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21 paragraphs · about 6 minutes

Every paragraph the index cites under transition, once, in the order of the book. Beside each stand the entries that cite it.

Paper 81 · Development of Modern Civilization

6. The Maintenance of Civilization

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.

81:6.23–39 · 17 paragraphs not cited here ·

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.

Paper 99 · The Social Problems of Religion

1. Religion and Social Reconstruction

99:1.3Uran­tia so­ci­ety can never hope to set­tle down as in past ages. The so­cial ship has steamed out of the shel­tered bays of es­tab­lished tra­di­tion and has be­gun its cruise upon the high seas of evo­lu­tion­ary des­tiny; and the soul of man, as never be­fore in the world’s his­tory, needs care­fully to scru­ti­nize its charts of moral­ity and painstak­ingly to ob­serve the com­pass of re­li­gious guid­ance. The paramount mis­sion of re­li­gion as a so­cial in­flu­ence is to sta­bi­lize the ide­als of man­kind dur­ing these dan­ger­ous times of tran­si­tion from one phase of civ­i­liza­tion to an­other, from one level of cul­ture to an­other.

99:1.4Re­li­gion has no new du­ties to per­form, but it is ur­gently called upon to func­tion as a wise guide and ex­pe­ri­enced coun­selor in all of these new and rapidly chang­ing hu­man sit­u­a­tions. So­ci­ety is be­com­ing more me­chan­i­cal, more com­pact, more com­plex, and more crit­i­cally in­ter­de­pen­dent. Re­li­gion must func­tion to pre­vent these new and in­ti­mate in­teras­so­ci­a­tions from be­com­ing mu­tu­ally ret­ro­gres­sive or even de­struc­tive. Re­li­gion must act as the cos­mic salt which pre­vents the fer­ments of pro­gres­sion from de­stroy­ing the cul­tural sa­vor of civ­i­liza­tion. These new so­cial re­la­tions and eco­nomic up­heavals can re­sult in last­ing broth­er­hood only by the min­istry of re­li­gion.

Paper 99 · The Social Problems of Religion

2. Weakness of Institutional Religion

99:2.6Mod­ern re­li­gion finds it dif­fi­cult to ad­just its at­ti­tude to­ward the rapidly shift­ing so­cial changes only be­cause it has per­mit­ted it­self to be­come so thor­oughly tra­di­tion­al­ized, dog­ma­tized, and in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized. The re­li­gion of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence finds no dif­fi­culty in keep­ing ahead of all these so­cial de­vel­op­ments and eco­nomic up­heavals, amid which it ever func­tions as a moral sta­bi­lizer, so­cial guide, and spir­i­tual pi­lot. True re­li­gion car­ries over from one age to an­other the worth-while cul­ture and that wis­dom which is born of the ex­pe­ri­ence of know­ing God and striv­ing to be like him.

Paper 99 · The Social Problems of Religion

4. Transition Difficulties

99:4.1Gen­uine re­li­gion ren­ders the re­li­gion­ist so­cially fra­grant and cre­ates in­sights into hu­man fel­low­ship. But the for­mal­iza­tion of re­li­gious groups many times de­stroys the very val­ues for the pro­mo­tion of which the group was or­ga­nized. Hu­man friend­ship and di­vine re­li­gion are mu­tu­ally help­ful and sig­nif­i­cantly il­lu­mi­nat­ing if the growth in each is equal­ized and har­mo­nized. Re­li­gion puts new mean­ing into all group as­so­ci­a­tions—fam­i­lies, schools, and clubs. It im­parts new val­ues to play and ex­alts all true hu­mor.

99:4.2So­cial lead­er­ship is trans­formed by spir­i­tual in­sight; re­li­gion pre­vents all col­lec­tive move­ments from los­ing sight of their true ob­jec­tives. To­gether with chil­dren, re­li­gion is the great uni­fier of fam­ily life, pro­vided it is a liv­ing and grow­ing faith. Fam­ily life can­not be had with­out chil­dren; it can be lived with­out re­li­gion, but such a hand­i­cap enor­mously mul­ti­plies the dif­fi­cul­ties of this in­ti­mate hu­man as­so­ci­a­tion. Dur­ing the early decades of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, fam­ily life, next to per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, suf­fers most from the deca­dence con­se­quent upon the tran­si­tion from old re­li­gious loy­al­ties to the emerg­ing new mean­ings and val­ues.

99:4.3True re­li­gion is a mean­ing­ful way of liv­ing dy­nam­i­cally face to face with the com­mon­place re­al­i­ties of ev­ery­day life. But if re­li­gion is to stim­u­late in­di­vid­ual de­vel­op­ment of char­ac­ter and aug­ment in­te­gra­tion of per­son­al­ity, it must not be stan­dard­ized. If it is to stim­u­late eval­u­a­tion of ex­pe­ri­ence and serve as a value-lure, it must not be stereo­typed. If re­li­gion is to pro­mote su­preme loy­al­ties, it must not be for­mal­ized.

99:4.4No mat­ter what up­heavals may at­tend the so­cial and eco­nomic growth of civ­i­liza­tion, re­li­gion is gen­uine and worth while if it fos­ters in the in­di­vid­ual an ex­pe­ri­ence in which the sov­er­eignty of truth, beauty, and good­ness pre­vails, for such is the true spir­i­tual con­cept of su­preme re­al­ity. And through love and wor­ship this be­comes mean­ing­ful as fel­low­ship with man and son­ship with God.

