The Bases of Modern Society And A New Order

[Ron Price]

:mad:

A COMPLEX JOURNEY


We make these observations...to encourage a re-examination of the bases of modern society, and to....lay the ground for a contrasting observation of the origin and nature of the characteristics and philosophy underlying that Order.
-Universal House of Justice, 29 December 1988. :lol:

The quest for a rational ethic1 was
what launched the social sciences
into orbit. Their mission was to define
modernity in all its labyrinthine forms.

The ground for the contrasting
observation of this new Order
has one or two features which
this poem would like to underline.

First, is the sacred nature of this
Order as opposed to one that
drew on Greece and Rome as
the source, the model, for today.

We can no longer look to them;
nor can the long and tortured
history of the great religions
be of any value as we search.

But to understand where we
have been and how we got there
is a useful matrix to describe
why we are where we are today.

To gain this understanding
you can spend your whole
lifetime, for the journey is the
most complicated you can take.


Ron Price
6 October 1996

1 Donald N. Levine, Visions of the Sociological Tradition, University of Chicago Press, 1995, p.317. In this interesting account of the position of sociology today, Levine argues that this search for a rational ethic was what got the social sciences going in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This ethic is essentially a secular one, like the ethic that was the underpinning of Greece and Rome. :D

Levine describes the fracturing of the social science disciplines since the late 1960s and ealry 1970s. The very maps for describing them seem to be in question. We seem to need not only new maps, but new principles for mapping. Answering questions like those raised by the House of Justice in this 1988 letter will keep Baha’i social scientists busy for decades to come for they are fundamental and extremely complex. :brow:

[Ron Price]

Sincew noone has responded in the last eight months, I will make an addition to this subject. It is a subject involving our: human journey, sociology and order in society. I place these 3 subjects in a wider spiritual context. ;)
_____________________
THE STONE

The poet must consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners of future generations as a being superior to time and place.
-Imlac, From Sensibility to Romanticism, F.W. Hilles, editor, Oxford UP, Oxford, 1965, p.69.

The poet must cover his face in the dust, a dust which exalted above the knowledge of the learned and the praise of all that glorify Thee.
-Ron Price with one eye on the Tablet of Visitation of ‘Abdu’l-Baha.


It’s not everyday that some voice
tells you to: “get a stone....if you
believe in immortality”, unless your
name is Esther Tobin and the stone
is the foundation stone for the Mother
Temple of the West, to be dedicated by
‘Abdu’l-Baha. We all, in the end, though,
must get our stone, our weight, and carry it
until the end of our days, if we believe in
immortality. But the key is not so much to
carry the stone, for this we must, but to be
happy while carrying it. For our stone is part
of the great Edifice, Order, Warp and Weft,
and it, too, is blessed by His Word and Presence.

Ron Price
31 January 1997

[bhekti]

Have you ever been in Indonesia Mr. Price?

[Expounder]

So you want us to debate the ethic of modern society?

[Ron Price]

Sorry for not getting back to you folks, but: 1. I have never been to Indonesia and 2. feel free to respond in any way you like to my posts--hopefully I will try and get back to you sooner than the last time.-Ron

[Ron Price]

The language of both science and poetry is a language under stress. Words are being made by their respective authors to describe things that often seem indescribable in words: equations, chemical and physical structures in the case of science, and an inner life of thoughts and emotions, among other things in the case of poetry. Words don’t and cannot mean all that they stand for. Yet words are arguably the best means people have to describe experience. By being a natural language under tension, the language of science is inherently poetic. There is metaphor aplenty in science. Emotions emerge shaped as states of matter and, more interestingly, matter acts out what goes on in the soul. This is why one can say that science is poetic. One thing is certainly not true: that scientists have some greater insight into the workings of nature than poets, or vice versa. Some people feel that, deep down, scientists have some inner knowledge that is barred to others. The expertise of a scientist is an expertise acquired by learning and, unless others acquire the required learning, that particular piece of the universe of knowledge is, indeed, barred to those others.

Poetry soars in the world of science.1 It soars all around the tangible, in deep dark, through a world the scientist reveals and makes his own. Poetry in the hands of a lover of life and words, a person with great knowledge and wisdom, can soar in the worlds of intellect and understanding the two most luminous lights in the world of creation.2 -Ron Price with thanks to 1Roald Hoffman, “Science, Language and Poetry,” The Pantaneto Forum, Issue 6, April 2002; and 2Abdul-Baha, The Secret of Divine Civilization, Wilmette, 1970, p.1.

What can I say of today?
Slept late and also had a
sleep after lunch: hardly
productive one could say.
But how can one measure
the success of a single day?
Got a handle on Homer more
than I’ve ever had: The Iliad
and The Odyssey as well as
Simone Weil.1 She was a delight,
especially her essay on The Iliad
and its closing words about the idea
of rediscovering: “the epic genius…
no refuge from fate…learning not to
hate the enemy….…how soon will this
happen?” she asks.2 It has happened; it
has already happened, Simone: it was born
in the Siyah-Chal in Tehran and its light is
spreading around the world to every corner.

1 Simone Weil(1909-1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist.
2 Simone Weil, “The Iliad or the Poem of Force,” Chicago Review, 18.2, 1965.
Ron Price
12 September 2010

[PrinceMyshkin]

I am sorry to have overlooked the starting point of your thread and the several thoughtful, passionate additions to it. As for

"One thing is certainly not true: that scientists have some greater insight into the workings of nature than poets, or vice versa."

That, like several other of your statements, strikes me as the bravado of having discovered and embraced your own sort of faith - yet another kind of poetry! In the end it is all to some degree or other "poetry" and to each man and woman who is fortified by it, "truth."

In the end, none of such proclamations mean more to me than they would if they began I have seen... or I have thought... or I believe... or most telling of all, I hope that...

[Ron Price]

Indeed, PrinceMyshkin. You said it well, very well.-Ron in Tasmania