Nanaimo UB forum
Paper 78:1;2
....But thirty-five thousand years ago the world at large possessed little culture....
Really? I am sorry but I don't agree, however, could someone explain the definition of the world culture in the context of this paper please?
Ugo, I am not sufficiently acquainted with ancient history to refute your point. 35,000 years ago was slightly after Adam and Eve's appearance on earth, which was 37,850 years ago. What is 'culture'?
Off hand, I suppose culture would include development of tools, implements, metals, ceramics, art in various forms, poetry, literature, music, dance, writing, printing, architecture and so on .
We do know that at the time of Adam and Eve, the garden was highly cultivated with ornamental and other plants..and Adam knew the names of many of these plants - so horticulture was in place and apparently quite advanced.
3000 workers assisted in preparing this garden, p 822.
(organized by Van)
The drinking water supply was kept pure p 824.
The Edenites practised the burial of all waste or decomposing material, p 825.
"Before the disruption of the Adamic regime a cpvered brick-conduit disposal system had been constructed which ran beneath the walls and emptied into the river of Eden almost a mile beyound the outer or lesser wall of the Garden." p 825.
You have discomfort with TUB's claim that 35,000 years ago the world did not have much culture.
Perhaps at your convenience, you might share with us your understanding of culture at that time, Ugo.
Regards
/ j
I believe that we will discover that there were more ancient cultures on this planet than mainstream sources assert. Much of that may fortify assertions of TUB.
However we (moderns) have this tendency to look at our ancestors, particularly those who lived in concert with Creation instead of dominating it, in a condescending way.
Yes I believe that culture involves all the things you mention but also things like beliefs, ritual, ideologies, philosophies etc.
What I also believe from my own readings, that these ancient people had very rich cultures, every bit as valid as our modern times and so I don't see any need for any distinction between old and new to be made is all.
The colonialists that set foot ashore of nearly every indigenous land felt that same kind of condescending view of native "cultures", even suggesting they were but brutes with no culture whatsoever, and then went about decimating these peolpes like vermin, with bible in one hand and musket/sword in the other.
If I am uncomfortable with the expression of poeple of 35,000 yers ago not having much culture, it may be the knee-jerk reaction I have in sympathy of those people who lived back then as they did when early "cultured" explorers landed on their shores and showed them what a cultured society can do for them. (sarcasm implied)
If there is to be some comparative measure about their culture versus modern culture, let it be judged upon how they treated God's creation and let's see the report card then :)
For a few millenia we have been a martial culture expressive of domination theology and patriarchal hierarchical rule. Do we have a richer culture than did those "lazy primitives of Tahiti" who did not have a system of workdays but instead played music, fished as they felt like it, who walked in step with God's nature, who enjoyed multi-generational respect amongst their poeple but built no cathedrals?
Perhaps the word culture has taken upon it an elitist synonymous meaning which would be very wrong in my opinion. I'd like to know in what context the word "culture" was used in TUB's 'author's" comment.
Thanks for sharing your points of view, Ugo.
The author of Paper 79, VIOLET RACE AFTER ADAM, was an Archangel of Nebadon. I wonder what he/she meant by 'culture.'
Immediately following that sentence, p 868, paragraph 3, "But 35,000 years ago the world at large possessed little culture" comes this sentence:
"Certain centers of civilization existed here and there but most of Urantia languished in savagery. "
For lack of direct communication with the author, perhaps that sentence explains what was meant - most of Urantia was still enveloped in savagery.
I do appreciate your sentiment, Ugo, that when colonial culture met upon ancient cultures it was too often assumed that the colonial culture was superior.
Until we have more light on ancient cultures 35,000 years ago, the best guess may be what the author said,
...most of the world "languished in savagery" ..and , p 869,
Adam and Eve had left behind a limited but potent progeny, and the celestial observers on Urantia waited anxiously to find out how these descendants of the erring Material Son and Daughter would acquit themselves.'
/j
Hi Ugo and Joy.
Interesting topic, indeed.
It seems to me that the UB often uses words in their original language, like Latin, or at least the roots of the word.
Culture in this sense derives from 'cultio' = growing, cultivating- as soil; from which we get 'cultor' = farmer, grower; 'cultus' = agriculture, horticulture, planting, seeded fields, care and tending and maintaining these, as well as 'life-style'. Further: cultured as in learning, rearing of young, refinement, cultivating the mind, on to civilization etc etc.....
