What is Civilization? Marshall High School Mr. Cline Western Civilization I: Ancient Foundations Unit One BD * What is Civilization? • Rebooting the Checklist • Now we can return to making a list of the characteristics of civilization. • As historians investigating civilizations, we are seeking a list that delivers no judgment, either for or against civilization, simply a description of what constitutes most actual civilizations. • This list may include: • surplus food • density of population • specialized occupations • social classes topped by small elites • subordination of women • coerced tribute, collected by force if necessary * What is Civilization? • Rebooting the Checklist • state religions • monumental public buildings • standing armies • frequent warfare • notable modification of the natural environment • lavish tombs and burial goods for rulers and elites • system of writing and numbers • regular foreign trade • representative art • calendars, math, other science * What is Civilization? • Rebooting the Checklist • some slavery • epidemics of disease • By now it seems clear that any given civilization need not have all the characteristics on a list, only most of them. • It is also clear that, while there is a core of common characteristics of civilization, any list of them will reflect the judgment and point of view of its author(s). • Most big historians have chosen to use the word "civilization" rather than to reject it, but they define it carefully as a particular type of human community with specific features. • Why do all these features come together in this type of community but not in others? • Big historians are still wondering about this profound question. * What is Civilization? • Analogy with Ants • Several scholars thinking on the largest scale of history have called our attention to the analogies of human societies with those of the most social insects: ants, termites and bees. • Ants have evolved over a hundred million years from a solitary wasp to creatures living in the most complex of social structures, now being called a super-organism. • Ants have achieved a success that rivals that of humans in terms of sheer mass—each group has about ten percent of the animal biomass on the planet. (The animal biomass is only about two percent of plant biomass, which is only about one percent of the bacterial biomass.) • Ant societies have several features in common with human civilization. • They have a rigid, hierarchical caste system. • They have communication, consisting of ten to twenty chemical signals (but no writing or numeration!). * What is Civilization? • Analogy with Ants • Some ants herd aphids. • The leafcutter ants of South America have agriculture; they chew their cuttings of huge leaves, fertilize them with their feces to produce a mushroom-like fungus, which they eat. • Most ant societies have aggressive warriors; their societies are even more aggressive and war-like than human societies, sometimes attacking their own species over food and territory. • Individual ants have relinquished their reproductive roles to the central queen, making their super-organism possible. • Ants have a significant effect on their environment, moving around as much dirt as earthworms do, enriching the soil. • Are human societies headed in the direction of ant societies as our density increases? * What is Civilization? • Analogy with Ants • Do humans have any choice in the matter, or is this a process beyond our control? • Where else but in large-scale history do these questions even arise? • And, as it is with the ants in our analogy, we have to question the value of the study of civilization, and whether it is the proper form or level of human interaction to study, as well as what it is and what characterizes it. • In this class, I have chosen to study a particular civilization, because many of its common characteristics, once relegated to people who met many of the criteria on our list, were and are shared by our ancestors, the founding fathers of the United States, and even into today by our families and social institutions, • Therefore, to understand what civilization is, is to understand what we are. • But in defining who we are, we have to have a point of comparison, there must be other civilizations to compare ourselves to, and this is the inherent problem made particularly poignant in the book “Orientalism” by Dr. Edward Said * What is Western Civilization? • To begin to understand the concept of Orientalism, and therefore begin to understand what Western Civilization is, I want to engage you in a thought experiment. • Take about 10 to 15 minutes and describe the following two concepts: • Black, as in the color, and • Hot, as in the temperature. • But, here is the catch: • You cannot use the words of other colors in describing black, and • You cannot use the words of other temperatures in describing hot. * What is Western Civilization? • It was difficult, wasn’t it? • In order to define a set term, we often need some basis of comparison in order to compare it. Such as white to help describe black, and cold to help describe hot. • The problem with this oppositional dialectic is that it separates things into categories. And when you are dealing with separating people into categories, you run into the value implication that one is better than the other. • Hence, when studying Western Civilization, we run into the implication that it is in some ways superior to those we not only do not considered civilized, but superior to other civilizations. • So, how do we justify the study of western civilization, particularly given the number of crimes committed throughout its history by some of its members, in the names of this theoretical superiority? • The Orientalism argument does suffer from a serious flaw that haunts historians and historical philosophers, * What is Western Civilization? • If any westerner desires to write about any other civilization or peoples, they are writing from their perspective about it; a western perspective • In writing in a western perspective, one is imposing cultural and societal biases on the culture being studied, and therefore is guilty of orientalism. • Orientalism is a term coined in Said’s book and refers to the historical pattern of studying the middle east (the orient) as an almost mythical land filled with low and base characters, camel caravans, oases, spectacular rajes, lustful Turks, and beautiful but hidden women. • This cultural picture of the orient was found in so many histories of the region that it became a pervasive fantasy within western culture. • Thus, whenever a westerner writes about another culture, they can be accused of a cultural bias similar to the one found in the histories of the Orient. • This poses two unique, but inherently self defeating premises. • For one, if westerners cannot write on anything but western culture, then can other groups write about western culture? * What is Western Civilization? • And, if we can only write about what we belong to, then how limited can history be, especially if we are required to get down to the individual level? Will we only be able to write a history of ourselves? • Secondly, and subsequently, how can westerners writing about western culture then be accused of being Orientalists? If they cannot write about it, then who can without ascribing cultural biases to it? • In other words, could anyone write any history? • These two premises obviously defeat each other, and despite the claims to a form of racism inherent in the claim of Orientalism, just by studying the subject, it must be completed and done. • However, we must be careful in understanding and limiting what western civilization is in order to maintain some cultural integrity; so let us examine what is the commonly understood principle of what Western Civilization is. * What is Western Civilization? • Western Civilization can also be thought of as Western culture, sometimes equated with a Western lifestyle or European civilization. • It is a term used very broadly to refer to a heritage of social norms, ethical values, traditional customs, belief systems, political systems, and specific artifacts and technologies that have some origin or association with Europe, having both indigenous and foreign origins. • The term has come to be applied by people of European ethnicity to countries whose history is strongly marked by European immigration, colonisation, and influence, such as the continents of the Americas and Australasia, whose current demographic majority is of European ethnicity, and is not restricted to the continent of Europe. • Western culture is characterized by a host of artistic, philosophic, literary, and legal themes and traditions; • The heritage of Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, Hellenic, Jewish,Latin, and other ethnic and linguistic groups,as well as Christianity, including the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Church, which played an important part in the shaping of Western civilization since at least the 4th century. * What is Western Civilization? • Also contributing to Western thought, in ancient times and then in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance onwards, is a tradition of rationalism in various spheres of life, developed by Hellenistic philosophy, Scholasticism, humanism, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. • Values of Western culture have, throughout history, been derived from political thought, widespread employment of rational argument favoring freethought, assimilation of human rights, the need for equality, and democracy. • Historical records of Western culture in Europe begin with Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. • Western culture continued to develop with Christianization during the Middle Ages, the reform and modernization triggered by the Renaissance, and with globalization by successive European empires, that spread European ways of life and European educational methods around the world between the 16th and 20th centuries. • European culture developed with a complex range of philosophy, medieval scholasticism and mysticism, and Christian and secular humanism. • Rational thinking developed through a long age of change and formation, with the experiments of the Enlightenment, and breakthroughs in the sciences.