The Urantia Book
PAPER 81
DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN CIVILIZATION
Sponsored by an Archangel of Nebadon.
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.
