Living a Baha'i life involves the twofold purpose of individual and social transformation. However most institutions in society today focus on one or the other more. Religions of the past have largely tended to focus on individual change - purifying the self, becoming a better person, establishing a personal connection with God etc - believing that this will lead to widespread change in society. Most non-religious social institutions on the other hand focus on social transformation - governments enact laws governing all of society, policies are made that change the nature of the economy etc - there isn't much effort made to transform the individual (save in the field of education). It is assumed that people are who they are, and then institutions are devised so as to cater to people as they are.
However there is a very dynamic interplay between the individual and society, and it is essential to work at transforming both simultaneously. This was brought home to be especially strongly as I read the following excerpt from a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi:
"We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us, and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life molds the environment and is itself also deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions."
So what, dear reader, are ways in which this simultaneous transformation can happen?
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Again you have posted a very useful posting which I hope will last longer than a day or two.
I am often thinking on this topic, and I have spoken to my adult students on this, because in a general way it concerns processes that do not necessarily have to be linked to religious sources. And of course people are concerned about what they see in society, however they cannot yet accept that religion offers anything new that hasn't already been tried before.
There is an election coming soon here and the hopes are that some miracle may occur through the ballot box, or the opposite view is that nothing will change despite new faces in the government leadership.
The strategy I think I am trying to first present the solution lies in local, or sub-local community building, but a new type of community from what exists now or has existed in the past. Diversity is one important element that will affect individual change as well as social change at higher levels, and the second repeating message I am trying to present is the focus on individual values, the virtues that are universal in scope but presented in a dual image-one that occurs in all cultures and is rooted in the context of Japanese culture. My students provide the Japanese context while try to provide the international or universal context.
So, you have to have some tool that can constantly market "the message" (I mean in this case the message of the quote you have from Shoghi Effendi). That tool has to have some beauty to attract the soul with, it has to have some element of novelty to create interest from week to week or so. And it has to be clearly and reliably focused on "the message".
And my answer to this marketing challenge are the Virtue Cards.It isn't magic, the more thought-work you put in the more skillful I think one can become at connecting everything someone wants to talk about to this message by using these cards as reminders.
final thought of the day,
Dr. Taherizadeh says in his talk in Alaska that there has to be a love affair created between the individual and Baha'u'llah. From my limited experience, we Bahais have a difficulty conveying this love. We have a reputation of being intellectual (among some circles) and where intellect is valued, this is a compliment, But the intellectual attachments don't last as long as the love.
Of course many religions have this ability to create a love that is a prejudiced love. It is the love of a salesman who only knows his company's product and nothing about the competition. He cannot sustain an exchange that goes too far beyond an excessive devotion or appreciation to the source of his income.
Have you heard the love songs that say, "If you think someone else is better than me, then I l release you to see if that is true."? Would a Bahai dare say that to someone who believes there may be something better than what the Bahai's are offering? This is what the scientist espouses, and most dislikes about the image he has about religion. It is a prejudice that can be blind to facts, or comparisons. If the true scientist has a hypothesis he then tries to prove it with his research and then he submits it to a peer reviewed journal for everyone to challenge him on every single aspect of his work. Of course there are those who try to find typos in the manuscript as a proof that his reseach is false. But the vast majority will eventually respond/ do respond to the truth. However the scientist should have a love for the truth and not a love for his work, those are two separate entities. His love for the truth is what makes him outstanding. This love is not intellectual, it is much more than that, it is inexpressible, yet I think you know it when you come in contact with it, regardless of the packaging. This is what sustains the transformation regardless of whether it is individually or institutionally inspired. This is the challenge.
