Civilization (Humans)

by dhw, Monday, June 27, 2011, 18:23 (4897 days ago)

DAVID (under Animal Minds): Civilized humans have sublimated most of the instinctual behavior that underlies our evolution. But there are the uncivilized: bin Laden, Hitler, etc. and we go to war to defend ourselves.-The very civilized have developed mores way beyond the African and Muslim tribalism. In my opinion that colonization that disappeared after WWII disappeared because the Europeans who were the custodians raped the countries and did not develop the mores of the indigenous people properly. -TONY (under Mutations, bad not good): We make a lot of assumptions about ancient mankind that, as I have often argued, are based on the assumption that they were lesser beings than we are today. [...]-These two posts raise all kinds of questions about the nature of civilization and the assumptions we westerners make about our own. Perhaps before we discuss the topic, it might be as well to find a suitable definition. Here are two from Collins: 1) "a human society that has highly developed material and spiritual resources and a complex cultural, political and legal organization"; 2) "the total culture and way of life of a particular people, nation, region or period". Between them, these two very different definitions seem to me to cover all areas, and also to provide clear reasons for many of the misunderstandings that arise when people talk of 'civilization'.-David's post dramatically and in my view rightly describes European colonization as rape, but in my view wrongly assumes that Europeans were in a position to "develop the mores of the indigenous people properly". African, Asian and South American civilizations had their own mores which worked perfectly well for centuries until the Europeans came along. We'd better define mores too: I'll go for "customs, social behaviour and moral values" (Longman). Of course we disapprove of the human sacrifice and cannibalism that formed part of the social fabric of some societies, but are they any worse than the torture and/or execution of those with different religious and/or political beliefs ... hallmarks of western civilization down through the centuries. David mentions Hitler. Nazi Germany had highly developed material and spiritual resources etc. It was a "civilized" country. The ambition of its leaders to impose their systems and values on the rest of the world was no different to that of the old kings and emperors, and even now the west continually and aggressively tries to impose its ideas on the rest of the world, under the assumption that our values are superior to theirs. David says we go to war to defend ourselves. Where are the borderlines? Western history is one long list of aggressive/defensive wars. Does anyone now seriously argue that the invasion of Iraq was defensive? Our western societies are riddled with corruption, crime, greed, social injustice and ... not least these days ... economic and ecological incompetence that will lead to ever greater social problems. Who are we, then, to teach others how to govern themselves? I'm not necessarily advocating other cultures that are in competition with our own. I find Muslim fundamentalism abhorrent, but the Muslims have as much right to oppose our interference as we have to oppose theirs.-Nor am I denigrating the technological, scientific, philosophical or artistic achievements of our culture, and I not deny that having experienced freedom of speech and the right to boot out an unpopular government, I would not want to live in a society that did not enjoy those rights. But if we consider the second definition of the term, and apply it to those cultures disparagingly dismissed by the west as savage or barbaric, we should acknowledge the fact that sophistication and civilization are not synonymous. Furthermore, as Tony has pointed out, we should not discount the astonishing feats of earlier non-western civilizations. Many of the African cultures, for instance, that we have helped to destroy had a rich history of art and oral literature, but these were linked to communion with Nature and what we would call religious beliefs. We might perhaps use the term 'holistic' here, in the sense that these indigenous cultures emphasized the oneness of all things, whereas our own is divisive, often compartmentalized, even to the extent of shutting Nature out. I regard the insistence that humans are different "in kind" from other animals as similar to the insistence that one civilization is superior to others ("we did not develop the mores of the indigenous people properly") ... as if we humans/westerners always know best, despite the messes we go on making. The inherent oneness of all things seems to me to be a far healthier basis for society than the individuality and presumed superiority that underlies many western and middle-eastern views of the world. -All credit, then, to our western civilization for its great achievements; no credit for its continued failures, its arrogant assumption of superiority, and its wanton, often successful attempts to destroy cultures it was/is either unwilling or unable to understand. Perhaps if we acknowledge the second definition, it may help us gain a more accurate perspective of the first.