revolution (abrupt change)

• deranges society

66:6.3The Cali­gas­tia one hun­dred—grad­u­ates of the Sa­ta­nia man­sion worlds—well knew the arts and cul­ture of Je­ru­sem, but such knowl­edge is nearly val­ue­less on a bar­baric planet pop­u­lated by prim­i­tive hu­mans. These wise be­ings knew bet­ter than to un­der­take the sud­den trans­for­ma­tion, or the en masse up­lift­ing, of the prim­i­tive races of that day. They well un­der­stood the slow evo­lu­tion of the hu­man species, and they wisely re­frained from any rad­i­cal at­tempts at mod­i­fy­ing man’s mode of life on earth.

66:6.4Each of the ten plan­e­tary com­mis­sions set about slowly and nat­u­rally to ad­vance the in­ter­ests in­trusted to them. Their plan con­sisted in at­tract­ing the best minds of the sur­round­ing tribes and, af­ter train­ing them, send­ing them back to their peo­ple as emis­saries of so­cial up­lift.

66:6.5For­eign emis­saries were never sent to a race ex­cept upon the spe­cific re­quest of that peo­ple. Those who la­bored for the up­lift and ad­vance­ment of a given tribe or race were al­ways na­tives of that tribe or race. The one hun­dred would not at­tempt to im­pose the habits and mores of even a su­pe­rior race upon an­other tribe. Al­ways they pa­tiently worked to up­lift and ad­vance the time-tried mores of each race. The sim­ple folk of Uran­tia brought their so­cial cus­toms to Dala­ma­tia, not to ex­change them for new and bet­ter prac­tices, but to have them up­lifted by con­tact with a higher cul­ture and by as­so­ci­a­tion with su­pe­rior minds. The pro­cess was slow but very ef­fec­tual.

66:6.6The Dala­ma­tia teach­ers sought to add con­scious so­cial se­lec­tion to the purely nat­u­ral se­lec­tion of bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion. They did not de­range hu­man so­ci­ety, but they did markedly ac­cel­er­ate its nor­mal and nat­u­ral evo­lu­tion. Their mo­tive was pro­gres­sion by evo­lu­tion and not rev­o­lu­tion by rev­e­la­tion. The hu­man race had spent ages in ac­quir­ing the lit­tle re­li­gion and morals it had, and these super­men knew bet­ter than to rob man­kind of these few ad­vances by the con­fu­sion and dis­may which al­ways re­sult when en­light­ened and su­pe­rior be­ings un­der­take to up­lift the back­ward races by overteach­ing and over­en­light­en­ment.

• displaced evolution in planetary rebellion

67:5.1Great con­fu­sion reigned in Dala­ma­tia and there­about for al­most fifty years af­ter the in­sti­ga­tion of re­bel­lion. The com­plete and rad­i­cal re­or­ga­ni­za­tion of the whole world was at­tempted; rev­o­lu­tion dis­placed evo­lu­tion as the pol­icy of cul­tural ad­vance­ment and racial im­prove­ment. Among the su­pe­rior and par­tially trained so­journ­ers in and near Dala­ma­tia there ap­peared a sud­den ad­vance­ment in cul­tural sta­tus, but when these new and rad­i­cal meth­ods were at­tempted on the out­ly­ing peo­ples, in­de­scrib­able con­fu­sion and racial pan­de­mo­nium was the im­me­di­ate re­sult. Lib­erty was quickly trans­lated into li­cense by the half-evolved prim­i­tive men of those days.

• nearly fatal to undertake wholesale change of mores by

68:4.6But these cus­toms are not an un­mit­i­gated evil; their evo­lu­tion should con­tinue. It is nearly fa­tal to the con­tin­u­ance of civ­i­liza­tion to un­der­take their whole­sale mod­i­fi­ca­tion by rad­i­cal rev­o­lu­tion. Cus­tom has been the thread of con­ti­nu­ity which has held civ­i­liza­tion to­gether. The path of hu­man his­tory is strewn with the rem­nants of dis­carded cus­toms and ob­so­lete so­cial prac­tices; but no civ­i­liza­tion has en­dured which aban­doned its mores ex­cept for the adop­tion of bet­ter and more fit cus­toms.

• disastrous suddenly to liberate great numbers of slaves

69:8.9Mod­ern me­chan­i­cal in­ven­tion ren­dered the slave ob­so­lete. Slav­ery, like polygamy, is pass­ing be­cause it does not pay. But it has al­ways proved dis­as­trous sud­denly to lib­er­ate great num­bers of slaves; less trou­ble en­sues when they are grad­u­ally eman­ci­pated.

• harmful approach

69:9.18The pres­ent so­cial or­der is not nec­es­sar­ily right—not di­vine or sa­cred—but man­kind will do well to move slowly in mak­ing changes. That which you have is vastly bet­ter than any sys­tem known to your an­ces­tors. Make cer­tain that when you change the so­cial or­der you change for the bet­ter. Do not be per­suaded to ex­per­i­ment with the dis­carded for­mu­las of your fore­fa­thers. Go for­ward, not back­ward! Let evo­lu­tion pro­ceed! Do not take a back­ward step.

• no great social or economic change should be effected suddenly

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.

• harmful approach

99:2.5The in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized church may have ap­peared to serve so­ci­ety in the past by glo­ri­fy­ing the es­tab­lished po­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic or­ders, but it must speed­ily cease such ac­tion if it is to sur­vive. Its only proper at­ti­tude con­sists in the teach­ing of non­vi­o­lence, the doc­trine of peace­ful evo­lu­tion in the place of vi­o­lent rev­o­lu­tion—peace on earth and good will among all men.

• technique of Caligastia

136:9.2The Jews en­vis­aged a de­liv­erer who would come in mirac­u­lous power to cast down Is­rael’s en­e­mies and es­tab­lish the Jews as world rulers, free from want and op­pres­sion. Je­sus knew that this hope would never be re­al­ized. He knew that the king­dom of heaven had to do with the over­throw of evil in the hearts of men, and that it was purely a mat­ter of spir­i­tual con­cern. He thought out the ad­vis­abil­ity of in­au­gu­rat­ing the spir­i­tual king­dom with a bril­liant and daz­zling dis­play of power—and such a course would have been per­mis­si­ble and wholly within the ju­ris­dic­tion of Mi­chael—but he fully de­cided against such a plan. He would not com­pro­mise with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary tech­niques of Cali­gas­tia. He had won the world in po­ten­tial by sub­mis­sion to the Fa­ther’s will, and he pro­posed to fin­ish his work as he had be­gun it, and as the Son of Man.

• Jesus was a progressive evolutionist, not a revolutionary

149:2.11Je­sus tran­scended all the teach­ings of his fore­bears when he boldly sub­sti­tuted clean hearts for clean hands as the mark of true re­li­gion. He put re­al­ity in the place of tra­di­tion and swept aside all pre­ten­sions of van­ity and hypocrisy. And yet this fear­less man of God did not give vent to de­struc­tive crit­i­cism or man­i­fest an ut­ter dis­re­gard of the re­li­gious, so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal us­ages of his day. He was not a mil­i­tant rev­o­lu­tion­ist; he was a pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion­ist. He en­gaged in the de­struc­tion of that which was only when he si­mul­ta­ne­ously of­fered his fel­lows the su­pe­rior thing which ought to be.