Civilization and Beyond: Learning from History Part 5

Having failed to co-ordinate and establish a planet-wide authority during the critical years following 1870, western civilization accepted the ant.i.thesis of co-ordination and entered a period of fragmentation:

1. During the century and a half from 1815 to the present day, as facilities for co-ordination were multiplied by discovery and invention, Europe remained stubbornly fragmented into more than a score of sovereign states. Minor changes were made in boundary lines and in internal relationships of property and privilege, but the European maps of the period present a record of persistent fragmentation of the continent into strongly frontiered sovereign segments.

2. Break-up of the European empires after two general wars led to the fragmentation of each empire into self-determining sovereign units.

3. The "third world," consisting chiefly of European empire fragments, has not consolidated, but after the Bandung Conference of 1955 has consisted of a fragmented Africa and Asia torn by domestic and inter-state conflicts and harried by the persistent intervention of the western powers.

4. Rivalry in the Pacific and in Asia has been heightened by the meteoric rise of j.a.pan as a world power, the dismemberment of the j.a.panese Empire after 1945 and the fierce subsequent economic compet.i.tion between j.a.pan and her planetary compet.i.tors, chiefly the United States.

5. United States efforts to coordinate Latin America as a source of raw materials and a market for manufactures and investment capital have not produced a United Latin American front against a common Yankee menace, but a st.u.r.dy refusal even of the tiniest Latin American Republic to surrender or limit its sovereignty has pushed a thorn into the vulnerable side of Washington's Monroe Doctrine control of the western hemisphere.

6. The high point in divisiveness was the decision of the United States spokesmen to inaugurate the American Century by establishing control over the Pacific Ocean, making itself the chief power in Asia and installing U.S.A. authority in the power vacuum left by the expulsion of Britain, France, Holland and j.a.pan from the territories composing their former empires. Local wars begun in Korea (1950) and extending across Southeast Asia have strengthened the determination of the local peoples to defend themselves at all costs against imperialist invaders from Europe and North America.

7. The United States has been rich enough since 1945 to build and maintain a navy that can patrol the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea and maintain large military forces in various European and Asian waters. This policy has been justified by the Truman-Johnson-Nixon Doctrine of determined opposition to the extension of socialism-communism and the consequent perpetuation of the cold war.

8. In theory the socialist world is unitary. In practice it is so fragmented by national boundary lines and ideological differences that its members have not been able (during recent years) to get together and discuss their major common problems.

United States wealth and military equipment have been sufficiently over-whelming to support the program of an American Century during which one nation might establish a universal state exercising planet-wide authority along the lines of the Universal State established by the Romans at the zenith of their power. In practice the program has not worked out. On the contrary, opposition to the United States as _the_ world power or even as _the_ power in Asia has grown steadily and quickly into a widespread "Anti-Americanism" or "anti-Yankeeism."

Conceivably a universal anti-American movement might develop a hot war similar to the anti-Hitler coalition of the 1930's. If that precedent is followed, however, the defeat of the United States would be followed by a period of fragmentation similar to or even more intense than the fragmentation of the 1950's and 1960's.

Present efforts to sh.o.r.e up the insolvent U.S.A. economy and the resulting opposition of America's leading European trading partners is not rea.s.suring. If western civilization has pa.s.sed the zenith of its development and entered a period of decline and fragmentation even a figure of Napoleonic capacities would be sorely pressed to breathe new life into its disintegrating social structure. At the moment, to the best of our knowledge, no such genius is in sight.

Western civilization is in some ways unique. In the main, however, the development of its life cycle has been typical. May we take it for granted that western civilization has turned its corner or may we a.s.sume that it is still replete with the possibilities of further maneuver, development and expansion? Perhaps the best way to approach the problem would be to ask three questions: What contribution has western civilization made to human nature, to human society and to mother nature, and what further contribution can it make in the foreseeable future?

Individuals, born or reared in any form of society are adjusted, shaped and conditioned by the social pattern of which they are a part. Each society attempts to stamp the individuals with its own image and likeness. The success or failure of this effort to a.s.sure individual adjustment to the social norm and conformity to its practices varies with the prosilitizing enthusiasm of the society and with the ration of adaptability and self-consciousness of its individual members.

Western civilization has produced a bourgeois human being intensively conscious of his capacities and anxious to try himself out in the rough-and-tumble of the market place and on the battlefield; to initiate, undertake, direct, administer. In the main, these are characteristics of the human male, though the female often possesses them in a greater or lesser degree.

Western civilization has opened the doors wide to aspirants eager to win out in the game of grab-and-keep. It has been equally kind to their chief executives, organizers and managers who rank second or third in the chain of command. These individuals come from widely different backgrounds. The social mobility of a bourgeois society gives them opportunity to climb high on the ladder of preferment.

