Introduction

Human beings are unfolding capacity in a manner that echoes all of nature. Nothing stands still. Everything progresses through stages of development. We are at a significant juncture in the development of social order - its globalization. I believe this is good and that spiritual guidance can enable us to avoid the more destructive hazards and reap the benefits latent in this stage of human social evolution.

An experience traveling by train from Xian from Beijing provides a small, personalized example of the difficulties of globalization. The young man sitting next to me expressed his concern over my presence on the train. The objection was not personal. It was cultural. My presence represented the American influence infringing on the cultural integrity of China. I told him of my regrets and honest empathy with respect to the spread of the more pernicious aspects of America's version of modern materialism - drugs, violence, moral laxity, and the dissolution of the family among the most obvious. However, with respect to the preservation of our respective ancestral heritages, I told him that I believed the time had passed for the maintenance of boundaries against the influences of modern global community. The two of us sitting on that train in our blue jeans, sipping Cokes with hands banded in digital watches, listening to hybrid Western/Asian music over the speaker system, were culturally closer to each other than either of us was to our ancestors of two hundred years ago.

Our shared global culture included more than the superficial accoutrements of marketing and the distribution of goods and services. Our common cosmology included concepts of an expanding universe that initiated from a 'Big Bang', the relative nature of time as well as morality, the existence of black holes, evolution, DNA, space flight, Marxism, capitalism, existentialism, atomic fusion, and global village to name a few. I was not arguing against the presence of a significant cultural influence in each of our lives distinct to our individual heritages; I was suggesting that the influence of global culture was more pervasive and significant. Moreover, I believe that the evolving global culture is good.

Modern human society, relying on empirical investigation and technical progress, sustains life for more human beings over longer average life spans with at least materially improved quality. I prefer the quality of my modern, middle class life to the material benefits associated with the life of Solomon who was at the apex of his social order. I have better food, intellectual stimulation, medicines, mobility, scriptural guidance, artistic experience, and creature comforts. This is not yet the norm for the majority of our planet's populations. Working toward these benefits as sustainable norms for global culture is a noble human endeavor.

Many of today's institutions originated from the minds of men who understood the earth as the center of the firmament that had been created by the hand of God who reigned with his angels just above the clouds. The minds of many, who are today reshaping the institutions for the future, carry images of the earth as a globe that moves around one of more than a hundred billion suns in a galaxy that is one of more than fifty billion in the currently measured universe. The mind of man has constructed images of the heavens and the earth with an increasing zeal to uncover the details of an ever more fascinating creation. From sub-atomic particles to black holes, descriptions of the phenomenon of human reality fill millions of books, periodicals, audio/video images, and web pages.

The magnitude of the paradigm shift associated with the emergence of global civilization can be glimpsed by examining the change of information production and transmission. Scientific investigation into all aspects of reality is the central defining characteristic of the emerging global society. It has been responsible for the creation of a vast depth and breadth of information. Viewed in relation to the production of information in the past, the last one hundred and fifty years could be characterized as an explosion. Our information infrastructure informs our collective understanding of the world we live in and thereby affects the nature of the institutions we create. An examination of the changing information infrastructure of society provides a glimpse of the varying stages of its evolution. So, before proceeding with a thematic presentation of some of the world's scriptures and how they apply to global community, we will view a sketch of the progression of society from tribal to global by viewing the relationship between the information handling mechanisms of a culture and its institutions.

The primary mechanism for the conveyance and storage of information for human beings living in tribes was the spoken word, stored in the memory of individuals and passed from generation to generation. Most of us have heard about the game that demonstrates just how unreliable the spoken word is for maintaining information accuracy. If you pass a story through ten individuals, each privately telling the story to the next person, you can end up with an entirely different story at the end of the process. Details often do not withstand the process of hearing, interpreting, reacting, reformatting, and delivering that must happen as the story is heard and retold. The institutions of the tribe are integral to this level of information accuracy as is the size of the population over which the institutions can effectively administer. The tribe is a group of individuals who know each other. The institutions deal with information in real time among members who personally share the daily experiences of the group.

