“It’s the romantics that make the world. The realists are content to fill their bellies.” —Irving Stone, The Greek Treasure
We know today that a civilized society does not exist, so many of us are unlikely ever to live in one. And with the Western world in its present self-inflicted economic turmoil, it seems equally unlikely one will appear even in our children’s lifetimes. But did one exist? Walter Russell Mead suggests in God and Gold that the Walrus and the Carpenter (Great Britain and the United States) may have got close during the last century.1 In retrospect many of us would agree that this must have been Mead’s wishful thinking.
Prior societies in their own time all went through basic stages or degrees of civility, but did one ever get close to Utopia, which, for the sake of this argument, we will define as the ideal civilized state? The trouble is, since each of us has a different idea of what constitutes the ideal civilized state, could one ever exist? Perhaps, if our individual ideals were to be united in a Utopian dream, such a longed-for ideal society may be achievable. So how close, or far away, from such a dream are we today? Any better than when Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1957, said of his country at that time: “We have never had it so good!”? It seems doubtful.
The incongruity of today’s America continually reminds us of the mess we are making of the place we live in—this bountiful, beautiful, but blighted so-called land of the free. For instance, more than two centuries after its birth, we are still hopelessly struggling to live up to the Founding Fathers’ ideal of liberty for all our citizens, the least of which is ensuring gainful employment for all. Isn’t our lack of moral and political will to attain even this modest goal for our society becoming our most self-evident national weakness?
Have you also noticed how the rich always secured the better options? One may argue this is natural law, the survival of the fittest. But in a civilized society surely the following would be axiomatic: the fittest help take care of those less fit.
Apparently, this humanistic viewpoint is not appealing to all of us, most obviously todays stupendously rich. They appear to hate any form of taxation, particularly if it is designed to support a welfare state. And true, social welfare in any guise appears contradictory to Darwin’s brilliant illumination. But doesn’t national survival, let alone Utopia, demand it? This is what some of the most honorable Americans, such as Howard Fast, saw at one time in the ideals of communism but decided in the end to support American capitalism since, despite its obvious failings, he realized it stood the better chance.
The assumption of that truth leads us to the first definition of a civilized state: it is an unnatural state.
A civilized state can never be an instinctive state since reason, not instinct, must prevail, where intelligence and welfare go hand in hand, where decisions are made collectively and conscientiously to benefit all, not just the well-off. The territorial imperative (taking someone else’s property) must be checked, the killer instinct outlawed, basic human and, where appropriate, nonhuman freedoms ensured. Civil and human rights the ultimate goal, prejudice the pariah, racism and hatred eradicated. We would then come to understand that our uncivilized failings were not original sins, as the theologians would have us believe, but instinctive, primordial survival traits long since past their expiration date, kept alive either by archaic religious Tonypandy or obsolete human myths of cultural superiority.2
In this context we have learned that the greatest evolutionary strength we humans possess is our collective consciousness. Via this endowment we have survived over the millennia, even perhaps developing a bit despite our failings, the most obvious one being man’s love of war. Nonetheless, paradoxically and particularly now, we find human survival tentative. Living in close proximity with each other in ever-expanding population centers creates increasingly awkward problems. Consequently, the future challenge—the same as all past ones—is how do we utilize our big brain for the continuous development of the common good? For if we don’t pull this one off, what chance do we have in our present world of avarice and nuclear peril?
This is a huge challenge: the unnatural but entirely possible civilized way of living together amicably, based on a set of values that require a society to successfully resolve the inevitable discord of living within itself as well as with all others around it. But before we go on, let’s step back and explore, as a starting point, the meaning and derivation of the word civilized.
It comes down to us from the Greek meaning “tamed, cultivated, grafted.” This suggests a society must first go through these evolutionary developmental processes: taming, cultivating, and grafting the essence of civility onto our earlier instinctive survival trait, moving toward the collective consciousness of the new. This demands a genuine free set of political rules molded into a collective psyche that values individual freedom of choice as given, plus the national collective will to achieve fair and honest elections to choose those who will answer to our will. In other words, the society must want to be civilized. What then constitutes societal evolution?
