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The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
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.
*
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