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“Civilization is an occasional and temporary interruption of the jungle.”
—Will Durant.
“Civilization” or “being civilized” are not terms that are wholly easy to define. Vagaries and degrees can exist; it would be hard to argue that any human being is totally “uncivilized” or that any human being (or culture) has a monopoly on the term. We tend to think of “civilized” societies as those who possess at least a modicum of decent behavior and progress. Perhaps “civilization” can best be defined—though possibly not with total accuracy—as a distinction between man and the animal kingdom, or in the word Durant used, the “jungle.”
Animals—despite some idiotic Leftist claims today—don’t have morality, art, economic goals, religion, science—things that we have often considered to be representative of “civilized” societies. Some animals do, on occasion, show some features of what we might call “civilized” behavior, but such is not planned by intelligence; it is wholly by instinct and a desire for self-preservation. The “jungle” isn’t “civilized” in any intelligent definition of the word. “Civilization” is an offshoot of humans created in the image of God, yet with a crucial, important conception: God gives man freedom of moral choice and thus the freedom to descend into barbarity and the jungle if we choose to do so. As the quote from Durant suggests, and any good historian will tell you, such has happened in human history and not necessarily infrequently. Not many of us would call the Nazis “civilized.”
Thus, there is a standard of behavior—again, not always clearly or distinctly defined in human activity—which we can call “civilized” vs. “uncivilized.” When people sink below a certain standard of decency, responsibility, concern for their fellow creatures, and wise, virtuous conduct, it would be hard to call them “civilized.”
Are the inner cities of most Democratic Party-controlled metropolises “civilized”? I, personally, would not call them that. There is some behavior everywhere that classifies as “civilized,” but when that certain standard is no longer reached, barbarity becomes dominant. The streets of Chicago and San Francisco are probably more dangerous than an Amazonian jungle.
What other kinds of human behavior do we see today that qualify as “uncivilized”? Let me suggest a few examples.
1. Civilized beings do not kill their own offspring for pleasure or self-gratification. There are indeed some animals who do occasionally kill their offspring; a male bear, for example, might kill his own cubs to have sexual access to the female again. Quite frankly, this sounds a lot like abortion to me, at least in principle—the destruction of life for the carnal gratification and selfishness of the parent, in this case, the mother. We accept male bears doing this as simply part of their nature; they aren’t “civilized,” they are acting by instinct, and as a result, we cannot hold them morally responsible for their behavior. But that’s the point. The killing of one’s offspring is not “civilized” behavior, and in creatures who do (supposedly) have moral “sense” (humans), it becomes a reprehensible, uncivilized act. All the more because it is done deliberately and primarily for ultimate carnal gratification. A baby would be a nuisance; the procreation of the species, which is the ultimate purpose of the sexual act, is no longer in view. Pleasure is. This isn’t “civilization,” it is barbarity gone to seed.
2. The mutilation of children for sexual purposes is also a distinctly “uncivilized” act. As noted, some animals will kill their offspring. Perhaps there are some who mutilate their children in order to produce a creature they can eventually have sex with, but I know of no such creature—except humans. What the Left is doing to America’s children today is beneath barbarity. It is savagery in the basest meaning of the term. Civilized people do not mutilate their own children. Period. Anybody who believes that conduct is proper is as uncivilized as any creature can be, even below the most monstrous of animals.
3. Contrariwise, civilized people nurture and care for their children, educate and discipline them, and protect them from uncivilized predators. It is called “the family,” and it has been the foundation of every civilized society in history. The more a society destroys the nuclear family, the less “civilized” it becomes.
4. A civilized society knows the difference between males and females. Even animals do. Any society that doesn’t have descended beneath a jungle level. Nature cannot be destroyed, and civilization can be advanced.
5. A civilized society knows that all its collective parts should contribute to the well-being and advancement of that society. It will structure itself in such a way as to accomplish that. A civilized society does not encourage wanton, degraded, degenerate, slothful—or uncivilized—behavior. It isolates the animals inside it in order to protect its civilization.
6. The glorification of violence and sex in a society is uncivilized. These things appeal to the most squalid nature of man, his most carnal appetites, not his noblest. Uncontrolled lust and violence are characteristics of the lowest common denominator of humanity. Jungle instincts must be restrained, contained, and overcome for civilization to exist. Any society that refuses to do so will suffer dire consequences, as indeed we see in America today.
I could mention other matters pertaining to a “civilized” vs….. “uncivilized” society, but space is limited. It is evident to any wise, just observer that many parts of the United States today have descended into the jungle and are getting worse. And all at the behest and encouragement of those who should know better. It is critical to understand—and too many people do not—that left unchecked and unhindered, a jungle will overrun everything in its path. But when the jungle is the source of someone’s wealth and power, it is obviously in their best interest to let it grow and flourish.
