initiative

• belief in charms destroyed; tradition stifles
• Prince’s staff preached individual initiative

66:6.2Slav­ery to tra­di­tion pro­duces sta­bil­ity and co-op­er­a­tion by sen­ti­men­tally link­ing the past with the pres­ent, but it like­wise sti­fles ini­tia­tive and en­slaves the cre­ative pow­ers of the per­son­al­ity. The whole world was caught in the stale­mate of tra­di­tion-bound mores when the Cali­gas­tia one hun­dred ar­rived and be­gan the procla­ma­tion of the new gospel of in­di­vid­ual ini­tia­tive within the so­cial groups of that day. But this benef­i­cent rule was so soon in­ter­rupted that the races never have been wholly lib­er­ated from the slav­ery of cus­tom; fash­ion still un­duly dom­i­nates Uran­tia.

• overdevelopment of institutions diminishes

69:1.1All hu­man in­sti­tu­tions min­is­ter to some so­cial need, past or pres­ent, not­with­stand­ing that their overde­vel­op­ment un­fail­ingly de­tracts from the worth-while­ness of the in­di­vid­ual in that per­son­al­ity is over­shad­owed and ini­tia­tive is di­min­ished. Man should con­trol his in­sti­tu­tions rather than per­mit him­self to be dom­i­nated by these cre­ations of ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tion.

• industrialism should promote

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.

• lost when class becomes caste

70:8.13Flex­i­ble and shift­ing so­cial classes are in­dis­pens­able to an evolv­ing civ­i­liza­tion, but when class be­comes caste, when so­cial lev­els pet­rify, the en­hance­ment of so­cial sta­bil­ity is pur­chased by di­min­ish­ment of per­sonal ini­tia­tive. So­cial caste solves the prob­lem of find­ing one’s place in in­dus­try, but it also sharply cur­tails in­di­vid­ual de­vel­op­ment and vir­tu­ally pre­vents so­cial co-op­er­a­tion.

• under ghost cults, future not result of effort or talent

87:5.8Un­der the spirit cult, life was at best a gam­ble, the re­sult of spirit con­trol. One’s fu­ture was not the re­sult of ef­fort, in­dus­try, or tal­ent ex­cept as they might be uti­lized to in­flu­ence the spir­its. The cer­e­monies of spirit pro­pi­ti­a­tion con­sti­tuted a heavy bur­den, ren­der­ing life te­dious and vir­tu­ally un­en­durable. From age to age and from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, race af­ter race has sought to im­prove this super­ghost doc­trine, but no gen­er­a­tion has ever yet dared to wholly re­ject it.

• belief in charms destroyed; tradition stifles

88:6.6But a world so filled with charms did much to de­stroy all per­sonal am­bi­tion and ini­tia­tive. The fruits of ex­tra la­bor or of dili­gence were looked upon as mag­i­cal. If a man had more grain in his field than his neigh­bor, he might be haled be­fore the chief and charged with en­tic­ing this ex­tra grain from the in­do­lent neigh­bor’s field. In­deed, in the days of bar­barism it was dan­ger­ous to know very much; there was al­ways the chance of be­ing ex­e­cuted as a black artist.

• men should make best of their lives

148:5.3“But, my son, you should know that the Fa­ther does not pur­posely af­flict his chil­dren. Man brings down upon him­self un­nec­es­sary af­flic­tion as a re­sult of his per­sis­tent re­fusal to walk in the bet­ter ways of the di­vine will. Af­flic­tion is po­ten­tial in evil, but much of it has been pro­duced by sin and in­iq­uity. Many un­usual events have tran­spired on this world, and it is not strange that all think­ing men should be per­plexed by the scenes of suf­fer­ing and af­flic­tion which they wit­ness. But of one thing you may be sure: The Fa­ther does not send af­flic­tion as an ar­bi­trary pun­ish­ment for wrong­do­ing. The im­per­fec­tions and hand­i­caps of evil are in­her­ent; the penal­ties of sin are in­ev­i­ta­ble; the de­stroy­ing con­se­quences of in­iq­uity are in­ex­orable. Man should not blame God for those af­flic­tions which are the nat­u­ral re­sult of the life which he chooses to live; nei­ther should man com­plain of those ex­pe­ri­ences which are a part of life as it is lived on this world. It is the Fa­ther’s will that mor­tal man should work per­sis­tently and con­sis­tently to­ward the bet­ter­ment of his es­tate on earth. In­tel­li­gent ap­pli­ca­tion would en­able man to over­come much of his earthly mis­ery.

• men should make best of their lives

149:5.3“Much of man’s sor­row is born of the dis­ap­point­ment of his am­bi­tions and the wound­ing of his pride. Al­though men owe a duty to them­selves to make the best of their lives on earth, hav­ing thus sin­cerely ex­erted them­selves, they should cheer­fully ac­cept their lot and ex­er­cise in­ge­nu­ity in mak­ing the most of that which has fallen to their hands. All too many of man’s trou­bles take ori­gin in the fear soil of his own nat­u­ral heart. ‘The wicked flee when no man pur­sues.’ ‘The wicked are like the trou­bled sea, for it can­not rest, but its wa­ters cast up mire and dirt; there is no peace, says God, for the wicked.’

• Jesus’ disciples should always be active, positive

194:3.11Pen­te­cost, with its spir­i­tual en­dow­ment, was de­signed for­ever to loose the re­li­gion of the Mas­ter from all de­pen­dence upon phys­i­cal force; the teach­ers of this new re­li­gion are now equipped with spir­i­tual weapons. They are to go out to con­quer the world with un­fail­ing for­give­ness, match­less good will, and abound­ing love. They are equipped to over­come evil with good, to van­quish hate by love, to de­stroy fear with a coura­geous and liv­ing faith in truth. Je­sus had al­ready taught his fol­low­ers that his re­li­gion was never pas­sive; al­ways were his dis­ci­ples to be ac­tive and pos­i­tive in their min­istry of mercy and in their man­i­fes­ta­tions of love. No longer did these be­liev­ers look upon Yah­weh as “the Lord of Hosts.” They now re­garded the eter­nal De­ity as the “God and Fa­ther of the Lord Je­sus Christ.” They made that prog­ress, at least, even if they did in some mea­sure fail fully to grasp the truth that God is also the spir­i­tual Fa­ther of ev­ery in­di­vid­ual.

• directly proportional to degree of doing Father’s will

195:6.16Free­dom or ini­tia­tive in any realm of ex­is­tence is di­rectly pro­por­tional to the de­gree of spir­i­tual in­flu­ence and cos­mic-mind con­trol; that is, in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, the de­gree of the ac­tu­al­ity of do­ing “the Fa­ther’s will.” And so, when you once start out to find God, that is the con­clu­sive proof that God has al­ready found you.