Friends, listen up. The end of the 20th century discloses to the eyes of humanity a vista of stupendous opportunities and grave perils. Allow me to explain. Some of the more striking phenomena are those associated with globalization, a designation … Continue reading Globalization: Good or Bad?
The Baha’i International Community was shocked to hear of news that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have begun excavation in a historically important Baha’i cemetery in Shiraz. The site is, among other things, the resting place of ten Baha’i women whose cruel … Continue reading Destruction of historic Baha’i cemetery underway in Shiraz by Iranian Revolutionary Guards
The Problem . ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY is a term used to describe the condition in which masses of people are deprived of their bare necessities, while wealth, resources, and infrastructure exist in sufficient proportion to provide for all. The amount of … Continue reading Artificial Scarcity & The Baha’i Faith
A recent study by Oxfam provided some striking data regarding growing disparities of wealth and poverty within and between countries around the globe: 50% of the world’s wealth is now owned by 1% of the population. This richest 1% has 65 times … Continue reading “Concentrations of Wealth” by Michael Karlberg
Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and … Continue reading Marx, Baha’u’llah, and Suffering
The top 10 US tax deductions, credits and exclusions ensure that over $12 trillion in tax revenues will be granted to multinational corporations over the next decade. The tax loopholes have been written into the tax code by a bought-and-paid-for Congress … Continue reading Tax Code 101
About a century ago, in the free world, the ruling classes became aware they couldn’t control the population by force any longer, the spirit of the age was shifting and violence only bred further civil disobedience. Too much freedom had been won … Continue reading Colonial Coercion vs. Corporate Consumerism: Replacing the Stick with the Carrot
The economic recession is linked to a recession in democracy. If we continue this way, we will be ruined by class warfare and the wrath of global warming. We must seek a different way of living that is based not on maximizing how much we can buy but on maximizing values important to life. True happiness is a transcendent experience, not inherent in material things. Groundswell in grassroots spirituality holds the solution. Countless small actions of unknown people are the foundation for those great moments that ultimately enter the historical record without mention of the people that created them. Change is made in such ways. … Continue reading Prophecy And Policy
Since the housing market crash of 2008 we have heard it said that the economy is recovering. Who, I wonder are the people who are actually recovering? Let us look into what the facts say. The top 7% of wealthy … Continue reading Money, Lies, and Spiritual Solutions
Corrupt incentives drive people’s contribution to the public discourse. Politicians, businessmen, financiers, are all guilty. The discourse no longer represents an honest viewpoint of reality, the dominant slogans on TV and radio are a designed smoke-screen to hide the real structure, decision-making, and motives at play in the world of economic policy, legislation, and campaigning. The derangement in economics, political deceit, and social manipulation is reaching unrecognizable proportions. Popular culture is responsible for making itself gullible to such influence. Our society nurtures a desire to be entertained from childhood, cultivating generations eager to be led by priests, politicians, advertising, pop idols, and whoever proves … Continue reading New World Order
The global economy is now in a downward spiral, unemployment is at record highs in country after country, national debt is paralyzing governments, incomes have stagnated for a majority of workers — suddenly the question emerges from Marx’s grave: has … Continue reading Marx: From Beyond the Grave
The spike in income inequality in the U.S. in recent decades is due to systemic injustices at the level of policy and institution structure for over 40 years. Incomes for the bottom 90 percent of Americans grew by an average of … Continue reading What Do You Call Capitalized Gains But Communized Losses?
I didn’t know it was called capitalism to work for someone else’s money. I thought capitalism was the harder you work the more money you earn. In fact, i was told communism is what we call it when you work … Continue reading What is the Definition of Capitalism?
GDP has doubled in the past 30 years, yet workers wages haven’t even kept up with inflation, let alone increased. The 1.9% increase in wages was surpassed by inflation in 2012 marking the 40th consecutive year that wages have declined below their … Continue reading Are You Working for Someone Else’s Money?
Assault rifle ban dead in the Senate. Monsanto protected from lawsuits by congressional legislation. 50 K-12 schools closed in Chicago while corporate profits at all time high. Yet, Obama speaks in Israel on the topic of youth laying the path … Continue reading Monarchy AND Democracy?
