What Is Civilization?

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Pilgrim

Puritanboard Commissioner
I just posted the following to my blog and thought I'd post it here to see if it will generate any discussion.

The following appeared in Our Hope Vol. XXX, No. 6, Dec. 1923, pp. 302-303, edited by Arno C. Gaebelein.

The New York Herald, under the able editorial management of Mr. Frank Munsey, had a few weeks ago an editorial paragraph on the question “What is civilization?” which contains a good deal of truth. We want to pass it on to our readers.

A few years ago, the Kiowa Indians lived on the great plains of the West, killing the buffalo and capturing wild horses. Now the tribe is under Government protection on an agency near Anadarko, Oklahoma. Where their fathers hunted the bison Governor Jack Walton now hunts the Ku Klux.


“These Kiowas,” says the Department of the Interior, “have established a record in making rapid strides toward civilization.” That is, of the 1,940 families only seventy-five now live in tents or tepees, although every adult redskin on the reservation was born in a tepee. Now, with the income from their oil lands, the Kiowas are building houses better than those of their white neighbors.

“Here in the effete East, from spring until late fall, thousands of people leave their modern homes for weeks or months and live in tents or tepees. The Kiowa considers it a mark of civilization to desert the wigwam for the bungalow; the New Yorker thinks it a genuine advance in his life to do the reverse.


“The Kiowa whose father rode across the plains, bare to the waist except for paint, now sits under an electric bridge lamp clothed in Norfolk jacket and ‘plus fours,’ and reads that the civilized ladies of the East stood on the benches at the Polo Grounds and screamed ‘Kill him, Jack! or ‘Finish him, Luis!’ at two men as naked and bloodthirsty as ever a Kiowa warrior was.” (The recent barbarous New York prizefight.–Ed.*)


A good deal more might have been added. Our boasted civilization is but skin deep and, certain scientists may be right in their assumption that that civilization is going backward instead of forward.

*How many preachers and Christian leaders would denounce prizefighting (or football) as barbarism today? It is more likely that they would be MMA enthusiasts.


(I'm currently going through my library and found this bound volume of Our Hope from 1923 that I somehow had failed to catalog. It's one of my more interesting used bookstore finds in recent years. With period pieces like this, (including many pages giving examples of the forward march of liberalism) I'm not sure if I'd be able to part with it just now, regardless of the particulars of the theology of the editor. It includes some contributions from Pink, W.H. Griffith Thomas, etc. as well.)
 
The sporting-observation is an interesting one; and the comment on civilization is one probably made many times, and as true as ever.

I don't know if I'd agree with the quoter that there's a "good deal of truth" coming through the original article by way of accurate observation.

The internal excerpt is interesting to me more for the cultural assumptions it makes: ethno-superiority/inferiority, and how it was being "remedied." Seriously, who would visit a typical Reservation today and conclude that a free, semi-nomadic people are in better circumstances today, due to Uncle Sam's benevolence? US govt. general treatment of the many, varied, patchwork nations/tribes that were on this continent prior to and then concurrent with the Euros fails the "equity" test.

Not that I am a Dancing-with-Wolves romanticist. For a painfully realistic description of native-American life, ca.1634, see The Black Robe; or don't--it's pretty graphic at times.


As for the modern preacher, in line with your comment, I wonder how many would be on the side of Augustin's criticism of the gladiatorial games? From Confessions, book 6
CHAPTER VII

11. Those of us who were living like friends together used to bemoan our lot in our common talk; but I discussed it with Alypius and Nebridius more especially and in very familiar terms. Alypius had been born in the same town as I; his parents were of the highest rank there, but he was a bit younger than I. He had studied under me when I first taught in our town, and then afterward at Carthage. He esteemed me highly because I appeared to him good and learned, and I esteemed him for his inborn love of virtue, which was uncommonly marked in a man so young. But in the whirlpool of Carthaginian fashion -- where frivolous spectacles are hotly followed -- he had been inveigled into the madness of the gladiatorial games. While he was miserably tossed about in this fad, I was teaching rhetoric there in a public school. At that time he was not attending my classes because of some ill feeling that had arisen between me and his father. I then came to discover how fatally he doted upon the circus, and I was deeply grieved, for he seemed likely to cast away his very great promise -- if, indeed, he had not already done so. Yet I had no means of advising him, or any way of reclaiming him through restraint, either by the kindness of a friend or by the authority of a teacher. For I imagined that his feelings toward me were the same as his father's. But this turned out not to be the case. Indeed, disregarding his father's will in the matter, he began to be friendly and to visit my lecture room, to listen for a while and then depart.

12. But it slipped my memory to try to deal with his problem, to prevent him from ruining his excellent mind in his blind and headstrong passion for frivolous sport. But thou, O Lord, who holdest the helm of all that thou hast created,[161] thou hadst not forgotten him who was one day to be numbered among thy sons, a chief minister of thy sacrament.[162] And in order that his amendment might plainly be attributed to thee, thou broughtest it about through me while I knew nothing of it.