99:4.5Af­ter all, it is what one be­lieves rather than what one knows that de­ter­mines con­duct and dom­i­nates per­sonal per­for­mances. Purely fac­tual knowl­edge ex­erts very lit­tle in­flu­ence upon the av­er­age man un­less it be­comes emo­tion­ally ac­ti­vated. But the ac­ti­va­tion of re­li­gion is super­emo­tional, uni­fy­ing the en­tire hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence on tran­scen­dent lev­els through con­tact with, and re­lease of, spir­i­tual en­er­gies in the mor­tal life.

99:4.6Dur­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cally un­set­tled times of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, amid the eco­nomic up­heavals, the moral cross­cur­rents, and the so­ci­o­logic rip tides of the cy­clonic tran­si­tions of a sci­en­tific era, thou­sands upon thou­sands of men and women have be­come hu­manly dis­lo­cated; they are anx­ious, rest­less, fear­ful, un­cer­tain, and un­set­tled; as never be­fore in the world’s his­tory they need the con­so­la­tion and sta­bi­liza­tion of sound re­li­gion. In the face of un­prece­dented sci­en­tific achieve­ment and me­chan­i­cal de­vel­op­ment there is spir­i­tual stag­na­tion and philo­sophic chaos.

99:4.7There is no dan­ger in re­li­gion’s be­com­ing more and more of a pri­vate mat­ter—a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence—pro­vided it does not lose its mo­ti­va­tion for un­selfish and lov­ing so­cial ser­vice. Re­li­gion has suf­fered from many sec­ondary in­flu­ences: sud­den mix­ing of cul­tures, in­ter­min­gling of creeds, diminu­tion of ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal au­thor­ity, chang­ing of fam­ily life, to­gether with ur­ban­iza­tion and mech­a­niza­tion.

99:4.8Man’s great­est spir­i­tual jeop­ardy con­sists in par­tial prog­ress, the predica­ment of un­fin­ished growth: for­sak­ing the evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gions of fear with­out im­me­di­ately grasp­ing the rev­e­la­tory re­li­gion of love. Mod­ern sci­ence, par­tic­u­larly psy­chol­ogy, has weak­ened only those re­li­gions which are so largely de­pen­dent upon fear, su­per­sti­tion, and emo­tion.

99:4.9Tran­si­tion is al­ways ac­com­pa­nied by con­fu­sion, and there will be lit­tle tran­quil­lity in the re­li­gious world un­til the great strug­gle be­tween the three con­tend­ing philoso­phies of re­li­gion is ended:

99:4.101. The spiri­tis­tic be­lief (in a prov­i­den­tial De­ity) of many re­li­gions.

99:4.112. The hu­man­is­tic and ide­al­is­tic be­lief of many philoso­phies.

99:4.123. The mech­a­nis­tic and nat­u­ral­is­tic con­cep­tions of many sci­ences.

99:4.13And these three par­tial ap­proaches to the re­al­ity of the cos­mos must even­tu­ally be­come har­mo­nized by the rev­e­la­tory pre­sen­ta­tion of re­li­gion, phi­los­o­phy, and cos­mol­ogy which por­trays the tri­une ex­is­tence of spirit, mind, and en­ergy pro­ceed­ing from the Trin­ity of Par­a­dise and at­tain­ing time-space uni­fi­ca­tion within the De­ity of the Su­preme.

Paper 159 · The Decapolis Tour

3. Instruction for Teachers and Believers

159:3.7Fore­warn all be­liev­ers re­gard­ing the fringe of con­flict which must be tra­versed by all who pass from the life as it is lived in the flesh to the higher life as it is lived in the spirit. To those who live quite wholly within ei­ther realm, there is lit­tle con­flict or con­fu­sion, but all are doomed to ex­pe­ri­ence more or less un­cer­tainty dur­ing the times of tran­si­tion be­tween the two lev­els of liv­ing. In en­ter­ing the king­dom, you can­not es­cape its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties or avoid its obli­ga­tions, but re­mem­ber: The gospel yoke is easy and the bur­den of truth is light.

Paper 160 · Rodan of Alexandria

1. Rodan’s Greek Philosophy

160:1.6When men dare to for­sake a life of nat­u­ral crav­ing for one of ad­ven­tur­ous art and un­cer­tain logic, they must ex­pect to suf­fer the con­se­quent haz­ards of emo­tional ca­su­al­ties—con­flicts, un­hap­pi­ness, and un­cer­tain­ties—at least un­til the time of their at­tain­ment of some de­gree of in­tel­lec­tual and emo­tional ma­tu­rity. Dis­cour­age­ment, worry, and in­do­lence are pos­i­tive ev­i­dence of moral im­ma­tu­rity. Hu­man so­ci­ety is con­fronted with two prob­lems: at­tain­ment of the ma­tu­rity of the in­di­vid­ual and at­tain­ment of the ma­tu­rity of the race. The ma­ture hu­man be­ing soon be­gins to look upon all other mor­tals with feel­ings of ten­der­ness and with emo­tions of tol­er­ance. Ma­ture men view im­ma­ture folks with the love and con­sid­er­a­tion that par­ents bear their chil­dren.

Onward

See also change; progress; translation

Cited alongside: civilization, religion, spiritual growth, conflict, difficulties, problem solving