A central tenet of the Bahá’í perspective on history is that humanity has reached the point at which a lasting global peace is “not only possible but inevitable.”1Universal House of Justice, The Promise of World Peace (Bahá’í World Centre, 1985), bahai.org/r/981833506. Yet if peace is indeed inevitable, the path towards it has been neither straightforward nor uninterrupted. The twentieth century witnessed the establishment of unprecedented institutions of international cooperation, accompanied, at certain moments, by shifts in political culture and public consciousness that seemed to signify a new era in international relations. However, from a vantage point a quarter of the way through the twenty-first century, it is clear that the project of building a united and effective global order is far from complete, and indeed in some respects appears to be in reverse. As the Universal House of Justice observes:
For many decades following the second great war of the twentieth century, humanity moved, with fits and starts, toward the promise of a united world. The failure to complete the project of the unification of nations, however, left gaps in relations in which supranational problems could fester and threaten the security and well-being of peoples and states, leading to a recrudescence of prejudice, of divers expressions of factionalism, and of virulent nationalism that are the very negation of Bahá’u’lláh’s message of peace and oneness.2Letter written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual, 27 April 2017, bahai.org/r/362945323.
Within this political and historical context, this article explores two questions. First, why did previous attempts to reach for lasting peace not succeed? Second, what conceptual and moral shifts stand between humanity and this long-cherished goal? If the obstacles to peace were merely technical or institutional, they might have been overcome long ago. The persistence of conflict and division suggests that a deeper transformation is required. What might be among the fundamental adjustments necessary for the establishment of a durable peace?
Reaching for Peace
In a message dated 18 January 2019, the Universal House of Justice comments on the progress towards world peace that has been made over the past century, and analyzes some of the causes of the regressive steps of recent years. In the letter, the House of Justice identifies three moments in which mankind seemed to be “reaching for real, lasting peace, albeit always falling short”: the two periods immediately following the First and Second World Wars, and the post-Cold War period.3Letter of the Universal House of Justice to the Bahá’ís of the world, 18 January 2019, bahai.org/r/276724432. The first moment saw the establishment of the League of Nations after the First World War. This represented the earliest attempt at a global collective security mechanism in history, and was accompanied in the 1920s by treaties and statements from intergovernmental meetings that explicitly rejected war as an instrument of foreign policy—a novel development in international relations at the time.4These included the Locarno treaties and the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact which explicitly renounced war “as an instrument of national policy.” See avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/kbpact.asp. Tragically, of course, the League of Nations was hampered from birth by the non-participation of the United States, and by the harsh settlement imposed on the defeated powers from the First World War, sowing the seeds of resentment that would ignite a second global conflict two decades later.
The second attempt at peace initially appeared more promising. The United Nations and the series of accompanying economic institutions established in the wake of the Second World War were broader-based in their membership, and were accompanied by advances at the level of thought and political culture, with the creation and ratification of foundational agreements related to human rights and international law. What is interesting to note about this period is not only the list of institutions that were established, or the treaties signed, but the tenor of public discourse. During this period, following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a wide range of scientists, political figures, jurists, journalists, and authors advocated for a world state powerful enough to prevent nuclear destruction. Albert Einstein, for example, conducted an extended publicity tour advocating for global government, while his colleagues on the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists lobbied for integrated global control of nuclear weapons.5Dexter Masters and Katharine Way, eds., One World or None (McGraw-Hill, 1946). Multiple resolutions introduced in the US Congress supported the creation of a world federation or transformation of the United Nations along world state lines, and major hearings on world government proposals were held by foreign affairs committees in both the US House and Senate in 1949 and 1950. Elsewhere, public support for a union of Atlantic democracies was expressed in 1949 by the foreign ministers of Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium, as well as by the Canadian Senate.6Daniel Deudney, “Greater Britain or Greater Synthesis? Seeley, Mackinder, and Wells on Britain in the Global Industrial Era,” Review of International Studies 27, no. 2 (2001): 187–208, jstor.org/stable/2009772. In India, Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru made a world federal government central to the 1942 Quit India Resolution, framing it as a remedy for Western imperialism.7Luis Cabrera, “Global International Relations and Indian Visions of World Government,” Global Studies Quarterly 5, no. 3 (2025), doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksaf061. Several organizations were founded in this period to draft a “world constitution.”8Joseph Preston Baratta, The Politics of World Federation (Praeger, 2004). World federalism drew support not only from academic, scientific, economic, and political elites, but also from relatively broad cross-sections of the population (at least in surveyed countries). In June 1946, for example, a Gallup poll asked Americans: “Do you think the United Nations Organization should be strengthened to make it a world government with power to control the armed forces of all nations, including the United States?” The results showed 54% in favor and 24% opposed, with the remainder undecided.9Luis Cabrera, “World Government: Renewed Debate, Persistent Challenges,” European Journal of International Relations 16, no. 3 (2010): 511–30. Indeed, similar surveys across the period 1946-1949 showed substantial American support for strengthening the United Nations into a world government, with approval ratings ranging from 52-77%. One reason to highlight this example is that the US is now one of the countries where respondents are more skeptical than the global average regarding the desirability of world government.
If nothing else, these examples illustrate that the terrain of public discourse is not fixed and that what appear to be immovable boundaries in public opinion, or hard constraints of political possibility, can, and indeed do, change dramatically over time. In the case of the mid-century postwar moment, however, this upsurge in discourse around world government receded as attempts to strengthen global government, notably in response to the threat of nuclear war, failed in an atmosphere of growing tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. As a result, political, scholarly, and public attention drifted away from the idea and remained largely dormant until the end of the Cold War.
The Third Moment
The third moment of reaching for peace stands much closer to our present historical juncture. During the 1990s there was a significant expansion in the range and strength of systems designed to foster international cooperation, exemplified by a series of conferences on thematic issues organized under the auspices of the UN, various developments in the area of international law including the adoption of the Rome statute leading to the creation of the International Criminal Court, and the formulation of the Millennium Development Goals. These political developments were matched by an upsurge in scholarly attention to the question of global governance (and the emergence of this term in common academic parlance).10Thomas Weiss charts how the notion of “global governance” came to displace the language of “world government” in academic and policy discourse. See Thomas G. Weiss, “What Happened to the Idea of World Government,” International Studies Quarterly 53, no. 2 (2009): 253–71, jstor.org/stable/27735096.
Alongside the political optimism of the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, a prominent feature of intellectual discourse at the time was the assumption that an expanded global order would consist largely in the progressive extension of the achievements of the modern West around the world. Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis was totemic of this assumption. Fukuyama argued that following the collapse of Soviet communism liberal democratic capitalism had emerged as the final form of human government, with no viable ideological competitors remaining.11Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (Free Press, 1992). Fukuyama illustrates the tenor of public and scholarly discourse at the time. His argument is more sophisticated than saying that the West had simply “won” the Cold War—he provides a Hegelian argument that liberal democracy is uniquely attractive because it best satisfies fundamental human desires for recognition and dignity. Further, he does not claim that countries will inevitably become liberal democracies, only that it has no serious competitors as a normatively compelling philosophical position. Proposals for reforming political order in this period were thus often proposals for globalizing aspects of the economic and political model of the West.12Strobe Talbott, “America Abroad: The Birth of the Global Nation,” Time, 20 July 1992; David Held, Democracy and the Global Order (Polity Press, 1995); Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace (Princeton University Press, 1993). In a 2005 Bahá’í World article, Michael Karlberg notes that critique of free-market capitalism is relatively widespread, including by voices within the West, but that the same has not hitherto been true of liberal democracy. The article goes on to analyze some of the limitations and pathologies of liberal democratic governance, including tendencies towards polarization, gridlock, oligarchic capture of political processes, and rising cynicism. See Michael Karlberg, “Western Liberal Democracy as New World Order?” The Bahá’í World (2005), bahaiworld.bahai.org/library/western-liberal-democracy-as-new-world-order/.
Yet against the optimism of many who assumed that liberal democracy would inexorably suffuse political systems worldwide, the first two decades of the twenty-first century have seen a series of cross-cutting trends that have undermined this narrative, and which seem to have eroded faith in the very idea of international governance. In some parts of the world, a “globalization backlash” has been expressed in phenomena such as member states withdrawing from international organizations and agreements, increasing trade protectionism, and more general protests against international institutions.13Stefanie Walter, “The Backlash Against Globalization,” Annual Review of Political Science 24 (2021): 421–42, doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-041719-102405. These currents of dissatisfaction draw on a wide and sometimes contradictory range of sources—from populist nationalisms, to movements with anti-capitalist orientations, to postcolonial critiques centered on historical marginalization. Underlying many of these phenomena is a general concern that the structures and ideologies underpinning globalization serve only a small minority of the world’s population. Alongside these political developments, this period has also seen growing scholarly interest in marginalized traditions of thought, often with the goal of unmasking the “false universalism” of dominant liberal thought.14Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton University Press, 2000). Efforts to imagine an effective and legitimate global order have thus come to be constrained within the terms of an unpalatable dichotomy—between a “globalism” that embraces liberalism and free-market capitalism as its foundation and an “anti-globalism” that is suspicious of the very idea of a global order. Such suspicion reflects not only disillusionment with the prevailing model of globalization, but broader anxieties about cultural homogenization and the global concentration of power.
While social and intellectual trends have raised questions about the direction of globalization, the inherently cross-national challenges for which global institutions are designed have hardly disappeared. If anything, their intensity has grown. In the juxtaposition of these trends lies a key paradox. On the one hand, the forces propelling global integration are strengthening, and with them the necessity of global cooperation. On the other, consensus around the basis for a legitimate global order is eroding.
A Fundamental Prerequisite
Where, then, do we go from here? The vision of global integration built on liberal democratic capitalism has been criticized for its tendency to universalize particular political, cultural, and economic arrangements that themselves have not proven able to establish social harmony or justice, while a reactive skepticism of the entire project of building a unified world order offers no constructive path forward in the face of inherently transnational challenges. Neither pole offers a satisfactory response to the challenges humanity faces. The task, therefore, is twofold: to separate the notion of a unified global order from the simple extension of the methods and procedures of liberal democracy or market capitalism, and to move beyond solely critiquing a defective order by describing, with progressive clarity, what might take the place of the present “incomplete project” of the unification of nations.
Where might such an alternative foundation be identified? Each of the three historical moments examined above saw genuine advances in the machinery of international cooperation, yet none succeeded in establishing enduring peace. The post-Cold War period, in particular, demonstrated that even substantial institutional development proves insufficient when underlying questions about the nature and purpose of global society remain unresolved. The resulting dichotomy between globalism and anti-globalism reflects, at a deeper level, an absence of shared conviction about the foundations of human society capable of commanding broad allegiance. What appears to be missing are not only better mechanisms of coordination, but rather a conception of global society itself, one that can ground institutional arrangements in globally shared principles.
In examining Bahá’í contributions to public discourse on the question of peace, one idea stands out as a central conviction regarding both what is defective in the existing global order and what is required for the elusive goal of global peace and stability to be realized: the principle of the oneness of humanity. The principle not only informs visions of a future world civilization whose contours can scarcely be imagined, but also stands at the heart of contributions to contemporary discourse about what is to be done here and now.
In a statement marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations, for example, the Bahá’í International Community draws attention to the “profound convictions for our collective behaviour” that flow from the truth that “the human family is one.”15Bahá’í International Community, A Governance Befitting: Humanity and the Path Toward a Just Global Order (2020), bic.org/statements/governance-befitting-humanity-and-path-toward-just-global-order. The statement observes that the challenge of embedding the principle of oneness in the design and operation of the global order is not merely one of creating or reforming institutions, important as this is. Rather, there exists a pressing need for what the statement terms a “settled consensus” around “a set of common values and principles” capable of underpinning collective decision-making on issues affecting humanity as a whole.16Bahá’í International Community, A Governance Befitting. The Promise of World Peace, a 1985 message of the Universal House of Justice to the peoples of the world, similarly expresses this conviction, identifying the primary question confronting humanity as “how the present world, with its entrenched pattern of conflict, can change to a world in which harmony and cooperation will prevail.” Its answer: “World order can be founded only on an unshakable consciousness of the oneness of mankind….” Accepting the oneness of humanity, the message continues, represents “the first fundamental prerequisite for reorganization and administration of the world as one country, the home of humankind.”17Universal House of Justice, Promise of World Peace.
Yet what is meant by “oneness” in these contexts? And how does the principle of oneness take us beyond the familiar principles and institutions of the current discourse on global governance? Shoghi Effendi states:
The principle of the Oneness of Mankind—the pivot round which all the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh revolve—is no mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hope. Its appeal is not to be merely identified with a reawakening of the spirit of brotherhood and good-will among men, nor does it aim solely at the fostering of harmonious cooperation among individual peoples and nations.18Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh (Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1938), bahai.org/r/449204500.
In exploring the meaning of oneness, it is important to begin from the recognition that it would be premature to claim to comprehend anything but a fraction of its full import for the life of humanity. Clarity on what the principle of oneness entails for the next stage of social evolution will only emerge through sustained processes of learning and exploration. The full significance of the principle—including its implications for human consciousness and the very foundations of social existence—extends well beyond what any single line of inquiry can capture. The principle carries implications for many dimensions of social life, including questions of identity, the relations between diverse peoples and groups, the organization of economic life, and collective governance.19The implications of oneness for questions of identity—how we define ourselves and relate to others—have received insightful treatment recently in the pages of The Bahá’í World. See Shahrzad Sabet, “The Crisis of Identity,” The Bahá’í World, bahaiworld.bahai.org/library/the-crisis-of-identity/. This analysis follows the observation of the House of Justice in its message of 18 January 2019, that one obstacle to peace is humanity’s present “crisis of identity, as various peoples and groups struggle to define themselves, their place in the world, and how they should act.” Indeed, the promise of a global order grounded in oneness may extend beyond the achievement of more stable and just governance arrangements. As relationships among peoples are progressively reordered to reflect the reality of oneness, new horizons of possibility may emerge that cannot be anticipated at present. With all this in mind, and conscious of the constraints of inevitably limited vision, there is one particular idea this essay seeks to examine because of its relevance to current questions of political life and global order: what the concept of oneness tells us about the nature of society itself.
Conceptions of Society
Underlying most political and philosophical thought are conceptual models or metaphors which, though not literal descriptions of reality, generate distinctive conceptions of the body politic. One thinks of the market as a jungle in classical economics, the Confucian image of the extended family as a model for political relationships, or Plato’s image of the city-state as a ship requiring a wise captain. Such heuristic devices organize ideas and shape intuitions regarding the moral principles that ought to govern collective life, which in turn mold social norms and structures.
Of these various images, we can examine one in some depth as an example of how a guiding metaphor can shape the architecture of an entire tradition of political thought. The image of a social contract conceptualizes society as a collection of individuals who, despite divergent interests and beliefs, form a binding agreement to regulate social and political questions arising among them. This contract sets certain ground rules for ongoing coexistence and serves as a reference point in arbitrating disputes about what individuals owe to one another. From this deceptively simple starting point flow distinctive assumptions about persons, about what justice requires, and about the proper role of political institutions, assumptions that have also informed influential approaches to theorizing social and global order.