Dow Jones is at record high; corporate profits are too. The real estate crisis is over, but most people in the united states still seem to be in financial difficulties. Household incomes in absolute dollar amounts are at a decade-low … Continue reading Capitalism vs Corporatism
For decades, the Universal House of Justice has been nurturing the development of the Baha’i community in Iran, guiding them through their persecution and assisting them to recognize the significance of their sacrifice and their opportunities to serve. A few … Continue reading Framework that Shapes the Baha’i Approach to Political Involvement
Some facts are based on principle, others follow from empirical evidence. The economic and social order of the industrial world no longer considers universal welfare the object of its deliberations and actions. This has been, in part, the result of … Continue reading In the Masses Lies the Key
“…Should anyone deliberately take another’s life, him also shall ye put to death…” The world of man is a terrifying place. A world constructed on violent notions of masculinity. A world where power is the only rule, and law is … Continue reading The World of Man: The Rape of Women
Some people think education is an act of depositing facts, in which the students are the receptacle and the teacher is the banker. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues lectures and makes deposits which the students receive and memorize. This … Continue reading Education and Liberation
Mental illness is not responsible for mass shootings. Removing guns from society would prevent mass shootings, but guns aren’t responsible for mass shootings. A desire for mass suffering is at play. What causes the desire for mass suffering? Much of … Continue reading Mental Illness and Collective Responsibility
Disproportionate access to nutritious diets, quality housing, industry-recognized education, employment opportunities, and healthcare services would not in itself sow the seeds of rebellion were it not for the possessiveness of the privileged over their resources. Selfishness towards privilege is engendered through fear of having to … Continue reading Economic Mirages
Extreme socio-economic inequalities of access and opportunity result in privileged vs. oppressed classes. The oppressed, over time, adapt to the structure of domination under which generations languish and become resigned to it. The status quo of the social order is maintained by … Continue reading Empowerment, Oppression, and Social Order
Every intelligent mind that evaluates the causes for global warming concludes that human-induced green-house gas emissions are responsible for Earth’s atmospheric average temperature increases. The only people who disagree with this are fringe scientists and few in number. For mysterious … Continue reading Climate Change and Political Partisanship: Why is the Truth So Divisive?
Paragraph#: 1. Abdu’l-Baha’s Temple-ground piercing Centenary. Diverse participants then and now. 2. Divine civilization beyond mere adjustments to present order. 3. Erroneous assumptions of human nature, justified by failings, disallow spiritual potential. 4. Imprisonment enables sympathetic hearts. 5-Year Plan (5YP) … Continue reading Summary: Ridvan 2012 Message
http://educationunderfire.com/ More than ten thousand souls were slain, and a great multitude of women and children, left without protector or provider, dispersed and confounded, they were trodden down and destroyed. This occurrence was brought about by the arbitrary decision and … Continue reading Lamps of Truth and Purity
Medical treatment of drug addicted patients involves assessment of abuse, addiction, and tolerance. Consumerism is an addiction. Commodities, physiques, and sensations are its drug of choice; corporations the drug lord; advertising the dealer. The mystique of the unknown first lures an unsuspecting customer in. … Continue reading The Stimulus of the New
Currently, there are some who resist the reconceptualization of science and religion. They fragment science and religion, and dismiss one for the other, claiming that only one or the other has led to humanity’s successes. How often is it that we hear religion caricatured … Continue reading Fanaticism and Ridicule: Science and Religion
The advancement of a civilization aiming to achieve a dynamic coherence between the material and spiritual dimensions of reality recognizes that science and religion are the two reciprocal knowledge systems that impels its advance. History gives rare, yet significant instances … Continue reading Crisis of Knowledge
The processes of development have adopted values driven by economic growth, values that often view all things as means to a narrow-minded end, values that reduce an individual’s identity to a producer, consumer, and coveter of goods, values that reduce … Continue reading Exploitation and Oppression
Today’s vision of betterment is dogmatically materialistic. The interpretation of reality that progress equals economic development, and that people’s happiness would only be the result of better health, food, education, living conditions, etc., has consolidated itself to become the deciding … Continue reading Materialism
Let us take advertising as an example of social forces that cause oppression through distortion of self-knowledge. Advertising, a euphemism for propaganda, mutilates our conceptions of reality. Images presented to youth, at a time of rising self-awareness, present unattainable goals … Continue reading Advertising
One of the major causes of injustice and oppression is lack of knowledge and perpetuation of ignorance. This is done through words, actions, and policies of self-interested governments, leaders, corporations, media, clergy, etc. They seek to retain their power; and … Continue reading Oppression
achieving coherence 