Xue

An issue which has long been on my mind is the Bahai life, and its relation to consumer ethics. Most of us live within a capitalist and consumerist society. This includes most individual Bahai's and Bahai institiutions. Just to set the stage I'd like to offer some basic facts about our economies.

As consumers we have connections and influences on far more people than we are in direct contact with. By purchasing a product or service we are funding that product with our own money, and therefore are connecting ourselves and our influence to that product or service. Nearly all products or services go through a long process of production envolving the labour of many people, and the resources of our planet. This long process is hidden in our capitialist system where all we see is the final product, nevertheless, when we purchase something we are purchasing the whole process or production. The exact methods of production and marketing are decided by the particular business owners running the company in question.

Consumer ethics can be taken as the ethical use of our personal funds when purchasing things. We all know most of our products are made in slave labour conditions, by workers who have few if any benefits, or social security. That said, I have heard little, possibly no discussion by Bahai's on consumer ethics. I have seen little discussion of it by any religious groups, however I am concerned here with the Bahai case.

I have two major concerns with this, why has this been so neglected in Bahai life, and what is the actual "answer" to this question. From what I know about Bahai Scripture, there is little on consumer ethics; if any readers know of any it would be great to bring them into this thread.

Considering how much money the Bahai world community is pumping into consumerism, it is very disturbing that there would be no legislation on consumer ethics, and no solid Bahai culture on it either, no deeping on it. Is there a chapter in Ruhi on consumer ethics? I am not familiar with Ruhi so I do not know. Have any of the Universal House of Justice long term plans contained goals dealing with consumer ethics?

What I am looking for here is not a discussion on personal values and individual Bahai's who have made headway with this issue, but rather community wide action, that is, action which can genuinely be called "Bahai" because it involves bringing the large portions of the community together.

arthra

Xue.. If possible I'd suggest you obtain a copy of the Foundations for World Unity an excellent compilation of talks by Abdul-Baha. I'd recommend the chapters on Co-operation and Man and Nature..

You also might enjoy reading:

Sustainable Consumption and True Prosperity

Spiritual Dimensions of Sustainable Development

http://bahai-library.com/pdf/2003_11...l_justice2.pdf

As yet I don't think there's any material in Ruhi about Consumer Ethics..

lukasali

Interestingly enough, the Baha'i international community just released (May 3 2010) a statement about consumerism. You can find it at

Rethinking Prosperity: Forging Alternatives to a Culture of Consumerism — Baha'i International Community -- United Nations Office

The Secret of Divine Civilization by Abdu'l-Baha also lays out some economic principles and practices that are relevant to this conversation.

My wife and I, and many many other Baha'is I know, take this matter very seriously in our day to day lives.

However (and this is of course simply my personal observation/speculation), I tend to think that a lot of the problems of of our times are symptoms of underlying issues(such as selfishness and ignorance) rather than the core problems themselves. It seems to me that environmental degradation, the prostitution of the arts and economic disparity, for example, are all the result of erroneous values and practices, and it is on these underlying causes that the Baha'i community is primarily focused.

That is, Baha'is are trying to solve these "symptoms" by developing fundamental spiritual virtues and concepts that will cure the disease, rather than merely alleviate the symptoms. If the Baha'i community is successful at its stated goal of nurturing divine qualities such as love, justice, compassion, service, honesty and selflessness in the hearts of the human family, these social afflictions will be dramatically reduced. Therefore, spiritual education (rather than political action) is the chosen mode of operations, as I understand it.

I hope that makes sense, as always it's difficult to communicate about such nuanced subjects through text alone. And thank you for bringing up this very interesting subject!

lukasali

Xue - when you get a chance, I'd be interested to know what you think about our responses.

Xue

Yes, sorry about the slow reply and thank you for the articles, I found the articles not without problems but still refreshing in their frankness, and revolutionary proposals. Certainly they approach the problem of consumer ethics from the root, which is to rework our economic system from the ground up, that is to make an economic system which address real human needs and desires, our spiritual side. The ideas in the articles sound to me no less than proposing to entirely throw out the capitalist system. I have not heard sentiments of that sort from Christianity, possibly there are threads of it in Islam. That says a lot about the Bahai Faith for sure

What concerns me about the articles, however, is a common problem with religions, and in this case the Bahai Faith, is a tendency to talk about the future, often the distant future. Thinking of the future of course informs what we do in the present, but it also runs the risk of turning the present, and hence our daily activities into an abstraction. It does this by grounding our lives in the future, since the future is non-existent it places our thinking and living in a very flimsy context. I found it interesting that one of the articles was addressing a non-Bahai audience, and how important solutions to world problems lie in spiritualizing ourselves, and that presumably it is Baha u llah's teachings which will or can offer these solutions and that the Bahai community would thus have evolved some of these solutions for others to see how they work. To reiterate my first post, my main concern is not individual action but rather community wide action, something that shows the Bahai community encourages itself as a whole to make headway and lead in this arena.