John Rawls’s influential theory of justice provides an instructive example of how this contractualist vision generates a framework of political principles. Rawls is a particularly helpful figure because he explicitly notes that conceptions of justice are “the outgrowth of different notions of society.”20John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 9–10. Rawls begins with a fundamental organizing conception of society as a system of cooperation between autonomous and equal individuals. He then creates the device of an “original position,” a hypothetical scenario in which parties deliberate about the terms of the social contract—the basic terms of social cooperation between them—while deprived of knowledge about morally arbitrary characteristics about themselves, such as their race, class, gender, or natural talents.
The original position serves as the mechanism for working out what free and equal individuals would agree to under conditions that model fairness. Parties in the original position are characterized by “mutual disinterest”—they are concerned with advancing their own conception of the good, but are not motivated by benevolence toward or envy of others. This assumption is not incidental: it ensures that the principles chosen are ones that individuals can accept as fair regardless of their particular conceptions of human flourishing or moral doctrines, and it models the separateness of persons that Rawls takes to be a basic fact about human beings.21Rawls is careful to distinguish between the motivation of parties in the original position and the motivation of actual persons, noting that mutual disinterest is a modeling device rather than a claim about human nature. He argues that the combination of mutual disinterest and the veil of ignorance achieves much the same purpose as benevolence, since it forces each party to take the good of others into account. See Rawls, Theory of Justice, pp. 128–29. This defense succeeds against the charge that his theory presupposes egoism. However, the choice to model fairness through mutually disinterested parties carries with it assumptions about the independent specifiability of agents’ interests that sit in tension with the idea of constitutive interdependence discussed later in this article. The framework treats others’ positions as possible locations for oneself, rather than recognizing that one’s own flourishing depends on the character of shared structures and relationships regardless of which position in society one occupies. From this architecture flows Rawls’s principles of justice. The first principle guarantees equal basic liberties for all citizens—freedoms such as political participation, expression, and conscience that rational agents would not risk losing regardless of their position in society. The second principle addresses social and economic inequalities, requiring that positions of advantage be open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity, and that any remaining inequalities work to the benefit of the least advantaged members of society.22John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Harvard University Press, 1999). Each element follows from what mutually disinterested parties, ignorant of their own circumstances, would rationally choose: they would secure fundamental freedoms, ensure fair access to opportunities, and, since they might find themselves among the worst off, insist that inequalities improve the prospects of those worst-off in society.
Rawls’s theory represents one example of sophisticated and nuanced contractualist thinking, which in many ways is sensitive to the balance of unity and diversity in society. The purpose here is not to criticize it, but rather to demonstrate that any such framework relies on a particular image of human nature and social order. The characterization of agents in this framework as mutually disinterested, the specification of interests prior to and independent of social relationships, and the modeling of fair agreement as that which emerges from a process of individual rational choice all form, and reinforce the notion that an individual’s core interests are understood to be independently constituted, and that social cooperation is merely an arrangement among such agents to secure fair terms despite potentially divergent interests. Importantly, the effects of contractualist thinking, of which Rawls’s view is one illustrative example, have not been confined to the academy. In direct and indirect ways, this conceptual model, which emerged during the Enlightenment and remains influential in contemporary political thought, has become embedded in the political, economic, and social lives of whole societies. Consider Rawls’s principles of justice. His first principle, guaranteeing equal basic liberties, finds expression in the broader liberal commitment that individual freedom can only be constrained in order to prevent harm to others.23It should be noted that several of the principles discussed here, including the harm principle, also have roots in non-contractualist liberal thought, such as the work of J. S. Mill. See John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (John W. Parker and Son, 1859). The purpose of the present analysis is not to claim that the social contract tradition is the sole source of these principles, but to illustrate how a particular conception of society can underpin and give coherence to a framework of political thought. The assumption of mutual disinterest, which ensures that principles are acceptable regardless of one’s particular conception of the good, underwrites the notion that the state should remain neutral between different visions of the good life rather than promoting any substantive account of human flourishing. And the architecture of the original position, modeling society as separate individuals who must find terms of cooperation despite divergent interests, reflects the prevalent belief that governance structures and social institutions exist primarily to arbitrate between potentially divergent claims rather than to cultivate shared purposes. These and similar principles have over time become codified in constitutional documents, embedded in popular consciousness, and expressed in legal precedent.
The point is not that such principles lack merit. It is rather that they emerge from a particular conception of society and the person. When this contractualist framework is extended to theorize global order, the parties sometimes shift from individuals to states, such that global society is conceptualized as a system populated by free (i.e. autonomous) and equal (i.e. sovereign) nation-states.24There have been a number of attempts to extend the Rawlsian picture of society to equivalent analysis of the global order, with some authors, such as Charles Beitz, attempting to extend the domestic Rawlsian original position by depriving parties of knowledge of their nationality, while others, including Rawls himself, prefer to conceptualize global society as a system of cooperation between “peoples” or societies rather than between individuals, generating principles of international order that emphasize national self-determination. See Charles Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton University Press, 1979); John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Harvard University Press, 1999). But core elements of the underlying conception remain: separate agents with divergent interests seeking mutually acceptable terms of cooperation. Beyond explicitly nationalist or statist extensions of the contractualist conception of society, if building a just and effective global order consisted, as many assumed in the post-Cold War period, in extending the Western social and political model worldwide, it would involve globalizing something like the contractual conception of society, embedding its assumptions about persons and social cooperation in political cultures and institutions around the world.
The purpose of the analysis above has simply been to make visible assumptions that often operate invisibly—to show that the contractual framework represents one possible starting point among others, not a neutral or inevitable foundation for political thought. This recognition opens space to ask what a conception of society informed by the principle of oneness might look like, and how it might differ from the models that currently predominate.
Oneness and Global Society
With this in mind, let us return to the idea of oneness. A conception of society, including global society, as a cooperative system characterized by an essential oneness would emphasize the extent and nature of interdependence between its constituent elements, in both an empirical and a normative sense. The empirical aspect observes that the well-being of individuals and societies is connected across borders, whether through economic systems, ecological processes, technological networks, or political structures.25While the focus here is the global level, this interdependence characterizes social reality at every scale—within communities and nations as much as between them. Yet the conception is not merely descriptive. The normative component asserts that these empirical interdependencies possess constitutive rather than merely instrumental significance for human flourishing. This normative dimension transcends enlightened self-interest, which would calculate the long-term advantages of cooperation while maintaining that agents affect one another’s well-being only instrumentally, and approaches that widen the scope of moral obligation while leaving the underlying conception of agents and their interests unchanged. Constitutive interdependence makes a stronger claim and implies a transformed understanding of what constitutes interest and well-being themselves: one’s capacity to flourish is inherently limited when others suffer. This is not simply because their suffering might eventually affect one’s interests from the outside, but because flourishing itself is partly constituted by the character of one’s relationships and the health of shared structures. To put the point positively, participation in relationships of genuine reciprocity and shared endeavor may unlock, or even itself constitute, a dimension of flourishing that no degree of isolated prosperity can provide.
Each conception of society carries with it an implicit or explicit view of the person—what agents are like, what motivates them, and what constitutes their flourishing. A contractualist conception would generally assume agents whose interests can be specified independently. A conception informed by oneness, by contrast, is likely to assume that agents’ capacity for flourishing is inherently relational. Human flourishing, on this view, inherently involves the quality of relationships and systemic conditions, not merely the accumulation of goods, the satisfaction of preferences, or even access to resources and the protection of basic rights, important as these are. From this perspective, the quality of social structures partially determines individual possibilities, and societal dysfunction constrains human flourishing even for those who appear temporarily insulated.
Understanding oneness in this way—as a principle informing our conception of global society—carries significant implications. If the capacity to flourish cannot be isolated from the health of shared structures and relationships, neither can peace; and this reframes conventional thinking about what peace requires, in terms of both scope and sequence. Regarding scope, it helps to explain the claim in The Promise of World Peace that achieving peace requires removing obstacles often seen as unrelated to peace: “…the abolition of war is not simply a matter of signing treaties and protocols; it is a complex task requiring a new level of commitment to resolving issues not customarily associated with the pursuit of peace.”26Universal House of Justice, Promise of World Peace. If oneness informs our foundational conception of society, then obstacles to peace such as racism, wealth inequality, tribal nationalism, and religious sectarianism are not discrete problems to be addressed separately. They are incompatible with oneness and therefore with a society capable of genuine peace; conceptualizing social order through the lens of oneness illuminates why these diverse phenomena share a common root. Regarding sequence, oneness reveals the limitations of the assumption that unity is “a distant, almost unattainable ideal to be addressed only after a host of political conflicts have been somehow resolved”: oneness is not the fruit of solving other problems; it is the prerequisite for solving them.27Bahá’í International Community, Who Is Writing the Future? Reflections on the Twentieth Century (1999), bahai.org/documents/bic-opi/who-writing-future.
A conception of society informed by oneness, like its contractual counterpart, would not be a mere abstraction, but would carry significant practical consequences. As the discussion of Rawls illustrated, conceptions of society inform the normative principles selected to regulate collective life, which in turn shape laws, policies, and institutions. Such a conception of global society would carry with it similarly distinctive implications, both empirical and normative.
The empirical dimension directs attention to the ways in which the major challenges defining contemporary global politics demonstrate this inherent interdependence. Climate change is one clear example: no amount of national wealth can insulate a society from atmospheric changes driven by global emissions. Similarly, pandemic preparedness, financial stability, and digital technologies create vulnerabilities that transcend national boundaries and cannot be addressed through isolated action. These are not marginal issues but increasingly define the parameters within which all other political and economic activity occurs. The principle of oneness also enables us to distinguish between narrow material accumulation and comprehensive flourishing. An individual or society might increase certain metrics—household wealth, GDP, territorial control—while experiencing degradation in the broader conditions that enable genuine well-being. Rising wealth inequality in many countries coinciding with deepening polarization and weakening social trust suggests that even apparent beneficiaries of economic inequality bear costs in other dimensions of life.28Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (Allen Lane, 2009); Eric M. Uslaner, The Moral Foundations of Trust (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
The normative dimension carries distinctive implications for what ought to be done about these interdependencies. Enlightened self-interest might recognize that assisting developing nations creates future markets or that environmental cooperation prevents future costs. But the idea of constitutive interdependence suggested by oneness makes a stronger and qualitatively different claim: one’s capacity to flourish cannot be separated from the flourishing of others within a system of social cooperation, because the quality of shared structures and relationships is not merely an external condition affecting well-being but partly constitutive of it. Appealing to oneness to justify and appraise laws or policies may imply, among other things, that the legitimacy of domestic policies be judged by reference to their global impacts and that self-interested bargaining in global politics represents not merely a moral failure but a fundamental misunderstanding of a nation’s own interests.29See Bahá’í International Community, A Governance Befitting. A central bank’s mandate, for instance, would be framed not purely in domestic terms but in terms of contributing to the stability and health of the international economic system, recognizing this as a condition of its own society’s prosperity.30Empirical evidence suggests, for example, that increases in US interest rates trigger economic effects of at least the same size in a significant number of foreign countries, as the effect in the US itself. See Matteo Iacoviello and Gaston Navarro, “Foreign Effects of Higher U.S. Interest Rates,” Journal of International Money and Finance 95 (2019): 232–50. Agricultural support policies would be designed to strengthen food systems both domestically and internationally—asking not only whether subsidies benefit domestic producers, but whether they contribute to food security worldwide and to the livelihoods of farming communities in other countries.31Bahá’í International Community, Just, Sustainable and Resilient Food Systems: Some Considerations for the AU–EU Partnership (June 28, 2023), bic.org/publications/just-sustainable-and-resilient-food-systems. Tax regimes would be oriented toward building the shared fiscal capacity to fund public goods in every country, rather than structured in ways that encourage nations to competitively undercut one another. In each case, a oneness-informed conception of international society does not merely add global well-being as an afterthought; it reframes the very question of what constitutes effective policymaking, directing attention not only to how outcomes are distributed but to the character of the relationships through which collective life is conducted.
Oneness beyond Collectivism
The foregoing has sought to articulate, in necessarily preliminary terms, what a conception of global society informed by oneness might involve and some of its implications. Yet for all its apparent relevance to the challenges of global order, such a conception of global society has not yet permeated political discourse, let alone become embedded in social structures. This is not to say the ideal of oneness is completely absent—one can identify latent expressions of the underlying sentiment in foundational international documents such as the UN Charter. Similarly, in the more diffuse realm of public consciousness, it is common to hear in discourse, from informal everyday conversation to formal statements in global forums, recognition that in matters of public health “no one is safe until everyone is safe,” or that on climate change “the world will succeed or fail as one.” All this notwithstanding, there are many aspects of the existing global political order that do not yet reflect, or align with, the implications of human oneness. Why might this be? Why has a conception of the essential nature of social order informed by oneness not been more widely adopted?
Clearly, one significant part of the answer is a gap between moral principle and action, and a lack of willingness to “put aside short-term self-interest” on the part of individuals, governing institutions, and indeed whole societies.32Letter of Universal House of Justice to the Bahá’ís of the world, 4 January 2022, bahai.org/r/845512230. But it would appear that insufficient commitment to recognized ideals is not all that is at work here. Sustained action in pursuit of moral principles is difficult without clarity about the kind of world those principles are meant to create. There are conceptual obstacles, at least in some prevalent traditions of thought, to embracing the reality of oneness as an essential characteristic of global society. These conceptual obstacles may, by furnishing rationales for behavior inconsistent with the principle of oneness, in turn weaken the connection between the force of moral principle and political practice. When, for instance, the separateness and divergent interests of nations is treated as a basic fact of international life, policies that prioritize narrow national advantage over global well-being appear not as moral failures but as rational responses to how the world is structured.
The conceptual concern regarding oneness, while not always articulated explicitly, can be presented as follows: conceptions of society that emphasize unity, including those which draw on organic metaphors (such as the use of the human body analogy in the Bahá’í writings), have historically been deployed in service of worldviews emphasizing hierarchy, homogeneity, or the priority of the collective over the individual. Karl Popper expresses the general intuition in contrasting the “closed” and “open” society: “the open society rests on a strong commitment to individualism—to individual rights but also to individual responsibilities—and on a rejection of the “organic theory” that prioritizes the collective (the tribe, the nation, etc.) over the individual.”33Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Routledge, 1945), pp. 165–66.
Clearly, this is not what the principle of oneness from a Bahá’í perspective asserts. When the Bahá’í writings make reference to the human body as a model for social relationships, this is not an understanding of the body as simply an agglomeration of interchangeable cells, whose individual character is unimportant, but rather a complex web of interdependent systems, which requires the complementary operation of differentiated components.34Further, metaphors should not be confused with descriptions of reality in and of itself. Society is not, in fact, a human body, any more than it is a contractual agreement. Such metaphors are tools that attempt to approximate certain of reality’s features for the purposes of illuminating principles relevant to social organization. Their value is demonstrated by the fecundity of the traditions of thought derived from them over time, rather than by simplistic statements about their inevitable consequences. Extending the metaphor to social organization, diversity in political cultures and institutional arrangements enables experimentation with different governance approaches, creating opportunities for learning about distinctive knowledge and practices suited to varied contexts. Further, collectivism, in problematic forms, treats society as a unified agent possessing a single system of desire, a collective entity whose judgments and purposes override or subsume individual perspectives. A oneness-inspired conception of society need not make any such claim. It would make quite a different point: that pursuing self- or national interest in ways that systematically undermine global structures or the flourishing of other segments of society represents a misunderstanding of the conditions for one’s own flourishing.
