Posted on 09/07/2023 7:25:49 AM PDT by SJackson
“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.
The response you typicaly receive before the descent into frothing-at-the-mouth rage and spiral-eyed insanity is: "But that wasn't real [insert ideology here]. REEEEEEEE"
What causes this behavior?
Being ‘uncivilized’ is but the symptom.
Cultural degradation is the cause.
JMHO
The Climate Alarmists are every bit as genocidal as the Nazis. If they ever get a leader with Adolf Hitler’s genius for organization, they will soon be marching “Useless Eaters” off to extermination camps.
The Left has brainwashed their followers over time to regard sex as the be-all and end-all of their entire existence.
This is what they have planned.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKTltWU1e7w
And the Weather Underground took over the Democratic Party in the 70s, and is about to achieve what they set out to do all those years ago.
Thus, the pursuit of all-encompassing, hedonistic sexual activities has become their raison d'être.
Here’s the deal - we are in the midst of leaving behind all the psychologies required for survival in a dog eat dog, Malthusian SCARCITY equals competition milieu. Technology creates SURPLUS and the only way our psychology has of coping with (or taking advantage of) SURPLUS is to adopt the aesthetics of the ruling class whose defining characteristic is leisure - free time which they fill with ornament. For example, the entirety of the New Age social value system is based upon ruling class spa culture, a hedonism. In a leisure time SURPLUS generating society, attention span is not an issue; novelty is. You no longer need a long attention span to gather crops or stalk game in order to survive. Long attention span equates to habit and habitual thought. Short attention span is actually a breakthrough as time is fragmented into shorter lengths and this equates to acquiring greater variety of detail about one’s surroundings and the adoption of a generalist rather than specialist or ideological zealot approach. A short attention span also equates to less tolerance for mind numbing (”alienating” in Marx’s terminology) robotic labor and a clear demand that wage slave jobs be done by actual robots rather than flesh and blood ones.
“Cultural degradation is the cause.”
But that only begs more questions...
“what causes cultural degradation?”
“What is culture?”
“Where does it come from?”
“What makes one culture better than another?”
BFL
The Soviets despised the serfs for not wanting to remain serfs under the Soviets.
The article missed the most important part of civilization that has been crushed in the modern era....
Ayn Rand explains:
“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.”
“Hence, the Democratic Party in America.”
No. It is the party of Democrats. Nothing democratic about it.
Ayn Rand’s “setting man free from men” versus Brave New World’s sexual context of “Everyone belongs to everyone else.”
We must start this investigation with the stipulation that one culture can, indeed, be "better" than another; and that the investigators are allowed to possess and speak about this idea.
Look up the history of the environmental movement; it is bound up in the nazi movement.
Look up “Nazi ecology”by Mark Musser; you can probably find it on Amazon.
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