ted to carry it out. Through its influence, the work of
society's rapidly proliferating nongovernmental organizations will be
increasingly rationalized. It will ensure the creation of binding
legislation that will protect both the environment and the development
needs of all peoples. Ultimately, the restructuring or transformation of
the United Nations system that this movement is already bringing about
will no doubt lead to the establishment of a world federation of nations
with its own legislative, judicial, and executive bodies.

Central to the task of reconceptualizing the system of human relationships
is the process that Baha'u'llah refers to as consultation. "In all things
it is necessary to consult," is His advice. "The maturity of the gift of
understanding is made manifest through consultation."

The standard of truth seeking this process demands is far beyond the
patterns of negotiation and compromise that tend to characterize the
present-day discussion of human affairs. It cannot be achieved--indeed, its
attainment is severely handicapped--by the culture of protest that is
another widely prevailing feature of contemporary society. Debate,
propaganda, the adversarial method, the entire apparatus of partisanship
that have long been such familiar features of collective action are all
fundamentally harmful to its purpose: that is, arriving at a consensus
about the truth of a given situation and the wisest choice of action among
the options open at any given moment.

What Baha'u'llah is calling for is a consultative process in which the
individual participants strive to transcend their respective points of
view, in order to function as members of a body with its own interests and
goals. In such an atmosphere, characterized by both candor and courtesy,
ideas belong not to the individual to whom they occur during the
discussion but to the group as a whole, to take up, discard, or revise as
seems to best serve the goal pursued. Consultation succeeds to the extent
that all participants support the decisions arrived at, regardless of the
individual opinions with which they entered the discussion. Under such
circumstances an earlier decision can be readily reconsidered if
experience exposes any shortcomings.

Viewed in such a light, consultation is the operating expression of
justice in human affairs. So vital is it to the success of collective
endeavor that it must constitute a basic feature of a viable strategy of
s