Human Rights Day, observed annually during the second week of December, is a reminder that all the peoples of the world have certain inalienable rights and that everyone should have equal opportunity. Food, clothing, and shelter are common requirements for all, the dignity of economic self-support is the right of everyone as is affordable health care and especially equal education which is the foundation of a more equitable and humane society.
These are among the basic human rights that should not be denied for reasons of race, gender, creed, or nationality. Human Rights are God-given rights (however you perceive Him–or even if you cannot).
As we only understand through comparison and there is nothing with which to compare the Creator (Who supersedes His creation), periodically every several thousand years this Unknowable Essence must manifest itself into a human temple in order to relate to a different maturity of mankind in a manner more applicable to the exigencies of the times. This “Progressive Revelation” made manifest through the Revelation of Baha’u’llah, believed by Baha’is to be the most recent in such succession throughout time, began as recently as 1844, less than 164 years of a planet purported to be millions of years old. Equally historic is the fact that in a matter of hours after the first proclamation of this inestimable revelation was made in Iran, in the western world the first telegraph was sent between Baltimore, MD and Washington, DC tapping out the message: “What hath God wrought?”
One has to consider how primitive the world was in 1844 and the quantum leap in knowledge, science, and technology in a little more than a century and a half to realize that something extraordinary has happened.
Consider also that Human Rights Day ironically also falls within the week of Pearl Harbor Day (Dec. 7) which commemorates the pre-empted strike by Japan on Pearl Harbor which triggered WWII and the primary concentration of science and technology since that date toward the sophistication of war and weaponry. In what age or at what stage of devastation and contamination of the planet (of air, land, and water) will we ever acknowledge that war begets war and of increasing concern is not who’s right but who’s left–to survive under what conditions.
As through our inherited prejudices adults are easily misled and manipulated, the Baha’i Writings for modern man stresses that “…children must be taught to favor character and conduct above the sciences and arts, to guard against the prostitution of each. Good behavior and high moral character must come first for unless the character is trained, acquiring knowledge will only prove injurious. Knowledge is praiseworthy when it is coupled with ethical conduct and virtuous character; otherwise, it is a deadly poison, a frightful danger.”
It is hoped that food for thought in this Human Rights/Pearl Harbor Day message will whet the appetite when realizing that increased drastic measures are only producing increasingly drastic results.
