Some Fundamental Truths About the Evolution of Wars and Governments

The first major challenge for the human races which had been evolving on earth was learning the techniques for acquiring the essential things for life such as food, shelter, family and the groups or clans. Once this was mastered at least partially, the next task was the regulation of human contacts.The development of industry demanded law, order, and social adjustment; private property necessitated government.

Not only on earth, but on all evolutionary planets beaming with evolutionary life such as that is on earth, development of antagonisms among the evolving humans are a natural phenomena. That is because, the evolving humans are not yet perfect in their mind levels. This causes the humans to be with varying capacities of understanding each other. Misunderstanding, mistrust and consequent animosities are therefore, natural.

When this is so, human groups have to learn the technique of bringing peace and soon they begin to appreciate the necessity for peace among them. They learn how to regulate themselves so that peace is established among them.

Anarchy causes misery and therefore establishment of law and order becomes essential for the evolving human groups to reduce their miseries.

The need for bringing law and order necessitated formation of governments.

It was essential for the struggling humanity to forcefully adopt the path of civilization as a necessity for their own existence. This is the natural tendency of evolutionary growth in all evolutionary worlds in this universe!

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.

But 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 such as sports and games. 

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.

Modern air travel has reduced the limitations of distances.

But that has not yet enabled man to remove his suspicion about the foreigners!

When the early chiefs would try to sort out misunderstandings among their clans, they often found it necessary, at least once a year, to permit the people to have some other kind of fun-fights among themselves. The clan would divide up into two groups and engage in an all-day battle. And this for no other reason than just the fun of it; they really enjoyed fighting. The nature of enjoying a fight is within the minds of all underdeveloped humans. Humans will remove this trait only when they become perfectly developed in civilization!

Warfare persists because man is human, evolved from an animal, and all animals have a tendency to fight! In humans, this animal tendency of fighting and killing slowly gets removed from the human mind as human perfection of mind takes place with successive generations!

As it stands now, war and fight among humans in some form keep taking place due any one of the following reasons:

1. Scarcity of food: Man will fight to get food at any cost when food becomes scarce.

2. Scarcity of woman or opposite partner: Imperfect man would not mind fighting or killing for fulfilling this!

3. Showing off pride and superiority: Imperfect man does not consider others as equals. They would resort to violent ways to establish their superiority! They will resort to violent methods when their egos are hurt!

4. Imperfect humans have the animal tendency to acquire leadership at any cost. They would not mind resorting to violent means for achieving this. In olden times it used to be slavery. In today's world, it is all kinds of bossism. All imperfect humans would like to become adorable bosses to others. When they get the power or opportunity, they might even become sadistic to trouble those who happen to be under their control! Wars can happen for establishment of leadership!

5. Imperfect animal minded humans cannot forgive the wrongs of others and they get satisfaction only when they take revenge. The human imperfection of revenge is another cause for wars!

6. Imperfect humans cannot tolerate long term peace as their minds do aspire for fighting. Such imperfect humans create war like situations during long term peace times. Sports and games, to some extent, help the imperfect humans to vent their fight loving agitations of mind!

7. Religions of imperfect humans invariably approve war to establish superiority of their own faith. It is extremely difficult for the imperfect humans to understand the true divine nature of God!

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.

Nature confers no rights on man, only life and a world in which to live it. Nature does not even confer the right to live, as might be deduced by considering what would likely happen if an unarmed man met a hungry tiger face to face in the primitive forest. Society’s prime gift to man is security.

When rights are old beyond knowledge of origin, they are often called natural rights. But human rights are not really natural; they are entirely social. They are relative and ever changing, being no more than the rules of the game—recognized adjustments of relations governing the ever-changing phenomena of human competition.

Natural justice is a man-made theory; it is not a reality. In nature, justice is purely theoretic, wholly a fiction. Nature provides but one kind of justice—inevitable conformity of results to causes.