Thanks Edo River - these are all awesome points... your comment about how people believe change can happen miraculously by voting for a new leader is particularly insightful...we see this very much in the US too, of course, esp given the latest elections, and all the hopes pinned on Obama... And yes, good leaders can help mold the direction society is taking to an extent... but it has to be coupled with change in the attitudes of people, in their thinking, in their approach to life - else that change just cannot be successful..
i havent really had much experience with the virtue cards - could you explain what exactly they are, so everyone knows?
your point about love and its interplay with the intellect is interesting too... i must confess that i too don't really understand this idea of love very much yet... i think its a lifelong process as one seeks to go beyond just intellectual acceptance of these values to a point where they are so completely a part of one that to act in contradiction to them would cause us great pain... and maybe that's where the love comes in...
I think what you point to overall, and what I totally think is necessary, is for the individual to step out of his own comfort zone, and take an active part in the discourses of society. We need to engage people, think together, find solutions to problems in our communities, apply these virtues in practice within our spheres of influence. This will help transform our communities in two ways - first, just the force of our efforts, and two, by inspiring other people to learn about the exhibit the same values. In addition, it also provides good practice for our own individual growth - all virtues are truly imbibed only when they are tested in our interactions with people who tempt us to behave contrary to them :) No virtue can really be acquired on a mountaintop... :) So we each need to find ways of getting involved in our communities, interacting not just with people who share the same beliefs as us but those who believe in the contrary too, engage in open discourse, be a part of community development projects etc...
Exactly,
All these points for discussion I have shotgun sprayed out over these posts is because these thoughts are chasing one another in my mind. Basically, I am overawed at how I can create a love relationship to Baha'U'llah with others, because unless you can do that, unless that magic happens the LSA or group or individual does not survive here in Japan.
I am cut off from the news, but we don't have yet, close to it, but we don't have an A level cluster in the whole country. We have alot of small groups, we have some incredible individuals whom you can meet at the the national convention, but we don't have that concentration of people who have prayed enough and then interacted with society enough to create the environment of an A level community.
You know what I am talking about if you are old enough to remember when the whole business news of the US TV, 7PM, half hr. national news lasted about 1 min. with the net change in the DOW. "We" wished for more entertainment value from our business news, for various reasons, and now we got it. The business news, to my mind, more than politics, or my beloved US baseball, describes in "characters writ large" the American culture of conflict. We see conflict, in its various faces: movies, music stories, politics, social behavior, social advancement as a vehicle for change. And there is little discrimination of which kind of change, because at this time, I think, our appetite for conflict is so HUGE, and unlimited time wise. Perhaps our only boundaries are the dept of the examination of the roots of a particular conflict. So, the business news captures the engine of our social awareness in the US. All older entertainment eyes, the non-teenage segment of our population, have gradually learned to look to Wall Street, I think more than to the political parties, for both guidance in their personal-emotional hopes for what kind of future they will be living in. Watching Wall Street has become a kind of religious substititution.
To me this means that the aspects of individual vs social transformation has to include how this culture of conflict has inhibited or helped create an understanding of the purpose of these two social forces. The conflict of the market-place is judged as a purification process for all kinds of personal and social ills. I think we can see a higher evaluation of individual conflict over social institutional conflict. Every thing happening in our current social condition that Bahais see on the TV and in the streets, I think can be reduced down to American's facination with "the individual struggle; does this sound like Ayn Rand, you bet it does!
I have been roving to the other Bahai blogs I like and in the back of my mind I am thinking about this theme "individual and social transformation". I think have already had a Bahai Summer/winter school plus a Bahai Studies Conference with this theme, but I missed it :-(
You know there are heaps of New Age and old age (post WW2 theologians, Thomas Merton, etc) who have struggled with the individual part. And the institutions within Christianity have tried/are trying to negotiate for and through the second part. Over here, it is so strange to compare the activity of American religious culture that I knew of or the Bahai culture that I know of, with what makes the wheels turn.
I wish I could give you a "25 words or less summary", but I can't. I wouldn't say, "It's a vacuum". because that's impossible. and yet..........
Every culture has its peculiarities that make for a challenge for pioneers. Patience, and wisdom, perseverance, etc. I came from California where, if it didn't happen in Hollywood yesterday, it must not be important enough to continue in its present form. Ironically this is what makes me attractive to Japanese classes.
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