35 000 yrs ago I don't think there was much cultivated land except for the small pockets mentioned. Mankind settled down when we started to plant and seed, as we had to be there for the harvest. No more traipsing about hunting and gathering. The women probably lead this movement, as they had to carry children on these treks, and probably just put their feet down and said: ENOUGH, already!
The Adamites had a form of writing, as did the Planetary Prince bunch, but it didn't survive outside of those areas, Much of what we call culture is embodied in the written word, or for that matter hieroglyphs, or cuneiform, to keep records and pass on to next generations. Yes, there were lots of oral traditions, but the point is we don't know much about them, precisely for that reason: they didn't write it down!
I am acutely aware of this in my genealogical research. I am sitting here on Van Isle, reading on-line images of old church records, property/estate transfers, births, marriages, deaths and burials of people who lived 4-500 years ago! Yet, some Swedes are still acting like cavemen! :-) But I think you see what I mean.
Let's not forget another very important aspect of our human development: Thought Adjusters were NOT generally distributed before the year 30 AD.
Somewhere in the book they say that if those adjusters were to be removed, we would very soon fall back into savagery and lose our civilization we have struggled so hard to develop.
That's my story, and I am sticking to it! :-)
I understand that semantics plays a big part in any communication, however I will apply that to the next sentence (languishing in savagery) as well.
Taking into account where we (modern humans) are today as a species vis-a-vis our relationship to each other, to the animals of this earth and to Urantia itself, how have we risen above savagery?
We sit at the precipice of potential global annihilation due to pollution, poverty, disease, depleting resources, over=population, environmental degradation and nearly constant warfare (with a potential for WW3 if we attack Iran). Did we get to this point by applying superior culture or by remaining savages? Fatalistic? Perhaps but it sits well within the realm of objective observation and probability.
Adding insult to injury is that we readily lay claim to knowing more than our primitive forefathers did.
So that's where my semantic confusion lies. I do not see much if any advancement of our species from the savagery of 35,000 years ago such that any comparative reference to culture remains more of a distinction without a difference.
Not trying to make a mountain of this semantic query. Just curious about the context in which TUB statement was meant.
Yes, I think you are right when you say that people back then were not less intelligent. Of course not! There were folks of differing levels of understanding of the world they inhabited; there were most likely village idiots as well as wise old folks in the same proportion as today.
Lately it does look like we are heading for hell in a hand-basket, but there are also many things working for the good of all. Those things do not make the evening news, as there is no blood and gore.
We have also come a loooooong way from where we were just a few hundred years ago, or even 100.
In Sweden (as in much of Europe) in the 1700s a woman would have perhaps 15 pregnancies and counted herself lucky to have 2 survive to adult age. If she didn't die in childbirth, of course. The bubonic plague wiped out a third of the European population, in some places 80% or more. This happened several times in different waves. Then there was cholera, small pox, diphtheria and many other devastating diseases.
Education was slowly becoming public with the coming of the Gutenberg printing press. Schools were first for the elite, but the church, at least the Lutherans, instituted a form of schooling, reading, writing, in the homes and farms on a regular basis, including not only the farmer and his wife and children, but the maids and farm hands, too.
There is probably no peoples anywhere, who have at some time not been enslaved or handicapped by serfdom.
The Scots sold their children in the hopes they would at least get food, after the 1745 uprising.
The human suffering has been with us for ages upon ages, and we are a long way from Light and Life.
Then again, we are different, with different abilities and characteristics; for some there is probably a pony somewhere under that pile of manure and they are willing to dig for it. Others won't go near it.
Have you read the Urmia Lectures? The papers on Religion by Melchizedec? the last 2 papers in the book? The paper on the dawn of civilization and following papers?
I also firmly believe that we are today so bombarded by images and sound bytes from far away concerning people of other 'cultures'
The old: Cui bono? again...as always.
So .... be of good cheer! It HAS been far worse.
Christel
Christel,
You knew how to spell "diphtheria" ! I have had endless trouble spelling it !
I read the Urmia papers when you referred to them a while back.
You mentioned a good point - Thought Adjusters were only of more recent times, 30 AD not 35,000 years ago.
