Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 68
THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION
1. Civilization is a racial acquirement...The superior qualities of civilization—scientific, philosophic, and religious—are not transmitted from one generation to another by direct inheritance. These cultural achievements are preserved only by the enlightened conservation of social inheritance...In more recent times the yellow race and the white race have presented the most advanced social development on Urantia.
2. Association early became the price of survival. The lone man was helpless unless he bore a tribal mark which testified that he belonged to a group which would certainly avenge any assault made upon him. Even in the days of Cain it was fatal to go abroad alone without some mark of group association.
3. But co‑operation is not a natural trait of man; he learns to co‑operate first through fear and then later because be discovers it is most beneficial in meeting the difficulties of time and guarding against the supposed perils of eternity ...The modern phrase, "back to nature," is a delusion of ignorance, a belief in the reality of the onetime fictitious "golden age."
4. Self‑maintenance originates society, while excessive self‑gratification destroys civilization. Society is concerned with self‑perpetuation, self‑maintenance, and self‑gratification, but human self‑realization is worthy of becoming the immediate goal of many cultural groups.
5. History is the record of man's agelong food struggle. Primitive man only thought when he was hungry ...But today society is top‑heavy with the overgrowth of supposed human needs. Occidental civilization of the twentieth century groans wearily under the tremendous overload of luxury and the inordinate multiplication of human desires and longings.
6. Hunger, vanity, and ghost fear were continuous in their social pressure, but sex gratification was transient and spasmodic...Woman...was an essential partner in self-maintenance. She was a food provider, a beast of burden, and a companion who would stand great abuse without violent resentment, and in addition to all of these desirable traits, she was an ever‑present means of sex gratification.
7. Almost everything of lasting value in civilization has its roots in the family. The family was the first successful peace group, the man and woman learning how to adjust their antagonisms while at the same time teaching the pursuits of peace to their children.
8. Probably the greatest single factor in the evolution of human society was the ghost dream. Although most dreams greatly perturbed the primitive mind, the ghost dream actually terrorized early men...The baseless fears of evolution are designed to be supplanted by the awe for Deity inspired by revelation. The early cult of ghost fear became a powerful social bond, and ever since that far‑distant day mankind has been striving more or less for the attainment of spirituality.
9. What habit is to the individual, custom is to the group; and group customs develop into folkways or tribal traditions ‑ mass conventions. From these early beginnings all of the institutions of present‑day human society take their humble origin.
10.The primitive savage was hedged about by an endless ceremonial. Everything he did from the time of awakening in the morning to the moment he fell asleep in his cave at night had to be done just so—in accordance with the folkways of the tribe. He was a slave to the tyranny of usage; his life contained nothing free, spontaneous, or original.
11.But these customs are not an unmitigated evil ...Custom has been the thread of continuity which has held civilization together ...no civilization has endured which abandoned its mores except for the adoption of better and more fit customs. The survival of a society depends chiefly on the progressive evolution of its mores
12. The evolution of the mores is always dependent on the land‑man ratio ...The earliest human cultures arose along the rivers of the Eastern Hemisphere, and there were four great steps in the forward march of civilization. They were:
1. The collection stage…followed by the African Bushmen.
2. The hunting stage...some Australian natives have progressed little beyond this stage...
3. The pastoral stage ...The Arabs and the natives of Africa are among the more recent pastoral peoples...
4. The agricultural stage...Agriculture and industrialism are the activities of peace... And now is industry supplementing agriculture... But an industrial era cannot hope to survive if its leaders fail to recognize that even the highest social developments must ever rest upon a sound agricultural basis.
13. Man is a creature of the soil, a child of nature; no matter how earnestly he may try to escape from the land, in the last reckoning he is certain to fail ...The basic struggle of man was, and is, and ever shall be, for land... The land‑man ratio underlies all social civilization.
14. Human society is controlled by a law which decrees that the population must vary directly in accordance with the land arts and inversely with a given standard of living. ..The improvement of the land yield, the extension of the mechanical arts, and the reduction of population all tend to foster the development of the better side of human nature.
15. Cities always multiply the power of their inhabitants for either good or evil ... Caste is the direct result of the high social pressure of keen competition produced by dense populations.
16. The early races often resorted to practices designed to restrict population; all primitive tribes killed deformed end sickly children ...Many races learned the technique of abortion, and this practice became very common after the establishment of the taboo on childbirth among the unmarried...Even in the twentieth century there persist remnants of these primitive population controls.
17. Will Urantia rulers have the insight and courage to foster the multiplication of the average or stabilized human being instead of the extremes of the supernormal and the enormously increasing groups of the subnormal? The normal man should be fostered; he is the backbone of civilization and the source of the mutant geniuses of the race.
Discussion Questions1. How will the improvement in world transportation and communication effect world civilization?
2. How important is organization in religion?
3. Is our society top-heavy with human needs?
4. What are the basic antagonisms between men and women?
5. What is ghost fear?
6. What are the basic customs or folkways of contemporary society?
7. How do you think our world will solve the problem of population control?
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship