Take one planet of disparate, unorganized, contentious and clashing inhabitants.
Send them instructions periodically through the centuries. These instructions will provide guidance for the inhabitants to learn to live and work together in ever larger social groupings: family, tribe, city-state, nation, and finally, the entire planet.
Expect most of the inhabitants to ignore most of these instructions.
A fractional number of inhabitants will pay attention to the instructions, but not optimally. They will not see the connection between the units of instruction, instead will consider each unit to be separate, unrelated to the others, and even fight over the units. They will most often take what little instructions they will to be literal, not comprehensive, thereby missing the point of the instructions.
Tragically, some affiliated with each unit will proclaim themselves authorities of that unit and extol it over all other units and create suspicion regarding most or all other units. These self-proclaimed “authorities” will even fight each other and set their followers to fighting.
This will go on for millennia.
Despite the obstinance, the literality, the narrowmindedness, the constant fighting and killing, the inhabitants in one region after another will apply some of the instructions and advance. Advances from one region will eventually trickle to other regions. Eventually all inhabitants will benefit somewhat from echoes of most of the units of instruction.
Fortunately, just before the species gains the knowledge to completely self-destruct, by violence or neglect in taking care of their planet, though they teeter on the edge of that, a set of instructions arrive with radically new guidelines:
– One institutional Center of Authority is specified in the instructions. Those who do not follow this Center are considered not following at all. This specific Center has parameters set within the instructions.
– No one individual following these instructions is allowed to set themselves as an authority over any other. Period!
– Decisions will be made by groups in consultation and coordinated with each other.
– These instructions are to be spread from heart to heart; force, violence or coercion of any kind, are categorically condemned and forbidden.
– These instructions recognize the value of former units of instruction and do not disparage any previous ones, all were necessary for the advancement of the species.
– A future set of instructions will be sent after a lapse of time when the species is ready for more advanced instruction.
– By following these instructions, the species will not self-destruct.
Gradually a few individuals accept and begin to follow these instructions. Followers of former units of instruction oppose, and even kill, some of them, but they are not successful in exterminating them all.
As outside individuals see the value of these instructions to those who follow them, they too accept to follow these new instructions. With these new instructions, conflict diminishes, even between those who had been enemies, even between those whose parents had fought to eat each other!
More and more individuals together create new social institutions based on these instructions. These radically new institutions and organizations benefit everyone, not only those who follow the instructions. This attracts even more to follow the new instructions.
In time, whole nations accept to follow the new instructions. In these new instructions the nations discover ways to eliminate conflict between themselves. Peace comes to the planet and the species prospers in ways no one could have imagined centuries earlier.
The species is now ready to explore the stars and colonize other planets!
Conclusion:
The human race is now near the end of this sequence of development. The chaos around us every day is part of the process of some accepting the new instructions, while others fight them.
The new instructions include: the crucially essential equality of women with men, the fundamental equality and oneness of all members of the human race, the need for every human being to be educated, respect and acceptance of scientific processes and facts, detachment from the physical realm, the necessity for good manners and high morals, a level of selflessness in all attitudes and actions, and more.
The new instructions were brought by Baha’u’llah, the Glory of God.
Good luck with that. I think all the “great religions” have tried that. We never make it beyond personal acceptance. We join together with other accepters of the same “instructions.” but ….