Hence, the Democratic Party in America.
What puts man above the animals are the weapons used to defeat them, primarily the gun.
Great point Al. Before the gun it was the spear, before the spear it was the club.
What puts man above the animals is his reasoning mind. Animals live by instinct. Man has no instincts to survive or flourish, all he has for survival and happiness is his reasoning mind.
From the slingshot, to the gun, to the atom bomb, to going to the moon, the discovery of penicillin, cancer surgery, the skyscraper, the locomotive, internal combustion engine, nuclear energy, electricity, none of these wonders are the result of some divine revelation from a supernatural God.
But the product of the hard work of the Man’s reasoning mind.
Neither Einstein nor Alexander Fleming went to some mountain top to have a ghost reveal to them through a burning bush the secrets of atoms or antibiotics. But they did spend years and decades of their lives using their reasoning minds to wrest from nature its secrets.
“Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions—and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth….
Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think….
Money is made—before it can be looted or mooched—made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.” – Ayn Rand
“Man has no instincts to survive or flourish, all he has for survival and happiness is his reasoning mind.”
Every living creature, including modern humans, instinctively struggle to survive. Man has a big brain that separates him from lower animals and provides vastly more opportunities to change his environment, for sure. But when push comes to shove, a human will physically struggle to survive just as a tiger, cow, dog, insect. A very elderly Asian lady waiting for a subway train in NY will struggle rather than try to cognitively reason a way out of being pushed onto the tracks by some subhuman denizen of NY. A soldier will struggle to survive in a war battle. The most basic law of life from that of an insect to that of a human is to struggle/fight to the death to survive. Life is so precious.
Really? Then please explain why this alleged human instinct to live did not stop the 9/11 hijackers from committing suicide and taking thousands of others with them to the grave?
Why did this alleged human instinct to live not stop the Japanese kamikaze pilots from committing suicide by crashing their planes into American warships? Go to YouTube and you will find footage of the Japanese citizens jumping off cliffs to their deaths, this alleged survival instinct did not stop them.
Why did the Nazis pursue death instead of life?
No, Mija, what determines if a person chooses life, or chooses death, is her philosophy of life. Her sense of life. Religion is a form of philosophy. Islam is based on a philosophical viewpoint. Nazism is based on a philosophical viewpoint. Shintoism is based on a philosophical viewpoint.
“There is only one state that fulfills the mystic’s longing for infinity, non-causality, non-identity: death. No matter what unintelligible causes he ascribes to his incommunicable feelings, whoever rejects reality rejects existence—and the feelings that move him from then on are hatred for all the values of man’s life, and lust for all the evils that destroy it.” – Ayn Rand
Humans with their big brains are able to conjure and rationalize a motive to overcome their instinct and to die.
The Nazis are too complex to go into here and now. But in a word, they conjured up an artificial reason to get by the instinct to live.
Sir, i am not your daughter. Please do not be condescending.
Ayn, unfortunately, worked off a misunderstanding of what it means to be a mystic. Instead, consider the non-educated formally Sun Lutang, momentarily, and his dissertation on the goal of emptiness. Again, not to repeat – but I will: there is far more to reality than we mere humans perceive with our five senses. But then, you are cool with Ayn’s perception. That’s ok. Go ahead with it. Lead on McDuff.
If it was your intention to dismiss God in your equation. You did the opposite.
“Animals live by instinct.”
Generalizations weaken arguments logically.
Yes, and ability to think of consequence. E.g., have you seen a crow use a tool to get its food? Some do. Have you seen a Grey Parrot do multiple complex steps to get its food. Some do. Some crow and some grey parrots have cognition to do multiple, consequential steps to earn its food. Have you seen crows display a type of mourning, some call it a funderal procession, when a flock member dies? Many of them do. I have seen it in real life in person in Bothell next to a large farm, all standing around, walking around their dead member. A U prof at the U of W describes it in his book on crows. While it may be unlikely that crows or grey parrots will develop Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, many do have some cogntion and walk through multiple steps to achieve a reward. At the same time, many humans more resemble zombies with no thought of consequence..
Luz, you are correct. One only has to have a cat or dog to know this.
Now, it’s time for another reading of the gospel according to Ayn.
i sure don’t know. Could guess. But won’t cuz some probability of a miss.
Anyway, agree with the consequence.
I have a Congo African Grey Parrot. She used to get angry and show it to me when i fed wild birds and raccoons in our back yard. Now she merely gazes at them then walks off. A mother racoon once brought her baby to my back steps – it was clear she wanted me to see it. She placed it on the step and then looked up at me as if to say, “look what i have.”
Whoever down voted AA sucks dog dicks.
