The Flower of Civilization

It baffles me when apparently “intelligent” people, folks who claim to be educated, and so forth, tell me that we are living in the highest expression of “civilization.” That we’re at the peak of greatness – far surpassing any cultural or civilizational achievements of past epochs. When they tell me such glowing things, especially in the West, my eyes start to glaze over... then I know their egos are at full throttle -- they're proud of something they did not achieve. It's their “badge of honor” to be living at the zenith of materialistic culture, and they have no qualms in taking credit for it. 

The usual spiel goes like this: We in the West are the most advanced people on Earth. We have created the most wealth in History, we live longer than anyone ever before. We have the most gadgets and toys, and we enjoy the greatest creature comforts with the least amount of effort, etc., etc. 
  

The last bit is, of course, both revealing and true at the same time. But when I ask them to provide some evidence, some proof of this overwhelming superiority we possess vis-a-vis our ancestors, no one wants to take into account the downside...

We also have more and longer wars than our ancestors. We also kill and starve children as a necessity (to maintain our superiority, I assume), famines and environmental destruction is now worldwide and not local, refugees and immigrant displacement has never been greater. Neither has racism, violence, cancer and illnesses been so rampant. Never has culture, art, and sicence been so devoid of spirit or originality. Who is painting a 'Mona Lisa' today? And, when the obvious physical and intellectual weakness of the modern herd-animal is laid bare in the light of day, there is little to recommend our exceptional "superiority." To all this they have nothing to say...

When I ask them to define what they mean by “civilization,” I invariably get something like this (although not always this succinctly): “the behavior and beliefs that characterize a society.” 

But of course, when I tell them that sounds suspiciously like the definition of “culture,” and not “civilization,” then I do get slightly better revisions to the definition, although not particularly good ones... Because then, people react to the word Civilization (with a capital ‘C’) and they throw everything into the definition, such as... “A society reaching an advanced state in the arts, science, industry, and government has been reached.”

Advanced in compared to what? Isn't that a barely a glossed over value judgment? So much for a priori judgments... The key word seems to be “advanced state” or something of that ilk. The value judgment that “advanced” is better somehow than what has gone before, and therefore the general illusion of “progress” seems to be the hallmark of Civilization.

Is this satisfactory? It’s probably too close to the textbook definition, and it barely rates as a small snack... We’re not looking for a dictionary entry to answer the question. The problem with confusing “culture” with Civilization is neither new nor unusual, but it’s revealing.

Naturally, I don’t get as much of this as I used to... but, I still do, especially from old friends, who should know better, since they lived through parts of the last millennium, which was a time when one could close one’s eyes to the obvious – we were mildly distracted then by the West’s technological superiority vis-à-vis the rest of the world (that certainly isn’t the case today). I supposed the lack of enthusiasm has its root – things just aren’t as peachy-keen as the purveyors of propaganda would have us believe. Things simply aren’t as “glowing” as they were but a few years back... even for folks who lived in relative wealth and comfort (all the Karma does end up coming around, doesn’t it?).

Still, even philosophically, existentially, abstractly, they claim that we’re the “Top of the Pops,” although with less enthusiasm than formerly. Well, I beg to differ... The fact that now every two-year-old owns a Smartphone to stare at in their play pens, doesn’t rightly smack me of “cultural superiority,” “class exceptionalism,” or “human advancement” as far as culture or Civilization are concerned. Rather the opposite comes to mind... in other words, decadence or decay, and inevitable decline.

From Roots to Flowers

Hate to bring in “reality” into the picture – most people are offended when I do that.

But let us look at an example from the real world – the world of plants – to get an idea of where we stand in civilizational terms. I’m going to go against my better instincts and agree wholeheartedly with my friends’ opinion about our place in the “evolution” of Civilization.

Let’s assume the we – the West – since we can’t have the least consideration for other “inferior” Civilizations like the Hindu, Persian, Egyptian, Babylonian, Incan, Mexican, Polynesian, et al... anything that predates us is toast! (Or so does our current herd-animal believe).

The West is then the “flower” of Civilization, and arguably the flower is the sum of all the plant has achieved in its “evolution,” or better said, its existence. The flower radiates out its color into the world to delight and cajole (kind of like Hollywood does for the current “world-order”).

But what went into this flower in order that it my dazzle us with its fragrance, color, and one would dare say, luminosity? What attracts the bees and the butterflies that it can then “go on giving” pleasure and delight in the future (through pollination, although that’s not what happens in the flower in actual reality, but let’s just assume that it does for the purposes of our example, or metaphor, if you will).  

If we have ever observed a flower in its field of splendor in spring, we know that a couple of weeks later, it doesn’t look so hot (unless the flower is in a garden and tended by someone who has a green thumb). In the field (in Nature), the flower is the first to go... it withers with the onset of the days, it decays, discolors, and then its petals drop off (like the leaves the petals once were).

