Paper 71 Overview: Development of the State

The state represents humanity's evolutionary solution to the challenges of regulating social interactions and resolving conflicts between competing groups and individuals. As a product of civilization's advancement, the state emerged through trial and error to coordinate antagonisms among tribes, clans, families, and individuals, ultimately serving as the mechanism through which peace, law, and order are maintained within society. Modern statehood, at its most effective, balances the powers of executive, legislative, and judicial branches to protect individual freedoms while promoting collective progress.

The ideal state functions as a facilitator of social progress rather than an oppressive force, balancing the needs of individual liberty with those of social coordination. Through various stages of development, humanity struggles to perfect government by adapting administrative functions to changing social needs and ensuring wise leadership. This evolutionary journey reflects the progress of civilization itself, as societies move from primitive coercion toward systems based on education, enlightened self-control, and the pursuit of higher values including spirituality, brotherhood, and cosmic understanding.

The state represents society's net gain from the devastation and suffering of war, having emerged as a practical technique for adjusting competitive conflicts between struggling tribes and nations. It serves as the institutional framework through which human societies can maintain internal order and manage external relationships, evolving to address increasingly complex social challenges. The modern state has survived because it offered the most effective solution to the problem of group power and coordination.

Unlike divine institutions, the state was not produced by intentional intelligent human design but emerged through evolutionary processes as an automatic response to social needs. As groups grew larger and interactions more complex, the state developed as a regulatory mechanism that could transcend tribal and familial loyalties to establish broader territories of peace and cooperation. This evolution reflects the natural progression of social organization as humanity moved from primitive bands toward more sophisticated forms of governance.

A state is fundamentally a territorial social regulative organization, with the strongest and most efficient states typically composed of a single nation whose people share common language, customs, and institutions. Early states invariably resulted from conquest rather than voluntary association, as nomadic groups would overpower peaceful agricultural communities and establish stratified social systems with distinct classes. These conquest-born states naturally created hierarchies that led to ongoing class struggles, which have functioned as selective forces in social evolution.

The transition from tribal organizations to genuine statehood required several key developments, including private property systems, urban centers with agriculture and industry, domesticated animals, organized family structures, defined territories, and strong executive leadership. The Roman state succeeded because it effectively integrated these elements, while the Native American tribes failed to achieve true statehood despite creating confederations. When state integration falters, societies often regress to pre-state conditions, as happened during Europe's feudal period when the territorial state collapsed and reverted to smaller castle-centered governance structures reminiscent of clan and tribal organizations.

Democracy, while representing an ideal form of government, emerges as a product of civilization rather than evolution and carries inherent risks that societies must carefully navigate. These dangers include the glorification of mediocrity, the selection of unprepared leaders, failure to recognize evolutionary patterns, vulnerability to uneducated majorities, and potential enslavement to public opinion which, though valuable, often delays necessary social progress. Education rather than force remains the safest method to accelerate civilization, allowing citizens to eventually control their governance through nonviolent expression.

The evolution toward effective representative government progresses through ten distinct stages, beginning with personal freedom and educated citizenry, advancing through the reign of law, freedom of expression, and property rights, and culminating in universal suffrage, control of public servants, and intelligent representation. Democratic governance, while imperfect, represents the right approach even when decisions prove incorrect, as it allows societies to learn and adjust through practical experimentation. The survival of democracy ultimately depends on citizens electing representatives who possess technical training, intellectual competence, social loyalty, and moral character—ensuring government that truly serves the people's best interests.

The specific administrative form a government takes matters far less than its effectiveness in providing the essentials of civil progress: liberty, security, education, and social coordination. No state, regardless of its structural design, can surpass the moral values embodied by its citizens and reflected in their chosen leadership. Even the ideal state must overcome challenges like national egotism, which though regrettable has historically served as a cohesive force in tribal unification and nation-building throughout human development on Urantia.

An ideal state functions under three coordinated motivating forces: love loyalty derived from recognizing human brotherhood, intelligent patriotism based on wise ideals, and cosmic insight interpreted through the lens of planetary needs and goals. Such a state has few laws and has progressed beyond negative prohibitions to embrace positive advancements in individual liberty through enhanced self-control. The most advanced states preserve citizen self-respect, provide opportunities for self-realization, encourage social evolution with minimal governmental interference, and attract their wisest and noblest citizens to public service rather than to military, industrial, or religious pursuits.

