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- Consultation - Governance Discourse Justice Knowledge

Post-Partisan Politics

Identifying aspects of political discourse that is partisan in nature and to be avoided is challenging and will call for a higher caliber of insight and self-mastery as issues become increasingly engrossing and complex and as noble ideologies arise to prominence within the context of partisan systems. The boundaries may not always be clear, and our understanding of these boundaries in turn may evolve over time as the community synthesizing and advocating noble, selfless, and unifying ideologies 1) learns from the global experience, 2) synthesizes collective learning into tangible guidelines, 3) initiates more radically when responsibilities are low, and then consummates more reservedly as responsibilities and powers grow,  and finally 4) as issues available in the data itself evolve and humanity unitedly breaches new frontiers in the study of phenomena related to modern governance. World conditions change, and as such, engagement in partisan politics must change its off-limits demarcations – always keeping true to the axiom that what promotes unity is best, and any discourse involving combativeness, conflict, or competition, must be eschewed behind. In our struggle to apply our keenest insights into unraveling these boundaries, perhaps some controversial issues will unintentionally be engaged, however, rapid real-time delimitation of what is considered valuable and allowable discussion will suggest itself and can be modified distinctly and quickly, retracting said involvement, and supplanting it with non0involvement – as a policy most conducive to unity. Damage will by this means be minimized and any controversy will be pre-emptively avoided.

Future collective understanding of these boundaries will be able to benefit from the synthesized experience of others who engaged in discourse of a similar learning nature and whose results, quickly synthesized in a globalized learning process, feeds its respective experience of controversial boundaries into a centralized, canalized, web of communication that extends inwardly collecting experience from near and far policy-discussions. Subsequently, dissemination of information regarding which topics, structural arrangements, language insensitivities, particularistic proposals, and bigoted sentiments conduce to public discontent, fueling contention. This information is data that can be synthesized into a guideline for political activists seeking to avoid encroachment on elements that create disunity, constitute partisanship, inadvertently support campaigning, or constitute a breach in voting secrecy. Generation of knowledge takes places through experimentation at city and village centers; the collation of information from localities will proceed inwardly and upwardly toward a world nerve center for synthesis and crystallization of collective experience into a distillate of statistical averages, constructive coincidences, complementary tendencies and identification of strategies of benefit. Finally, recommendations can be formulated by induction, insofar as cultural and contextual considerations allow, for the dissemination and diffusion of guidelines in a retrograde direction, towards diverse cities and hamlets, on a global scale. The process of the generation, application, and diffusion of knowledge therefore has its dawn at the grassroots level, sees its meridian glory emerge in the metropolitan nerve center that synthesizes global experience, and reaps its golden luster in the distant goal lands it warms in the political landscape which undergoes a global re-organization of its structure and re-education of its culture. Knowledge and praxis of political science will be equipped to assist and not invalidate human progress.

We know that we can minimize our mistakes, maximize our systematic learning, and revolutionize structural insufficiency  if we deliberate together on the synthesized global experience, study the resultant guidance, and consult together with unity. So powerful is the light of unity, that it can illuminate the whole earth. The power of fraternity, camaraderie, and prosperity through unity surpasses the light of the sun, and turns earth into a lustrous homeland for a prosperous people. As a species, we learn how to apply knowledge, have faith in the collective, scientific, knowledge-generating and synthesizing process, and ultimately take action informed by such experience and empowered by such loving unity. After one cycle of experimentation, collation, synthesis, recommendation,  application and diffusion – we return to reflect on what we have learned through such action. Please, offer some recommendations that inform the structure of a post-partisan political world. Outcome measures include considerations of practicability, merits and nuances in application, prohibitions and descriptions of internal dynamics. Let us keep in mind the complexity and difficulties that are involved in prosecuting such a charge.

Categories
Discourse Knowledge

Scouting the Truth

Having explored the nature of knowledge and its generation, thought must now be given to the nature of one who generates knowledge, a seeker of knowledge, a scholar.  How do we view those who have or seek knowledge?

Revelation and Social Reality, by Paul Lample, provides a very insightful analogy to the nature of a scholar – from which the following is taken.

A scholar is not as a gatekeeper or priest, one who is seen to hold the keys to knowledge, one who determines what knowledge is valuable or meaningful, one who sets the directions of inquiry.  Neither is a generator of knowledge like an anthropologist or archeologist, merely identifying truth as what is currently understood, or even as what has been in the past.  Nor is a scholar an artist, simply constructing the meaning of knowledge according to one’s subjective standards, preferences, or inclinations.  Finally, a seeker of knowledge is not an impartial observer, apart from and outside of the community in which one learns.

Instead, the generation of knowledge is a right and responsibility of all human beings, not an elite few; it is a constantly evolving process, where truth is relatively less understood, applied, and embodied now than it will be in the future; it is, however, the process of uncovering objective and foundational truths of reality; and every individual both influences and is influenced by the social reality they seek to study.

With this understanding, one can view a generator of knowledge as a scout – helping to guide an expedition into unexplored territory with the aim of bringing knowledge back to the group, constantly advancing individual and collective understanding, while not possessing any authority on the subject, and actively participating with others and making a humble yet vital contribution towards a collective endeavor.

Categories
- Consultation Justice Knowledge

Circle of Participation

This online forum for discourse shares content that is inspired by the Writings of the Bahá’í Faith. Learning how to apply what is written to reality, however, remains a formidable task. In order to accomplish this, capacity must be built in others; individuals, groups and institutions must arise to contribute to the discourse, sharing in action, reflection, and consultation, with a mature spirit of scientific and social discovery, at once dignified and enthusiastic, similarly rigorous and all-inclusive – and never losing site of the all-important fact that knowledge is generated in groups. Shared input and thoughts from various concerns for the betterment of society are needed to unravel complex issues requiring extensive exploration before solutions can be discerned. Any single individual, or even group of individuals, must in time fall short of advancing the frontiers of human learning in any field of importance to service or production, society or politics. No matter how diligent or intelligent this dedicated minority may be, without increasing circles of participation, the total intellectual and experiential reservoir available to solve the world’s increasingly complex and challenging issues will prove insufficient. Justice demands universal participation.

Categories
- Consultation - Empowerment - Three Protagonists Knowledge

Global Learning

A culture of learning that operates through study, consultation, action, and reflection, depends on empowerment and capacity building on the level of both the individual and the institutions of society.

Individually, all are responsible to participate in the generation and application of knowledge according to each’s unique talents and capacities.  Contrasted to current society’s depiction of education and learning as a filling information into the empty minds of passive recipients, a culture of learning recognizes the innate capacities of creativity, insight, and intelligence of all individuals.  Opportunities must be created to develop these latent capacities towards the end of generating and applying knowledge for the betterment of the world.

Institutional capacity must also be developed – both creating systems which foster the empowerment of individuals through manifesting their latent capacities of knowledge generation, as well as  consolidating, integrating, and diffusing generated knowledge.  Learning is a collective enterprise, as consultation thrives on diverse perspectives and views from many individuals.  Thus, not only does the role of institutions becomes the empowerment of all to contribute to learning, but to distill and synthesize knowledge generated from diverse settings and contexts.  Knowledge propels the advance of civilization – the goal being a world civilization.  Knowledge, therefore, has a global dimension, and institutions must discern universal patterns from local insights.  Of particular significance is the impact these concepts have on the educational systems of the world.  They need to be concerned with empowering students to be active participants in a process of generating and applying knowledge – not receptacles of others’ learning; and they need to compare knowledge from diverse contexts, identify patterns, and disseminate learning.  In these ways will institutions be empowered themselves to guide a global collective learning process towards building a world civilization.