Unreflective identification of ideals of interdependence or social unity with crude collectivism, then, may help to explain why a conceptualization of global society that emphasizes its essential oneness has not been the object of greater attention. Attempts to examine the potential of conceptual models other than those dominant within the liberal tradition have perhaps been hampered by the persistence of false dichotomies. The tendency to present social organization as a binary choice between collectivism and individualism, or between liberalism and authoritarianism, may be one conceptual obstacle that needs to be overcome.
Crisis and Possibility
The foregoing analysis of twentieth-century attempts to establish peace suggests that moments of crisis often precipitate a reexamination of inadequate frameworks. Conceptions of society exert a profound influence on the intuitions, norms, and structures that shape collective life. Yet fundamental shifts in how society is understood are rarely the product of conceptual argument alone. Liberal models of social organization, for example, emerged through an interplay between philosophical reflection and the social and political action of particular groups and movements. As they form, such conceptions become embedded not only in formal structures but in popular consciousness, social norms, and everyday relationships. It follows that the process of developing a new underlying basis for global order will necessarily involve the efforts of communities and peoples in diverse settings to explore what oneness means for patterns of social organization—efforts that will, over time, generate insights and demonstrate possibilities capable of informing broader discourse and institutional change. In this sense, every segment of the world’s population has agency in the process of redefining the conceptual foundations of global society.
While the immediate prospects for peace are uncertain, the historical record also demonstrates how dramatic shifts in the landscape of political possibility can and do occur. It is not possible to predict how the integrative and disintegrative forces shaping humanity’s trajectory towards peace will unfold in the near future. Yet if enduring peace requires not only institutional arrangements but a conception of global society capable of grounding them, the work of clarifying what oneness implies for our collective life may be indispensable to the peace humanity seeks.
The author is grateful to Vafa Ghazavi, Shahrzad Sabet, and Stephen Agahi-Murphy for their input.
It is late morning in the New Zealand town of Masterton. Dame Robin White DNZM1The Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (DNZM) is a prestigious honor awarded in New Zealand to individuals who have made significant contributions to the nation in fields such as arts, science, business, or public service. Recipients are granted the title Dame and recognized for their distinguished achievements.—a painter and printmaker known for her vibrant explorations of Pacific life—settles into conversation with her longtime friend and collaborator, Tongan artist and curator Ruha Fifita. Ruha is visiting for a few days, and they sit together in Robin’s studio. Holding cups of tea and surrounded by an array of drawings and colorful works in progress, they reflect on years of working together and the many insights that their collaboration with each other and many others has yielded.
For much of her early career, Robin was recognized in New Zealand for her bold, light-infused portraits and landscapes, a style that connected her, in the public eye, to the so-called Pacific Realist painters of the 1970s. Yet even in those early, seemingly solitary works, a communal spirit peeks through. In later decades, after living for a time in Kiribati, her art would become profoundly collaborative, engaging partners from a range of backgrounds and homelands.
One of Robin’s significant partnerships over the past decade has been with Ruha. From their initial conversations in Tonga about how Robin could expand on her recent experiences working with barkcloth practitioners in Fiji, the two developed an evolving partnership in which they have explored themes such as customary and contemporary approaches to art and how a vision of humanity’s oneness informs and illuminates creative work.
Below is an interview with Robin and Ruha, shaped and edited from two transcribed audio recordings. The conversation that unfolds explores how, as Bahá’ís, their journey in the arts has been fundamentally shaped by the oneness of humankind—the cardinal principle of the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh.
Interview
INTERVIEWER: Let’s begin with the idea of collaboration. You both frequently highlight the term, yet “collaboration” can mean many things. What does it mean in your practice?
ROBIN: On a very basic level it means seeking the opportunity to work with others in order to achieve something that I could never do on my own. So, there are circumstances in which collaboration is a practical necessity. For example, the making of a large ngatu2Ngatu is a traditional barkcloth made in Tonga from the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree (Broussonetia papyrifera). It is created by beating, layering, and decorating the bark with natural dyes and patterns. It is highly valued in Tongan culture and is used for special ceremonies, gifts, and decoration. demands a wide range of skills and requires teamwork for its completion. Plus, it can be a very enjoyable and sociable experience—making friends, telling stories, sharing food. It’s fun.
Over time I find that there is much to learn, at a deeper level, about what collaboration can mean. I find it a liberating experience, liberating from the confines of self, and something that offers a wide-open horizon of possibilities.
Of course, collaborating is not without risks and challenges, but that’s also part of the appeal. When we come from different backgrounds—culturally, generationally, or in terms of craft—it’s vital to spend time creating a shared understanding. We ask: “Why are we doing this?” and “What do we hope to achieve beyond the finished artwork?”
When a deeper sense of unity is fostered—when people talk freely and openly about their motivations and ideas and feel they are part of the decision-making process—problems that arise can be solved. I’ve also seen what can happen when a collaborative project loses track of the ultimate purpose. But when we remember the principle of the oneness of humankind and reflect on our coming together to learn from each other, the process becomes infinitely enriching.
RUHA: I feel very fortunate to have spent the formative years of my life immersed in environments strongly characterized by a spirit of cooperation and reciprocity. This spirit is present in the Bahá’í community and in the cultures of the Pacific. Spending most of my upbringing in Tonga meant that the opportunities to observe and contribute to rich experiences of collaboration were many and integral to the way one participates in family and community life, and that is really what shaped my engagement with the arts from the very beginning.
We learn dances to contribute to significant occasions. We learn to paint and make things from natural resources around us. We learn to create dance costumes and gifts. We raise funds for community and family initiatives. As we gain experience and skill, we embrace opportunities to teach, help, and shape opportunities for others.
This context also allowed me and my family and friends to connect and work with many other creatives from our region with similar arts practices.
I guess, this is to say that my foundational experiences have been ones where collaboration is assumed, shared authorship is the norm, and the complexity of this way of working is nurtured and supported by collective core values and longstanding cooperative relationships. Trying to make or share work in more Western contexts has sparked an interest in how others view collaboration.
I love the way the artist Pablo Helguera3Pablo Helguera is a Mexican-American artist, educator, and writer known for his work in socially engaged art, performance, and museum education. His projects often explore history, language, and community engagement, with notable works like The School of Panamerican Unrest. He has held key roles in major institutions such as MoMA and the Guggenheim, contributing to the dialogue between art, education, and social change. has described the different layers of participation in collaborative creative processes:
Nominal—that is offering encouragement, food, prayers, space to work; or Discursive—for example, contributing conversation, stories and/or insights that shape the conceptual scope and content of the work; or Directed—offering a skill and time to complete a specific task; or Creative—offering creative agency to a specific part of the work to achieve a defined outcome; and finally, Collaborative—which I now define as contributing to shaping the purpose, function, and form of the work and participating fully in decision-making processes throughout its completion.
It’s important to develop language that helps us describe the nuances and complexities of the term “collaboration” so that its meaning is not lost, as it is used to refer to many things. My contribution to projects with Robin has floated between these different layers.
INTERVIEWER: You both mention spiritual principles. In your view, how do central Bahá’í teachings such as the oneness of humankind shape the day-to-day reality of making art together?
ROBIN: It’s foundational. I think of humanity as being like one family—so if I’m working with an artist from Tonga, Fiji, or Kiribati, I begin with the conviction that our shared spiritual reality outweighs any cultural differences.
We do have differences, of course, but I don’t see them as a barrier. Instead, they’re a richly varied resource of perspectives. I like thinking of it as working in the space between. It’s a space that is dynamic and creative, and these are conditions that rely on contrast or diversity. If everything is predictably the same then where is the energy? So, I really welcome opportunities to work with others who come from a very different background and life-experience. It’s energizing and full of opportunities to learn from each other.
Another related concept is work as worship.4‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the eldest son and appointed Successor of Bahá’u’lláh, wrote that “work done in the spirit of service is the highest form of worship.” (‘Abdu’l-Bahá on Divine Philosophy, p. 78). If we see our work—our making, weaving, painting—as an act of devotion carried out in a spirit of service, then that feeling of reverence becomes part of every stage of what we do. We each bring a certain attentiveness, a certain respect, to the materials, the process, and the people involved.
RUHA: Looking back, I do feel it was two concepts central to being a Bahá’í—the oneness of mankind and the importance of living a life of service to others—that shaped my first engagements with Robin.
INTERVIEWER: How did you begin your first big collaboration?
RUHA: Robin arrived in Tonga after visiting the Kermadec Islands5A remote oceanic area northeast of New Zealand, including the uninhabited Kermadec Islands and the deep Kermadec Trench. Known for its rich marine biodiversity and volcanic activity, it is a key site for conservation efforts. wanting to learn about traditional ngatu-making. She had started to think about how to use this medium as a way of responding to her time in the Kermadecs, which lie in the ocean space between Tonga and New Zealand.
Typically, a Tongan kokaʻanga group—a collective of women making ngatu—will work on a piece together, but that group might not be familiar with Western art world contexts. Initially, Robin asked me to help find an experienced group. In the process, we discovered we had a shared framework for discussing both the form and meaning of the work. I was then invited to help make the work she needed to complete for an upcoming exhibition in New Zealand.
Over the next few months, I contributed to the project as someone to bounce ideas with, to help her source the necessary materials, to connect with local practitioners and community leaders, and to help paint the final work. I felt fortunate to be part of conversations that explored the aims of the piece and how its intended message could guide decisions about pattern, scale, color, and whom to involve. I had not had many interactions before that with professional artists that were contributing to global discourses through work shown in art galleries, and I was grateful to be able to learn from her experience.
ROBIN: I remember being so grateful for Ruha’s youthful energy, her cultural curiosity, and her readiness to learn. She might say she was new to some aspects of barkcloth production, but she had a closeness to it that I lacked. Also, because we share the same spiritual convictions, there was a sense of confidence in the way we worked together and I could trust that if either of us thought that something needed to change, or if we had to consult with village elders, we’d do so in a spirit of humility.
That first big work we made, Siu i Moana, was about the concept of reciprocity. The Kermadec Islands that I had just visited lay at a halfway point between Tonga and New Zealand. So, I started thinking about how to visually represent the constant exchange and movement of people and goods between those two countries as a metaphor for the sharing of ideas and values whereby both populations are enriched.
INTERVIEWER: You’ve both touched on bridging traditional and contemporary in your work. Would you say your art preserves an old form, or is it something else?
ROBIN: I don’t see it primarily as preservation. Ngatu is a living art form, integral to Tongan life. It doesn’t need reviving or preservation.
What we do with ngatu, or with Fijian masi6Masi is a traditional Fijian barkcloth made from the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree (Broussonetia papyrifera). It is handcrafted through a process of soaking, beating, and layering the bark into large sheets, which are then decorated with natural dyes in intricate geometric patterns. Used in ceremonies, clothing, and gifts, masi holds deep cultural significance in Fijian society, symbolizing respect, identity, and tradition., is explore ways in which these traditional forms can have an ongoing role in telling contemporary stories.
RUHA: I often find the image of a sapling comes to mind when thinking about my own engagement with cultural practices. Planted in the rich fertile soil of culture prepared by our ancestors, I feel the responsibility of the seeds of each new generation is to ensure that our roots continue to grow and draw from ever-deepening understandings of this cultural knowledge, while, at the same time, striving to respond to the needs and changing reality of the world around us.
I personally feel like a very small plant in this regard, grateful to have many strong plants around me helping to create the conditions for that growth. The ecology is enriched by every effort. So, it’s less about building a bridge than learning how engagement in this practice can enrich the conditions that support the array of efforts being made across different fields of endeavor to ensure the world we are building is benefitting as much as possible from the instruments and knowledge generated by those who came before us.
INTERVIEWER: When artists from outside an indigenous community engage in that community’s art forms, it can raise concerns about cultural appropriation? How do you respond to such concerns?
ROBIN: When I first began working with Kiribati weavers, and later with Tongan or Fijian craftspeople, some people assumed I was simply borrowing a tradition for my own gain. But we approached the process differently, through friendship, building real relationships, learning from local knowledge-holders, and approaching our work in a humble posture of learning. In the end, I have to examine the integrity of my own motives for the work that I am doing. The way forward for me is always to be mindful and clear on what my purpose is and on the core principles that determine how I proceed.
I also want to clarify that appropriation typically implies exploitation—a circumstance in which someone with more power or status takes something from a vulnerable individual or group. But these island communities are not powerless. To think that way is patronizing.
I begin with the conviction that indigenous people have agency, that is, capacity and control of their own lives, thoughts, and behavior, and the ability to handle a wide range of tasks and situations.
Yes, there has been colonialism with its attendant exploitative behaviors, and remnants of those patterns still exist. But by striving to work in a spirit of mutual exchange, with genuine respect and recognition for each other’s experience and gifts, these collaborations are uplifting and beneficial for everyone.
RUHA: There is valid concern about appropriation in the art world. It can and does happen.
One question that has moved to the forefront of my mind since working with Robin is, how can artists from an indigenous culture engage in customary practice alongside people from other cultures as an affirming act of cultural dialogue? I believe it’s possible and important to learn about as an expression of a belief in the oneness of mankind.
But I also recognize that even with the most noble principles and intentions in mind, we must acknowledge that we live in a world where social systems and dominant patterns of thought can perpetuate or normalize exploitative and selfish behavior. We are all influenced by these forces. I feel it is even possible for people to appropriate or exploit their own cultures; we don’t get a free pass just because we have blood ties to a culture.
In this regard, what has been important is to continue to check in myself about the motivations and principles that are driving me. I am realizing that the most appropriate way to engage with indigenous practice is to recognize that it demands individual growth and transformation. This sense of purpose requires of me to be honest and open to understanding my mistakes, figuring out the adjustments that need to be made to my approach and committed to applying those adjustments even if it is less convenient, unseen by others, or takes me down a less familiar or uncomfortable route. An important aspect of this is also seeking to hear and understand the perspectives that differ from my own.
Working with Robin was my first opportunity to be involved in the full process of making a large-scale ngatu. It was an eye-opening experience for me to understand more fully the potency of the practice and the role it plays in nurturing relationships within a community and with the natural environment; facilitating collective reflection, consultation, and knowledge sharing; cultivating unity of purpose, thought, and action; uplifting community ceremonies and gatherings; harmonizing spiritual and scientific sources of knowledge; and harnessing the power of pattern and collectively understood visual languages. It’s these aspects of the practice I am most interested in continuing to explore. How one does this in quickly changing familial and community constructs is a question that I’m finding can only be gradually understood.
INTERVIEWER: Could you describe an example of a collaborative artwork that merged several cultural threads?
ROBIN: One that stands out is a project in Fiji, which eventually resulted in a piece titled Living in a Material World. It involved me, Ruha, and another collaborator, Tamari Cabeikancea, who is Fijian. We drew on three different bodies of knowledge and experience—Tongan barkcloth, Fijian masi, and my own background and training in the Western art tradition.
I had come to understand from earlier conversations with Tamari and her aunt Leba that in the precolonial times there was a great deal of exchange going on between Tonga and Fiji and that the art of barkcloth reflected a spirit of reciprocity in the sharing of knowledge and skills. A desire grew to explore ways in which we could bring together Tongan and Fijian practitioners to work together to share and combine their traditional skills. Eventually an opportunity presented itself, and I joined Ruha and Tamari in Leba’s home in Lautoka, Fiji, in June 2017.