First, the careful taming of the natural world and the development of material assets is a necessary adjunct of a civilized society. Once a society has developed the means of gaining the basic knowledge of the world in which it lives, the growth of civility can begin. From a loosely knit group of tribes, binding into a larger entity; moving to gender harmony where neither man nor woman dominates and all life is perceived as sacred; to the flowering of urban life, nurturing individual and collective endeavor; the civilized society takes root. It can now progress by exploring concepts such as the division of labor, economic independence, and the unity of family in cooperative relationships.
The second step is cultivation, achieving individually and collectively rewarding experiences of exploration and expression through the arts and sciences.
All societies will, at some point, strive to understand who they are, where they came from, and where they would like to be heading. Seeking emotional fulfillment and developing knowledge banks are basic requirements of a growing, civilized community. Knowing why, when, and how, as well as enjoying history, literature, and the arts, become new and exciting basic human needs. Intelligence, curiosity, and philosophy develop and accumulate as the culture advances from a stable material base. Religion too has its place. For most societies religion is beneficial but it cannot be allowed to get in the way of progress.
Ancient Greece took on religion more as a symbolic ritual than a dominating daily devotion to be observed. For others, however, religion has been a barrier to cultural growth. Medieval Europe resisted progress just as modern America, in many ways, still denies the obvious today. Too often, religion frustrates the possibility of cultural exchange by imposing its brand of Tonypandy. Dogma, irrational belief, ignorance, and the fear of the unknown can enslave the mind, so religion must be cultivated with great care. Religions reinforce man’s Illusion of Central Position: his belief that it was all made for him, that he is the center of the universe, which is man’s supreme weakness. Belief has the tendency to dominate, reducing the rewards of freedom of thought that accompany the excitement of cultural growth. An enlightened society will break the bonds of dogma or, as it has in some European countries, learn to ignore the barriers of belief and carry on creating the civilized society despite the potential of religious encumbrance.
And the third step: once religion is either outlawed as a debilitating force or, more appropriately, accepted as a positive framework, the civilizing society can move on, recognizing it still has to build the superstructure. It still has to graft itself to a unity of purpose, an understanding of intent, and a declaration of values designed to underscore endurance since without developing a core of ethics, a set of moral codes, rules of law, and articles of governance, it will wander in unproductive directions. This requires a flexible constitution, a mature understanding of self, and a realization that change has the potential to be its friend, not its enemy.
America is unique. It took this final constitutional step 230 years ago. We are a civilized nation in the one and only sense that we have the documents to prove it. They are of course the Constitution of the United States of America and The Bill of Rights that goes with it, extraordinary civilizing guides written down for us by a remarkable bunch of brilliant patriots all those years ago.
But are we civilized? Of course not! America hasn’t been close to civilized for at least the last hundred years, ever since presidents and Congress saw fit to ignore the Constitution. And did we care? Of course some of us did, Ron Paul being one. But we the people don’t run this show no matter how much we may like to think we do. For example, we had little choice when it came to taking the country off the gold standard, thereby debasing the dollar; setting up the Federal Reserve, thereby giving a cabal of unelected officials the right to do what it wants with our wealth; and going to war without the consent of the people, particularly when it came to unconstitutional conflicts such as—and this is nowhere near a complete list of all we have been involved in over the last fifty years or so—Cuba (Bay of Pigs), Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya.
This cannot be the Utopia we are seeking, yet this is the uncivilized formula we in America have accepted.
Clearly, no society has got there yet. And with the way things are going, it is doubtful America ever will.
1. Walter Russell Mead, God and Gold 2007 (ISBN 9780375414039)
2. “Tonypandy” is a word coined to describe faulty collective memory of popular history, the idea that man’s eternal need is to continuously supply mythology for “facts” known to be untrue. (See Chapter 5, Changing Our World: Solutions for a Future, below.)
---------------------------------
The preceding was a guest article for The Debt by author Jim Knapton. To know more about Jim Knapton’s new book, Changing Our World: Solutions for a Future, visit his website at http://www.ottolinepublishing.com/. You can send him mail at info@ottolinepublishing.com.
