Civilization and Beyond by Scott Nearing
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Scott Nearing >> Civilization and Beyond
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Resulting oppositions fragmented civilization: (1) urban vs. rural life,
city vs. hinterland; (2) cooperation vs. competition; (3) acquisition
and accumulation vs. sharing; (4) riches vs. poverty; (5) the individual
vs. the group; (6) status vs. change.
These fragmenting forces have been accepted, adopted and given priority
by civilizations as they developed predominance. As they grew in
magnitude they limited or subordinated the forces of integration and
unification.
Opposites and oppositions lead to confrontations along class lines,
geographic lines, cultural lines, color lines, racial lines. The
traditional confrontation of rural vs. urban life is doubly underlined
by two factors: first, the countryside operates generally on a use
economy with pay for services largely in kind or by barter. The city
operates under a market economy with payment for services usually in
money. Second, the standards of life and work are more primitive in the
countryside than in the city. Third, as the civilization advances toward
maturity, city population increases while it declines in the
countryside. Consequently vigorous, energetic, adventurous people leave
the deteriorating countryside.
Increasingly the owners of land and capital live in the cities, visiting
the countryside for holidays and recreation, leaving rural areas to
servants, peons, serfs and slaves. Small owning farmers are bought out
or expropriated. Unable to make a living in the countryside they move to
the city. Lacking city skills they work as casual labor or are
unemployed. The city is divided between enterprisers, their
subordinates, owners of country estates and members of the state
bureaucracy on one side and vassals, servants, serfs, and slaves and the
unemployed on the other. The rich and powerful become richer and more
powerful. The poor and dependent grow in numbers--protest, demonstrate,
riot, revolt.
This class struggle dominates public life in the urban centers of every
civilization. The rich offer petty reforms and minor benefits to the
impoverished, semi-employed city masses. At the same time the urban
oligarchy breaks up into rival factions: the Ins and the Outs. The Ins
hold public jobs, spend public money, award contracts and pass around
favors. The Outs wait and maneuver for their turn at the public
pie-counter. Both Ins and Outs appeal for mass support.
Oppositions and confrontations lead to conflicts which have studded the
life of every civilization. Conflicts include wars which may be divided
into six groups: (1) Wars of expansion, conquest, colonization directed
toward the enlargement of the territories included in the civilization.
(2) Wars of survival among adjacent nations and empires. (3) Wars fought
to suppress unrest and revolt in the colonies and dependencies of an
empire or civilization. (4) Wars fought to repel the invasion of
migrating peoples attempting to occupy territory over which an empire or
a civilization claims jurisdiction. (5) Peasant, serf and slave revolts
and rebellions against the authority of empires or civilizations. (6)
Civil wars to determine the leadership of particular empires; wars of
leadership succession; conflicts and power seizures within particular
oligarchies.
In every civilization final decisions regarding domestic and foreign
issues have been made by an appeal to arms. There were laws and legal
institutions in many civilizations under which confrontations might have
been prevented and armed conflict avoided. Where these legal means
failed to provide solutions, contestants turned to armed force as the
final arbiter.
Competitive survival struggle has played a prominent role in the life of
every civilization known to history. Competition at its highest level
employs armed force as its instrument of policy. War, domestic and
foreign has, therefore, dominated the history of every civilization.
Walter Bagehot called war a state maker. In the same context, war may be
referred to as a civilization maker.
Conflict, including war, has played a major role, often a determining
role in building and maintaining civilizations. It has also been a major
and perhaps _the_ major factor in undermining and destroying
civilizations. Arnold Toynbee contends that war has been a "proximate
cause" of the overthrow of one civilization after another. No observer
of current western civilization can fail to note the determining part
played by war during the first half of the present century.
Every completed civilization known to historians has passed through a
sociological life cycle: origin, growth, expansion, maturity, violent
premature dismemberment and death in the competitive survival struggle
or gradual decline and eventual dissolution.
Every completed civilization has had small, local beginnings, on an
island like Crete, or a group of islands like the Japanese Archipelago,
or a tiny spot like Latium on the Tiber River, or an isolated area like
the desert-surrounded Nile River Valley in Africa. The seed ground or
nucleus of each civilization has been a small, well-knit group of
vigorous, energetic people, well-led, living in an easily defended,
limited area, enjoying relative isolation, but also having ready access
to the outside world.
At the beginning the growth cycle has moved slowly, from victory to
victory, as competing neighboring peoples have been brought under the
authority of the victor in local wars. After generations or centuries of
struggle a point is reached at which the nucleus of the growing empire
begins to expand, through trade, colonization, diplomatic alliances,
conquest, into an era of survival struggle in which rival cities reach
out for the same piece of fertile land, the same markets, the same
mineral deposits. Again the life and death survival struggle tests out
the people, their leaders, their ambitions, determination, tenacity.
