Bob Crane sent out an email about a recent New York Times Article “Tapes Show Enron Arranged Plant Shutdown” by Timothy Egan which provoked a series of responses from those on the mailing list.  I am fortunate to be included in this mailing list which over time has had a number of intense and important discussions.  I wish that I had thought before to open these discussions to a wider audience who may also decide to participate in the discussion by using the “comment” feature at the bottom of the article. 

FROM BOB CRANE

The “conspiracy theorists” who blamed energy companies for deliberately creating the multi-billion dollar energy catastrophe in California in 2001 now have been proven to be right. According to evidence in court trials now being made public, the state-wide collapse was deliberately engineered by Enron and others in order to profit from the disaster.

Would Enron, if it had been owned by employees with voting shares of stock, have behaved any differently? Would they have ever known what was going on? And, if they did, would they have behaved any differently? If so, why and how?

In other words, if the morals of society have collapsed, what difference would restructuring access to credit and broadening corporate ownership make? Suicide is suicide, whether in a company or a civilization, and whether caused by the few or the many.

Can governments correct destructive abuses sufficiently to make a difference? If so, don’t we need Senator Gravel’s revolutionary changes in the political process so that citizens can vote on ballot initiatives prepared by the many rather than by the few and debated in a parallel process the same way policy proposals are now debated in Congress? Don’t we need the revolutionary changes of a Third Way in both politics and economics for either of these two third ways to succeed in their objectives.

America’s founders believed that direct democracy was dangerous, which is why they created a republic to cushion policy against the madness of the mob. But, perhaps they succeeded too well, because now we have the madness of the political and economic elite working in tandem. Or do the elites merely reflect the madness of the mob? In that case, would all the talk about freedom and the democracy initiative amount to anything other than propaganda to maintain the status quo? Unfortunately, the status quo is precisely what must be fundamentally changed for civilization to survive, much less prosper. We seem to have some un-addressed dilemmas here.

The great thinkers of the traditionalist movements in both the West and the Rest have addressed these dilemmas, but no-one pays any attention to them any more. The intellectual and moral genius of the Islamic civilization has been dead for centuries, and the American genius is now questioned worldwide for the first time.

Perhaps both need a spiritual revival, but organized religion seems to be a major deterrent to such a change. “Religion” can be more of a cause than a cure for our problems. Dilemma upon dilemma! Perhaps now we really need an “invisible hand,” and it is not the utopian one that “democratic capitalists” advance to justify their rapacious pursuit of greed.
Peace, freedom, and democracy through transcendent justice, Bob

FROM NORMAN KURLAND

Thanks for sending me the Herbert article. As you know, I find little of value from negative thinking, especially from “conspiracy theorists.” Negative thinking never solved any problems. It is part of the problem.

The genius in the great American experiment lies in the long-ignored Ninth Amendment, which was supposed, as far as I interpret it, to imbed ultimate sovereignty on earth in each human person under the higher sovereignty of the Creator. In other words, it recognized natural law as part of the Constitution. Nevertheless, the founders understood that men were not angels and accepted the need for government as a “necessary evil.” This led to the structuring of a constitution with checks upon the monopoly power of the state. Rather than pure democracy, which they rejected, they opted for a structured diffusion of power, or a republican form of government, with the ultimate check on centralized power being property spread widely among the citizens. Another source of the founders’ wisdom was Mason’s specific listing of purposes of government in section one of the Virginia Declaration of Rights. (”[T]he basis and foundation of government [is] . . . [t]hat all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter in a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” (May 15, 1776) While you seem to think this kind of language came from Thomas Hobbes. I think it come from John Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government.  Another thought in the minds of the founders is the statement in the Federalist No. 1 (Hamilton or Madison): “Justice is the end of government.” As you have stated eloquently in many writings, justice is also the essence of all religions, and our founders were guided by their commitment to religion as the basis or their moral outlooks.  If we agree that power must be structurally diffused in the political arena, I think we should be applying the same formula for limiting power concentrations in all human institutions, including business corporations, from the smallest to giant global corporations like Enron.  Lord Action put his finger on the human dilemma by reminding us that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Why fret about the fact that human beings are imperfect? Let’s design laws, constitutions, and institutions that spread power in a structured way to minimize the ever-present potential for the abuse of power. That’s why we designed “Justice-Based Management” as a philosophy and system of governance of corporations, knowing that the wage-slave corporations of the modern world needed radical overhaul. (See http://www.cesj.org/jbm/whatisjbm.htm 

The dilemma you posed in your e-mail can and has been addressed, albeit imperfectly, but that’s why the work of social justice never is completed.

Up the Just Third Way, Up the Second American Revolution, Up the Capital Homestead Act, Up Justice-Based Management, and Up the Global Justice Movement.  Norm

FROM BOB CRANE

My essay of yesterday on economic injustice and the survival of civilization evoked a response from Norm Kurland quite in line with your comments about the reverse initiation (or however you phrased it). He seems to have concluded that I am too pessimistic, which misses the thrust of the entire essay hidden in the final sentence. The essay is very optimistic but only within a different paradigm of understanding.

Changing human structures and improving management styles, even if possible, will neither create nor save civilizations. The invisible hand of the “corporate bottom line” requires what Rabbi Michael Lerner calls the radical move to a spiritual bottom line. But, even this is not something that we can do of ourselves. We must rely on the invisible hand of God, because without it we are lost. Perhaps people do not want to accept that, because of their fear of losing control, which, of course, is precisely the problem of materialist thinking, even if dressed up in spiritual language.

