The New Baha'i Paradigm: 1996-2016

I posted an introduction to the paradigmatic shift in the Baha’i community, the new culture of learning and growth that is at the heart of this paradigm, nearly five years ago. I did this posting at several internet sites and have revised that post in these last five years as developments in the paradigm have come about, as new messages from Bahá'í institutions have been published and as many individuals have commented verbally and in print on this new culture. It seemed like a good idea to give readers some specific steps on how to access this now revised article, what is now a book of 200,000 words and more than 400 pages(in font 14) and is found at Baha’i Library Online(BLO).

In the time this book has been at BLO there have been more than ten thousand views/clicks of this analysis, this statement on the new paradigm.  There have also been 1000s of clicks at the several other sites where this book has now been posted. In addition to googling “Baha’i Culture of Learning and Growth” and accessing this book in the process at several internet sites, readers can find this piece of writing at BLO by clicking on the following:

http://bahai-library.com/price_culture_learning_paradigm

Readers can also access the latest edition of this article at BLO by taking the following steps: (i) type Baha’i Library Online or Baha’i Academics Resource Library into your search engine; (ii) click on the small box “By author” at the top of the access page at BLO; (iii) type “Price” into the small box that then appears and click on the word “Go;” and then (iv) scroll down to article/document item #50 and (v) click on that item and read to your heart’s content. When your eyes and your mind start to glaze over, stop reading. The book can be downloaded free and you will then have access to a commentary on this new paradigm, this new paradigmatic terminology, that has come into the Baha’i community in the last 20 years: 1996 to 2016.

The statement is a personal one, does not assume an adversarial attitude, attempts to give birth of as fine an etiquette of expression as I can muster and, I like to think, possesses both candour and critical thought on the one hand and praise and delight at the many interrelated processes involved in the execution of this paradigm on the other. I invite readers to what I also like to think is “a context on which relevant fundamental questions” regarding this new paradigm may be discussed within the Baha’i community.

This book also contains an update, an inclusion of commentary on the most recent messages from the institutions of the Cause—including the latest of the House of Justice messages up to and incluing Ridvan, 21/4/'12.  One of the advantages of the BLO site is the freedom it gives to a writer to update the article right on the site in an ongoing process as new insights from major thinkers in the Baha’i community and information from the elected and appointed institutions of the Cause comes to hand.

If time and the inclination permit, check it out. No worries, no obligation, just if it interests you. You may find the piece of writing too long as I’m sure many readers do. It is certainly a view from the inside, but it is just one person’s view building as it does on the ideas and writings of others: Bahá'í institutions and individuals. We each have a different experience on the inside of this paradigm, on the inside of this Faith or, indeed, living on the inside of our global society. You may find this book too personal due to the fact that I attempt to answer the question: “where do I fit into this new paradigm?” After a few paragraphs of reading, you will get the flavour of the exercise. Just keep reading if your mind and spirit are enjoying the process.

Edited by RonPrice - 4/21/12 at 9:36pm

Belated thanks to you, AdrianDyka and, as far as your comment on spamming is concerned, dreary louse, let me say the following. This prose-poem is a personal reflection on the subject of spam
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A NEW PRODUCT HITS THE MARKET

The original term spam was coined in 1937 by the Hormel corporation as a name for its Spam luncheon meat: a canned, precooked, spiced meat product. The transition from meat product to internet term had a stop with the comedy Monty Python's Flying Circus. In 1970 that BBC comedy show aired a sketch that featured a cafe that had a menu which featured items like: "egg, bacon, and spam; egg, bacon, sausage, and spam; spam, bacon, sausage, and spam; spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon, and spam; and finally, lobster thermidor aux crevettes with a mornay sauce garnished with truffle pate, brandy, and a fried egg on top and spam." To make matters sillier in Monty Python style, the cafe was filled with Vikings who periodically break out into song praising spam: "spam, spam, spam, spam: lovely spam, wonderful spam."

While the Hormel corporation was holding a competition to find a new name for their product, the North American Bahá’í community was formulating the details of its first teaching Plan in May 1937. This formulation took place just eight weeks before the introduction of Spam onto the market. As of 2003 the Baha’i Faith had spread to over 200 countries and territories with the largest number of adherents in India, Iran and the USA. As of 2003, Spam was sold in 41 countries worldwide. The largest consumers of Spam were in the United States, the UK and South Korea.