Earlier struggles were local. Now the struggle area has become regional.
At the outset the peoples were amateurs in the science and art of
expansion, occupation, consolidation, exploitation. Through the hard
school of struggle they became professionals. From victory to victory
they gained in territory, in wealth, in administrative skill. One by
one, rivals were eliminated, annexed or associated with the nascent
empire which was by way of becoming the central empire of a maturing
civilization.
Generations of effort and centuries of time have gone into the empire
building process. The farther the civilization has expanded, the greater
the necessary input of manpower, wealth, enterprise and administrative
talent needed to keep the enterprise strong, solvent, masterful.
Eventually the expanding civilization reaches a point at which the costs
of further expansion are greater than the income derived from further
extension of its authority. Up to this point expansion had paid its own
way. Beyond this point it is a losing proposition--politically,
economically, sociologically. At this point begin times of troubles; bad
harvests; colonial or provincial revolts; power struggles between
individuals or classes in the homeland; new rivals moving in to share in
the prospective plunder of the mother-city.
From this time of troubles the civilization enters a new phase of its
lifecycle. Up to this point victory has brought plunder and prosperity
which have financed new foreign adventures and led to new victories.
Beyond this point lies stalemate, economic stagnation, military defeat.
Building an empire and establishing it as the central force in a
civilization is a long and arduous process. Once the process is
reversed, the decline may move quickly or slowly, but as it proceeds the
civilization is fragmented and eventually dissolved or taken over by a
more vigorous rival.
At all stages of this cycle there have been life and death survival
struggles. Peoples, nations and empires entered the contest, played
their parts, made their contribution to the up-building process. There
were ups and downs, advances and withdrawals, victories and defeats.
There were many contenders for survival and supremacy. Usually there was
one survivor which gave its name to the civilization.
The period of ascendancy of any civilization has been historically
brief. The struggle to the summit was long and exhausting; the descent
from the summit more rapid than the ascent. Literally, like the bear
that went over the mountain to see what he could find, and who found the
other side of the mountain, the civilizations that have reached the
summit of wealth and power have found on the other side of the summit a
steep downward sloping time of troubles that ended in dissolution and
liquidation.
Civilization, as a sociological life pattern, has proved to be seductive
and alluring in prospect, but in retrospect unsatisfactory and
frustrating. Civilization has proved to be not an opportunity for the
ambitious, but a trap for the ignorant, inexperienced and unwary. For
the many contestants who set out to conquer the world the experience
has been disappointing and on the whole disastrous. For the few who have
reached the summit the experience has been frustrating.
Civilization as a way of life is like any other contest. The struggle is
good for those who are able to benefit from it by learning its lessons.
Whether they win or lose is a matter of no great consequence. For the
losers the experience often is heart breaking and death-dealing.
Students of social history have been tempted to draw a parallel between
the biological life cycle of an individual and the sociological
lifecycle of a civilization. There are elements of likeness between
biological birth, growth, maturity, old age and death of human
individuals and of human civilizations. All of the individuals and
civilizations that we know have passed or are passing through such a
lifecycle. The same thing may be true of the larger universe of which we
are a minute fragment. However exact or inexact it may prove to be, the
parallel certainly is unmistakable, alluring. It may also be seductive
and mortal.
CHAPTER NINE
IDEOLOGIES OF CIVILIZATION
This study was laid out along inductive lines: an examination of the
facts with such generalizations as the facts suggest or justify. We
began our social analysis of civilization by presenting noteworthy facts
concerning the politics, economics, and sociology of various
civilizations. In the present chapter we deal with their ideologies.
We are accepting and following the fourth variant definition of
"ideology" presented by Webster's New World Dictionary: "The doctrines,
opinions or way of thinking of an individual, class, etc." In this case
we are reporting on the doctrines, opinions, thought forms and action
patterns of entire civilizations.
Our concern is not with the doctrines, opinions and ways of thinking and
acting advanced by elite minorities. Such an approach would involve a
study of comparative ideologies. Rather we are asking what civilized
peoples were trying to do, as measured by their political, economic and
sociological activities, programs and purposes.
It may be presumptuous for an individual to generalize about
civilizations of which he knows so little. On the other hand, if we
recognize the limitations under which all assumptions and
generalizations operate it is possible and often helpful to assume and
generalize, although the generalizations may be no more than interim
reports, subject to later amendment, correction or rejection.
What were the prevailing ideas of civilizations and what ideas were put
into practice? What purposes dominated and directed the lives of
civilized peoples? How successful have civilized peoples been in
achieving their objectives?
