Civilization and Beyond: Learning from History Part 15

At the outset of the survival struggle which led to the establishment of one language, one religion, one law, one authority, one loyalty, each among the many contestants had its own language, its own religion, its own law, its own authority.

These rival forces were temporarily confederated against internal disruption or foreign invasion. ("Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable.") In the course of the survival struggle, the separate parts of which the civilization was composed began with the local autonomy permitted by confederation, and ended up with one among the many contestants donning the imperial purple and establis.h.i.+ng itself as the master and supreme dictator--the Caesar or Pharoah of the conquered, unified world.

Foreign territories conquered and brought by force of arms within this imperium were subjects of a central authority which they never really accepted. Authority continued to be exercised from the imperial nucleus.

The newly conquered territories were policed by professional soldiers whose primary loyalty was national but whose responsibility was to the aggregate composing the Roman or the Egyptian civilization.

The acid test of the expanding civilization was embodied in the degree of acceptance of wholeness as opposed to self-determination. Were the individual members--the provinces and colonies composing the whole--willing and able to sink their differences in an unquestioned wholeness, or were they prepared at the first opportunity to exercise their right to self-determination and declare their independence of the whole?

The resolution of this question const.i.tuted the sixth collective goal of civilization: to establish a whole in which the component members were able and willing to recognize the axiom that the interests of the whole come before the interests of any of its component parts.

The issue of central authority versus local self determination has been one of the basic issues of the present century because during the preceding period, the British, French, Dutch and Spanish Empires had been built up by the conquest and occupation of foreign lands. If the nineteenth century was an epoch of expanding imperial authority, the twentieth century has been an epoch of the dismemberment of empires by movements for independence and self-determination.

Seventh, and finally, among the collective goals of civilization, each has developed an ideology that justified empire building by conquest, exploitation, chattel slavery, peonage, wagery, the supremacy of the empire nucleus, the subordination of the periphery to the nucleus and other aspects of ascendancy and mastery including "divine" rights in politics and "natural" rights in economics.

Civilizations expect the individuals and groups of which they are composed to preserve the status quo, work as disciplined members of an effective team and be satisfied with the outcome. This brings us back to the goal with which we began this discussion of the collective goals of civilizations: The primary task of any civilization is to survive.

Each individual human being, living and working in a civilized community occupies a sphere of action, enjoys the advantages and disadvantages and accepts the responsibilities and duties which pertain to his sphere.

Within his sphere the individual succeeds or fails in so far as he leads a rewarding personal life and contributes his share toward the collective life of the group to which she or he belongs.

If the individual in a civilized community is to live a good life, the first task is to maintain normal health, good spirits and a determination to get the most out of life and to contribute at least the equivalent of what he receives in service to his group.

As a civilization expands and extends its influence, the individual must contribute his mite to the entire enterprise while adding to his own store of goods and services. Acquisition and acc.u.mulation satisfy a human desire to have and to keep. They also add to the wealth and well being of the community on the widely accepted utilitarian formula: happiness comes in direct proportion to the extent and variety of ones possessions.

In most civilized communities the building unit is a family. It is this family unit, usually directed by a male or father figure, who acts for the family and represents it in the community.

In pa.s.sing, the reader should note that the breakdown in family life now so prevalent in many parts of western civilization is a departure from the civilized norm. It is really a measure of the extent to which western civilization itself is disintegrating.

The revolution in science and technology, ma.s.s production and the distribution of goods and services through a ma.s.s market have put acquisition and acc.u.mulation of goods and services as a life-goal to a severe test. Until the early years of the present century no civilization had provided affluence for more than a small fraction of its population. The vast majority consisted of slaves, serfs, war captives, and tenant farmers. Only an exceptional few were in a position to live in comfort or luxury on unearned income. As each civilization matured, owners.h.i.+p of land and capital diverted the flow of consumer goods and services into the coffers of a diminis.h.i.+ng proportion of the total population. The vast majority lived at or below the subsistence level. General affluence was a goal that was talked about and dreamed about, but there was no way to test its practical effects on the population as a whole.

Under conditions presently existing in many parts of the West, millions of individuals and families following the utilitarian principles of acquisition and acc.u.mulation have secured and kept an abundance of goods and services in strict accordance with utilitarian principles. Yet they have not been and are not happy.

Quite the contrary, in many cases they are unhappy, particularly in the second and third generations of affluent family life. This is notably true in the United States, Scandinavia, Switzerland and other parts of western Europe. It is true to a lesser degree in New Zealand and Australia.

Millions of families in these countries, with all their possessions, fail to enjoy peace and happiness. On the contrary, they are so acutely unhappy that many of them have come to regard acquisition and acc.u.mulation as a sterile rat-race. Consequently mult.i.tudes of people, young and old, have turned their backs on civilization, separating themselves from their affluent homes with their glut of consumer goods to live at non-civilized or pre-civilized levels. These individuals are avowedly anti-civilization in so far as its material incentives are concerned.