We began by studying a letter7https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/the-universal-house-of-justice/messages/20170301_001/1#712004157 from the Universal House of Justice, dated 1 March 2017, which prompted us to consider the moral and spiritual dimensions of wealth and economics in the context of core Bahá’í values, such as justice and the oneness of humanity. We reflected on how a consumption-driven culture shapes our lives, and we thought about questions, such as: What is material wealth for? What is the outcome of excessive materialism? What does genuine prosperity look like?
Turning these ideas into a visual art form meant uniting distinct textile processes—an indigenous Fijian approach for the barkcloth base and printed designs, Tongan-inspired patterns layered on top, plus my experience working with composition and color as a painter. Our common ground was that we all shared a spiritual motivation; we were speaking to the same underlying themes.
RUHA: It is important to note we were not introducing intercultural exchange and collaboration as a way of working; this has and does exist within and between all parts of the Pacific region. Artists and creative communities are constantly embracing new opportunities to learn from and with each other through creative practice. For me, what stood out about this experience was the thread of Western arts practice. The points of difference and similarity in the ways Robin thought about composition, tone, symbolism, and function of a work really allowed me to become more conscious of the knowledge and aesthetic principles within the indigenous practices and the questions that might guide my ongoing engagement.
It also helped me to become more aware of two potential benefits of intercultural interactions—one being that it can help us to clarify our own cultural influences and convictions, and the other, that it can raise our consciousness of our agency in the creation and recreation of culture and help strengthen our capacity to exercise this with clarity of purpose and vision.
INTERVIEWER: You’ve mentioned that a lot of consultation and spiritual reflection happens behind the scenes. What did that look like day to day?
RUHA: When working on those first projects with Robin, even when it was just two or three of us working, we would dedicate time each day to reflect and consult. Often, we would do this first thing in the morning, at mealtimes, and at the end of the day.
Every experience of working with others has deepened my appreciation for how fundamental it is to develop a common understanding of the integral role that reflection and consultation play in the art-making process and to purposefully make and protect the time given to this. The more our project or creative process involves complexity or unfamiliar territory, the more time, attention, and care needs to be given to the ways we collectively reflect and consult throughout.
The making of a larger scale work involves many contributors with diverse capacities. Regardless of the level of one’s contribution, making time to build understanding together about the themes within the work, its purpose, and the spiritual qualities and standards it demands has a significant influence on the quality and impact of the final work. Consultation and reflection are also how we can collectively learn from the process, facilitate decision-making, and overcome any challenges or misunderstandings.
Painting and working with one’s hands stimulates a lot of personal reflection, and it is now the norm to always have a notebook handy to record ideas and reflections as they emerge. I enjoy exploring how one can be scientific—experimental, exploratory, analytical, methodical—in one’s approach to developing a creative practice.
ROBIN: Trust and trustworthiness are the essential elements of the whole process. Through these qualities, we can negotiate challenging elements of our collaboration and share opposing opinions constructively and openly. If someone says, “This motif isn’t working,” or “The proportions feel off,” no one interprets it as a criticism, because we’ve built a foundation of love and respect, and we are all striving for excellence. When a project is urgent or large-scale, the spiritual dimension—prayer, reflection, unity—becomes even more important. Without it, the sheer logistics can be overwhelming.
It wasn’t always plain sailing, but if we got blown off course, we’d reflect on why things weren’t working out as hoped for, identify when challenges arose, and remind ourselves that mistakes can be gently remedied and new ideas welcomed. Clarity of purpose is essential and, in that context, so is detachment.
INTERVIEWER: Robin, could you say more about your personal background as an artist and what prompted the shift to this kind of collaborative approach?
ROBIN: In the mid-1960s I went to a university art school in New Zealand and chose to specialize in painting. Then throughout the 1970s and ’80s, I became known for my paintings of New Zealand landscapes and portraits. From the 1970s onwards, my involvement in the Bahá’í community strengthened the core values and the worldview that I had received from my Bahá’í parents and reshaped my sense of how art can be aligned to the needs of society.
A turning point arrived unexpectedly in Kiribati, where in 1982 I had moved with my family. We suffered a devastating house fire that destroyed my studio. My art supplies were lost and there was no local source of replacement. If I wanted to keep creating, I had to adapt to using the available local resources. This led me to considering the use of pandanus8Pandanus refer to the palm-like leaves of pandanus trees. The time-consuming process to prepare them for weaving involves striping away the edges and middle section of the leaves before boiling, soaking, and drying them., which is the material most commonly used by local artisans.
But I had no weaving skills! I turned to women in the community known for their skill in working with pandanus. I laid out my rough sketches, and we embarked on a journey weaving my Western images using their traditional skills.
That experience opened my eyes to the beauty of a truly communal practice. I discovered a joy in working collectively and a deep appreciation of how these customary practices carry spiritual depth. When I later relocated to Aotearoa, I carried that collaborative spirit into subsequent projects, like those with Ruha and her sister Ebonie, and my friends from Fiji—Leba Toki, the late Bale Jone, Tamari Cabeikancea, and her daughter Kesaia Biuvanua.
INTERVIEWER: How does that principle of oneness help you navigate issues of power or authorship in a Western art market that generally focuses on the status of the individual artist?
ROBIN: Provenance is an important matter in the Western art market and authenticity is an issue. So, questions arise like “Who is the artist?” and “Where is the signature?” And if the work sells, “How is income distributed?” There is plenty of room for misunderstandings because, in these tapa9Tapa is a synonym for ngatu. The word “tapa” is used in the Tahiti and the Cook Islands, whereas “ngatu” is used in Tonga. or barkcloth projects, the final work is the result of many hands.
I hope that, over time, those who collect or write about art will appreciate this broader view of authorship. Instead of a single significant figure, they might see a living, collective tapestry of human creativity.
My approach is to be transparent: if a gallerist wants to represent my practice, I explain that, for a collaborative work, I share credit. We name the collaborators; we share proceeds. People in the Western art world sometimes struggle with that concept, but that’s okay. Because of the age difference between myself and Ruha, and my standing in the art world, questions are also raised about what might be perceived as a power imbalance.
RUHA: I remember when Robin first invited me to sign a work I had contributed to. In Tonga, I understood that it was more important for whom or what the ngatu was made to honor rather than who made it, and so any signing or labelling of a work was more to highlight its intended purpose rather than authorship. But Robin’s works were intended for a different context.
It’s helpful for me to draw on the example of an ocean voyage where there needs to be a captain—the one who knows the ocean, knows the destination, and knows how to get there. So, in our collaboration I was like a member of the crew. It was less about imbalance in power and more about what capacity we each had to contribute to the specific goal. I felt that Robin had the deepest understanding about what that goal was, its intended purpose, and the context of the work. Even the way in which the works were signed—I saw this as Robin’s effort to find a way of acknowledging various indispensable contributions.
The most valuable aspect of the collaboration for me was having the opportunity to go through the ngatu-making process from beginning to end for the first time and getting to know and learn from an amazing network of creatives along the way. I really felt that the things I was learning from Robin and others could enrich how I was able to contribute to my own community.
INTERVIEWER: Both of you refer to a kind of evolution in your practice. Where do you see this leading?
RUHA: I’ve loved deepening my appreciation of how indigenous arts practices like ngatu-making exist as an integral part of community life. I see these practices as sophisticated instruments for deep reflection on spiritual, scientific, and social concepts; for generating and sharing knowledge that draws from and nurtures relationships with the natural world and with others; for strengthening our ability to listen, to practice a culture of encouragement, and to uphold standards of excellence; for cultivating unity of thought and action; for responding to practical individual and collective needs; and for elevating significant community events and gatherings. I am most excited when I think of what can be learned by engaging in these kinds of arts practices alongside members of a community that I am a part of, discovering how it can evolve as a collective practice of creative community building and care.
ROBIN: I see my art practice as belonging within a movement that is involving the whole of humanity. I am just a tiny drop in an ocean, and that ocean is moving, carrying all of us through a powerful and irresistible current. The tide is shifting. I think there’s a spiritual awakening in the world that’s nudging people toward a greater appreciation of fellowship and recognition of what we are—one human family, the waves of one ocean. It’s a feeling and a vision that animates my day-to-day reality.
Afterward
In April 2024, the Universal House of Justice expressed its joy at seeing “in every country and region” “true practitioners of peace occupied with building” an “ultimate haven,” and it called for all to “extend then to everyone the hand of friendship, of common endeavor, of shared service, of collective learning, and advance as one.”10https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/the-universal-house-of-justice/messages/20240419_001/1#503426541
Listening to Robin White and Ruha Fifita talk calls to mind this beckoning invitation of the House of Justice. As they reflect on their collaborations, one senses not only their deep mutual respect but also their shared conviction that art can serve as a field of action for building unity. In an era when division and polarization seem to define many societies, the experiences of Robin and Ruha and their art practices provide a hopeful alternative.
Robin and Ruha work with women who do not necessarily call themselves artists but whose skill in weaving or barkcloth-making transcends Western aesthetic categories. Together, these groups of collaborators open their creative process to spiritual reflection—prayer, consultation, moral vision—treating every motif or color choice as an expression of a deeper conversation about humanity’s future.
In bridging so-called traditional and contemporary forms, Robin and Ruha do more than combine mediums. Their experience confirms that our diversity can be a fertile meeting place from which new forms emerge—forms that speak to our shared spiritual identity as one human race.
This approach may not be the norm in a critical art world that sometimes prizes extreme individualism above collective endeavor or views any cross-cultural blending as suspect. Yet Robin and Ruha’s experience offers an alternate vision: that we can honor the living customs of indigenous communities while inviting them to join a global, contemporary dialogue—and that this conversation, if rooted in a reverence for humanity’s oneness, might unlock something new and life-giving for us all.
Humanity is gripped by a crisis of identity, as various peoples and groups struggle to define themselves, their place in the world, and how they should act. Without a vision of shared identity and common purpose, they fall into competing ideologies and power struggles. Seemingly countless permutations of “us” and “them” define group identities ever more narrowly and in contrast to one another. Over time, this splintering into divergent interest groups has weakened the cohesion of society itself.—The Universal House of Justice1Universal House of Justice, letter to the Bahá’ís of the World, 18 January 2019. On humanity’s crisis of identity and the principle of human oneness, see also: Universal House of Justice, letter to the Followers of Bahá’u’lláh in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1 November 2022.
The “crisis of identity” described by the Universal House of Justice is one of the defining features of the present moment. Questions of identity and belonging have surged to prominence in recent years, finding expression in virtually every aspect of collective life. As the forces of our decidedly global age challenge the boundaries, both literal and figurative, that define group identities, the secure sense of belonging these identities have traditionally supplied is increasingly frustrated or lost, resulting in confusion, insecurity, conflict, and ever more forceful assertions of difference. Paradoxically, even as the need for a deeply felt sense of human oneness has grown more obvious, categories of “us” and “them” have multiplied and become more salient around the globe.
Confronted with humanity’s crisis of identity, some thinkers have proposed the reimagination of national identity. A newly enlightened and capaciously inclusive form of nationalism, they suggest, can provide a shared context of belonging within which various narrower identities and attachments can be reconciled.2For example, see: Amy Chua, Political Tribes: Group Instincts and the Fate of Nations (New York: Penguin Press, 2018); Francis Fukuyama, Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018); Mark Lilla, The Once and Future Liberal (New York: Harper, 2017); Yascha Mounk, The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and What We Can Do About It (New York: Penguin Press, 2022). But solutions rooted in national identity, or in other familiar concepts such as liberal democracy, are struggling to resolve the crisis.
From the perspective of the Bahá’í teachings, the solution to our crisis of identity lies in the genuine and deeply felt recognition of human oneness. Specifically, the Bahá’í writings suggest that only a collective identity3As social psychologists explain, identity is a (self-)categorization that holds significant emotional meaning, typically entailing thick ties of empathy, solidarity, belonging, and love. Ties of identity thus differ from other, more cerebral or emotionally thin bonds of universal human connection such as those that might result, for example, from a rational commitment to the equal moral worth of all persons. See Monroe, K. R., Hankin, J., & Van Vechten, R.B. (2000). The psychological foundations of identity politics. The Annual Review of Political Science, 3(1), 419-447. 2000. rooted in the oneness of humankind can resolve our present crisis and fundamentally relieve the various long-standing tensions that surround it. The previously cited passage from the Universal House of Justice goes on to elaborate this point:
Rival conceptions about the primacy of a particular people are peddled to the exclusion of the truth that humanity is on a common journey in which all are protagonists. Consider how radically different such a fragmented conception of human identity is from the one that follows from a recognition of the oneness of humanity. In this perspective, the diversity that characterizes the human family, far from contradicting its oneness, endows it with richness. Unity, in its Bahá’í expression, contains the essential concept of diversity, distinguishing it from uniformity. It is through love for all people, and by subordinating lesser loyalties to the best interests of humankind, that the unity of the world can be realized and the infinite expressions of human diversity find their highest fulfilment.4Universal House of Justice, letter to the Bahá’ís of the World, 18 January 2019. On humanity’s crisis of identity and the principle of human oneness, see also: Universal House of Justice, letter to the Followers of Bahá’u’lláh in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1 November 2022.
The notions of identity and human oneness reflected in this passage, and indeed throughout the Bahá’í writings, present a radical departure from the way these concepts are frequently understood in contemporary thought and discourse. Many prominent conceptions of our shared humanity, and in particular, those that emerge from the predominant intellectual frameworks of the West, are widely deemed homogenizing. They are also critiqued for being too far removed from the texture of everyday life to hold any relevance for the communities and relationships to which people immediately belong. The Bahá’í teachings offer a different vision. Far from threatening or contradicting the essential diversity of humankind, the Bahá’í writings suggest that a universal human identity is uniquely equipped to ensure the fundamental security and flourishing of our particular (i.e., narrower) identities, communities, and affiliations. This article considers why and how the Bahá’í expression of human oneness resolves both the collective crisis of identity we currently face and the long-assumed tension between the oneness and the diversity of humankind.
HUMANITY’S CRISIS OF IDENTITY: TWO UNDERLYING TENSIONS
It would be helpful to begin by more closely examining the crisis itself. Two long standing tensions, or apparent contradictions, underlie humanity’s crisis of identity and complicate its resolution.
The first tension pertains directly to the nature of traditional group identities5In this article, the terms “group identity,” “collective identity,” “social identity,” and “identity” are used interchangeably. See footnote 3 for a brief explanation of what identity entails. themselves. As the philosopher Martha Nussbaum explains in reference to the two-faced Roman god of duality, collective identities are “Janus-faced”: they are characterized by two contrasting aspects in chronic tension.6M. C. Nussbaum, “Toward a globally sensitive patriotism,” Daedalus 137, no. 3 (2008): 78-79. On the one hand, our traditional “bounded” identities—that is, identities that include some and exclude others—are deeply susceptible to instability, conflict, and destructiveness. Whether in the dividing lines of contemporary society or in the most catastrophic injustices of human history, collective identities can reveal an exceedingly ugly face. Observing the tensions that surround group identities, the philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah declares them “horsemen of the apocalypses from apartheid to genocide.”7K. A. Appiah, The lies that bind: Rethinking identity (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2018), xvi.
