When I was a student studying the ancient world I was intrigued by the term 'civilisation'. At one level its meaning was simple: that clever 19th-century French philologist, Lucien Febvre who was in love with Philip II of Spain (the subject of his doctoral thesis), claimed the term was coined in the middle of the eighteenth century. That was the time of the Enlightenment when my favourite philosopher and polymath David Hume was developing the philosophy of science. Ok, I can hear you chuntering, "get to the point". For the not-so-delicate but precious western culture of the 18th-century 'civilisation' denoted "the state of being conditioned into civility or polite society." Hume's interest in civility, however, like ancient Greek syntax, was in terms of binary opposites: the irrational and emotional as opposed to the rational and scientific. In Hume's mind, humanity had to tame or manage its savagery, the irrational and emotional, through civilisation, as that was the way to advance society.
For me, as a 20th century student of archaeology, civilisation meant the change from the Stone Age (Palaeolithic), nomadic hunter-gatherers, to the sedentary husbandry and agriculture of the New Stone Age (Neolithic), leading to urbanisation, specialisation, and a whole series of concomitants: class stratification, centralised administration, sacred kingship, record keeping and writing, and a money economy. The cultural changes were so dramatic that this period of evolution heralding civilisation became labelled as 'the Neothlitic Revolution'. Though the advances for humanity associated with the move from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural society can be perceived as positive, as you can see from the phrase 'class stratification' civilisation has also taken on a negative political nuance.
The negative take on civilisation is essentially sociological but has economic and environmental elements. There is an image, prior to civilisation, of the innocent egalitarian hunter-gatherers living in harmony with each other and nature compared to the inequities of civilisation with its rigid patriarchal hierarchies, unequal distribution of wealth and destruction of natural habitats. 'Progress', associated with civilisation, the development of metalworking and technology, mass destruction and pollution of the planet, bear a heavy responsibility, it is argued, for the woes of humanity.
It is true every culture tends to have a golden age, for many, like the ancient Greeks, utopia existed in the past and so some anthropologists and sociologists perceive the period before civilisation as a time of social and economic equality destroyed by the inexorable march of human 'progress'. Of course, for others, the revolutionaries, the golden age will come in the future. We humans often see the present as a time of destructive disasters and so we dream of a better time either in the past or still to come.
When the rose-coloured spectacles of Rousseau are applied to early humanity, the small bands of hunter-gatherers are seen as possession-less families of equals. If any disturbing hierarchical features are perceived among the persisting hunter-gatherer societies of today, the solution has been to seek the answer in ethology - an evolutionary biological perspective - comparing them with the hierarchical dominance, for example, of alpha male or female behaviour, observed among primates, our cousins the great apes and in particular chimpanzees, with whom science tells us we share at least 96% of our DNA. Somehow that makes those behavioural traits alright?
As you can tell from my tone I have never subscribed to the historical sociology of Marx and Weber and I can't see the archaeological/historical definition of civilisation as the root of human social ills. I am still with Hume and I see civilisation as an instrument for advancing humanity over our basic fight or flight instinctual mechanisms that can be both irrational and damaging to the individual and societies. Popularism, tribalism and racism are enemies of civilisation geared to damage, if not destroy, civilised behaviour, by demonising the 'other' and promoting inequities on the basis of identity. Therefore, and here I get to the point, if our Government's slapdash slogan 'levelling-up' is to mean anything we need to condemn popularism and make sure we all discard the savagery that Hume condemned and embrace the enhancing definition of civilisation, pronto, please!
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