Many of those who fall into line, adapt themselves to the civilizing process, accept with alacrity the chances that come their way, but do not reach the top of the success ladder. They have the health, energy and a.s.sertiveness necessary to keep climbing. They accept their a.s.signments and carry them out with modest success. They are the lesser executives who work themselves out by the time they are fifty and find some sinecure or safe position near the top of the social pyramid.

Below the high command posts there is a wide range of handymen and specialists who fill particular positions and place their time, energy, experience and expertise at the disposal of the high command. Among them are scientists, engineers, technicians. Equally important are their spokesmen, advisers and apologists: lawyers, preachers, teachers, writers, speakers, publicists, carefully chosen for their ability to apologize, pa.s.sify, justify and rea.s.sure. On the political side are the diplomats and politicians. Protection for their persons and property is provided by the police and the armed forces, composed of highly paid, well-trained, well-armed destroyers and killers.

Social stability and ma.s.s support come from an extensive middle cla.s.s composed of public servants and body servants, small tradesmen, self-employed craftsmen, rentiers and retired persons who are a.s.sured body comforts, social recognition and preferment for themselves, their relatives and dependants. Members of this middle cla.s.s are recognized on occasion, pampered, amused, diverted, bored, frustrated and eventually corrupted by the soft living which their middle cla.s.s status makes possible.

Close to the middle cla.s.s come the white collar workers and the better paid blue collar workers. Their lives are cluttered with gadgets and fringe benefits. Their homes are paid for or bought on credit.

Below these more or less regularly employed workers on salaries and wages come the semi-employed, racial or cla.s.s underlings living in poverty at or near the subsistence level.

a.s.sociated with this range of bourgeois occupations and often closely identified with it are owners of family farms, tenants and hired hands.

Outside of the employment range, but dependent upon the economy are the defectives and delinquents, the parasites who live on cake and the parasites who live out of garbage cans.

Beyond these categories, in the American Empire, there are the colonial compradors and handymen who enjoy standards of living comparable to their opposite members in the North America nucleus. Below them are the colonial ma.s.ses who live their entire lives under conditions of uncertainty and insecurity.

Millions of young people across the planet, born into the complicated and bewildering social network of western civilization after war's end in 1945 and graduated from school after the onset of the Vietnam War in 1965, find themselves in a complex, frustrating jungle. Should they fit in or drop out? Those who are more conventional and adaptable fit in as best they can, although the recent high unemployment rate among the youth indicates that the adjustment is often difficult. Millions of the less adaptable drop out.

Such a situation could have been foreseen by the initiated. Preparations could have been made in advance to deal with it when it arose. In the absence of adequate preparation the result is the chaos incident to every downturn of the private enterprise business cycle, magnified in this case by the regressive forces released during the disintegration of the entire social fabric.

Two other areas require a word of comment. Among human faculties are ambition, imagination, ingenuity, inventiveness, creativity. Human beings are, to a greater or lesser degree, cosmically aware. In the physical field western civilization handsomely rewards initiative. In the social field it has been far less generous. Imagination and cosmic consciousness have been quite generally listed among the undesirable endowments of mankind.

Western civilization, in the early years of the present century, produced a generation of insecure, unsettled, anxious, worried, harried people. This is generally true of young, middle aged and old, of rich and poor. Rapid social transition from expansion and advance to contraction and retreat is a traumatic, hectic experience for any human being.

Western civilization in the early years of its decline has not brought out the more generous aspects of human nature. In the best of times a materialistically oriented society appeals to the more material and less spiritual aspects of human beings. A period of social decline leads away from principled conduct toward unashamed opportunism.

The current generation, born and reared in a disintegrating civilization has been sorely tested and tried. From such tests the strong and purposeful are likely to emerge stronger and more determined. For the weak and vacillating the consequences are likely to prove disastrous.

The individual born into western society during its current "time of troubles" has not had an easy row to hoe.

What has western civilization done to human society as such?

Western civilization has urbanized its society. Until recently in Europe and until very recently in North America, the majority of people were living outside of cities, in villages or on the land. From their flocks and herds or from their cultivated land they fed themselves and the cities. Mechanization reduced the demand for labor power in the countryside. At the same time the growth of industry, trade, commerce and "services" increased the demand for labor power in the cities.

Relatively the countryside was poor while the cities were rich. The high prizes were in the cities, bright lights, crowds and the seductive excitements of seething ma.s.s life. Incessant human contacts were part and parcel of city life. City landlords collected high rents, city merchants found many customers. City manufacturers could pick and choose their wage and salary underlings among throngs of young and not so young jobseekers.

Western civilization grew in and around its cities. Both in form and function it was urban rather than rural.

Western civilization specialized its society, mechanized it and later computerized it, making social relationships depend less and less on personality and more on the position of the individual in a working team or on an a.s.sembly line. Human beings ceased to have names. Instead they acquired numbers on the payroll, on their homes, on their ident.i.ty cards.