On the other hand, the diversity embodied in our bounded social identities is vital. At the aggregate level, various forms of diversity are essential to the strength, stability, and flourishing of social systems.8For example: A. L. Antonio, et al., “Effects of racial diversity on complex thinking in college students,” Psychological Science 15, no. 8 (2004): 507-510; F. Arbab, “Promoting a discourse on science, religion, and development,” in The lab, the temple, and the market: Reflections at the intersection of science, religion, and development, ed. S. Harper (Ottawa: International Development Research Center, 2000), 149-237. Shared identities, furthermore, bind us together in social and moral enterprises, providing a basis for community, collective action, and mutual support. At a more personal and subjective level, our particular experiences and perspectives constitute important parts of our self-concept as human beings: they legitimately yearn for recognition, inclusion, and expression.
This dual nature of collective identity is also suggested in the Bahá’í writings. Shoghi Effendi, for instance, distinguishes unbridled nationalism from a “sane and legitimate patriotism,”9Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Baha’u’llah. Available at www.bahai.org/r/895919188 and the Universal House of Justice describes “a love of one’s country that cannot be manipulated” and that “enriches one’s life.”10Universal House of Justice, letter to the Bahá’ís of Iran, 2 March 2013. Universal House of Justice, letter to the World’s Religious Leaders, April 2002. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá makes this duality more explicit. “[D]ifferences, He writes, “are of two kinds. One is the cause of annihilation and is like the antipathy existing among warring nations and conflicting tribes who seek each other’s destruction … The other kind, which is a token of diversity, is the essence of perfection …”11‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Available at www.bahai.org/r/583780535
These two sides of our traditional bounded identities leave them in a state of chronic tension and instability which has, to date, stubbornly evaded resolution. Social identities are perpetually vulnerable to destructiveness and conflict. And yet, we cannot live without them.
The tension that characterizes bounded identities is amplified by their relationship to forces and movements that are unbounded. Economic globalization in its various forms, the heightened ease of transborder communication, the growing universality of our moral intuitions, the expanding consciousness of human oneness and interdependence more broadly, not to mention the countless interdependencies that propagated a deadly virus across the globe, are all widely thought to threaten the security of our traditional identities and affiliations.12W. Brown, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (Brooklyn, NY: Zone Books, 2010); C. Kinnvall “Globalization and religious nationalism: Self, identity, and the Search for ontological security,” Political Psychology 25, no. 5 (2004): 741-767. Put differently: the legitimate yearning for rootedness and belonging is challenged by the porousness, fluidity, and expanded consciousness of an increasingly global age. The insecurity induced by these “universalizing” forces thus results in a more acutely felt yearning for the sense of rootedness traditional identities provide, as well as in the related impulse to bolster the security of these identities by sharpening the boundaries that define them. In other words, as our shared consciousness of the physical, social, moral, and economic space we inhabit as human beings is stretched to include the entire planet, humanity’s collective ambivalence toward its bounded identities both intensifies and becomes increasingly expressed in a second, broader tension between the universal and the particular—between the pull of bounded identities and attachments, on the one hand, and that of universalist forces and aspirations, on the other. This stubborn tension has led the political philosopher Seyla Benhabib to conclude, “Our fate, as late-modern individuals, is to live caught in the permanent tug of war between the vision of the universal and the attachments to the particular.”13S. Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 16.
At the heart of humanity’s crisis of identity, therefore, lies a key question: Can humanity’s fundamental oneness be reconciled with its essential diversity? And can such a reconciliation be achieved at the deepest levels of human identity and meaning? The answer proclaimed in the Bahá’í writings, as we have seen, is unequivocally affirmative: it is through the deeply felt recognition of human oneness that the diversity of humankind thrives and finds its highest fulfillment. Why might an identity rooted in the oneness of humankind be uniquely equipped to protect and promote its diversity?
UNIQUE FEATURES OF AN IDENTITY ROOTED IN THE ONENESS OF HUMANKIND
To begin answering this question, I suggest that a collective identity genuinely rooted in the oneness of humankind is qualitatively different than every other social identity because of at least two distinguishing features. These unique features, in turn, enable a universal human identity to stabilize and empower14Of course, not all identities—and certainly not every aspect of every identity—should be preserved or empowered. Identities (or aspects of them) that cannot be reconciled with the principle of human oneness (for instance, those rooted in racial superiority or in some other form of antagonism toward others) must ultimately be abandoned. On this important point, see also footnotes 32 and 48 below. our particular identities in ways that other overarching affiliations—nationality, for example—cannot.
The first feature that distinguishes an identity rooted in the oneness of humankind is rather obviously that it is non-exclusionary. Insofar as human beings and their communities are concerned, an identity genuinely rooted in our common humanity has no bounds of exclusion or parameters of otherness; it literally has no “other.”15What I wish to do in this article is to move away from the defensive posture that cosmopolitan theorists and other proponents of universalism often take to refute objections, and instead, lean into the notion of non-exclusion to identify its implications. Much has been written to question the possibility and meaningfulness of such a collective identity and, at a theoretical level at least, this skepticism has been ably addressed elsewhere. See, for example, A. Abizadeh, “Does collective identity presuppose and other? On the alleged incoherence of global solidarity,” American Political Science Review 99, no. 1 ,(2000): 45-60. This stands in contrast to all traditional social identities which, by definition, have outsiders, and are thus inescapably bounded and exclusionary.
I hasten to note that a non-exclusionary human identity need not cast humanity in opposition to non-human life on the planet, nor must it entail a sharp separation of human beings from their physical environment, precluding, for instance, the notion that we share a type of oneness with our ecosystem(s).16For an illuminating discussion of this topic, see P. Hanley, Eleven, (Victoria, Canada: Friesen Press, 2014), especially Chapter 12. Indeed, a genuinely non-exclusionary human identity should lead to a deeper appreciation of our broader interdependence, rather than to a destructive anthropocentricism, which is often an expression of the very same attitudes and predispositions that animate the exclusion, oppression, and destruction of human life on the planet.17Hanley, Eleven, 280. See also: Akeel Bilgrami, Secularism, Identity, and Enchantment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014), Chapter 5.
The second distinguishing feature of a genuinely universal human identity pertains to the nature of the commonality on which it is based. Consider that, as scientific studies widely confirm, virtually all other group identities are ultimately socially constructed.18W.C. Byrd, et al, “Biological determinism and racial essentialism: The ideological double helix of racial inequality,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 661, no. 1 (2015): 8-22. This is not to say, of course, that these identities are not real, whether in their objective, material consequences, or in humanity’s subjective experience and valuation of them. It is to observe, rather, that the commonalities in which they are grounded are contingent (i.e., dependent) on a range of social constructs and impermanent socio-historical phenomena, for example, on fluid beliefs about social and biological reality, on the frequently contested details of history, on socially constructed parameters of membership, and tragically, on shared experiences of oppression and injustice.19Given its biological distinctions, one might object that an identity based on gender is an exception to this observation. But a very large proportion of what constitutes gender—our ideas about what different genders are, and how members of each should behave and feel, for example—is socially constructed. As the Universal House of Justice writes in a letter to the Bahá’ís of Iran dated 2 March 2013: “The rational soul has no gender or race, ethnicity or class…” For a related discussion, see also: Appiah, The lies that bind, Chapter 1. In this sense, then, the contingency of other collective identities is inescapable.
Strikingly, more than a hundred years ago, when the socially constructed nature of humanity’s dividing lines was far from obvious, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá made these observations explicit. As he explained, “These boundaries and distinctions are human and artificial, not natural and original.”20‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Foundations of World Unity, 23. And elsewhere: “Religions, races, and nations are all divisions of man’s making only …”21‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, 131. Indeed, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá elaborated on the inherent contingency and impermanence of the various identities and affiliations that traditionally bind human beings together:
In the contingent world there are many collective centers which are conducive to association and unity between the children of men. For example, patriotism is a collective center; nationalism is a collective center; identity of interests is a collective center; political alliance is a collective center; the union of ideals is a collective center, and the prosperity of the world of humanity is dependent upon the organization and promotion of the collective centers. Nevertheless, all the above institutions are, in reality, the matter and not the substance, accidental and not eternal—temporary and not everlasting. With the appearance of great revolutions and upheavals, all these collective centers are swept away.22‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Tablets of the Divine Place, 14: Tablet to the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada.
Drawing on the Bahá’í writings, this article posits that, in contrast to the necessarily contingent basis of all other identities, the basis of a universal human identity need not be socially constructed or contingent. Such an identity, rather, can be rooted in the non-contingent and ultimately investigable reality of human oneness.
This second unique and distinguishing feature of an identity authentically rooted in the oneness of humankind I will call its non-contingency. Specifically, by positing that the basis of a genuinely universal human identity is non-contingent, I take for granted first, that there is something distinctive and non-contingent that only and all human beings have in common;23As this article later discusses, the Baha’i writings offer a spiritual understanding of this human commonality, recognizing it as the human soul. and, second, that the expressions of this human commonality or “core”—expressions in the form, for example, of common yearnings, vulnerabilities, and experiences—are such that human beings, whatever their particular context, can come to recognize that a distinctive and non-contingent human commonality exists.24For the argument that follows to hold, a third premise is also needed, namely, that human beings are able to readily recognize the humanness of another without a widely articulated consensus on the content of our humanity. In other words, there is, or there can be, a reasonably widespread intuitive consensus about who falls within the community of human beings. ,25It is worth highlighting an important distinction between the non-contingent basis of a human collective identity (posited above) and the empirically contingent process whereby any social identity, including a universal one, is formed. To posit that a collective human identity can be rooted in a set of features that are not contingent on socio-historical constructs is not to say that the process through which such an identity emerges and becomes expressed—the process whereby we come to recognize and articulate our oneness and interdependence as human beings, for example, or the process that finally exposes our need for an identity based on this recognition—is not socially, materially, and historically contingent. Indeed, it is precisely the empirical conditions of our time, and the surge of historically contingent forces that shape them, which make the recognition of such a collective identity possible.
Not every possible basis of unbounded human affiliation will meet the criteria of genuine (or authentic) non-contingency. The article returns to this point in various ways below, especially when it considers what constitutes a genuinely non-contingent basis for collective identity from the Bahá’í perspective.
The sections that immediately follow, however, aim to show that when taken together, the two distinguishing features of a universal social identity posited above—that is, its non-exclusionary and potentially non-contingent basis—carry deep and far-reaching implications.
A SOURCE OF FUNDAMENTAL SECURITY
What implications follow from the non-exclusionary and non-contingent basis of a collective identity authentically rooted in the oneness of humankind? Consider first that these two features of a universal human identity can yield parameters of inclusion that are immovably all-inclusive—in other words, that are thoroughly stable and safe. In contrast, bounded and contingently grounded identities have parameters of membership that are inherently unstable. Because the boundaries of such identities are exclusionary (by definition, there are outsiders), and because they are contingent and fluid (they are socially constructed and therefore subject to reconstruction), their parameters of belonging are intrinsically susceptible to contestation, redefinition, exclusion, and othering. This threat of exclusion, of course, can come from without (i.e., othering of and by non-members). But significantly, it also comes from within. When parameters of inclusion are intrinsically bounded and contingent, the question of “who belongs?” can never be fully closed: today’s insiders can be cast as outsiders tomorrow. The instability of intergroup relations is thus augmented by the potential precariousness of in-group membership. The current discourse and political rhetoric surrounding many national identities helps illustrate this point. As the narrative of a national identity is recontested and retold, so too are its parameters of otherness redrawn: “Who counts as ‘real’ national and who doesn’t?” has become a strikingly unstable question in recent years, even in long-consolidated nations and democracies.
Thus, when parameters of inclusion are bounded and the basis of belonging contingent, the possibility of external threat is never fully eliminated and one’s claim to internal membership is never fully stable. Only a collective identity that is both genuinely non-exclusionary and non-contingently grounded—that is, an identity rooted in the genuine recognition of human oneness—can deliver a context of fundamental security: one belongs because one is human, full stop.26Identity and security are deeply intertwined concepts across a vast spectrum of disciplines and discourses, including political philosophy and contemporary public discourse. In philosophy, for instance, Charles Taylor’s influential discussion of identity and recognition emphasizes the guarantee of a secure feeling of permanence and continuity, while Avishai Margalit and Joseph Raz argue that the value to one’s identity of membership in a national group is the provision of a sense of security. In another prominent example, Nussbaum worries that the removal of local boundaries might leave “a life bereft of a certain sort of warmth and security.” The link between identity and security also finds concrete expression in many examples of contemporary politics and social unrest. The political rhetoric around “walls” and “wall building” in the United States, which was overwhelmingly articulated in relation to anxieties over collective identity and belonging, is but one recent example. The close connection between social identity and a feeling of security also has deep roots in the study of psychology. One of the key functions of a social identity, according to psychologists, is to satisfy the need for security. See: C. Taylor, “The politics of recognition,” in Multiculturalism: Examining the politics of recognition, ed. A. Gutmann, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 25-74; A. Margalit, et al, “National self-determination,” The Journal of Philosophy 87, no. 9 (1990): 439-461; M. C. Nussbaum, “Patriotism and cosmopolitanism,” Boston Review, October/November (1994); E. H. Erikson, Childhood and society, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1950); A. Giddens, Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern Age, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991).
The distinctive characteristics of a universal human identity, therefore, reveal the possibility of a collective identity that is not only itself uniquely invulnerable to instability and destructiveness, but that is also uniquely equipped to relieve the insecurity and potential destructiveness of all other shared identities and affiliations. In other words, only a collective identity rooted in the oneness of humankind has the potential to deliver a stabilizing context of fundamental security to our particular—and otherwise unstable—group identities.
Empirical research in psychology suggests and substantiates this proposition in notable ways. Two threads of this research are briefly highlighted here. The first shows that a feeling of security (and conversely, the feeling or perception of threat) plays a critical role in constituting the context and nature of intergroup relations. Specifically, a substantial body of research finds that “felt security” relieves intergroup hostility, yielding a posture of empathy, care, and openness to out-groups,27O. Gillath, et al, “Attachment, caregiving, and volunteering: Placing volunteerism in an attachment theoretical framework,” Personal Relationships 12, no. 4 (2005): 425-446; M. Mikulincer, et al, “Attachment theory and reactions to others’ needs: Evidence that activation of the sense of attachment security promotes empathic responses,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, no. 1 (2001): 1205-24; M. Mikulincer, et al, “Attachment theory and concern for others’ welfare: evidence that activation of the sense of secure base promotes endorsement of self-transcendence values,” Basic and Applied Social Psychology 25, no. 4 (2003): 299-312; M. Mikulincer, et al, “Attachment, caregiving, and altruism: Boosting attachment security increases compassion and helping,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89, no. 5 (2005): 817-839. while “felt threat” increases intergroup hostility and conflict.28For example: M. B. Brewer, “The importance of being we: Human nature and intergroup relations,” American Psychologist 62, no. 8 (2007): 728-738; M. B. Brewer, et al, “An evolutionary perspective on social identity: Revisiting groups,” in Evolution and social psychology, eds. M. Schaller, et al, (Madison, CT: Psychology Press, 2006), 143-161; L. Huddy, “From group identity to political cohesion and commitment,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, eds. L. Huddy, et al, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 737-773; D. R. Kinder, “Prejudice and politics,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, eds. L. Huddy, et al, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 812-851. See also: L. S. Richman, et al, “Reactions to discrimination, stigmatization, ostracism, and other forms of interpersonal rejection: A multimotive model,” Psychological Review 116, no. 2 (2009): 365-383; J. M. Twenge, et al, “Social exclusion decreases prosocial behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92, no. 1 (2007): 56-66; W.A.Warburton, et al, “When ostracism leads to aggression: The moderating effects of control deprivation,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 42, no. 2 (2006): 213-220. Thus, a sense of security is conducive to more caring and empathic relations with those who hold different bounded identities.
