2016-06-12. Evolution: Into the light, back to the dark, into the light.
It appears there were several differences between these two first humans and even their immediate ancestors. Of the first order, they were always upright and moved by walking and running all the time; they climbed trees like a bear, no longer like the apes. Their life space increase by three times over their relatives. They had an appreciation and admiration for other objects and beings and considerable vanity.
Of the second order,
“… the most remarkable advance in emotional development was the sudden appearance of a new group of real human feelings, the worshipful group, embracing awe, reverence, humility, and even a primitive form of gratitude. Fear, joined with ignorance of natural phenomena, is about to give birth to primitive religion.” (UB 62:5.4)
And with these new feelings came the most significant difference, which was the initiation of the sixth, followed by the seventh, adjutant spirits of worship and wisdom. At some point, before they left their families to strike out on their own, they made a decision (it must have been a moral one, although the book is silent on that point) which was the factor of causation for the coming of the last two adjutant spirits.
“When about nine years of age, they journeyed off down the river one bright day and held a momentous conference. . . . On this eventful day they arrived at an understanding to live with and for each other, and this was the first of a series of such agreements which finally culminated in the decision to flee from their inferior animal associates and to journey northward, little knowing that they were thus to found the human race.”
The joinder of adjutant spirits is the one event alone that distinguishes human beings from all previous versions of pre-human animals. This event was the catalyst for the coming of their Thought Adjusters. And within a short time, Urantia was finally recognized as an inhabited world. (Notice, a planet is not recognized as such until the first true human beings have arrived, so to speak. All of the other inhabitants don’t count apparently.)
Today, I suspect we are quite different than what Anton and Fonda were in those days. There is likely some advanced cerebral and muscular advances today as compared to then, and we have continued to evolve as needed (think teeth and appendix), and we have continued to improve in mental acuity. Whereas we think of our culture as being the main advancements, we need to remember that our culture is not automatically here for us to enjoy. It is purely social and each being born to this world must learn of it by instruction and experience. (Soapbox time!)
“Civilization is a racial acquirement; it is not biologically inherent; hence must all children be reared in an environment of culture, while each succeeding generation of youth must receive anew its education. 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.” (UB 68:0.2)
In 2004, Jane Jacob, one of the great “prophets” of our time, wrote a small but important book, Dark Age Ahead. She starts off by telling us something about culture, any culture. As the Urantia Book noted above, culture can be a fragile thing. We are losing aspects of our culture daily and replacing them with other aspects. And once these lost aspects are gone, they can be permanently gone from memory as well as daily experience. We think we have culture because we have the internet, television, movies, now video games, iPhones–all of which we feel give a permanence to our culture. But culture is not those things. A dynamic, living culture is one that is lived and experience daily and which is passed on to succeeding generations by word of mouth and example. It is for this reason Ms. Jacobs sees our society moving into a “dark age,” similar to other that our civilization has passed through over the last 2000 years. And once it is gone, it can never be reconstructed.
(In this regard, I am reminded from the UB how the biologist can never re-construct life by examining the directed frog or piecing together strands of DNA.)
To make her point, Ms. Jacobs puts emphasis on what she calls the failure of our six pillars of our culture: communities and families rigged to fail; higher education versus credentialing where the degree is more important than the learning; the abandoning of science (what global warming?); dumbing down of taxes and governmental powers no longer in touch with reality; and the lack of self-policing of the learned professions. As with all Jane Jacobs’ books, this being her last, they are all worth reading.
As to our long-term future, I think we will get through these dark ages and move into the eras of Light and Life. I think it is a long way out there, but not 100,000 years out there. I have every confidence we can do it. But we need to be more thoughtful and wiser, that means more educated in our culture as well in our schools, more considerate and compassionate, more accepting and less materialistic, more like Jesus and less like congress. And we need humor. Much more humor. I doubt it will take 100,000 years for us to move into Light and Life. By that time we should be in the six-stage at least of Light and Life. So in that time, I suspect we would not recognize our world. So much will be lost, the good as well as the bad, and we will have much good to replace that which is lost.
