PAPER 68
THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION
68:0.1 THIS is the beginning of the narrative of the
long, long forward struggle of the human species from a status that was little
better than an animal existence, through the intervening ages, and down to the
later times when a real, though imperfect, civilization had evolved among the
higher races of mankind.
68:0.2 Civilization is a racial acquirement; it is
not biologically inherent; hence must all children be reared in an environment
of culture, while each succeeding generation of youth must receive anew its
education. The superior qualities of civilization -- scientific, philosophic,
and religious -- are not transmitted from one generation to another by direct
inheritance. These cultural achievements are preserved only by the enlightened
conservation of social inheritance.
68:0.3 Social evolution of the co-operative order
was initiated by the Dalamatia teachers, and for three hundred thousand years
mankind was nurtured in the idea of group activities. The blue man most of all
profited by these early social teachings, the red man to some extent, and the
black man least of all. In more recent times the yellow race and the white
race have presented the most advanced social development on Urantia.
1. PROTECTIVE SOCIALIZATION
68:1.1 When brought closely together, men often
learn to like one another, but primitive man was not naturally overflowing
with the spirit of brotherly feeling and the desire for social contact with
his fellows. Rather did the early races learn by sad experience that "in union
there is strength"; and it is this lack of natural brotherly attraction that
now stands in the way of immediate realization of the brotherhood of man on
Urantia.
68:1.2 Association early became the price of
survival. The lone man was helpless unless he bore a tribal mark which
testified that he belonged to a group which would certainly avenge any assault
made upon him. Even in the days of Cain it was fatal to go abroad alone
without some mark of group association. Civilization has become man's
insurance against violent death, while the premiums are paid by submission to
society's numerous law demands.
68:1.3 Primitive society was thus founded on the
reciprocity of necessity and on the enhanced safety of association. And human
society has evolved in agelong cycles as a result of this isolation fear and
by means of reluctant co-operation.
68:1.4 Primitive human beings early learned that
groups are vastly greater and stronger than the mere sum of their individual
units. One hundred men united and working in unison can move a great stone; a
score of well-trained guardians of the peace can restrain an angry mob. And so
society was born, not of mere association of numbers, but rather as a result
of the organization of intelligent co-operators. But co-operation is not a
natural trait of man; he learns to co-operate first through fear and then
later because he discovers it is most beneficial in meeting the difficulties
of time and guarding against the supposed perils of eternity.
68:1.5 The peoples who thus early organized
themselves into a primitive society became more successful in their attacks on
nature as well as in defense against their fellows; they possessed greater
survival possibilities; hence has civilization steadily progressed on Urantia,
notwithstanding its many setbacks. And it is only because of the enhancement
of survival value in association that man's many blunders have thus far failed
to stop or destroy human civilization.
68:1.6 That contemporary cultural society is a
rather recent phenomenon is well shown by the present-day survival of such
primitive social conditions as characterize the Australian natives and the
Bushmen and Pygmies of Africa. Among these backward peoples may be observed
something of the early group hostility, personal suspicion, and other highly
antisocial traits which were so characteristic of all primitive races. These
miserable remnants of the nonsocial peoples of ancient times bear eloquent
testimony to the fact that the natural individualistic tendency of man cannot
successfully compete with the more potent and powerful organizations and
associations of social progression. These backward and suspicious antisocial
races that speak a different dialect every forty or fifty miles illustrate
what a world you might now be living in but for the combined teaching of the
corporeal staff of the Planetary Prince and the later labors of the Adamic
group of racial uplifters.
68:1.7 The modern phrase, "back to nature," is a
delusion of ignorance, a belief in the reality of the onetime fictitious
"golden age." The only basis for the legend of the golden age is the historic
fact of Dalamatia and Eden. But these improved societies were far from the
realization of utopian dreams.
2. FACTORS IN SOCIAL PROGRESSION
68:2.1 Civilized society is the result of man's
early efforts to overcome his dislike of isolation. But this does not
necessarily signify mutual affection, and the present turbulent state of
certain primitive groups well illustrates what the early tribes came up
through. But though the individuals of a civilization may collide with each
other and struggle against one another, and though civilization itself may
appear to be an inconsistent mass of striving and struggling, it does evidence
earnest striving, not the deadly monotony of stagnation.
