PAPER 81
DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN CIVILIZATION
81:0.1 REGARDLESS of the ups and downs of the
miscarriage of the plans for world betterment projected in the missions of
Caligastia and Adam, the basic organic evolution of the human species
continued to carry the races forward in the scale of human progress and racial
development. Evolution can be delayed but it cannot be stopped.
81:0.2 The influence of the violet race, though in
numbers smaller than had been planned, produced an advance in civilization
which, since the days of Adam, has far exceeded the progress of mankind
throughout its entire previous existence of almost a million years.
1. THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION
81:1.1 For about thirty-five thousand years after
the days of Adam, the cradle of civilization was in southwestern Asia,
extending from the Nile valley eastward and slightly to the north across
northern Arabia, through Mesopotamia, and on into Turkestan. And
climate was the decisive factor in the establishment of civilization in
that area.
81:1.2 It was the great climatic and geologic
changes in northern Africa and western Asia that terminated the early
migrations of the Adamites, barring them from Europe by the expanded
Mediterranean and diverting the stream of migration north and east into
Turkestan. By the time of the completion of these land elevations and
associated climatic changes, about 15,000 B.C., civilization had settled down
to a world-wide stalemate except for the cultural ferments and biologic
reserves of the Andites still confined by mountains to the east in Asia and by
the expanding forests in Europe to the west.
81:1.3 Climatic evolution is now about to accomplish
what all other efforts had failed to do, that is, to compel Eurasian man to
abandon hunting for the more advanced callings of herding and farming.
Evolution may be slow, but it is terribly effective.
81:1.4 Since slaves were so generally employed by
the earlier agriculturists, the farmer was formerly looked down on by both the
hunter and the herder. For ages it was considered menial to till the soil;
wherefore the idea that soil toil is a curse, whereas it is the greatest of
all blessings. Even in the days of Cain and Abel the sacrifices of the
pastoral life were held in greater esteem than the offerings of
agriculture.
81:1.5 Man ordinarily evolved into a farmer from a
hunter by transition through the era of the herder, and this was also true
among the Andites, but more often the evolutionary coercion of climatic
necessity would cause whole tribes to pass directly from hunters to successful
farmers. But this phenomenon of passing immediately from hunting to
agriculture only occurred in those regions where there was a high degree of
race mixture with the violet stock.
81:1.6 The evolutionary peoples (notably the
Chinese) early learned to plant seeds and to cultivate crops through
observation of the sprouting of seeds accidentally moistened or which had been
put in graves as food for the departed. But throughout southwest Asia, along
the fertile river bottoms and adjacent plains, the Andites were carrying out
the improved agricultural techniques inherited from their ancestors, who had
made farming and gardening the chief pursuits within the boundaries of the
second garden.
81:1.7 For thousands of years the descendants of
Adam had grown wheat and barley, as improved in the Garden, throughout the
highlands of the upper border of Mesopotamia. The descendants of Adam and
Adamson here met, traded, and socially mingled.
81:1.8 It was these enforced changes in living
conditions which caused such a large proportion of the human race to become
omnivorous in dietetic practice. And the combination of the wheat, rice, and
vegetable diet with the flesh of the herds marked a great forward step in the
health and vigor of these ancient peoples.
2. THE TOOLS OF CIVILIZATION
81:2.1 The growth of culture is predicated upon the
development of the tools of civilization. And the tools which man utilized in
his ascent from savagery were effective just to the extent that they released
man power for the accomplishment of higher tasks.
81:2.2 You who now live amid latter-day scenes of
budding culture and beginning progress in social affairs, who actually have
some little spare time in which to think about society and civilization, must
not overlook the fact that your early ancestors had little or no leisure which
could be devoted to thoughtful reflection and social thinking.
81:2.3 The first four great advances in human
civilization were:
1. The taming of fire.
2. The domestication of animals.
3. The enslavement of captives.
4. Private property.
81:2.4 While fire, the first great discovery,
eventually unlocked the doors of the scientific world, it was of little value
in this regard to primitive man. He refused to recognize natural causes as
explanations for commonplace phenomena.
