Tag: material and spiritual

Categories
- Empowerment - Science Development Discourse

Technology: Good or Bad?

It would be unrealistic to adhere to a retrogressive and romanticized notion of a “simple” life, in which technology is non-existent, and humanity subsists in some type of passively blissful coexistence with nature. It overlooks at once the inter-personal needs that technology satisfies with enhanced communication as well as the life-salvaging benefits of medical intervention, for examples. Retrogressive viewpoints for a romanticized past  are the result of rampant conservativism driven delusional by nostalgia.  It exists in the middle east, with Islamic revolutionary retrogression in the democratized states of the Arab spring, as well as in the United States with the spokespeople of the religious right. Retrogression exists anywhere conservatism blinds people to the evolving needs to which time subjects human societies. Its proponents become entrenched in and bolster the status quo against mounting evidence for desperately required change. An “ever-advancing civilization” is God’s own characterization of the human condition to which we are all contributors. It is this same retrogression that has prevented the recognition of progressive revelation in the manifestation of the various religions that have come to man from God over the centuries. Ever wonder why they don’t call it conservative revelation?

The concept of an ever-advancing civilization, material as well as spiritual, is central to our conceptual framework for social action, where we work for wholesale social transformation. It is inevitable that because of the never-ceasing tide of human needs and opportunities to improve social services and streamline infrastructure that our ever-advancing civilization will require a never-ending form of technological innovation, change, and development. As far as we are concerned, then, the challenge before humanity is not whether it should opt for high and sophisticated technology (eventuating in World War III) or low and simple technology (releasing humanity to care-free co-existence with mother nature) — this is a false choice, a false dichotomy. The question regarding technology, rather, is how to develop and apply technologies that are conducive to spiritual, and not only material, prosperity? And how in doing so does such technology organically extend the benefits of materially and spiritually prosperous civilization to members of the entire human race? Is technology doomed to be manipulated as the instrument of materialism forever? Are technological choices possible? What choices and how as a society can we make them? Share your comments below.

Categories
- Empowerment - Three Protagonists Development Justice Oneness

From the Animator to a World Civilization

The worldwide Baha’i community is dedicated to a systematic long-term process of learning how to translate the principles of the Revelation of Baha’u’llah into reality and engaging more and more people in an “exploration of reality that gives rise to a shared understanding of the exigencies of this period in human history and means for addressing them.”  The community’s activities are the current representation of this process of learning.  The end goal: a world civilization that has achieved a dynamic coherence between the material and spiritual requirements of life.

 

How do these activities relate to a world civilization?  Let’s work backwards.

 

A world civilization that has achieved a dynamic coherence between the material and spiritual requirements of life requires relationships that are completely reconceptualized and based upon the principle of the oneness of humankind – the relationships between and among individuals, communities, and institutions – as well as social structures that are based on fresh conceptions of justice.

Relationships based upon the oneness of humanity and social structures based upon justice require patterns of behavior and habits of thought that are founded upon an understanding of the spiritual nature of the human being: that justice is a faculty of the soul, and that the rational soul – a human being’s identity – has no gender, race, ethnicity, or class.

These patterns of behavior and habits of thought that strive to embody more and more the principles of oneness and justice – in other words, a change of culture – require patterns of community life that draw upon our common identity; a community that takes “charge of its own spiritual, social and intellectual development” and is “eager to improve [its] material and spiritual conditions”.

Creating such a community life necessitates certain foundational collective activities that will occur even as humanity matures into a world civilization, such as praying together, educating the young together, studying together and applying insights into action together, and reflecting and consulting together.  These activities will never cease, only simply change form.

At various stages in the development of community life, one activity may flourish more rapidly.  This should be strengthened, as an advance in one aspect of the community-building process will advance the whole.  At our current stage of growth, the junior youth spiritual empowerment program has proven vital and beneficial to enhancing the entire scheme of community-building.

In order to develop the junior youth spiritual empowerment program, there needs to be strong animators – those older youth who work with junior youth groups – who “come to regard themselves as agents of social change”, “endowed with a twofold sense of purpose that impels them to take charge of their own spiritual and intellectual growth and contribute to the welfare of society”, and who can “examine the forces shaping their society and their role in contributing to its constructive transformation”.

 

This sequence of thoughts helps to show how service as an animator of a junior youth group is directly tied with contributing to the advancement of a world civilization.