At the outset we must realize that in any complex society there are wide
ranges of ideology, from the body of ideas held by small uninfluential
sects to the purposes, ideas, policy declarations and actions of
governing oligarchies. We do not wish to defend or attack the ideas, but
to summarize them and understand them in a way that will give a group
picture of the purposes, ideas, policies and day-to-day activities of
the civilizations in question. For convenience in our discussion we will
take up, first, civilized societies as collectives, and then the
operation of civilized ideology as expressed in the lives of
individuals.
Presumably the most immediate purpose of all civilized peoples has been
survival, getting on as a collective or group from day to day, through
summer and winter, under normal conditions, and/or in periods of stress
and emergency. If the group cannot survive it loses its identity,
breaking up into the self-determining parts of which it is composed.
Survival means continued existence as a group--in the face of disruption
from within or attack and invasion from without. The group which
survives continues to exist and to act as a group that maintains the
common defense and promotes the general welfare.
Each social group competing for survival has a sense of its own identity
and a belief in its capacity to survive. This ideology is strengthened
by the belief that the group has special qualities and is protected by
powerful entities that will guarantee its success in the survival
struggle. The group considers itself better qualified to survive than
neighbor groups. Such ideas, carried to their logical conclusion, make
the group in question superior to its neighbors in survival qualities
and a people chosen by its gods.
A superior people, chosen by its gods, is in a class by itself. Other
people, by comparison, are inferior. It is the destiny of the superior
people to take the lands of their inferior neighbors, and, whenever
opportunity offers, to defeat the neighbors in battle, capture them and
force them to do the bidding of the captors.
Cults of ideological superiority are widespread. Put into successful
practice by a victorious tribe, nation or empire, they develop into
cults of superiority which assert: "We, the victors, are stronger,
better people than our weaker neighbors." As one victory follows another
the belief in superiority grows. People in an expanding empire or
burgeoning civilization are obviously better survivors than their less
successful competitors.
Competitive survival struggle modifies the cultures of both victors and
vanquished. The dispersal and adoption of culture traits, supplemented
by negotiation and accommodation, broaden the geographical area of the
victors, increasing the population and adding to the material resources,
the wealth and income of the enlarged group. It may also involve the
corresponding decrease of the geographical area, population, wealth and
income of the vanquished.
In order to protect itself, preserve itself, to enlarge itself and,
where possible, to improve itself, each competing groups aims to set up
standards of ideas and conduct to which all living members of the group
are presumed to agree and to which they must adhere. When new members
enter the group, by birth or adoption, they are duly indoctrinated with
the group ideology. Early in their history the individuals and
sub-groups composing every civilization adopted such standards and
promulgated them by the decree of a leader or by the common consent of
associated groups, as the outcome of negotiation, discussion, give and
take. During the history of every civilization such agreements were
reached and recorded in compacts, treaties, laws, constitutions,
specifying the nature and limits of the collective cultural uniformity
at which the community aimed.
The struggle for collective uniformity was long and often bitter.
Individuals and factions resented and resisted the imposition of group
authority. Internal conflict led to civil wars in the course of which
the group was divided or the solidarity of the group was reaffirmed
despite hardships imposed on disagreeing, divergent minorities.
Closely paralleling the group need for survival and uniformity
(solidarity) was the need for group expansion, or extension. In the
competitive struggle for survival which played such an important role in
the life of pre-civilized communities, strategic geographic location was
often decisive. Soil fertility, mineral deposits, timber reserves,
access to waterways, location on trade routes all played a part in
community survival, stability and growth.
Such geographical advantages are few and far between. Often they are
already occupied and defended by stable communities. Their control and
utilization are basic in determining the survival or elimination of
rivals in the competitive struggle.
Above and beyond the need to occupy the "corner lots" of the planetary
land mass was the urge of civilized peoples to advance from littleness
to bigness as a goal in itself. Confined by limitations on communication
and transportation, pre-civilized man was circumscribed and localized.
With the advent of cultivation, land workers were tied to a particular
piece of real estate on which they lived and worked. When asked whether
the village across the valley was Sunrise Mountain the local peasant
could reply: "How should I know? I live here."
Reacting against restricted living and pressed by curiosity and the
spirit of adventure, the imaginative and adventurous members of each
generation pressed outward from the homeland toward wider horizons. Many
traveled. Some migrated. Others pursued the will o' the wisp of
expansion by adding field to field. The grass always looked greener on
the other side of the mountain. The ambitious expansionist therefore
tried to control both sides.
"Move on! Move on!" became the watchword, without any particular
emphasis on quality. In one civilization after another bigness
(magnitude) was accepted as a symbol of success, because "the more you
get and keep, the happier you will be."
Mastery of strategic advantages, plus the illusion of mere bigness,
without any specification to quality, became keys to survival and
success.
