[D66] What is civilization?

[R.O.]

https://wuestenzeitung.blogspot.com/search/label/civilization

What is civilization?

2020-03-23

With states closing their borders left and right, shutting down services 
and institutions for obsessive fear of spreading disease, the damage 
inflicted on the globalized economy has already reached epic 
proportions. The costs of one single month of partial shutdown, with no 
end in sight, is predicted to result in national GDP losses of min 3.5 
to 4 percentage points, driving states into negative growth across the 
board. Stock market bubbles are ready to burst, currencies like the Euro 
and the Dollar teeter at the edge of major devaluation anyway, and the 
reduction of the aerosol masking effect, better known as global dimming, 
following the closing of numerous factories and reduced traffic, may 
increase global average atmospheric temperature by 1°C or more within 
weeks. Among the many pressing issues that our culture has brought about 
and is troubled by, these are but a few hopefuls (sic!) pointing at a 
near-term demise of the system of the locust, global industrial 
civilization. Don’t hold your breath, though; evil rarely dies that 
fast, but there is a slight chance that this might be my last blog 
posting before the lights go out.

Since civilization has become the central topic to this blog so many 
years ago, have we ever defined what we mean by it? The description of 
its origins, its workings, and its implications for the future might 
have done the job thoroughly already, but it may help if I summarize the 
essence of it all in a few sentences.

What is civilization characterized by?
The illusion of separation (in general), especially into Me vs. Other, 
and culture vs. nature, creates fear of Other which results in the 
Program of Control: the project to measure, name, appropriate, 
domesticate, manipulate, coerce, commodify and consume the natural 
world, and to defend it against all that is not (yet) under control.

This, in turn, leads to accumulation of all kinds, individually of e.g. 
stuff, power, or money, collectively to societies characterized by 
growth, with expanding populations, cities, economies, knowledge, 
regulations etc.

Civilization (consequently) manifests in the growth of settlements too 
large to sustain themselves (cities); this is where the word derives 
from, etymologically, in the first place. The dependence on a huge 
hinterland supplying indispensable goods to the cities creates the 
peculiar relationship between center and periphery, of structural 
violence, most obviously social hierarchies in which permanent 
institutions are formed, with a tendency towards ossification. 
Structural violence, of course, works only so long as it is backed by 
physical violence. Hence the permanent threat and fear of harm or death, 
resulting in the absence of freedom, equality, brotherhood. As these are 
the indispensable birth rights and everlasting conditions of the 
existence of all living beings (to the point where wild humans have no 
name for those because they are, to them, like water to fish), we 
elevate them to the status of divine values, but we are unable to 
achieve them through the system which causes their absence. 
Historically, mass war, mass oppression, mass famine, mass slavery, mass 
poverty, patriarchy, and large-scale habitat degradation, among many 
other issues, have been constant companions to civilization from its 
very beginnings.

Why have we never been able to solve those problems? From the analysis 
of civilizations’ origin, history, and current manifestation, regarding 
the logic within its workings, I cannot help but disagree with the 
notion that we were “not civilized yet,” because as far as the above 
mentioned definitions matter we have reached the ultimate apex of our 
culture, the maximization of separation (social distancing, anybody?), 
knowledge acquirement (science our religion, surveillance state), 
population size (8bn), energy consumption, and territorial expansion. 
The wild, the divine, and the mysterious have been diminished to 
negligible size, to marginal existence. Not much more seems possible in 
terms of civilizing the world – and we are suspended over a cliff. From 
here on, downwards.

[public domain]
This is true even for Auroville, a township developed to manifest the 
Divine within physical civilized existence. The relentless forces built 
into our culture’s mechanism are dragging the community-at-large along 
without mercy. It shows that the basic condition for joining Auroville, 
“to be of good will,” does suffice neither to halt nor to reverse the 
accelerated transformation of the world into goods and services, the 
spiritual impoverishment, or the psychological sliding into insanity. 
Attempting to swim against that powerful current, on the individual 
level, comes at the expense of one’s standing, livelihood, and 
eventually membership in this club.