81:2.5 When asked where fire came from, the simple
story of Andon and the flint was soon replaced by the legend of how some
Prometheus stole it from heaven. The ancients sought a supernatural
explanation for all natural phenomena not within the range of their personal
comprehension; and many moderns continue to do this. The depersonalization of
so-called natural phenomena has required ages, and it is not yet completed.
But the frank, honest, and fearless search for true causes gave birth to
modern science: It turned astrology into astronomy, alchemy into chemistry,
and magic into medicine.
81:2.6 In the premachine age the only way in which
man could accomplish work without doing it himself was to use an animal.
Domestication of animals placed in his hands living tools, the intelligent use
of which prepared the way for both agriculture and transportation. And without
these animals man could not have risen from his primitive estate to the levels
of subsequent civilization.
81:2.7 Most of the animals best suited to
domestication were found in Asia, especially in the central to southwest
regions. This was one reason why civilization progressed faster in that
locality than in other parts of the world. Many of these animals had been
twice before domesticated, and in the Andite age they were retamed once again.
But the dog had remained with the hunters ever since being adopted by the blue
man long, long before.
81:2.8 The Andites of Turkestan were the first
peoples to extensively domesticate the horse, and this is another reason why
their culture was for so long predominant. By 5000 B.C. the Mesopotamian,
Turkestan, and Chinese farmers had begun the raising of sheep, goats, cows,
camels, horses, fowls, and elephants. They employed as beasts of burden the
ox, camel, horse, and yak. Man was himself at one time the beast of burden.
One ruler of the blue race once had one hundred thousand men in his colony of
burden bearers.
81:2.9 The institutions of slavery and private
ownership of land came with agriculture. Slavery raised the master's standard
of living and provided more leisure for social culture.
81:2.10 The savage is a slave to nature, but
scientific civilization is slowly conferring increasing liberty on mankind.
Through animals, fire, wind, water, electricity, and other undiscovered
sources of energy, man has liberated, and will continue to liberate, himself
from the necessity for unremitting toil. Regardless of the transient trouble
produced by the prolific invention of machinery, the ultimate benefits to be
derived from such mechanical inventions are inestimable. Civilization can
never flourish, much less be established, until man has leisure to
think, to plan, to imagine new and better ways of doing things.
81:2.11 Man first simply appropriated his shelter,
lived under ledges or dwelt in caves. Next he adapted such natural materials
as wood and stone to the creation of family huts. Lastly he entered the
creative stage of home building, learned to manufacture brick and other
building materials.
81:2.12 The peoples of the Turkestan highlands were
the first of the more modern races to build their homes of wood, houses not at
all unlike the early log cabins of the American pioneer settlers. Throughout
the plains human dwellings were made of brick; later on, of burned
bricks.
81:2.13 The older river races made their huts by
setting tall poles in the ground in a circle; the tops were then brought
together, making the skeleton frame for the hut, which was interlaced with
transverse reeds, the whole creation resembling a huge inverted basket. This
structure could then be daubed over with clay and, after drying in the sun,
would make a very serviceable weatherproof habitation.
81:2.14 It was from these early huts that the
subsequent idea of all sorts of basket weaving independently originated. Among
one group the idea of making pottery arose from observing the effects of
smearing these pole frameworks with moist clay. The practice of hardening
pottery by baking was discovered when one of these clay-covered primitive huts
accidentally burned. The arts of olden days were many times derived from the
accidental occurrences attendant upon the daily life of early peoples. At
least, this was almost wholly true of the evolutionary progress of mankind up
to the coming of Adam.
81:2.15 While pottery had been first introduced by
the staff of the Prince about one-half million years ago, the making of clay
vessels had practically ceased for over one hundred and fifty thousand years.
Only the gulf coast pre-Sumerian Nodites continued to make clay vessels. The
art of pottery making was revived during Adam's time. The dissemination of
this art was simultaneous with the extension of the desert areas of Africa,
Arabia, and central Asia, and it spread in successive waves of improving
technique from Mesopotamia out over the Eastern Hemisphere.