Guns truly are the ultimate equalizer. Lion, tiger or bear, they all go down. Even elephants.
Thanks Jeff! I’ve been reading a lot about societies before they had guns, and how they related to animals.
VDH has lots of interesting comments on us being returned to precivilization by the Dems/leftists.
I got my first down vote ever, the other day.
I wrote that the only thing Ayn Rand ever did of any consequence was to write a book that was made into a movie starring Gary Cooper.
Gee, wonder who down-voted me???
Actually, it is man’s big brain that puts him above lesser animals..
Because of man’s brain, guns and gun powder were invented – the big leveler. Monkeys, dolfins, octopuses, whales, grey parrots, all intelligent animals, have not invented guns or gun powder – yet.
Civilisation needs morality and where does western civilisation get its morality?
The Muslims claim they get their morality from a ghost in a super-natural dimension. A super-natural ghost nobody can see or prove the existence of.
A super-natural ghost that created everything including man and the Muslims claim every man must obey this ghost regardless of and against the conclusions of their own reasoning minds.
The religious morality of this Almighty Ghost consists NOT of objective and rational moral principles to be applied rationally and thoughtfully within a personal and individual given context, but of commandments that must be blindly obeyed. If you don’t obey they say this Almighty Ghost will punish you in an eternal Hell.
I don’t know about you but morality should consist of rational moral principles to be applied rationally within a given context for the purpose of living on earth, flourishing on earth, and achieving happiness one earth.
“Life or death is man’s only fundamental alternative. To live is his basic act of choice. If he chooses to live, a rational ethics will tell him what principles of action are required to implement his choice. If he does not choose to live, nature will take its course….
The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.” – Ayn Rand
Since you have no connection to any morality, or humility for that matter, how could you possibly understand the concept of morality
Ayn was partially, incompletely correct.
You would have to be specific and precise about how she was only partially correct.
That’s the thing about 99% of attacks on Rand they are never precise or specific.
I have never encountered a legitimate refutation of any of her basic ideas.
Go ahead, please quote her, and then proceed to successfully, rationally, refute the content of the quote.
You want specifics except you allow Ayn to generalize. U r logically inconsistent.
The author is confused, especially in that he takes “civilized” to mean “good”. That leads to such blatantly false statements as “It is called “the family,” and it has been the foundation of every civilized society in history. The more a society destroys the nuclear family, the less “civilized” it becomes.” That’s absurd; the family is also the basic unit of every barbarous society as well. For that matter, it’s the building block of many animals’ societies, as well. An entire beehive is descended from the queen, you know.
“A civilized society knows the difference between males and females. ” As does every uncivilized one. And, as the author points out, do animals. He seems unaware that in admitting that, he blew up his entire thesis.
This is the sort of garbage I expect from the left – paying no attention to the meanings of words, and elevating a word as a sort of talisman. There is nothing to learn from this article.
Bravo! Excellent thinking! Thank you!
Wait a minute, my bad, “civilized”, in its rational definition does mean “good”, in other words to be civilized is a good not an evil, or more precisely civilized means that a man, society, or culture has chosen reason over unreason.
The more rational, the more civilized, i.e., peaceful. Rational people are peaceful people, i.e., they deal with each other through the persuasion of rational argument not through deception, fraud, or the initiation physical force.
Obviously not a lot of people think your flawed concept of “civilized” is not playing with the crowd, judging from the number downvotes you manage to accrue each week.
And you are hardly what I call a peaceful person, given your thin skinned angry responses we are subjected to.
He thinks he is some kind of authority figure 🙂
I call it his messiah complex. I am pretty tired of his over weening need to “teach us”.
Sadly the above dissenter does not, or Can not comprehend the concept of a fallen angel or evil or even Satan himself.
Evil is an objective, legitimate concept. The devil made me do it is an attempt to escape from personal responsibility.
You should try the devil excuse sometime.
Everything the left does is validation of this author’s thesis, especially the phony transvestite movement, destruction of the family, and mutilation of children.
Thank you for the essay, Mr. Lewis.
It would help if one would distinguish between a quality and a concept by and of itself. It’s a most important difference. The article author uses it correctly. That respondent apparently does not know the difference as well as projecting his confusion onto the subject of civilization.
“Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men….
The precondition of a civilized society is the barring of physical force from social relationships—thus establishing the principle that if men wish to deal with one another, they may do so only by means of reason: by discussion, persuasion and voluntary, uncoerced agreement.
The necessary consequence of man’s right to life is his right to self-defense. In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use.” – Ayn Rand
And that is why you will never be able to adequately defend yourself. You are that much of a pacifist.
The savages had a concept of privacy, except it tended to be reserved for the higher-ups.
