XI

The image used by 'Abdu'l-Baha to capture for His hearers the coming

transformation of society was that of light. Unity, He declared, is the

power that illuminates and advances all forms of human endeavour. The age

that was opening would come in the future to be regarded as "the century

of light", because in it universal recognition of the oneness of humankind

would be achieved. With this foundation in place, the process of building

a global society embodying principles of justice will begin.

The vision was enunciated by the Master in several Tablets and addresses.

Its fullest expression occurs in a Tablet addressed by 'Abdu'l-Baha to

Jane Elizabeth Whyte, wife of the former Moderator of the Free Church of

Scotland. Mrs. Whyte was an ardent sympathizer of the Baha'i teachings,

had visited the Master in 'Akka and would later make arrangements for the

particularly warm reception that met Him in Edinburgh. Using the familiar

metaphor of "candles", 'Abdu'l-Baha wrote to Mrs. Whyte:

O honored lady!... Behold how its [unity's] light is now dawning upon the

world's darkened horizon. The first candle is unity in the political

realm, the early glimmerings of which can now be discerned. The second

candle is unity of thought in world undertakings, the consummation of

which will erelong be witnessed. The third candle is unity in freedom

which will surely come to pass. The fourth candle is unity in religion

which is the corner-stone of the foundation itself, and which, by the

power of God, will be revealed in all its splendor. The fifth candle is

the unity of nations--a unity which in this century will be securely

established, causing all the peoples of the world to regard themselves as

citizens of one common fatherland. The sixth candle is unity of races,

making of all that dwell on earth peoples and kindreds of one race. The

seventh candle is unity of language, i.e., the choice of a universal

tongue in which all peoples will be instructed and converse. Each and

every one of these will inevitably come to pass, inasmuch as the power of

the Kingdom of God will aid and assist in their realization.(144)

While it will be decades--or perhaps a great deal longer--before the vision

contained in this remarkable document is fully realized, the essential

features of what it promised are now established facts throughout the

world. In several of the great changes envisioned--unity of race and unity

of religion--the intent of the Master's words is clear and the processes

involved are far advanced, however great may be the resistance in some

quarters. To a large extent this is also true of unity of language. The

need for it is now recognized on all sides, as reflected in the

circumstances that have compelled the United Nations and much of the

non-governmental community to adopt several "official languages". Until a

decision is taken by international agreement, the effect of such

developments as the Internet, the management of air traffic, the

development of technological vocabularies of various kinds, and universal

education itself, has been to make it possible, to some extent, for

English to fill the gap.

"Unity of thought in world undertakings", a concept for which the most

idealistic aspirations at the opening of the twentieth century lacked even

reference points, is also in large measure everywhere apparent in vast

programmes of social and economic development, humanitarian aid and

concern for protection of the environment of the planet and its oceans. As

to "unity in the political realm", Shoghi Effendi has explained that the

reference is to unity which sovereign states achieve among themselves, a

developing process the present stage of which is the establishment of the

United Nations. The Master's promise of "unity of nations", on the other

hand, looked forward to today's widespread acceptance among the peoples of

the world of the fact that, however great the differences among them may

be, they are the inhabitants of a single global homeland.

"Unity in freedom" has today, of course, become a universal aspiration of

the Earth's inhabitants. Among the chief developments giving substance to

it, the Master may well have had in mind the dramatic extinction of

colonialism and the consequent rise of self-determination as a dominant

feature of national identity at century's end.

Whatever threats still hang over humanity's future, the world has been

transformed by the events of the twentieth century. That the features of

the process should also have been described by the Voice that predicted it

with such confidence ought to command earnest reflection on the part of

serious minds everywhere.

