Civilized Procrastination
Oct. 7th, 2009 05:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darishaHey guys! It's after five in the afternoon and I'm procrastinating. I should be finishing my (way over due) history assignment, but I can't stop thinking about the topic of today's tutorial: civilization.
What is civilization? When many of us think of civilization, we picture the elaborate, monumental cities of ancient Greece and Rome, or our own multi-storied societies with all their modern advancements and conveniences. The Oxford English Dictionary defines civilization as: "the action or process of civilizing or of being civilized; a developed or advanced state of human society." Now this is where the problem starts - how do we accurately identify a "developed or advanced state of human society"? Developed or advanced compared to what? At the same time, "to civilize" is defined as: "to make civil; to bring out of a state of barbarism; to instruct in the arts of life; to enlighten; to refine and polish." Once again, is there a universal definition of what we are to compare it to?
Up until recently, our ideas of what a civilized society should and shouldn't consist of have been very narrow and clear cut. Anthropologist Clyde Kluckhorn outlined three main criteria for civilization: towns with a population of more than 5000 persons; writing; and monumental structure. Generally, we consider civilization to be cities that consist of:
* A clearly defined hierarchical structure
* Social organization
* Monumental architecture
* A monetary system / a way of amassing wealth
* Administration of the collection and distribution of wealth (merchants, tax collectors etc.)
* Trade
* A standing military (paid a wage by the state)
* Religion
* Culture
* Language / writing
* Morals / Laws
* Technology (by this I mean things like irrigation, tools, medicine, aqua ducts etc., not computers)
In other words, a state in which people are living together in larger, more complex communities where specilaized labour division results in less self-sufficient, more impersonal groups. The idea of kinship and family groups are replaced by the the larger affiliations of social class or religious belief. We tend to think of these cities as being highly organised, logical, rational, and moral, with the people having a shared language and memory.
But in the 200,000 years of human (homo sapiens) history, it wasn't until roughly 9000-8500 B.C. that people started settling in one area (as opposed to being nomadic hunter/gatherers). After the last ice age, when temperatures rose and the land became more fertile, there is evidence that people started to consciously sow crops and raise domesticated animals. Even then, the first real cities didn't appear until 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia. This development marks a turning point in human history, where people started building large, permanent structures and becoming more and more dependent on domesticated resources. More resourses meant a greater population, which meant more people to produce/gather resources etc. (you get the idea). This lead to a rise in higher culture and specialized trades/skills, and eventually, to the rise of philosophy (think about it - with less work for each individual, they had more time to think about/do other things).
According to ancient and medieval explorers, you weren't civilized unless your society displayed the aforementioned traits. But with such a short history of "civilization", who were they to judge what was civilized and what was not? Every society, no matter how large or how old, must have a shared language and memory in order to communicate; even the most remote jungle villages have moral codes and standards of behaviour; culture reaches way back to the Upper-Paleolithic era (45,000 years ago) when people first started painting pictures on cave walls; and the idea of religion is even older. Just because these people didn't live in large cities, there is no denying that they were organised, logical and moral - they wouldn't have been able to live harmoniously together if they weren't. If they were to look at us now, would they consider themselves "uncivilized", or would they consider us just plain weird? "Why are those people placing rocks on top of each other and living in them? Why do they sit around all day looking at little shining boxes?"
Essentially, the idea of what civilization is is an illusion - it is whatever it means to you, depending on what you hold to be most important. Ultimately, it is very biased and therefore not clearly definable except for you as an individual.
References/Further Reading:
* Fagan, B. M. & Scientific American. (1957). Civilization: Readings from Scientific American. Scientific American, Inc., California, USA.
* Kreis, S. (2000). Lectures on Ancient and Medieval History - Lecture 1: What is Civilization?. The History Guide [ER]: http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture1b.html
* Krober, A. L. (1962). A Roster of Civilizations and Culture. Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc., New York, USA.
* Oates, D. & J. (1976). The Rising of Civilization. Elsevier-Phaidon Publishing, Oxford, England.
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It's an interesting idea, but unfortunately it's not a common one. For most people, if you don't fit in with their idea of what's civilized, that automatically makes you barbaric (and in some cases, a second-class human being). Time to think outside the box people!
