Announcing New Publication

Dear Friends,

After more than a month I am posting again.  But I have been silent on the blog because I have been very busy finishing up a project.

I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book, Gettin' Through Hard Times Together: Creating Prosperity Through Sharing, Service and Sacrifice.  The book is the product of my search into one of the main pillars of human economy, what I call the moral economy.  While the phrase "the moral economy" is not new, I use it in a new way.  For many, the moral economy is concepts like the just price for a commodity, so that the idea is restricted to the moral aspect of the exchange of goods--don't try to gouge your neighbor or seek only personal advantage in the exchange of goods and services.

But I use the moral economy to identify that area of economy that is the morality of all human interrelations.  That is, the exchange of goods is secondary, or, rather, the material medium through which moral virtues, such as love and justice, are expressed and exchanged. Thus, in my concept of the moral economy the primary exchange is that of spirit, or virtue.  All economies have a moral dimension to them.  But the moral economy of a materialist society exchanges a morality of selfish , self-serving and self-centered values.  That is, it is an economy of me-first.  The moral economy that we must create is the exchange of virtues, but the core virtues in economic life are, I believe, sharing, service and self-sacrifice.  This is an economy of you-before-me.

The moral economy of human interrelations occupies a place mid-way between the material economy of goods and services and the divine economy identified by Shoghi Effendi, as the social code of human relations that includes global divinely conceived and inspired institutional arrangements.  The "pattern and nucleus" of that global divine economy is, according to the Baha'i Teachings, the Baha'i Administrative Order.  But its full expression will be that future global commonwealth that the vision of Baha'u'llah anticipates, and toward which all constructive forces in society are taking us.

The content of Gettin' Through Hard Times Together is an exploration of one sentence of a letter of the Universal House of Justice composed in 1974 and addressed to a National Spiritual Assembly.  In that letter the House of Justice says: “It is not merely material well-being that people need. What they desperately need is to know how to live their lives—they need to know who they are, to what purpose they exist, and how they should act towards one another; and, once they know the answers to these questions they need to be helped to gradually apply these answers to everyday behaviour.  It is to the solution of this basic problem of mankind that the greater part of all our energy and resources should be directed.”  (Messages from the Universal House of Justice 1963-1986: 283)  The book seeks to answer these four central questions, but not in a scholarly way.  The text is, I believe, simple and straight forward, and, I hope, insightful.

As the title Gettin' Through Hard Times Together says, we must get through these hard times together.  All attempts by any fraction of humanity to use the current economic crisis for their own purposes, or to their own advantage, only exacerbates an already critical situation.  By sharing our wealth, serving each other and sacrificing personal interest to a common or larger good, we can get through these hard times and help lay the foundation of an enduring civilization of peace and prosperity: for prosperity must be defined as every person on earth having enough and not a person before.

There is much more to the book than is in this post of course.  But I hope that I have piqued your interest.

Thanks so much for support until now.