Social, economic, and political

Watch the 11:48 video or listen to the audio file.

All my life, I have cared intensely about debates on social, economic, and political questions. In high school I identified as conservative or libertarian; in college, I moved to the left and identified for a while with Marxism. Since finding The Urantia Book in graduate school, I have tried to adjust my views as much as possible to those teachings, although I have poured most of my energy into other topics. I have had the privilege to meet, hear, and read the writings of outstanding examples of highly educated representatives of a wide spectrum of views. Relevant to some of these debates, I have taught entire university courses or units in courses.

We live in time of ideological one-sidedness. That virus infects some readers of The Urantia Book. There is a tendency to take one’s own convictions, to find some supporting passages in the book, and to go forward in the conviction that one’s own position represents the views of the distinguished, superhuman authors of the Fifth Epochal Revelation.

My goals:

1. peacemaking
2. quality of thinking
   1. Fairness to our most worthy opponents: Thomas Aquinas—see Jeffrey Wattles, Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, pp. 49 and 175-78)
   2. Must read: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (see Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, pp. 175-78). One of the foremost African-American writers, he writes about race in a way that resonates well with The Urantia Book (see the quote and note below).
   3. Marshall Rosenberg’s disciplines for mutual understanding, Nonviolent Communication, 3^rdedition
   4. 81:6.40 (911.5) Always should these adventures in cultural adjustment be controlled by those who are fully conversant with the history of socialevolution; and always should these innovators be counseled by the wisdom of those who have had practical experience in the domains of contemplated social or economic experiment.

 

What I did: read 21 papers making notes—four pages of notes with two columns on each page: one column for statements that might be classified as leaning to the left and one column to statements that might be classified as leaning to the right. It seems to me that it would be interesting for a study group to do the same, and then discuss why they classified things as they did.

Here’s a statement that I classified as both:

71:3:1 (803.1) The political or administrative form of a government is of little consequence provided it affords the essentials of civil progress—liberty, security, education, and social co-ordination. It is not what a state is but what it does that determines the course of social evolution.

Anthropology. Paper 63 The first human family; 64, the evolutionary races of color; 66:4/743: The organization of the Planetary Prince’s staff; marriage papers . . . .

Sociology. Society is said to be busy with self-perpetuation, self-maintenance, and self-gratification. Note the emphasis on social service in Part IV. Society’s current rights (70:9/793).

Economics. Industry, commerce, capital, property, the evolution of competition; the profit motive; distribution of wealth

Political science. Government. See 10 steps to efficient representative government (71:2/801). The judicial branch should interpret the constitution to prevent a host of ills: 71:12/798. Dangers of democracy:

The state. The evolution of statehood (71:8/806); nationalism and world government (Urmia lectures, 134:4-6/486.

Culture. 68:6/769, Evolution of Culture (treated as synonymous with society)

Civilization. 50:5/576 Progressive civilization; 52/589 Planetary Mortal Epochs;  Paper 68, The Dawn of Civilization (cp); 114/1250 Seraphic Planetary Government

My overall conclusion is that cooperation in evolution requires a wise combination of realism and idealism; persons that lean to the right often represent realism, and persons that lean to the left often represent idealism. The Urantia Book helps these groups understand each other, be at peace spiritually, and cooperate if the need and opportunity arise.

Sometimes you need to go pretty far to the left or the right to find the insight that slices through the confusion and goes straight to the answer that is needed. But most of the time, wisdom is promoted more by careful study of a variety of competing views—in the best representatives you can find.

The quote plus some context.

One model of the exercise of reason comes from Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). When thinking about a particular subject, he took into consideration ideas from ancient and contemporary philosophers and from theologians of different religions. He organized his discussion of topics into a sequence of sharply focused questions. For each question, he created a short article, which began by listing the main objections that his historical and contemporary conversation partners could raise about the answer he was about to defend, and then set forth his own view in a brief, clear, reasoned way. Finally, he showed how to handle the previously stated objections.

If people could form the habit of using an abbreviated version of this procedure prior to entering a debate on a contentious issue, this could transform public discussion from polarized polemics into peaceful progress. It is essential to listen deeply to the perspectives of the groups involved. Fairness requires acknowledging that key premises in each group’s position may (perhaps crudely and partially) express a genuine value. In angry debate, opposing sides fail to acknowledge the values cherished by their opponents. True, sometimes a one-sided position finds the insight that slices through all the confusion and goes straight to the right conclusion. But a judicious examination of key ideas from all sides is a more reliable guide to reaching a sound conclusion. In a complex problem, truth cannot be told via one-sidedness; good judgment requires a sense of proportion.