A second thread of evidence powerfully complements the first by suggesting that identifying with the humanity of others is associated with markedly higher levels of felt security. For example, in her analysis of in-depth interviews with Nazi supporters, bystanders, and rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, the political psychologist Kristen Monroe found that those who conceived of themselves first and foremost as part of all humankind29K. R. Monroe, Heart of altruism: Perception of a common humanity, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). K. R. Monroe, The hand of compassion: portraits of moral choice during the holocaust, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). experienced distinctively higher levels of felt security.30K. R. Monroe, Ethics in an age of terror and genocide: Identity and moral choice, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). In this study, the rescuers manifested heightened levels of ontological security, while Nazi supporters fell on the other end of the felt security spectrum. It is notable that those who identified with the whole of humankind did so in a deep and profoundly felt way. They shared, in other words, a decidedly thick universal identity. Monroe’s extensive study thus also provides evidence of the empirical possibility of an affectively rich and deeply internalized universal identity. Studies employing different methods offer consistent results. Brain imaging in neuropsychology, for example, reveals that the amygdala—a part of the brain that plays a central role in the experience of fear and aggression—becomes highly active when the average subject is shown faces from different races. But when subjects are first primed to think of people as individual human beings rather than as members of groups, the amygdala does not react.31For example: M.E. Wheeler, S. T. Fiske, et al, “Controlling racial prejudice: social-cognitive goals affect amygdala and stereotype activation,” Psychol Sci. 16, no. 1 (2005): 56-63.
These two threads of empirical research thus suggest that identifying with the oneness of humankind is associated with a greater sense of security, and that a sense of security relieves intergroup hostility and yields a posture of empathy, care, altruism, and openness toward out-groups.
Taken together, these empirical findings begin to substantiate the implications drawn logically from the inclusiveness and non-contingency of a universal source of belonging. An identity based on the essential oneness of humankind detaches bounded identities from the threat of rejection, humiliation, and domination that has forever shadowed them, and from notions of superiority and inferiority that have stubbornly fueled these threats. In other words, by transforming the overarching frame in which difference is situated and perceived—by resituating our particular identities within parameters of inclusion that are thoroughly safe, immovable, and all-inclusive—a universal identity has the potential to fundamentally relieve the seemingly inherent instabilities of our particular attachments, and to resolve the chronic tension or duality that we observed at the outset. An all-encompassing identity can thus deliver the context of genuine and enduring security that has long eluded our bounded social identities.32To be clear, nothing in this argument should be taken to suggest that bounded cultures and identities must remain static or unchanging. To the contrary, a context of deep, all-pervasive security allows our particular cultures and identities to freely change and evolve without causing the feelings of insecurity and threat that often accompany such change. See also footnotes 14 and 48.
BEYOND SECURITY: LIBERATING THE PARTICULAR
The preceding section developed the case that an identity authentically rooted in the oneness of humankind provides a context of fundamental security, stabilizing the tensions that have long shadowed our bounded identities. The implications of a genuinely universal collective identity, however, go beyond just relieving particular identities of their destructive and destabilizing potential. What a context of deep, all-pervasive security delivers is not merely a stable equilibrium of peaceful coexistence, but rather, optimal conditions for the vibrancy and flourishing of particular identities, and of human diversity more broadly.
The idea here might be put this way: when the cost and encumbrance of insecurity and its associated protective measures are removed, on the one hand, and when an open and empathic posture toward difference becomes pervasive, on the other, then uninhibited, constructive, and creative expressions of the particular from all sides become much more probable and robust. In a context of fundamental security, goals of survival and collective self-protection can give way to more generative and constructive goals. In other words, through the felt security and certainty of belonging that an identity rooted in human oneness provides, other identities find not only protection—from their own instability and from the threat of other groups—but also liberation or release from the constraining weight that a context of latent threat has imposed on the expression of their potential. Thus, the deeply internalized consciousness of the oneness of humanity frees our bounded identities both from the threats of instability, hostility, and oppression that have stubbornly shadowed them, and from the countless safeguards and constraints that have been devised to keep these instabilities in check. Far from stifling the diversity of humankind, a reimagined universal human identity can furnish a powerful lubricant for the free expression of diversity on newly constituted terms.
Notably, the relationship between freedom and the recognition of human oneness is emphasized and elaborated in various ways throughout the Bahá’í writings. In one passage, for example, Bahá’u’lláh writes, “If the learned and worldly-wise men of this age were to allow mankind to inhale the fragrance of fellowship and love, every understanding heart would apprehend the meaning of true liberty.…”33Bahá’u’lláh, Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh, 162. In another tablet, Bahá’u’lláh explains more explicitly that “true liberty” will be achieved when identification with and love for the whole of humankind is realized in people’s consciousness.34Bahá’u’lláh, Amr va Khalq Volume 3, 472. Translations from the Persian are by the author and provisional. See also: Nader Saiedi, Logos and Civilization: Spirit, History, and Order in the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh (Lanham, MD: University Press of Maryland, 2000), 327-328. It is noteworthy that, in that passage, Bahá’u’lláh also characterizes the achievement of such an identity as “the ornament of utmost tranquility,” further associating universal human identity with a sense of fundamental security and freedom.
What comes into focus, then, is a radical and somewhat counterintuitive vision of human oneness that directly addresses the tension between the universal and the particular. The Baha’i writings suggest that it is by liberating the particular through the universal—by releasing, in other words, the particular from the insecurities, instabilities, and oppressive relationships that have constrained it—that a fundamental and enduring resolution emerges.35For a discussion of how this resolution compares to those that have been devised by some contemporary political theorists, see Shahrzad Sabet, “Social Identity and a Reimagined Cosmopolitanism” (paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, 17 April 2021). Paradoxically, it is by leaning fully into a genuine and emotionally rich universalism that the particular thrives, flourishes, and fulfills its potential. Thus, and as the opening passage from the Universal House of Justice indicates, it is through the deeply felt recognition of our fundamental oneness that the infinite expressions of human diversity thrive and find their highest fulfillment.36Pursuing the logic of this argument further also illuminates the reciprocal and mutually dependent relationship between unity and diversity, and the assertion of the Universal House of Justice that “Unity, in its Bahá’í expression, contains the essential concept of diversity, distinguish ing it from uniformity.” Put briefly, a context of oneness not only facilitates the expression of the particular and the fulfilment of its distinctive potential, but the liberated expression of the particular, in turn, ensures that the emergent form of oneness is not uniformity, but rather, unity—that is, the close integration of diverse components which have transcended the narrow purpose of ensuring their own existence and found their highest fulfillment in relation to the whole.
CRITIQUES OF UNIVERSALISM AND THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF THE BAHÁ’Í VIEW
The notions of identity and human oneness reflected in preceding sections present a significant departure from the way these concepts are frequently understood in contemporary thought and discourse, particularly in the contemporary discourses of the West. One of the most powerful and pervasive critiques of universalism—and of a collective identity rooted in the oneness of humankind, in particular—is that it poses a threat to diversity. Skeptics worry that, along a variety of dimensions (e.g., identity, language, culture, geography, institutions, etc.), the ideal of human oneness carries an inherent risk of uniformity. This homogeneity, they further worry, tends to project dominant cultures and identities, and is often propagated through (neo-)imperialistic processes.37O. Dahbour, Self-Determination without nationalism: A theory of postnational sovereignty, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012); A. Kolers, Land, conflict, and justice: A political theory of territory, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Farah Godrej, Cosmopolitan Political Thought: Method, Practice, Discipline, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). The Bahá’í writings, as we have seen, envision a radically different possibility. The concept of oneness that emerges from these writings is not uniformity, but rather, a notion of unity that “contains the essential concept of diversity.” This conception of oneness is also strikingly embodied in the practice of the Bahá’í community. Across the globe, the Bahá’í principle of the oneness of humankind is actively expressed in worldwide community-building efforts that are explicitly “outward looking”38Universal House of Justice, letter to the Conference of the Continental Boards of Counsellors, 30 December 2021.: they are, by definition, open to the full diversity of human beings, including those with other or no religious beliefs.
Another prominent critique of universalism reflects the notion that ideas rooted in our common humanity are overly abstract and disconnected from the concrete texture of everyday experience. While universalist visions might be relevant to questions of directly global or transnational concern (e.g., global governance, “global” poverty, etc.), their relevance to the relationships, neighborhoods, and communities to which people immediately belong is unclear or remote. This is especially true, the argument goes, where collective identity is concerned. In contrast to the intimacy and warmth offered by our traditional group identities, a universal human identity entails a rational commitment to the cold and distant abstraction of human oneness. From this perspective, an identity rooted in the oneness of humankind is too far removed from the texture of everyday life and experience to deliver the color, warmth, meaning, and locality that our other identities provide. A variation on this critique is the now-popularized charge of elitism: if a global, universal, or “cosmopolitan” identity works for anyone, we are told (and can vividly imagine), it works for a small, out-of-touch tribe of frequent-flying elites.39C. Calhoun, “‘Belonging’ in the cosmopolitan imaginary,” Ethnicities 3, no. 4 (2003): 531-568; M. Lerner, “Empires of reason,” Boston Review 19, no. 5 (1994); Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism.”
The Bahá’í vision of oneness and identity also diverges markedly from this view. As the preceding sections have tried to show an identity genuinely rooted in the oneness of humankind transforms the overarching context in which all identities are expressed, reorienting identities and relationships at all levels of society. From the Bahá’í perspective, then, the domain of universalism does not lie exclusively beyond borders, nor is it some distant transnational space inaccessible to the masses. Its domain, rather, is everywhere: it is concrete, immediate, and ubiquitous, encompassing all the textured communities and identities human beings value, whether they hold international passports or not. In this view, the oneness of humankind finds expression as much in the particular, and as much within the bounds of local and national communities, as it does beyond them. Again, this conception of oneness is not only reflected in the writings of the Faith, but also, strikingly, in the practice and experience of the worldwide Bahá’í community across countless cultural settings. In the Bahá’í experience, a universal identity is both directly nourished by and expressed in a range of grassroots community-building efforts that are decidedly local in nature.40For an exploration of Bahá’í community-building efforts, please see the article “Community and Collective Action,” available in the Library.
A directly related and overlapping feature of the Bahá’í conception of human oneness—and of an identity rooted in the oneness of humanity, in particular—is the radical, thoroughgoing, and unprecedented nature of the transformation it entails. Unlike some notable conceptions of universalism, the Bahá’í principle of the oneness of humankind does not simply call for the “universalization” of existing identities, norms, and institutions.41The notable conceptions of universalism referred to here are primarily those that emerge from the school of thought known as “cosmopolitanism” in contemporary Western political theory. For a thorough comparison of contemporary cosmopolitan theory to a view derived from the Bahá’í writings , see Shahrzad Sabet, “Social Identity and a Reimagined Cosmopolitanism” (paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Midwest Political Science Association, 17 April 2021). For examples of contemporary Western cosmopolitan thought, see: C. R. Beitz, Political theory and international relations, second edition, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); T. W. Pogge, Realizing Rawls, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989); D. Archibugi, The global commonwealth of citizens: Toward cosmopolitan democracy, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); D. Held, Democracy and the global order: From the modern state to cosmopolitan governance, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995). It does not, for instance, entail the extension of existing national systems of governance and democracy to the entire globe; nor does it simply call for the expansion of existing schemes of domestic redistribution, or the replication of national collective identities in the global plane. Rather, the Bahá’í conception of the oneness of humanity represents a qualitatively distinct and transformative shift that permeates every level of society, fundamentally reorienting all identities and relationships, and transforming all structures of society. As the Universal House of Justice writes, “the principle of the oneness of humankind, as proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh, asks not merely for cooperation among people and nations. It calls for a complete reconceptualization of the relationships that sustain society.”42Universal House of Justice, letter to the Bahá’ís of Iran, 2 March 2013. Similarly, this principle “has widespread implications which affect and remold all dimensions of human activity.”43Universal House of Justice, letter to an individual, 24 January 1994.
In other words, far from merely reflecting a linear and incremental expansion of scope from the national to global sphere, the deeply felt recognition of humanity’s oneness represents a fundamentally different and qualitatively unprecedented step in the evolution of humankind. In reference to the revolutionary changes that led to the unification of nations, for example, Shoghi Effendi writes, “Great and far-reaching as have been those changes in the past, they cannot appear, when viewed in their proper perspective, except as subsidiary adjustments preluding that transformation of unparalleled majesty … which humanity is in this age bound to undergo.”44Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, 45. Elsewhere, he explains that the principle of the oneness of humankind implies “a change such that the world has not yet experienced,” “a new gospel, fundamentally different from … what the world has already conceived.”45Shoghi Effendi, World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, 42-43.
THE RISK OF FALSE UNIVERSALISMS
Of course, any proponent of the oneness of humankind must heed a critical warning: humanity shares a long and continuing history of oppressive ideas about the “human.”46For example, see: Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World (New York: New York University Press, 2020); Walter D. Mignolo, “Who Speaks for the ‘Human’ in Human Rights?” Hispanic Issues On Line, Fall (2009): 7-24; Rinaldo Walcott, “Problem of The Human, or the Void of Relationality,” The Long Emancipation: Moving toward Black Freedom, (New York: Duke University Press, 2021), 55-58. Indeed, theorists of various kinds legitimately worry that casting our humanity in essentialist terms (i.e., taking for granted that our humanness is constituted by certain universal features, as the premise of non-contingency suggests) risks elevating a particular conception of the human over others, potentially marginalizing non-dominant experiences and opening the door to false, oppressive, and exclusionary ideas.
Adequately addressing these important concerns lies beyond the limited frame of this article. Here, I acknowledge the significance of these concerns and briefly highlight two points that might be developed in relation to them. First, recognizing that a non-contingent basis for a universal human identity exists—a recognition, it should be noted, that countless human beings readily and intuitively evince—does not require an immediate commitment to any particular, fixed, or rigid conception of our shared humanity. Of course, on a biological level, the truth that human beings constitute a single species is a basic fact that few people today deny, and which can serve as a starting point for the recognition of our shared humanity. But to arrive at a fuller and deeper common understanding of human oneness—one that can sustain a richly-conceived collective identity—a process of genuinely open, inclusive, and dynamic inquiry is required. By explicitly positing that the content or definition of a universal human identity must (minimally) include the recognition of its basis as non-exclusionary and non-contingent, we guard against false accounts of the human that violate these parameters—accounts, in other words, that exclude some human beings, or that render their humanity contingent and therefore questionable.47The validity of this point depends on the third premise described in footnote 23, namely, that human beings are able to readily recognize the humanness of another without a widely articulated consensus on the content of our humanity. Or put differently, there is, or could be, a reasonably widespread intuitive consensus about who falls within the community of human beings. This particular formulation of a collective human identity thus creates a safe and stable set of parameters within which genuine dialogue and inquiry into the content and expression of the human can take place.48It also creates a set of parameters within which particular identities and their various aspects can be examined. Not all identities—and certainly not every aspect of every identity—should be protected and empowered. The criteria of non-exclusion and non-contingency helps identify identities (or aspects of them) that cannot be reconciled with the principle of human oneness, and that must therefore be abandoned or recast.
