We are not alone

Within each constellation, the brightest-looking star is called Alpha, the second brightest is referred to as Beta, and so on. When it came to measuring how far away from us each star might be, the brightest star in the constellation of Centaur (“Alpha Centauri”) seemed to be the nearest to our Sun, at “only” 4.2 light years in distance.

When astronomers tried to learn more about Alpha Centauri, it was discovered that there are actually two stars operating together as a binary system, and these are known as Alpha Centauri A and (you guessed it) Alpha Centauri B. But books usually still refer to Alpha Centauri as if it were one star.

In 1915, the Scottish astronomer Robert Innes discovered another star nearby, too dim to be seen with the naked eye. When the distance was calculated, it was found to be nearer to our Sun than the Alpha Centauri stars are! So, although we can see several thousand stars with the naked eye, the nearest one is simply invisible to us. I find this quite exciting, a red dwarf star (yes, really) that is our nearest, but secret, neighbour! Its name, “Proxima” Centauri, actually means “nearest”. And yet, although this star has been known for over a hundred years, many sources still state that “Alpha Centauri is our nearest star”.

Proxima Centauri is a less massive star than our Sun, slightly older and with a lower surface temperature. And yet, this month, a new discovery has been announced. Our nearest star has a planet circling it, now named “Proxima b” (artist's impression above). This planet is at the right distance from the star to enable it to have liquid water, which is important because many scientists believe that water is essential for life to exist. The zone in which this sort of planet should exist has been nicknamed “the Goldilocks Zone” – not too hot, not too cold, but just right!

Writing before Proxima Centauri itself had even been discovered, Bahá’u’lláh said, “Every… star hath its own planets, and every planet its own creatures…” The life of a planet, and indeed of a star, stretches over billions of years, and it is perfectly possible that different planets go through different stages in the evolution of life at vastly different times. So even if “Proxima b” has had/will have life, it may not necessarily exist there now. What the discovery of “Proxima b” does do is show that the presence of planets around stars is even more of a feature than previously realised, and that theoretically inhabitable planets are also more common than was realised. Crucially, to have habitable planets, the star does not have to resemble our Sun. This hugely increases the number of stars which may support habitable planets, and therefore the chances that we are not alone.

Certain scientists are already considering new theoretical ways of speedier space travel, essential if we are to travel to the nearest star systems. While that research is under way, it would be wise to sort out conditions on our own planet, ensuring that we are in a fit state to set off to visit the neighbours! Firstly, we need to establish some sort of genuine co-ordination at the planetary level. That would be greatly assisted by the choice of a world shared language. We need to abandon the practices of various kinds of warfare, including terrorism – no other planet will want us exporting violence to their worlds. If we want to have anything positive to offer our planetary neighbours, then we need to improve our economic systems, and ensure that everyone has an acceptable standard of living, before we start trying to visit other planets! Bahá’u’lláh wrote that “All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilisation”. Let us work on overcoming the world’s immediate problems so that we can present a positive and friendly face to the neighbours.

We come together as one

Thousands of athletes and sports fans have arrived in Rio de Janeiro for the 31^st Olympic Games. A rainbow of peoples from 206 countries and territories will be participating in a rainbow of different sports. In some ways, it is a glimpse of the future, the endlessly diverse family of man united in a common enterprise.

The lead-up to the Games has also been a mirror to the challenges and trials of our age. Rio has shown us the need for planning and for concerted action, but it has also shown the need for just and considerate treatment of the poor. It has shown the need for better disease control, and has highlighted the disastrous consequences of crime. In some sports we have also been shown the fundamental need for trustworthiness to underlie everyone’s actions, and we have also been shown that an excessive nationalism plays a part in undermining trustworthiness itself.

Alongside the deliberate portrayal of human diversity, and the need to cherish and nurture our minorities, Brazil’s opening ceremony chose to highlight the environment, and the need to protect it. The ideal expressed was that we should be at peace with the planet. The Olympic rings, made from trees, were seen to grow from seeds, and each athlete was given a seed from one of Brazil’s tree species, communicating the idea of replanting some of what has been lost.