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Changing Our World
We know today that a civilized society does not exist, so many of us are unlikely ever to live in one. And with the Western world in its present self-inflicted economic turmoil, it seems equally unlikely one will appear even in our children’s lifetimes. But did one exist? Walter Russell Mead suggests in God and Gold that the Walrus and the Carpenter (Great Britain and the United States) may have got close during the last century.1 In retrospect many of us would agree that this must have been Mead’s wishful thinking.
Prior societies in their own time all went through basic stages or degrees of civility, but did one ever get close to Utopia, which, for the sake of this argument, we will define as the ideal civilized state? The trouble is, since each of us has a different idea of what constitutes the ideal civilized state, could one ever exist? Perhaps, if our individual ideals were to be united in a Utopian dream, such a longed-for ideal society may be achievable. So how close, or far away, from such a dream are we today? Any better than when Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1957, said of his country at that time: “We have never had it so good!”? It seems doubtful.
The incongruity of today’s America continually reminds us of the mess we are making of the place we live in—this bountiful, beautiful, but blighted so-called land of the free. For instance, more than two centuries after its birth, we are still hopelessly struggling to live up to the Founding Fathers’ ideal of liberty for all our citizens, the least of which is ensuring gainful employment for all. Isn’t our lack of moral and political will to attain even this modest goal for our society becoming our most self-evident national weakness?
Have you also noticed how the rich always secured the better options? One may argue this is natural law, the survival of the fittest. But in a civilized society surely the following would be axiomatic: the fittest help take care of those less fit.
Apparently, this humanistic viewpoint is not appealing to all of us, most obviously todays stupendously rich. They appear to hate any form of taxation, particularly if it is designed to support a welfare state. And true, social welfare in any guise appears contradictory to Darwin’s brilliant illumination. But doesn’t national survival, let alone Utopia, demand it? This is what some of the most honorable Americans, such as Howard Fast, saw at one time in the ideals of communism but decided in the end to support American capitalism since, despite its obvious failings, he realized it stood the better chance.
The assumption of that truth leads us to the first definition of a civilized state: it is an unnatural state.
A civilized state can never be an instinctive state since reason, not instinct, must prevail, where intelligence and welfare go hand in hand, where decisions are made collectively and conscientiously to benefit all, not just the well-off. The territorial imperative (taking someone else’s property) must be checked, the killer instinct outlawed, basic human and, where appropriate, nonhuman freedoms ensured. Civil and human rights the ultimate goal, prejudice the pariah, racism and hatred eradicated. We would then come to understand that our uncivilized failings were not original sins, as the theologians would have us believe, but instinctive, primordial survival traits long since past their expiration date, kept alive either by archaic religious Tonypandy or obsolete human myths of cultural superiority.2
In this context we have learned that the greatest evolutionary strength we humans possess is our collective consciousness. Via this endowment we have survived over the millennia, even perhaps developing a bit despite our failings, the most obvious one being man’s love of war. Nonetheless, paradoxically and particularly now, we find human survival tentative. Living in close proximity with each other in ever-expanding population centers creates increasingly awkward problems. Consequently, the future challenge—the same as all past ones—is how do we utilize our big brain for the continuous development of the common good? For if we don’t pull this one off, what chance do we have in our present world of avarice and nuclear peril?
This is a huge challenge: the unnatural but entirely possible civilized way of living together amicably, based on a set of values that require a society to successfully resolve the inevitable discord of living within itself as well as with all others around it. But before we go on, let’s step back and explore, as a starting point, the meaning and derivation of the word civilized.
It comes down to us from the Greek meaning “tamed, cultivated, grafted.” This suggests a society must first go through these evolutionary developmental processes: taming, cultivating, and grafting the essence of civility onto our earlier instinctive survival trait, moving toward the collective consciousness of the new. This demands a genuine free set of political rules molded into a collective psyche that values individual freedom of choice as given, plus the national collective will to achieve fair and honest elections to choose those who will answer to our will. In other words, the society must want to be civilized. What then constitutes societal evolution?