The Neo-Cons are not going to save the world, nor are those who want merely to perfect neo-conservative thought by introducing a paradigm of justice. If God intends us human beings to survive and prosper, we will not do it by ourselves. This wisdom is the ultimate realism and the source of pragmatic optimism. Everything else is utopia. And, as we all should have learned from the history of the 20th century, all utopias fail.

FROM JEREMY HENZELL-THOMAS

I was deeply moved by your recognition that the ultimate optimism is faith in the “invisible hand of God” as the only means of saving the world and this wisdom is “the ultimate realism”.  The words optimism and pessimism come from Latin roots meaning “the best” and “the worst”, and, as people of faith, we put our trust in the best, for, as the Qur’an reminds us so often, “Allah knows best”, and without Him, we are indeed, as you say, “lost” and rootless, trapped in limited “paradigms of understanding” and utopian fantasies. As seekers of Truth, what else, apart form the highest Truth, could ever slake our thirst?

The quote from Stephen Hawking you included in a recent email is instructive here: “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge,” which is another way of expressing Alexander Pope’s famous couplet: “A Little Learning is a dangerous Thing; Drink Deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring”. Most people have heard that couplet, or at least the first line, but the next two lines take it further, advising us that “There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain, and drinking largely [i.e. deeply] sobers us again.”  Again, further on, “…from the bounded Level of our Mind, Short Views we take, nor see the Lengths behind.”

My comments on your review of Scruton’s book also take up this theme: the danger posed by “halfway house” people who promote a kind of conservative morality devoid of authentic transcendent principles - the kind of people who rightly reject liberal relativism but have no roots in the Haqq. The worst outcome of this mediocrity - in its true etymological sense of ‘halfway up a mountain’ from Latin ‘medius’ (middle) and ‘ocris’ (rough stony mountain) - is the incarceration of people in restricted identities, so that the limit of their horizon becomes the “superior way of life” or “culture” represented by their national identity. At its very worst, this feeds the crude and strident patriotism we see as supposed evidence of loyalty to “civilised values”. Who wants to be half way up a mountain? The view is much better from the summit, and so is the air. What professional mountaineer standing on the summit or, at least, aspiring to reach it, would wish to be co-opted by beer-bellied day trippers to descend to the foothills to share their impoverished view of things?

Of course, there are also the “halfway house” people who are halfway up the mountain but on a different side of it, facing in the opposite direction: those who call themselves “progressive” and who castigate the “conservatives”. Amongst these, there are not only the secular liberal relativists captivated by academic theorising which denies the absolute and regards all knowledge as “constructed” by human minds but also the secularised Muslims who have capitulated to Western rationalism and the myth of progress, or, worse, to appearances on Fox News. There is a joke here, because although these two groups (the liberal relativists and the conservative moralists) are on opposite sides of the mountain, they are both only half way up it, or a better way of putting it is that the secularised Muslims, instead of climbing the mountain, have achieved their mediocrity by descending half way down. I guess Bush won the election because his simple moralisms give the appearance of climbing upwards, while the other lot never seemed to have a summit in sight, or if they did, they manifestly failed to communicate it.
But the point is that whether climbing up or climbing down, all these guys are firmly stuck half way up the mountain, and in each case all they have to offer is a vision of mediocrity, no matter how utopian it appears.

Hawking’s “illusion of knowledge” or Pope’s “shallow draughts” which “intoxicate” are other ways of describing the counter-initiatory process which wraps up materialist thinking in language which has the ring of good deeds, idealism, altruism and spirituality.

Another parallel is the kind of tour company which offers people “authentic” experiences in foreign parts - usually places like Morocco. Such tourists, who are whisked away in air-conditioned cars to “authentic” and “exotic” old Moroccan venues which have been “renovated” to provide five-star luxury and all mod-cons, are protected during their entire vacation from any kind of contact with anything authentically Moroccan, including the Moroccan people themselves (after all these poor people might “hate” us, because they “envy” our wealth; some might even be “terrorists”, “separatists” or “insurgents” who could harm us). 

This is another kind of “wrapping-up”, not to give materialism the ring of idealism or spirituality, but to give a veneer of cultural “authenticity” to what is actually a total incapacity to engage with any other culture. This is not even half way up the mountain, for such people have not even ventured into the foothills but are content with a view which extends barely beyond their own feet. In a different kind of terminology, this is the solipsism which verges on autism, a mere pretence of “engagement” with the “other”.

Another aspect of this illusory process is the use of certain labels to diminish those who refuse to be beguiled and intoxicated by illusion. Three of which come to mind immediately are “unrealistic” “pessimistic” and “conspiracy theorists”.  As you so rightly say, the wisdom which realises our dependence on God is “the ultimate realism”, and as you also say, your essay which Norm regarded as “pessimistic” is actually very optimistic, but “only within a different paradigm of understanding”. In the same way, Traditionalists are sometimes accused of being “negative” because they will not compromise their allegiance to what is Real.

The state of being centred in what is Real gives us the only objective criteria to recognise in ourselves what is prompted by the nafs, including those “negative” attitudes (such as being “judgmental”) which may masquerade as positive faculties (such as discernment or correct judgment).  The answer is not to rationalise such distinctions but to climb to the top of the mountain where the spaciousness of one’s perspective (that is the all-encompassing range of the Heart) allows one to “see” the difference directly. In the halfway house we will always be forever arguing and analysing and debating about the difference, but never truly experiencing it.

