Worldview Change
July, 2011
Recent news about small things that make a difference to lots of us brings word that feeding fish to cats is bad for the felines, since the fish are full of pollution from things discarded or dumped into their waters by humans. In Maryland a heritage class organic farm on leased city land is to be turned into soccer fields by Montgomery County’s School Board* with no input whatsoever from the public that the local government is meant to serve. Personally, while a number of people boycott Nike for signing on Michael Vick for their ads, I’m filling out a complex form as the potential adopter of a dog from a large animal rescue organization, taken aback by the number of probing questions I must answer regarding my past and present animal companions. Meanwhile, Dogs Deserve Better, a rescue organization, has turned Vick’s former residence with its black-painted animal facilities into a rescue center for dogs.
There seems to be no end of things which the dark side of people has made poisonous, destructive to the earth we all depend upon -- as will our children’s children -- or to where the innocent must prove their worthiness to adopt a homeless dog. Of course, these are only mild examples of things topsy turvy wrong in our world.
What brings these threads together as a puzzle for me is the idea that none can be well and permanently fixed by the means being taken. Denying cats the fish they love won’t fix ongoing pollution of oceans, rivers and lakes. Is feeding them, say, beef with its likely load of chemicals fed to cattle, much better for them? In Maryland, the organic farmer and people who depend on his 31-year-old, certified organic heritage farm for their food may succeed in beating back the school board’s soccer fields but maybe not another scheme to make more bucks off the land in current miserable economic conditions that have governments grasping at straws to stay afloat. No matter what careful measures rescue organizations devoted to promoting animal welfare take, abusers continue to exist. Many of them looking no kinder or more cruel than the rest of us. They know how to answer rescue questionnaires to get the dog they want to serve as bait in fighter dog training.
We must not succumb to existential indecision because of these things -- and we don’t have to. There is another path. A widespread change in people’s behavior is the thing that will solve numerous terrible problems -- a quantum shift in the way in which overarching problems of humanity are perceived, then addressed. Human and human caused problems such as my three examples are as coordinated as humans are, underneath all the different viewpoints. Everybody will forever need the same basic things, like food, shelter, love, a livelihood, something to believe in, conditions in which children will grow and do well. Thus problems and solutions alike spring from need and vision, material and spiritual balance. Or imbalance.
Last summer I read a seminal book by Baha’i author and educator John Fitzgerald Medina, Faith, Physics and Psychology. He builds the case that problems ranging from economics, politics, governance, health care and the wretched condition of the planet stem from a worn out world view which -- since the days of René Descartes and Isaac Newton -- has firmly separated religion from science, including social science. At the same time it has enthroned material "success" and self interest as guiding principles.
Baha’i teachings state that science and religion are in harmony. Must be so, for religion without science sinks to superstition, science without religion degenerates into unrelieved materialism. The Cartesian-Newtonian way of thinking, correct though it is about so much, has affected virtually every segment of the world for the past several hundred years; its materialistic view created capitalism and communism alike. Governments form, education operates, medical care is practiced, economic systems function, food is grown and distributed -- or not distributed -- under the aegis of these two 17th/18th century geniuses whose view is that the universe and everything in it functions on purely mechanical principles -- leaving out the spiritual side of things. This state of affairs brings a way of life where self interest is at the heart of economic and social systems, where God and morals have no place in school curricula, where a human’s soul and spiritual nature get no, or very little, consideration in western medicine. And make no mistake, there is food enough in the world to feed the starving majority of the human race -- if large corporations with their self interest foremost would step back from what they call market forces, allowing each country feed its own people before the country’s privatized farms are required to sell their products abroad to pay off the country’s debts.
Holistic views, which in critical ways are harmonious with Baha’i views, are growing and hold great hope that things are slowly changing. Increasing numbers of people recognize that we absolutely need to discard old paradigms that created a “them versus us” mentality. As Baha’u’llah, the Prophet Founder of the Baha’i Faith, said, “The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.” We are ALL in this together. It works when we cooperate and respect one another. The only way we can emerge from the present escalating series of catastrophes and collapses of systems is by learning to work together in all areas of endeavor. How else, for example, can the earth’s oceans be cleaned so the bounty of plant and animal life they contain will function as nature made it, providing safe and abundant food and so on? How else can the world’s food supplies be evenly distributed so that a tiny percentage of people aren’t consuming 90% of it while the vast majority of people feel hunger or worse every day?
We have a world where humanitarian organizations distribute vaccines and other medicines to the world's most needy, who are then healthier as they slowly starve. We have a willy-nilly, uncoordinated way of approaching solutions, with no systematic manner of putting the humanitarian organizations in concert with not only the world's governments, but with the critical corporations that are larger than most of the world's governments! The forces preventing these corrections from being made include the self interest (greed) within existing systems that have no moral or spiritual regulations to temper their self interest.
Reading recommendation:
What the publisher says about this book: "Written in the style of Fritjof Capra's The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture, with one critical difference: Medina includes discussions regarding the role of religion and spirituality in building a new society. Despite the progress of Western Civilization in economic, scientific, and other areas, a lack of corresponding progress with respect to spiritual life has left much of society feeling disoriented and unbalanced. Medina's insight sheds light on ways to address this imbalance. The ultimate goal of this examination is to present a path toward a prosperous global civilization that fulfills humanity's physical, psychological, and spiritual needs."
It is available via the Baha'i Distribution Service as well as Amazon.
*See the story: 31-Year-Old Organic Farm to Be Replaced with Private Soccer Field
