Is there a place outside the dichotomy of civilization vs. the less pronounced, primitivism? Civilization sounds like “evil is everywhere”. And that sounds like fear mongering. Could civilization be a way to get people to fear nature? And if it is, who’s doing it?
Civilization is a cister. Primitivism is a brother.
What would break apart a sister and brother? Early on it could be privacy and who gets what, or later on inheritance?
Wow, I never thought civilization sounds like evil is everywhere. Where did you get that from? Civilization is not really a way to get people to fear nature, it’s just the way people have naturally built upon their societies to more complex “animals”, if you will.
The entire history, ideology, and philosophy of man made civilization is one of complete total dominance over nature along with total control of human nature itself by any means.
Civilization isn’t evil [evil doesn’t exist] but rather is inherently savage which is humanity’s natural state and because of the hyper competitive component of human nature inevitably throughout human history becomes self destructive.
Odd how a human baby is the most helpless animal in the Kingdom of Animalia, yet when we grow up we become the most dominant by such a wide margin, we become afraid of our own power.
The most helpless overtime become the most feared through constant insecurity.
Actually, she is right. Civilization is related to the fear of nature.
Fear, rejection, and more importantly the desire to rule over it.
Civilisation is a logical consequence of an advanced species. The problem with it is that it favours
the individual over the collective. And compare it to other species and see how ants or bees work
together with a common goal. Humans have too much free will and ego to be as efficient as them
Maybe “See evil, AGAIN” (civilization)
“Pretend it doesn’t exist” or (Primitivist)
I wouldnt use the example of ants or bees to give a template of your utopia. Talk about cuckcity.
Nobody planned civilization. It’s not like a group of conspirators gathered together and said “Let’s convince everyone that nature is scary, and that we will protect them by inventing civilization in which they can be sheltered.” Civilization is what happens when a tribe becomes too big to manage in the usual ways (i.e. through a tribal leader). The group becomes so big that you can walk through the town square and not recognize a single soul. Primitive groups aren’t like this; capping out at around 300 people or thereabouts, people in tribes usually know and recognize 99% of everyone else. Order and harmony are maintained the same way they are in a family or among a group of friends. But when the group becomes too big for this to be possible, you need institutions in order to keep everyone organized and in line–institutions like law, education, religion, government, etc. The tribal leaders are booted out and replaced by these. ← That’s civilization.
Since noone knows each other in civilization it leads to more negative behavoirs. CEO’s don’t know the families they dump toxins in lakes of. Though I can spit on tribalism as well, many of them are religious cannibalistic idiots and nodding heads who endlessly war on tribes. So it’s a bit of a shitshow, but you can at least choose between marble shit or diarrhea. Actually you can’t choose because tribalism is illegal in most places. Oh well, I guess we don’t have the option of diarrhea soup anymore. Big loss.
I actually disagree with this. The first civilizations were built upon religious experience and cultism.
From the creation of civilization the next step was to gather people up from wilderness and countryside in having a full hosts of slaves to build in expanding civilization. Early ancient politics was inseparable from religion also in identity.
The way I see it, religion was the by product of a higher intellect mind. The mind couldn’t cope with the boredom and emptiness associated with the result of a higher intellect mind, so they had to fill the emptiness with religion. It’s why you see people with a fair amount of mental capacity, like Turd Ferguson, end up religious idiots.
War is also a product of higher minds. We have the advantage of not needing it anymore, because videogames satiate our masculine feminine need for violence. Violence is a feminine thing, but it is masculine type of feminine.
Civility is a mere facade, indoctrinated within us from birth. Social conditioning has directed people to civility that we have today, but could we as a species taken a different route? Perhaps, but would it have been “better”? The imagination is a powerful thing and I suspect that a rather successful implementation of imagination – in the ideological push of civility – has many wonderful aspirations to offer. However, it does have its extremes. We can often end up forgetting who or what we are, animals. We, human beings, are classified as animals under Kingdom Animalia, yet we have chosen to subjectively distance ourselves from every other animal, by definition even, as provided by Merriam Webster.
1an·i·mal
: a living thing that is not a human being or plant
: any living thing that is not a plant
: a person who behaves in a wild, aggressive, or unpleasant way
I like the third sense of the word, a person who behaves in a wild, aggressive, or unpleasant way… Which when push comes to shove, we may all just go back to being this type of animal. After all, we have the will to survive and if aggressiveness is required for us to survive, more times than not we will become pretty agressive.
We react based upon our biological make up and environmental conditioning, just as all animals do. Sure, we have some major advantages over the rest of Kingdom Animalia, but are we to distance ourselves so much to consider ourselves so special that we are beyond animals now?
I credit the extreme notions of this ideology of civility to have ended up in various forms of political correctness. It is often that any of us can be disillusioned about anything…and I’ve noticed some various politically correct stances that weave a web of twisted logic pushing the envelope to a disillusioned frame of reference. The simple scientific categorization that places us as not animals, for instance. It seems this occurred, well, just because “we” can.
