The wondrous thing is, an overwhelming number of people have no experience of true community, and have no inkling, though they be the toast of all around, that they are living in a dark cave when it comes to social existence - for currently we all are.
Without a real experience of community, or a concrete vision instilled through education and reflection, there's no goal horizon that will draw people out from their caves into the glorious, bright and song-filled world of building up and living within a real community. To have the slightest experience or vision of community is, ironically, a misfortunate curse, as you become irrevocably unsettled by the lack of community you perceive everywhere around you and in the world - although it's a blessing too, if you can find ways to act and (start to) do something about it.
There are lots of things parading today as community - watching soap operas; emailing people across the globe; business meetings; chatting about football results and weather; living comfortably with everything you need like a fattened animal, fashion - but they are not even the glint in the eye of a dead ant.
All the above do have a place within a real community, but on their own they shine only a small light into life, though for anyone (all of us!) in a cave having never seen the bright world of community, any small light will be mistaken for the sun. If I trip and fall into a canal, someone at the other side of the globe isn't going to pull me out, nor will some fictional character on the TV. Community is about existing as part of a living, organic social environment, where everybody automatically looks out for everyone else, laughs with them, shares their tears, encouraging and carrying each others' load. It's not about having like-minded or like-skilled people, but a diversity of people with a common and true family spirit of the most uplifting and nourishing kind, where people are honest and listen and are listened to intently with deep love and respect.
Every year for a number of years, I have in fact joined a community project in Northumberland whose purpose is to give people the experience of community life, so that when they go back to their cities, towns and villages after a week, they will have a vision of how a community can feel, and they will try to recreate that feeling of fellowship in the neighbourhood where they dwell.
The amazing thing is that all the qualities every spiritual tradition commends avoiding (due to their dire consequence upon community dynamic) have no apparent consequences in dyfunctional communities, because such communities can't disintegrate any further, giving people little incentive to adopt those very necessary spiritual qualities that will lift them and their community out of its quagmire in preference to languishing as they are; nevertheless, in a functioning society, it is essential to hold fast to those qualities encouraged by religion and scrub out those qualities religions discourage. For instance, a person who holds onto their anger in a harmonious community, will tear apart and utterly derange the fabric of its vibrant dynamic unless that community has a strong structure of preservation.
One question that therefore arises, is how to go from the state the world we are in, into the state it should be in.
Since everything is tied to everything else, you have to address all issues at a fundamental level, setting in motion enduring processes that will heal the festering wounds, promote community, and protect against the entrance of discord.
Many people advocate that all that is needed is love. That is like saying all a body needs is blood, or all a bike needs is oil. A body also needs organs and structures, and a bike needs cogs and handlebars. So in the world, love is an essential ingredient, but structural organs are needed too, though not of the kind we have today. For love needs forms to work with and through, whether that love takes on the hues of individual empathy, or consultative justice and mercy.
The world has poured out resources and finance as vast as oceans into solving the innumerable individual problems of the world, only to find one problem is immediately replaced by another; the whole world is in imbalance, and they are addressing merely the symptoms of a deep disease; as with a tree whose every leaf is ill, the problem lies not with the leaves but with the sap, and in the world it is the spiritual sap that has lost its vitality, corrupting all the organs and leaves that promote and safeguard its growth. As long as the spiritual sap is rancid, dying leaves will continually be replaced with more dying leaves.
People need to orientate the mirrors of their hearts and minds toward God, so that they become the image of God's qualities and will, that through their feelings, thoughts, words and deeds, the qualities of the spirit may shine upon the earth.
When people consult and work together there is peaceful progress; when they work in conflicting teams, there is war and competition; when they work as individuals, there is anarchy and misfortune. So of the three, we would choose to work together wherever the above choices arise: and they arise in all things, not just at the microlevel with individuals, but on the larger scales of districts, counties, nations, and continents. All must work together where possible, for the other two choices are no valid substitute.
Obviously this raises certain practicalities; small groups of people can work directly together, whilst larger groups have to elect representatives who work together on their behalf, and those representatives when engaged in collective cooperation with others, must themselves at some point elect representatives. Superficially the world does this, but omits some absolutely key requirements.
A king has no power of himself, other than his own arms and legs; power and strength in the world come from ordinary individuals, cooperating amongst themselves in a joint adventure of life; interacting with life, it is also they whom decisions ultimately affect, and consequently it is small localities who should be creating, implementing and evaluating their own activities within a framework that promotes effective cooperation and necessary conflict resolution, not unnecessary values and decisions being dictated by people sitting around a far-distant table who know little about that community's desires and fears. You could say this is devolution taken to an extreme degree, down to the level of the village and the individual street, thus resulting in a healthy and active participation of individuals in community life, instead of the passivity seen today. However, such devolution is only possible within a framework of effective cooperation and conflict resolution that embraces streets, villages, parishes, counties, countries and the whole world, and which, ultimately, has the power to enforce a resolution wherever consultative means have been strenuously tried and failed. For as we have seen, any issue allowed to linger or fester will destroy a beautiful community dynamic.
To create such a framework of facilitation, localities must elect representatives who walk, live and eat amongst themselves, whose goal within the community is to nurture and protect this creative vitality, who represent the best wisdom of the community in processes both within and outwith the community. Because the community knows its members (especially a devolved community), with hearts turned toward the spirit, they should elect each year those people who most embody spiritual qualities: which would include humbleness, trustworthiness, listening (deeply to others), openness (with ideas), detachment (from their own views), energy (engaging in what is required of them and pursual of the majority decision), accession (to the collective will), entirely unpartisan, and so forth, with no individual representative holding any power or authority, only their collective decisions being binding and authoritative. Thus will the representatives be trustworthy and vibrant servants of the community, able to nurture the community life without overshadowing it.
