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. [1]
Biologic evolution and cultural civilization are not necessarily correlated. But in lengthy periods of history evolution and culture become related as cause and effect. [2] Jesus avoided all entanglements with the economic structure and the political commitments of his day. [3]
The civilization of Urantia is the joint product of the Urantia mortals and the Urantia midwayers, and this is true despite the present differential between the two levels of culture. [4]
We cannot judge religion by the status of its accompanying civilization; we had better estimate the real nature of a civilization by the purity and nobility of its religion. [5]
It is the people who make a civilization; civilization does not make the people. [22] The advances of true civilization are all born in the inner world of mankind. [23] Cultural civilization can not flourish without an adequate background of antecedent racial progression. [24] Culture is never developed under conditions of poverty; leisure is essential to the progress of civilization. [25] Climate always has been a decisive factor in civilization. [26]
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. [27]
Evolutionary religion has been man’s most expensive but incomparably effective institution. Religion fostered civilization and provided societal continuity. [28]
War has served many valuable purposes in the past, it has been an indispensable scaffolding in the building of civilization, but it is rapidly becoming culturally bankrupt — incapable of producing dividends of social gain in any way commensurate with the terrible losses attendant upon its invocation. [29] The progressive program of an expanding civilization embraces:
The greatest twentieth-century influences contributing to the furtherance of civilization:
The first four great advances in human civilization were: [44]
The civilization which is now evolving on Urantia grew out of, and is predicated on, the following factors:
The efforts of planetary helper seraphim has allowed the development of a civilization now evolving which embodies much of their ideals of confidence and trust. [52] Love is the essence of religion and the wellspring of superior civilization. [53]
Many intelligent and well-meaning men, even in the more enlightened age of these revelations, maintain that modern civilization could not have been built upon the teachings of Jesus. But all such doubters forget that a much better civilization could have been built upon his teachings. The secret of a better civilization is bound up in the Master’s teachings of the brotherhood of man, the good will of love and mutual trust. [54]
The Urantia peoples are suffering the consequences of the Caligastia upheaval precipitated world-wide confusion and robbed all subsequent generations of the moral assistance which a well-ordered society would have provided. [55] A lasting social system without a morality predicated on spiritual realities can no more be maintained than could the solar system without gravity. [56] Civilization is a racial acquirement; it is not biologically inherent; hence must all children be reared in an environment of culture. [57]
Secularism can never bring peace to mankind. Nothing can take the place of God in human society. Secular revolt win many liberties and satisfactions but made the mistake of institute a revolt against God himself. [58]
Much, very much, in civilization depends on age, the help of the biologic uplifters, and the subsequent missions of the various orders of the divine Sons. [59]
But the security of civilization itself still rests on the growing willingness of one generation to invest in the welfare of the next and future generations. [60]
Culture is never developed under conditions of poverty; leisure is essential to the progress of civilization. [61] Cultural society is no great and beneficent club of inherited privilege; this guild of civilization exacts costly admission fees. [62] Society is not a divine institution; it is a phenomenon of progressive evolution. [63] Society was born, not of mere association of numbers, but rather as a result of the organization of intelligent co-operators. [64] Race mixture is always advantageous in that it favors versatility of culture and makes for a progressive civilization. [65] Organized society had every right to employ force in the execution of its just mandates. [66] Spiritual progress is not dependent upon cultural civilization. [67]
Commerce and exploration quickly became the most potent influence in the spread of cultural civilization. Other secondary influences were military conquests, colonization, and missionary enterprises. [68]
The factors in the preservation of civilization are:
An ideal social order is that in which every man loves his neighbor as he loves himself. [73] Society should in every way possible foster originality. [74] The ideal of all social attainment can be realized only in the coming of this divine kingdom. [75] Prime gift of society is security, survival possibilities. [76] Refusal to use power selfishly is mark of high civilization. [77] We should not tolerate idleness or poverty. No society has progressed very far when it permits idleness or tolerates poverty. [78] It is the business and duty of society to provide the child of nature with a fair and peaceful opportunity to pursue self-maintenance. [79] Society thus becomes a co-operative scheme for securing civil freedom through institutions. [80]
Only in the higher levels of the superconscious mind we find those higher concepts in association with effective master patterns which will contribute to the building of a better and more enduring civilization. [81]
The four great stages were collection, hunting, pastoral, and agricultural. [82]
Primitive society was regulated on the theory that the group membership should have an interest in, and some degree of control over, the behavior of each individual. [83] The chief factor in early civilization was the force exerted by wise social masters. [84] Chinese were first to achieve a racial solidarity—the first to attain a large-scale cultural, social, and political civilization. [85]
For about 35,000 years after the days of Adam, the cradle of civilization was in south-western Asia, extending from the Nile valley eastward and slightly to the north across northern Arabia, through Mesopotamia, and on into Turkestan. [86] First great advances were fire, animal domestication, slavery, and private property. [87] Urantia civilization was literally forged out between the anvil of necessity and the hammers of fear. [88] Primitive society was thus founded on the reciprocity of necessity and on the enhanced safety of association. [89]
Primitive society with its four divisions—industrial, regulative, religious, and military—rose through the instrumentality of fire, animals, slaves, and property. [90] Civilization has become man’s insurance against violent death. [91] Hunger and love drove men together; vanity and ghost fear held them together. [92] Planetary Prince’s and Adam’s headquarters intended to advance. [93] The excessive multiplication of slaves is what caused the aegean culture to perish. [94] Law is always at first negative and prohibitive; in advancing civilizations it becomes increasingly positive and directive. [95] Second Eden was cradle of civilization for 30,000 years. [96] The influence of Adamic, though in numbers smaller than had been planned, produced an advance in civilization. [97] Small middle class appeared in Jesus’ time. [98]
Civilization has not always progressed forward. Throughout history there have been several major setbacks:
Society is becoming more mechanical, more compact, more complex, and more critically interdependent. [104] Modern society is enduring the strain of one of its most dangerous phases of far-flung interassociation and highly complicated interdependence. [105] This secularistic human society, notwithstanding its unparalleled materialistic achievement, is slowly disintegrating. [106]
Scientific secularism, notwithstanding its unparalleled materialistic achievement, is slowly disintegrating society, and the only cohesive force resisting this disintegration is nationalism, but nationalism is the chief barrier to world peace. [107] Society is the offspring of age upon age of trial and error. [108] In current civilization lower strata no longer so ignorant or politically helpless. [109] Gradually society asserted its rights and, at the present time, they are: [110]
The attainment of a high cultural civilization demands, first, the ideal type of citizen and, then, ideal and adequate social mechanisms. [111]
The progress of civilization is hardly alike on any two planets. Under the benign rule of a Planetary Prince and other leaders an average world will successively pass through the following seven developmental epochs: [112]
The status of any civilization may be very accurately determined by the thoroughness and equity of its courts and by the integrity of its judges. [113] The sum of man’s adjustment to the life demands equals his cultural civilization. [114] Civilizations are unstable because they are not cosmic; they are not innate in the individuals of the races. [115] The presence of large numbers of unmarried persons in any society indicates the temporary breakdown or the transition of the mores. [116]
See also: UB 68:2; UB 71:4.2-14; UB 81:6.