A city-state differs from a tribe in the size and nature of its institutions, the nature and organization of work, the buildings, the number of people, and the way they relate to each other. The information shared by the group is preserved in written documents. Contrast the image you have of Rome two thousand years ago with its sewer systems, public baths, temples, and senators to the image of a small group of people living in temporary dwellings at the side of a river. Cooperative farming and other technologies may be part of the system that produced the necessary amounts of food to sustain the more sophisticated activities of a citystate. But the information systems necessary to control and consolidate technology, wealth, and power were an essential, integral part of the picture. A level of accuracy could be preserved that allowed for the development of more complex religious, political, social, and technical institutions. Ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, and Imperial China were all expressions of societies that used the written word.

The structures or institutions that created, managed, preserved, and passed on the information of the city-state were limited by the rate at which the information could be proliferated. The rate relied on the number of individuals who participated in the creation and dissemination of the information. In the typical city-state, only a small percentage of the population was literate and privy to the recorded information. That information was often viewed as sacred, and it was expensive. If it took a scribe a year to copy the information and create an additional copy of the text, it was worth a year of his upkeep. The scribe occupied a position of prominence in his day. Viewed in current terms, he was a reasonably well-paid scholar or professional. One copy of a book or scroll was worth roughly $50 to $100 thousand if viewed in the context of today's pay scale. You did not order the copy of a book unless you really felt you needed it. You did not write something down unless it was very important. You did not change it without the sanction of the highest authorities of the day.

The printing press brought the written word into the realm of the profane. It provided for easy and cheap proliferation of information. It was a prerequisite technology to the beginning of global civilization. The printing press drove the price of a book or manuscript from the $50 thousand range down to the $29.95 range. As the market cost of information plummeted, the volume and the quality of the information soared. The content engaged the mental capacities of an ever increasing number of individuals in the creation of still more information. The observations of one individual could be scrutinized from a larger variety of perspectives. Over the course of several centuries the product of all of those contributions to human learning took us through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, the Protestant Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, and a series of political revolutions.

There is now available in the libraries of the world, a relatively large volume of information on the effects of these revolutions on the institutions of the modern world. The family, religion, workplace, city, state, indeed, all the institutions of society have gone through more change over the past five hundred years than they had in the previous ten thousand years since the beginnings of agricultural societies.

Computers, along with communication technologies, are opening the contents of the world's knowledge to an expanding number of participants with ever more powerful tools to find, analyze, synthesize, and communicate information. The acceleration of the production of information and the corresponding engagement of human mental capacity is progressing at an exponential rate when compared with former times. The Internet has been characterized as the global societal brain being constructed and used by a global community of participants. The new understandings and consequent actions and reactions of the peoples of the world through the accelerated means of communication are causing the fabric of the social, political, and economic order of the modern world to be undone and rewoven at every level of human experience. Global society is evolving within this expanded information context.

The following three concepts, gleaned from Baha'i scripture, summarize my view of the process of globalization. First, the current stage in our development on this planet is like the transition of the individual from adolescence to adulthood. Global community requires the engagement of reason in the search for meaning and will proceed through choice and consequence. The absolutes of childhood understanding are giving way to the realization of the relative, contingent nature of human understanding. Science and reason as an integral aspect of global society are being harmonized with spiritual experience and understanding. This integration is an essential ingredient for the creation of a hopeful, meaningful, and peaceful global community.

Second, the world's religions all issue from the same source, the same reality of God, and their primary teachings are in complete agreement. The differences in the teachings with respect to the particulars of religious practice and social justice derive from the exigencies of their respective cultures. Their differences are like personalities that reflect individual experiences in reality.

Third, the realm of perfection proceeds from God as He makes Himself known to each of us. The Messengers, i.e. Abraham, Moses, Krishna, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, the Bab, and Baha'u'llah, are the remembrance of God, the voice of God, the word of God. We can experience the one God through Them, but none of us can speak authoritatively for God or His Messengers. What we are to do about our varying conceptions of reality will most productively proceed from consultative, consensus building processes rather than force. Submission to the will of God, respect for each other's capacity to uniquely approach God, and realization that we are not to supplant God's role as the judge of who is best succeeding in following His will, are the foundation of all of the religions of God. They are also the foundation required for global community.