Man is the rational animal, but reason and a consistent dedication to reason is not automatic. Reason is a choice of free will. Bearing in mind that man is not omniscient and success in reasoning is not automatic either. Bearing in mind that man has no innate or automatic knowledge. Man can make honest mistakes, this does not mean that reason is impotent to discover objective moral truths.
To rise above the animals man must discover his rational nature and then choose to be rational on a consistent basis.
No, the French Terror was NOT an example of rationality. Anymore than Anthony Fauci represents science. Just because you call something rational does not make it rational, just as calling a charlatan a scientist does not make him a scientist.
“Thinking is man’s only basic virtue, from which all the others proceed. And his basic vice, the source of all his evils, is that nameless act which all of you practice, but struggle never to admit: the act of blanking out, the willful suspension of one’s consciousness, the refusal to think—not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know. It is the act of unfocusing your mind and inducing an inner fog to escape the responsibility of judgment—on the unstated premise that a thing will not exist if only you refuse to identify it, that A will not be A so long as you do not pronounce the verdict “It is.”….
There is a fundamental moral difference between a man who sees his self-interest in production and a man who sees it in robbery. The evil of a robber does not lie in the fact that he pursues his own interests, but in what he regards as to his own interest; not in the fact that he pursues his values, but in what he chose to value; not in the fact that he wants to live, but in the fact that he wants to live on a subhuman level [like an animal] (see “The Objectivist Ethics”).
I think man, for the most part, has discovered his rational nature, without any help from you and your Lotus Flower. I know you like to think of yourself as the last man standing, bestowing upon us your version of Objectivist rational nature, which fortunately no one else is interested in or remotely comprehends.
That is because man is rational. Even us poor Godly types. Everyday is a struggle for you, isn’t it.
The tiger in the article pic is more rational than you will ever be.
First came Spears then Bow & Arrow then Firearms Rocks gave way to Missiles and Bombs but now we see those who wish to disarm us in aa dangerous world and thin that shaking hands ends all hostile feelings
From a reading I heard years ago… we are neither greater nor lesser than the animals. We are but different realms that share this earth and travel together thru time and space.
We can truly see how mankind’s insanity has changed the realm they live in. They have no retreat, Only can respond in kind. This is an apocalyptic time for all mankind. History repeats itself and men still refuse to learn.
We are animals.
More examples of uncivilized behaviour among supposedly civilized humans:
– Pushing someone off a subway platform onto tracks, just because they think it’s funny (I don’t think this is done in the animal world. They would at least have a mating imperative like getting rid of a competitor – even then, they would fight the other contenders to win over a female).
– Shitting on the streets, in plain view (animals in zoos do that because they are not potty-trained).
– Raping and brutalizing girls and women (even animals wait for the female to be in heat before attempting intercourse).
– Burning and killing, just for the hell of it. (I didn’t including “looting” here because animals will loot for food if they are in search of food. No BLM thug looted out of desperation for food.)
– Systematically killing off millions of their own kind.
– Letting “alien” creatures completely invade their territory.
This essay was very profound and thought provoking.
This essay was very thought provoking and profound.
Man was created in the image of GOD. GOD created man. Man was put on this Earth to create. Taking man”s creativity away from him is akin to taking away his free will. Without free will we are not free. Not being free is the same as being a lesser intelligence than those that make us their pets. We are becoming the pets and zoo animals of the elites designated as servants and slaves to be disposed of by their ungodly selfishness.
We hit the height of our civilization most like in the period between the 1940”s and 1960’s, and have been in decline since, morally and ethically. We are devolving and regressing away from a civilized society. The elites want to maintain their lifestyles at the expense of their puppet and fodder peons.
Unfortunately, I’ve been taking about this for more than four decades, but people are generally stupid in that they are easily gratified with useless stuff, but are now much more easily controlled with TV, social media, and medical fear.
As the govt grows larger it appears individuals find less value in their personal agency. Could it be that man’s hidden instinct is to have his belly rubbed?
And this “woke” Democ-rat scum presumes to lecture civilized people about “our democracy.” Satanic… that’s what it is.
When nothing is sacred, humans are no better than farm food animals & any atrocity is acceptable.
Mark Lewis states:
“Vagaries and degrees can exist; it would be hard to argue that any human being is totally “uncivilized” ”
I’m not persuaded this true. Of course, calling a person “uncivilized” runs the risk of being an entirely subjective opinion and nothing more than rank bigotry.
And yet, despite the risk of exaggeratiing the evil of a particular person or group in the grand scheme of things, I submit that the hyphenated word “sub-human” fulfills a valid function in our lexicon. There are persons who must be dealt with accordingly.
I shall resist giving any examples; doing so requires a great deal more reflection than possible on a passing blog.
So when are we going to throw the doctors that surgically mutilate children’s sex organs into prison? Why aren’t they being prosecuted?