Homeland. This word is being used often these days for a variety of reasons. It is generally considered our place of birth and a person’s cultural, racial or national home of origin. One’s homeland carries significant emotional connections binding individuals to each other. All these little homelands merge into one single homeland--humanity’s only homeland--the Earth!
The Bahá’í concept of the relationship between global integration and local adaptation and differentiation is not unlike the relationship between the ecosphere and its component ecosystems (Dahl, Unless and Until 81–82). Ecosystems vary greatly according to their locale, but all operate by similar ecological principles and are organically interwoven in the larger encompassing ecosphere. The Bahá’í model of an organically structured social order also illustrates how, in general, spiritual and natural principles are correlative.
Blueprints for the establishment of central community institutions to facilitate community self-reliance and development are also outlined in the Bahá’í writings. A key principle is that development should support and benefit whole communities rather than allow individuals or élites to monopolize wealth. Thus the Bahá’í view of a global society is one based on individual, family, and local self-reliance, integrated with sophisticated interdependence on the national and global levels.
It is through the balanced combination and cooperation of science and religion that humanity can be allowed to acquire a genuine humility and respect for Nature while applying the appropriate skills and technologies needed to advance civilization. In terms of both our spiritual growth and our common dependence on the ecosphere, we are called to be, fully and consciously, citizens of one Earth home. Our total dependence on the encompassing ecosphere reflects and reinforces our dependence on God. Paradoxically, our detachment gives us the spiritual capacity to participate consciously in this role without being caught in a purely material existence.
An attitude of awe and gratitude towards the earth is part of attaining spiritual humility. Humility means literally of the ground or humus. Bahá’u’lláh describes this relationship: Humility exalteth man to the heaven of glory and power, whilst pride abaseth him to the depths of wretchedness and degradation. (Epistle to the Son of the Wolf 30) Every man of discernment, while walking upon the earth, feeleth indeed abashed, inasmuch as he is fully aware that the thing which is the source of his prosperity, his wealth, his might, his exaltation, his advancement and power is, as ordained by God, the very earth which is trodden beneath the feet of all men.
However, to continue to assert the extreme degree of independence and “false sense of omnipotence” given us by our mastery of Nature now threatens to destroy all life (Hatcher, “Science of Religion” 16). Our evolutionary imperative is to leave this adolescent phase and progress to a more mature understanding of our true relationship with Nature—to the conscious interdependence that will be the hallmark of our adulthood. The full extent of this interdependence (felt and recognized by many tribal societies) is now coming to light in many areas of inquiry, as the emergent paradigms in ecology, quantum physics, neurophysiology, and psychology demonstrate. Even if we no longer see the planet as sacred, advancing knowledge compels us to see that the ecological systems of the Earth are all interconnected, and human life is inextricably woven within the wholeness of the ecosphere. Life is a property of the ecosphere as a whole—an evolving, self-regulating system that can be understood as a living organism in which physical and biological components have evolved together over billions of years to maintain the delicate balance of temperature and other parameters necessary to maintain life (Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth).
Spiritual Foundations for an Ecologically Sustainable Society* Robert A. White