Development of the State

71:3.1The po­lit­i­cal or ad­min­is­tra­tive form of a gov­ern­ment is of lit­tle con­se­quence pro­vided it af­fords the es­sen­tials of civil prog­ress—lib­erty, se­cu­rity, ed­u­ca­tion, and so­cial co-or­di­na­tion. It is not what a state is but what it does that de­ter­mines the course of so­cial evo­lu­tion. And af­ter all, no state can tran­scend the moral val­ues of its cit­i­zenry as ex­em­pli­fied in their cho­sen lead­ers. Ig­no­rance and self­ish­ness will in­sure the down­fall of even the high­est type of gov­ern­ment.

71:3.2Much as it is to be re­gret­ted, na­tional ego­tism has been es­sen­tial to so­cial sur­vival. The cho­sen peo­ple doc­trine has been a prime fac­tor in tribal weld­ing and na­tion build­ing right on down to mod­ern times. But no state can at­tain ideal lev­els of func­tion­ing un­til ev­ery form of in­tol­er­ance is mas­tered; it is ev­er­last­ingly in­im­i­cal to hu­man prog­ress. And in­tol­er­ance is best com­bated by the co-or­di­na­tion of sci­ence, com­merce, play, and re­li­gion.

71:3.3The ideal state func­tions un­der the im­pulse of three mighty and co-or­di­nated drives:

71:3.41. Love loy­alty de­rived from the re­al­iza­tion of hu­man broth­er­hood.

71:3.52. In­tel­li­gent pa­tri­o­tism based on wise ide­als.

71:3.63. Cos­mic in­sight in­ter­preted in terms of plan­e­tary facts, needs, and goals.

71:3.7The laws of the ideal state are few in num­ber, and they have passed out of the neg­a­tivis­tic taboo age into the era of the pos­i­tive prog­ress of in­di­vid­ual lib­erty con­se­quent upon en­hanced self-con­trol. The ex­alted state not only com­pels its cit­i­zens to work but also en­tices them into prof­itable and up­lift­ing uti­liza­tion of the in­creas­ing leisure which re­sults from toil lib­er­a­tion by the ad­vanc­ing ma­chine age. Leisure must pro­duce as well as con­sume.

71:3.8No so­ci­ety has pro­gressed very far when it per­mits idle­ness or tol­er­ates pov­erty. But pov­erty and de­pen­dence can never be elim­i­nated if the de­fec­tive and de­gen­er­ate stocks are freely sup­ported and per­mit­ted to re­pro­duce with­out re­straint.

71:3.9A moral so­ci­ety should aim to pre­serve the self-re­spect of its cit­i­zenry and af­ford ev­ery nor­mal in­di­vid­ual ad­e­quate op­por­tu­nity for self-re­al­iza­tion. Such a plan of so­cial achieve­ment would yield a cul­tural so­ci­ety of the high­est or­der. So­cial evo­lu­tion should be en­cour­aged by gov­ern­men­tal super­vi­sion which ex­er­cises a min­i­mum of reg­u­la­tive con­trol. That state is best which co-or­di­nates most while gov­ern­ing least.

71:3.10The ide­als of state­hood must be at­tained by evo­lu­tion, by the slow growth of civic con­scious­ness, the rec­og­ni­tion of the obli­ga­tion and priv­i­lege of so­cial ser­vice. At first men as­sume the bur­dens of gov­ern­ment as a duty, fol­low­ing the end of the ad­min­is­tra­tion of po­lit­i­cal spoils­men, but later on they seek such min­istry as a priv­i­lege, as the great­est honor. The sta­tus of any level of civ­i­liza­tion is faith­fully por­trayed by the cal­iber of its cit­i­zens who vol­un­teer to ac­cept the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of state­hood.

71:3.11In a real com­mon­wealth the busi­ness of gov­ern­ing cities and prov­inces is con­ducted by ex­perts and is man­aged just as are all other forms of eco­nomic and com­mer­cial as­so­ci­a­tions of peo­ple.

71:3.12In ad­vanced states, po­lit­i­cal ser­vice is es­teemed as the high­est de­vo­tion of the cit­i­zenry. The great­est am­bi­tion of the wis­est and no­blest of cit­i­zens is to gain civil rec­og­ni­tion, to be elected or ap­pointed to some po­si­tion of gov­ern­men­tal trust, and such gov­ern­ments con­fer their high­est hon­ors of rec­og­ni­tion for ser­vice upon their civil and so­cial ser­vants. Hon­ors are next be­stowed in the or­der named upon philoso­phers, ed­u­ca­tors, sci­en­tists, in­dus­tri­al­ists, and mil­i­tarists. Par­ents are duly re­warded by the ex­cel­lency of their chil­dren, and purely re­li­gious lead­ers, be­ing am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual king­dom, re­ceive their real re­wards in an­other world.