bahai tradition. the “middle man scam” consists of a priest class (”manifestation”, as represented by “administration” in bahai) that place themselves between the “follower” and transcendance, mystical unity, etc.
(Buddhism, in contrast, tries to remove the middleman and give the follower as much direct access to transcendence and mystical unity as possible.)
From the perspective of Habermas’ statements about “colonization of lifeworld by systems” and “the delegitimization of institutions” in postmodern culture, the whole edifice of bahai administration is massively dysfunctional.
bahai will inevitably get sucked backward into the cultural black hole of shiism that it came from.
I honor people like you that are fighting the inevitable lost battle. you are slowing the entropy of the bahai universe a little bit, and are an necessary example of people that will not give up on the search for higher truths even in the face of certain defeat.
I wish you were involved in another religion or social movement that was actually going to make a tangible difference to the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Institute
-
http://www.esalenctr.org/display/confpage.cfm?confid=1&pageid=33&pgtype=1
-
http://books.google.com/books?id=fzSP6BRFBzIC
“…were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.””
Winston Churchill
Regards,
Eric
XL-ex-bahai (after 30+ years)
Sacramento
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/102gwtnf.asp
Among the Bourgeoisophobes
Why the Europeans and Arabs, each in their own way, hate America and Israel.
by David Brooks
04/15/2002, Volume 007, Issue 30
AROUND 1830, a group of French artists and intellectuals looked around and noticed that people who were their spiritual inferiors were running the world. Suddenly a large crowd of merchants, managers, and traders were making lots of money, living in the big houses, and holding the key posts. They had none of the high style of the aristocracy, or even the earthy integrity of the peasants. Instead, they were gross. They were vulgar materialists, shallow conformists, and self-absorbed philistines, who half the time failed even to acknowledge their moral and spiritual inferiority to the artists and intellectuals. What’s more, it was their very mediocrity that accounted for their success. Through some screw-up in the great scheme of the universe, their narrow-minded greed had brought them vast wealth, unstoppable power, and growing social prestige.
Naturally, the artists and intellectuals were outraged. Hatred of the bourgeoisie became the official emotion of the French intelligentsia. Stendhal said traders and merchants made him want to “weep and vomit at the same time.” Flaubert thought they were “plodding and avaricious.” Hatred of the bourgeoisie, he wrote, “is the beginning of all virtue.” He signed his letters “Bourgeoisophobus” to show how much he despised “stupid grocers and their ilk.”
Of all the great creeds of the 19th century, pretty much the only one still thriving is this one, bourgeoisophobia. Marxism is dead. Freudianism is dead. Social Darwinism is dead, along with all those theories about racial purity that grew up around it. But the emotions and reactions that Flaubert, Stendhal, and all the others articulated in the 1830s are still with us, bigger than ever. In fact, bourgeoisophobia, which has flowered variously and spread to places as diverse as Baghdad, Ramallah, and Beijing, is the major reactionary creed of our age.
This is because today, in much of the world’s eyes, two peoples–the Americans and the Jews–have emerged as the great exemplars of undeserved success. Americans and Israelis, in this view, are the money-mad molochs of the earth, the vulgarizers of morals, corrupters of culture, and proselytizers of idolatrous values. These two nations, it is said, practice conquest capitalism, overrunning poorer nations and exploiting weaker neighbors in their endless desire for more and more. These two peoples, the Americans and the Jews, in the view of the bourgeoisophobes, thrive precisely because they are spiritually stunted. It is their obliviousness to the holy things in life, their feverish energy, their injustice, their shallow pursuit of power and gain, that allow them to build fortunes, construct weapons, and play the role of hyperpower.
…
BOURGEOISOPHOBIA is really a hatred of success. It is a hatred held by people who feel they are spiritually superior but who find themselves economically, politically, and socially outranked. They conclude that the world is diseased, that it rewards the wrong values, the wrong people, and the wrong abilities. They become cynical if they are soft inside, violent if they are hard. In the bourgeoisophobe’s mind, the people and nations that do succeed are not just slightly vulgar, not just over-compensated, not just undeservedly lucky. They are monsters, non-human beasts who, in extreme cases, can be blamelessly killed. This Manichaean divide between the successful, who are hideous, and the bourgeoisophobes, who are spiritually pristine, was established early in the emergence of the creed. The early 19th-century German poet Holderlin couldn’t just ignore the merchant bourgeoisie; he had to declare the middle classes “deeply incapable of every divine emotion.” In other words, scarcely human.
