The Evolution of Human Government

70:2.1In past ages a fierce war would in­sti­tute so­cial changes and fa­cil­i­tate the adop­tion of new ideas such as would not have oc­curred nat­u­rally in ten thou­sand years. The ter­ri­ble price paid for these cer­tain war ad­van­tages was that so­ci­ety was tem­porar­ily thrown back into sav­agery; civ­i­lized rea­son had to ab­di­cate. War is strong med­i­cine, very costly and most dan­ger­ous; while of­ten cu­ra­tive of cer­tain so­cial dis­or­ders, it some­times kills the pa­tient, de­stroys the so­ci­ety.

70:2.2The con­stant ne­ces­sity for na­tional de­fense cre­ates many new and ad­vanced so­cial ad­just­ments. So­ci­ety, to­day, en­joys the ben­e­fit of a long list of use­ful in­no­va­tions which were at first wholly mil­i­tary and is even in­debted to war for the dance, one of the early forms of which was a mil­i­tary drill.

70:2.3War has had a so­cial value to past civ­i­liza­tions be­cause it:

70:2.41. Im­posed dis­ci­pline, en­forced co-op­er­a­tion.

70:2.52. Put a pre­mium on for­ti­tude and cour­age.

70:2.63. Fos­tered and so­lid­i­fied na­tion­al­ism.

70:2.74. De­stroyed weak and un­fit peo­ples.

70:2.85. Dis­solved the il­lu­sion of prim­i­tive equal­ity and se­lec­tively strat­i­fied so­ci­ety.

70:2.9War has had a cer­tain evo­lu­tion­ary and se­lec­tive value, but like slav­ery, it must some­time be aban­doned as civ­i­liza­tion slowly ad­vances. Olden wars pro­moted travel and cul­tural in­ter­course; these ends are now bet­ter served by mod­ern meth­ods of trans­port and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Olden wars strength­ened na­tions, but mod­ern strug­gles dis­rupt civ­i­lized cul­ture. An­cient war­fare re­sulted in the dec­i­ma­tion of in­fe­rior peo­ples; the net re­sult of mod­ern con­flict is the se­lec­tive de­struc­tion of the best hu­man stocks. Early wars pro­moted or­ga­ni­za­tion and ef­fi­ciency, but these have now be­come the aims of mod­ern in­dus­try. Dur­ing past ages war was a so­cial fer­ment which pushed civ­i­liza­tion for­ward; this re­sult is now bet­ter at­tained by am­bi­tion and in­ven­tion. An­cient war­fare sup­ported the con­cept of a God of bat­tles, but mod­ern man has been told that God is love. War has served many valu­able pur­poses in the past, it has been an in­dis­pens­able scaf­fold­ing in the build­ing of civ­i­liza­tion, but it is rapidly be­com­ing cul­tur­ally bankrupt—in­ca­pable of pro­duc­ing div­i­dends of so­cial gain in any way com­men­su­rate with the ter­ri­ble losses at­ten­dant upon its in­vo­ca­tion.

70:2.10At one time physi­cians be­lieved in blood­let­ting as a cure for many dis­eases, but they have since dis­cov­ered bet­ter reme­dies for most of these dis­or­ders. And so must the in­ter­na­tional blood­let­ting of war cer­tainly give place to the dis­cov­ery of bet­ter meth­ods for cur­ing the ills of na­tions.

70:2.11The na­tions of Uran­tia have al­ready en­tered upon the gi­gan­tic strug­gle be­tween na­tion­al­is­tic mil­i­tarism and in­dus­tri­al­ism, and in many ways this con­flict is anal­o­gous to the age­long strug­gle be­tween the herder-hunter and the farmer. But if in­dus­tri­al­ism is to tri­umph over mil­i­tarism, it must avoid the dan­gers which be­set it. The per­ils of bud­ding in­dus­try on Uran­tia are:

70:2.121. The strong drift to­ward ma­te­ri­al­ism, spir­i­tual blind­ness.

70:2.132. The wor­ship of wealth-power, value dis­tor­tion.

70:2.143. The vices of lux­ury, cul­tural im­ma­tu­rity.

70:2.154. The in­creas­ing dan­gers of in­do­lence, ser­vice in­sen­si­tiv­ity.

70:2.165. The growth of un­de­sir­able racial soft­ness, bi­o­logic de­te­ri­o­ra­tion.

70:2.176. The threat of stan­dard­ized in­dus­trial slav­ery, per­son­al­ity stag­na­tion. La­bor is en­nobling but drudgery is be­numb­ing.

70:2.18Mil­i­tarism is au­to­cratic and cruel—sav­age. It pro­motes so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion among the con­querors but dis­in­te­grates the van­quished. In­dus­tri­al­ism is more civ­i­lized and should be so car­ried on as to pro­mote ini­tia­tive and to en­cour­age in­di­vid­u­al­ism. So­ci­ety should in ev­ery way pos­si­ble fos­ter orig­i­nal­ity.

70:2.19Do not make the mis­take of glo­ri­fy­ing war; rather dis­cern what it has done for so­ci­ety so that you may the more ac­cu­rately vi­su­al­ize what its sub­sti­tutes must pro­vide in or­der to con­tinue the ad­vance­ment of civ­i­liza­tion. And if such ad­e­quate sub­sti­tutes are not pro­vided, then you may be sure that war will long con­tinue.

70:2.20Man will never ac­cept peace as a nor­mal mode of liv­ing un­til he has been thor­oughly and re­peat­edly con­vinced that peace is best for his ma­te­rial wel­fare, and un­til so­ci­ety has wisely pro­vided peace­ful sub­sti­tutes for the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of that in­her­ent ten­dency pe­ri­od­i­cally to let loose a col­lec­tive drive de­signed to lib­er­ate those ever-ac­cu­mu­lat­ing emo­tions and en­er­gies be­long­ing to the self-preser­va­tion re­ac­tions of the hu­man species.

70:2.21But even in pass­ing, war should be hon­ored as the school of ex­pe­ri­ence which com­pelled a race of ar­ro­gant in­di­vid­u­al­ists to sub­mit them­selves to highly con­cen­trated au­thor­ity—a chief ex­ec­u­tive. Old-fash­ioned war did se­lect the in­nately great men for lead­er­ship, but mod­ern war no longer does this. To dis­cover lead­ers so­ci­ety must now turn to the con­quests of peace: in­dus­try, sci­ence, and so­cial achieve­ment.