81:2.16 These civilizations of the Andite age cannot
always be traced by the stages of their pottery or other arts. The smooth
course of human evolution was tremendously complicated by the regimes of both
Dalamatia and Eden. It often occurs that the later vases and implements are
inferior to the earlier products of the purer Andite peoples.
3. CITIES, MANUFACTURE, AND COMMERCE
81:3.1 The climatic destruction of the rich, open
grassland hunting and grazing grounds of Turkestan, beginning about 12,000
B.C., compelled the men of those regions to resort to new forms of industry
and crude manufacturing. Some turned to the cultivation of domesticated
flocks, others became agriculturists or collectors of water-borne food, but
the higher type of Andite intellects chose to engage in trade and manufacture.
It even became the custom for entire tribes to dedicate themselves to the
development of a single industry. From the valley of the Nile to the Hindu
Kush and from the Ganges to the Yellow River, the chief business of the
superior tribes became the cultivation of the soil, with commerce as a side
line.
81:3.2 The increase in trade and in the manufacture
of raw materials into various articles of commerce was directly instrumental
in producing those early and semipeaceful communities which were so
influential in spreading the culture and the arts of civilization. Before the
era of extensive world trade, social communities were tribal -- expanded
family groups. Trade brought into fellowship different sorts of human beings,
thus contributing to a more speedy cross-fertilization of culture.
81:3.3 About twelve thousand years ago the era of
the independent cities was dawning. And these primitive trading and
manufacturing cities were always surrounded by zones of agriculture and cattle
raising. While it is true that industry was promoted by the elevation of the
standards of living, you should have no misconception regarding the
refinements of early urban life. The early races were not overly neat and
clean, and the average primitive community rose from one to two feet every
twenty-five years as the result of the mere accumulation of dirt and trash.
Certain of these olden cities also rose above the surrounding ground very
quickly because their unbaked mud huts were short-lived, and it was the custom
to build new dwellings directly on top of the ruins of the old.
81:3.4 The widespread use of metals was a feature of
this era of the early industrial and trading cities. You have already found a
bronze culture in Turkestan dating before 9000 B.C., and the Andites early
learned to work in iron, gold, and copper, as well. But conditions were very
different away from the more advanced centers of civilization. There were no
distinct periods, such as the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages; all three existed
at the same time in different localities.
81:3.5 Gold was the first metal to be sought by man;
it was easy to work and, at first, was used only as an ornament. Copper was
next employed but not extensively until it was admixed with tin to make the
harder bronze. The discovery of mixing copper and tin to make bronze was made
by one of the Adamsonites of Turkestan whose highland copper mine happened to
be located alongside a tin deposit.
81:3.6 With the appearance of crude manufacture and
beginning industry, commerce quickly became the most potent influence in the
spread of cultural civilization. The opening up of the trade channels by land
and by sea greatly facilitated travel and the mixing of cultures as well as
the blending of civilizations. By 5000 B.C. the horse was in general use
throughout civilized and semicivilized lands. These later races not only had
the domesticated horse but also various sorts of wagons and chariots. Ages
before, the wheel had been used, but now vehicles so equipped became
universally employed both in commerce and war.
81:3.7 The traveling trader and the roving explorer
did more to advance historic civilization than all other influences combined.
Military conquests, colonization, and missionary enterprises fostered by the
later religions were also factors in the spread of culture; but these were all
secondary to the trading relations, which were ever accelerated by the rapidly
developing arts and sciences of industry.
81:3.8 Infusion of the Adamic stock into the human
races not only quickened the pace of civilization, but it also greatly
stimulated their proclivities toward adventure and exploration to the end that
most of Eurasia and northern Africa was presently occupied by the rapidly
multiplying mixed descendants of the Andites.
4. THE MIXED RACES
81:4.1 As contact is made with the dawn of historic
times, all of Eurasia, northern Africa, and the Pacific Islands is overspread
with the composite races of mankind. And these races of today have resulted
from a blending and reblending of the five basic human stocks of
Urantia.
