Tag Archives: civilization

Sanity Prevails-For Now

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Posted by on in children, collaborating, Community, Family, Historical, impediments, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

April 7, 2026- The only possible solution to the current stalemate in and around Iran has been reached-for now. Personally, I am most concerned for the safety and well-being of my fellow Baha’is in that country. They have, since the proclamation of the Babi Faith, in the days of the Qajar Dynasty, been relentlessly persecuted by the Shiite Muslim clergy and by elements of the government. This was as true during the Pahlavi Dynasty of the mid-Twentieth Century as it was earlier. The Islamic Republic has upped the level of persecution, to the extent of desecrating Baha’i graves, banning Baha’i marriages and refusing to let children of Baha’is receive an education, past eighth grade-if even for that long. Many Baha’is have been imprisoned, and several executed.

That said, the way to reversing the waves of prejudice against my fellows in Faith doe snot lie in “an eye for an eye” or “bombing the country back into the Stone Age”. ( Iran was a highly civilized place when much of western Europe was still a land of hunter/gatherers and North America was mostly settled and a place of organized agricultural communities, but not yet of classical, nation-based civilization.) Baha’is take the position that only consultation and equanimity can resolve the various conflicts, large and small, around the globe.

One of the tenets of the Baha’i Faith is to “regard the Earth as but one country and mankind its citizens.” This is accepted, in principle, by a good many people around the world. Some go back, though, to “What about national sovereignty?” or “Clean up your own back yard”, when I have raised this in the past. I say we can, and should, be concerned at all levels. Indeed, my most elemental concerns are for my own health and well-being, then for my granddaughter and her parents, and on up the family ladder. Neighbourhood, community, state, nation and planet do not, however, get short shrift. We all share the air, water and mineral resources.

The various leaders, when they take a break from screaming and yelling at one another, can surely bear witness to this reality.

Harvest Day

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Posted by on in Community, Inspiration, Poetry, Social

October 10, 2016, Chula Vista-

All Canada offers thanks,

for a successful harvest.

Canadian Thanksgiving

is a true celebration

of the farmers’ fruition.

It has ever been a rejoinder

to the Columbus Day tradition.

First Nations people, across the nation

would gather to honour the Holy People

and the Creator,

for all that was given them

to stave off deprivation.

The Europeans across the north,

tried to snuff out many traditions,

in the name of “civilization”.

What they meant by “civilized’ were things like

private property, walls, fences and speaking

one of two European languages.

Harvest, and sharing, made the cut, though.

Love is one thing, no one can long disparage.

Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!

 

The Road to 65, Mile 131: Typhoons

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Posted by on in Social

April 8, 2015, Prescott-  It was cold all over the place today.  Snow was reported on the East Coast, and we shivered a bit, here in northern Arizona. North America is past being ready for warm weather.

It’s time to consider that warm weather has its price:  Storms happen, as anyone in New Orleans or Miami can attest.  Tornadoes have already swiped Oklahoma and Arkansas, this spring.  Even Dubai had a wicked dust storm, last week.

Typhoons, though, are in a league of their own.  Being cyclonic in nature is bad enough, when the storm is an Atlantic or eastern Pacific hurricane.  In the islands of the western Pacific, from Borneo and New Guinea to New Zealand, and on up to Japan, the deadliness of a Category 5 Typhoon, hitting a low-lying island community, seemingly from three directions at once, defies the imagination.  The Philippines have had two such killer storms, this year alone. Vanuatu, which used to be called New Hebrides, is slowly inching forward in recovery from a massive typhoon, a few long weeks ago.  Small countries nearby, named Kiribati and Tuvalu, also got hammered by the monster.  These are not places with an unlimited store of resilience, but they will come back from that one.

Word has reached us, this evening, of yet another Category 5.  This one is hitting Micronesia, a vast federation of atolls, stretching nearly 1,000 miles from east to west.  There was a civilization in western Micronesia, when Europe was shaking from the Dark Ages. The villagers of the  low-lying islands had much to impart to the Spanish and Dutch, who came seeking a quick route from China to the Americas, in the Sixteenth Century.

We used to have an image of Pacific Islanders, as happy, carefree dancers and singers, who were always glad to see boatloads of tourists.  There was a warrior segment, also, of course, but they got reduced to an entertainment contingent as well- savagely tattooed and grimacing, to the delight of the squealing audience.

It was never thus.  South Sea islands, to my mind, are harsh places, in terms of having enough fresh water; in terms of surviving monster waves, tides and gale-force winds; in terms of not being forgotten by the wider world.  We who are concerned with rising seas, point to places like Kiribati, Tuvalu and Nauru, in the Pacific, Anguilla in the Caribbean, and the Maldives and Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean, as victims of climate change, “in the not-to-distant future”.  This year’s experience, though, suggests that the world had better keep an eye on nature’s “dry runs”- the three Category 5 typhoons that have leveled the homes of good-hearted and long-struggling human beings.  Mankind is one, after all.