One day, when I was sitting in my accustomed place with my scholars before me, he came in, greeted me, sat himself down, and fixed his attention on the subject I was then discussing. It so happened that I had a passage in hand and, while I was interpreting it, a simile occurred to me, taken from the gladiatorial games. It struck me as relevant to make more pleasant and plain the point I wanted to convey by adding a biting gibe at those whom that madness had enthralled. Thou knowest, O our God, that I had no thought at that time of curing Alypius of that plague. But he took it to himself and thought that I would not have said it but for his sake. And what any other man would have taken as an occasion of offense against me, this worthy young man took as a reason for being offended at himself, and for loving me the more fervently. Thou hast said it long ago and written in thy Book, "Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you."[163] Now I had not rebuked him; but thou who canst make use of everything, both witting and unwitting, and in the order which thou thyself knowest to be best -- and that order is right -- thou madest my heart and tongue into burning coals with which thou mightest cauterize and cure the hopeful mind thus languishing. Let him be silent in thy praise who does not meditate on thy mercy, which rises up in my inmost parts to confess to thee. For after that speech Alypius rushed up out of that deep pit into which he had willfully plunged and in which he had been blinded by its miserable pleasures. And he roused his mind with a resolve to moderation. When he had done this, all the filth of the gladiatorial pleasures dropped away from him, and he went to them no more. Then he also prevailed upon his reluctant father to let him be my pupil. And, at the son's urging, the father at last consented. Thus Alypius began again to hear my lectures and became involved with me in the same superstition, loving in the Manicheans that outward display of ascetic discipline which he believed was true and unfeigned. It was, however, a senseless and seducing continence, which ensnared precious souls who were not able as yet to reach the height of true virtue, and who were easily beguiled with the veneer of what was only a shadowy and feigned virtue.

CHAPTER VIII

13. He had gone on to Rome before me to study law -- which was the worldly way which his parents were forever urging him to pursue -- and there he was carried away again with an incredible passion for the gladiatorial shows. For, although he had been utterly opposed to such spectacles and detested them, one day he met by chance a company of his acquaintances and fellow students returning from dinner; and, with a friendly violence, they drew him, resisting and objecting vehemently, into the amphitheater, on a day of those cruel and murderous shows. He protested to them: "Though you drag my body to that place and set me down there, you cannot force me to give my mind or lend my eyes to these shows. Thus I will be absent while present, and so overcome both you and them." When they heard this, they dragged him on in, probably interested to see whether he could do as he said. When they got to the arena, and had taken what seats they could get, the whole place became a tumult of inhuman frenzy. But Alypius kept his eyes closed and forbade his mind to roam abroad after such wickedness. Would that he had shut his ears also! For when one of the combatants fell in the fight, a mighty cry from the whole audience stirred him so strongly that, overcome by curiosity and still prepared (as he thought) to despise and rise superior to it no matter what it was, he opened his eyes and was struck with a deeper wound in his soul than the victim whom he desired to see had been in his body. Thus he fell more miserably than the one whose fall had raised that mighty clamor which had entered through his ears and unlocked his eyes to make way for the wounding and beating down of his soul, which was more audacious than truly valiant -- also it was weaker because it presumed on its own strength when it ought to have depended on Thee. For, as soon as he saw the blood, he drank in with it a savage temper, and he did not turn away, but fixed his eyes on the bloody pastime, unwittingly drinking in the madness -- delighted with the wicked contest and drunk with blood lust. He was now no longer the same man who came in, but was one of the mob he came into, a true companion of those who had brought him thither. Why need I say more? He looked, he shouted, he was excited, and he took away with him the madness that would stimulate him to come again: not only with those who first enticed him, but even without them; indeed, dragging in others besides. And yet from all this, with a most powerful and most merciful hand, thou didst pluck him and taught him not to rest his confidence in himself but in thee -- but not till long after.
Confessions and Enchiridion, newly translated and edited by Albert C. Outler - Christian Classics Ethereal Library
 
It was probably the sporting observation that jumped out at me as well. The rest of it is interesting as a period piece albeit somewhat superficial. I doubt the writer would say the same thing about reservations today. And I'm guessing any in Norfolk jackets and "plus fours" weren't on the reservation long.

In the back of my mind was the efficiency with which the civilized world killed millions in two world wars. But back then it appears that some liberals and progressives thought that human nature could actually be elevated and improved.
 
There is Christian civilisation and various non-Christian civilisations e.g. Communist, Secular Humanist democracies, Islamic, etc.

Christian civilisation is never perfectly realised before the Eschaton, just as holy living is never perfectly realised in the life of the regenerate, but it is still our aspiration, as we desire God's Kingdom to be manifested on Earth. It is achieved through sinners being converted and obeying God's Word for all of life.

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