So to say that all the damage done was avoidable – could be avoided in 
the future – means that one overlooks the nature of the project called 
civilization. It’s not despite our best efforts that we have reached a 
breaking point, but because of them. All of this does not happen because 
of ill-informed decisions, bad luck, or evil intentions on the side of 
the ruling elites but because of regularities baked into the cake. Every 
civilization has developed a bit differently, but every single one of 
them which has not been swallowed by the Western model has collapsed as 
a result of the same shortcomings that our culture possesses. Don’t 
blame it on the wild, the untamed, the un-civilized which seeks to 
liberate itself from the shackles of our culture; blame it on this 
culture which has oppressed freedom, equality and brotherhood for ten 
millennia in a row.

Wild peoples have always been aware of the problem with our ways; they 
rarely gave up their ways for city living voluntarily. Early states, as 
we know today, had to forcefully conscript their population into staying 
put, and they habitually disappeared from the map as a result of people 
defecting in avoidance of slavery, drudgery, repetitive work, sickness, 
malnourishment, famine, and oppression. Contemporary neighbouring 
tribals, archaeological evidence shows, fared much better; they grew 
stronger and larger, lived longer, had less skeletal deformations, less 
signs of sickness and hunger and seemed to suffer lower mortality rates 
at a young age.

The other day I had a few conversations which indicated to me that the 
word civilization, despite the all-encompassing harm it does to the 
conditions of existence both of humans and their habitat still, in the 
mind of most people, is connected to positive views, values, and hopes: 
civilization, the guarantor of life, liberty, and harmony, as well as 
arts, rational science, and a thriving economy.

 From the times when the term has been coined as a descriptor for our 
“ascending” culture – as opposed to the “primitive tribals” it has 
colonized – which informs today’s (mis-) understanding of what life is 
about within or outside of civilization, it is understandable that 
people feel concerned when thinking about the end of the world they have 
grown up with. You may regard it as a fallback into inferior ways of 
living, or you may look sorrowfully to the turmoil that the transition 
to another way of living almost certainly brings about. I do understand 
those concerns, yet it must also be clear that civilization is 
inherently unsustainable; it will collapse anyway. So what do you mean 
when you say we must build a better civilization? It is basically the 
same question as, What is it that you want to sustain when you are 
talking of sustainable living?

The answer might be that it is not civilization which is worth saving, 
but some of the above-mentioned values, and those are, as indicated, the 
birth right of every man, animal and plant. Not only do they not require 
civilization, they require its absence. In the absence of civilization, 
life – nature – thrives.

While every major change does indeed feel uncomfortable and bears the 
risk of violent outbreaks the one to blame, in this case, is 
civilization itself. No matter the good that you may attribute to 
civilization, ask yourself whether that justifies the quadrillion-fold 
suffering imposed on man, plant, animal, land, and sea, constantly, like 
that Orwellian boot in the face – forever.

I liken this to what my grandparents have related from their youth under 
the Nazi regime. Stating that not everything about Hitler had been bad 
they may simply have tried to convey the feeling that pervaded society 
at the time. It left me with the impression, though, that somehow they 
wanted to justify their silence in the face of surveillance, injustice, 
tyranny, eugenics, political murder, genocide, and war, as if economic 
success, autobahns, boy scout expeditions or the restoration of national 
pride had been worth all of that.

Seeing the world of today as it presents itself to me I cannot avoid 
noticing how much toward worse than back in the mid-20th century the 
situation has evolved. Considering the price this world pays for our 
food preferences, egocentric attitudes, computer obsession, mobility 
addiction etc., where am I standing in the overall picture? Personally, 
as much as I like to read a good book in my bed after dark, I would 
gladly give away scriptures, mattresses, pillows, electricity, 
lightbulbs and all the rest of civilized technology as the price for the 
restoration of humanity’s nature and place in the Universe. But that’s 
just me, one man wielding power over his own life alone.

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Labels: civilization, english, history