Ugo,
We have made many advances in medicine and technology..living conditions are better today than in our grandparents' generation..less infant mortality...yet, I have to agree than underneath these advancements our behavior still leans toward savagery despite more trappimngs of 'culture'.
/j
Thank you Joy and Christel for your submissions. I have given these kinds of things much thought over the years.
But in the grander scheme of things what we hold up as achievement is sldo fraught with corruption, two sides of the same coin.
I agree that the news only covers bad things with blood, bombs etc and so we miss out on a lot of day-to-day goodness and common sense living as it is for all of us on this bubble in space.
However, I also see the failings in our media where the true cost of what we have, or have done, or will do, is also hidden. I have spoke to Joy a bit about my premise on true costs.
If I was to invent a machine that helped society in some way, you may applaud my efforts etc but if you began asking questions like; what is it made from, how was it made, did it cause pollution to make it, does it contain any toxic chemicals, etc and my answers were in the negative, then what real progress was made?
If the only way to manufacture that machine was to heavily pollute land and water, exploit workers for 2 dollars a day, and it being available only to those who had money, then what have I really created?
There is much talk about infant nmortality and adult longevity and often, to make a point, people point out how short a life span people used to have and they refer comparatively to the Romans et al, but seldom is there a comparison done with Indigenous people around the world where there has been little interference with Europeans. Some indigenous tribes suffered low infant mortality, some higher.
Early "settlers" were amazed that the primitives, lived as long as they did, and it made no sense to the settlers because these poor savages were living like animals (in the settlers' minds). And yet they lived to good old ages, and they had a rich culture and settlers learned from them how to survive something that is never discussed on Thanksgiving Day !!
It is true that with technology we have accomplished much, but the true price tag of that advancement has been the leaving behind, the setting underfoot, of entire nations. We in the priveleged gluttonous West are currently bombing Afghanistan for oil and lithium, not to fight terrorists. We went into Lybia to steal their oil and massive gold supplies. We went in Iraq to dominate its oil supplies. We might go into Iran for the same reasons. And it has been that way for a couple millenia at least, the couple millenia of "advancement" as cultured conquerers asserted themselves over weaker societies for the gathering of wealth.
The oral traditions, are almost always condescended to by the people who have known writing. Writing has its advantages but oral traditions have had benefits that supercede writing. Benefits that gave fortification to the feeling of community throughout the generations.
If indigenous peoples could live peacefully, and many did, such that they, those savages, could survive and propogate in a benvolent sustainable way for maybe hundreds of thousands of years, (without the markers of "modern success") , as Jesus would have wanted us to behave, then with or without Thought Adjusters, it was possible for societies to exist without dominon over others and still have a rich culture of higher values.
The phrase We came, We saw, We conquered was the after-birth to the birth of personal wealth accumlation, brought about by the advent of agriculture, the accumulation of increased food supplies and materialism.
Again all I am saying is that we have virtually no knowledge of the true costs of everything we do or have and the price of many advancements has been the loss of humanity, dignity, property, of others in this world. That is savagery in a three-piece suit with a Phd.... but savagery nonetheless.
I think we are easily and readily accepting of a certain kind of superiority over others and that is ego-centricity made manifest.
What advancement is there to claim as modernists to be able to treat some cancers with an amazing technology while the true cost of our technological material advancements has caused more cancers than at any time in history? Rhetorical question.
Where ther MAY not have been many Thought Adjusters 35 thousands years ago, are we to assume there are many more today, even though our population has increased? If so are they still in short supply? Only because we have come out of a fairly prosperouos post-WW2 era can we feel like we have established some form of standard of civlization but look again, now that we are beginning to pay the truer costs of our excesses of the last half century, are we seeing the collapse of this illusory house of cards as poverty, social unrest and criminality is beginning to increase markedly.
So we all did pretty good while we were buying our advancement on our credit cards so to speak, but now it has come time to pay those credit cards off and we cant, and the debt its falling upon ohters, and our children and their children.
I am not na
I am not naively enamoured of some idealistic tribal way of living. But I know that if objectivity was applied to assessing the savages' "cultures" vis-a-vis our modern cultures, we are left lacking in the broader spectrum of what it means to be civilized, and advanced and human.
The largest cathedral in the world cannot hide all the crimes committed in some religions' deity's name as pagan and other indigenous people were eradicated like vermin for their crime of simply not having been privy to some form of "first-hand" theology at a particular time and place.