First, the careful taming of the natural world and the development of material assets is a necessary adjunct of a civilized society. Once a society has developed the means of gaining the basic knowledge of the world in which it lives, the growth of civility can begin. From a loosely knit group of tribes, binding into a larger entity; moving to gender harmony where neither man nor woman dominates and all life is perceived as sacred; to the flowering of urban life, nurturing individual and collective endeavor; the civilized society takes root. It can now progress by exploring concepts such as the division of labor, economic independence, and the unity of family in cooperative relationships.
The second step is cultivation, achieving individually and collectively rewarding experiences of exploration and expression through the arts and sciences.
All societies will, at some point, strive to understand who they are, where they came from, and where they would like to be heading. Seeking emotional fulfillment and developing knowledge banks are basic requirements of a growing, civilized community. Knowing why, when, and how, as well as enjoying history, literature, and the arts, become new and exciting basic human needs. Intelligence, curiosity, and philosophy develop and accumulate as the culture advances from a stable material base. Religion too has its place. For most societies religion is beneficial but it cannot be allowed to get in the way of progress.
Ancient Greece took on religion more as a symbolic ritual than a dominating daily devotion to be observed. For others, however, religion has been a barrier to cultural growth. Medieval Europe resisted progress just as modern America, in many ways, still denies the obvious today. Too often, religion frustrates the possibility of cultural exchange by imposing its brand of Tonypandy. Dogma, irrational belief, ignorance, and the fear of the unknown can enslave the mind, so religion must be cultivated with great care. Religions reinforce man’s Illusion of Central Position: his belief that it was all made for him, that he is the center of the universe, which is man’s supreme weakness. Belief has the tendency to dominate, reducing the rewards of freedom of thought that accompany the excitement of cultural growth. An enlightened society will break the bonds of dogma or, as it has in some European countries, learn to ignore the barriers of belief and carry on creating the civilized society despite the potential of religious encumbrance.
And the third step: once religion is either outlawed as a debilitating force or, more appropriately, accepted as a positive framework, the civilizing society can move on, recognizing it still has to build the superstructure. It still has to graft itself to a unity of purpose, an understanding of intent, and a declaration of values designed to underscore endurance since without developing a core of ethics, a set of moral codes, rules of law, and articles of governance, it will wander in unproductive directions. This requires a flexible constitution, a mature understanding of self, and a realization that change has the potential to be its friend, not its enemy.
America is unique. It took this final constitutional step 230 years ago. We are a civilized nation in the one and only sense that we have the documents to prove it. They are of course the Constitution of the United States of America and The Bill of Rights that goes with it, extraordinary civilizing guides written down for us by a remarkable bunch of brilliant patriots all those years ago.
But are we civilized? Of course not! America hasn’t been close to civilized for at least the last hundred years, ever since presidents and Congress saw fit to ignore the Constitution. And did we care? Of course some of us did, Ron Paul being one. But we the people don’t run this show no matter how much we may like to think we do. For example, we had little choice when it came to taking the country off the gold standard, thereby debasing the dollar; setting up the Federal Reserve, thereby giving a cabal of unelected officials the right to do what it wants with our wealth; and going to war without the consent of the people, particularly when it came to unconstitutional conflicts such as—and this is nowhere near a complete list of all we have been involved in over the last fifty years or so—Cuba (Bay of Pigs), Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen, and Libya.
This cannot be the Utopia we are seeking, yet this is the uncivilized formula we in America have accepted.
Clearly, no society has got there yet. And with the way things are going, it is doubtful America ever will.
1. Walter Russell Mead, God and Gold 2007 (ISBN 9780375414039)
2. “Tonypandy” is a word coined to describe faulty collective memory of popular history, the idea that man’s eternal need is to continuously supply mythology for “facts” known to be untrue. (See Chapter 5, Changing Our World: Solutions for a Future, below.)
---------------------------------
The preceding was a guest article for The Debt by author Jim Knapton. To know more about Jim Knapton’s new book, Changing Our World: Solutions for a Future, visit his website at http://www.ottolinepublishing.com/. You can send him mail at info@ottolinepublishing.com.
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