Similar att.i.tudes were expressed in previous civilizations. Socrates went barefoot through the streets of Athens. Diogenes lived in a tub.

Uncounted numbers of Indian holy men and early Christians rejected all affluence, embraced poverty, lived simply and austerely. Religious asceticism is no novelty. But the wholesale rejection of acquisition and acc.u.mulation as a way of life certainly marks a turning point in the popular att.i.tude toward the utilitarian axiom that human happiness is directly proportioned to the quant.i.ty and variety of material possessions.

Civilization presupposes getting, keeping and exercising power over nature, society and man. Each civilization has added to man's utilization of nature. This has been a notorious aspect of western civilization since the inauguration of the scientific-technological revolution. After a century of intensified exploitation of the natural environment, entire communities are reacting with dismay and disgust against the resulting pollution of air, water and land, the wanton waste of soil fertility, forests and minerals, and extermination of various forms of "wilderness." Freedom to exploit nature's storehouse has not brought happiness. On the contrary, it threatens the existence of other life forms and even the continuance of human life on the planet.

Private enterprise and other forms of permissiveness have led to practices that circ.u.mscribe and hamper life. Their declared objective is the liberation and enlargement of human life and well being. Where they have been tested out they have proved themselves to be obstructive and destructive rather than creative and constructive.

Notable advances in science and technology have greatly increased the human capacity to transform nature and remake society. Designed and executed as a means of enhancing the general welfare, science and technology might have promoted human well-being. But employed as a means of exploiting nature and society for the benefit of a favored few, science and technology, whether directed by European and American promoters of the African slave trade, Spanish conquerors in Latin America, by Belgians in the African Congo, by European whites in their dealings with the North American Indians, by the n.a.z.is in Europe, or by Americans in South East Asia, have involved merciless exploitation accompanied by revolting atrocities.

Never in recorded history was the capacity of man to modify nature and exploit society more publicly tested out than in the atom bombing of Hiros.h.i.+ma and Nagasaki and the purposeful devastation of jungle life and village life in large parts of Vietnam and Cambodia. Reported in the public press and pictured, live, over radio and television, these latest developments in the ugly record of man's exploitation of nature have become part of the record of the decline and dissolution of western civilization.

Exploitation of human society for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many is an old story that extends through the entire record of written history. Every civilization has produced a cl.u.s.ter of inst.i.tutions and practices that enabled a few rich and privileged to live in affluence at the expense of the impoverished many. This juxtaposition of riches and poverty is the logical outcome of a system of social relations designed to provide the few with comfort and luxury while the many are forced to accept penury and hards.h.i.+p. Exploitation, carried to its logical conclusion, permits and requires a parasitic minority to live in abundance while the majority must content itself with scarcity, extending to death from malnutrition.

Another goal presented to individuals by the promoters and fas.h.i.+oners of civilization is individual perfection, physical, mental, emotional, moral. Every generation of human beings contains individuals who are beyond the average--bigger, stronger, more talented, seeing farther, searching more deeply, endowed with greater sensitivity, working more conscientiously, imbued with a love of their fellows and determination to serve them. Such individuals have genius in one or another form and offer themselves and their products as a gift to the general welfare of their generation. Scientists, poets, musicians, inventors, artists, teachers, healers, philosophers, statesmen have appeared in each civilization adding their mite to the sum-total of community culture.

Innovators, moralists and counselors of perfection have played a noteworthy part by advocating and often by living noteworthy lives.

Reports of their sayings and doings are part of the folklore and the history of each civilization. If they did not set the tone of their generation, they provided it with a model toward which their less talented, less creative fellows might aspire. If they were creative artists their works provided models which were admired, copied and emulated by their successors. If they were moralists or philosophers their sayings were recorded, respected and repeated by successive generations.

Each civilization has adopted lines of thinking and codes of action which embody the best and most advantageous in theory and in practice.

These codes of thought, feeling and action are attributed to some outstanding individual and pa.s.sed on from generation to generation as codes of conduct to which all right-thinking individuals may or should aspire.

Human beings know everything about themselves except whence they came, what they should do and whither they will go. To compensate for this lack of knowledge and wisdom each civilization has established and maintained religious organizations and inst.i.tutions whose duty it was to search out the truth, record it and teach it to successive generations.

In some civilizations the religious inst.i.tutions have dominated the secular. At other times and in other places the secular has maintained its ascendancy over the religious. In still other cases the religious and the secular forces have maintained an uneasy balance leading to acrimonious bickering and sometimes to civil war.