Although the Bahá’í community is better known for its efforts to unite the religions and to unite mankind, the need to preserve the world’s ecology is also part of the Bahá’í vision. The Bahá’í writings say: “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 moulds the environment and is itself also deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other…”

In 1992, Rio de Janeiro was the venue for a huge Summit and Global Forum on preserving the Earth’s resources, and the Bahá’ís had a very visible presence there. The Bahá’í community supplied a large number of the volunteers and contributed to the debates within the Summit. The Bahá’ís designed and created a Peace Monument, as a contribution to the Earth Summit. This is in the shape of an hour-glass, into which representatives from each of the countries placed a small quantity of their soil. Engraved upon the monument are the words of Bahá’u’lláh: “The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.”

The Olympics represent something special in human life. Every few years we remind ourselves, through the holding of the Games, that we are all endowed with different talents and capabilities. We can, and should, come together as one human family – not just to show the great diversity in the human race, but to celebrate our oneness.


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In a previous blog, I have touched upon the related subject of climate change – (see “A climate of change” [August 2015]); and on the subject of trustworthiness – (see “You can cheat people, but you cannot cheat nature” [February 2016]).

A question of balance

The number of women in leading roles in the political world again seems to be on the rise. In the United Kingdom, recent political events have paved the way for Theresa May to become the second female Prime Minister (from a final choice of two women), while Angela Eagle made a bid for the leadership of the official Opposition. Meanwhile, in the United States of America, there is a real possibility, for the first time, of a woman becoming president.

The equality of men and women has been a major principle of the Bahá’í Faith since its inception. In the early history of the birth of this new religion, the poetess Tahirih allowed herself to become the first martyr for women’s rights. Her final words, before her cruel death, were said to be: “You may kill me as soon as you like, but you will not stop the emancipation of women.”

When Bahá’u’lláh‘s son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, visited London in 1912, a number of well-known suffragettes came to meet Him. They were well aware of the Bahá’í belief that women would obtain parity with men in all fields of endeavour and accomplishment. The famous Emmaline Pankhurst visited ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and referred to Him as a “prophet”. He replied, with a broad smile, “Oh no! I am a man, like you.”

 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said, 100 years ago: “If women were given the same advantages as men, their capacity being the same, the result would be the same. In fact, women have a superior disposition to men; they are more receptive, more sensitive, and their intuition is more intense. The only reason of their present backwardness in some directions is because they have not had the same educational advantages as men.” The Bahá’í Writings also stress that the education of girls is even more important than that of boys. This is because most girls will become mothers, and the mother is the first teacher of the child.

Bahá’ís see men and women as like the two wings of a bird – both must be equally strong in order for the bird to fly successfully. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said that, “The happiness of mankind will be realised when women and men co-ordinate and advance equally, for each is the complement and helpmeet of the other.”

 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá gave us a very clear vision of the future: “The world in the past has been ruled by force, and man has dominated over woman by reason of his more forceful and aggressive qualities both of body and mind. But the scales are already shifting - force is losing its weight; and mental alertness, intuition, and the spiritual qualities of love and service, in which woman is strong, are gaining ascendancy. Hence the new age will be an age less masculine, and more permeated with the feminine ideals - or, to speak more exactly, will be an age in which the masculine and feminine elements of civilisation will be more properly balanced.”


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In order to achieve the necessary balance between masculine and feminine elements in the writing, Ann (my wife) and I worked together on this blog post.

                

We are all one

Trish Adudu is a presenter and producer on British television screens. She also works on local radio, based in Coventry, where she lives. Last week she was racially abused by a person on a bicycle, who turned his unwanted attention from a young Asian man to her. The cyclist used upsetting and insulting language, and told her to, “Go home!”, although I doubt that he knew where her house is. (Perhaps he actually meant that she should go back to Bristol, where she was born.) As she is a local personality, the story of her experience was soon aired on both radio and television, but apparently it is reflecting a sudden rise in such abuse in many parts of Britain.

