— You referred to “blind” optimism as though it was coming from me. I assure you I am no blind optimist. In fact, I said that I realized the world is a ‘shitty’ place but under the circumstance we are doing the best we can and in the process transforming ourselves.
Omar,
O- David my point is that after thousands of years of human civilization only blind optimism could still expect or recognize a process of transformation in the human species. We need only to turn on the TV and watch the news about the world.
Oman, I dismiss your point. You speak of human civilization as thought it was some preconceived notion, that it should have reached some fixed point by now. Human civilization is still a work in progress.
The only blind people here are those who think that we should have reached some point of perfection. Human civilization is organic and fallible.
I speak of “human civilization” as a verb, what humans do, not a thing, that is found here but not somewhere else. It does not imply that there is a fixed point in a line of progress “that it should have reached” by now. I have denied progress, so that human civilization is a “work”, nothing more. It is what we do, not what we do towards a specific end to be reached “by now” or later in some future.
Civilization can be a verb but it is also a noun, the culmination of human endeavor, music, art, buildings, achievements, technologies and so on. The state of Civilization is constantly expanding.
What we call civilization the Germans call culture. To me it is obvious that many people feel culture made man, but I see that mankind makes culture. People can add to their cultures, their societies, their civilizations; but no one can make one, and all can take something from their culture, and give nothing in return. In the sense of our modern society, we all suffer much to have what we need. If we suffer so much, and still do not have our needs met, the tendency is to revert to an older form of culture, which is also an older form of relationship. What Mr. Obama said of people clinging to their religion and guns is also true of many hanging on to party and government. These forms of relationship may not work, but we cannot abondon them without a substitute, because people do not change, but change their forms of relationship or die with them.
The state of civilization, of societies, of culture and the arts have changed and continue to change…no one denies that. But the argument is that all this change is still explained by all which stays the same. For example the level of human destructiveness has expanded and continues to expand. This is explained by what remains the same, which is human agressiveness towards one another.
Human aggression will always be with us but it is Civilization that contains and channels it into less violent and more productive means. Relatively speaking the world is more civilized today than at any time in its past, relative to its population and complexity. For instance, in the past an attack like 9/11 would have triggered a world war. But not this time because of the protective layers Civilization has woven so as to avoid and deter such aggression.
The world has changed but it has, at the same time, not changed at all. It is not just that we retain our aggressive origins, or instinctual drives with us, but that the problems of today’s society are echoes of the problems society faced 2,000 years ago and even before. I said that civilization is what humans being do. We are never without it. Maybe a savage’s culture is different, his civilization different, but not absent. The human world has always been civilized in some sense and it has always and everywhere codified aggression. Civil society, civilizations, have always and everywhere produced art, science, philosophy, but never with the explicit intent of “channeling” violence, never as a “means” towards an end. Nor is “civilization” a means towards blunting human aggression, but is always it’s own end. Nor has civilizations, even if it had been intended to disuade aggression, succeded in doing so and if anything has worsened aggression by dehumanizing it. It was the most civilized of countries, Germany, that produced a most “productive” aggression". In fact they industrialized aggression. Athens, Rome and everything after, every peak of civilization, has been characterized by the export of aggression. The channels provided by civilizations is the redirection of aggression, not into less violent means, but in providing aggression another target, which is more productive, overall, for a given group than internal conflict or civil aggression.
The world today is more complex, more people live in it, but human aggression still is explained by what I have said about the dynamics of group identity.
I can’t argue any further with some who doesn’t see the cumulative affect to Civilization that I see, which is insulating it from the destructive human aggression of the past. I see an incrementalization in human affairs, whereas you don’t. Like I said, we see the world through different lenses.
The origin of the state is civilization itself. Then the state becomes the receptacle of civilization.
I find it interesting that some people think civilization is not a growing thing, that its something that doesn’t expand or increase in value. Civilization is the reservoir of knowledge and know-how that we continually dip into in order to function and sustain ourselves, whether it be music or a technology . And as the years go by we keep adding to that reservoir so that we can continue to survive and develop.
You are right and wrong. The state is civilization only because walled cities are made out struggles without, and class division within. Civilizations are built upon slave labor, ours, like theirs. Knowledge too is built upon the liesure that comes from slavery, since time is the greatest wealth. When civilizations are swept away it is while under the impression that they know enough, and then their knowledge becomes dogma. The poor will never know enough. Needing technology, it is they rather than the rulers who will be the source of invention. But invention never hindered the exploitation of the poor, but only increased its rate, giving more wealth to the ignorant rich until the whole people is lost, demoralized, and corroded. If you want to know what makes states and civilizations; look at what breaks them. When they take more life to support than they give back to the people they are all done, and we are reaching that point.