PAPER 81
- DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN CIVILIZATION
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
As these five great racial
groups extensively intermingled, continual mixture tended to
obscure the Andonite type by Sangik hereditary dominance.
The
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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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
The civilization which is
now evolving on Urantia grew out of, and is predicated on,
the following factors:
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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be fostered, whether they
involve language, trade, art, science, competitive play, or
religion.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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but spiritual idealism is the
energy which really uplifts and advances human culture from
one level of attainment to another.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No national civilization
long endures unless its educational methods and religious
ideals inspire a high type of intelligent patriotism and
national devotion.
Page 911
Without this sort of
intelligent patriotism and cultural solidarity, all nations
tend to disintegrate as a result of provincial jealousies
and local self-interests.
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.
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.
High civilizations are
born of the sagacious correlation of material wealth,
intellectual greatness, moral worth, social cleverness, and
cosmic insight.
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.
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.
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.
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.
And it was by these rungs
on the evolutionary ladder that civilization climbed to that
place where those mighty influences could be initiated which
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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.
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.
[Sponsored by an Archangel
of Nebadon.] |