Economics, society, and government must continuously evolve to remain viable in an evolutionary world, as static conditions invariably indicate decay rather than progress. Only institutions that move forward with the evolutionary current can persist and contribute to civilization's advancement. This principle applies to all social institutions, requiring constant adaptation to changing conditions and needs.

A progressive civilization's program encompasses twelve key elements that build upon one another: preserving individual liberties, protecting homes, promoting economic security, preventing disease, establishing compulsory education and employment, encouraging productive leisure activities, caring for the unfortunate, improving racial stocks, advancing science and art, promoting philosophy, and augmenting cosmic insight through spirituality. These progressive achievements lead naturally toward humanity's highest goals: the social realization of the brotherhood of man and the personal attainment of God-consciousness. True brotherhood can only manifest in a society where the spiritually motivated willingly bear one another's burdens while maintaining adequate defenses against those who might exploit their peaceful inclinations.

Competition serves as an essential driver of social progress, but requires regulation to prevent it from descending into violence. In evolving societies, competition gradually displaces war as the primary mechanism for determining individuals' economic positions and industries' survival. This transition represents significant social advancement, as murder has been outlawed since early societal development while war has persistently remained sanctioned by collective humanity.

The ideal state faces the challenge of regulating social conduct sufficiently to eliminate violence from competition and prevent unfairness without imposing excessive taxation or becoming parasitical or tyrannical. Throughout planetary evolution, competition initially stimulates primitive human development, while in advanced civilizations, cooperation proves more efficient and beneficial. The transition from competition to cooperation marks a crucial stage in societal maturation, yet attempts to eliminate economic competition should never compromise fundamental individual liberties, even at the cost of inefficiency.

Current economic systems driven primarily by profit-seeking face inevitable decline unless they incorporate service motives alongside financial incentives. Ruthless competition based on narrow self-interest ultimately destroys even what it aims to preserve, creating a fundamental incompatibility with Christian ideals and Jesus' teachings about valuing others above material gain. This represents one of the central tensions in evolving societies seeking both material prosperity and spiritual advancement.

The profit motive functions in economics much as fear operates in religion—as a primitive but powerful motivator that eventually needs transformation into higher impulses. While this self-interest shouldn't be abruptly eliminated since it motivates otherwise unmotivated individuals to productive work, evolutionary progress requires gradually replacing it with superior nonprofit motivations. These elevated economic drivers include the transcendent urges of wisdom, brotherhood, and spiritual attainment—values that sustain advanced civilizations beyond mere material accumulation.

The enduring state establishes its foundation on culture, draws its direction from ideals, and finds its motivation in service to others. Within this framework, education serves multiple essential purposes: the acquisition of practical skills, the pursuit of wisdom, the realization of personal potential, and the attainment of spiritual values that transcend material existence. In the ideal state, education continues throughout life, with philosophy becoming a primary pursuit among its citizens as they seek deeper understanding of human relationships, reality's meaning, and cosmic purpose.

Citizens of Urantia should envision a new cultural horizon where education transcends its current profit-motivated, localistic, and militaristic limitations to embrace worldwide, idealistic, and cosmic perspectives. The educational system needs to evolve from control by clergy, lawyers, and businesspeople toward leadership by philosophers and scientists who can facilitate humanity's progression through seven ascending levels of wisdom: knowledge of things, realization of meanings, appreciation of values, understanding of duty, recognition of moral goals, love of service that builds character, and finally, the development of spiritual discernment that leads to God-consciousness—the ultimate achievement of mind attainment.

The only truly sacred aspect of human government is its division into three separate domains—executive, legislative, and judicial functions—a pattern that mirrors the administrative structure of the universe itself. Beyond this divine concept of functional segregation, the specific form of government matters less than whether it facilitates citizens' progress toward increased self-control and expanded social service. A society's intellectual capacity, economic wisdom, social ingenuity, and moral strength are faithfully reflected in its governmental institutions.

The evolution of statehood advances through twelve progressive levels, beginning with the three-branch government structure and expanding to include freedoms of social, political, and religious activities, the abolition of slavery, citizen control of taxation, universal education, proper balance between local and national governments, scientific advancement, gender equality, technological liberation from toil, language unification, international conflict resolution, and ultimately, the worldwide pursuit of wisdom through philosophy and a unifying world religion. While Urantia remains distant from realizing these exalted ideals, the civilized races have taken their first steps on the evolutionary march toward higher planetary destinies.