I put my trust in God, for, as you say, “if God intends us human beings to survive and prosper, we will not do it by ourselves”. Nothing could me more real and nothing could be more pragmatically optimistic, even if that conclusion is seen by halfway house people as “negative” or “pessimistic” (or, of course, “fatalistic”, the usual jibe against traditional peoples who patiently endure and who do not have the hubris to believe they can control everything). But that is the way of the counter-initiation: to reduce higher faculties to lower ones, and to do so by subverting and degrading the meanings of words. Thus, the exercise of discernment which exposes the unreal (or more correctly the half-real, for that is what is truly the test of discernment) is stigmatised as “negativity” and the perception of the Real is labelled as “pessimism”.

I agree with you absolutely that “changing human structures and improving management styles, even if possible, will neither create nor save civilisations”. Islam has more to offer the world than apologetic imitations of the worst of Western utilitarian education systems which are based not on any understanding of higher human faculties but on oppressive models of techno-management which strip man of his very soul and spirit. This is the very worst of Al-Dajjal, a world of efficient “systems” (increasingly IT systems) designed to control and “assess” every aspect of human behavior for the purpose of advancing economic growth and material “progress” and “development”.

It can be depressing to realise that so many well-intentioned people involved in projects to “improve” higher education in developing countries (and in Muslim contexts) appear to wish to do this not by honouring the higher faculties whose cultivation by definition must surely be at least one of the priorities of “higher” education, nor by showing how Islam might honour the depth of its own tradition in order to revive a true understanding of the faculties which have been lost in Western education systems (and thereby revive higher education in the West), but, instead, by importing Western systems of “management”, “assessment” and “control” so that they can provide an education to “equip” modern-day Muslims with the means to “drive forward” national “economic development”.

I can think of nothing more “pessimistic” than this vision of a world in which the worth of human beings is judged not by their spiritual virtues but by their contribution to Gross Domestic Product. If GDP is such an important factor in the standing of a civilisation, perhaps someone can explain to me why the USA, which has the largest GDP on earth, ranks no. 29 in the world in its generosity in giving aid to poor nations (it currently gives 0.1% of its GDP, or one part in one thousand). This leads me to the unavoidably negative conclusion that the “improvement” of higher education in Muslim countries and the resultant growth in economic development and GDP can only stifle the hearts of those who are so “improved” by it. It is a call to begin the descent of the mountain under the false banner of climbing up it. Only the delusive power of Al-Dajjal could make people believe that they were actually on the way up when they are hurtling downwards.

So I guess we seekers of Truth, like Nasrudin, are upside down in this world. Once we begin to doubt that (because of our sensitivity to attacks from people who call us “negative”) we become one of the half-way house people, neither up nor down, neither here nor there, having lost all definition, forever twirling about in some never-never land, forever tinkering on the margins, mistaking sterile rationalisation for “nuanced thinking”, “critical intelligence” or “progressive deconstruction”: salt which has lost its savour, in the words of Jesus (peace be upon him).

Let me end with a funny (but very revealing) story I heard on BBC Radio 4 yesterday morning. There is a slot called “Thought for Today” every morning, which has various guests from all spiritual traditions. Yesterday was the turn of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi in England. He told the story of a religious studies teacher who decided to go into one topic in depth rather than range superficially over many topics. He chose the topic of the Old Testament prophet Joshua, and for a whole term his students studied nothing apart form the life and teachings of Joshua. At the end of the term he asked his class some questions to test what they had learnt.

He asked one student: “Who destroyed the walls of Jericho?”
“It wasn’t me, sir”, the boy protested.
The next day he received a letter from the boy’s father, who wrote: “Look, if my son said, he didn’t do it, then I can assure you he is telling the truth”.
The next day he received a letter from one of the Governors of the school, enclosing a cheque for £1,000, with the comment: “Please accept this payment as compensation, and let this be an end to the matter so that you can get on with the education of our students.”

This says more about the mediocrity of modern school culture than any number of wordy reports, and I guess it sums up what happens when we lose all connection with Tradition.

FROM NORMAN KURLAND

Let me comment on two of Jeremy’s statements:

(1)  “I agree with you (Bob) absolutely that ‘changing human structures and improving management styles, even if possible, will neither create nor save civilizations.’” 

This is true only if the human structures and management systems fail to reflect such absolute values as Truth, Love and Justice, the source of which is God.  But in the eternal quest for Truth, Love and Justice, humans discover principles of Reality that can enable them to transform their human structures and management systems for the good of all.  When humans out of ignorance or selfishness apply principles that violate Truth, Love and Justice, the structures and system don’t work, or at least not well.  But these human structures and systems are what “civilization” is all about.  They can be perfected over time to encourage a virtuous society, or they can encourage vice and lead to chaos and destruction.  (See my discussion below on Father William Ferree’s writings on Social Justice, based upon the encyclical by Pope Pius XI, “On Transformation of the Social Order.”)  Bob and Jeremy’s statements treat human structures and systems as irrelevant.  I totally disagree.

(2)  “I can think of nothing more “pessimistic” than this vision of a world in which the worth of human beings is judged not by their spiritual virtues but by their contribution to Gross Domestic Product.”

I agree that material or economic activities are not as important to civilization as moral virtues and spiritual fulfillment.  But, as discussed in the paragraphs below on “the law of the urgent and important,” no one can enjoy the fruits of moral virtues or live a rich spiritual life, if the material basis of existence is absent.

The problem I have in reading Jeremy is trying to figure out who is “God’s gatekeeper.”  The late Father Ferree, the finest theologian I’ve come across, gave me the answer I was seeking when he described “religion” as “the permanent pluralism.”  Each of us has his or her own path to a relationship with the Creator.  Each of us have within us the capacity to recognize the Truth or understand Justice when it is revealed to us.  Each of us has to climb Jeremy’s “mountain” on his own. 

