The Baha'i Studies Listserv on the contrary . . . . Like most Euro-Americans, you believe in some kind of authoritarianism in which those in control pass laws to make people behave according to your standards and then punish people who do not comply. i reject that as an efficient and effective means of administration.
Further, I do believe in a form of separation of church and state such that Baha'i law will not be forced on non-Baha'is. What happens when Baha'is "run the world"? First off, I reject the terminology. I don't believe Baha'is will ever "be in charge" in the sense that governments are today. When the Baha'i Commonwealth with the House of Justice at its head comes into being, the entire idea of someone being in charge will be seen as anachronistic. How do I believe the Baha'i administration will "come to power"? By default. It will be recognized as the only effective administrative system that is actually functioning. You think this is impossible? Look at what has happened in parts of the world where the central government has collapsed and fundamentalist Islam has been embraced by the populace, if only temporarily. They were accepted because they provided stability and nobody else could. in a similar manner, parts of northern Italy were ruled by the Communist Party for the the same reason. You may not have liked their philosophy, but there were relatively corruption free. You and I Stephen have extremely different administrative philosophies. Not only am I a Baha'i, but I also have a libertarian left administrative philosophy. There are not very many other Baha'is in that category and even fewer who have given any tho't as to how that philosophy informs the functioning of the Baha'i Administration. According to Baha'u'llah, this is not merely a new Dispensation, but a new age, the Age of Maturity. As such, what we are going thru' is the greatest change to the functioning of human affairs since the mythic "Time of Adam", when the Culture Hero societies replaced the Mother Goddess societies. The Adamic Cycle can be seen as the equivalent of going thru' puberty. We are now embarking on our maturity and it is time for us to grow up and take responsibility for our own affairs instead of waiting for mommy and daddy (kings/gov'ts/administrators) to tell us what to do. Rather, the new purpose of administrators is to remind us, repeatedly and persistently if necessary, what the proper principles should guide us. Shoghi Effendi made reference to this idea many years ago when he told local Assemblies to quit making up rules to enforce on their members. Another point - most leftist activists in the United States are authoritarian, they seek power so they can make other people do things their way. Most leftist activists also define equality in terms of power; that is, a group of people are only equal to the extent they have members who exercise power. That is the reason some people make a big deal out of there not being any women on the House of Justice. It is seen as having for its purpose the exercise of power and if women are not allowed to participate, then they have less power and are, therefore, not quite equal. I reject that entire argument. You may think I have avoided the topic or changed it. i have not. What I have done is shown how your entire argument is irrelevant. Don C > Susan, have you read the earlier e-mail in this thread. Don C thinks society > should have a zero tolerance policy towards non-heterosexuality. No marriage, > no civil unions, no domestic partnership, no adoption, no parental rights, > etc. He was complaining society gives them too many rights and blames it on > secular liberalism. ----------- It doesn't matter whether the sun shines if you never go outside. __________________________________________________ You are subscribed to Baha'i Studies as: mailto:arch...@mail-archive.com Unsubscribe: send a blank email to mailto:leave-697606-27401.54f46e81b66496c9909bcdc2f7987...@list.jccc.edu Subscribe: send subscribe bahai-st in the message body to ly...@list.jccc.edu Or subscribe: http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=bahai-st Baha'i Studies is available through the following: Mail - mailto:bahai-st@list.jccc.edu Web - http://list.jccc.edu:8080/read/?forum=bahai-st News (on-campus only) - news://list.jccc.edu/bahai-st Old Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.net New Public - http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st@list.jccc.edu
