The new World Order

Before I forget, here are some of the major points made by Hamid during his most excellent talk today on "A New World Order: A Baha'i vision of the political systems of the future, and the role of spiritual values in politics." As usual his clarity of thought and expression, and ability to hone in on the point left me marveling...

Anyway, here's some of what he had to say (in the order that thoughts come to me, not necessarily how he said it). I will expand more later:

1. Humans need to realize their fundamental identity as a spiritual beings.

2. The social and political order at any point of time is both a reflection/expression of the stage of humanity's spiritual maturity, as well as an enabler of further individual and collective progress in this realization of their spiritual identity (the first aspect, btw, is one of the reasons why when one country goes into another and tries to impose a system different from what exists there, it usually doesn't work).

3. Humans also need to realize their fundamental unity, something that is becoming increasingly clear at all levels. We will soon reach a stage where we cannot ignore out commonalities, and must necessarily come together to govern ourselves.

4. Ergo, the political order of the future will be one where the basic unit of government today, the nation-state, is expanded to the entire world. This is not entirely unconceivable, as we consider global problems - ecological, economic etc - and also consider cases where several countries have come together under a common banner, such as the EU.

5. Just as there exist states within a country today, each enjoying a reasonable degree of autonomy, but united under a common program for development, so will countries exist in the future global society.

6. The move from the current system to such a system would be a gradual, organic transformation effected by the individual spiritual transformations of people, as well as the rise in intellectual and spiritual maturity of people. Change will not happen by revolution but in an organic way through individual change.

7. Unity will also be promoted by the realization that collectively, humans can achieve much more than individually - the total is much greater than the sum of the parts. Consultation and discussion, carried out properly, therefore, will always yield better results than individual decision-making.

8. Nationalism is redundant (see earlier post!!)

9. The world today, relatively speaking (and we HAVE made great progress since the past, btw), is like an orchestra where each of us is an instrumentalist who isn't a very good player, we aren't playing a very good score, we all don't necessarily have a very good ear to realize how badly we are playing, and the conductor is really there because he wants to be conductor, not because he loves music. What we're trying to do is get to a stage where each of us has individually developed, and at the same time become better at harmonizing together; and we play a much better score (a plan for progress) under the guidance of a conductor (a leader) who is at that position for the sheer love of music.

10. Some features of this future world order include a world tribunal, an executive force, a universal auxiliary language in addition to our mother tongue, unique currency etc - everything we see at the level of a country today at the world level, but imbued with spiritual principles. Cultural diversity will be preserved and respected - but not allowed to become a source of dissension or disunity.

11. As we evolve more, and a majority of people reach a certain level of spiritual maturity, there will be a greater commonality in vision and viewpoints of how society should evolve, and which direction we should move in. Even now there exist fundamentally different viewpoints on some very basic issues, which will eventually disappear as we realize our underlying unity. Then decisions need to be made not on what direction society should move in - but rather, how we should move in that direction.

12. Leaders should be elected based not on what stance they take on issues (which is what happens now) but on the basis of their capabilities as decision makers, their characters, and the trust we can place in them to make the right decisions under changing circumstances based on fact and instinct. Interestingly this is happening with the current US primaries to a greater extent than before - there is much that is common between the 2 Democratic front-runners, for example, in terms of policy and stance on issues - and votes in this election are being decided more on people's perceptions of the character of these candidates.

13. We want our leaders to be competent, intelligent and capable - but at the same time selfless. However the current system encourages the selection of precisely those people who are NOT selfless, but are willing to get to the top at any cost. This is of course better than a dictatorial system, but still not the best we can do.

14. Partisan politics is based essentially on holding dogmatic stances on issues, and NOT on the ideal of consultative decision making based on the facts at any given time. Therefore it will always be inferior to a non-partisan system when a majority of society has evolved to a greater spiritual level.

15. Partisanship is divisive, and detrimental to the goal of unity. The very existence of parties depends on defining a set of dogmatic ideals that are different from other sets of such ideals - many of them at a fundamental level. Again, we need to develop commonality of thought and vision at a very basic level - and once we reach that stage, having political parties will be unnecessary (and even harmful) and so should be actively discouraged.

16. In general adopting a fixed stance on many issues (such as some of the hot issues of the day like abortion, state-financed medical care etc) doesn't make sense, because most issues have many sides, and the right decision is really a combination of these various sides, which would come about through consultation and deliberation based on the reality at that time in society. In addition, issues evolve over time, and so sticking to stances dogmatically does not help. The whole art is to balance out all dimensions to any given issue. Of course, you have to achieve commonality on some basic issues.

17. In addition, partisan politics implies that a candidate, even when he/she gets elected to office, still remains in some way responsible and accountable to the party, for their very political existence depends on the party. Therefore their policies and decisions are reflections of the idealogical position of the party as opposed to the results of a rational decision making process based on facts.

18. The current system of nomination and campaigning could easily be replaced by a system where people vote at different levels (first within their local community, then city, then county, then state, then country, then world), and at each level vote for those people whom they consider the best suited for the post of a leader at that level - based on a direct knowledge of the person, trust, what they see of people's accomplishments, etc. People at any level vote for people at the next higher level, and so on, till you get to the level of world governance. This process does require a greater involvement of the people in the political process and greater transparency in terms of knowing the accomplishments of people. The former will come about, again, organically as more and more people advance spiritually; and the latter becomes easier with every passing day, as our communications network and the internet grow exponentially.

19. At the top you would have not one person, but a group of people, again exemplifying the principle that collective decision making is better than individual.

20. Such a system is not just a hypothetical possibility - it is a reality. Switzerland is governed by a group of people who are elected, not one person. The worldwide Baha'i community is administered by a structure very similar to the one described above, where elections are democratic and yet totally non-partisan in nature, and involve no nominations/campaigning. So the question is just one of scaling by another order of magnitude or two as society evolves to the stage where such a system becomes closer to realization.