Please bear with me for a minute while I consult the Oxford English Dicitionary.
Civilization – the stage of human social and cultural development and organization that is considered most advanced.
Civilized – polite and well-mannered.
Are we truly a civilization according to the definition?
Archeologists have been able to paint the basic physical makeup of our ancestors back several millions of years but they can only grasp at what their society was like. Hunter-Gatherers, nomadic yes but not how they interacted with one another.
I am always struck by the opening scene in 2001 space odyssey where a band of our supposed ancestors controlled a watering hole from another band of of kin. We like to accept this concept of our beginnings simply because we have no other model then our current day existence to base the hypothesis on. Don’t get me wrong I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and it’s undertones and recommend that everyone see it.
When one looks around at the world today, a questioning person has to ask, “Are we truly an advanced civilization or are we still at the same level we were millions of years ago?”
As far a being polite and well mannered, I personally would not call us that in the least. There is an old southern joke called, “We’ll how nice!” which sums up our society today sadly.
We all hide behind the wall we project because we are afraid to show our true selves to the world, I totally understand why. Our minds and bodies have been trampled upon by the world we live in and that’s a shame.
We as an individual truly are sympathetic and empathetic at our core, I do not in my heart and mind believe that it is inherent in man to be cruel and nasty to our fellow human beings.
We as a whole can not let our past define us and must break it’s stronghold on our beliefs and actions.
History repeats itself to those that fail to rember it and our present day society has always forgotten it. We have been in this same cycle since the begining of the dawn of man.
So don’t you think that after millions of years we should take a look and realize that how we have progressed just hasn’t worked and maybe, just maybe try a different approach?
How about one that values how we treat each other instead of humiliating and subjugating our fellow man.
If we don’t then we will never achieve the definition we have assigned to Civilization and Civilized.
Thank you and Namaste,
P. L. Hogan