The Dawn of Civilization

68:2.1Civ­i­lized so­ci­ety is the re­sult of man’s early ef­forts to over­come his dis­like of iso­la­tion. But this does not nec­es­sar­ily sig­nify mu­tual af­fec­tion, and the pres­ent tur­bu­lent state of cer­tain prim­i­tive groups well il­lus­trates what the early tribes came up through. But though the in­di­vid­u­als of a civ­i­liza­tion may col­lide with each other and strug­gle against one an­other, and though civ­i­liza­tion it­self may ap­pear to be an in­con­sis­tent mass of striv­ing and strug­gling, it does ev­i­dence earnest striv­ing, not the deadly mo­not­ony of stag­na­tion.

68:2.2While the level of in­tel­li­gence has con­tributed con­sid­er­ably to the rate of cul­tural prog­ress, so­ci­ety is es­sen­tially de­signed to lessen the risk el­e­ment in the in­di­vid­ual’s mode of liv­ing, and it has pro­gressed just as fast as it has suc­ceeded in less­en­ing pain and in­creas­ing the plea­sure el­e­ment in life. Thus does the whole so­cial body push on slowly to­ward the goal of des­tiny—ex­tinc­tion or sur­vival—de­pend­ing on whether that goal is self-main­te­nance or self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Self-main­te­nance orig­i­nates so­ci­ety, while ex­ces­sive self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion de­stroys civ­i­liza­tion.

68:2.3So­ci­ety is con­cerned with self-per­pet­u­a­tion, self-main­te­nance, and self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion, but hu­man self-re­al­iza­tion is wor­thy of be­com­ing the im­me­di­ate goal of many cul­tural groups.

68:2.4The herd in­stinct in nat­u­ral man is hardly suf­fi­cient to ac­count for the de­vel­op­ment of such a so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion as now ex­ists on Uran­tia. Though this in­nate gre­gar­i­ous propen­sity lies at the bot­tom of hu­man so­ci­ety, much of man’s so­cia­bil­ity is an ac­quire­ment. Two great in­flu­ences which con­tributed to the early as­so­ci­a­tion of hu­man be­ings were food hunger and sex love; these in­stinc­tive urges man shares with the an­i­mal world. Two other emo­tions which drove hu­man be­ings to­gether and held them to­gether were van­ity and fear, more par­tic­u­larly ghost fear.

68:2.5His­tory is but the rec­ord of man’s age­long food strug­gle. Prim­i­tive man only thought when he was hun­gry; food sav­ing was his first self-de­nial, self-dis­ci­pline. With the growth of so­ci­ety, food hunger ceased to be the only in­cen­tive for mu­tual as­so­ci­a­tion. Nu­mer­ous other sorts of hunger, the re­al­iza­tion of var­i­ous needs, all led to the closer as­so­ci­a­tion of man­kind. But to­day so­ci­ety is top-heavy with the over­growth of sup­posed hu­man needs. Oc­ci­den­tal civ­i­liza­tion of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury groans wearily un­der the tremen­dous over­load of lux­ury and the in­or­di­nate mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of hu­man de­sires and long­ings. Mod­ern so­ci­ety is en­dur­ing the strain of one of its most dan­ger­ous phases of far-flung in­teras­so­ci­a­tion and highly com­pli­cated in­ter­de­pen­dence.

68:2.6Hunger, van­ity, and ghost fear were con­tin­u­ous in their so­cial pres­sure, but sex grat­i­fi­ca­tion was tran­sient and spas­modic. The sex urge alone did not im­pel prim­i­tive men and women to as­sume the heavy bur­dens of home main­te­nance. The early home was founded upon the sex rest­less­ness of the male when de­prived of fre­quent grat­i­fi­ca­tion and upon that de­voted mother love of the hu­man fe­male, which in mea­sure she shares with the fe­males of all the higher an­i­mals. The pres­ence of a help­less baby de­ter­mined the early dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of male and fe­male ac­tiv­i­ties; the woman had to main­tain a set­tled res­i­dence where she could cul­ti­vate the soil. And from ear­li­est times, where woman was has al­ways been re­garded as the home.

68:2.7Woman thus early be­came in­dis­pens­able to the evolv­ing so­cial scheme, not so much be­cause of the fleet­ing sex pas­sion as in con­se­quence of food re­quire­ment; she was an es­sen­tial part­ner in self-main­te­nance. She was a food provider, a beast of bur­den, and a com­pan­ion who would stand great abuse with­out vi­o­lent re­sent­ment, and in ad­di­tion to all of these de­sir­able traits, she was an ever-pres­ent means of sex grat­i­fi­ca­tion.

68:2.8Al­most ev­ery­thing of last­ing value in civ­i­liza­tion has its roots in the fam­ily. The fam­ily was the first suc­cess­ful peace group, the man and woman learn­ing how to ad­just their an­tag­o­nisms while at the same time teach­ing the pur­suits of peace to their chil­dren.

68:2.9The func­tion of mar­riage in evo­lu­tion is the in­sur­ance of race sur­vival, not merely the re­al­iza­tion of per­sonal hap­pi­ness; self-main­te­nance and self-per­pet­u­a­tion are the real ob­jects of the home. Self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion is in­ci­den­tal and not es­sen­tial ex­cept as an in­cen­tive in­sur­ing sex as­so­ci­a­tion. Na­ture de­mands sur­vival, but the arts of civ­i­liza­tion con­tinue to in­crease the plea­sures of mar­riage and the sat­is­fac­tions of fam­ily life.

68:2.10If van­ity be en­larged to cover pride, am­bi­tion, and honor, then we may dis­cern not only how these propen­si­ties con­tribute to the for­ma­tion of hu­man as­so­ci­a­tions, but how they also hold men to­gether, since such emo­tions are fu­tile with­out an au­di­ence to pa­rade be­fore. Soon van­ity as­so­ci­ated with it­self other emo­tions and im­pulses which re­quired a so­cial arena wherein they might ex­hibit and grat­ify them­selves. This group of emo­tions gave ori­gin to the early be­gin­nings of all art, cer­e­mo­nial, and all forms of sportive games and con­tests.

68:2.11Van­ity con­tributed might­ily to the birth of so­ci­ety; but at the time of these rev­e­la­tions the de­vi­ous striv­ings of a vain­glo­ri­ous gen­er­a­tion threaten to swamp and sub­merge the whole com­pli­cated struc­ture of a highly spe­cial­ized civ­i­liza­tion. Plea­sure-want has long since su­per­seded hunger-want; the le­git­i­mate so­cial aims of self-main­te­nance are rapidly trans­lat­ing them­selves into base and threat­en­ing forms of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Self-main­te­nance builds so­ci­ety; un­bri­dled self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion un­fail­ingly de­stroys civ­i­liza­tion.