To an extent unimaginable a decade ago, the ideal of world peace is taking
on form and substance. Obstacles that long seemed immovable have collapsed
in humanity's path; apparently irreconcilable conflicts have begun to
surrender to processes of consultation and resolution; a willingness to
counter military aggression through unified international action is
emerging. The effect has been to awaken in both the masses of humanity and
many world leaders a degree of hopefulness about the future of our planet
that had been nearly extinguished.
Throughout the world, immense intellectual and spiritual energies are
seeking expression, energies whose gathering pressure is in direct
proportion to the frustrations of recent decades. Everywhere the signs
multiply that the earth's peoples yearn for an end to conflict and to the
suffering and ruin from which no land is any longer immune. These rising
impulses for change must be seized upon and channeled into overcoming the
remaining barriers that block realization of the age-old dream of global
peace. The effort of will required for such a task cannot be summoned up
merely by appeals for action against the countless ills afflicting
society. It must be galvanized by a vision of human prosperity in the
fullest sense of the term--an awakening to the possibilities of the
spiritual and material well-being now brought within grasp. Its
beneficiaries must be all of the planet's inhabitants, without
distinction, without the imposition of conditions unrelated to the
fundamental goals of such a reorganization of human affairs.
History has thus far recorded principally the experience of tribes,
cultures, classes, and nations. With the physical unification of the
planet in this century and acknowledgement of the interdependence of all
who live on it, the history of humanity as one people is now beginning.
The long, slow civilizing of human character has been a sporadic
development, uneven and admittedly inequitable in the material advantages
it has conferred. Nevertheless, endowed with the wealth of all the genetic
and cultural diversity that has evolved through past ages, the earth's
inhabitants are now challenged to draw on their collective inheritance to
take up, consciously and systematically, the responsibility for the design
of their future.
It is unrealistic to imagine that the vision of the next stage in the
advancement of civilization can be formulated without a searching
reexamination of the attitudes and assumptions that currently underlie
approaches to social and economic development. At the most obvious level,
such rethinking will have to address practical matters of policy, resource
utilization, planning procedures, implementation methodologies, and
organization. As it proceeds, however, fundamental issues will quickly
emerge, related to the long-term goals to be pursued, the social
structures required, the implications for development of principles of
social justice, and the nature and role of knowledge in effecting enduring
change. Indeed, such a reexamination will be driven to seek a broad
consensus of understanding about human nature itself.
Two avenues of discussion open directly onto all of these issues, whether
conceptual or practical, and it is along these two avenues that we wish to
explore, in the pages that follow, the subject of a strategy of global
development. The first is prevailing beliefs about the nature and purpose
of the development process; the second is the roles assigned in it to the
various protagonists.
The assumptions directing most of current development planning are
essentially materialistic. That is to say, the purpose of development is
defined in terms of the successful cultivation in all societies of those
means for the achievement of material prosperity that have, through trial
and error, already come to characterize certain regions of the world.
Modifications in development discourse do indeed occur, accommodating
differences of culture and political system and responding to the alarming
dangers posed by environmental degradation. Yet the underlying
materialistic assumptions remain essentially unchallenged.
As the twentieth century draws to a close, it is no longer possible to
maintain the belief that the approach to social and economic development
to which the materialistic conception of life has given rise is capable of
meeting humanity's needs. Optimistic forecasts about the changes it would
generate have vanished into the ever-widening abyss that separates the
living standards of a small and relatively diminishing minority of the
world's inhabitants from the poverty experienced by the vast majority of
the globe's population.
This unprecedented economic crisis, together with the social breakdown it
has helped to engender, reflects a profound error of conception about
human nature itself. For the levels of response elicited from human beings
by the incentives of the prevailing order are not only inadequate, but
seem almost irrelevant in the face of world events. We are being shown
that, unless the development of society finds a purpose beyond the mere
amelioration of material conditions, it will fail of attaining even these
goals. That purpose must be sought in spiritual dimensions of life and
motivation that transcend a constantly changing economic landscape and an
artificially imposed division of human societies into "developed" and
"developing".
As the purpose of development is being redefined, it will become necessary
also to look again at assumptions about the appropriate roles to be played
by the protagonists in the process. The crucial role of government, at
whatever level, requires no elaboration. Future generations, however, will
find almost incomprehensible the circumstance that, in an age paying
tribute to an egalitarian philosophy and related democratic principles,
development planning should view the masses of humanity as essentially
recipients of benefits from aid and training. Despite acknowledgement of
participation as a principle, the scope of the decision making left to
most of the world's population is at best secondary, limited to a range of
choices formulated by agencies inaccessible to them and determined by
goals that are often irreconcilable with their perceptions of reality.
This approach is even endorsed, implicitly if not explicitly, by
established religion. Burdened by traditions of paternalism, prevailing
religious thought seems incapable of translating an expressed faith in the
spiritual dimensions of human nature into confidence in humanity's
collective capacity to transcend material conditions.
