The best beloved of all things

Collective trusteeship provides a lofty goal in the realization of justice. It calls for a careful analysis of our individual choices, community norms, and societal institutions and structures. It has implications for human rights, in terms of the obligations of the broader community to provide certain basic fundamentals to ensure the health and well-being of its individual members; for economics and development, as a spiritually-impelled antidote to the growing chasm between the extremely wealthy and the destitute; for national sovereignty, in rethinking the limited loyalties that keep nations at odds with each other and prevent them from taking actions for the common good; and for environmental sustainability, because trusteeship applies not just in geographic terms but also inter-generationally, requiring that we take future generations into account in our use of resources (Baha’i International Community, 1995, 2010, 2012; Karlberg, 2010, 2012; Weinberg, 1998)... Full text published in Contemporary Justice Review, 16, 341-350. doi: 10.1080/10282580.2013.828916