68:2.2 While the level of intelligence has
contributed considerably to the rate of cultural progress, society is
essentially designed to lessen the risk element in the individual's mode of
living, and it has progressed just as fast as it has succeeded in lessening
pain and increasing the pleasure element in life. Thus does the whole social
body push on slowly toward the goal of destiny -- extinction or survival --
depending on whether that goal is self-maintenance or self-gratification.
Self-maintenance originates society, while excessive self-gratification
destroys civilization.
68:2.3 Society is concerned with self-perpetuation,
self-maintenance, and self-gratification, but human self-realization is worthy
of becoming the immediate goal of many cultural groups.
68:2.4 The herd instinct in natural man is hardly
sufficient to account for the development of such a social organization as now
exists on Urantia. Though this innate gregarious propensity lies at the bottom
of human society, much of man's sociability is an acquirement. Two great
influences which contributed to the early association of human beings were
food hunger and sex love; these instinctive urges man shares with the animal
world. Two other emotions which drove human beings together and held them
together were vanity and fear, more particularly ghost fear.
68:2.5 History is but the record of man's agelong
food struggle. Primitive man only thought when he was hungry; food
saving was his first self-denial, self-discipline. With the growth of society,
food hunger ceased to be the only incentive for mutual association. Numerous
other sorts of hunger, the realization of various needs, all led to the closer
association of mankind. But today society is top-heavy with the overgrowth of
supposed human needs. Occidental civilization of the twentieth century groans
wearily under the tremendous overload of luxury and the inordinate
multiplication of human desires and longings. Modern society is enduring the
strain of one of its most dangerous phases of far-flung interassociation and
highly complicated interdependence.
68:2.6 Hunger, vanity, and ghost fear were
continuous in their social pressure, but sex gratification was transient and
spasmodic. The sex urge alone did not impel primitive men and women to assume
the heavy burdens of home maintenance. The early home was founded upon the sex
restlessness of the male when deprived of frequent gratification and upon that
devoted mother love of the human female, which in measure she shares with the
females of all the higher animals. The presence of a helpless baby determined
the early differentiation of male and female activities; the woman had to
maintain a settled residence where she could cultivate the soil. And from
earliest times, where woman was has always been regarded as the
home.
68:2.7 Woman thus early became indispensable to the
evolving social scheme, not so much because of the fleeting sex passion as in
consequence of food requirement; she was an essential partner in
self-maintenance. She was a food provider, a beast of burden, and a companion
who would stand great abuse without violent resentment, and in addition to all
of these desirable traits, she was an ever-present means of sex
gratification.
68:2.8 Almost everything of lasting value in
civilization has its roots in the family. The family was the first successful
peace group, the man and woman learning how to adjust their antagonisms while
at the same time teaching the pursuits of peace to their children.
68:2.9 The function of marriage in evolution is the
insurance of race survival, not merely the realization of personal happiness;
self-maintenance and self-perpetuation are the real objects of the home.
Self-gratification is incidental and not essential except as an incentive
insuring sex association. Nature demands survival, but the arts of
civilization continue to increase the pleasures of marriage and the
satisfactions of family life.
68:2.10 If vanity be enlarged to cover pride,
ambition, and honor, then we may discern not only how these propensities
contribute to the formation of human associations, but how they also hold men
together, since such emotions are futile without an audience to parade before.
Soon vanity associated with itself other emotions and impulses which required
a social arena wherein they might exhibit and gratify themselves. This group
of emotions gave origin to the early beginnings of all art, ceremonial, and
all forms of sportive games and contests.
68:2.11 Vanity contributed mightily to the birth of
society; but at the time of these revelations the devious strivings of a
vainglorious generation threaten to swamp and submerge the whole complicated
structure of a highly specialized civilization. Pleasure-want has long since
superseded hunger-want; the legitimate social aims of self-maintenance are
rapidly translating themselves into base and threatening forms of
self-gratification. Self-maintenance builds society; unbridled
self-gratification unfailingly destroys civilization.
3. SOCIALIZING INFLUENCE OF GHOST FEAR
68:3.1 Primitive desires produced the original
society, but ghost fear held it together and imparted an extrahuman aspect to
its existence. Common fear was physiological in origin: fear of physical pain,
unsatisfied hunger, or some earthly calamity; but ghost fear was a new and
sublime sort of terror.