I have considerable difficulty understanding where Jeremy is leading me in trying to find solutions to major problems facing modern civilization based on the principles of justice expressed in my paper to the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (http://www.cesj.org/thirdway/paradigmpapers/csid-040528.htm)  Does Jeremy challenge those principles?  Is he challenging the concepts and vision of the Just Third Way or the specific proposals in that paper?  I’m not sure.

I enjoy spiritual discussions if they help solve human problems, but such discussions are useless if humanity destroys itself. When religious fanatics can convince mothers to allow their children to be strapped with explosives to kill Israeli civilians at bus stops or Iraqi citizens wanting to vote, it’s time for spiritualists to come down to earth and challenge those fanatics and those who teach them and those who pay them, from preaching religious hatred.  When Saddam Hussein used oil money to pay $25,000 to pay Palestinian families for committing murder, why were so many spiritualists so blinded by their anti-Zionism that they could not condemn this dirty money?  And what about the dirty money that is spreading religious hate through Wahhabi-edited Korans in Saudi-funded madrassas in America, Europe and throughout the Muslim world?  The spiritualists did not stop the events of September 11, 2001. 

When the spiritualists begin to address the material needs of humanity, and begin to recognize how the social order (i.e., the invisible architecture of any society) affects the spiritual lives and behavior of those living within that social order, then and only then can spiritual leaders save humanity and mobilize people to work together for global peace through global justice.

The founders of America were every bit as spiritual as you, Bob and Jeremy.  They were also realists as architects of a system for structurally diffusing political, economic and spiritual power that would secure those fundamental human rights.  They were visionaries with their heads above the clouds, but they had their feet on the ground.  Yes, their systems were imperfect, but anything created by humans will always be imperfect. But it was the best system invented to that date, and it worked fairly well.  And that system can now be improved.

America’s founders were not utopians, nor are those at the front lines of the Just Third Way.  (http://www.cesj.org/thirdway/comparison3rdway.htm)  The world will be changed only when a critical mass of spiritually oriented “revolutionaries” become united to teach others how “to make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”  (Buckminster Fuller)

You and Jeremy seem to believe that you need to raise every member of humanity to the same level of spiritual awareness as the two of you before achieving Fuller’s realistic goal.  I respectfully disagree and think that the many good people who hold this position are the real utopians.

Bob, you seem comfortable in labeling me as a “materialist”, a box I reject.  My core values are expressed at http://www.cesj.org/about/corevalues.htm  Both of us subscribed to those core values, such as Absolute Truth, Absolute Love and Absolute Justice.  So how can you justify the label you’ve put on me?  Some of us pray publicly according to prescribed rituals of a particular religion.  I respect their form of worship.  I let my work in the vineyards of justice be my continuing prayer to the Creator of all existence and all absolute values.  My spiritual beliefs are imbedded in my work.  And I don’t apologize for living at a lower spiritual plane than you or others.

I’d be most interested in the thoughts of Bob and Jeremy about what the Kelsos called “The Law of the Urgent and the Important” in their 1968 book, Two-Factor Theory: The Economics of Reality (Random Press):

“Human affairs are governed by a hierarchy of values, each corresponding to one of the two sides of man’s nature.  The priority order of particular activities on these tables of value is inverse, so that an activity which occupies first place on one is in last place in the other.  Man is an animal, and his animal needs and wants are the subject of economics.  But he is also a spiritual being, with a mind unique in the natural order; he is a civilized or human being.  It is from the dual nature of man as both animal and human that the dual scale of values governing his life arises.  One is a hierarchy of urgency; the other is a hierarchy of importance.  The history of man, at least as we read it, leaves no doubt that he places the highest value on the goods of the mind and the spirit—what Plato called “the wares of the soul; that in the human scale of things, it is the goods of civilization—the arts, sciences, religion, education, philosophy, statesmanship and the like, that weigh the heaviest. … It is equally clear, however, that for all but the most exceptional human beings, the goods and services that minister to the need and desire for creature comforts weigh heaviest on the scale of urgency. … [F]or men as a whole, the general rule is the goods of civilization are more important, while the physical goods and services of economics are more urgent.  It is only when man’s material needs and desires are satisfied and he is secure in his belief that they will continue to be satisfied—when, in a word, he becomes affluent—that the urgency of economic matters disappears, and the truly important things move into the foreground of consciousness. … Economic planning for a free industrial society that fails to take into account the significance of the inverse dual scale of values implicit in man’s nature is predestined to error.  The lesson to be learned … is simple: solve the economic problem of society first, and a floodtide of goods of civilization will follow.”  (pp. 111-112)

The only labels I accept others calling me is a “human being”, a “believer in one Creator”, and a “revolutionary.”  As a practical revolutionary, Bob, I try to follow Father William Ferree’s “laws of social justice” as reflected in his pamphlet, “Introduction to Social Justice.”  (http://www.cesj.org/thirdway/socialjustice/introtosocialjustice.pdf)  I would especially like Jeremy’s critique of this pamphlet.

All successful revolutionaries (e.g., Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela) followed those “laws” for changing the social order.  Ferree joined with you Bob and others in the founding of our interfaith CESJ in 1984.  Ferree was a spiritual realist, another word for a “revolutionary.”  We need more teachers of teachers like Ferree and those mentioned above.
In Peace through Justice, Norm

FROM BOB CRANE

Norm’s comments in response to Jeremy are very relevant, and I am glad that he gave links to CESJ sources so that interested readers can enter the realm of faith-based justice that is so badly needed in American domestic and foreign policy.  Policy-makers, with rare exceptions, will never be able to go beyond Norm’s decades-long formulation and presentation of this paradigm.  But, I think that those who can do so will never find a better short presentation of a still higher level of reality than Jeremy’s. 

