Primitive humans evolved from animals a million year ago on earth slowly resolved their problems of making a living, at least partially. Their population increased to millions.
They were then confronted with the task of regulating human contacts.
The development of industry demanded law, order, and social adjustment; private property necessitated government.
On an evolutionary world, antagonisms are natural; peace is secured only by some sort of social regulative system.
Social regulation is inseparable from social organization; association implies some controlling authority.
Government compels the co-ordination of the antagonisms of the tribes, clans, families, and individuals.
Government is an unconscious development; it evolves by trial and error. It does have survival value; therefore it becomes traditional.
Anarchy augmented misery; therefore government, comparative law and order, slowly emerged or is emerging.
The coercive demands of the struggle for existence literally drove the human race along the progressive road to civilization.
War is the natural state and heritage of evolving man; peace is the social yardstick measuring civilization's advancement.
Before the partial socialization of the advancing races man was exceedingly individualistic, extremely suspicious, and unbelievably quarrelsome.
Violence is the law of nature, hostility the automatic reaction of the children of nature, while war is but these same activities carried on collectively.
And wherever and whenever the fabric of civilization becomes stressed by the complications of society's advancement, there is always an immediate and ruinous reversion to these early methods of violent adjustment of the irritations of human inter-associations.
War is an animalistic reaction to misunderstandings and irritations; peace attends upon the civilized solution of all such problems and difficulties.
There could be no such phenomenon as war until society had evolved sufficiently far to actually experience periods of peace and to sanction warlike practices. The very concept of war implies some degree of organization.
With the emergence of social groupings, individual irritations began to be submerged in the group feelings, and this promoted intra-tribal tranquility but at the expense of inter-tribal peace.
Peace was thus first enjoyed by the in-group, or tribe, who always disliked and hated the out-group, foreigners. Early man regarded it a virtue to shed alien blood.
Warfare persists because man is human, evolved from an animal, and all animals are bellicose (ready to fight).
In past ages a fierce war would institute social changes and facilitate the adoption of new ideas such as would not have occurred naturally in ten thousand years. The terrible price paid for these certain war advantages was that society was temporarily thrown back into savagery; civilized reason had to abdicate.
War is strong medicine, very costly and most dangerous; while often curative of certain social disorders, it sometimes kills the patient, destroys the society.
War has had a certain evolutionary and selective value, but like slavery, it must sometime be abandoned as civilization slowly advances.
Olden wars promoted travel and cultural inter-mixing; these ends are now better served by modern methods of transport and communication.
Olden wars strengthened nations, but modern struggles disrupt civilized culture.
Ancient warfare resulted in the decimation of inferior peoples; the net result of modern conflict is the selective destruction of the best human stocks.
Early wars promoted organization and efficiency, but these have now become the aims of modern industry.
During past ages war was a social ferment which pushed civilization forward; this result is now better attained by ambition and invention.
Ancient warfare supported the concept of a God of battles, but modern man has been told that God is love.
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.
At one time physicians believed in bloodletting as a cure for many diseases, but they have since discovered better remedies for most of these disorders. And so must the international bloodletting of war certainly give place to the discovery of better methods for curing the ills of nations.
Do not make the mistake of glorifying war; rather discern what it has done for society so that you may the more accurately visualize what its substitutes must provide in order to continue the advancement of civilization. And if such adequate substitutes are not provided, then you may be sure that war will long continue.
Man will never accept peace as a normal mode of living until he has been thoroughly and repeatedly convinced that peace is best for his material welfare, and until society has wisely provided peaceful substitutes for the gratification of that inherent tendency periodically to let loose a collective drive designed to liberate those ever-accumulating emotions and energies belonging to the self-preservation reactions of the human species.
But even in passing, war should be honored as the school of experience which compelled a race of arrogant individualists to submit themselves to highly concentrated authority—a chief executive. Old-fashioned war did select the innately great men for leadership, but modern war no longer does this.
To discover leaders society must now turn to the conquests of peace: industry, science, and social achievement.
[As told by the Urantia Book; Visit Urantia-India Site to know More about it]
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