Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 81
DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN CIVILIZATION
1. Evolution can be delayed but it cannot be stopped. The influence of the violet race, though in numbers smaller than had been planned, produced an advance in civilization which, since the days of Adam, has far exceeded the progress of mankind throughout its entire previous existence of almost a million years.
2. For about thirty‑five thousand years after the days of Adam, the cradle of civilization was in southwestern Asia... And climate was the decisive factor in the establishment of civilization in that area.
3. For ages it was considered menial to till the soil; wherefore the idea that soil toil is a curse, whereas it is the greatest of all blessings... Man ordinarily evolved into a farmer from a hunter by transition through the era of the herder... but more often the evolutionary coercion of climatic necessity would cause whole tribes to pass directly from hunters to successful farmers.
4. The growth of culture is predicated upon the development of the tools of civilization... You who now live amid latter‑day scenes of budding culture and beginning progress in social affairs, who actually have some little spare time in which to think about society and civilization, must not overlook the fact that your early ancestors had little or no leisure which could be devoted to thoughtful reflection and social thinking.
5. The first four great advances in human civilization were:
1. The taming of fire.
2. The domestication of animals.
3. The enslavement of captives.
4. Private property.
6. The depersonalization of so‑called natural phenomena has required ages, and it is not yet completed. But the frank, honest, and fearless search for true causes gave birth to modern science: It turned astrology into astronomy, alchemy into chemistry, and magic into medicine.
7. The Andites of Turkestan were the first peoples to extensively domesticate the horse, and this is another reason why their culture was for so long predominant. By 5000 B.C. the Mesopotamian, Turkestan, and Chinese farmers had begun the raising of sheep, goats, cows, camels, horses, fowls, and elephants.
8. Civilization can never flourish, much less be established, until man has leisure to think, to plan, to imagine new and better ways of doing things.
9. The climatic destruction of the rich, open grassland hunting and grazing grounds of Turkestan, beginning about 12,000 B.C., compelled the men of those regions to resort to new forms of industry and crude manufacturing... From the valley of the Nile to the Hindu Kush and from the Ganges to the Yellow River, the chief business of the superior tribes became the cultivation of the soil, with commerce a side line... Trade brought into fellowship different sorts of human beings, thus contributing to a more speedy cross‑fertilization of culture.
10. About twelve thousand years ago the era of the independent cities was dawning. And these primitive trading and manufacturing cities were always surrounded by zones of agriculture and cattle raising... The early races were not overly neat and clean, and the average primitive community rose from one to two feet every twenty‑five years as the result of the mere accumulation of dirt and trash ... The widespread use of metals was a feature of this era of the early industrial and trading cities... There were no distinct periods, such as the Stone, Bronze, and Iron ages; all three existed at the same time in different localities.
11. The traveling trader and the roving explorer did more to advance historic civilization than all other influences combined. Military conquests, colonization, and missionary enterprises fostered by the later religions were also factors in the spread of culture; but these were all secondary to the trading relations, which were ever accelerated by the rapidly developing arts and sciences of industry.
12. Each of the Urantia races was identified by certain distinguishing physical characteristics. The Adamites and Nodites were long‑headed; the Andonites were broad‑headed. The Sangik races were medium‑headed, with the yellow and blue men tending to broad‑headedness. The blue races, when mixed with the Andonite stock, were decidedly broad‑headed. The secondary Sangiks were medium‑to long‑headed.
13. As these five great racial groups extensively intermingled, continual mixture tended to obscure the Andonite type by Sangik hereditary dominance.., the Adamites and the Nodites have become so admixed with the other races that they can be detected only as a generalized Caucasoid order.
14. Study of such skeletal structures will disclose that mankind is now divided into approximately three classes:
1. The Caucasoid—the Andite blend of the Nodite and Adamic stocks.. .
2. The Mongoloid—‑the primary Sangik type ...
3. The Negroid—‑the secondary Sangik type.
15. Biologic evolution arid cultural civilization are not necessarily correlated ... But when lengthy periods of human history are surveyed it will be observed that eventually evolution and culture become related as cause and effect.
16. In short, the present‑day social mechanism is a trial‑and‑error insurance plan designed to afford some degree of assurance and protection against a return of the terrible and antisocial conditions which characterized the early experiences of the human race... Might does not make right, but it does enforce the commonly recognized rights of each succeeding generation... Liberty subject to group regulation is the legitimate goal of social evolution. Liberty without restrictions is the vain and fanciful dream of unstable and flighty human minds.
17. Very few Urantians have ever had such a favorable opportunity for continuous and unmolested developments as has been enjoyed by the peoples of North America‑protected on practically all sides by vast oceans.
18. Culture is never developed under conditions of poverty; leisure is essential to the progress of civilization... Social progress has invariably come from the thoughts and plans of those races that have, by their intelligent toil, learned how to wrest a living from the land with lessened effort and shortened days of labor and thus have been able to enjoy a well‑earned and profitable margin of leisure.
19. Knowledge is power. Invention always precedes the acceleration of cultural development on a world‑wide scale... Science teaches man to speak the new language of mathematics and trains his thoughts along lines of exacting precision. And science also stabilizes philosophy through the elimination of error, while it purifies religion by the destruction of superstition.
20. Multiplication of numbers beyond the optimum of the normal man‑land ratio means either a lowering of the standards of living or an immediate expansion of territorial boundaries by peaceful penetration or by military conquest, forcible occupation... And it is a wise nation which knows when to cease growing.
21. The chief factor in early civilization was the force exerted by wise social masters; primitive man had civilization literally thrust upon him by his superior contemporaries. Well‑organized and superior minorities have largely ruled this world.
22. Today, there is great need for further linguistic development to facilitate the expression of evolving thought.. Language is man's greatest and. most serviceable thinking tool, but it never flourished until social groups acquired some leisure ... A universal language promotes peace, insures culture, and augments happiness.
23. Science, 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.
24. The 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.
25. 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.
26. At 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.
27. Civilization is not dependent on the effective co‑ordination of specialists. As society expands, some method of drawing together the various specialists must be found.
28. It 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.
29. Modernized co‑ordination and fraternal regulation will be productive of longer‑lived cooperation than will the older and more primitive methods of communism or dictatorial regulative institutions based on force.
30. No national civilization long endures unless its educational methods and religious ideals inspire a high type of intelligent patriotism and national devotion... The 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.
31. In civilization much, very much, depends on an enthusiastic and effective load‑pulling spirit... And such teamwork‑social co‑operation‑is dependent on leadership. The cultural civilizations for the past and the present have been based upon the intelligent co‑operation of the citizenry with wise and progressive leaders.
32. Society is not a divine institution; it is a phenomenon of progressive evolution... Man 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... No great social or economic change should be attempted suddenly.
33. 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. Leadership is vital to progress. Wisdom, insight, and foresight are indispensable to the endurance of nations. Civilization is never really jeopardized until able leadership begins to vanish. And the quantity of such wise leadership has never exceeded one per cent of the population.
34. Before the discovery of printing, progress was relatively slow since one generation could not so rapidly benefit from the achievements of its predecessors. But now human society is plunging forward under the force of its accumulated momentum of all the ages through which civilization has struggled.
Discussion Questions
1. Is our modern use of leisure contributing to creativity?
2. How can our world solve the problem of overpopulation?
3. How can the Internet help us establish a universal language?
4. How can we improve our educational system?
5. How can our ethical standards catch up with our scientific development?
6. How can the values and goals of Christianity and Isam be brought into more harmonious relationships?
7. Will the teachings of the Urantia Synopsis of Papers establish a new and higher level of spirituality on our world?
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