Development of Modern Civilization

81:6.1While 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.

81:6.2The civ­i­liza­tion which is now evolv­ing on Uran­tia grew out of, and is pred­i­cated on, the fol­low­ing fac­tors:

81:6.31. 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.

81:6.4At 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.

81:6.5The 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.

81:6.62. 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.

81:6.7Dur­ing 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.

81:6.83. 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.

81:6.9Knowl­edge 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.

81:6.10Sci­ence 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.

81:6.114. 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.

81:6.12You 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.

81:6.13But 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.

81:6.145. 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.

81:6.15Might 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.

81:6.166. 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.

81:6.17Lan­guage 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.

81:6.18Lan­guage 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.

81:6.19While 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.

81:6.207. 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.

81:6.21In 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.

81:6.22Sci­ence, 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.

81:6.238. 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.

81:6.24In­sects 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.

81:6.25The 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.

81:6.269. 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.

81:6.27Ide­als 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.

81:6.28At 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.

81:6.2910. 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.

81:6.30So­cial, 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.

81:6.3111. 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.

81:6.32It 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.

81:6.33Such 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.

81:6.3412. 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.

81:6.35No 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.

81:6.36The 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.

81:6.3713. 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.

81:6.38High civ­i­liza­tions are born of the saga­cious cor­re­la­tion of ma­te­rial wealth, in­tel­lec­tual great­ness, moral worth, so­cial clev­er­ness, and cos­mic in­sight.

81:6.3914. 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.

81:6.40Man 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.

81:6.4115. 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.

81:6.42Lead­er­ship 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.

81:6.43And 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.

81:6.44This 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.]