Central to their discussions is the nature of life. Is it continuous, as it appears in vegetation and the animal kingdom, or is it discontinuous like the rocks on the mountainside or the grains of sand on the seash.o.r.e? Those who live for the moment prefer discontinuity. Those who observe their natural environment are forced to the conclusion that life today is part of a sequence or progression which relates the life of yesterday to that of tomorrow.

Recorded history, from fossil and geological remains, to the books on library shelves a.s.sures us that man has had a past. Projecting this experience, it seems quite reasonable that barring accident or a purposed intervention, man will have at least some future. To prepare for that future, using the knowledge and wisdom at our disposal, seems to be a must for any reasoning creature.

Even for the short planetary life-span of the average human, the logic of this position seems inescapable, whether it applies to the next hour, day, year, or century. In terms of our children and grandchildren it is even more impressive. Today we find it desirable to live as well as possible. If there is any future, the same principle should apply to its implementation and utilization.

If the "hereafter" begins tomorrow and if those whose well-being concerns us will probably be "alive" tomorrow, the science and art of the future (futurology) takes its place beside other fields of theory and practice as a must for all responsible members of the human race.

If the conditions presently existing in human society affordment, skills and technical experience necessary to make significant changes, why wait? Why not proceed forthwith to live a better life?

This dilemma has confronted individuals and sub-groups in various civilizations. It has been particularly in evidence during periods of decline and social disintegration. It has led people of both s.e.xes and all ages to uproot themselves from the old social order and reestablish themselves in a social order "nearer to the heart's desire."

Such efforts have been described as "intentional communities" to distinguish them from a traditional, currently existing social order which emerged from the past enc.u.mbered with vestigial remains and obsolete inst.i.tutions and practices having little or no relation to the needs and wants of a changing world.

Pilgrim Fathers in New England, William Penn in Pennsylvania, Lord Baltimore in Maryland aimed to organize local intentional communities.

Similar efforts were made by the Mennonites, the Dukhobors, the Hutterites, the Mormons in North America. The Christians during the decline of Roman civilization led a movement to convert a large geographical area to a new and better way of life. Followers of Mohammed, several centuries later, made a similar effort to convert the Eurasian-African world to their ways of thinking and acting.

Young people by the thousands, in the United States and other western countries, are turning their backs on western civilization and are organizing enlarged families and communes that provide their members with a modified social order which aims at improvements here and now.

Necessarily such social experiments are looked upon with suspicion by the Establishment. They are "new", "different", "subversive", "G.o.dless", "wicked." Hence, they are criticized, denounced, raided and often broken up as threats to existing law and order.

Intentional communities may grow out of consumers' cooperation. They may begin as farm collectives. Generally, however, they consist of the followers of outstanding leaders of religious or ethical sects. Many intentional communes spring up, mushroom-fas.h.i.+on, and disappear with equal rapidity. Others endure for generations and centuries.

In a very real sense they are pilot plants designed to correct individual or social maladjustments and subst.i.tute new ways for old ones. As pilot plants they experiment with deviations from existing social norms, acting as a social laboratory in which new ideas and practices are tested, modified, accepted, rejected.

Change is one of the essential aspects of every society. There are changes in personnel. In each generation individuals grow old and retire. Others grow up and take over the tasks of organizing the communities in which they live. Profound social changes result from discoveries and inventions: the wheel, the arch, steam and gas engines, electricity, atomic power. Cyclic changes occur in the economy. Social changes follow alterations in the weather. Nations, empires, civilizations are produced by the changing life forms.

During long periods, social changes are so gradual that they are unnoticed save by the more sensitive and perceptive. At other times, social changes tumble over one another in an overwhelming revolutionary flood which sweeps away the old, yielding place to new, "lest one good custom should corrupt the world".

Changes in society beget changes in ideology. Reciprocally, changes in ideology lead to changes in social structure and function. The more rigid the social order, the more stubborn its resistance to change. By the same token, more fluid societies lend themselves more readily to changes in practice and in theory.

It is not possible to discuss ideology without some reference to the closely related problems of means and ends. As we consider our existing social establishment, in the light of unceasing social change, we must deal with goals or objectives, with practicable modifications of social form and function and with the way in which changes can be, might be, will be brought about.

One fact is obvious. Whether social change is major or minor, local or general, it s.h.i.+fts the social balance. Any s.h.i.+ft in the social balance involves reactionaries, conservatives, liberals, radicals, some of whom will gain, while others will lose in the course of each social transformation. All will be concerned and involved.

Since political change involves some alteration in the balance of social forces, it behooves those who advocate and those who oppose social change to maximize acceptance and minimize opposition in order to take advantage of the gains and cut down the losses incident to all change.

For present purposes we wish to make seven notes about means and ends.