Justice, as conceived by man, means getting one’s rights and has, therefore, been a matter of progressive evolution.

Law is always at first negative and prohibitive; in advancing civilizations it becomes increasingly positive and directive.

Mankind’s struggle to perfect government on earth has to do with perfecting channels of administration, with adapting them to ever-changing current needs, with improving power distribution within government, and then with selecting such administrative leaders as are truly wise. 

So long as the majority humans remain without achieving reasonable levels of mind perfection, their evolutionary progress is incomplete. The last strains of genetic features they carry from their animal origins need to be polished by successive generations of evolutionary growth. This progress does not happen uniformly across all and therefore human society at any time during its evolutionary progress remains as a heterogeneous lot with varying levels of imperfection. The chances of democratic systems achieving near perfect governance under such a situation is very low and non-sustainable. Yet democracy is the ideal and desirable form of governance for humans who have surpassed their primitive stages of development.

While there is a divine and ideal form of government, it is a futile exercise to give the details of it to humans when they remain vastly under lower levels of mental maturity. The minds of such people will not accept the principles of such a governance even when that is divinely revealed!

So, humans of earth has to go forward to future generations facing all the trials and tribulations which in essence are there own creation. 

But that does not mean that the human race is going to be doomed.

On the contrary, it will progress continuously and every generation ahead would have some improvements over their predecessors! 

It is divinely destined that all evolutionary planets reach to their respective perfection levels at some point of time. No living planets are divinely destined to be doomed! Such a destiny is not in the plans of their divine creators!

Hence, earth too would eventually reach a glorious future. A future time when its peoples and its governments are more or less with the highest possible material perfection!

[Adapted from the Urantia Book-Paper-70]

Sharing Some Advanced Thoughts on War and Peace; Evolution of Government and Civilization!

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]

About Political Sovereignty, Law , Liberty, War and Peace : Some Statements of Supernal Wisdom!

The following are some supernal statements of wisdom about political sovereignty, law and liberty that I read in my favorite book of life guidance-the Urantia Book. Some of those statements, I reproduce below for the thoughtful meditation of those who are capable of assimilating such knowledge:

Sovereignty is power and it grows by organization. This growth of the organization of political power is good and proper, for it tends to encompass ever-widening segments of the total of mankind. But this same growth of political organizations creates a problem at every intervening stage between the initial and natural organization of political power— the family—and the final consummation of political growth—the government of all mankind, by all mankind, and for all mankind.

As sovereignty passes from smaller groups to larger groups, wars are lessened. That is, minor wars between smaller nations are lessened, but the potential for greater wars is increased as the nations wielding sovereignty become larger and larger. Presently, when all the world has been explored and occupied, when nations are few, strong, and powerful, when these great and supposedly sovereign nations come to touch borders, when only oceans separate them, then will the stage be set for major wars, world-wide conflicts. So-called sovereign nations cannot rub elbows without generating conflicts and eventuating wars.

Political sovereignty is created out of the surrender of self-determinism, first by the individual within the family and then by the families and clans in relation to the tribe and larger groupings. This progressive transfer of self-determination from the smaller to ever larger political organizations has generally proceeded unabated in the East since the establishment of the Ming and the Mogul dynasties. In the West it obtained for more than a thousand years right on down to the end of the World War, when an unfortunate retrograde movement temporarily reversed this normal trend by re-establishing the submerged political sovereignty of numerous small groups in Europe.

Your world will not enjoy lasting peace until the so-called sovereign nations intelligently and fully surrender their sovereign powers into the hands of the brotherhood of men—mankind government. Internationalism—(viz., Leagues of Nations, the UN)—can never bring permanent peace to mankind. World-wide confederations of nations will effectively prevent minor wars and acceptably control the smaller nations, but they will not prevent world wars nor control the three, four, or five most powerful governments. In the face of real conflicts, one of these world powers will withdraw from such Leagues and declare war. You cannot prevent nations going to war as long as they remain infected with the delusional virus of national sovereignty. Internationalism is a step in the right direction. An international police force will prevent many minor wars, but it will not be effective in preventing major wars, conflicts between the great military governments of earth.