81:4.2 Each of the Urantia races was identified by
certain distinguishing physical characteristics. The Adamites and Nodites were
long-headed; the Andonites were broad-headed. The Sangik races were
medium-headed, with the yellow and blue men tending to broad-headedness. The
blue races, when mixed with the Andonite stock, were decidedly broad-headed.
The secondary Sangiks were medium- to long-headed.
81:4.3 Although these skull dimensions are
serviceable in deciphering racial origins, the skeleton as a whole is far more
dependable. In the early development of the Urantia races there were
originally five distinct types of skeletal structure:
1. Andonic, Urantia aborigines.
2. Primary Sangik, red, yellow, and blue.
3. Secondary Sangik, orange, green, and indigo.
4. Nodites, descendants of the Dalamatians.
5. Adamites, the violet race.
81:4.4 As these five great racial groups extensively
intermingled, continual mixture tended to obscure the Andonite type by Sangik
hereditary dominance. The Lapps and the Eskimos are blends of Andonite and
Sangik-blue races. Their skeletal structures come the nearest to preserving
the aboriginal Andonic type. But the Adamites and the Nodites have become so
admixed with the other races that they can be detected only as a generalized
Caucasoid order.
81:4.5 In general, therefore, as the human remains
of the last twenty thousand years are unearthed, it will be impossible clearly
to distinguish the five original types. Study of such skeletal structures will
disclose that mankind is now divided into approximately three classes:
81:4.6 1. The Caucasoid -- the Andite blend
of the Nodite and Adamic stocks, further modified by primary and (some)
secondary Sangik admixture and by considerable Andonic crossing. The
Occidental white races, together with some Indian and Turanian peoples, are
included in this group. The unifying factor in this division is the greater or
lesser proportion of Andite inheritance.
81:4.7 2. The Mongoloid -- the primary Sangik
type, including the original red, yellow, and blue races. The Chinese and
Amerinds belong to this group. In Europe the Mongoloid type has been modified
by secondary Sangik and Andonic mixture; still more by Andite infusion. The
Malayan and other Indonesian peoples are included in this classification,
though they contain a high percentage of secondary Sangik blood.
81:4.8 3. The Negroid -- the secondary Sangik
type, which originally included the orange, green, and indigo races. This is
the type best illustrated by the Negro, and it will be found through Africa,
India, and Indonesia wherever the secondary Sangik races located.
81:4.9 In North China there is a certain blending of
Caucasoid and Mongoloid types; in the Levant the Caucasoid and Negroid have
intermingled; in India, as in South America, all three types are represented.
And the skeletal characteristics of the three surviving types still persist
and help to identify the later ancestry of present-day human races.
5. CULTURAL SOCIETY
81:5.1 Biologic evolution and cultural civilization
are not necessarily correlated; organic evolution in any age may proceed
unhindered in the very midst of cultural decadence. But when lengthy periods
of human history are surveyed, it will be observed that eventually evolution
and culture become related as cause and effect. Evolution may advance in the
absence of culture, but cultural civilization does not flourish without an
adequate background of antecedent racial progression. Adam and Eve introduced
no art of civilization foreign to the progress of human society, but the
Adamic blood did augment the inherent ability of the races and did accelerate
the pace of economic development and industrial progression. Adam's bestowal
improved the brain power of the races, thereby greatly hastening the processes
of natural evolution.
81:5.2 Through agriculture, animal domestication,
and improved architecture, mankind gradually escaped the worst of the
incessant struggle to live and began to cast about to find wherewith to
sweeten the process of living; and this was the beginning of the striving for
higher and ever higher standards of material comfort. Through manufacture and
industry man is gradually augmenting the pleasure content of mortal
life.
81:5.3 But cultural society is no great and
beneficent club of inherited privilege into which all men are born with free
membership and entire equality. Rather is it an exalted and ever-advancing
guild of earth workers, admitting to its ranks only the nobility of those
toilers who strive to make the world a better place in which their children
and their children's children may live and advance in subsequent ages. And
this guild of civilization exacts costly admission fees, imposes strict and
rigorous disciplines, visits heavy penalties on all dissenters and
nonconformists, while it confers few personal licenses or privileges except
those of enhanced security against common dangers and racial
perils.