The 'noble savage'? Am not so sure they all were.
The Amerind supposedly killed off many of the best and brightest in fierce tribal warfare, long before any pale face arrived in the West.
I agree with you basically in all your points, but...no matter how 'civilized' any tribe or people are, there is always that desire to be different, more powerful, better hunter, faster runner etc , to be noticed, and perhaps to have more control over the others.
At the root is Greed in all its forms.
And yet, I come back to page 51, which spells it out rather well.
As for our humongous blunders in our environment, I believe we don't do anything about anything until we smell the stink and hurt, but then we do act. I remember in England when 120 kinds of birds came back in the Sheffield area after having been gone for ages due to the air pollution. Same with the river Thames that you couldn't dip a toe in, now it has fish again, big ones, coming up-stream. It takes a while, but we do learn, albeit slowly.
So many parts of our world have no notion of recycling and toss anything out they no longer use, with no thought what so ever. Mass production of cheap and shoddy 'stuff' threatens to bury us alive, and yet, that is the only way some people can make a living there. Never mind that the father of the house/hut/hovel refuses to work himself and rather have his little kids do the dirty job.
In this I have some personal experience having worked with refugees from Asia, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Somalia et al and have seen their behaviour and attitudes up close. Had I been raised in their culture I would probably not think anything of it. So I am not judging.....only evaluating ;-)
Be of good cheer, my friend! It could be a lot worse.
I must reinforce that I am not purporting a comparative noble savage concept. I disagree with some aspects of some indigenous socieites and applaud others.
I understand human nature quite well and my point re: culture, is it is incorrect in my mind to diminish what "they" may have thought culture was vis-a-vis us modernists.
In my view, pre-euro-contact indigenous poeple had as much "culture", as anything we can brag about today... but if the terms savage or primitive or unintelligent are used to denigrate/diminish their culture then a closer "true cost" examination of who we are, what we are doing, today, would reveal that we demonstrate unintelligent, wilful, brutal primitive savagery as we bomb civilians in foreign lands over corporate monopoly acquisitons of natural and very lucrative resources.
We seem to have this tendency to want to believe in our own current superiority. Our egos won't let us see that we while we have raised the bar on technical academic knowledge over our ancestors in some regards, we have also raised our level of collective barbarous socio-psychopathology to never-before-seen levels.
And the penultimate insult to injury is that much of that horrific behaviour has occured with religion as it's backbone. I am not an atheist nor pro-atheism. But organized religion has been the director of justification of much historical brutal savagery, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other vile criminal enterprises for profit whereby the social indoctrination of "they are sub-human, we are superior".
So back to my initial point, 35,000 years ago, humanity, I believe, possessed as much "culture" as we do today (along with evil, greed) and we are not one step closer to rising above all of that. How can I assess that? Well, if we were really and truly of "the faith" of higher realms of human spirituality, it is not now present in the make-up of our socities, nor how we treat "others" in foreign lands sitting upon a treasure of resources that we "need" to continue living at our current standard of living.
So let's test that theory. Let's imagine a global fiscal melt-down where people here are without the basic necesities of lfie, say, as many people of 3rd world nations. How do you think we will behave vis-a-vis how the rest of the needy world behaves? Civil? Fair? Compassioante? Remember Hurricane Katrina?
I get little if any consolation in knowing that if it wasn't for my contributions to waste and gluttony in my world that those in impoverished nations wouldnt have rubbish to sort through to survive. That is not higher realm principles at work.
Could it be much worse? I believe not only can it be wrose, it will be, as we get closer and closer to not being able to defer the true cost of what we do unto our progeny and others' future.
After thought:
There was nothing less noble nor savage in those past indigenous societies, and, no more so, than in modern societies and it is that parallel that I see when comparing the two.
It is essentially a distinction without a difference.
However, the one outstanding difference is that we possess today, the power to destroy all of God's creation in our civilized cultured fear-based egocentric pursuits.
We never stopped building that Tower of Babel. And aside from how we see ourselves, we are also limited by that very vision, by our very human limitations, like an ape cannot grasp economic theories or debate philosophies, we may be nor more significant that the dionosaurs who came and went, or evolved into something else.
The two worst things humans ever invented were the concept that we should have dominion over everything, and a mirror.
peace, love.