The articles presented proposals but show no goals on the part of the Bahai Faith to create Bahai's who are concerned, and educated in consumer ethics, and then act according to Bahai principles when being a consumer. I am not closely familiar with the Bahai community right now, but from what I know they are very similar to other religions in that they do encourage spiritual communion with God through prayer and meditation, this is encouraged through multiple opportunities to pray in groups, study sessions of all sorts are put together. In large communities one could always find a study group which will study the Scripture directly, youth are admonished by peers and adults to live upright lives in regard to sexual morals, and honesty. Study sessions can even be made to address specific goals such as certain financial goals a community faces and wants to meet.

The above qualities, however, do not set the Bahai Faith apart from other religions. One might say the Bahai Faith does have other things which set it apart, such as racial equality. The Bahai Faith leads on this issue possibly more than any other organization in the world, but even this is more complex, as we note that sweat shop labour is entirely (except for very small secret operations in the West) based in Asia, implying a possible racist thread in Western business to profit from Asians in a manner inexcusable in any Western labour market. Seeing as a foundational principle of the Bahai Faith is progressive revelation, and the adapting of the religion to current social needs, where is action and results in consumer ethics?

arthra

One of the goals of the Faith is to foster a recognition of the oneness of religions.. so thats an important perspective that we champion to encourage better relationships between religions so in this respect we don't want to set ourselves apart from other religions.

More likely what we call Social Developement Projects that can have a variety of goals depending on the community.. these could have say local application and include what you call consumer ethics..

The papers and thought by Baha'is on the issue of consumer ethics is ground work for building perhaps specific projects in the future..

There can be many goals and applications of these Social Developement Projects but that's where your more likely see "action and results on consuler ethics".

There also may be possibilities in our particpation in UNited Nations committees to raise important issues such as consumer ethics..

Baha'is are active with many agencies of the United Nations. The Baha'i International Community has consultative status with the UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and Children's Fund (UNICEF). It is affiliated with the Environment Program (UNEP) and various other bodies. Baha'is regularly participate in UN conferences on such subjects as human rights, social and economic development, narcotic drugs, disarmament, and so on.

As one may gather from the Baha'i social principles, Baha'is are very involved in a large number and variety of social and economic development projects. In 1988, 1482 of these were listed worldwide. The majority of these are educational projects involving the setting up of simple village schools. But there are also health, agricultural and community development projects.

arthra

Xue

Yes there certainly are some good points brought up in the video. I like the idea she mentions of connecting consumption to our values, to examine what our consumption patterns say about our values, and if we want to hold those values.

I actually don't like the point she makes that if we conceive of humanity as one family then we will not want our family to go thirsty or have polluted water. It may seem strange to dislike the idea, but again it is too far reaching, so far reaching that the Bahai Faith need not take action because it is too early to begin implementing new education systems in the world. Bahai's simply do not have the resources or the influence in the world to do so, at best the Faith might start some very small grass roots schools here and there.

The other problem is, if the understanding of humanity as one family really changes ones buying habits then why don't we see this change taking place in the Bahai community. Bahai's by and large do not have a pattern of dramatically different buying habits from non-Bahai's. Neither do Bahai's seem concerned with investigating the policies of the companies they support.

thebiggloveyou

I will come in from a "matrix" point of view. the consumerism of today is a disease. one angle to look at it from is that there are 1 or 2 generations of kids out there that think fruits and vegetables come from a shelf or table. what is really disturbing, and i mean really disturbing is, that it isn't just kids that think fruits and vegetables come off a shelf. i went to work out the other day and joined in on a conversation about oil. i was talking to a ww2 veteran and about a 50 year old woman. i was telling them that the world needs to stop drilling for oil and move on to solar energy and clean nuclear. they were of the attitude that i come across everyday. "Keep drilling and keep killing." so i started on the what ifs. i.e. what if gasoline was $20 a gallon tomorrow? or better yet, $20 a liter? or what if we ran out of oil tomorrow? or even worse, ww3 started over oil. the conversation evolved into "where are you going with this, sunny boy?" where i'm going is that we have forgotten to treat our homes, our water, our food, our neighbors and ourselves with respect because of convenience and abundance. we've forgot to teach our kids where fruits and vegetables come from. they laughed at that. "what are you doing to address this issue?" i'm starting a garden, saving seeds and going solar. they laughed again. and this is where it got disturbing. "why do all that when you can go to HEB or randalls and buy your food?" thus, we have adults that think fruits and vegetables come off a shelf. :blink there are many "consumers" out there so plugged in, so dependent on the matrix, that we even take our education for granted. you don't hear many parents telling their kids to goto school to help other people. they usually say goto college to get a good paying job. but for what? rinse, repeat and the stain still hasn't come out. i would love to elaborate on the spiritual and philosophical angles of this but it's time for me to go scrub.

btw, here's how bad consumerism is. the modern toilet is polluting the environment. doodoo is a resource. not trash. :blink:blink:blink