The recent referendum in the United Kingdom, in which slightly more than half of the voters opted to leave the European Union, highlighted during the campaign the significant numbers of eastern Europeans who have recently migrated to Britain. This was all to do with managing migration and it certainly had nothing to do with the colour of people’s skin. However, the “Leave” victory seems to have emboldened those who have a racist view of the world to openly express their opinions.

Meanwhile in the United States of America, there have been a rising number of incidents in which people from racial minorities have lost their lives at the hands of police officers, and just recently a sad retaliation. The immediate causes of the trouble may be different, but in perceiving us all as so different from one another, the underlying problem is actually the same.

In the Bahá’í view, these occurrences demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of the biology of the human race. Bahá’u’lláh stated, and science seems to agree, that all human beings are descended from the same original stock. Bahá’u’lláh saw mankind as inter-related, and as one people: “O people of the world, ye are all the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch.” In effect, human beings are one extended family. (It has been calculated that the most distant relationship we can have with another human being is fiftieth cousin, without any exception whatsoever!) The Bahá’í community itself exists in virtually every territory in the world, and includes members of most minority groups. There are also special safeguards for minorities within the community. For example, if there is a tie in a Bahá’í election, and if one of the people is from a minority background, they will be the one elected.

Elsewhere in the Bahá’í Writings, humanity is likened to the different-coloured flowers of one garden. In a garden, the beauty is caused by the juxtaposition of flowers of various shapes, sizes and colours. A garden in which every flower is identical is simply not pleasing to the eye. In the same way, human beings are of different sizes, different colours and differing appearance. The Bahá’í watchword is “unity in diversity”, and this is one of the reasons why inter-racial marriage has always been encouraged within the Bahá’í community. In the USA, Bahá’ís have always been at the forefront of promoting racial unity.

This understanding of the varied but united nature of the human race renders all nationalism and racism rather meaningless. Bahá’u’lláh said that, “The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.” We should be loving one another, and supporting one another. Within a family, it is understood that richer members can spare some time and money to help those who have less, and help them through difficulties. This is what should be happening on a global scale, with richer neighbourhoods and territories helping to build up the poorer ones. A greater sense of economic justice and co-operation would greatly decrease the hatred and suspicion in the world.

Love for all humanity has to be the answer: “If you desire with all your heart, friendship with every race on earth, your thought, spiritual and positive, will spread; it will become the desire of others, growing stronger and stronger, until it reaches the minds of all men.”    



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In January, 2016, after I had a vivid dream, I wrote another blog post on racism. It is called “I have a dream”.

               

For many are called, but few are chosen

For many months now, people in the United States of America have been involved in a tortuous process which will (eventually) culminate in the election of one individual as President of the entire country. Two rival parties vie for public support, although each one in reality contains a wide range of opinions and viewpoints. Within each party, a ruthless process of elimination takes place, as candidates realise, one by one, that there is no realistic chance of them securing their party’s nomination. There are few rules as to what constitutes acceptable behaviour, and a huge amount of money has to be spent on advertising, television slots, literature and the like. It is therefore clearly an advantage to be wealthy at the start of the process.

In the United Kingdom, the vote to leave the European Union, against the advice of almost every political leader, has brought about a severe storm within each of the two foremost parties. Within the party in government, there is to be a long drawn-out contest for a new leader, not as bruising as the American one, but with some similarities. Within Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, no vacancy for leader officially exists, but there is a huge rebellion within the Parliamentary Party, which may also lead to a similar drawn-out internal process.

Elections within the Bahá’í community are organised on a quite different basis. For a start, there are no candidates. No-one puts themselves forward. Within each town or village, the Bahá’ís come together once a year for a meeting organised on spiritual lines. After prayer, and some short readings encouraging the election of people with the best combination of “recognised ability” and of “selfless devotion”, each person simply writes down the names of nine Bahá’ís within that town/village on their ballot paper. The nine people who receive the most votes are automatically considered to have been elected as the Local Spiritual Assembly. Of course, there are further details, but in essence that is how it is done. The Bahá’ís do not even discuss between themselves the qualities of other individuals. The election is considered as between the voter, his or her conscience, and God!

