Chapter 5 – Society
Current societal drivers
The dominant religion in western society is Christianity; this religion appears to be an integral part of our society. At many public events there are prayers but it goes much deeper than this because most of those who participate in our society are at least nominal Christians. Christianity is intimately tied into our civilization; because of this it appears that Christianity even sponsors our society, giving those of other religions a false impression. This is particularly the case with religious fanatics who radicalize the poor and downtrodden for their purposes. In their view Christianity is an intimate part of our society; this is one rationalization for their terrorist attacks on Western civilization.
Radical elements who feel marginalized by western society in particular, feel oppressed by this society and they vent their frustrations upon the Christian western society. These terrorists act on their frustrations in an unacceptable and violent manner; nonetheless the grievances are real, these people have been marginalized, and the underlying causes need to be dealt with. When these causes are not reconciled we have terrorists at war with civilization.
If Christianity is so tied up with our society, where do we turn for assistance instead? How about turning to the real Jesus? When Jesus was only fourteen years old he devised a test for the institutions of society; he used this test to measure every institution of society. This is how he determined if a certain segment of society was useful or not, was it good or bad. He tested each part by the following tests: What does it do for the human soul? How does it assist our spiritual growth? Another test was does this institution bring God closer to man? Does it show God what kind of person we are? Another test was does it bring man closer to God?[1] A progressing and improving society will pass these tests because it will have the best interests of its citizens in mind. Is there any institution of our “modern” society that can pass these tests?
We first briefly examine various aspects of our modern society. These are for descriptive purposes only. After this we investigate areas for progress; how can we help to bring about a better world.
Current society is dominated by special interest groups. The so called one per cent controls a vast portion of our civilization; because of their wealth, their power is out of proportion to their meaning for society and this disparity is growing. Between 1978 and 2014 the pay raises for CEOs of S&P 500 companies grew by just under 1000% while that of the typical worker grew less than 11%.[2] Less than 5 per cent of these CESs are women,[3] therefore this also increases the inequality of pay between men and women.
What does it matter if you have a hundred zillion dollars, how does that help our sisters and brothers? What will you do with this wealth to bring mankind closer to God?
Where will you be in a thousand years?
Our society is top-heavy with luxury and materialistic longings. Our society labors under the strain of a dangerous phase of interassociations and multiple interdependencies.[4] We are too much tied up in materialism to care about anything meaningful, anything of lasting value. The antidote for this is religion, true faith. People of faith need to act so that overactive progress does not destroy our culture, our civilization. These turbulent times can bring brotherhood and peace only by the insights of religion.[5]
One problem in our political atmosphere is that there is a fundamental distrust of anybody who is any way different. We feel comfortable with people who are like us and uneasy around anybody who might be different. Politicians who pledge to build great walls to keep out those who are different are elected. Politicians who vow to throw out anyone who might follow another faith are elected. Politics has become a process of exclusion, attempting to find how many we can keep out, rather than seeing who we might be able to let in.
Jesus was all about inclusion: he talked to the Samaritan woman Nalda and his apostles were shocked that he would speak to anybody of questionable character,[6] he organized the women evangelistic corps,[7] and he wanted to bring the Greek believers into the apostolic group[8] but he knew the original apostles would not accept this. Jesus was all about inclusion, the Golden Rule, and knowing the value of each individual.
Our entire society is built upon rampant materialism. This materialistic binge cannot continue indefinitely, someday there will be a reckoning, a coming to terms with the consequences of our actions. This will not be easy, it will not be comfortable, and there will be unhappy choices to make. The coming economic instability is another consequence of the actions of our fallen planetary prince; we need to read the signs of the times and prepare for the reaping of Caligastia’s sowing.
It is true we have powerful spiritual assistance when we work for truth, but we need to have steadfast faith to make the best use of this assistance. We certainly are not alone but if we are complacent and sit idly by, this spiritual assistance will move on seeking those who are willing to work for truth and righteousness. This spiritual assistance will not come to the aid of those who are unwilling to exert themselves. Too often we earthlings will sit back and let things happen we know to be unhealthy and unrighteous. We have let it happen and now we must live with the consequences. The time has come when each one of us needs to declare where we stand: for truth and the will of God, or instead for lies, falsehood and our fallen planetary prince. There are active forces working against truth on Urantia and it is up to each one of us to proclaim which side we are on.
