1.b.)
The ending of WW II brought a respite to the world; there was an aura of hope and euphoria immediately following the end of the hostilities. Short-lived though it was it was enough to get the United Nations Organization established on a much firmer basis then the League of nations had ever been.
There was also fear. The two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought a very sobering realization of the incalculable damage such weaponry could bring. It was soon understood that these new weapons could in fact destroy us.
These two factors gave some impetus to the willingness of nations to seek an ongoing means of regulating international relations and behavior.
The current situation shows that more is needed. We are, I hope, coming closer to the point when nations will be forced to think seriously about imposing limitations on the scope of national sovereignty. “Pax America” will not not work for long just as “pax Romana” and Pax Britannia”
and all the other so-called “pax” and other imperial efforts didn’t work.
I would like to share some personal memories from this time. I was born just before the War began and in all my earliest memories the War is the ground of everything. My father enlisted in the U.S. army even though he was older, in his mid-thirties. He understood what Hitler and nazism was really all about and wanted to help obliterate it. Two of my uncles also served, one in the Pacific theatre with the U.S. army and the other with the Canadian army served in Europe. He was an ambulance driver in Belgium. (After the War, he never again drove a vehicle of any kind.) I remember their homecoming at the end of the War. My father, thank God, was not sent overseas but kept at home to help train younger soldiers who go overseas. At one point he was in charge of a black regiment but that is another story.
We loved in Chicago in the neighborhood of the University of Chicago only a few blocks from where the first controlled nuclear reaction took place. Years later I had a biology class in this building under the bleechers at the west end of Stag Field (gridiron football stadium) where this expereiment took place. Over then years following, my family became aware of the personal impact this work had on some of the scientists who were involved in the Manhatten Project. One, our upstairs neighbor, committed suicide.
This is indeed a century of light and darkness. The great science that has brought a whole new revolutionary understanding of physics has also brought the means of immensely great destruction.
C) conditions at the end of the Century:
How bad can it be? Can it get worse? I fear it can. Today we heard on the news that many Serbians want a president who espouses the nationalistic values of the early nineties that lead to genocidal war in the Balkans. Do we never learn anything?
I suspect the highest levels of government generally are still clinging to older models of national sovereignty and people generally don’t want to see beyond the edges of their own lives. And yet there has been a change.
D) New conditions.
1) development of global communications. Telegraph, telephone, radio, TV; and now the internet and e-mail. Could have done this course even 10 years ago? Am I thankful? Oh YES!
2) An ever-widening gap between rich and poor both globally as with “rich” and “poor” countries and within countries between an affluent elite and the rest.
3) Presence if “new” diseases and some older ones (SARS, HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C, TB)that have capacity to spread widely amongst a population and diseases that are enhanced by lifestyle and diet like diabetes. The impact of these causes great loss of productivity and great cost to health care systems.
4) So-called natural disasters caused by climate change and destruction of environments.
5) Emergence of a new alignment of confrontation between nations; e.g., the “West” vs. the Islamic
world.
6) Spread of materialism into all parts of the world.
7) Spread of complacency especially in North America.
8) Spread of fear of terrorism accompanied by badly conceived laws that may pose a serious threat
to civil rights in the so-called democracies.
2) Emergence of the Baha’i Faith from obscurity.
Very soon after the establishment of the United Nations Organization after WWII, the Baha’i Community under the leadership of our Guardian sought to associate itself with the U.N. In 1948 the eight National Spiritual Assemblies then in existence secured accreditation as an international non-governmental organization. This became another launching pad for our effective involvement in world affairs. Early on we assisted by providing public information in many countries about the U.N
and its agencies. Soon we acquired consultative status with the U.N. Economic and Social Council,
the U.N. Environmental Programme and U.N.I.C.E.F. When in the 1980’s renewed persecution against the Baha’is of Iran at a greater level of ferocity and persistence then under the Shah arose, we were able to turn to the U.N. for assistance. This time the sufferings of our Iranian believers did not go unnoticed by the world at large.
5) How the Baha’i Cause demonstrates on a global scale its unifying power:
The victory we won in 1963 when we established the Universal House of Justice by electing its first members is the first real taste of this unification. The power the Cause possesses to influence the course of history springs from the spiritual power of its message and also from the example it provides. In this election we did what has never been done before on at least three counts. First, the succession of authority was passed on willingly (even eagerly) and intact. Second, the process was elective throughout beginning with the individual believers. Third, the scope of participation was worldwide.
Perhaps the passing of out Guardian early in the 10 Year Crusade left us in a “testing”place where we could choose to have Community of the Most Great Name follow the path to the election of the Universal House of Justice.