Philosophical training in rational thinking does not ensure that our ideas will be correct, but it does help us spot some types of error. This is serious business, because thinking depends greatly on basic convictions; and in drawing conclusions, any one of us can make big mistakes based on one key premise that is seriously wrong.

Taking a couple of courses on formal logic and critical thinking (informal logic) would improve our ability to protect ourselves from sophistry and participate constructively in group discussion. The study of logic provides a vocabulary for identifying and explaining errors that occur when reasoning—our own or that of others—goes bad, and it helps organize our thoughts in a legitimately persuasive way. It is sad to contemplate the flood of shoddy thinking that pervades public media, which are overloaded with manipulative commercial and political messages. I sometimes entertain the idea that training in logic should be regarded as a requirement for responsible functioning as an adult. It should be widely known that philosophy can be taught at all levels, and that children can begin to develop logical thinking before being trained in formal logic. In France, for example, philosophy is part of secondary education. And one pioneering organization, the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children, works with active Philosophy for Children centers in more than forty nations, serving preschoolers through high school students. Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, pp. 49-50.

 

Must read: W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk. Introduced with a key footnote in

 

One of our greatest social problems is to combine recognition of the eternal truth of our spiritual equality as human beings in the family of God with realism about the empirical facts of our inequalities as groups. The spiritual and humane approach needed to address this topic can be found in the 1903 African American classic by W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois earned a Harvard PhD and did additional study in Germany before he returned to the United States to do research, writing, teaching, and organizational leadership. As an interdisciplinary work of history and sociology, this book combines empirical studies of individuals, cities, counties, institutions, races, and a nation by means of biography, quantitative studies, and “ideal types”—descriptions that highlight typical features in groups.

The book portrays the condition of blacks in their relations with whites in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. It sets the stage with the story of the era of Reconstruction after the U.S. Civil War, when former slaves, newly freed, struggled to make their way. With great learning and poetic and religious sensitivity, Du Bois administers prophetic moral clarity and warning along with universal compassion, qualified generalizations, and nuanced understanding of individuals in his call to awaken brotherhood. His uncommon fairness in recognizing the many-sidedness of issues does not keep him from taking clear positions. He looks forward, lucid about the slowness of most historical process, offering a vivid portrait of ideals and a core agenda for progress. He criticized success-oriented education and exalted what he regarded as the real goals of education: truth, beauty, and goodness.

Du Bois criticized the separation of blacks from whites in the American South as “so thorough and deep that it absolutely precludes for the present between the races anything like that sympathetic and effective group-training and leadership of the one by the other, such as the American Negro and all backward peoples must have for effectual progress.” To tell his story, he avoids simplistic apology or fault-finding in favor of empirical honesty.

Du Bois’s writing is dialectical. He presents a series of arguments on behalf of blacks in rebuttal to criticisms of their race by “Southern Gentlemen.” Then he comments:

I will not say such arguments are wholly justified,—I will not insist that there is no other side to the shield; but I do say that of the nine millions of Negroes in this nation, there is scarcely one out of the cradle to whom these arguments do not daily present themselves in the guise of terrible truth. I insist that the question of the future is how best to keep these millions from brooding over the wrongs of the past and the difficulties of the present, so that all their energies may be bent toward a cheerful striving and co-operation with their white neighbors toward a larger, juster, and fuller future.

 

Conditions have changed since 1903, and today’s excellent descriptions of these groups would differ; but the virtues visible in Du Bois’s classic are needed as much as ever. If he were alive today, I believe he would recognize that Jesus’ core teachings, shared by many religions, not only address the spiritual difficulties of various groups of people; he would also recognize that these difficulties are among the root causes of our ecological, social, economic, and political problems.

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Footnote: “Ideal types” is a term linked to sociologist Max Weber, whose lectures Du Bois heard during his time in Germany. The term names a way of describing a group, and by no means does it imply idealizing the group; rather such a description is like a statistical generalization without the mathematics; it is a simplified sketch of a group in terms of some of its prominent features. It is common to use such descriptions when contrasting generations, e.g., millennials and baby boomers; but they are avoided in some other areas due to the danger of supporting abusive stereotypes. Plato used them in one way toward the end of the Republic; Jesus used them in another way during his open warfare with the religious leaders; Marx used them; Maurice Merleau-Ponty defended them in “The Crisis of the Understanding.” In my opinion, Du Bois showed the understanding, courage, and humanity needed to rehabilitate this important form of social description today. He knew that “superior” and “inferior” do not mean good and bad, that civilizational differences do not impair spiritual equality, and that right responses to racial and other differences can lead to a much better world.