Specialization and division of labor, plus power-driven machines increase productivity, income, surplus. In the countryside goods and services often are scarce. In the city they are likely to be super-abundant.

Growth of wealth and income provide support for an increase in population. Hence the population explosions in cities and in centers of developing industry, trade and commerce. Countries pa.s.sing through the industrial revolution expanded their populations. Recently, the population of some countries has doubled each twenty-five years.

Western civilization has been militarized as it was mechanized. Every tool is a potential weapon. The truck becomes a tank, the airplane a bomber. War making, like other aspects of western civilization, was mechanized. Formerly war had pitted man against man. Mechanized war pitted machines and their attendants against other machines and their human attachments. The same mechanical forces that built cities, factories and ships converted these agencies of production into instruments of destruction. Each country in the civilized West fortified its frontiers, trained officers in special schools, mobilized young men and women for military service, stockpiled weapons, multiplied fire-power, making western civilization an armed camp, with guns pointing in every direction.

Regimentation of city life, of industry and commerce, of war, of education and public health followed one after another as the individual human became more and more a cog in a vast social mechanism. This regimentation dulled imagination at the same time that it deified greed, with "gimme, gimme;" "more, more;" as its watch words.

At certain points in its development western civilization has lifted itself temporarily above the material forces that hemmed in the life of primitive man. The Renaissance was one such period. The Enlightenment was another. A third was the scientific breakthrough from Darwin and Marx to the research and experiments which split the atom and inaugurated the s.p.a.ce age. These gains were offset by the growing planet-wide chasm between wealth and poverty, the plunder and pollution of man's natural and social environment and the terrifying growth of destructive power revealed during two prolonged general wars in one generation.

Mechanized war demonstrated its destructivity, physically, socially, psychologically. Prolonged war accustomed an entire generation of mankind to unnecessary suffering and the deliberate twisting, maiming and destroying which are characteristic features of the war-waging civilized state.

Exposure of an entire generation to wholesale destruction and ma.s.s murder as a way of life had two quite divergent effects. It converted sensitive introverts into pacifists. It produced millions of trained destroyers and killers, experienced in the science and art of mechanized warfare. Pacifists opposed, denounced and resisted the warfare state and its progeny. Ma.s.ses of trained destroyers and killers, the "new barbarians," gained experience and improved their qualifications by taking part in conventional warfare and in the innumerable guerrilla adventures and operations that accompanied and followed conventional wars.

Previous civilizations have been harried, hectored and undermined by migrating "barbarians" who had heard of acc.u.mulated wealth and had come to share or perhaps to take over the "honey-pot" and lick up the honey.

Western civilization has faced the problem of migration, intensified by population explosion. But the "barbarians" who are tearing the social body of western civilization limb from limb are not outsiders, invading a civilization in order to plunder and sack it, but the offspring of well-to-do civilized affluent communities who have repudiated the acquisition and acc.u.mulation of material goods and services, turning, instead to the satiation of body hungers and the freedom of social irresponsibility.

Western man has spent ten centuries in building a civilization aimed at economic stability and social security for the privileged. The "new barbarian" progeny have rejected this civilization of affluence and are busily engaged in fragmenting the social apparatus that has made affluence possible. In a word, western civilization has organized and coordinated, but in the process it has sowed the seeds of disorganization and chaos.

One last word about the effect of western civilization on human society.

The West has littered and cluttered the planet with an immense variety and with enormous quant.i.ties of gimmicks and gadgets from tin cans to airplanes that fly faster than sound, and rockets that carry their occupants to the moon. Western productivity has multiplied greatly. Too often it has by-pa.s.sed utility, ignored quality and outraged beauty.

More often than not its goods, services, inst.i.tutions, practices and ideas have remained at the surface without reaching down to life's essentials.

If life can be fragmented into "physical," "mental," "emotional,"

"energetic," "spiritual," and "creative" it must be evident that the western way has smothered life's more significant aspects under a blanket of trivialities, non-essentials and inconsequentials.

Western civilization has stressed compet.i.tion, aimed at the acquisition and acc.u.mulation of material goods and services. The compet.i.tive struggle, in its civilian and military aspects, has played fast and loose with the contents of nature's storehouse.

Through uncounted ages Mother Nature has set up a knife-edge balance among the mult.i.tude of aspects and differentiated forms that have existed and still exist on the planet. Humanity has increasingly upset this balance of nature, ignorantly and often stupidly, without pausing to determine the resultant changes. Nowhere is this upset more in evidence than the changes in climate and animal life and their possibilities of survival brought about by the erosion of topsoil. Paul Sears, in his _Deserts on the March_, has told the story. It can be summed up in four words: deforestation, overgrazing, erosion, drifting sands.