* * * * *

The changes wrought in humanity's social and moral life received powerful

endorsement at a series of international gatherings called under the

United Nations' authority to mark the approaching end of one "millennium"

and the beginning of a new one. On 22-26 May 2000, representatives of over

one thousand non-governmental organizations assembled in New York at the

invitation of Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General. In the

statement that emerged from this meeting, spokespersons of civil society

committed their organizations to the ideal that: "...we are one human

family, in all our diversity, living on one common homeland and sharing a

just, sustainable and peaceful world, guided by universal principles of

democracy...."(145)

Shortly afterwards, from 28-31 August 2000, a second gathering brought

together leaders of most of the world's religious communities, likewise

assembled at the United Nations Headquarters. The Baha'i International

Community was represented by its Secretary-General, who addressed one of

the plenary sessions. No observer could fail to be struck by the call of

the world's religious leaders, formally, for their communities "to respect

the right to freedom of religion, to seek reconciliation, and to engage in

mutual forgiveness and healing...."(146)

These two preliminary events prepared the way for what had been designated

as the Millennium Summit itself, meeting at the United Nations

Headquarters from 6-8 September 2000. Bringing together 149 heads of state

and government, the consultation sought to give hope and assurance to the

populations of the nations represented. The Summit took the welcome step

of inviting a spokesman for the Forum of non-governmental organizations to

share the concerns that had been identified at that preparatory gathering.

It seemed to Baha'is as significant as it was gratifying that the

individual accorded this high honour was the Baha'i International

Community's Principal Representative to the United Nations, in his

capacity as Co-Chairman of the Forum. Nothing so dramatically illustrates

the difference between the world of 1900 and that of 2000 than the text of

the Summit Resolution, signed by all the participants, and referred by

them to the United Nations General Assembly:

We solemnly reaffirm, on this historic occasion, that the United Nations

is the indispensable common house of the entire human family, through

which we will seek to realize our universal aspirations for peace,

cooperation and development. We therefore pledge our unstinting support

for these common objectives, and our determination to achieve them.(147)

In concluding this sequence of historic meetings, Mr. Annan addressed

himself to the assembled world leaders in surprisingly candid terms--terms

that, for many Baha'is, carried echoes of Baha'u'llah's stern admonition

to the now vanished kings and emperors who had been these leaders'

predecessors: "It lies in _your_ power, and therefore it is your

responsibility, to reach the goals that you have defined. Only _you_ can

determine whether the United Nations rises to the challenge."(148)

* * * * *

Despite the historic importance of the meetings and the fact that the

greater portion of humanity's political, civil and religious leadership

took part, the Millennium Summit made little impression on the public mind

in most countries. Generous media attention was given to certain of the

events, but few readers or listeners could fail to note the expression of

scepticism that characterized editorial treatment of the subject or the

air of doubt--even of cynicism--that crept into many of the news stories

themselves. This sharp disjunction between an event that could

legitimately claim to mark a major turning-point in human history, on the

one hand, and the lack of enthusiasm or even interest it aroused among

populations who were its supposed beneficiaries, on the other, was perhaps

the most striking feature of the millennium observations. It exposed the

depth of the crisis the world is experiencing at century's end, in which

the processes of both integration and disintegration that had gathered

momentum during the past hundred years seem to accelerate with each

passing day.

Those who long to believe the visionary statements of world leaders

struggle at the same time in the grip of two phenomena that undermine such

confidence. The first has already been considered at some length in these

pages. The collapse of society's moral foundations has left the greater

part of humankind floundering without reference points in a world that

grows daily more threatening and unpredictable. To suggest that the

process has nearly reached its end would be merely to raise false hopes.

One may appreciate that intense political efforts are being made, that

impressive scientific advances continue or that economic conditions

improve for a portion of humankind--all without seeing in such developments

anything resembling hope of a secure life for oneself, or more

importantly, for one's children. The sense of disillusionment which, as

Shoghi Effendi warned, the spread of political corruption would create in

the minds of the mass of humankind is now widespread. Outbreaks of

lawlessness have become pandemic in both urban and rural life in many

lands. The failure of social controls, the effort to justify the most

extreme forms of aberrant behaviour as primarily civil rights issues, and

an almost universal celebration in the arts and media of degeneracy and

violence--these and similar manifestations of a condition approaching moral

anarchy suggest a future that paralyzes the imagination. Against the

background of this desolate landscape the intellectual vogue of the age,

seeking to make a virtue out of grim necessity, has adopted for itself the

appellation and mission of "deconstructionism".