When the flower droops or is gone, usually, the leaves and stems continue, for a time, but the last to go – what we don’t see underground – is the root. The root is still alive, long after the rest of the plant has withered away. In fact, a capable gardener can revive a plant from the root alone, not just from a sprig, or graft.

Too bad this can’t be done with a Civilization...

So, I tell my friends that if you’re not a good gardener, you can forget your vaunted Western Civilization... it’s had its flowering, it’s now ready for the compost heap. The people who were supposed to be watering, trimming, and singing, failed to do so... they got lazy. They left it all to the Government and the Bankers to do for them... It turned out that the crooks weren’t gardeners at all – they just plucked the flowers out and left everyone else with a dried-out stem, no leaves, and a rotten root!

The stewards we left behind in the garden so we could go stroke our egos, sprawled on the sofa, looking at ourselves in the little screens, admiring our “beauty” and “intelligence,” weren’t very good gardeners, were they? Why does this sound like a parable to me?

Yep, we fell asleep and we got ripped off... it ought to be a lesson... but... we can’t pry ourselves from the little hand-held mirrors long enough to hit the toilet... Best not think at all – if one can get away with it... sleep right through the mess...

Civilization Lost...

What is Civilization? At this point, to ask such may be tantamount to closing the barn door after the cow’s gone... Our prejudice of the past tells us that if you look at it historically, it wasn’t much of a “paradise”. I’m not so sure... It certainly had less wars, less starvation, less of the things that brought our little flower to wither and decay... But we can’t remedy the past, we can only get to work on what’s left of the garden... Sadly, there’s not much of that either.

What is Civilization? One can ask this today, almost in the same way that one may ask what a dinosaur is... I mean, was. Are we even living in a Civilization? Or is that just a nice, polysyllabic word to banter about to sound more “erudite,” more “cultured”? Don’t be too quick to jump to conclusions... just because the Greeks started something, it doesn’t mean that it’s not “all over now baby-blue”...

Is Civilization the finale of a Culture, as Oswald Spengler (1880-1936) postulated? Spengler was the author of “The Decline of the West,” possibly one of the most revolutionary works of the early 20^th Century (written before WW I, and published immediately afterward). Not surprisingly, at the beginning of the last millennium (the last time human beings could actually think), there were quite a few ground-breaking works, including Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, etc.

Modern herd-animals seem to hate Spengler (that includes most of Western “academia,” or what’s left of its desiccated petals). Is it because he’s odious? In other words, some Nazi knuckleheads read him, so now his thoughts are somehow “evil”? Or, is it because he says things that are uncomfortable for the decadent herd-animals of today to hear?

Frankly, I think it's because he looks like "Dr. Evil," and all that's missing is "mini-me"...

To give you an idea of how prescient the “The Decline of the West” was, here are a couple of quotes from it, that ought to make one stand up, go for a long, long walk... and, keep following the little furry lemmings...

“Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed intellect.” -Oswald Spengler-

Welcome to 2017! Welcome to the Ponzi scheme par excellence... the craven, new world of Zuckerberg-media (ought to be properly labeled as “sucker media”), wherein so-called “presidents” and “leaders of the free-for-all” sit with their excessively overwrought asses on the red-button, insulting other nuclear-armed leaders through Twitter.

We are so “advanced” that it is also the preferred “tool” for developing and implementing of national and international policy... Any “idea” that requires more than 140 characters to express is no longer considered, much less though out; i.e., any actual idea... What idea could possibly be developed and explained in 140 characters? It’s even hard to insult someone properly with a barrage of four-letter words with that limitation. I find it constricting as hell. Only a constipated, anal-retentive culture-society could possible flourish with Tweeter as its “commons.”

In the meantime, what are the rest of the folks doing while this is going on? Sleeping through the whole damn nightmare...

“Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom.” -Oswald Spengler-

Normally, I’m not much for quoting quotes... but since we’re doing “quotes” today, might as well nail it with another eminent philosopher’s point of view on the subject of “thinking” – someone of a whole different stripe than Spengler so that there should be less squealing from the gallery... Usually, as things get closer to universal truths, they lose their identifying stripes (their convenient labels) all together.

“Thought is not a gift to man but a laborious, precarious and volatile acquisition.” -José Ortega y Gasset- (1883-1955) Spanish philosopher.

Since the middle of the 20^th Century, “thinking” (by which I mean “critical thinking,” as it was then called, or “free thinking,” as it was labeled in the 17^th - 19^th Century) is no longer practiced. It has become “passé,” something for nerds to do (although they – the “nerds” – are incapable of it also). Scientists are the least capable of thinking... Again, “critical thinking,” is not counting, adding, multiplying, or fooling around with abstract mathematical formulas... these are not “active” living thoughts going to the brain.

As most of you know, the Ancient Egyptians called thinking, “wisdom-of-the-heart” or “knowledge-of-the-heart,” since what actually does the “work” of thought is not the brain but rather the heart organ. When a thought reaches up to the head; i.e., gets through the entire body, from the ground up – then we can start talking about something related to “thought”.

