Civilisation

It’s just one simple thing

I only ever want to say one thing. Just a remark, nothing much. It’s usually something that I maybe think you won’t yourself have concluded. Something you won’t have noticed. Maybe you have, or maybe you think I notice something that isn’t there. Like pointing out a distant feature from the top of a viewing tower. Do you see it? Just to the left there…

Like those musings on civilisation, which Margaret Mead thought started with a healed femur, because, for a femur to heal, you need to lie still for a few weeks, and in those few weeks you need to eat, and so someone needs to bring you food and water, otherwise you’ll just waste away, or get eaten by a tiger. Civilisation is where we look after each other, and that invites a question: what did that very first injured person do to deserve being looked after?

Is it still civilisation if we assume they had an insurance policy? That they possessed a skill that the carer did not have, on which the carer depended? Surely civilisation cannot be dependent on pure, selfless philanthropy? Surely, it has to.

When Volodymyr Zelenskyy was cross-examined in the Oval Office, besides being presented with a bill for 500 billion dollars, he was denounced for failing to say thank you. So, perhaps civilisation’s quid pro quo for caring for unrelated others is a simple thank you. In point of fact, I think Mr Vance wanted the 500 billion dollars of ore and the thank you.

So, a question for all you lawyers out there: is civilisation dependent on the legal concept of consideration? And a question for all the religious folk out there: is civilisation dependent on the theological notion of absolution—whereby those who acquire the debt of sin must first be absolved of that sin before they can access the kingdom of God? And a question for all you businesspeople out there: does civilisation depend upon you returning some of the profits you have exacted from your customers and suppliers alike to those from whom you exacted them? Is redistribution in your vocabulary?

Each of you, lawyer, religious or businessperson, can answer these questions however you will, and how you answer will form the construct of your idea of civilisation. Perhaps it’s dependent on none of these things, and perhaps it is dependent on them all. But then, if your answers do differ, we cannot surely all live within a shared civilisation?

Many of the aspects that belong to the fabric of society are to be found in primitive or aboriginal societies. These are the things that establish hierarchy, leadership, motherhood and fatherhood, child protection, provision of food and shelter, regulation of disputes, respect for ancestral knowledge and wisdom, portents of future events. This fabric is set down in storytelling or in fable, or in inherited wisdom, tradition and customs. The society itself may eat insects, or harvest plants that we do not recognise. They may work strange hours, taking a midday siesta, and they may celebrate feasts and bow before deities that are strange to us. What we see when we observe such societies is difference. And it frequently gets labelled as uncivilised, because these people may clothe themselves differently and show flesh that it is not our custom to show, or conceal flesh that it is not our custom to conceal.

During the years of colonial expansion, Europeans discovered many of these peoples and they formed the intent there and then to bring to these peoples what they knew to be civilisation. What they brought to the Americas, to Africa and to the Far East was not civilisation, however; it was the trappings of civilisation; and it was the preconditions that Europeans laid down for the establishment of a relationship with Europeans, and, in many, many cases, that entailed an element of subjection. What Europeans then did was smother native civilisation, and impose its own, as a precondition for an established relationship with the European.

So, a final question, to lawyers, religious and businesspeople: is subjection of another a mark of civilisation, or is it a mark of a lack of civilisation?

It is fair to assume that the communities that once were, and in some cases still are, primitive and aboriginal societies are reflected in communities that existed at one time in Europe. But domination became our mantra. Domination becomes everyone’s mantra, wherever they are, to the point where we do it to others because we fear it ourselves.

Hamilton Nolan wrote yesterday: We must stretch our own imaginations enough to fit the lives that we feel least able to comprehend. He wrote it in a report about a visit to the Houston Rodeo. His report describes Houston and its rodeo in terms that make it sound like a far-off, foreign society, for an understanding of which he must stretch his imagination. Otherwise, in his words, he is a tourist. Nowadays even tourists seek to dominate in some places. Civilisation is where we make that effort, we stretch our imaginations, we remain tourists and we learn from our touring, without dominating. They who can do that deserve the appellation civilised.

Europe’s colonial history is peppered with references to trading posts. These are the first settlements that get established in far-flung corners of the world. Sometimes, they grow into fortresses, and provide a base for exploration into what we call the hinterland. They develop into colonies. These are no trading posts: they are beachheads. They are launch pads for conquest. Yet we cling to fiction by acquiescing in calling them trading posts.

Domination is in our DNA, and some call that natural. It is only natural that in this world of savagery, dog eats dog. It is nature’s way. Well, as Katharine Hepburn retorted to Humphrey Bogart in the film The African Queen, when complained to that chucking his gin in the river was not natural, “Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we were put on this earth to rise above.” To do so is to realise the attainment of civilisation. To succumb to our feral instincts is to equate ourselves with the beasts.

The beasts that would’ve ravaged us if someone hadn’t taken that first step to care for the first human being who broke their leg. Just think. For a femur to heal, you need to lie still for a few weeks, and in those few weeks you need to eat, and so someone needs to bring you food, otherwise you’ll just waste away, or get eaten by a tiger. That’s civilisation.