68:3.2 Probably the greatest single factor in the
evolution of human society was the ghost dream. Although most dreams greatly
perturbed the primitive mind, the ghost dream actually terrorized early men,
driving these superstitious dreamers into each other's arms in willing and
earnest association for mutual protection against the vague and unseen
imaginary dangers of the spirit world. The ghost dream was one of the earliest
appearing differences between the animal and human types of mind. Animals do
not visualize survival after death.
68:3.3 Except for this ghost factor, all society was
founded on fundamental needs and basic biologic urges. But ghost fear
introduced a new factor in civilization, a fear which reaches out and away
from the elemental needs of the individual, and which rises far above even the
struggles to maintain the group. The dread of the departed spirits of the dead
brought to light a new and amazing form of fear, an appalling and powerful
terror, which contributed to whipping the loose social orders of early ages
into the more thoroughly disciplined and better controlled primitive groups of
ancient times. This senseless superstition, some of which still persists,
prepared the minds of men, through superstitious fear of the unreal and the
supernatural, for the later discovery of "the fear of the Lord which is the
beginning of wisdom." The baseless fears of evolution are designed to be
supplanted by the awe for Deity inspired by revelation. The early cult of
ghost fear became a powerful social bond, and ever since that far-distant day
mankind has been striving more or less for the attainment of spirituality.
68:3.4 Hunger and love drove men together; vanity
and ghost fear held them together. But these emotions alone, without the
influence of peace-promoting revelations, are unable to endure the strain of
the suspicions and irritations of human interassociations. Without help from
superhuman sources the strain of society breaks down upon reaching certain
limits, and these very influences of social mobilization -- hunger, love,
vanity, and fear -- conspire to plunge mankind into war and
bloodshed.
68:3.5 The peace tendency of the human race is not a
natural endowment; it is derived from the teachings of revealed religion, from
the accumulated experience of the progressive races, but more especially from
the teachings of Jesus, the Prince of Peace.
4. EVOLUTION OF THE MORES
68:4.1 All modern social institutions arise from the
evolution of the primitive customs of your savage ancestors; the conventions
of today are the modified and expanded customs of yesterday. What habit is to
the individual, custom is to the group; and group customs develop into
folkways or tribal traditions -- mass conventions. From these early beginnings
all of the institutions of present-day human society take their humble
origin.
68:4.2 It must be borne in mind that the mores
originated in an effort to adjust group living to the conditions of mass
existence; the mores were man's first social institution. And all of these
tribal reactions grew out of the effort to avoid pain and humiliation while at
the same time seeking to enjoy pleasure and power. The origin of folkways,
like the origin of languages, is always unconscious and unintentional and
therefore always shrouded in mystery.
68:4.3 Ghost fear drove primitive man to envision
the supernatural and thus securely laid the foundations for those powerful
social influences of ethics and religion which in turn preserved inviolate the
mores and customs of society from generation to generation. The one thing
which early established and crystallized the mores was the belief that the
dead were jealous of the ways by which they had lived and died; therefore
would they visit dire punishment upon those living mortals who dared to treat
with careless disdain the rules of living which they had honored when in the
flesh. All this is best illustrated by the present reverence of the yellow
race for their ancestors. Later developing primitive religion greatly
reinforced ghost fear in stabilizing the mores, but advancing civilization has
increasingly liberated mankind from the bondage of fear and the slavery of
superstition.
68:4.4 Prior to the liberating and liberalizing
instruction of the Dalamatia teachers, ancient man was held a helpless victim
of the ritual of the mores; the primitive savage was hedged about by an
endless ceremonial. Everything he did from the time of awakening in the
morning to the moment he fell asleep in his cave at night had to be done just
so -- in accordance with the folkways of the tribe. He was a slave to the
tyranny of usage; his life contained nothing free, spontaneous, or original.
There was no natural progress toward a higher mental, moral, or social
existence.
68:4.5 Early man was mightily gripped by custom; the
savage was a veritable slave to usage; but there have arisen ever and anon
those variations from type who have dared to inaugurate new ways of thinking
and improved methods of living. Nevertheless, the inertia of primitive man
constitutes the biologic safety brake against precipitation too suddenly into
the ruinous maladjustment of a too rapidly advancing civilization.
68:4.6 But these customs are not an unmitigated
evil; their evolution should continue. It is nearly fatal to the continuance
of civilization to undertake their wholesale modification by radical
revolution. Custom has been the thread of continuity which has held
civilization together. The path of human history is strewn with the remnants
of discarded customs and obsolete social practices; but no civilization has
endured which abandoned its mores except for the adoption of better and more
fit customs.