The second of the two developments undermining faith in the future was the

focus of some of the Millennium Summit's most anguished debates. The

information revolution set off in the closing decade of the century by the

invention of the World Wide Web transformed irreversibly much of human

activity. The process of "globalization" that had been following a long

rising curve over a period of several centuries was galvanized by new

powers beyond the imaginations of most people. Economic forces, breaking

free of traditional restraints, brought into being during the closing

decade of the century a new global order in the designing, generation and

distribution of wealth. Knowledge itself became a significantly more

valuable commodity than even financial capital and material resources. In

a breathtakingly short space of time, national borders, already under

assault, became permeable, with the result that vast sums now pass

instantly through them at the command of a computer signal. Complex

production operations are so reconfigured as to integrate and maximize the

economies available from the contributions of a range of specializing

participants, without regard to their national locations. If one were to

lower one's horizon to purely material considerations, the earth has

already taken on something of the character of "one country" and the

inhabitants of various lands the status of its consumer "citizens".

Nor is the transformation merely economic. Increasingly, globalization

assumes political, social and cultural dimensions. It has become clear

that the powers of the institution of the nation-state, once the arbiter

and protector of humanity's fortunes, have been drastically eroded. While

national governments continue to play a crucial role, they must now make

room for such rising centres of power as multinational corporations,

United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations of every kind, and

huge media conglomerates, the cooperation of all of which is vital to the

success of most programmes aimed at achieving significant economic or

social ends. Just as the migration of money or corporations encounters

little hindrance from national borders, neither can the latter any longer

exercise effective control over the dissemination of knowledge. Internet

communication, which has the ability to transmit in seconds the entire

contents of libraries that took centuries of study to amass, vastly

enriches the intellectual life of anyone able to use it, as well as

providing sophisticated training in a broad range of professional fields.

The system, so prophetically foreseen sixty years ago by Shoghi Effendi,

builds a sense of shared community among its users that is impatient of

either geographic or cultural distances.

The benefits to many millions of persons are obvious and impressive. Cost

effectiveness resulting from the coordination of formerly competing

operations tends to bring goods and services within the reach of

populations who could not previously have hoped to enjoy them. Enormous

increases in the funds available for research and development expand the

variety and quality of such benefits. Something of a levelling effect in

the distribution of employment opportunities can be seen in the ease with

which business operations can shift their base from one part of the world

to another. The abandonment of barriers to transnational trade reduces

still further the cost of goods to consumers. It is not difficult to

appreciate, from a Baha'i perspective, the potentiality of such

transformations for laying the foundations of the global society

envisioned in Baha'u'llah's Writings.

Far from inspiring optimism about the future, however, globalization is

seen by large and growing numbers of people around the world as the

principal threat to that future. The violence of the riots set off by the

meetings of the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the

International Monetary Fund during the last two years testifies to the

depth of the fear and resentment that the rise of globalization has

provoked. Media coverage of these unexpected outbursts focused public

attention on protests against gross disparities in the distribution of

benefits and opportunities, which globalization is seen as only

increasing, and on warnings that, if effective controls are not speedily

imposed, the consequences will be catastrophic in social and political, as

well as in economic and environmental, terms.

Such concerns appear well-founded. Economic statistics alone reveal a

picture of current global conditions that is profoundly disturbing. The

ever-widening gulf between the one fifth of the world's population living

in the highest income countries and the one fifth living in the lowest

income countries tells a grim story. According to the 1999 Human

Development Report published by the United Nations Development Programme,

this gap represented, in 1990, a ratio of sixty to one. That is to say,

one segment of humankind was enjoying access to sixty percent of the

world's wealth, while another, equally large, population struggled merely

to survive on barely one percent of that wealth. By 1997, in the wake of

globalization's rapid advance, the gulf had widened in only seven years to

a ratio of seventy-four to one. Even this appalling fact does not take

into account the steady impoverishment of the majority of the remaining

billions of human beings trapped in the relentlessly narrowing isthmus

between these two extremes. Far from being brought under control, the

crisis is clearly accelerating. The implications for humanity's future, in

terms of privation and despair engulfing more than two thirds of the

Earth's population, helped to account for the apathy that met the

Millennium Summit's celebration of achievements that were, by all

reasonable criteria, truly historic.

