Long before "Occupy Wall Street" some saw events unfolding and started building a response to them that will "survive spring break."
Excerpts from "The Promise of World Peace",
a statement by the Baha'i Universal House of Justice,
October 1985
Peace .. is now at long last within the reach of the nations. For the
first time in history it is possible for everyone to view the entire
planet, with all its myriad diversified peoples, in one perspective.
World peace is not only possible but inevitable. It is the next stage
in the evolution of mankind -- in the worlds of one great thinker, "the
planetization of mankind."
Whether peace is to be reached only after unimaginable horrors
precipitated by humanity's stubborn clinging to old patterns of
behavior, or is to be embraced now by an act of consultative will, is
the choice before all who inhabit the earth....
Among the favorable signs are ...the spread of women's and youth
movements calling for the end to war; and the spontaneous spawning of
widening networks of ordinary people seeking understanding through
personal communication.
Baha'u'llah wrote ... The signs of impending convulsions and chaos can
now be discerned inasmuch as the prevailing order appears to be
lamentably defective....
Flaws in the prevailing order are conspicuous in .. the threatened
collapse of the international economic order, the spread of anarchy and
terrorism, the intense suffering which these and other afflictions are
causing to increasing millions. Indeed so much have aggression and
conflict come to characterize our social, economic,and religious systems
that many have succumbed to the view that such behavior is intrinsic to
human nature and therefore ineradicable.
With the entrenchment of this view, a paralyzing contradiction has
developed in human affairs. One the one hand, people of all nations
proclaim not only their readiness but their longing for peace and
harmony... On the other, uncritical assent is given to the proposition
that human beings are incorrigibly selfish and aggressive and thus
incapable of erecting a social system at once progressive and
peaceful... based on cooperation and reciprocity.
... Satisfaction on this point will enable all people to set in motion
constructive social forces which , because they are consistent with
human nature, will encourage harmony and cooperation instead of war and
conflict.
To choose such a course is not to deny humanity's past, but to
understand it. The Baha'i Faith regards the current world confusion and
calamitous condition in human affairs as a natural phase in an organic
process leading ultimately and irresistible to the unification of the
human race in a single social order whose boundaries are those of the
planet. The human race as a distinct organic unit, has passed through
the evolutionary stages analogous to the states of infancy and childhood
in the lives of its individual members and is now in the culminating
period of its turbulent adolescence approaching the long-awaited coming
of age.
...That the human race is today experiencing the unavoidable tumult
which marks its collective coming of age is not a reason for despair but
a prerequisite to undertaking the stupendous enterprise of building a
peaceful world.
That such an enterprise is possible, that the necessary constructive
forces do exist, that unifying social structures can be erected, is the
theme we urge you to examine.
The resurgence of fanatical religious fervor occurring in many lands ... testifies to the spiritual bankruptcy it represents.
All too many of these ideologies, alas, instead of embracing the concept
of the oneness of mankind and promoting the increase of concord among
different peoples have tended to deify the state, to subordinate the
rest of mankind to one nation, race, or class, to attempt to suppress
all discussion and interchange of ideas, or to callously abandon
starving millions to the operations of a market system all all to
clearly is aggravating the plight of the majority of mankind, while
enabling small sections to live in a condition of affluence scarcely
dreamed by our forbears.
Those who care for the future of the human race may well ponder this
advice. "If long-cherished ideals and time honored institutions, if
certain social assumptions and religious formulae have ceased to promote
the welfare of the generality of mankind, if they no longer minister to
the needs of a continually evolving humanity, let them be swept away
and relegated to the limbo of obsolescent and forgotten doctrines."
The inordinate disparity between rich and poor, a source of acute
suffering, keeps the world in a state of instability, virtually on the
brink of war.
Unbridled nationalism, as distinguished from a sane and legitimate
patriotism, must give way to a wider loyalty, to the love of humanity as
a whole. Baha'u'llah's statement is "The earth is but one country,
and mankind its citizens."
The emancipation of women, the achievement of full equality between the
sexes, is one of the most important, though less acknowledged
prerequisites of peace.
Entire Document
The Promise of World Peace
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