…
FOR THE bourgeoisophobe, then, the question becomes, how does one confront this menace? And on this, the bourgeoisophobes split into two schools. One, which might be called the brutalist school, seeks to reclaim the raw, masculine vitality that still lies buried at the virile heart of human nature. The other, which might be called the ethereal school, holds that a creative minority can rise above prosaic bourgeois life into a realm of contemplation, feeling, art, sensibility, and spiritual grace.
…
“Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself. ” Mark Twain
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marktwain161288.html
ep: Thanks for the wikipedia link re: anti-patterns. Fascinating. Just fascinating. And so … applicable!
“I know that you and Sen and Terry and Juan and others (Tony and Steve, Kalimat, etc.) have worked very hard for a long time to find cool, progressive stuff in the religion as the basis of attempts at reform, but I do not think there is any evidence that you will prevail. that is sad.”
Very sad indeed. And (probably) very true. Which is what makes it very sad. Indeed.
“infallability is wrong. I know that Sen has tried hard to reverse the stupid position taken by bahai administration on the issue, and was rewarded by getting kicked out of the religion.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Sen would argue that if the Baha’i Faith is a religion (rather than a sect), one can’t really be kicked out of it, since one can’t be kicked out of a religion. One can call oneself a Baha’i (in a religious sense), but one can’t be part of the Baha’i community. Which seems to me rather like saying that one can call oneself a Catholic, but one can’t be part of the Catholic community. Which is actually a contradiction in terms, since Catholicism is both a religion and a community, neither of which can legitimately be separated from each other. One cannot be Catholic without being a member of the Catholic Church. One can be Christian without being a member of the Catholic Church, but not Catholic. If one can be a “Baha’i” without being a member of the Baha’i community, what is one called? An Abhaist?
Andrew,
If bahai administration takes away one’s membership because of nonconformism to orthodoxy, but one wants to continue to consider themselves a bahai in some broader sense, then one could call oneself a dismembered bahai. or memberless bahai?
the whole thing about dismembering people is backward, dismal and medieval. humanity should have been done with such inquisitions a long time ago.
one of the last (of many) straws for me was when local bahais started using an appeal to an “integral paradigm” for advertising purposes, but they could not even explain what such a thing meant.
collosal ineptitude and phoniness.
when I tried to start a discussion about what an integral paradigm might actually be, it was deemed “off topic” by the “scholars” (to whom anything postmodern/integral is just windows dressing to be used for promotional purposes, to get potential converts interested, etc., before the usual bait-and-switch routine kicks in).
regards,
ep
Ok, back to american politics. and spirituality, or at least consciousness studies.
the question is, if spiritual capitalism (and spiritual science) is evolving in the midst of warring paradigms, what sciopolitical trends should be expected (and presumably supported)?
Note: there have been some significant discussions about the possibilities of “postpartisan politics” in the USA recently.
Background:
http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/excerptB/intro.cfm/
…
Put simply, a theory is a map of a territory, while a paradigm is a practice that brings forth a territory in the first place. The paradigm or social practice itself is called an “exemplar” or “injunction,” and the theory is called, well, the theory. The point is that knowledge revolutions are generally combinations of new paradigm-practices that bring forth a new phenomenological territory plus new theories and maps that attempt to offer some sort of abstract or contoured guidance to the new territories thus disclosed and brought forth. But a new theory without a new practice is simply a new map with no real territory…
A scientific revolution is the result of new paradigms and new theories coming into accord with each other, both of which are anchored, not in abstractions but in social practices. These revolutions are embraced, at the start, by a handful of individuals at the leading edge, but, if validated, these new exemplar-worldviews (paradigms-and-theories) are accepted by the larger culture or knowledge community, becoming a new “normal” or “legitimated” science, which stabilizes and carries forward until the next set of pesky data arises that refuses to be humbled in the existing scheme of things, and new and heretofore undisclosed territories start to shimmer on the horizon of the possible.
A similar process is now at play, I believe, in the nascent integral salons spontaneously forming around the world. Before we discuss that possibility in more detail, here is another example of a knowledge revolution, this time in politics.
The rise of the modern, liberal, representative democracies in the West involved, among innumerable other things, a significant shift in values from traditional to modern, which particularly began in Europe around 1600 and accelerated to something of a crisis pitch by the mid-1770s. Traditional values (e.g., blue, mythic-membership, conventional) tended to be conformist, ethnocentric, hierarchical, mythic-religious, and based on individuals conforming strongly to the present order. Modern values, on the other hand, tend to be egalitarian (not hierarchical), individualistic (not conformist), scientific (not mythic-fundamentalist), and place a premium on equality (not slavery).