  Perhaps the ultimate question concerns the nature of the human being.  Is a human merely a thinking being who can love and strive and seek perfection in this life, only to disappear forever when the body dies?  If so this material world is the sum and substance of one’s life, no matter how much love one has for one’s Creator and for fellow humans and no matter how hard one works to bring justice in this world.  This can be regarded as a materialistic view of reality.

  Or is each human a creation that transcends space and time, a being who was created outside of time and will continue to be even after this material universe disappears?  This makes a big difference.  Belief in a continuum that transcends this life is important because it enables us to understand what Jeremy is saying.  First, it helps us understand that the achievement of justice in this world is merely a phase in a larger whole and that the whole is greater than the part.  Second, it thereby helps us understand the truth of the divine revelation that one can change the community and the world only to the extent that one can change oneself.  For the materialist who does not appreciate true transcendence and who therefore necessarily focuses on the tactics of policy-making and the strategy of institutional change, this focus on changing oneself in order to change the world seems irrelevant to the urgent need for fundamental and revolutionary change in the world.

  True justice, i.e. transcendent justice, is based on the view that the human person is transcendent, i.e. transcends space and time.  According to Islamic teachings, the person consists of three elements, namely, one’s physical body or jizm, including the brain, one’s soul or nafs, which is the decision-making power in each person and is independent of the body, and the spirit or ruh, which since “before” the beginning of time has been in the presence of God.  The spirit knows truth and can communicate it to the soul, but the soul is free to accept such guidance or ignore it.  This free will makes us in some ways superior even to the angels.  This is the Islamic concept of human nature. 

  Although the Qur’an says that even the trees and stars know and bow down to God “in ways you do not understand,” human beings know in more complex ways, both indirectly through the brain and directly through the heart.  On-going modern research reveals that the heart produces waves fifty times more powerful than does the brain and also can remember, though not physical details or intellectual concepts.  The truly transcendent nature of the human person with the resulting inherent knowledge of truth, as well as the capacity to articulate, shape, and apply truth in social action is what produces transcendent justice, as distinct from positivist justice based on the secular and relativistic view that there are no absolutes and that therefore human beings create both truth and justice.

  The term “transcendent justice” can be used misleadingly to define what humans posit as justice (thus the term positivist) based on the concept that humans are by nature good and therefore can themselves define justice without any reference to a transcendent source.  The more proper use of the term “transcendent justice” or “transcendent law” is based on the view that humans in practice are very unlikely to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of justice without divine guidance indirectly through natural law (‘ain al yaqin) and directly through divine revelation (haqq al yaqin).

  A study of civilizational dynamics throughout history shows that civilizations rise when this traditionalist understanding of the transcendent as the source of truth and justice becomes the norm of a culture, and that civilizations fall when they lose this understanding.
 
  The Prophet Muhammad, salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa salam, according to a Hadith Qudsi, said metaphorically that the purpose of every human being and every human community is to serve as the eyes, ears, and hands of God.  This is developed, with warnings against literalism, in my article, Oneness of Being: Fact or Fiction?, http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/2004jul.php TAM #27 Jul/Aug 2004.  This responsibility is our highest calling as God’s representatives (khulafa’) or stewards of creation.  Conscious awareness of this calling from God and commitment to it is the key to revolutionary change both in the human person and at every level of human community.  This awareness and commitment, in fact, constitute the very definition of traditionalism as it exists in all the world religions.

FROM JEREMY HENZELL-THOMAS

While I respect those who seek to do good, as Muslims we are required to embrace all levels of “charity”, from the practical and material alleviation of human suffering in this world to the dissemination of higher knowledge according to the capacity of people to understand it. This means that we seek not only to do good but to achieve excellence (ihsan), which is another way of saying that we wish to ascend as far as possible up the mountain, although only the Grace of God can help us to the beatific vision on the summit.  Norm misses the point entirely when he suggests that my outlook is a kind of impractical “head in the clouds” spirituality which will not lead to the practical solution of pressing world problems.

I guess the essential difference is that whereas Norm follows the wisdom of Buckminster Fuller, the revolutionary inventor, I try to follow the Wisdom of Allah, the Ineffable Designer. Whereas he puts his trust in man-made, even visionary, design “solutions” for the temporary amelioration of material problems, I put my trust in the guidance which offers us permanent solutions for the amelioration of spiritual darkness and the transformation of human souls, which begins first and foremost with ourselves, for, as the Qur’an says, we cannot change the condition of mankind until we change what is in ourselves.  It is ultimately a matter of which comes first, which has primacy or precedence.

This is the truly “practical” way because it is based in spiritual “practice”. It is also fiercely “empirical” because it is based on vigilant and intelligent observation of oneself and one’s attachments, the condition of mankind, and the causes of suffering (which is also the essential method of Buddhism). Through such empirical observation, the truth of divine revelation is verified and our faith strengthened.

While I hear Norm acknowledging a theological basis for his ideas, I do not get the sense that it has ultimate precedence. I hear a pragmatic voice, which, though grounded in strong moral principles and having some connection to an explicit theological framework, is still an essentially secular and materialistic voice, motivated as it is by the best of intentions to create a more just world.  What use is the most ingeniously constructed and fastest train in the world if it is hurtling towards a cliff? And the problem is that the faster it goes, the heedless passengers are thrown further back into their seats, so that they are lulled further into sleep by the comfort of the ride. What degree of enlightenment has all this material “progress” brought to Western civilisation?

