… Animating the Bahá’í effort to discover the nature of a
new set of relationships among these three protagonists [the individual, the
institutions, and the community] is a vision of a future society that derives
inspiration from the analogy drawn by Bahá’u’lláh, in a Tablet penned nearly a
century and a half ago, which compares the world to the human body. Cooperation
is the principle that governs the functioning of that system. Just as the
appearance of the rational soul in this realm of existence is made possible
through the complex association of countless cells, whose organization in
tissues and organs allows for the realization of distinctive capacities, so can
civilization be seen as the outcome of a set of interactions among closely
integrated, diverse components which have transcended the narrow purpose of
tending to their own existence. And just as the viability of every cell and
every organ is contingent upon the health of the body as a whole, so should the
prosperity of every individual, every family, every people be sought in the
well-being of the entire human race.
- The Universal House of Justice (From a
message dated 2 March 2013 to the Bahá’ís of Iran; compilation: ‘Social
Action’, prepared by the Research Department of the Universal House of Justice,
August 2020; online Baha’i Reference Library of the Baha’i World Center)