Our society is dominated by power groups, each striving to gain control; each group feels they are the ones who can make a real difference and they must be the dominant segment of society. Our society is all about power and control; all about what each person can get for themselves. Reason and truth have become victims of those seeking power.
While the majority of our people are Christian, God is not the central figure in the lives of everyone. Again, people are focused upon the narrow view, the short term outlook. If we instead take the broader outlook, the long term viewpoint and bring God into the center of our lives, then we will obtain needful things, instead it appears as if our society is totally focused upon immediate reality; we appear to have no awareness of anything outside our narrow consciousness.
The way our political system is set up, the only thing needed to be elected to a governmental office is lots of money. There appears to be little consideration of issues or eligibility or competence. The only consideration is who has the most money to purchase ads on various media outlets or who can bluster, shout untruths and put up a good front. Our political system seems to give no consideration whatsoever to qualifications or suitability or ability to govern. Before they can be elected, politicians need vast amounts of money. Beyond this, once they are elected they must immediately seek even more money so they can be reelected. Our political system has become an endless swirl of money. Like the rest of our society, our political system is built upon greed. In the next chapter we will explore how we the people can exert our sovereignty.
Because of this only the rich or those connected to wealthy backers can effectively run for political office. It seems as if the majority of elected politicians are those who kowtow to wealth or industrial power. This means that those who do have wealth can impose their view, however warped it may be, upon the mass of society.
Because of the instabilities in our society it is unsustainable on many levels. One of these is our economic instability. Massive amounts of debt have been run up, which cannot be repaid. How these excessive obligations have occurred truly does not matter; what does matter is how we are going to deal with the situation we find ourselves in; will we seek the easy way out and pass the problem to our descendants or will we face up to reality and deal with the situation.
In one survey the rising income and wealth disparity was rated as the most important factor that determines global developments during the next decade.[9] When the majority of the wealth is concentrated in a few hands, instability is assured.
Another area of instability is the political polarization present in our society. We have two different types of political viewpoints, two vastly divergent ways of moving forward. Each side has absolute conviction they have the solution to all our problems. Having various groups with differing viewpoints is not necessarily a problem; the problem comes when each side is so absolutely convinced of the rightness of their position; they know there is no need to seek ways of finding a middle way between the two viewpoints. Our current society appears to permit no middle ground.
What is happening to our environment is also vital to our survival as a species. In low lying areas such as Miami, Florida water levels are rising already. “Whether the majority of the cause is anthropogenic or natural, the end result is indisputable: sea level is rising. It is not a political issue, nor does it matter if someone believes in it or not.”[10] Politicians or those with preconceived opinions may think otherwise, but the water is rising, our planet is warming and the polarization in our society prevents anything being done about it. This is another major portion of our society that is unsustainable.
Our society also cannot make and sustain long term goals because there are no goals, nothing we as a group want to strive for. Our society reacts to situations rather than being proactive and developing long term improvement plans. This is definitely not the way to progress; this is not the way to leave the world a better place than we found it; this is not the sort of example we should be setting for our children. We need a strong and righteous motivating story.
It seems there will always be individuals seeking power, looking for ways to gain control over others. “Those who seek power at any price detect a societal weakness, a fear that they can ride into office.”[11] This is how Hitler secured his absolute power over the German people and also it is the way other demagogues seek power, even into our own times.
We have difficulty distinguishing between true and false liberty. Whenever the magic word liberty is proclaimed we affirm that is what everyone desires, what everyone strives for; what can be wrong about wanting liberty? There is however, more than one type of liberty, and we must choose between them wisely. It turns out that some forms of liberty are more spiritually enduring, more meaningful than others. The types of liberty can be broadly separated into two distinct groups: true and false liberty, it is important to distinguish between them and to be wary of calls for false liberty.
False liberty is for a select few at the expense of others. False liberty is portrayed in “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand where the upper crust of society live in protected enclaves while the mass of society are outside killing each other in a lawless state. A recent article about the present day consequences of her books concluded: “Our very survival as a species depended on cooperation, and humans excel at cooperative effort. Rather than keeping knowledge, skills and goods ourselves, early humans exchanged them freely across cultural groups.”[12]
False liberty recognizes value or importance for only a few individuals who self-proclaim their own importance over others. Arguments by the ultra-rich using calls to false liberty hide “a deeper purpose, a compulsion to control others, to limit their freedoms, in the name of ensuring one’s own liberty.”[13] These individuals and their followers personify the call to false liberty.