As for the extract from Two-Factor Theory: The Economics of Reality, which Norm adduces to illustrate the importance of meeting urgent material needs and solving economic problems first (in line with the “hierarchy of values” governing human affairs, which holds that only when human beings become “affluent” can they turn to truly important things) this confirms what I have said about the precedence given to the material over the spiritual. While the Kelsos, who wrote this book, refer to this as the “Law of the Urgent and the Important”, the Books that I read, including the Qur’an, the Old and new Testaments of the Bible, the Vedas, and all Wisdom traditions, as well as the insights that I gain through contemplative practice tell me the opposite: that what is truly urgent is the Remembrance of God, and never more so in these times of spiritual darkness and heedlessness. Indeed, as we know, Mary, the Mother of Jesus (peace be upon her), was given her material provision (rizq) directly from God because of her complete trust (tawakkul), devotion and surrender, and because of the absolute precedence she gave to God. This spiritual attitude is the very basis of our Abrahmic faiths, and of all world faiths and primordial traditions, and the core of any great civilisation. The reversal of this order of precedence can only be a process of counter-initiation.

Of course, Norm might say that it would be unrealistic to expect such a high spiritual level amongst the vast majority of the world’s poor and dispossessed, and that to expect that their provision will come directly from God would be to condemn them to poverty and suffering. He might say that this is typical of an unrealistic “quietism” or “fatalism” which prevents “undeveloped” people from “developing” and “progressing”.

Now, I am absolutely not saying that we should not feed the poor or help to ameliorate their material condition through economic justice. I believe absolutely that we must work for economic justice, and I have the greatest respect for those who work to reform institutions to that end. If I did not believe this, I would not put in so much effort myself to disseminate information about economic injustice, write letters to newspapers, challenge such injustice wherever I can, give to charitable causes, and discuss these pressing issues with such intensity, and even outrage.  Neither would I have marched against the war in Iraq in London with a million other people. I could easily have been an activist for social, economic or environmental causes, but I have come to realise that my own path is one in which such activism is rooted above all in my own spiritual struggle to climb that mountain as far as I can. For me, any kind of activism for change and reform which is not rooted in the primacy of that spiritual struggle can only be, by definition, a materialistic (and hence un-Realistic) process rooted at best in half-truths and at worst in our own egoism, with all its personal obsessions and idiosyncrasies. 

But doesn’t the Jewish tradition tell us that the Children of Israel received manna directly from heaven in the wilderness?  And wasn’t this manna both delicious physical and spiritual nourishment, feeding body, mind and spirit? Remembering God, all their needs at every level of the hierarchy were provided for in accordance with the saying of Jesus: “Seek first the Kingdom of God, and all else shall be added unto you”, for we cannot serve both God and Mammon.

Of course, the materialists and rationalists will counter this by saying that Jesus also said: “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s”, as if this abrogates the other statement, and they adduce this as a verification of the “hierarchy of values” which supposedly requires us to give equal attention to both material and spiritual struggles, or even, in the case of the Law of the Urgent and the Important espoused by the Kelsos and by Norm, to give precedence to the creation of affluence as a prerequisite for higher things. But this entirely misses the profound wisdom of this saying of Jesus, for since everything and everyone belongs to God, as the ayat al-kursi (Qur’an 2:255) so majestically reminds us, (“His is all that is in the heavens and all that is on earth” - lahu ma fissamawati wa ma fil-ard), then everything that is “Caesar’s” also belongs to God. It needs a certain faculty of perception to understand that Jesus is speaking on many levels here, offering a logical statement to silence the rationalists who are trying to trap him, and at the same time offering a paradox to those who have “ears to hear”, a paradox which is also an affirmation about the precedence of God in all things.

There is a real difficulty of communication here, because once you bring forward these sublime and transcendent parables and truths, most people will see this as evidence of a completely “impractical” and “head in the clouds” mentality, and even as a “selfish” focus on personal salvation over charity towards others. This is because they are not thinking on different levels simultaneously, but assume that is one is saying one thing it must be the polar opposite of something else, or at least contradict it.

It is a matter of the utmost urgency to restore to our dispiriting education system the revival of higher faculties which are capable of multi-dimensional perception and thinking. Of course, such a course already exists in the parables of Jesus, who made it very clear that there were different levels of meaning in his parables according to different capacities for understanding. The same of course goes for the Qur’an, which has many levels of meaning. The decline in symbolic and analogical thinking in our culture as a result of serial, one-dimensional, literal-minded rationalism and scientism has made it very difficult for people to understand that one level of description does not necessarily exclude other levels. If there is only one level, a horizontal one, and ideas intended for different levels are reduced to one level only, then they will appear to contradict each other, when, in fact, they all have validity on their own level (provided that there is a hierarchical ordering which gives precedence to the highest level). Without this multi-layered thinking, there can only be endless dichotomisation and polarisation, and endless misunderstanding. This is the true meaning of the Tower of Babel. One-level thinkers will assume that is you adduce the story of Mary (peace be upon her) receiving her provision directly from God that you are implying that there is no point in working to eradicate poverty, but this conclusion is not warranted by the story.

I agree with you Bob, that we need to let people know clearly what it is that we hold dear, although the Qur’an advises us to do this “in the fairest manner” (i.e. with ihsan).  This is of course meant to apply to discourse with “followers of previous revelations” (that is, followers of all faith traditions preceding Islam).  With regard to those who have no faith, sura 109 advises us to avoid disputation altogether: “I worship not that which you worship. Nor will you worship that which I worship. And I will not worship that which you used to worship. Nor will you worship that which I worship. To you be your Way, and to me mine”. As for those in the half-way house of partial faith, I guess we have to “discourse with them in the fairest manner” as far as possible and then recognise if necessary that we do not worship the same reality, nor tread the same path.