A related point is suggested in the Bahá’í writings. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá proclaims, “[T]ruth or reality must be investigated; for reality is one, and by investigating it, all will find love and unity.”49Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, 123. In another talk, He explains:
The first teaching [of Bahá’u’lláh] is that man should investigate reality, for reality is contrary to dogmatic interpretations and imitations of ancestral forms of belief to which all nations and peoples adhere so tenaciously … Reality is one; and when found, it will unify all mankind … Reality is the oneness or solidarity of mankind … The second teaching of Bahá’u’lláh is the principle of the oneness of the world of humanity.50Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, 372.
Clearly, these passages assert the truth of the principle of the oneness of humankind. But by closely pairing that principle with the precept that human beings should actively investigate reality, the truth of human oneness is also rendered a testable hypothesis. Indeed, both the reality of human oneness, and ideas about the various forms and expressions it might take, are investigable propositions. The posture of free and independent investigation enjoined by the Bahá’í writings—that is, the principle that truth must be investigated free from the force of prevailing traditions, habits, and prejudices—both demands a critical interrogation of the (often oppressive) claims, structures, and relationships that bear the false imprint of universalism, and directly negates any assumption that universalism requires the imposition of a particular viewpoint or way of thought. In the Bahá’í view, a genuine recognition of the oneness of humankind can not only survive the free, open, and critical investigation of reality, but in fact, requires it. With the potential pitfalls of essentialism firmly in mind, but recognizing the transformative power that a genuine universalism could hold, the reality of human oneness might be regarded as a hypothesis that deserves the open, rigorous, and investigative posture that the Bahá’í teachings invite.51Relatedly, yet another critique of universalism claims that it threatens the diversity of thought that emerges from free and independent thinking. This critique might go as follows: the creation of national identities required, at best, a moderate manipulation of thought (through the invention and promotion of national mythologies, for example), and at worst, extreme suppressions of free and critical thinking (as in the case of totalitarian forms of nationalism). How much more of this manipulation and suppression would be needed, this critique asks, to bind the whole of humanity, with all its differences, in a collective identity? When we begin, however, from the premise that, unlike nationality, a universal identity need not be socially constructed, a different light is shed on the objection that the consciousness of human oneness depends on the curtailment of free and independent investigation. If one accepts, even as a hypothesis, that human oneness has a non-contingent basis, it follows that a genuinely free and critical investigation of reality—a commitment to truth and truth-seeking—could strengthen the possibility of a deeply internalized universal human identity, not undermine it. See also Nader Saiedi, “The Birth of the Human Being: Beyond Religious Traditionalism and Materialist Modernity,” The Journal of Bahá’í Studies 21, no. 1-4 (2011), 1-28.
A SPIRITUAL CONCEPTION OF HUMAN ONENESS AND THE ONGOING LEARNING OF THE BAHÁ’Í COMMUNITY
Drawing insights from the Bahá’í writings, and engaging prominent strands of contemporary thought and discourse, this article has developed the case that the solution to our collective crisis of identity lies in the genuine and deeply felt recognition of the oneness of humankind. But as the preceding section suggests, important questions remain: What might constitute the content—that is, the non-contingent basis—of a universal human collective identity? Can such an identity take shape and find expression across the vast spectrum of human diversity? And if so, how?
In this connection, the experience of the Bahá’í community and its grassroots community-building efforts present a potentially fruitful case for study. Bahá’í communities, the Universal House of Justice explains, define themselves “above all … by their commitment to the oneness of humanity.”52Universal House of Justice, letter to all who have come to honour the Herald of a new DawnOctober 2019. Significantly, for the Bahá’í community, this recognition of human oneness is a fundamental and defining feature of identity. It is a meaningful and deeply internalized commitment, entailing thick, emotionally rich bonds of genuine solidarity and love.53For a further discussion of why thick bonds of human identity might be highly hospitable to diversity, see Shahrzad Sabet, “Toward a New Universalism,” The Hedgehog Review Online, December 2020. Bahá’ís consciously strive to manifest a love that extends “without restriction to every human being”54Universal House of Justice, letter to the Bahá’ís of the United States, 22 July 2020. and to achieve “a sense of identity as members of a single human race, an identity that shapes the purpose of their lives …”55One Common Faith (Wilmette: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 2005), 44.
As alluded to earlier, the radical vision of human oneness that motivates this identity also shapes the practice and experience of the Bahá’í community in important and potentially illuminating ways. First, the Bahá’í expression of unity contains the essential concept of diversity. Second and relatedly, the Bahá’í concept of oneness finds powerful expression in the local and the particular: it assumes a deep confluence between a universal human identity, on the one hand, and a deeply felt sense of local community and belonging, on the other. As such, the Bahá’í principle of the oneness of humankind is actively and systematically expressed in local community-building processes open to the full spectrum of human diversity56In a letter dated 1 November 2022, the Universal House of Justice urges Bahá’ís to demonstrate “that vital Bahá’í attitude of being truly outward looking, sincerely open to all, and resolutely inclusive.” and extending to every corner of the planet. Around the globe, Bahá’ís—and all who wish to join them—are consciously learning how an identity rooted in the oneness of humankind can be cultivated and expressed across a range of breathtakingly diverse communities, identities, and experiences. In light of the two core concerns raised by critics of universalism—namely, that the ideal of human oneness stifles diversity and is detached from the texture and locality of everyday life—the evolving experience of the Bahá’í community presents fertile ground for learning. Additionally, the experience of the Bahá’í community addresses the further critique that universalist projects, in particular those pertaining to social identity, are utopian and unrealizable. The breadth, depth, and wide-reaching resonance of Bahá’í endeavors should at least prompt a reconsideration of this frequently assumed limit of collective human possibility.
Another essential characteristic of the Bahá’í principle of human oneness relates more directly to the basis of a universal human identity and the question of its non-contingency. From the Bahá’í perspective, what renders a universal collective identity truly stabilizing and non-contingent—in other words, what makes it uniquely invulnerable to the tensions, instabilities, and contradictions that characterize other sources of identity—is a spiritual understanding of the human oneness on which it is based. According to the Bahá’í writings, the fundamentally spiritual reality of human beings—the human soul—is not characterized by the contingent traits that define other, bounded social identities. As the Universal House of Justice explains, “An individual’s true self is to be found in the powers of the soul, which has the capacity to know God and to reflect His attributes. The soul has no gender, no ethnicity, no race. God sees no differences among human beings except in relation to the conscious effort of each individual to purify his or her soul and to express its full powers … This truth is directly related to another—that humanity is one family.”57Universal House of Justice, letter to the Followers of Bahá’u’lláh in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 1 November 2022. Also illuminating in this connection is the equation of the spiritual and with true freedom in the Bahá’í writings. Even as the spiritual is equated with the universal, the realization of true liberty is equated both with the spiritual (i.e., freedom from the material world of nature) and with genuine universalism, further reinforcing this article’s earlier discussion of liberty. On this and related points, see Saiedi, “The Birth of the Human Being.”
Recall the core argument that, in contrast to all other forms of love and association, the non-exclusionary and non-contingent basis of an identity rooted in human oneness yields a collective identity that is uniquely stable and stabilizing. In more than one passage, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá affirms this idea directly, and explicitly ties the non-contingency of universal love and identity to a spiritual source. For example:
… fraternity, love and kindness based upon family, nativity, race or an attitude of altruism are neither sufficient nor permanent since all of them are limited, restricted and liable to change and disruption. For in the family there is discord and alienation; among sons of the same fatherland strife and internecine warfare are witnessed; between those of a given race, hostility and hatred are frequent; and even among the altruists varying aspects of opinion and lack of unselfish devotion give little promise of permanent and indestructible unity among mankind … the foundation of real brotherhood, the cause of loving co-operation and reciprocity and the source of real kindness and unselfish devotion is none other than the breaths of the Holy Spirit. Without this influence and animus it is impossible. We may be able to realize some degrees of fraternity through other motives but these are limited associations and subject to change. When human brotherhood is founded upon the Holy Spirit, it is eternal, changeless, unlimited.58Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, 385-386.
Elsewhere, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá characterizes love for the whole of humanity as the one expression of love that is uniquely “perfect” (i.e., free from limits and instabilities) and again, ties this characteristic to the spiritual and the divine. He explains:
Love is limitless, boundless, infinite! Material things are limited, circumscribed, finite. You cannot adequately express infinite love by limited means.
The perfect love needs an unselfish instrument, absolutely freed from fetters of every kind. The love of family is limited; the tie of blood relationship is not the strongest bond. Frequently members of the same family disagree, and even hate each other.
Patriotic love is finite; the love of one’s country causing hatred of all others, is not perfect love!
Compatriots also are not free from quarrels amongst themselves.
The love of race is limited; there is some union here, but that is insufficient. Love must be free from boundaries!
To love our own race may mean hatred of all others, and even people of the same race often dislike each other.
Political love also is much bound up with hatred of one party for another; this love is very limited and uncertain.
The love of community of interest in service is likewise fluctuating; frequently competitions arise, which lead to jealousy, and at length hatred replaces love…
All these ties of love are imperfect. It is clear that limited material ties are insufficient to adequately express the universal love. The great unselfish love for humanity is bounded by none of these imperfect, semi-selfish bonds; this is the one perfect love, possible to all mankind, and can only be achieved by the power of the Divine Spirit. No worldly power can accomplish the universal love.59Abdu’l-Bahá, Paris Talks, 36-37.
Spiritual forces and commitments are not only conducive to selfless association and universal love; for many human beings, they are also prime sources of meaning, purpose, and purposeful action. Casting a spiritual light on identity thus reveals a potent connection between the crisis of identity with which this article is concerned, and another pressing crisis confronting humanity, namely, our collective crisis of agency and meaning. Indeed, even as we collectively struggle to find a secure sense of identity and belonging, the yearning for a sense of meaningful agency—that is, the yearning to meaningfully shape our lives, to give purposeful expression to our potential, and to contribute constructively to the communities we inhabit—is also widely frustrated. The experience of the Bahá’í community and the conception of identity on which it is based suggest that the solution to these two crises ultimately converge. A spiritual conception of identity not only attaches an absolute sense of belonging to the condition of being human; it also provides a powerful source of purpose and agency, and a basis for meaningful, transformative action. In the Bahá’í experience, these two expressions of identity—being and doing—are deeply intertwined and often indistinguishable.
The aim of this brief section has not been to demonstrate or adequately develop these ideas. Rather, it has been to highlight how the efforts of the Bahá’í community across vastly different cultural settings might provide illuminating insights into the power and possibility of a universal collective identity and, in particular, into the potential of an explicitly spiritual conception of human oneness.
In neighborhoods and villages around the world, tens, hundreds, and in some places, thousands of people, inspired by the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh, are engaged in activities that aim to “build community.” In their efforts, we can already see signs of the emergence of new patterns of collective life: a village coming together regularly at the hour of dawn to summon divine assistance before the day’s work; a group of people combining skills and knowledge to carry out a reforestation project; neighbors consulting on ways to establish classes for the spiritual education of their children; a population beginning to shed age-old prejudices and build new patterns of interaction based on justice and unity; young adults, in rural and urban settings, initiating small-scale agricultural projects to support their communities—examples like these and many more are springing up from every continent and multiplying.
The image that is evoked by the word community can be quite different from one person to the next. Some think of a community simply as those who live in the same geographic area, regardless of whether its members interact; others use the word to refer to a collection of people who share common interests or are motivated by the pursuit of a common goal; and, for many, community is seen as a population that shares a common ethnic identity and set of traditions. We also come across people who believe that the sense of togetherness that we need as human beings can be fulfilled through virtual networks, and some thinkers even predict that the whole concept of a community as it has been traditionally known will eventually disappear.
Although certain aspects of the conceptions above may be valuable, the relationships that sustain society are also being reconceptualized by many in light of the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. Our understanding of community, then, will need to move beyond anything humanity currently knows or has experienced. To build a common vision of community, we turn to the messages of the Universal House of Justice. For instance, in 1996, the House of Justice described a community as
a comprehensive unit of civilization composed of individuals, families, and institutions that are originators and encouragers of systems, agencies and organizations working together with a common purpose for the welfare of people both within and beyond its borders; it is a composition of diverse, interacting participants that are achieving unity in an unremitting quest for spiritual and social progress.1Universal House of Justice, Riḍván 1996. Available at www.bahai.org/r/045175659
The House of Justice has also written about “vibrant communities,” describing them as being characterized by “tolerance and love and guided by a strong sense of purpose and collective will” and explaining that they provide an “environment in which the capacities of all components––men, women, youth and children––are developed and their powers multiplied in unified action.”2Universal House of Justice, from a letter to the Conference of the Continental Boards of Counsellors dated 26 December 1995. Available at www.bahai.org/r/864076551
Over the past decade, Bahá’í community-building efforts have unfolded in smaller geographic areas like neighborhoods and villages. This process has been very similar to the organic processes that take place in nature. Indeed, creating something new in social reality is, like the growth of a tree, an organic process that begins by planting a seed in fertile soil.
The process begins with a group of people inspired by a hopeful vision of change who take action together within the context of a neighborhood or village. The initial steps they take are not random or haphazard but rather unfold within a framework defined by the growing experience of the worldwide Bahá’í community. The various elements that cohere to advance this process include classes for the spiritual education of children; groups of junior youth who, together with an older youth, support one another, study together, and carry out acts of service; the opening of homes and community centers for collective prayer and discussions about the progress of a neighborhood or village; regular visits by neighbors to meet with one another and strengthen bonds of friendship; educational programs for youth and adults in which they reflect on the spiritual dimension of life and prepare themselves for a life of service; and in some places, initiatives that seek to enhance the social and material well-being of a population. Whatever the form and arrangement of activities, however, the process of community building is a process of transformation in which a population takes ownership of its own spiritual and social development.
The fruit of the process of community building is a unit of civilization that is characterized by the principles and teachings of Bahá’u’lláh. The House of Justice has explained the long-term nature of these efforts:
The work advancing in every corner of the globe today represents the latest stage of the ongoing Bahá’í endeavour to create the nucleus of the glorious civilization enshrined in His teachings, the building of which is an enterprise of infinite complexity and scale, one that will demand centuries of exertion by humanity to bring to fruition. There are no shortcuts, no formulas. Only as effort is made to draw on insights from His Revelation, to tap into the accumulating knowledge of the human race, to apply His teachings intelligently to the life of humanity, and to consult on the questions that arise will the necessary learning occur and capacity be developed.3Universal House of Justice, Riḍván 2010. Available at www.bahai.org/r/178319844
We are, of course, too early in these efforts to know exactly what the entire process looks like, what stages we will have to pass through, what obstacles we might face along the way, and what capacities will need to be developed at each stage of development by the members of the community, individually and collectively. These are questions we must ask ourselves in the years and decades to come, and answers to these questions will become clear to us as we engage in a systematic process of learning.
