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Chapter 4 : CIVILIZATION
Cro-Magnons displayed certain achievements not seen among their early ancestors. They had more understanding of how to use fire to their advantage, they had developed language and the beginning of more complex culture, had improved their hunting skills, and had developed some rudimentary tools. Humans were becoming an increasingly adaptable species and this adaptability was to a great extent a function of their relatively large brains.
When we eventually named the various organisms on the planet we chose the name homo sapiens, meaning the wise man, for ourselves. The quality of wisdom is displayed by showing good judgment. I believe that this title has been largely undeserved by us, but I do believe that we have the capacity to be highly intelligent, which means to have the ability to learn and understand from experience. Due to our intelligence we are so adaptable and our adaptability has resulted in us being very opportunistic. Opportunism is a highly desirable characteristic to possess from the perspective of natural selection and has had everything to do with our rise to dominance on the planet despite the many deficiencies that we possess as a species.
Civilization, which literally means citification, was the result of agriculture - the domestication of wild plants and animals. Over a long period of time, members of our species learned to control and alter certain wild plants and animals so as to increase food production per unit of land. This led to the end of nomadic lifestyles, and the development of settlements of increasing size designed to meet human wants and needs, which we call cities. Civilization appeared as a significant factor on this planet about 10 thousand years ago and virtually everything in human reality has changed since then as a consequence.
All living organisms are very materialistic. A principle focus of their energy expenditure is to acquire the necessary materials to sustain their existence. Without food there is no life. The increase in food production that agriculture provided the human animal brought out the opportunism of our species to an extreme degree. No longer did we have to hunt, gather, and scavenge to nourish ourselves. Instead, with our crops and herds we gained a significant degree of control of our food sources. Each generation looked for new ways to improve both the quality and quantity of food production. We no longer perceived ourselves at the mercy of the environment but gradually gained the ability to have increasing control over it and over other living things. That concept allowed us to begin to think of ourselves as being separate from other animals, in fact not animals at all.
As well, we began to perceive ourselves as being somehow outside of nature and its rules, which we had of necessity been forced to obey from time immemorial. We began to develop and to fulfill the fantasy of conquering nature in order to make it do what we wanted it to. In what evolved into an increasing competition with nature, we sought out as many ways as possible to pursue the unnatural just to prove our power. Those that could accomplish the most unnatural achievements attained the highest status.
While we still found ourselves at the mercy of the elements to some degree, particularly with regard to food production and natural disasters, our preoccupation with the unnatural developed into religions whereby we sought some divine intervention to look after our particular needs of the time. As our ability to shield ourselves from even the elements increased, our seeking of divine assistance diminished. Now we were gods and could with ever increasing predictability ensure our survival. This war against nature was not only directed outwardly but within as well. All that was associated with our animality and our origins was either flatly denied or decried as being savage, base, and primitive. To be civilized was commonly understood to be superior and to be uncivilized was inferior. The worst insult one could give a human was to be described as having behaved like an animal.
As a function of all of this, one's animal instincts were to be repressed as much as possible. Any bodily function that revealed one to be animal-like was a subject of either much shame or humor or both and was not the type of behavior to be displayed in public. We disguised and covered our bodies with clothing and decorations to make us appear very different than the apes that we are.
The turning against nature applied to most other living things as well. In the wild, apart from killing in order to ensure survival, most living things operate on a live and let live principal. Our empowerment created within us a savageness and arrogance not observed elsewhere among living things. The world was divided into that which was useful or liked by our species and that which was not. Blooming plants that we enjoyed were deemed flowers and those that we did not were considered weeds. With the flowers, we took control of their existence and molded them to our liking and with the weeds, we did everything in our power to eliminate them. As for other animals, apart from not considering ourselves to be one of them, we have gone out of our way, far beyond the needs of food, safety, and basic utility to abuse and slaughter them.
Homo sapiens, the wise man, has over the last 10 thousand years done everything in its power to display contempt and disrespect towards all that is nature both within and without. Such an attitude can only show how foolish we really are.
We are only able to temporarily, and 10 thousand out of 4 billion years is temporary, get away with such conduct due to the increased food production that agriculture has brought us. Eventually, and in this case sooner rather than later, our foolish disrespect of nature and our denial of our animality will catch up to us even more clearly than it already has. We will likely find ourselves flocking back to our churches asking once again for divine intervention in order to save us from the hell on earth that we will have created.
While it is undoubtedly true that virtually every civilized human has been directly responsible to some degree for the war on nature, it is important to understand that there have been more and less active proponents of this agenda.
As civilization developed, the reality of agricultural food production made it possible for the first time in our evolutionary history that not all members of our species had to be directly involved in food procurement. The development of specialization of roles within society took place, leading to the appearance of groups such as tradespeople, and professional soldiers and leaders.
Villages became cities and different cities began to trade with each other, which led to increased cultural and material options. In addition, more powerful cities embarked upon the agenda of conquest. Gradually, the civilized humans eliminated virtually all of the hunters and gatherers throughout the world except for those in a few difficult to reach areas or some less 'useful' areas for civilization. In addition, increased food production through agricultural and later technological developments enabled the population of our species to rise dramatically. From the 2 million humans of 40 thousand years ago we have increased in numbers 3000 times to over 6 billion today, our population having doubled in just the last 40 years.
All of this has led to the evolution of human society from one based on the band, then on the tribe, then on the chiefdom, and now on the state. As the societal unit changed and grew, the degree of relatedness of members within the group diminished significantly and a reality of depersonalization among the group members became the norm. Unlike the band of thirty or so members who were virtually all closely related, states of a billion people exist today comprised of diverse individuals who are totally unaware of each others' existence. In this process of societal evolution, the likelihood of intragroup conflict grew, which necessitated means to keep peace within the group which were more elaborate than before. The phenomenon of official rulers and leaders appeared. Gradually, the importance of the individual within the group became less and less while simultaneously the extremes of status became more widely separated. Laws and religions were created to maintain order and to create common ideology and thus to reinforce the power of the group leaders.
Professional soldiers developed whose role it was to maintain power within and expand it without. The hunter and gatherer tendency to murder neighbors continued but evolved to a degree never seen before in those simpler societies. In those times the attackers would only strike if they were confident that they had the power to emerge victorious and intact since none of them would accept the idea of dying in battle. However, with the development of professional armies and the phenomenon of patriotism and the rise of imperialism, the soldier became effectively a cell in the organism and the concept of dying for one's group took on heroic significance.
However, unlike the killing by the chimpanzees and the uncivilized humans, the civilized humans' imperialist agenda of war and conquest went far beyond simply ensuring adequate food and reproductive choices. What drove the civilized societies was not survival but the acquisition of gold and power as ends in themselves. Furthermore, the wealth won in this way found its way to the hands of the leaders of these societies. Many rivers of blood have flowed over the last 10 thousand years to satisfy the lust for wealth of a very small group of individuals who were able to dominate their fellow human apes. If one examines the reality for the majority of individuals in pre-civilization versus civilized societies, one discovers that overall there has been a decline in their quality of life.
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