68:4.7 The survival of a society depends chiefly on
the progressive evolution of its mores. The process of custom evolution grows
out of the desire for experimentation; new ideas are put forward --
competition ensues. A progressing civilization embraces the progressive idea
and endures; time and circumstance finally select the fitter group for
survival. But this does not mean that each separate and isolated change in the
composition of human society has been for the better. No! indeed no! for there
have been many, many retrogressions in the long forward struggle of Urantia
civilization.
5. LAND TECHNIQUES -- MAINTENANCE ARTS
68:5.1 Land is the stage of society; men are the
actors. And man must ever adjust his performances to conform to the land
situation. The evolution of the mores is always dependent on the land-man
ratio. This is true notwithstanding the difficulty of its discernment. Man's
land technique, or maintenance arts, plus his standards of living, equal the
sum total of the folkways, the mores. And the sum of man's adjustment to the
life demands equals his cultural civilization.
68:5.2 The earliest human cultures arose along the
rivers of the Eastern Hemisphere, and there were four great steps in the
forward march of civilization. They were:
68:5.3 1. The collection stage. Food
coercion, hunger, led to the first form of industrial organization, the
primitive food-gathering lines. Sometimes such a line of hunger march would be
ten miles long as it passed over the land gleaning food. This was the
primitive nomadic stage of culture and is the mode of life now followed by the
African Bushmen.
68:5.4 2. The hunting stage. The invention of
weapon tools enabled man to become a hunter and thus to gain considerable
freedom from food slavery. A thoughtful Andonite who had severely bruised his
fist in a serious combat rediscovered the idea of using a long stick for his
arm and a piece of hard flint, bound on the end with sinews, for his fist.
Many tribes made independent discoveries of this sort, and these various forms
of hammers represented one of the great forward steps in human civilization.
Today some Australian natives have progressed little beyond this
stage.
68:5.5 The blue men became expert hunters and
trappers; by fencing the rivers they caught fish in great numbers, drying the
surplus for winter use. Many forms of ingenious snares and traps were employed
in catching game, but the more primitive races did not hunt the larger
animals.
68:5.6 3. The pastoral stage. This phase of
civilization was made possible by the domestication of animals. The Arabs and
the natives of Africa are among the more recent pastoral peoples.
68:5.7 Pastoral living afforded further relief from
food slavery; man learned to live on the interest of his capital, the increase
in his flocks; and this provided more leisure for culture and
progress.
68:5.8 Prepastoral society was one of sex
co-operation, but the spread of animal husbandry reduced women to the depths
of social slavery. In earlier times it was man's duty to secure the animal
food, woman's business to provide the vegetable edibles. Therefore, when man
entered the pastoral era of his existence, woman's dignity fell greatly. She
must still toil to produce the vegetable necessities of life, whereas the man
need only go to his herds to provide an abundance of animal food. Man thus
became relatively independent of woman; throughout the entire pastoral age
woman's status steadily declined. By the close of this era she had become
scarcely more than a human animal, consigned to work and to bear human
offspring, much as the animals of the herd were expected to labor and bring
forth young. The men of the pastoral ages had great love for their cattle; all
the more pity they could not have developed a deeper affection for their
wives.
68:5.9 4. The agricultural stage. This era
was brought about by the domestication of plants, and it represents the
highest type of material civilization. Both Caligastia and Adam endeavored to
teach horticulture and agriculture. Adam and Eve were gardeners, not
shepherds, and gardening was an advanced culture in those days. The growing of
plants exerts an ennobling influence on all races of mankind.
68:5.10 Agriculture more than quadrupled the
land-man ratio of the world. It may be combined with the pastoral pursuits of
the former cultural stage. When the three stages overlap, men hunt and women
till the soil.
68:5.11 There has always been friction between the
herders and the tillers of the soil. The hunter and herder were militant,
warlike; the agriculturist is a more peace-loving type. Association with
animals suggests struggle and force; association with plants instills
patience, quiet, and peace. Agriculture and industrialism are the activities
of peace. But the weakness of both, as world social activities, is that they
lack excitement and adventure.
68:5.12 Human society has evolved from the hunting
stage through that of the herders to the territorial stage of agriculture. And
each stage of this progressive civilization was accompanied by less and less
of nomadism; more and more man began to live at home.