Computer people adopted the term Spam from the Python sketch to mean, to include, the commercialization of the internet, the unwanted commercial messages that come in the form of electronic junk mail or junk postings as well as posts at Internet sites that: (a) nobody really wants to read/asks for and/or (b) are basically some form of plagiarism. These have become the primary meanings, among other meanings, of spam on the internet.-Ron Price with thanks to “A History of the Term Spam,” internet.com, 24 July 2008.

Yes, there was a new name, allright—
little did they know—and there was
no need to hold a competition for its
name---for as Isaiah foretold His name
long ago--His name shall be called:
Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God,
the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

One could say, if one wanted, but not many
would have wanted and not many did put it
this way, that this new Product was finally
becoming commercialized but at a very low
level of evangelism. Indeed, there was no
aggressive proselytising here, just the slow
evolution of small groups all over the planet
and a Movement with many, many meanings
for the pluralistic society with which it was
engaged then--all the years of my earthly life.

Ron Price
For CHUD Forums
On: 12 June 2010

On Sexual Proclivities

The sex life of individuals in Baha'i marriages is the private preserve of those in the relationship and the actual sexual activities inevitably depend on the tastes and inclinations of the two people.-Ron Price, Tasmania

You Fellows Might Like the Following

"Ye are all the leaves of one tree, and the fruits of one branch." Baha'u'llah ("glory of God") the founder of the Baha'i faith.

bullet"If love and agreement are manifest in a single family, that family will advance, become illumined and spiritual." Abdu'l-Bahá, the first interpreter of Baha'i teachings.

bullet"If religion becomes a cause of dislike, hatred and division it were better to be without it..." Abdu'l-Bahá.

Back To That Paradigm

Just to place that new Baha'i paradigm in a historical and personal context and bring this thread back to its theme, I would like to add a prose-poem I wrote this evening.-Ron in Tasmania
--------------------------------------

THE WALL AND THE WINDOW

The Berlin Wall was erected on the night of August 13, 1961. I began my travelling-pioneer life for the Canadian Bahá’í community in a weekend afternoon in late August 1962. That August night in 1961 was on a weekend when most Berliners were sleeping. The East German government began to close the border. In the early morning of that Sunday most of the first work was done: the border to West Berlin was closed. The East German troops had begun to tear up streets and to install barbed wire entanglement and fences throughout Berlin. The first concrete elements and large square blocks were used on August 15, 1961. Within the next months the first generation of the Berlin Wall was built. It was a wall consisting of those concrete elements and square blocks.

A second Wall was built in June 1962, two months before my personal window of travelling-pioneer life opened. That second Wall was constructed in order to prevent East Germans escaping to the West. That first Wall was improved during the next several years. It is difficult to distinguish between the parts of the Wall that constituted its first and the second generation. These two first generations were torn down when a third generation was constructed beginning in 1965. This third generation of the Berlin Wall consisted of concrete slabs between steel-girder and concrete posts with a concrete sewage pipe running along the top of the Wall. In 1965 my travelling-pioneer life opened up an even larger window than it had enjoyed for three years. That window looked out into the Canadian Arctic on Baffin Island.

In 1975 a fourth generation of the Wall replaced this third generation. New concrete segments were used which were easy to build up and were more resistant to breakthroughs and to environmental pollutions. Over these years, 1961 to 1975, the East German government spent 1 billion dollars a year on the Wall. By 1975 I had travelled, pioneered, from the Canadian Arctic to the outback of Australia. Windows of opportunity had opened in my life but I, too, had suffered from months of mental illness institutionalized inside the walls of four hospitals. -Ron Price with thanks to several internet sites on the subject of “The Construction and Fall of the Berlin Wall,” 8 November 2009.

That Berlin Wall was far-away
during those years when I had
my own walls to contend with.
I was as busy as the proverbial
beaver just getting through the
walls erected in my own life!!

But gradually, year by year, a
series of windows opened-up
giving me opportunities I had
never dreamt-of: getting a BA,
then a teaching qualification, a
series of jobs from one end of
the earth to the other so that by
1975 when the final generation
of Berlin walls were built I was
well on my way into a career of
education, of learning & of time
in classrooms for over 50 years.

From the perspective of these years
of my retirement in a late adulthood
and on two old-age pensions those
early walls have all come down and
by 1989 that one in Berlin was down.
The revolutions of 1989…the Fall of
Communism, the Revolutions over
Eastern Europe: a new paradigm was
emerging in the international world.

And as it did so, too, did a paradigm
emerge in the embryonic world order
of the Baha’i Faith which has been in
my life now for nearly sixty years!!!!

Ron Price
20 October 2010