81:5.4 Social association is a form of survival
insurance which human beings have learned is profitable; therefore are most
individuals willing to pay those premiums of self-sacrifice and
personal-liberty curtailment which society exacts from its members in return
for this enhanced group protection. In short, the present-day social mechanism
is a trial-and-error insurance plan designed to afford some degree of
assurance and protection against a return to the terrible and antisocial
conditions which characterized the early experiences of the human
race.
81:5.5 Society thus becomes a co-operative scheme
for securing civil freedom through institutions, economic freedom through
capital and invention, social liberty through culture, and freedom from
violence through police regulation.
81:5.6 Might does not make right, but it does
enforce the commonly recognized rights of each succeeding generation. The
prime mission of government is the definition of the right, the just and fair
regulation of class differences, and the enforcement of equality of
opportunity under the rules of law. Every human right is associated with a
social duty; group privilege is an insurance mechanism which unfailingly
demands the full payment of the exacting premiums of group service. And group
rights, as well as those of the individual, must be protected, including the
regulation of the sex propensity.
81:5.7 Liberty subject to group regulation is the
legitimate goal of social evolution. Liberty without restrictions is the vain
and fanciful dream of unstable and flighty human minds.
6. THE MAINTENANCE OF CIVILIZATION
81:6.1 While biologic evolution has proceeded ever
upward, much of cultural evolution went out from the Euphrates valley in
waves, which successively weakened as time passed until finally the whole of
the pure-line Adamic posterity had gone forth to enrich the civilizations of
Asia and Europe. The races did not fully blend, but their civilizations did to
a considerable extent mix. Culture did slowly spread throughout the world. And
this civilization must be maintained and fostered, for there exist today no
new sources of culture, no Andites to invigorate and stimulate the slow
progress of the evolution of civilization.
81:6.2 The civilization which is now evolving on
Urantia grew out of, and is predicated on, the following factors:
81:6.3 1. Natural circumstances. The nature
and extent of a material civilization is in large measure determined by the
natural resources available. Climate, weather, and numerous physical
conditions are factors in the evolution of culture.
81:6.4 At the opening of the Andite era there were
only two extensive and fertile open hunting areas in all the world. One was in
North America and was overspread by the Amerinds; the other was to the north
of Turkestan and was partly occupied by an Andonic-yellow race. The decisive
factors in the evolution of a superior culture in southwestern Asia were race
and climate. The Andites were a great people, but the crucial factor in
determining the course of their civilization was the increasing aridity of
Iran, Turkestan, and Sinkiang, which forced them to invent and adopt new and
advanced methods of wresting a livelihood from their decreasingly fertile
lands.
81:6.5 The configuration of continents and other
land-arrangement situations are very influential in determining peace or war.
Very few Urantians have ever had such a favorable opportunity for continuous
and unmolested development as has been enjoyed by the peoples of North America
-- protected on practically all sides by vast oceans.
81:6.6 2. Capital goods. Culture is never
developed under conditions of poverty; leisure is essential to the progress of
civilization. Individual character of moral and spiritual value may be
acquired in the absence of material wealth, but a cultural civilization is
only derived from those conditions of material prosperity which foster leisure
combined with ambition.
81:6.7 During primitive times life on Urantia was a
serious and sober business. And it was to escape this incessant struggle and
interminable toil that mankind constantly tended to drift toward the
salubrious climate of the tropics. While these warmer zones of habitation
afforded some remission from the intense struggle for existence, the races and
tribes who thus sought ease seldom utilized their unearned leisure for the
advancement of civilization. Social progress has invariably come from the
thoughts and plans of those races that have, by their intelligent toil,
learned how to wrest a living from the land with lessened effort and shortened
days of labor and thus have been able to enjoy a well-earned and profitable
margin of leisure.
81:6.8 3. Scientific knowledge. The material
aspects of civilization must always await the accumulation of scientific data.
It was a long time after the discovery of the bow and arrow and the
utilization of animals for power purposes before man learned how to harness
wind and water, to be followed by the employment of steam and electricity. But
slowly the tools of civilization improved. Weaving, pottery, the domestication
of animals, and metalworking were followed by an age of writing and
printing.