The result, hopefully, is a harmonious process in which no-one knows who has voted for whom, and in which no cliques can form. Hopefully, the nine people elected will include reasonable and moderate people, whereas an adversarial system can sometimes favour more stubborn people, with strong opinions.

“Well, yes,” you may say. “It is easy for a small group of people who know each other. It wouldn’t work for the whole country.” Fair point. What happens, in the election of the National Spiritual Assembly, is that the Bahá’ís in each area vote for one person, who becomes their delegate and goes to a national convention. The delegate, once at the convention, will again be able to vote for nine people, again without any hindrance from the procedures of nominations, canvassing, etc. And the odd thing is – it works! Every vote is cast for someone, because of their positive qualities, rather than, as sometimes happens elsewhere, against someone, because of their less attractive qualities or their predetermined ideas.

Democracy means “government by the people”, but the actual system for achieving that varies widely from country to country. In the United States, the President is elected separately from the Congress. The result is that he (or she?) is charged with running the country, but does not necessarily have the legislature behind him (or her). In the United Kingdom, this never happens, because the person charged with organising the day-to-day running of the country, the Prime Minister, sits in parliament and needs to have the support of that Parliament (well, a majority of it), otherwise he/she falls out of power. This last situation is effectively what has just happened.

In the Bahá’í system, both the Local Spiritual Assembly and the National Spiritual Assembly are automatically elected afresh every year, so there should always be some renewal alongside a certain continuity, so confrontation and opposition are simply not required as part of the system at all. There are no competing groups or parties, so everyone naturally pulls together.

Abdu’l-Bahá, who visited the U.S.A. in 1912, hoped that the American democracy would become glorious in spiritual matters, even as it was aspiring to develop in material ways. He predicted that it would eventually be America which would start the process of instituting a world-wide and permanent peace. It is my personal hope that the people of the United States of America will one day have a government which will be able to further the causes of peace, understanding and justice in the world. And in Britain, which has now stepped back from membership of an ever-closer union of nations, the election of tolerant and far-sighted leaders is every bit as important…

God looks at the heart

Last Thursday, the people of London elected a Muslim man as their Mayor. Sadiq Khan, son of immigrants from Pakistan, became the leader of this city of eight million people. This is not a figurehead role - the Mayor has real power. In electing someone from a minority group, Londoners have voted in the true spirit of the age.

Of course, in many ways it should not really matter which religion he follows – but in practice it does matter to a lot of people. However, Britain is not the only country where people from religious minorities can become mayors. In largely Muslim Turkey, for example, the city of Mardin has a Christian mayor. So does Djakarta, a city of over nine million people, in largely Muslim Indonesia.

In the Bahá’í view anyway, all the world’s major religions are part of God’s plan. Bahá’ís believe in the principle of “Progressive Revelation”, in which the Founder of each religion builds on what has gone before, and advances the spiritual and social teachings to a new level. So any differences between the original teachings of one religion and those of another are because these religions were given at different times and revealed to societies which were therefore at different stages. Each religion has spiritual teachings, such as honesty, trustworthiness and love of one’s fellow humans. These teachings are common to all the religions and remain relevant in every age. But there are also social teachings, which fix the laws of marriage, divorce, inheritance and so on, according to the requirements of the time. It is these social teachings which differ between the religions.

Particularly in the early stages of each religion, when it is new and fresh, the religion is a real force for progress and an undoubted force for good. Bahá’u’lláh says: “All men have been created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilisation”, and explains that “the fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race.”  Unfortunately, over time man interferes with or “interprets” the teachings of a religion. An assumption develops within each religion that it is the only correct path, and this has sometimes developed into violent treatment of minorities. In parts of India, there is persecution of Christians and Buddhists by Hindus. Buddhists persecute Muslims in Burma. Christians “ethnically cleansed” the Muslims in Bosnia, and there is persecution of everybody else by the “Muslims” of ISIS/Daesh. In not one of these cases do the Scriptures of the religion say that religious minorities should be persecuted or killed.