68:5.13 And now is industry supplementing
agriculture, with consequently increased urbanization and multiplication of
nonagricultural groups of citizenship classes. But an industrial era cannot
hope to survive if its leaders fail to recognize that even the highest social
developments must ever rest upon a sound agricultural basis.
6. EVOLUTION OF CULTURE
68:6.1 Man is a creature of the soil, a child of
nature; no matter how earnestly he may try to escape from the land, in the
last reckoning he is certain to fail. "Dust you are and to dust shall you
return" is literally true of all mankind. The basic struggle of man was, and
is, and ever shall be, for land. The first social associations of primitive
human beings were for the purpose of winning these land struggles. The
land-man ratio underlies all social civilization.
68:6.2 Man's intelligence, by means of the arts and
sciences, increased the land yield; at the same time the natural increase in
offspring was somewhat brought under control, and thus was provided the
sustenance and leisure to build a cultural civilization.
68:6.3 Human society is controlled by a law which
decrees that the population must vary directly in accordance with the land
arts and inversely with a given standard of living. Throughout these early
ages, even more than at present, the law of supply and demand as concerned men
and land determined the estimated value of both. During the times of plentiful
land -- unoccupied territory -- the need for men was great, and therefore the
value of human life was much enhanced; hence the loss of life was more
horrifying. During periods of land scarcity and associated overpopulation,
human life became comparatively cheapened so that war, famine, and pestilence
were regarded with less concern.
68:6.4 When the land yield is reduced or the
population is increased, the inevitable struggle is renewed; the very worst
traits of human nature are brought to the surface. The improvement of the land
yield, the extension of the mechanical arts, and the reduction of population
all tend to foster the development of the better side of human nature.
68:6.5 Frontier society develops the unskilled side
of humanity; the fine arts and true scientific progress, together with
spiritual culture, have all thrived best in the larger centers of life when
supported by an agricultural and industrial population slightly under the
land-man ratio. Cities always multiply the power of their inhabitants for
either good or evil.
68:6.6 The size of the family has always been
influenced by the standards of living. The higher the standard the smaller the
family, up to the point of established status or gradual
extinction.
68:6.7 All down through the ages the standards of
living have determined the quality of a surviving population in contrast with
mere quantity. Local class standards of living give origin to new social
castes, new mores. When standards of living become too complicated or too
highly luxurious, they speedily become suicidal. Caste is the direct result of
the high social pressure of keen competition produced by dense
populations.
68:6.8 The early races often resorted to practices
designed to restrict population; all primitive tribes killed deformed and
sickly children. Girl babies were frequently killed before the times of wife
purchase. Children were sometimes strangled at birth, but the favorite method
was exposure. The father of twins usually insisted that one be killed since
multiple births were believed to be caused either by magic or by infidelity.
As a rule, however, twins of the same sex were spared. While these taboos on
twins were once well-nigh universal, they were never a part of the Andonite
mores; these peoples always regarded twins as omens of good luck.
68:6.9 Many races learned the technique of abortion,
and this practice became very common after the establishment of the taboo on
childbirth among the unmarried. It was long the custom for a maiden to kill
her offspring, but among more civilized groups these illegitimate children
became the wards of the girl's mother. Many primitive clans were virtually
exterminated by the practice of both abortion and infanticide. But regardless
of the dictates of the mores, very few children were ever destroyed after
having once been suckled -- maternal affection is too strong.
68:6.10 Even in the twentieth century there persist
remnants of these primitive population controls. There is a tribe in Australia
whose mothers refuse to rear more than two or three children. Not long since,
one cannibalistic tribe ate every fifth child born. In Madagascar some tribes
still destroy all children born on certain unlucky days, resulting in the
death of about twenty-five per cent of all babies.
68:6.11 From a world standpoint, overpopulation has
never been a serious problem in the past, but if war is lessened and science
increasingly controls human diseases, it may become a serious problem in the
near future. At such a time the great test of the wisdom of world leadership
will present itself. Will Urantia rulers have the insight and courage to
foster the multiplication of the average or stabilized human being instead of
the extremes of the supernormal and the enormously increasing groups of the
subnormal? The normal man should be fostered; he is the backbone of
civilization and the source of the mutant geniuses of the race. The subnormal
man should be kept under society's control; no more should be produced than
are required to administer the lower levels of industry, those tasks requiring
intelligence above the animal level but making such low-grade demands as to
prove veritable slavery and bondage for the higher types of
mankind.
68:6.12 Presented
by a Melchizedek sometime stationed on Urantia.