81:6.9 Knowledge is power. Invention always precedes
the acceleration of cultural development on a world-wide scale. Science and
invention benefited most of all from the printing press, and the interaction
of all these cultural and inventive activities has enormously accelerated the
rate of cultural advancement.
81:6.10 Science teaches man to speak the new
language of mathematics and trains his thoughts along lines of exacting
precision. And science also stabilizes philosophy through the elimination of
error, while it purifies religion by the destruction of superstition.
81:6.11 4. Human resources. Man power is
indispensable to the spread of civilization. All things equal, a numerous
people will dominate the civilization of a smaller race. Hence failure to
increase in numbers up to a certain point prevents the full realization of
national destiny, but there comes a point in population increase where further
growth is suicidal. Multiplication of numbers beyond the optimum of the normal
man-land ratio means either a lowering of the standards of living or an
immediate expansion of territorial boundaries by peaceful penetration or by
military conquest, forcible occupation.
81:6.12 You are sometimes shocked at the ravages of
war, but you should recognize the necessity for producing large numbers of
mortals so as to afford ample opportunity for social and moral development;
with such planetary fertility there soon occurs the serious problem of
overpopulation. Most of the inhabited worlds are small. Urantia is average,
perhaps a trifle undersized. The optimum stabilization of national population
enhances culture and prevents war. And it is a wise nation which knows when to
cease growing.
81:6.13 But the continent richest in natural
deposits and the most advanced mechanical equipment will make little progress
if the intelligence of its people is on the decline. Knowledge can be had by
education, but wisdom, which is indispensable to true culture, can be secured
only through experience and by men and women who are innately intelligent.
Such a people are able to learn from experience; they may become truly wise.
81:6.14 5. Effectiveness of material
resources. Much depends on the wisdom displayed in the utilization of
natural resources, scientific knowledge, capital goods, and human potentials.
The chief factor in early civilization was the force exerted by wise
social masters; primitive man had civilization literally thrust upon him by
his superior contemporaries. Well-organized and superior minorities have
largely ruled this world.
81:6.15 Might does not make right, but might does
make what is and what has been in history. Only recently has Urantia reached
that point where society is willing to debate the ethics of might and right.
81:6.16 6. Effectiveness of language. The
spread of civilization must wait upon language. Live and growing languages
insure the expansion of civilized thinking and planning. During the early ages
important advances were made in language. Today, there is great need for
further linguistic development to facilitate the expression of evolving
thought.
81:6.17 Language evolved out of group associations,
each local group developing its own system of word exchange. Language grew up
through gestures, signs, cries, imitative sounds, intonation, and accent to
the vocalization of subsequent alphabets. Language is man's greatest and most
serviceable thinking tool, but it never flourished until social groups
acquired some leisure. The tendency to play with language develops new words
-- slang. If the majority adopt the slang, then usage constitutes it language.
The origin of dialects is illustrated by the indulgence in "baby talk" in a
family group.
81:6.18 Language differences have ever been the
great barrier to the extension of peace. The conquest of dialects must precede
the spread of a culture throughout a race, over a continent, or to a whole
world. A universal language promotes peace, insures culture, and augments
happiness. Even when the tongues of a world are reduced to a few, the mastery
of these by the leading cultural peoples mightily influences the achievement
of world-wide peace and prosperity.
81:6.19 While very little progress has been made on
Urantia toward developing an international language, much has been
accomplished by the establishment of international commercial exchange. And
all these international relations should be fostered, whether they involve
language, trade, art, science, competitive play, or religion.
81:6.20 7. Effectiveness of mechanical
devices. The progress of civilization is directly related to the
development and possession of tools, machines, and channels of distribution.
Improved tools, ingenious and efficient machines, determine the survival of
contending groups in the arena of advancing civilization.
81:6.21 In the early days the only energy applied to
land cultivation was man power. It was a long struggle to substitute oxen for
men since this threw men out of employment. Latterly, machines have begun to
displace men, and every such advance is directly contributory to the progress
of society because it liberates man power for the accomplishment of more
valuable tasks.