Globalization itself is an intrinsic feature of the evolution of human

society. It has brought into existence a socio-economic culture that, at

the practical level, constitutes the world in which the aspirations of the

human race will be pursued in the century now opening. No objective

observer, if he is fair-minded in his judgement, will deny that both of

the two contradictory reactions it is arousing are, in large measure, well

justified. The unification of human society, forged by the fires of the

twentieth century, is a reality that with every passing day opens

breathtaking new possibilities. A reality also being forced on serious

minds everywhere, is the claim of justice to be the one means capable of

harnessing these great potentialities to the advancement of civilization.

It no longer requires the gift of prophecy to realize that the fate of

humanity in the century now opening will be determined by the relationship

established between these two fundamental forces of the historical

process, the inseparable principles of unity and justice.

* * * * *

In the perspective of Baha'u'llah's teachings, the greatest danger of both

the moral crisis and the inequities associated with globalization in its

current form is an entrenched philosophical attitude that seeks to justify

and excuse these failures. The overthrow of the twentieth century's

totalitarian systems has not meant the end of ideology. On the contrary.

There has not been a society in the history of the world, no matter how

pragmatic, experimentalist and multi-form it may have been, that did not

derive its thrust from some foundational interpretation of reality. Such a

system of thought reigns today virtually unchallenged across the planet,

under the nominal designation "Western civilization". Philosophically and

politically, it presents itself as a kind of liberal relativism;

economically and socially, as capitalism--two value systems that have now

so adjusted to each other and become so mutually reinforcing as to

constitute virtually a single, comprehensive world-view.

Appreciation of the benefits--in terms of the personal freedom, social

prosperity and scientific progress enjoyed by a significant minority of

the Earth's people--cannot withhold a thinking person from recognizing that

the system is morally and intellectually bankrupt. It has contributed its

best to the advancement of civilization, as did all its predecessors, and,

like them, is impotent to deal with the needs of a world never imagined by

the eighteenth century prophets who conceived most of its component

elements. Shoghi Effendi did not limit his attention to divine right

monarchies, established churches or totalitarian ideologies when he posed

the searching question: "Why should these, in a world subject to the

immutable law of change and decay, be exempt from the deterioration that

must needs overtake every human institution?"(149)

Baha'u'llah urges those who believe in Him to "see with thine own eyes and

not through the eyes of others", to "know of thine own knowledge and not

through the knowledge of thy neighbour". Tragically, what Baha'is see in

present-day society is unbridled exploitation of the masses of humanity by

greed that excuses itself as the operation of "impersonal market forces".

What meets their eyes everywhere is the destruction of moral foundations

vital to humanity's future, through gross self-indulgence masquerading as

"freedom of speech". What they find themselves struggling against daily is

the pressure of a dogmatic materialism, claiming to be the voice of

"science", that seeks systematically to exclude from intellectual life all

impulses arising from the spiritual level of human consciousness.

And for a Baha'i the ultimate issues _are_ spiritual. The Cause is not a

political party nor an ideology, much less an engine for political

agitation against this or that social wrong. The process of transformation

it has set in motion advances by inducing a fundamental change of

consciousness, and the challenge it poses to everyone who would serve it

is to free oneself from attachment to inherited assumptions and

preferences that are irreconcilable with the Will of God for humanity's

coming of age. Paradoxically, even the distress caused by prevailing

conditions that violate one's conscience aids in this process of spiritual

liberation. In the final analysis, such disillusionment drives a Baha'i to

confront a truth emphasized over and over again in the Writings of the

Faith:

He hath chosen out of the whole world the hearts of His servants, and made

them each a seat for the revelation of His glory. Wherefore, sanctify them

from every defilement, that the things for which they were created may be

engraven upon them.(150)