This shift from blue to orange, or from traditional values to modern values, was presaged in the salons or “small gatherings of moderns” (the word salon is French, but these gatherings were also occurring in England, Scotland, and Germany, among others), where the social practice of dialoging according to orange values was carefully exercised. That is, the practice of dialogue geared toward mutual understanding, reciprocal exchange, postconventional equality and freedom was practiced by small groups of leading-edge elites. This was a collective, communal, intersubjective, dialogical discourse at the orange wave of consciousness–a social practice, paradigm, or injunction of dialogical discourse within an elite subculture whose center of gravity was orange or higher.
This new exemplar or social practice gave rise to a set of novel experiences, insights, data, illuminations, and interpersonal understandings, which new political theories then sought to capture. Most of these new theories of liberal democracy shared the idea that the only way to integrate individual and social is to have the individual feel that he or she is participating in the laws that govern his or her behavior. In the States this was popularly summarized by the phrase, “No taxation without representation,” and it essentially meant that a people have the right to be self-governing. This new practice of dialogical discourse and self-governance (generally called a “social contract”) was conceptualized in different ways by leading-edge individuals ranging from John Locke to Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Paine to Thomas Jefferson, Immanuel Kant to James Madison.
This self-governance is not a felt requirement of blue (which will follow the law if it is part of tradition), and it is not felt requirement of red (which will follow the law if it issues from the power leader). Only at orange does interiority start to demand a hand in the laws that regulate its own behavior.
(Of course, there were several other social injunctions that were part of the orange tetra-worldspace, including an industrial base that was one of single largest factors in reducing the need for slavery, and which lessened the demand for physical strength in order to succeed in the public sphere, thus paving the way for, and actually allowing, the various liberation movements, including feminism and abolition. But we are here focusing on the subset of social practices or paradigms within the rising cultural elite that was forging a new and revolutionary form of governance that would tetra-mesh with new techno-economic base.)
In short, out of this new exemplar or social practice of orange dialogical discourse (which was enacting and bringing forth a new set of experiences, data, and illuminations) soon issued a new theory of political governance called the social contract, whose general form is: any legitimate governing system is a contract between the governors and those governed, such that the two are mutually governing. This usually involves the election of governors by those governed, such that sovereignty rests, in the final analysis, with the people being governed. All representative, liberal, industrial democracies are today some form of a social contract, which was first pioneered, in a micro-quadratic form, by a small cultural elite at the leading edge who were forging new types of social practice or paradigms embodying a higher, wider, deeper wave of consciousness unfolding.
The Great Possibility
And so it is today, with an integral age at the leading edge. The possibility–and it is only a gossamer possibility at this time–is that a new and wider wave of consciousness–an integral wave, an age of synthesis–is beginning to emerge and push against all of the now-older waves (traditional, modern, and postmodern), throwing each of them (but especially the postmodern) into a legitimation crisis about its own validity–a crisis of legitimacy that can only be resolved by an increase in authenticity, or an actual transformation to the new and wider integral wave of unfolding.
This new unfolding will involve, in terms of its paradigmatic base, an actual set of social practices, not merely a new theory or set of theories. As we saw in detail in Excerpt A and briefly summarized above, a paradigm is a social practice or behavioral injunction, not simply a theory or intellectual edifice (although, of course, they tetra-evolve together). Accordingly, any new paradigm will include a set of exemplars and practices–practices that, if they contain more depth (or Eros) than their predecessors, will throw the old approaches into a legitimation crisis that can only be resolved by a vertical (”revolutionary”) transformation–as we said, the crisis in legitimacy can only be resolved by an increase in authenticity. Thus, a new integral paradigm will therefore be a new set of injunctions and practices, not simply theories, not worldviews, not Web-of-Life notions, not holistic concepts–but actual practices.
What kind of practices might be the harbinger of the integral revolution at the leading edge? What might these social practices look like?
…
http://wilber.shambhala.com/html/books/kosmos/excerptB/part1.cfm
…The result would a set of paradigms, behavioral injunctions, and social practices that might be called an integral methodological pluralism. “Integral,” in that the pluralism is not a mere eclecticism or grab bag of unrelated paradigms, but a meta-paradigm that weaves together its many threads into an integral tapestry, a unity-in-diversity that slights neither the unity nor the diversity. “Methodological,” in that this is a real paradigm or set of actual practices and behavioral injunctions to bring forth an integral territory, not merely a new holistic theory or maps without any territory. And “pluralism” in that there is no one overriding or privileged injunction (other than to be radically all-inclusive). Unlike postmodernism, which practiced a type of exclusionary pluralism that condemned all other first-tier values (not to mention second-tier values), integral or inclusionary pluralism is a conscientiously adopted set of behavioral paradigms for acknowledging–and actually seeking out–the enduring truths in categorically every major methodology in first- and second- and third-tier probability waves.