81:6.22 Science, guided by wisdom, may become man's
great social liberator. A mechanical age can prove disastrous only to a nation
whose intellectual level is too low to discover those wise methods and sound
techniques for successfully adjusting to the transition difficulties arising
from the sudden loss of employment by large numbers consequent upon the too
rapid invention of new types of laborsaving machinery.
81:6.23 8. Character of torchbearers. Social
inheritance enables man to stand on the shoulders of all who have preceded
him, and who have contributed aught to the sum of culture and knowledge. In
this work of passing on the cultural torch to the next generation, the home
will ever be the basic institution. The play and social life comes next, with
the school last but equally indispensable in a complex and highly organized
society.
81:6.24 Insects are born fully educated and equipped
for life -- indeed, a very narrow and purely instinctive existence. The human
baby is born without an education; therefore man possesses the power, by
controlling the educational training of the younger generation, greatly to
modify the evolutionary course of civilization.
81:6.25 The greatest twentieth-century influences
contributing to the furtherance of civilization and the advancement of culture
are the marked increase in world travel and the unparalleled improvements in
methods of communication. But the improvement in education has not kept pace
with the expanding social structure; neither has the modern appreciation of
ethics developed in correspondence with growth along more purely intellectual
and scientific lines. And modern civilization is at a standstill in spiritual
development and the safeguarding of the home institution.
81:6.26 9. The racial ideals. The ideals of
one generation carve out the channels of destiny for immediate posterity. The
quality of the social torchbearers will determine whether civilization
goes forward or backward. The homes, churches, and schools of one generation
predetermine the character trend of the succeeding generation. The moral and
spiritual momentum of a race or a nation largely determines the cultural
velocity of that civilization.
81:6.27 Ideals elevate the source of the social
stream. And no stream will rise any higher than its source no matter what
technique of pressure or directional control may be employed. The driving
power of even the most material aspects of a cultural civilization is resident
in the least material of society's achievements. Intelligence may control the
mechanism of civilization, wisdom may direct it, but spiritual idealism is the
energy which really uplifts and advances human culture from one level of
attainment to another.
81:6.28 At first life was a struggle for existence;
now, for a standard of living; next it will be for quality of thinking, the
coming earthly goal of human existence.
81:6.29 10. Co-ordination of specialists.
Civilization has been enormously advanced by the early division of labor and
by its later corollary of specialization. Civilization is now dependent on the
effective co-ordination of specialists. As society expands, some method of
drawing together the various specialists must be found.
81:6.30 Social, artistic, technical, and industrial
specialists will continue to multiply and increase in skill and dexterity. And
this diversification of ability and dissimilarity of employment will
eventually weaken and disintegrate human society if effective means of
co-ordination and co-operation are not developed. But the intelligence which
is capable of such inventiveness and such specialization should be wholly
competent to devise adequate methods of control and adjustment for all
problems resulting from the rapid growth of invention and the accelerated pace
of cultural expansion.
81:6.31 11. Place-finding devices. The next
age of social development will be embodied in a better and more effective
co-operation and co-ordination of ever-increasing and expanding
specialization. And as labor more and more diversifies, some technique for
directing individuals to suitable employment must be devised. Machinery is not
the only cause for unemployment among the civilized peoples of Urantia.
Economic complexity and the steady increase of industrial and professional
specialism add to the problems of labor placement.
81:6.32 It is not enough to train men for work; in a
complex society there must also be provided efficient methods of place
finding. Before training citizens in the highly specialized techniques of
earning a living, they should be trained in one or more methods of commonplace
labor, trades or callings which could be utilized when they were transiently
unemployed in their specialized work. No civilization can survive the
long-time harboring of large classes of unemployed. In time, even the best of
citizens will become distorted and demoralized by accepting support from the
public treasury. Even private charity becomes pernicious when long extended to
able-bodied citizens.
81:6.33 Such a highly specialized society will not
take kindly to the ancient communal and feudal practices of olden peoples.
