Joined: Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:29 am +0000
Posts: 3969
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fanofVan wrote: katroofjebus wrote: rick warren wrote: If there is a major retrogression on the cusp (precipitated by those many red flags the authors waved in our faces) then we can rebuild society, a better one, I pray/work for. The warning is about the destruction of civilization, not its retrogression. Pleasure mania is a big problem, and as you specified earlier, education is part of it, as is disintegration of marriage and family institutions, where education has its beginnings. (942.2) 84:8.1 The great threat against family life is the menacing rising tide of self-gratification, the modern pleasure mania. The prime incentive to marriage used to be economic; sex attraction was secondary. Marriage, founded on self-maintenance, led to self-perpetuation and concomitantly provided one of the most desirable forms of self-gratification. It is the only institution of human society which embraces all three of the great incentives for living. (1220.3) 111:4.4 The inner and the outer worlds have a different set of values. Any civilization is in jeopardy when three quarters of its youth enter materialistic professions and devote themselves to the pursuit of the sensory activities of the outer world. Civilization is in danger when youth neglect to interest themselves in ethics, sociology, eugenics, philosophy, the fine arts, religion, and cosmology.Neither quote says anything at all about "destruction" but certainly do appear to me to be warning about regression or retrogression or losses of forward momentum and costly delays, etc. There are many such warnings including materialism. But the UB also tells us that the worst of the age of materialism is over. Again...I think we are hearing someone's personal political opinions and prejudices and biases about USA issues that are being transferred to global issues of planetary civilization and many cultures. It is generalization and unreasoned and uninformed IMO. Is the UB a doom and gloom warning? Some UB students manage to think so. I don't see how. There are risks, dangers, and warnings included to be sure. But some seem to be seeking those out for such an enthusiastic embrace, it is truly puzzling to me.
Perhaps Bonita's assessments (political opinions) are too dire and her predictions of the death of civilization somewhat exaggerated. I think regression is a risk in every generation and happens to some degree in every generation while others of each generation pushes the chain of social evolution another inch up the hill of progress.
The UB teaches us how to gain objectivity and how to abandon the myopic subjectivity (bias and prejudice) that inflicts so many mortals, evidently even some UB students. It's called the "time unit" perspective. We cannot discern the present accurately without a perspective that includes the past, from long, long ago....and also the far distant future. The UB teaches us both of those in great detail to lessen such anxieties as so many feel...even here.
We are taught that the immature and impatient ones among us fail to see the present as it is connected to the past and future...the present only exists as a moment in the trajectory arc and momentum of time. If we do not perceive the arc and motion of the trajectory then we cannot accurately gauge or measure or even view the present.
The moment of now is like a single photo frame plucked from the middle of a movie which reveals something but not much without the story and context of all that comes before and after. Thus the importance, meaning, and value of Epochal Revelation. To reveal and clarify and explain.
195:6.1 (2076.6) Scientists have unintentionally precipitated mankind into a materialistic panic; they have started an unthinking run on the moral bank of the ages, but this bank of human experience has vast spiritual resources; it can stand the demands being made upon it. Only unthinking men become panicky about the spiritual assets of the human race. When the materialistic-secular panic is over, the religion of Jesus will not be found bankrupt. The spiritual bank of the kingdom of heaven will be paying out faith, hope, and moral security to all who draw upon it “in His name.” *
195:6.4 (2076.9) At the time of this writing the worst of the materialistic age is over; the day of a better understanding is already beginning to dawn. The higher minds of the scientific world are no longer wholly materialistic in their philosophy, but the rank and file of the people still lean in that direction as a result of former teachings. But this ageof physical realism is only a passing episode in man’s life on earth. Modern science has left true religion—the teachings of Jesus as translated in the lives of his believers—untouched. All science has done is to destroy the childlike illusions of the misinterpretations of life.
195:9.2 (2082.7) But paganized and socialized Christianity stands in need of new contact with the uncompromised teachings of Jesus; it languishes for lack of a new vision of the Master’s life on earth. A new and fuller revelation of the religion of Jesus is destined to conquer an empire of materialistic secularism and to overthrow a world sway of mechanistic naturalism. Urantia is now quivering on the very brink of one of its most amazing and enthralling epochs of social readjustment, moral quickening, and spiritual enlightenment.
195:9.3 (2082. The teachings of Jesus, even though greatly modified, survived the mystery cults of their birthtime, the ignorance and superstition of the dark ages, and are even now slowly triumphing over the materialism, mechanism, and secularism of the twentieth century. And such times of great testing and threatened defeat are always times of great revelation.
118:1.3 (1295.3) There is a direct relationship between maturity and the unit of time consciousness in any given intellect. The time unit may be a day, a year, or a longer period, but inevitably it is the criterion by which the conscious self evaluates the circumstances of life, and by which the conceiving intellect measures and evaluates the facts of temporal existence.
118:1.4 (1295.4) Experience, wisdom, and judgment are the concomitants of the lengthening of the time unit in mortal experience. As the human mind reckons backward into the past, it is evaluating past experience for the purpose of bringing it to bear on a present situation. As mind reaches out into the future, it is attempting to evaluate the future significance of possible action. And having thus reckoned with both experience and wisdom, the human will exercises judgment-decision in the present, and the plan of action thus born of the past and the future becomes existent.
118:1.5 (1295.5) In the maturity of the developing self, the past and future are brought together to illuminate the true meaning of the present. As the self matures, it reaches further and further back into the past for experience, while its wisdom forecasts seek to penetrate deeper and deeper into the unknown future. And as the conceiving self extends this reach ever further into both past and future, so does judgment become less and less dependent on the momentary present. In this way does decision-action begin to escape from the fetters of the moving present, while it begins to take on the aspects of past-future significance.
118:1.6 (1295.6) Patience is exercised by those mortals whose time units are short; true maturity transcends patience by a forbearance born of real understanding.
118:1.7 (1295.7) To become mature is to live more intensely in the present, at the same time escaping from the limitations of the present. The plans of maturity, founded on past experience, are coming into being in the present in such manner as to enhance the values of the future.
118:1.8 (1295. The time unit of immaturity concentrates meaning-value into the present moment in such a way as to divorce the present of its true relationship to the not-present—the past-future. The time unit of maturity is proportioned so to reveal the co-ordinate relationship of past-present-future that the self begins to gain insight into the wholeness of events, begins to view the landscape of time from the panoramic perspective of broadened horizons, begins perhaps to suspect the nonbeginning, nonending eternal continuum, the fragments of which are called time.
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