Anyways, enough procrastination. Time to get back to work... (after I eat something) :P
Dimi's Random Thought For The Day: V energy drink + berocca = aneurism in a can <33
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What is civilization? When many of us think of civilization, we picture the elaborate, monumental cities of ancient Greece and Rome, or our own multi-storied societies with all their modern advancements and conveniences. The Oxford English Dictionary defines civilization as: "the action or process of civilizing or of being civilized; a developed or advanced state of human society." Now this is where the problem starts - how do we accurately identify a "developed or advanced state of human society"? Developed or advanced compared to what? At the same time, "to civilize" is defined as: "to make civil; to bring out of a state of barbarism; to instruct in the arts of life; to enlighten; to refine and polish." Once again, is there a universal definition of what we are to compare it to?
Up until recently, our ideas of what a civilized society should and shouldn't consist of have been very narrow and clear cut. Anthropologist Clyde Kluckhorn outlined three main criteria for civilization: towns with a population of more than 5000 persons; writing; and monumental structure. Generally, we consider civilization to be cities that consist of:
* A clearly defined hierarchical structure
* Social organization
* Monumental architecture
* A monetary system / a way of amassing wealth
* Administration of the collection and distribution of wealth (merchants, tax collectors etc.)
* Trade
* A standing military (paid a wage by the state)
* Religion
* Culture
* Language / writing
* Morals / Laws
* Technology (by this I mean things like irrigation, tools, medicine, aqua ducts etc., not computers)
In other words, a state in which people are living together in larger, more complex communities where specilaized labour division results in less self-sufficient, more impersonal groups. The idea of kinship and family groups are replaced by the the larger affiliations of social class or religious belief. We tend to think of these cities as being highly organised, logical, rational, and moral, with the people having a shared language and memory.
But in the 200,000 years of human (homo sapiens) history, it wasn't until roughly 9000-8500 B.C. that people started settling in one area (as opposed to being nomadic hunter/gatherers). After the last ice age, when temperatures rose and the land became more fertile, there is evidence that people started to consciously sow crops and raise domesticated animals. Even then, the first real cities didn't appear until 5000 years ago in Mesopotamia. This development marks a turning point in human history, where people started building large, permanent structures and becoming more and more dependent on domesticated resources. More resourses meant a greater population, which meant more people to produce/gather resources etc. (you get the idea). This lead to a rise in higher culture and specialized trades/skills, and eventually, to the rise of philosophy (think about it - with less work for each individual, they had more time to think about/do other things).
According to ancient and medieval explorers, you weren't civilized unless your society displayed the aforementioned traits. But with such a short history of "civilization", who were they to judge what was civilized and what was not? Every society, no matter how large or how old, must have a shared language and memory in order to communicate; even the most remote jungle villages have moral codes and standards of behaviour; culture reaches way back to the Upper-Paleolithic era (45,000 years ago) when people first started painting pictures on cave walls; and the idea of religion is even older. Just because these people didn't live in large cities, there is no denying that they were organised, logical and moral - they wouldn't have been able to live harmoniously together if they weren't. If they were to look at us now, would they consider themselves "uncivilized", or would they consider us just plain weird? "Why are those people placing rocks on top of each other and living in them? Why do they sit around all day looking at little shining boxes?"
Essentially, the idea of what civilization is is an illusion - it is whatever it means to you, depending on what you hold to be most important. Ultimately, it is very biased and therefore not clearly definable except for you as an individual.
References/Further Reading:
* Fagan, B. M. & Scientific American. (1957). Civilization: Readings from Scientific American. Scientific American, Inc., California, USA.
* Kreis, S. (2000). Lectures on Ancient and Medieval History - Lecture 1: What is Civilization?. The History Guide [ER]: http://www.historyguide.org/ancient/lecture1b.html
* Krober, A. L. (1962). A Roster of Civilizations and Culture. Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Inc., New York, USA.
* Oates, D. & J. (1976). The Rising of Civilization. Elsevier-Phaidon Publishing, Oxford, England.
-
It's an interesting idea, but unfortunately it's not a common one. For most people, if you don't fit in with their idea of what's civilized, that automatically makes you barbaric (and in some cases, a second-class human being). Time to think outside the box people!
Anyways, enough procrastination. Time to get back to work... (after I eat something) :P
Dimi's Random Thought For The Day: V energy drink + berocca = aneurism in a can <33
-