True, many common services can be acceptably and profitably socialized, but
highly trained and ultraspecialized human beings can best be managed by some
technique of intelligent co-operation. Modernized co-ordination and fraternal
regulation will be productive of longer-lived co-operation than will the older
and more primitive methods of communism or dictatorial regulative institutions
based on force.
81:6.34 12. The willingness to co-operate.
One of the great hindrances to the progress of human society is the conflict
between the interests and welfare of the larger, more socialized human groups
and of the smaller, contrary-minded asocial associations of mankind, not to
mention antisocially-minded single individuals.
81:6.35 No national civilization long endures unless
its educational methods and religious ideals inspire a high type of
intelligent patriotism and national devotion. Without this sort of intelligent
patriotism and cultural solidarity, all nations tend to disintegrate as a
result of provincial jealousies and local self-interests.
81:6.36 The maintenance of world-wide civilization
is dependent on human beings learning how to live together in peace and
fraternity. Without effective co-ordination, industrial civilization is
jeopardized by the dangers of ultraspecialization: monotony, narrowness, and
the tendency to breed distrust and jealousy.
81:6.37 13. Effective and wise leadership. In
civilization much, very much, depends on an enthusiastic and effective
load-pulling spirit. Ten men are of little more value than one in lifting a
great load unless they lift together -- all at the same moment. And such
teamwork -- social co-operation -- is dependent on leadership. The cultural
civilizations of the past and the present have been based upon the intelligent
co-operation of the citizenry with wise and progressive leaders; and until man
evolves to higher levels, civilization will continue to be dependent on wise
and vigorous leadership.
81:6.38 High civilizations are born of the sagacious
correlation of material wealth, intellectual greatness, moral worth, social
cleverness, and cosmic insight.
81:6.39 14. Social changes. Society is not a
divine institution; it is a phenomenon of progressive evolution; and advancing
civilization is always delayed when its leaders are slow in making those
changes in the social organization which are essential to keeping pace with
the scientific developments of the age. For all that, things must not be
despised just because they are old, neither should an idea be unconditionally
embraced just because it is novel and new.
81:6.40 Man should be unafraid to experiment with
the mechanisms of society. But always should these adventures in cultural
adjustment be controlled by those who are fully conversant with the history of
social evolution; and always should these innovators be counseled by the
wisdom of those who have had practical experience in the domains of
contemplated social or economic experiment. No great social or economic
change should be attempted suddenly. Time is essential to all types of
human adjustment -- physical, social, or economic. Only moral and spiritual
adjustments can be made on the spur of the moment, and even these require the
passing of time for the full outworking of their material and social
repercussions. The ideals of the race are the chief support and assurance
during the critical times when civilization is in transit from one level to
another.
81:6.41 15. The prevention of transitional
breakdown. Society is the offspring of age upon age of trial and error; it
is what survived the selective adjustments and readjustments in the successive
stages of mankind's agelong rise from animal to human levels of planetary
status. The great danger to any civilization -- at any one moment -- is the
threat of breakdown during the time of transition from the established methods
of the past to those new and better, but untried, procedures of the
future.
81:6.42 Leadership is vital to progress. Wisdom,
insight, and foresight are indispensable to the endurance of nations.
Civilization is never really jeopardized until able leadership begins to
vanish. And the quantity of such wise leadership has never exceeded one per
cent of the population.
81:6.43 And it was by these rungs on the
evolutionary ladder that civilization climbed to that place where those mighty
influences could be initiated which have culminated in the rapidly expanding
culture of the twentieth century. And only by adherence to these essentials
can man hope to maintain his present-day civilizations while providing for
their continued development and certain survival.
81:6.44 This is the gist of the long, long struggle
of the peoples of earth to establish civilization since the age of Adam.
Present-day culture is the net result of this strenuous evolution. Before the
discovery of printing, progress was relatively slow since one generation could
not so rapidly benefit from the achievements of its predecessors. But now
human society is plunging forward under the force of the accumulated momentum
of all the ages through which civilization has struggled.
81:6.45 Sponsored
by an Archangel of Nebadon.