I am not very good at following the advice in Sura 109, and find it difficult to detach from discourse with anyone, having had many long conversations into the night with all manner of atheists, rationalists, Darwinists and the like, whose views are just about as diametrically opposite my own perspective as you could get.

I always believe that, given the fitra in all human beings, there is a way of finding common ground and a common language and this is the challenge for all of us who try to use language in such a way that embodies the true significance of this gift of the Names given uniquely to Adam, and to all humankind: for the Names, I believe, are the universal semantic concepts embedded in the primordial psyche, and we have to try to find the words which revive those universal concepts which all human beings are programmed to understand.

Jeremy

FROM JEREMY HENZELL-THOMAS

Dear Friends,

I circulated our dialogue about Optimism, Realism and the Invisible Hand of God to a friend in Kentucky, Charles Upton, who is one of the finest metaphysicians in the USA, as well as a distinguished poet. I think his reply is extraordinarlily illuminating.

FROM CHARLES UPTON

This dialogue between someone who sees Divine realities as superceding and encompassing worldly ones, and a committed social activist who draws upon theological principles to empower his activism, is hugely important. It is especially interesting to me since I am a former activist who now sees the world as resting in God’s hands, not in the hands of the “powers that be,” or those of me and my fellow activists. As an activist I felt as if I were a kind of incompetent God who was committed to managing the world I had created, but was not doing a very good job. (I certainly don’t mean to imply that all activists do or should or eventually will see themselves like this.) If there is any bridge between your worldview and Norm’s, it would seem to be the principle that “acts are judged by their intent.”

I believe that the question of action vs. contemplation is one of vocation. Some are called by God to be activists, some are not; the same goes for comtemplation. The only imperative is that we follow God’s will for us as we understand it, while remembering always to ask for greater understanding: “O God, show me things as they really are.”

Question 1: Will a sincere activist necessarily believe that everyone should be an activist? Or can he or she recognize the legitimacy of different callings?

Question 2: How valid is it to say to oneself: “I will try to act in such a way that if everyone did as I do, many of the world’s problems would be solved”? Is this “hard-headed realism”? Or is it “head-in-the-clouds idealism,” given that we cannot expect everybody to immediately, or even some day, agree on what constitutes right action? Can an activist continue to pursue his course after realizing that there is no such conscious, unified group as “everybody”, and never will be?

Question 3: Given that there is no such political animal as “everybody,” is the activist necessarily pushed toward trying to find, join, influence or establish some kind of benign “power-elite”? Can this really work to effect change in the world, at least sometimes, or does it always end with the activist being “co-opted”?

Question 4: How valid is it to say: “The invisible influence of the contemplative on visible conditions is greater than the visible action of the activist,” given that such an assertion can probably never be proved, and that this kind of influence—if it really exists—is usually invisible to the contemplative as well, notwithstanding the stories told of the mysterious powers of Sufi shaykhs and
other spiritual masters? The following story is told of the Sufi master Attar: The Mongols were invading Dar al-Islam; Attar’s followers ran to him to ask his intercession against the enemy. In response he placed some substance in a bowl and stirred it with his finger; immediately, thousands of the enemy went blind; the invasion was averted. Some time later, the Mongols once more attacked, and so Attar’s followers asked him to “do it again.” But this time it was different (if indeed it really was): “When I look upon the Mongols, all I see is the perfect execution of God’s will” said Attar. What, if anything, are we to make of this?

Question 4: What about “more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of?”

Question 5: According to Thomas Merton, interpreting St. Thomas Aquinas, the contemplative life is higher than the active one—but the life which combines action and contemplation is higher still. Merton’s comment was that the “mixed” life is only higher than the contemplative one—given that contemplation is intrinsically higher than action—when the depth of contemplation exhibited by the person in question is so great that the worldly actions he performs in no way disturb it. His life is not “divided” between action and contemplation, but is entirely contemplative, so deeply contemplative that action spontaneously flows from the contemplation itself. Comments?

Question 6: Is this depth of contemplation not precisely that exhibited by the Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him? And if we take Muhammad as a “special case,” since Allah called him to prophethood, would not our own model for the active contemplative be Hazrat Ali, God grant him peace? Ali, the greatest war-champion of Islam, would lapse into mertaphysical discourse during lulls in the fighting, and the following two hadith are attributed to him: “Paradise is under the shadow of the swords” and “Paradise is at the feet of the mothers”.

Is seems to me that action and contemplation were so perfectly united in the Prophet Muhammad that activists naturally and automatically see him as an activist, and contemplatives as a contemplative. We need only remember that his accepted followers included both firebrands like ‘Umar, and “pure contemplatives” like “the people of the bench.”

The essence of contemplation is perfect submission to the will of God. Anyone who acts in the absence of such perfect submission is necessarily acting partly on the basis of his or her own ego, and thus spreading darkness and oppression. Yet sometimes we must act, in the knowledge that we and our actions are imperfect; God, in the guise of inescapable circumstances, demands action of us, whether or not we are perfectly submitted to Him. This is one of the ways He judges and teaches us. Action in the full knowledge that one will make mistakes and spread destruction, but that God still commands that we take action now, is the virtual islam of those who have not yet attained perfect islam, and is—God willing—a step toward that perfection, according to the prayer of thre Prophet, “O God, show me things as they really are.” But when that perfection of islam is attained, will the sword of action necessarily be laid down? Or directed only against one’s own passions and attachments, according to the norms of the “greater jihad”? God only knows, and He knows best. Whoever attains peace and rest from struggle—more power to him! He is God’s image of paradise in this world. Whoever can carry on struggle in this world without departing from God’s peace for even a single moment—more power to him! In his case, God’s is the eye by which he sees, the love by which he loves, the heart by which he knows, the hand by which he strikes.