In this way, villages, towns, cities, nations, and the whole planet, can work together. Every community, whilst holding the reins of its own affairs, must give up entirely all notion of sovereignty, for otherwise lingering issues that consultation fails to resolve, might never be solved. Thus every nation must give up its sovereignty also to a World Parliament vested with power and authority, so that whilst invariably engaged in its own affairs, any lingering issue with another nation can be resolved.
For it is sovereignty alone that permits and is a rallying point for war. In the past, when the counties of England had sovereignty, they would resolve lingering difficulties by taking up swords and guns and invading each other, much as nations regularly do. But with sovereignty removed, they're not even bothered if you have to change their borders. So too in the whole world, the nations must give up their sovereignty, with authority lying with a world governance, that war between nations may come to an end.
The way of politics today is entirely opposite to these things that have been described; for example,
(i) in the world today, a couple of candidates are fielded, denying people any choice, and cementing in a power-seeking system they cannot control, whereas everyone should be a candidate, so that what exercises power and authority is determined by the people;
(ii) in the world today, the electorate does not personally know candidates, and so cannot vote for them on the basis of the essential spiritual qualities mentioned above, of trustworthiness, humbleness, openness and the rest; as a result of this, corruption and propaganda are rife - whereas people should only vote for people they personally know and can vouch for the consultative spirit of, otherwise voting is the product of media and ambitious propaganda;
(iii) in the world today, voting is an outcome of electioneering, and therefore successful candidates are by nature ambitious and in a struggle for power; whereas there should be no canvassing or electioneering, so that voting is based on reality (what people know personally) rather than fiction (electioneering), and the successful candidates energetic servants of the community rather than seekers of power;
(iv) in the world today, party whips prevent those voted for from expressing freely their views, making a mockery of consultation; whereas every elected member of a consultation should express their ideas as a matter of duty, in a humble, detached and constructive spirit;
(v) in the world today, there are leaders, such as prime ministers, presidents and chairmen; whereas, there should be no leaders - authority should not be in individuals but in the collective decision of all members as equals, otherwise what's the point of electing people? and outside consultation, an elected member is the same as any ordinary person on the street; obviously you might need a chairperson, but they are humble facilitators equal to everyone else, and you might need a secretariat, but it or they should be a servant expressing only the will of the consultative conclusions;
(vi) in the world today, there are political parties clashing like rocks, mutually humiliating each other and undermining each other, making free discussion impossible; whereas in a parliament without whips, with every individual encouraged to express forth their ideas, there are no parties, only Parliament, and the conclusions made from earnest and free deliberation;
(vii) in the world today, members of parliament have material advantages such as high salaries, whereas in a parliament whose members are humble servants of the community, such material advantages are both undesired and undesirable;
(viii) in the world today, confidentiality is regularly breached due to lack of respect for the consultative process and conclusions and the animosity between parties, resulting in an unwillingness to share information freely; whereas in a functioning consultative process, information must be shared freely, and the members would understand clearly that this requires confidentiality;
(ix) in the world today, due to the above and such like, governance is lacking all credibility with the people, and so lacks the confidence to direct those necessary changes and sacrifices required to steer the world on a beneficial course of true and sustainable community, whilst on the world stage, the issues of sovereignty and self-interest hamper every effort to steer the right course for as long as the world lacks a World Parliament composed of citizens of the world, spiritually unnationalistic, humbly considering themselves servants of the world of humanity.
Because building a vibrant local community that interacts with others, requires processes of facilitation, nurturing and resolution to be in place, the above wider context of politics is very important; to try to build a local community in the setting of a dysfunctional country is like building a house on shifting sand or an intricate sandcastle on a beach raging with storm waves; things must be right both at local and world level, just as in the body, the blood, cells and the organs large and small must be healthy and in a good dynamic with each other.
To achieve all these things, people need to feel fully that they are brothers with everyone else. This means there needs to be a single universal language with a single script. This might seem a trivial goal, but if you imagine the chaos to the unity of the UK that would be result from every County speaking a different language and writing differently, it becomes apparent that one of the reasons the world is in the state it is, is due to the multiplicity of language. People feel aloof when someone's language is aloof and they cannot share deep and meaningfull values from the well of their heart, and ultimately a feeling of collective brotherhood is of such vital importance to the health of the world, that academic interest in the multiplicity of languages is secondary. In practice, this would mean everyone knowing a universal language that was secondary to their mother tongue, and, over centuries, as every nation invested the universal language with the unique qualities enshrined within their national languages, the universal language would become far superior to any individual language and eventually become the primary language of the world, in an entirely voluntary process.
There also needs to be a sufficient spread of spiritual qualities, so that, as well as the oil that makes communities and politics work, religious animosities dissipate. Personally I would see this happening through a universal faith, that the people's of the world at their own rate come to recognise as the fruits of the promise enshirined within their individual religions; a faith which nourished the diversity of different cultures, and yet provided a single communion undivided by competing sects. Naturally I would myself see the Baha'i Faith as fulfilling this, but without such a view, it is clear that the issue of religious animosity must be solved some way by God, either by this peaceful means, or through a terrible holocaust of everyone who holds different views from the one to be retained.
2009-03-18