Civilized man exploited natural advantages and augmented his power over
nature and society by increasing his wealth and multiplying the
population. At the outset of the struggle strategic geographical
advantages were occupied and utilized by local groups. Through survival
struggle, one of the groups, better organized, better led, more
determined and productive, succeeded in securing possession of one
strong point after another, until an entire region, like the Nile Valley
or the Mediterranean Basin had been conquered and occupied by a single
great power. The measure of success in the power struggle is the
occupation of strategic strong points. Natural resources, including land
and labor power, are among the chief spoils of victory.
Seven basic goals or principles were involved in the building of
civilizations: group survival; propitiating the gods; recognizing and
following aesthetic principles; achieving and stabilizing property and
class relations; expansion (bigness); individual conformity to the
collective pattern; and collective uniformity in a united world of human
brotherhood. At times and in places the basic propositions were
accepted, rejected, fought over. Each civilization which followed them
successfully was able to establish itself, maintain itself, and up to a
certain point add to its prestige, wealth and power.
The first goal was success in the struggle for survival. Collective
uniformity and expansion opened the path to wealth and power, in the
city, state, the empire, the civilization. From a multitude of local
beginnings the struggle for expansion and consolidation led to ever
larger aggregations of land, population, capital and wealth concentrated
in the hands of an increasingly rich, powerful oligarchy, protected and
defended by a military elite pushing itself ceaselessly toward a
position from which it could make and enforce domestic policy and order.
A second collective goal has been propitiating and wooing the unseen
forces of the universe: holding their attention; keeping them on "our"
side; relying on their influence for defense against enemies, mortal and
immortal, and help in providing water in case of drought, fertility,
assistance in healing the sick, comfort for the dying, consolation for
the bereaved and success in business deals. These multiple aspects of
ideology are summed up under the term "religion".
Each civilization has had its religious ideas and ideals, its religious
practices and institutions. Many civilizations have divided their
attention between civil ideology and religious ideology. In some cases
religious ideology took precedence, resulting in a theocratic society
under the leadership of religious devotees. In other cases, notably
Roman civilization and western civilization, religious ideology was
subordinated to secular interests.
In the early stages of western civilization, religious ideology took
precedence over secular ideology. With the rise of the bourgeoisie,
secular ideology moved into the foreground, making loud religious
professions, but also making sure that business-for-profit had the last
word in the determination of public policy.
A third collective ideological goal of civilization has been aesthetic;
the yen for symmetry and balance; the love of beauty; the desire for
harmony; the quest for excellence; the lure of magnificence; the search
for truth. Out of these urges have arisen the pictorial and plastic
arts, architecture, music, the dance, science, and philosophy, providing
outlets, occupations and professions that have colored and shaped many
aspects of civilized living.
A fourth collective goal of civilization has been the establishment and
maintenance of social structure, including classes and/or caste lines
based partly upon tradition, partly on function and partly upon
proximity to the honey-pot, the wellspring of wealth, income, prestige
and power.
Since the principle of private property has been implicit in every known
civilization, the ownership of land, capital and consumer goods and
services has been a prerogative of the ruling oligarchies, shared by
them with their associates and dependents and used as their chief means
of establishing and maintaining the "you work, I eat" principal of
economic relationships.
Private property, and its derivative, unearned or property income, has
enabled the ruling oligarchies of civilized communities to receive the
first fruits of every enterprise. They have also enabled the oligarchs
to establish a priority scale of income distribution under which those
who held property and its derivatives could have first choice among
available consumer goods and services. Second choice went to the
associates, retainers and defenders of the oligarchs. Third choice went
to the preferred, professional experts who spoke for and represented the
oligarchy. Fourth choice went to the artisans--skilled designers,
builders, fabricators. What remained went to hewers of wood and drawers
of water, the workers, women and men, who provided the necessaries,
comforts, luxuries upon which physical survival and social status
depended. Generally this proletarian mass, including chattel slaves,
serfs, tenant farmers and war captives, were outside the pale of
respectability. In a caste-divided community they were scavengers and
untouchables, living a life close to that of domestic animals.
Most civilizations have permitted gifted individuals to move vertically,
from the bottom toward the top levels of the social pyramid. Vertical
movement was severely restricted, however. Generally people lived,
served and died on the class or caste level into which they were born.
Members of classes and castes are not free agents. They have privileges
and rights. They also have obligations and duties. Classes and castes
are functioning parts of an interdependent social whole which can
maintain balanced order only so long as each segment recognizes its
obligations and performs its duties.
Social balance therefore depended on class collaboration. Successful
collaboration, in its turn, is the outcome of a general acceptance of
class and caste and general willingness to go on living and functioning
in a class divided society.
A fifth collective goal of civilization has been expansion from the
nucleus outward, with final authority exercised by and from the nucleus.
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 establishing itself
as the master and supreme dictator--the Caesar or Pharoah of the
conquered, unified world.
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