minorities

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.