Asalaamu Alaikum,
Charles

FROM BOB CRANE

  Our colloquy on “Optimism, Reality, and the Hand of God,” which is to go online in Sheila Musaji’s internet magazine, www.theamericanmuslim.org, in sha’a Allah, today, addresses the real problems that the world is facing.  The only thing it does not address is the failure of Muslims to face these problems, which may be the world’s greatest problem. 

FROM JEREMY HENZELL-THOMAS

Charles Upton sent me the piece below in response to Norm’s comments about Jesus and Muhammad as “Revolutionaries”. I assume he also sent it on to you, and I also assume that he is willing for his pieces to go on line because he hasn’t said otherwise.

I don’t know whether this means that this colloquium is an indefinite process or whether it just needs a Part II. I am sure that Sheila will prefer the latter option!

As a matter of fact, although I had assumed that Charles had wrapped it up, Bob’s latest comments have provoked a need in me to add something more (for Part II, or perhaps for the blog which Bob has suggested. Like Abdallah S. I know nothing about blogs, apart from the infamous one run by D. Pipes and a few others I have seen which it seems to me have only further corrupted the English language. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “never in the field of human communication has so much been written by so many who have hardly a worthwhile thought between them”). I’ll try and write it today, although I have been neglecting my conference paper for the London conference later this month and may have to give my time to that.

I need to write something about the false dichotmony between contemplation and action which has emerged from our discussion. I am not in the least suggesting that it is an either/or choice, and this misleading dichotomy is reinforced by the idea that Christianity cherishes monasticism and Islam disapproves of it (despite the Prophet’s respect for Christian contemplatives). As Charles Upton made clear in his first piece, the two highest ways are the life of the contemplative and the (higher) mixed life of the one who combines contemplation and action, but in each case it is contemplation which is the governing “activity”. As he explains in his paragraph summarising Thomas Merton’s interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas, “the"mixed” life is only higher than the contemplative one—given that contemplation is intrinsically higher than action—when the depth of contemplation exhibited by the person in question is so great that the worldly actions he performs in no way disturb it. His life is not “divided” between action and contemplation, but is entirely contemplative, so deeply contemplative that action spontaneously flows from the contemplation itself.”

This is also what I understand by the path of Karma Yoga, the Yoga of Action, in the Bhagavad Gita. This is action which emanates from spiritual devotion (bhakti) and spiritual knowledge (jnana), and it could never be the highest form of yoga (union) if it was not absolutely grounded in theses yogas of worship and contemplation.

Before we seize on the Prophet’s statement that “there is no monasticism in Islam” as evidence of a dichotomy between contemplation and action, we need to understand that the Prophet himself received the first revelation of Islam in the cave to which he habitually retired for contemplation, and the complete lack of division between contemplation and action in the life of the Prophet was based on the fact he was, in Merton’s words, “so deeply contemplative that his actions flowed spontaneously from the contemplation itself”.

It is not a question of either/or but of precedence.

The precedence of the contemplative faculty can be shown by considering which is more dangerous: contemplation without action, or action without contemplation. This reminds me of the motto of Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, which I visited for a week in 2000 to observe their ethos and teaching methods: “Knowledge without goodness is dangerous”, for we need not only knowledge of God through contemplation, and action in the world, but also the possession of virtue. Spiritual traditions tell us that contemplation even without action may open the doors to the operation of Divine Grace in the world to an extent which could never be encompassed by human action alone:  “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of”.

On the other hand, what are the outcomes of action without contemplation, of action with no grounding in the knowledge or love of God? We only have to look at the carnage wrought by secular totalitarian ideologies in the 20th century to know the answer, and we have to be extremely vigilant that any “causes” we espouse do not fall into the second category even if they have the appearance of the first, for that obscuring of the truth through the gilding of what is defective is , as we know, how Al-Dajjal operates.

Once again, the discussion comes down to the understanding of the hierarchical nature of all things: that some things are subsumed by other things, and that what is subsumed is not in opposition to the thing above it, but dependent on it. Thus action is dependent on contemplation, and not in antagonism to it.

Once again too, we need to distinguish the meanings of related words - in this case, between activism, and action. I suspect that so many of the -ism words emerged at the time of the French Revolution and its revolutionary ideological spin-offs. It is instructive to note the different connotations of pairs like relationship and relativism, authority and authoritarianism, absolute and absolutism, secular and secularism, and so on. In each case there is a vital concept with a positive core of meaning which has been corrupted by its reduction and transformation into a dogmatic ideology.  The word “secular” need not be necessarily disparaging, for in Latin, “saeculum” simply means the condition of the present time. We needs must all live and try to do what we can within the conditions imposed on us by the “saeculum”, but that does not mean that we have to subscribe to secularism, which can well be characterised as the chief deformity of those very times in which we have to live. It is a question of the semantic colouring of words, whether positive, neutral or negative in connotation.

So when I said in my earlier essay that I could well have been an activist, I was using the word in its reduced sense as referring to one wedded to “activism” (with all it social and political connotations) rather than in the sense of one committed to action emanating from contemplation.

One of my own projects is to identify all these pairs and bring to light the differences in meanings. More unnecessary disputation is caused by people using words with the same roots in different ways than by virtually any other factor.

Perhaps the above covers what I had intended to write about the contemplation/action dichotomy. This is clearly a discussion which could rapidly escalate into a book!

Please find below the new piece from Charles Upton:

Salaam
Jeremy

see Part II for continuation of colloquium http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/2005jan_comments.php?id=593_0_31_0_C