Before we can start a discussion on civilization and society and our way of life we must briefly address the issue of how humans came to populate the earth, and this brings us to the issue of God, since all the major religions of the world teach that God created man. Some believe that God created the earth some 5,000 odd years ago in a six-day period. Others who are also religious are more flexible in this belief. Those that are of the first group of teachings are prescriptively rigid and therefore they cannot account for the abundance of observations and phenomena in our natural world, which point to a much greater age for the planet (ten to fifteen billion years).
Why the red shift in astronomy? Why the many fossils that point to evolutionary development for all terrestrial life? Why the existence of geological structures millions, even billions, of years old? Why human brains with the capacity to discover these things as we study ourselves and the universe? Why would a God who had created the universe in six days go to such great efforts to make it appear otherwise?
We should bypass this issue by assuming that, given the existence of a God/Creator, the universe was created in a manner consistent with our scientific knowledge, but that man was an intentional result of the creation process, planned by the God/Creator from the beginning. In other words, God created man via an indirect, evolutionary process, that many today call “intelligent design.” If we can agree to make this one simple assumption, then we can move on to the discussion and analysis of our humanity without getting into an argument about the existence of God and whether here is an afterlife. There will be more on this subject in future post.
Assuming that human life developed in an evolutionary process we can begin our discussion of civilization with the pre-human ancestors of modern man, who began to roam the planet coming out of Africa approximately two and a half million years ago. By this stage of our development, pre-humans had developed a complex brain as a means of adapting to a hostile environment. It is generally believed that at the time the earliest humans developed sentience they had banded together in small groups for protection. The importance of this practice was three-fold:
First, living in groups provided general protection for all members of the band or tribe (in other words there was, “safety in numbers”).
Second, since the human female is particularly vulnerable during the later stages of pregnancy (pregnancy easily adds twenty-five to thirty percent to her body weight), group protection of gestating females was a very strong asset to the viability of the human species. Whether it is politically correct or not — the primary purpose of a man is to protect and care for his mate and their children
Third, human babies are absolutely helpless (unlike most other mammals) for an extended period of time after birth, and children require many years of growing and learning before becoming independent individuals (14 to 16 years back then and much longer today), and thus group protection of infants and young children was absolutely imperative if the human species was to survive.
The females of almost all species with complex brains (and developmental patterns similar to ours) developed very strong protective instincts. It follows logically that human males, unburdened with childbearing, became the aggressive gender of the species, whose core job was foremost to protect and provide for the females and young. In addition, males were much more expendable than females, since one male could impregnate many females. Maybe this is one of the reasons that approximately 7% more males are born than females. They were expected to die off and so more were needed.
These defined gender roles must have been beneficial to the development and propagation of the human species, or we would not have continued to evolve. By the time humans had developed language and had begun to use tools and fire, the social roles of both males and females had been “programmed” into human DNA: Aggressive males protected the tribe (even at the cost of their lives), while the more passive females bore and cared for the young. Probably as a direct result of the major physical demands of childbearing, females also became physiologically much stronger than males, thus increasing their longevity potential in comparison to males. This has major ramifications today as women live much long then men do and older people require more health care.
Based on observations of the social behaviors of other species with large, complex brains, we can assume that early humans developed specific social structures within their bands and small tribes. Typically, a dominant male becomes the band or tribe leader; parallel to this, a dominant female also arises, thus providing the basis for a “pecking order,” or social structure, of both males and females within the group.
Probably about thirty thousand years ago basic, “civilization” was born when humans began to retain knowledge through speech, art, and writing, and the relatively simple social structure of early humans began to evolve into something more complex. The evolutionary process became much more complicated as humans gained the knowledge that allowed them to exercise ever greater control over their environment. Farming, mining, metal working, and the building of mechanical devices developed quickly and spread throughout the world in short very short order.
A critical mass of knowledge was reached about five thousand years ago, and the conquest of the planet then began in earnest. It has continued in spurts ever since (periods of rapid gain of knowledge followed by periods of absorption of that knowledge) and is now progressing geometric rate. Given that most of the easy to get resources of the plant have been found and used it is critical that we continue to push the knowledge frontier so we can get to the point that we are not limited to ‘easy’ to get resources. Turing back now is not an option for if there is a second modern dark age it will not be easy to come back.