Integral Methodological Pluralism (IMP) has two main parts: paradigmatic and meta-paradigmatic. The paradigmatic aspect means a careful compilation of all the primary paradigms or methodologies of presently existing modes of human inquiry–which means, the major methodologies that are presently accepted within their own fields or disciplines. We have already given (in Excerpt A) an overview of many of those fundamental paradigms–and we will continue to explore those “need-to-be-included” paradigms as we proceed–from hermeneutics to phenomenology to behaviorism to systems theory to meditation to collaborative inquiry to vision quest to quantum physics to depth psychology to molecular biology. All of the major modes of human inquiry possess general practices and injunctions that bring forth and illumine various types of experiences, revelations, data, and phenomena held to be legitimate by those disciplines, and an Integral Methodological Pluralism quite literally makes room for all of those major modes of inquiry.
At this point, no attempt is made to judge whether a particular practice or paradigm should or should not be included in the mix. The fact is, these paradigms or practices already exist, they are already being practiced by human beings around the world–by men and women who are sincerely convinced that these practices bring forth something of value for themselves and others–and practices that accordingly deserve a fair hearing in the integrative forums or salons now nascently self-organizing. The first or paradigmatic part of IMP is thus a respectful compilation, without judgment, of the major methodologies for enacting, illuminating, and bringing forth various worldspaces or ways of being-in-the-world. These are the various paradigms or methodologies that already exist and are already being practiced by caring and concerned men and women around the world.
The second part of any integral methodological pluralism, and the part that prevents it from being a first-tier eclecticism, is a meta-paradigmatic set of practices that conscientiously relate the various paradigmatic strands to each other. Put simply, integral methodological pluralism includes a compilation of the most important, time-tested methodologies, as well as a set of practices that weave them together or integrate them into ways of being-in-the-world that are radically nonexclusionary. This aspect of IMP can be summarized as, “Everybody is right.”
—end excerpts—
So, if a new 40-year cycle of postpartisan politics is beginning, which will probably be called the “Obama era” (similar to Rosevelts’ “New Deal”, or the “JFK” era), why is so much energy still going into the outmoded dance of “liberal vs. conservative” rhetoric?
I guess the obvious answer is that the old mode of thinking in terms of paradigm conflict (instead of paradigm integration) still dominates. Big money is at stake. Integral solutions have not been “proven” in very “real world ” settings, etc., postmodernism is somewhat of an unresolved issue.
regards,
ep
EP wrote:
Wow EP, that little gem aptly describes the current attitude of the Baha’i Faith
Grover,
I’m glad you noticed the connection. The “etherealist” position obviously has deep roots in both the persian and european approaches to bahai. don’t foget that shoghi effendi was schooled in an european anti-bourgeoise tradition. in other words, he was a snob. which explains why he did very little to defend the working class elements of the american bahai community when they were attacked by upper class socialites, or why he didn’t help the race unity efforts more, only recognised Louis Gregory’s after he was dead, etc.
what this demonstrates is that bahai anchored in a failed paradigm that can’t engage in deep self-examination.
it is dishonest.
which means that it can’t come to terms with evolution (cultural or spiritual).
which is the same problem that all of the “unitive mysticism” traditions have.
which means that if people are really looking for “something better” (such as an approach to developing the “mature personality” characteristics that Clare Graves talked about in his 1970s “futurist” stuff), they will have to look outside the current bahai framework.
please note that there is a letter from the BWC to Susan Maneck that in essence actually says exactly that. in addressing the great conflict between “liberal and conservative” bahai intellectuals/scholars in the 70s/80s/90s, the UHJ’s letter writers stated that bahais should turn to the OUTSIDE to learn how to think in terms of “integrative paradigms”.
that is pretty stunning. basically the leading source of guidance from the bahai leadership elites stated that:
“to stay current at the leading edge of intellectual and cultural evolution, look elsewhere for answers.”
(it didn’t take any “infallibility” to arrive at that conclusion, just common sense and some insight into the current state of social change theory as it was known to many people in consciousness studies and similar movements. for instance, Ken Wilber is selling thousands more times books on “integral spirituality” compared to sales of bahai scripture or other materials. bahai books sales are probably about the same as druid scripture.)
the problem with that of course is that once people start looking elsewhere, they start to realize what a sham the whole idea is that bahai is a “complete answer” to anything.