Such an attitude misses the significance of what is likely the most
important social phenomenon of our time. If it is true that the
governments of the world are striving through the medium of the United
Nations system to construct a new global order, it is equally true that
the peoples of the world are galvanized by this same vision. Their
response has taken the form of a sudden efflorescence of countless
movements and organizations of social change at local, regional, and
international levels. Human rights, the advance of women, the social
requirements of sustainable economic development, the overcoming of
prejudices, the moral education of children, literacy, primary health
care, and a host of other vital concerns each commands the urgent advocacy
of organizations supported by growing numbers in every part of the globe.
This response of the world's people themselves to the crying needs of the
age echoes the call that Baha'u'llah raised over a hundred years ago: "Be
anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your
deliberations on its exigencies and requirements." The transformation in
the way that great numbers of ordinary people are coming to see
themselves--a change that is dramatically abrupt in the perspective of the
history of civilization--raises fundamental questions about the role
assigned to the general body of humanity in the planning of our planet's
future.
I
The bedrock of a strategy that can engage the world's population in
assuming responsibility for its collective destiny must be the
consciousness of the oneness of humankind. Deceptively simple in popular
discourse, the concept that humanity constitutes a single people presents
fundamental challenges to the way that most of the institutions of
contemporary society carry out their functions. Whether in the form of the
adversarial structure of civil government, the advocacy principle
informing most of civil law, a glorification of the struggle between
classes and other social groups, or the competitive spirit dominating so
much of modern life, conflict is accepted as the mainspring of human
interaction. It represents yet another expression in social organization
of the materialistic interpretation of life that has progressively
consolidated itself over the past two centuries.
In a letter addressed to Queen Victoria over a century ago, and employing
an analogy that points to the one model holding convincing promise for the
organization of a planetary society, Baha'u'llah compared the world to the
human body. There is, indeed, no other model in phenomenal existence to
which we can reasonably look. Human society is composed not of a mass of
merely differentiated cells but of associations of individuals, each one
of whom is endowed with intelligence and will; nevertheless, the modes of
operation that characterize man's biological nature illustrate fundamental
principles of existence. Chief among these is that of unity in diversity.
Paradoxically, it is precisely the wholeness and complexity of the order
constituting the human body--and the perfect integration into it of the
body's cells--that permit the full realization of the distinctive
capacities inherent in each of these component elements. No cell lives
apart from the body, whether in contributing to its functioning or in
deriving its share from the well-being of the whole. The physical
well-being thus achieved finds its purpose in making possible the
expression of human consciousness; that is to say, the purpose of
biological development transcends the mere existence of the body and its
parts.
What is true of the life of the individual has its parallels in human
society. The human species is an organic whole, the leading edge of the
evolutionary process. That human consciousness necessarily operates
through an infinite diversity of individual minds and motivations detracts
in no way from its essential unity. Indeed, it is precisely an inhering
diversity that distinguishes unity from homogeneity or uniformity. What
the peoples of the world are today experiencing, Baha'u'llah said, is
their collective coming- of-age, and it is through this emerging maturity
of the race that the principle of unity in diversity will find full
expression. From its earliest beginnings in the consolidation of family
life, the process of social organization has successively moved from the
simple structures of clan and tribe, through multitudinous forms of urban
society, to the eventual emergence of the nation-state, each stage opening
up a wealth of new opportunities for the exercise of human capacity.
Clearly, the advancement of the race has not occurred at the expense of
human individuality. As social organization has increased, the scope for
the expression of the capacities latent in each human being has
correspondingly expanded. Because the relationship between the individual
and society is a reciprocal one, the transformation now required must
occur simultaneously within human consciousness and the structure of
social institutions. It is in the opportunities afforded by this twofold
process of change that a strategy of global development will find its
purpose. At this crucial stage of history, that purpose must be to
establish enduring foundations on which planetary civilization can
gradually take shape.
Laying the groundwork for global civilization calls for the creation of
laws and institutions that are universal in both character and authority.
The effort can begin only when the concept of the oneness of humanity has
been wholeheartedly embraced by those in whose hands the responsibility
for decision making rests, and when the related principles are propagated
through both educational systems and the media of mass communication. Once
this threshold is crossed, a process will have been set in motion through
which the peoples of the world can be drawn into the task of formulating
common goals and committing themselves to their attainment. Only so
fundamental a reorientation can protect them, too, from the age-old demons
of ethnic and religious strife. Only through the dawning consciousness
that they constitute a single people will the inhabitants of the planet be
enabled to turn away from the patterns of conflict that have dominated
social organization in the past and begin to learn the ways of
collaboration and conciliation. "The well-being of mankind," Baha'u'llah
writes, "its peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its
unity is firmly established."