We need to take the world past this current period in which people are using religion as an excuse to carry out barbaric atrocities against other ethnic groups. Instead, we need to consciously move towards a stage of recognising all the religions as essentially one religion. Indeed, oneness of religion should be the glue which unites the hearts of mankind. God does not favour people who were raised in any particular religion, or come from any particular ethnic group. Why should He? In the Bahá’í view, religious background, a person’s colour or gender makes no difference at all in the sight of God, Who only looks at the hearts.

There *is* a better way

Someone recently unleashed more than eleven million documents on the world. These came from the Panamanian legal firm Mossack Fonseca. Many of these documents give insights into how people with a lot of money and power hide it away from the taxman and the lawman. Over the last few years, there have been many moves to try to remove banking secrecy and “offshore” tax havens, and this new leak of information from Panama will help reduce both unfairness and dishonest practice. And yet the bulk of mankind do not have spare money to hide away. Indeed many people simply do not have enough money for their basic needs. How can the huge differences in wealth be fair? How do we move away from the situation where some people are so rich, while others seemed destined to stay so poor?

Part of the underlying response must be in the way that we see other human beings. If we thought of mankind as one family, and every person needing help as one of our relations, we might behave differently. Elimination of the extremes of poverty and of wealth is one of the underlying Bahá’í principles. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said, “The Law of God requires that there should be neither excessive wealth nor excessive poverty.”

Another part of the solution is to devolve more initiative to the local level. Justice for the disadvantaged is impossible if we rely on formulae – sorry, formulas – cooked up centrally. Every individual’s circumstances are unique, with a myriad factors coming into play. The government comes up with ever more complicated attempts to help people from a distance, when what they actually need is help to be close at hand. Bahá’ís envisage the introduction of a new system referred to as the local “storehouse”. Starting at the village level, a proportion of the income generated locally is set aside each year. From this storehouse, farmers and others would have their incomes topped up during bad years, and families whose income falls short of their necessary expenditure would have their money made up from the storehouse. Crucially, the trustees of the storehouse would be local people, and would be in a position to understand the situation each family finds itself in, and would be able to direct all kinds of help.

A similar system would be operated in each town, possibly with trustees at a more local level, rather than centrally for the whole town. In this way, the entire community is involved in the same one exercise of balancing individual incomes: those paying money in, those taking money out and those overseeing the process. There would also, of course, have to be storehouses at regional or national level, which would receive money from areas in surplus and help out areas in real need. And clearly, although the initiative to act would be at the local level, there would be a place for some co-ordination at the global level.

In the Bahá’í view, every adult should be involved in an occupation of some sort – spending one’s life in idleness does not encourage personal growth. There is therefore the responsibility on every individual to look for some sort of honest employment. Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, said, “It is enjoined upon every one of you to engage in some form of occupation, such as crafts, trades and the like… Waste not your time in idleness and sloth…” At the same time, it is the responsibility of the local authorities to ensure that there is some sort of work for every individual: “It is the duty of those who are in charge of the organisation of society to give every individual the opportunity of acquiring the necessary talent … and also the means of utilising such a talent…”

But the wages of every person employed by others should also be fair. Justice therefore needs to be one of the watchwords of society, and the principle of the oneness of mankind should allow no room for the exploitation of others. All of the above principles need to be established worldwide, because while some parts of the world have such an advantage over others, large numbers of people will continue to see the need to migrate elsewhere, in the hope of a better life. One of the methods that Bahá’ís believe should be used to produce a better balance in personal incomes is that of profit-sharing. Employees in any company should be entitled to a share in the profits as a right, which should be established by law: “reasonable rights of both … parties will be legally fixed … by just and impartial laws.”

No one single measure introduced by itself will produce a total reshaping of the world’s economy, but adopting the goal of mankind becoming one family; adopting the elimination of poverty as a goal; the increase in local responsibility; profit-sharing and a consciousness of justice will together point to a better way.