True liberty acknowledges everyone has value; everyone has a spark of God within. This presence of our Heavenly Father within each normal minded individual has astounding implications; this means each one of us has a chance for eternal life, go to Paradise and meet our Father in person. It also means that if anybody is degraded for any superficial characteristic then it is God Himself who is being degraded. If any individual loses freedom because of any sort of bigotry then God is the subject of such unfair treatment. How can we subject the creator of all things and beings to such unfair treatment, to bigotry?
True liberty recognizes the worth of everyone, but it also includes the responsibility for each of us to make the best use of whatever opportunities we have; this especially includes the downtrodden and the disenfranchised. When an individual realizes their own worth they will have incentive to better themselves even after they have been degraded by the mass of society for generations. Once they become aware of their eternal potential and that of every other individual, they will want to improve and will no longer be a drain on society, instead they will be able to make a positive contribution to society. They will want and will find dignity and meaning in their existence. This process will not be an overnight transformation; it will take patience, love, perseverance, compassion and understanding. This will be a small price to pay for the chance to transform these human beings from pure consumers to contributors, from the degraded to the participating, from the disenfranchised to real members of a more vibrant society.
False liberty is unsustainable in the long run because the actual workers, those who truly produce the goods and services, are degraded until they can no longer function in society. The remaining privileged few are not willing or able to keep up the infrastructure or the flow of goods and services that are needed by society; the entire society will eventually collapse into oblivion.
True liberty, being inclusive and uplifting is able to progress, to improve and grow because everyone becomes contributors rather than having a class of degraded human beings who are a drag on society. True liberty includes God in our lives and with Him on our side we cannot fail. True liberty is potentially eternal while false liberty is momentary.
Beings who seek unwarranted power over others are certainly not new in our history, not only have they been with us throughout all of our own history, their allegiance is to the rebellion that took place two hundred thousand years ago. These seditious ideas have been with us for a very long time! Thus does the Lucifer manifesto, masquerading in the habiliments of liberty, stand forth in the clear light of reason as a monumental threat to consummate the theft of personal liberty and to do it on a scale that has been approached only twice in all the history of Nebadon.[14] This call to unfettered personal liberty was an important aspect of the Lucifer rebellion and it is also an important aspect for his present day followers.
In the final analysis, what is true liberty? It can be summarized thus: No being in all the universe has the rightful liberty to deprive any other being of true liberty, the right to love and be loved, the privilege of worshiping God and of serving his fellows.[15]
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All references are to The Urantia Book unless otherwise noted. The number refers to the single column version in the format page.paragraph, 1388.5 ↑
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Oxfam Briefing paper, January 18 2016, “An Economy for the 1%, How privilege and power in the economy drive extreme inequality and how this can be stopped,” ISBN 978-1-78077-993-5, p 15, Figure 5 ↑
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Oxfam, p 14 ↑
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765.2 ↑
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1087.1 ↑
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1614.5 and Bible, John 4: 5-42 ↑
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1679.2 ↑
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1924.2 ↑
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The Global Risks Report 2017 12th Edition, World Economic Forum, 2017, GRR17, the report can be downloaded from http://wef.ch/risks2017, p 6, see also Table 1.1 p 11 ↑
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Brian McNoldy, “Water, Water, Everywhere: Sea level Rise in Miami,” www.rsmas.miami.edu/blog/2014/10/03/sea-level-rise-in-miami/ ↑
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“The Demon-Haunted World – Science as a Candle in the Dark” by Carl Sagan, Ballantine Books, New York, 1996, p 406 ↑
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“Column: This is what happens when you take Ayn Rand seriously” by Denise Cummins, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/column-this-is-what-happens-when-you-take-ayn-rand-seriously, retrieved 10/18/18 ↑
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Democracy in Chains – The deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America, Nancy MacLean, Scribe, London, 2017, p 211-2. ↑
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614.8 ↑
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615.2 ↑