Naturally, this mystery of thinking, and how thoughts originate from our surroundings, from the Cosmos itself (from the living planet we stand on, etc.), is not something anyone has the least inkling about. Of course, I include myself among the lot of blockheads that can’t think properly, and who is completely ignorant on how the process actually works. The “how” of things is way harder than the “what” of things.

Yet, what is obvious even to a dunderhead like me is that thinking is NOT going on either at an individual or at a species level on this planet... And, I would welcome anyone to prove otherwise... (now, THAT would be a ray of hope, or would that just be more “fool’s gold”?

Thinking Is ‘Verboten’!

The folks that make me laugh the most are those who debate IQ numbers, and then apply them to “races”. As if IQ factoring were some kind of “empirical” proof of something, like intelligence... I realize that human beings are incapable of thought, and can therefore only “count,” so the claim is that if the subject of the IQ test can “compare” and “contrast” then they are more “advanced”. Well, comparing and contrasting are really only more counting. It’s a counting without numbers, but in the end, one adds or subtracts what one “likes” or “dislikes” from the whole (or whatever one is asked to compare and contrast on the test itself). But chimpanzees can do that too... yet, they can’t think either. Talk about nutty. It’s the “Sesame Street” approach to “thinking”.  

Frankly, IQ tests deal only in abstractions, and speaking of which, so is the concept of “race” – a total abstraction. The difference in DNA between humans and chimpanzees (hate to pick on the poor criters) is less than 2%. There are hardly any marginal differences between humans of different origin (geographical locations) on this planet. Yet, that’s what all the hate is about...

“Those who talk too much about race no longer have it in them.”

-Oswald Spengler-

But the fact that there is no such thing as race falls on deaf ears in this age of non-thinking, and sleep walking through History. Even by the abstract bent of modern science, no one has found yet a “race” gene. Yet, skin color does bother some people... and this “dislike,” is what all the hate is about. Wonder what chimpanzees have to say about that... (“Thank God we got off that lousy branch of the evolution tree!” Or words to that effect are often heard calling from the trees)

Now, the application of “feeling” to thinking in humans could elevate the form to that of actual thought (by bringing the heart into the process of lifting this heavy stuff upwards toward the brain). But humans no longer have the stamina for the heavy lifting involved. At one time, in the time of the Black People, they could lift two-ton blocks every two minutes, but today, we’re considerably weaker and more feeble creatures (the result of centuries of decadence, both physical and intellectual).

It is still possible to think? In our couch-potato culture it seems unlikely... Is thinking akin to a muscle in our bodies? If it is, then through sheer lack of use, it has become atrophied. As Ortega y Gasset said, a gift has been given us, but it was too “labor intensive,” and we just got tuckered out. We have chosen the sofa instead... Though the ability to think may be innate in our species, it’s not exactly a given, it must be worked at (will-to-power has something to do with it, I'm sure).

Here is another Oswald Spengler “pearl” of wisdom, demonstrating what our level of “thinking” amounts to, and thus revealing the decline and “end” of a Culture (culture form or group) and therefore, a Civilization:

When the ordinary thought of a highly-cultivated people begins to regard 'having children' as a question of pro's and con's, the great turning point has come.

If one assumes history morphologically, as Spengler did, Civilizations must have a “life-cycle,” and, we know when and where a life-cycle is over...

Every Culture had its Civilization, according the late German historian. Civilization seems to be the obvious destiny of a Culture. “Civilizations are the most external and artificial states of which a species of developed humanity is capable,” Spengler wrote in his famous “The Decline of the West”. It even makes sense.

This is not to say that one agrees with everything he says (although from a materialist’s point of view he covers all the angles). We do have our own little “likes” and “dislikes,” don’t we? But, we live in that ersatz "Tweetie" world where virtual reality is the only reality... We do cling to our a priori judgments and prejudices, what we’d rather believe than look at what is really there...

At the very least, Oswald Spengler was far more stimulating in his thinking than most other historians, even the venerable Arnold J. Toynbee, who practically stole Spengler’s idea of the morphology of civilizations. But alas, modern historians are just propagandists, with very few exceptions (e.g., the late Howard Zinn), since most prefer to simply lacquer over the “convenient fable” and regurgitate it as History. That’s the way it’s studied and disseminated in our society today (through universities and the media), like a feel-good ad on TV.

Perhaps I’ll take up this matter in coming posts, since it’s full of portent (like a good novel) and given our current malaise, it seems only fitting to determine if we are at the “finale” of our Civilization, or as my friends wish to believe, at the very “apex” of it. In the meantime, one last jab... a left-cross to the chin.

“To-day we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery (the media) that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object's sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed.” -Oswald Spengler-

Inward detachment is certainly necessary – the first step toward clear thinking. But who has the stamina for that today? Who is going to do Yoga in order to start to think? Why bother? When it’s so much comfier and cozy to cuddle up with that “Smartphone” or other hand-held device on that big couch... and let it suck all the brains out of ya’... Ahh! I can hear the collective sigh of relief (“Now, I can stop thinking and get comfortably numb!”)