| Beginning of related document The ideal of world peace
is taking on form and substance and awakening a degree of hopefulness about the future of our planet. Further effort must be galvanized by a vision
of human prosperity whose beneficiaries are all of the planet's inhabitants. Drawing upon their collective inheritance the world's
governments and peoples are now challenged to take up consciously and systematically, the responsibility for the design of their future.
This will necessitate a re-examination of the attitudes and assumptions that currently underlie social and economic development, and a
broad consensus about human nature itself. The two avenues of discussion that this paper explores are:
The current purpose of development is essentially the achievement of the
material prosperity that characterises certain regions of the world. It has become clear that these approaches are not capable of meeting
humanity's needs. An ever widening abyss separates the living standards of a diminishing minority of the world's inhabitants from the poverty of the
vast majority of the globe's population. This unprecedented economic crisis, together with the social breakdown it has helped to engender, reflects
a profound error of conception about human nature itself. We are being shown that unless the development of society finds a purpose
beyond material conditions, it will fail to attain even these goals. That purpose must be sought in the deeper dimensions and motivations of
life.
Development planning largely views the masses of humanity as essentially recipients of benefits from aid and training. The limited range of
decision making left to most of the world's population is often irreconcilable with their perceptions of reality. Such an attitude misses the
significance of probably the most important social phenomenon of our time, the response of the peoples of the world to constructing a new
global order. Countless movements and organisations, supported by growing numbers throughout the globe, advocate social change at local, regional
and international levels. Their vital concerns include human rights, the advancement of women, sustainable development, moral education, literacy
and primary health care. The transformation in the way that great numbers of ordinary people are coming to see themselves raises fundamental
questions about the role assigned to the general body of humanity in the planning of our planet's future.
The bedrock of a strategy that can engage the world's population in assuming responsibility for its collective destiny must be the
consciousness of the oneness of humankind. Only through the dawning consciousness that they constitute a single people, will the inhabitants
of the planet be enabled to turn away from the patterns of conflict that have dominated social organisation in the past and begin to learn the ways
of collaboration and conciliation.
Employing an analogy that points to the one model holding convincing promise for the organisation of a planetary society, Bahá'u'lláh
compared the world to the human body. The modes of operation that characterize man's biological nature illustrate fundamental principles of
existence. Chief among these is unity in diversity.
It is precisely the wholeness and complexity of the order constituting the human body - and the perfect integration into it of the body's
cells - that permit the full realisation of the distinctive capacities inherent in each of these component elements. No cell lives apart from the
body, whether in contributing to its functioning or in deriving its share from the well-being of the whole. The physical well-being thus achieved
finds its purpose in making possible the expression of human consciousness. The purpose of biological development transcends the mere existence of
the body and its parts.
What is true of the individual has its parallels in human society. The advancement of the human race has not occurred at the expense of human
individuality. As social organisation has increased, the scope for the expression of the capacities latent in each human being has correspondingly
expanded. Because the relationship between the individual and society is a reciprocal one, the transformation now required must occur
simultaneously within human consciousness and the structure of social institutions...
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Prepared by the Bahá'í International Community's Office of Public Information, January 1995
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