Uncivilization

 As modern human beings, we have always taken Civilization for granted.

Civilization, as the story goes, is the long crawl up from the hunter gatherers that occurred over thousands of years.  We moved from the irregularity of the food supply of the chase to the regularity (relatively speaking) of the harvest or the herd.  As we farmed and herded, we gathered together in larger and larger groups and learned to exchange the goods we did not have with others.  As we associated, towns and then cities (small ones, to be fair) appeared.   We learned to capture our ideas in letters, to travel farther afield, to make things - pottery or baskets, but eventually wood and metal objects.  Over time our tools and our outputs changed - from the abacus to the computer and the bronze dagger to the M1 - but behind all of this is the idea that we continued overall to move forward, not back.  

Mind you, Civilization comes with a lot of baggage as well.  Groups of people have to manage themselves - or, as it turns out, be managed by others.  And thus the story of Civilization is also largely the story of governments and how they ruled over others.  Be clear that no one race, creed, or society has a leg up on any of the others in this.  Scratch the surface of any Civilization and you will find a rather sordid history.  

The payoff for all of this, we are told, is Civilization.  Yes, people have treated each other horribly but look at what we have been able to accomplish.

But, at what point do we begin to reach the point of Uncivilization?

What is Uncivilization?  I do not know that I have fully developed the concept, but I would posit it is the process where a civilization loses itself.

It might not lose other things, of course.  It can still continue to develop technology, the arts, have a thriving business culture.  But the point of civilization - the betterment of the individual and the freedom of them to exist, largely or (desirably) completely free of government interference, to have the best possible life for themselves, is destroyed.

The individual, in these cases, is becomes nothing more than a cog in a giant machine that is the government and national economy.  The individual exists purely to fill a role in society that betters the power structure, not directly themselves.  The power structure benefits directly; the individual by default.

Note I use the phrase "power structure".  The power structure can be the government of course, but it is not always so.

We look back on history and see the horrors of slavery of the Roman Empire (or the American South, for that matter, or the reality of slavery that exists today in parts of the world) or the effective indentured feudal servitude of the Han Empire or Feudal Japan or Feudal Europe or the conquering arm and annual demand of victims of the Aztec Empire and correctly are repulsed.  We then see and hear voices demanding that our own governments take more and more control of every detail of our existence and are drowned out in the cheering.

The difficulty, of course, is that humans were never meant to be cogs in a machine.  They can function that way of course, but not forever.  They will find ways to work outside the system (thus denying the larger group of the benefits of their ingenuity, by the way), put in the minimum amount of effort, or actively seek to tear the system down.  Ultimately in all of these scenarios, "civilization" does not benefit but finds itself torn apart.

The shocking thing - at least shocking thing to me - is that people do this to themselves, perhaps from the best intentions of getting out of a failed older system - civilization - but not realizing that they have opened themselves up to the sort of thing that will view them not as individuals, but as tools and resources to be managed and expended.

It would be a far-seeing and wise civilization that would see such a thing and avoid it - but as wisdom is a chancy thing at best in this world, it seems more a matter of luck.

And luck, as any gambler will tell you, is a fickle thing.