With the rapid expansion of civilization throughout the globe, the aggressive nature of the male began to constitute, at least somewhat, a liability to the development of the human race. To some extent, war and the desire for conquest were simply an outgrowth of the male’s role as protector of the tribe. As bigger and bigger territories were brought under the control of a single dominant, male, large areas assumed a certain stability, which, in turn, promoted the development of technology. Since by this time no other thing on the planet could challenge the human race it began to dominate the planet.
As the number of humans grew and their knowledge base expanded, all areas or aspects did not develop equally. Initially male-oriented skills predominated and resulted in the advancement of technology and the physical sciences. The skills of warfare and conquest were perfected, driven by technological advances. Human cultures that did not develop these skills were quickly swept aside by highly organized and increasingly mechanized armies.
Prior to the twentieth century, however, aggression and warfare did not impact the overall survival of the human race. Today, unfortunately, with man’s ability to make nuclear bombs, lethal gases, and custom-designed killer viruses, warfare has the potential to threaten the survival of the human species and has become a very important issue.
“Civilization” has now reached a point at which mankind must rethink its purpose and, in fact, its very existence. With billions of humans on the planet, and with the knowledge we now possess, it would be easy for mankind to destroy all life on the planet. Some international tension has been displaced with the collapse of the USSR in the late ‘80s, but it must be kept in mind that, historically, a power always rises to fill a void. India, China, Japan (probably not now after the 2011 earthquake), or some other country will assert itself and replace the USSR in the pantheon of world powers. Disarmament is also not an issue as weakness breeds war, it always has and that cannot be allowed today.
Today with the apparent decline of the United States since 2008 this looks to be more and more like China will assume this role of the replacement country to the old USSR and in the process possibly even surpass the United States if the current direction is not reversed. This is not a certainty as there are internal problems in China that are not obvious, but that is a subject for a different discussion.
The decline of the United States to a lesser status would be very bad for mankind for we can no longer allow these old aggressive power patterns of a strong leader as part of a closed political system trying to gain control of a region or significant portion of the world. We must come to an understanding of who we are and why we do what we do; we must be able to address these issues realistically or our civilization will collapse under the onslaught of our increasing numbers our technology and our relentless impact on the ecostructure of the world.
The reason that our decline would be bad is that we are different. Because of this difference the U.S. rose to its present position as the world’s leading industrial and political power in less than 200 years. The industrial base, governmental structure and military might of our country are the culmination of five thousand years of western civilization. The U.S. is presently unchallenged by any nation on the planet; simply said, we are the best (nation) and we got to where we are by being the best (individually) because there was no central control. However, since 2008 that is being changed and not for the good. This fact must be kept in mind or all discussion of change will lack a solid base, for if we already are the best than what are we going to change to that is better?
We got here by the intellect and hard work primarily by men of European ancestry. This is not to imply that people with other cultural backgrounds did not contribute to America’s growth, but, prior to a very few years ago, the core leadership of this country came predominantly from western European stock (English, French, Italian, Spanish and German). This “melting pot” of people and ideas worked well as long as the melting was encouraged by the citizens. The social structure that developed from this experiment in self rule became the “American” culture. It makes no sense to postulate whether the contributions of eastern European or non-European cultures would have changed American culture in some substantial or “better” way, since the fact remains that the influence of these cultures was — nominal or minimal at best.
The American citizen was not ruled by the federal government and that was because of the U.S. Constitution and “Bill-of-Rights” which prevented an oppressive government from developing; that is until now. We are being told that those documents are obsolete and must be changed or gotten rid of. There is no logic to that thinking and it is only being promoted by those that want the power that those documents now deny. We should be very careful about making changes for another system other than what we have now for that is a return to past systems that do not and have never worked.
There are, of course, imperfections in our society we are after all human. But we should not abandon all the good we have accomplished within the parameters of American culture just because we have some negative aspects. For sure we should not start over because of some perceived problems areas. Make adjustments yes, but not start over.