As the number of truly sovereign nations (great powers) decreases, so do both opportunity and need for mankind government increase. When there are only a few really sovereign (great) powers, either they must embark on the life and death struggle for national (imperial) supremacy, or else, by voluntary surrender of certain prerogatives of sovereignty, they must create the essential nucleus of super national power which will serve as the beginning of the real sovereignty of all mankind.

Peace will not come to your world until every so-called sovereign nation surrenders its power to make war into the hands of a representative government of all mankind. Political sovereignty is innate with the peoples of the world. When all the peoples of earth create a world government, they have the right and the power to make such a government SOVEREIGN; and when such a representative or democratic world power controls the world’s land, air, and naval forces, peace on earth and good will among men can prevail—but not until then.

Citizens are not born for the benefit of governments; governments are organizations created and devised for the benefit of men. There can be no end to the evolution of political sovereignty short of the appearance of the government of the sovereignty of all men. All other sovereignties are relative in value, intermediate in meaning, and subordinate in status.

With scientific progress, wars are going to become more and more devastating until they become almost racially suicidal. How many world wars must be fought and how many leagues of nations must fail before men will be willing to establish the government of mankind and begin to enjoy the blessings of permanent peace and thrive on the tranquillity of good will—world-wide good will—among men?

If one man craves freedom—liberty—he must remember that all other men long for the same freedom. Groups of such liberty-loving mortals cannot live together in peace without becoming subservient to such laws, rules, and regulations as will grant each person the same degree of freedom while at the same time safeguarding an equal degree of freedom for all of his fellow mortals. If one man is to be absolutely free, then another must become an absolute slave. And the relative nature of freedom is true socially, economically, and politically. Freedom is the gift of civilization made possible by the enforcement of LAW.

There shall be wars and rumors of wars—nation will rise against nation—just as long as the world’s political sovereignty is divided up and unjustly held by a group of nation-states. 

Another world war will teach the so-called sovereign nations to form some sort of federation, thus creating the machinery for preventing small wars, wars between the lesser nations. But global wars will go on until the government of mankind is created. Global sovereignty will prevent global wars—nothing else can.

It is not a question of armaments or disarmament. Neither does the question of conscription or voluntary military service enter into these problems of maintaining world-wide peace. If you take every form of modern mechanical armaments and all types of explosives away from strong nations, they will fight with fists, stones, and clubs as long as they cling to their delusions of the divine right of national sovereignty.

War is not man’s great and terrible disease; war is a symptom, a result. The real disease is the virus of national sovereignty.

World peace cannot be maintained by treaties, diplomacy, foreign policies, alliances, balances of power, or any other type of makeshift juggling with the sovereignties of nationalism. World law must come into being and must be enforced by world government —the sovereignty of all mankind.

The individual will enjoy far more liberty under world government. Today, the citizens of the great powers are taxed, regulated, and controlled almost oppressively, and much of this present interference with individual liberties will vanish when the national governments are willing to trustee their sovereignty as regards international affairs into the hands of global government.

Under global government the national groups will be afforded a real opportunity to realize and enjoy the personal liberties of genuine democracy. The fallacy of self-determination will be ended. With global regulation of money and trade will come the new era of world-wide peace. Soon may a global language evolve, and there will be at least some hope of sometime having a global religion—or religions with a global viewpoint.

Collective security will never afford peace until the collectivity includes all mankind.

The political sovereignty of representative mankind government will bring lasting peace on earth, and the spiritual brotherhood of man will forever insure good will among all men. And there is no other way whereby peace on earth and good will among men can be realized.

[Reproduced in part from Paper-134 of the Urantia Book. Paper authored by the Midwayer Commission]