Much has already been learned about the early stages of community building: A group of people turns to the sacred Writings and the guidance of the Universal House of Justice and takes action within a framework defined by the growing experience of the worldwide Bahá’í community; it draws insights from the existing body of knowledge and reflects on experience; it has regular conversations in which questions are asked and ideas are clarified; and, as understanding advances, the group adjusts its plans, approaches, and activities. The result is that its efforts become more and more effective, and the process it is trying to promote advances. In this way, the Bahá’í community is gradually developing its capacity to operate in a mode of learning and, as an organic global community, is advancing collectively.
As people learn more about the process of community building and how to effectively contribute to it, certain questions arise. For instance, what is my conception of community and what contributions can I make to the development of my community? What are those qualities, skills, and abilities that need to be developed in individuals and in groups to build vibrant communities? What are the things that are needed to enhance the relationships in a community? In seeking answers to these questions, we turn to the guiding and operating principles involved. As we understand these principles better and internalize them, they begin to find expression in our actions. They influence how we see ourselves in relation to others which in turn influences how we interact with others.
There are many principles that are relevant to the process of community building. Foremost among these is the oneness of humankind. Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith, talked about the principle of oneness as “the pivot round which all the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh revolve.”4Shoghi Effendi, The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh. Available at www.bahai.org/r/264008982 He said that it cannot be seen as a “mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hope” and that it cannot be merely identified with the “reawakening of the spirit of brotherhood and good-will among men.”5Ibid. It has profound implications for every aspect of the organized life of society. Having the principle of oneness in mind as the guiding and operating principle sheds light on the process of community building and gives direction to our efforts as participants.
In His letter to Queen Victoria, Bahá’u’lláh writes: “Regard the world as the human body.” This metaphor of the human body, or a living organism, was also often used by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá when He wanted to illustrate the implications of the principle of the oneness of humankind. Like any analogy, there are limits to how much it can explain. Nevertheless, like the elements of the human body, “all the members of this endless universe are linked one to another.” He urged us to act as the members of one body, each connected to the other with “a linkage complete and perfect” 6‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Available at www.bahai.org/r/189063524 and contributing its part for the benefit of the whole. He said that “man cannot live singly and alone. He is in need of continuous cooperation and mutual help… He can never, singly and alone, provide himself with all the necessities of existence. Therefore, he is in need of cooperation and reciprocity.”7The Promulgation of Universal Peace, https:// www.bahai.org/r/469722961. The House of Justice, in commenting on this metaphor, has further explained:
In the human body, every cell, every organ, every nerve has its part to play. When all do so the body is healthy, vigorous, radiant, ready for every call made upon it. No cell, however humble, lives apart from the body, whether in serving it or receiving from it. This is true of the body of mankind in which God “has endowed each humble being with ability and talent”8Universal House of Justice, letter of September 1994 to the Bahá’ís of the World regarding subject of universal participation. Bahá’í Reference Library. Available at www.bahai.org/r/874127903
Some characteristics of the living organism suggest where to focus our efforts as individuals. For example, the cells of the body are intimately connected to each other; their existence is purely in relation to the whole body. There is no possibility for the cell to live without its connection to the rest. The purpose of the cell is to maintain the health of the body and, at the same time, its life depends on it. In this regard, a characteristic that stands out is the necessity for the basic units of the organism to be selfless. Cells, in their very essence, are selfless. They are made that way. They adapt their functions in order to respond to unforeseen needs or emergencies or to protect the organism. The cell also takes only what it needs from the organism. The behavior of healthy cells in the body illustrates well the high standard that the individual whose purpose is to work for the common good aspires to as a member of a group or community. This implies, for instance, giving of one’s time and energy generously, sacrificing when the situation requires it, being detached from the results of what we do, and carrying out our actions with sincerity and purity of heart.
This concept of selfless service and the responsibilities that everyone has in accomplishing the collective aim have many implications for the way we relate to others and to our work. It adds significance to various roles and responsibilities that we undertake. To see ourselves like the cells of the body implies that each of us gives our very best in fulfilling our responsibilities; each one is conscious that everything he or she does influences the functioning of the community. And since each of us is responsible not only for his or her part but also for the functioning of the whole, cooperation and reciprocity should characterize relationships. In such an environment, everyone strives to draw out the best in people and to help others develop their full potential and takes joy in the progress of others.
This concept of selfless service also has implications for the manner in which we approach the acts of service we undertake and our various roles and responsibilities in a community. Serving with selflessness and diligence requires making choices, because, unlike the cells, we have free will. To put the interests of the collective before our own and to devote ourselves to doing things with excellence; to be ready to collaborate; to prefer our brothers and sisters over ourselves; to orient ourselves toward that which brings about the well-being of the community; to move beyond the inertia that sometimes holds us back from working to the best of our ability––all of these are individual choices that have to be made consciously. To give of ourselves is embedded in our nature; it is a capacity within us that can be developed and strengthened through constant effort, prayer, reflection, and the acquisition of knowledge. Maybe a word of caution is also needed here: To put the interest of the community before our own does not imply that we lose our individuality. We do not become dissolved in the community. There are many references in the Writings that shed light on the question of serving the common good.
O My Servant! Thou art even as a finely tempered sword concealed in the darkness of its sheath and its value hidden from the artificer’s knowledge. Wherefore come forth from the sheath of self and desire that thy worth may be made resplendent and manifest unto all the world.9Bahá’u’lláh, The Hidden Words. Available at www.bahai.org/r/261142065
Senses and faculties have been bestowed upon us, to be devoted to the service of the general good; so that we, distinguished above all other forms of life for perceptiveness and reason, should labor at all times and along all lines, whether the occasion be great or small, ordinary or extraordinary, until all mankind are safely gathered into the impregnable stronghold of knowledge.10‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Secret of Divine Civilization. Available at www.bahai.org/r/574361742
How excellent, how honorable is man if he arises to fulfil his responsibilities; how wretched and contemptible, if he shuts his eyes to the welfare of society and wastes his precious life in pursuing his own selfish interests and personal advantages.11Ibid.
In these early stages of building this new kind of community that reflects the divine teachings, we have to learn how to manage the apparent tension between pursuing our own interests and contributing to the common good. It is a very real tension within human beings. Undoubtedly, this will always be the case, since it is part of human nature. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has explained:
Man is in the ultimate degree of materiality and the beginning of spirituality; that is, he is at the end of imperfection and the beginning of perfection. He is at the furthermost degree of darkness and the beginning of the light. That is why the station of man is said to be the end of night and the beginning of day, meaning that he encompasses all the degrees of imperfection and that he potentially possesses all the degrees of perfection. He has both an animal side and an angelic side, and the role of the educator is to so train human souls that the angelic side may overcome the animal. Thus, should the divine powers, which are identical with perfection, overcome in man the satanic powers, which are absolute imperfection, he becomes the noblest of all creatures, but should the converse take place, he becomes the vilest of all beings. That is why he is the end of imperfection and the beginning of perfection.12‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Some Answered Questions. Available at www.bahai.org/r/265818142
Although this tension will always be there, the Bahá’í writings also explain that the desire to do good is inherent in human nature because we are created noble. This desire to do good, however, needs to be cultivated and strengthened. It is through faith and our spiritual alignment with the will of God that we are enabled to do this.
The image of the functioning of the human body also gives us insights into the quality of the relationships that should exist within a healthy community. In the human body, we can appreciate how healthy interactions take place and how they contribute to maintaining unity and harmony among the diverse parts. Different organs, each with their own assigned functions, work together to allow new capacities to emerge––capacities that are manifested only when all the parts are functioning properly, each in its own sphere, and in perfect synchronization. Some of these capacities are associated with a specific organ while others do not belong to any particular one; the emergence of such capacities requires cooperation and reciprocity among the parts of the body. Whenever this cooperation breaks down or is replaced by competition, the body’s ability to manifest these capacities is inhibited.
The intention of this presentation is not to present a thorough analysis of the process of community building. It is simply to share a few ideas for reflection on the efforts of Bahá’í communities worldwide to bring about a new kind of community and ultimately contribute to the emergence of a peaceful and just world civilization envisioned in the sacred Writings. In this connection, we have spent some time examining the implications of the principle of the oneness of humankind. The analogy of a human body was used to see how the principle of oneness is foundational to our conception of a community and guides our choices and our actions.
The Bahá’í world is still in the early stages of the process of community building, and there is a great deal to be done before the process reaches fruition. In light of the challenges facing humanity, the task before us may seem daunting indeed, but we are committed to this process over the long term and are inspired to make constant efforts to better understand the relevant principles and to reflect this understanding in our approaches. We draw on spiritual forces to assist us and to propel us forward, and the most powerful force binding us together is the force of universal love. ‘Abdu’l-Baha addresses us: “Strive to increase the love-power of reality” and “to make your hearts greater centers of attraction and to create new ideals and relationships.”13‘Abdu’l-Bahá, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá on Divine Philosophy, (Boston: The Tudor Press, 1918), 107. Love, He writes, is “the magnetic force that directeth the movements of the spheres in the celestial realms” and “the establisher of true civilization in this mortal world.”14‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Available at www.bahai.org/r/407306067
NEW YORK – Dizzy Gillespie is remembered not only for his genius as a trumpeter who broke new ground in jazz but also for his long-standing dedication to the teachings of Baha’u’llah. Reflecting on the life and accomplishments of this iconic figure 100 years after his birth would be incomplete without reflecting on the Baha’i belief that seemed most to inspire and drive his work—that all human beings are part of one family.
“Dizzy represented an organic breakthrough in music,” asserts jazz pianist Mike Longo about Dizzy Gillespie, his late collaborator and friend.
“His music is from such a deep place,” Longo says, scanning the walls of his apartment on Riverside Drive on Manhattan’s upper west side. Framed photographs capture the decades of a musical partnership that ranged from playing sold-out concerts in major venues to private practice sessions at Gillespie’s home in Englewood on the other side of the Hudson River.
But jazz was not the only uniting factor in Gillespie and Longo’s enduring friendship. Both men were attracted to Baha’u’llah’s message of oneness and unity—principles that would lead them to embrace the Baha’i Faith.
“The night I joined the band was the night he heard about the Baha’i Faith,” says Longo.
When Gillespie encountered the Baha’i Faith for the first time, after a concert in Milwaukee, he discovered that it immediately resonated with his thinking—and his music.
“Jazz is based on the same principles as the Baha’i Faith,” says Longo. “Interracial mixing was way back when jazz first started. Dizzy described jazz as a marriage between African rhythm and European harmony and so, if you look at that from a broader perspective, that’s a marriage between the black race and the white race. And Dizzy’s music specifically, when they say that the Prophet unleashes a new power in the universe, Dizzy’s concept of bebop…is a reflection of that.”
Gillespie’s deep commitment to unity and justice expressed itself through the inclusive spirit that characterized his music and his interactions with people of all walks of life.
BEBOP PIONEER
Born John Birks Gillespie in Cheraw, South Carolina, on 21 October 1917, Dizzy Gillespie was at the cutting edge of the bebop jazz phenomenon in the 1940s, often considered the most radical and vital music of its time. Bebop is characterized by its high energy tempos and rapid key changes, complex chord progressions, and dazzling improvisations around a melody.
“They were doing very difficult things,” explains British jazz and art critic Martin Gayford. “Gillespie’s technique alarmed other trumpet players, particularly because he was playing so high.”
“While Charlie Parker came up with the phrasing and the rhythmic approach, Gillespie’s contribution was more the technical side of the harmony and great showmanship.”
“The photographs that typify the bebop era are of Dizzy, with his beret and goatee beard,” says Gayford.
That vibrant persona and sheer technical virtuosity—with Gillespie’s trademark cheeks ballooning out bullfrog-like around the mouthpiece of his distinctive bent trumpet—make him a hard act for trumpeters to follow today.
“When, at the age of 8, I first heard a recording of his music, I was just astonished by what the trumpet could do,” says James Morrison, the celebrated Australian musician who was at the helm of an anniversary tribute concert held at London’s Royal Albert Hall on 4 August 2017, as part of the world-famous BBC Proms concert season.
“I have always been inspired by his way of playing the trumpet,” says Morrison. “I’m very heavily influenced by him.”
Morrison, who played with Gillespie on a number of occasions, believes his outgoing personality helped to make his innovative music a lot more accessible.
“He was there pushing boundaries, but he was so approachable as a person. There is a clichéd idea that an innovator has to be a dark, brooding person, off in his own world. But Dizzy was so garrulous and made such a great connection with the audience.”
Photo by Mark Allan
ENCOUNTERING THE BAHÁ’Ì FAITH
It was just such an audience member who first introduced Gillespie to the Bahá’í Faith. Beth McKenty, a Canadian who attended one of his shows in Milwaukee, had been inspired to reach out to him after reading about the tragic death of Charlie Parker, bebop’s co-originator. Parker was a saxophonist, who had at one point claimed that Gillespie was the “other half of his heart.” He died in 1955 at the age of 34, following a long period of drug addiction.
“Beth had called Dizzy and told him, ‘Charlie Parker didn’t have to die like he died’ and could she talk to him,” remembers Longo. “And so that night, she and her husband came and Dizzy was sitting with them at the table and she told him about the Bahá’í Faith and gave him a lot of literature.”
THE UNITED NATIONS ORCHESTRA
“Gillespie was around for a very long time,” reflects Martin Gayford, “from the 1940s right through to the 1990s. So he became something of an elder statesman of jazz, and a great encourager of young talent.”
The most ambitious, and final, fusion of his music with his religious beliefs was Gillespie’s formation of his United Nation Orchestra, with which he toured the world in the 1980s. The Bahá’í principle of building unity that maintains and celebrates cultural diversity was Gillespie’s key inspiration for the big band made up of younger musicians from the United States and outstanding players and singers from Brazil, Cuba, and Panama.
“That’s what he believed in,” says Longo, “and so that’s what the principle of the United Nation Orchestra was.”
“In the Bahá’í religion we don’t believe in cutting loose anything good,” Gillespie wrote. “Cut loose your heritage? Bahá’ís believe that you bring it in and work with others. Bring it into the whole just like a master painting. Because I’m purple and there’s another cat who’s orange doesn’t mean that we can’t come into one big compatible complementary arrangement. Just contribute from your own uniqueness, but don’t get over in their groove. Stay outta theirs!”
A LASTING LEGACY
Since his death in 1993 at the age of 75, Dizzy Gillespie continues to be revered by enthusiasts the world over. His music has become the subject of academic study and symposia; his recordings are constantly being remastered, reissued, and rediscovered by younger generations. In the coming months, tribute concerts marking 100 years since his birth are taking place across the globe.
“When you pay a tribute to someone, there’s that question – do you imitate them?” says James Morrison. “And I believe, sound-wise—no. There are recognizable ‘Dizzyisms’ in what happens, but a true tribute is to create the atmosphere. It’s always like he was having a party, and he would take that onto the stage. I’ve always felt that’s what I wanted to do too.”
But Mike Longo believes Gillespie’s music is still not fully understood. Speaking at the trumpeter’s funeral in 1993, Longo told the congregation that, “a lot of people know what Dizzy played but they don’t know how he played.”
“At this point in time most of the educators and so forth are imitating it,” he says. “They don’t understand the concept, they understand the notes. So they imitate the notes and they try to imitate the feeling, but they’re not coming up with the essence yet. So he’s not fully appreciated yet.”
“Might be another 100 years before that happens,” Longo laughs.
Listen to the podcast episode associated with this Bahá’í World News Service story.
