Baha'i Faith. As was inevitable from the outset, however,
arbitrary efforts to disengage such physical and material well-being from
humanity's spiritual and moral development have ended by forfeiting the
allegiance of the very populations whose interests a materialistic culture
purports to serve. "Witness how the world is being afflicted with a fresh
calamity every day", Baha'u'llah warns. "Its sickness is approaching the
stage of utter hopelessness, inasmuch as the true Physician is debarred
from administering the remedy, whilst unskilled practitioners are regarded
with favour, and are accorded full freedom to act."(3)

"In addition to disillusionment with the promises of materialism, a..."

In addition to disillusionment with the promises of materialism, a force
of change undermining the misconceptions about reality that humanity
brought into the twenty-first century is global integration. At the
simplest level, it takes the form of advances in communication
technologies that open broad avenues of interaction among the planet's
diverse populations. Along with facilitating interpersonal and intersocial
exchanges, general access to information has the effect of transmuting the
cumulative learning of the ages, until recently the preserve of privileged
elites, into the patrimony of the entire human family, without distinction
of nation, race or culture. With all the gross inequities that global
integration perpetuates--indeed intensifies--no informed observer can fail
to acknowledge the stimulus to reflection about reality that such changes
have produced. With reflection has come a questioning of all established
authority, no longer merely that of religion and morality, but also of
government, academia, commerce, the media and, increasingly, scientific
opinion.

Apart from technological factors, unification of the planet is exerting
other, even more direct effects on thought. It would be impossible to
exaggerate, for example, the transformative impact on global consciousness
that has resulted from mass travel on an international scale. Greater
still have been the consequences of the enormous migrations that the world
has witnessed during the century and a half since the Bab declared His
mission. Millions of refugees fleeing from persecution have swept like
tidal waves back and forth across the European, African and Asiatic
continents, particularly. Amid the suffering such turmoil has caused, one
perceives the pro