Today we see extremes in various forms of political activism; political correctness in all its forms; PETA, pipe dream superfluous goals that will never be obtained; The paradoxical push for racial equality which ends up segregating the races and hurts its own cause; Trading some small victory while creating a larger war in the end. Censorship, while it has its practicality and legitimate uses, there is a fine line that we must not damage. To deny some aspects our savagery on these levels can lead to systematic corruption resulting in a slippery slope of self defeat. Authority will always need a reminder that their unjust facade of civility is transparent and their savagery is apparent to those that must obey their will. We should not necessarily expect more from the epitome of human civility; systems, governments, corporations, cultures… It will only set us up for failure. When we lose track of what we are we trick ourselves, which end up hurting us in the long run. We should be vigilant in our ideologies to understand what we can do and maybe more importantly, what cannot be done… which is along the lines of what we know; more importantly knowing at times that we do not know. When push comes to shove, civility will crumble. To be prepared let us embrace our inner savage, or our inner animal… as to forget our inner savage is to forget what we are, what we’re doing and will set us up for a long string of corruption and failures. Society is yet to work out its kinks and may never; We are very flawed humans. Civility certainly has its place and is particularly useful in how we treat others; Let us not forget what we are however; it is then that we open ourselves to direct or indirect harm. But of course, lets not go overboard and start eating each other.
Now if you have made it this far, perhaps I can welcome you to the human condition of just what kind of animal we are. The capability to produce abstract thoughts that result in the notion of civility, that we all play along, or abide with. (At least most of us). The human condition though is one in which has very animalistic tendencies, which if believe we are civilized human beings made in God’s image, perhaps we will forget the capability of humans. We are for the most part, bottomless pits. Black holes that will always want more. When we have more, we’ll want something else. It’s in our nature, which is not within our control. Our biological make up has caused us to be able to want, to live, to think… Other animals have other drives, dependent upon their biological make up. People become killers, they lie, they have all sorts of issues that civility pushes below the depths of our perception, hiding and lurking withe facade of civility to camouflage them. There are murderers, rapists, thieves, walking out there among us, who look just as civilized as everyone else. Civility has masked their savagery. They all play the game, just like everyone else. But in each and every one of us, lurks something else. Is being an animal always bad? Of course not. Many non human animals are probably capable of loving or caring just as we are. Just don’t let the facade of civility fool you into thinking everything is just fine and dandy with these human beings that walk the earth.
So embrace your inner savage, for it will give you insight into the rest of society. Knowing this within may help you know others. Your primal drives, fears, desires… don’t necessarily come from our environment, it may primarily come from our genetic make up, which remember, is a very dominant species of life that happens to conquer the food chain… and for many if not most, the most desirable conquest is of those of the same species.
The abstract, philosophical definition of masculinity, is the ability to overcome nature, it is artifice. Feminity is the animal state. Civilization is shit, but when you put balls in a lottery you’re likely to get shit. Simply keep trying and one of these days you’ll have good rolls, just like any procedural generated entity, many structures come out like shit, but you just gotta keep trying new seeds.
Religion is a useful delusion in that it facilitates humanity’s self importance and universal elevation. Compared to the emptiness of a universe lacking in either compassion or care of the human species a delusion was fashioned in order to negate that existential insecurity. A fantasy was created. God isn’t real but in the absence of god it became necessary to invent one.
Like politics of the ancient world war also was built upon religious experience separate from merely gathering land and resources competitively.
Civility is another delusion. Human nature is one of savagery and it is that primordial savagery that remains intact with us on that very thing we call human nature. Civility is an illusion we’ve constructed as an abstract in the narrative of having conquered nature through civilization we’ve conquered our own human nature but in reality it is quite the opposite.
The only usefulness of the illusion of civility is controlling and manipulating others through power. It’s an authoritarian propaganda word description for those who have accepted the faith and belief system of those in established power.
You got it exactly right, Trix.
The underlined part is especially telling. When we see strangers as we walk down the street, we try to avoid eye contact; if we’re forced to meet with a stranger, we put up a front, act the way we think we’re supposed to act, not be ourselves. There’s often some degree of tension. This is an instinctual reaction, a reaction of distrust which used to come out only when encountering members of another tribe. We warred with other tribes, and when we didn’t (trade relations, for example), it was nothing close to family or close friends–we knew that such relations could crumble at any time and war could break out. The reaction of distrust we feel when encountering strangers is an old remnant of how we reacted to an enemy. Civilization is a condition characterized by being surrounded by enemies, and governing civilization is the act of making laws and institutions of control your enemies.
I have no doubt that religion played a huge roll in the formation of civilization, but it only works for the reasons I said. The reasons it works is not always planned or in tune with what people think is going on. These religious folk most likely attributed their success as a civilization to the gods, not really understanding the more secular and natural reasons for their success.
But if it’s my doubts in the conspiracy theory I suggested that you disagree with (i.e. that a small band of conspirators gathered together to plan civilization), I will agree that civilization is built upon a long series of mini-conspiracies. I don’t think any one man, or group of men, back in the stone age, could have predicted the advent of civilization as we know it today (let alone made it happen), but I do think there was the occasional social genius who knew how to gather followers, enslave their minds, and make them do whatever he wanted (become a police force, for example). These would be like the cult leaders as you suggested. But this is an example of a mini-step towards civilization, a mini-step from a tribe whose members cohere for the usual natural reasons to a bit more of a streamlined group whose behavior is noticeably more normalized and strictly controlled. It’s just like any conspiracy today. Politicians finding loop holes in the law, bending the Constitution to suit their own agendas, embezzling money under the table, and any other way to gain a bit more control and cheat the system. But they’re hardly planning for what civilization will become several thousand years from now; however, as this kind of behavior continues, no doubt others will learn from it and build upon it, and maybe in a few thousand years, we will see how it leads to something even more monstrous and megalithic.