What does it take for a society to be civilized? Is it the type of governance in use, or the manner in which power is exercised? The flourishing of art and architecture perhaps? New developments in science and technology? Or possibly all of these and more?
Several readers of The Hames Report have taken exception to my personal view, often expressed, that it is our shared civilizational worldview - manifesting as a continuously evolving, dynamically-complex, world-system of beliefs, behaviours and artifacts that we unconsciously use to bring order to our daily lives - that now requires a radical overhaul. They point to the virtues of elected governments, contractual law, as well as global commerce and trade, and the positive impacts these have all had in convincing individuals and nations to refrain from acting aggressively towards each other.
I remain unconvinced. Depending on how statistics are used it is certainly possible to show that organized conflicts, including civil wars, genocides and terrorism, have all declined steadily since the European Enlightenment, and that a gradual process of pacification has reduced homicide as well as effectively eliminating most sanctioned forms of violence - such as despotism, dueling, judicial torture, superstitious killing and sadistic punishment.
Harvard psychologist and author Steven Pinker, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, argues that consolidation of a patchwork of feudal states into larger kingdoms and republics with centralized authority and an infrastructure of commerce must take the credit for this humanitarian revolution. Pinker also nominates the various 'rights movements' dating from the late 1950s as further validation that the civilizational model has been a viable platform for moral and ethical advancement.
Pinker’s arguments are only half true - correct only when considered solely in terms of linear progress towards peaceful coexistence, in relative terms per head of population, and when biased towards the world’s most developed nations. This sanguine analysis from a mainstream Occidental scholar is far too neat for my liking.
We live in a largely unknowable and highly intricate world where asymmetric hazards are all too common and greater numbers of people are struggling to make ends meet, especially across the Global South, which has long suffered from the remnants of a brutal colonization. To take aggression as just one parameter (ignoring other associated factors such as poverty, malnutrition, the West’s industrial war machine and human trafficking) is to put far too favourable a gloss on our situation.
Our modern civilization has advanced in fits and starts. It has produced objects and buildings of incredible beauty, the most remarkable inventions, creative works of art and of the imagination, and a sophisticated corpus of scientific knowledge. But we are still absurdly superstitious. We know almost nothing about human consciousness. We will still leap to defend the indefensible without thinking through the consequences. We naively seek material wealth over spiritual happiness and advancement. To suggest the human species is heading for a state of nirvana as a result of effective governance, the rule of law, and strong leadership, is both wrong and naive.
It is true that the last two decades have resulted in fewer deaths than any decades in the previous century. This is mostly because the nature of warfare has radically changed. Consequently the death toll is no longer an accurate measure of hostility. More rapid communication times together with expanded international networks have increased the numbers of individuals engaged in warfare while complicating the dynamics of it. The battlefield has become virtual when any willing person with a computer, possibly sitting thousands of kilometers away, can participate - not just by fighting or guiding drones to their target but also by instantaneously transferring information, money, and technology to where it is most needed. The enemy, too, has changed. Nowadays small groups operating outside the territorial boundaries of nation-states are confounding conventional war tactics and injecting fear into the hearts of citizens who were previously isolated from the actual theatre of war.
So other factors, usually ignored, must also be taken into account – such as the total numbers of displaced persons resulting from contemporary conflicts for example. In 2014 the International Institute for Strategic Studies logged a total of 175,881 battle-related deaths - but almost 27 million displaced people as a direct result of 42 armed conflicts around the world – mostly in North Africa and Western Asia. It is impossible to know how many casualties are caused by unofficial and covert operations. So although the number of fatalities is far less today than during the two world wars, to claim that 'the tide of war is receding' is political hyperbole. A better measure is the amount of money we spend on warfare.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute claims world military expenditure in 2019 reached $1,917 billion. This is higher than in any year since 2008. It amounts to 2.2 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product - around $249 for each individual. The US is responsible for 38 per cent of the world total, distantly followed by China at 9.5 per cent, Russia at 5.2 per cent, the UK at 3.5 per cent and Japan at 3.4 per cent.
But open warfare is only one expression of hostile conduct. It is generally accepted, for example, that poverty and starvation are inextricably linked to brutality of some kind. So this is an issue we should take into account when evaluating the degree of violence today.
In terms of access to potable water and adequate food, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization calculates that nearly 870 million people suffer from chronic malnutrition. Meanwhile the UN believes around 35.8 million adults and children are trapped in some form of modern-day slavery. Possibly 20.9 million of these are victims of forced labor though some claim that up to 80 per cent of human trafficking involves sexual exploitation. According to the US State Department around 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders every year. More than 70 per cent of these are female while half are children. This means there are more people in slavery today than at any other time in history.
As far as other unjustifiable inequities are concerned we need only examine the rapidly escalating gap between the rich and the poor. Since 2015 a threshold of $1.90 per day has been the standard agreed by the World Bank and other international organizations to reflect the minimum consumption and income level needed to survive. That means 736 million, or 8 per cent of the population, fall under the extreme poverty line, lacking the capacity to fulfill basic needs - whether that means eating only one bowl of rice a day or forgoing badly needed health care. At the other end of the scale the top 1 per cent of households own 43 per cent of all personal wealth.
On top of these staggering statistics it is evident that many of our most life-critical systems, such as the global financial system, education, health, agriculture, water and climate, are all teetering on the edge of failure. Our jails are overflowing. Youth suicide and homelessness are at an all-time high. Illegal drugs, in addition to legal substances like alcohol and tobacco, are destroying lives as never before. The costs of health care are soaring. Smart machines and novel business models continue to replace human labour across many traditional industries resulting in an explosion in the long-term unemployed and social problems emanating from this.
It is extraordinarily good fortune that the unprecedented lockdowns imposed around the world on healthy populations as a result of trying to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, in many cases authoritarian responses that peremptorily stopped the global economy in its tracks and fractured supply chains, has not done greater damage. Meanwhile the loneliness, despair, and lack of hope for a viable future felt by many, though impossible to quantify with any precision as yet, must be taken as symptoms of an ailing world-system under extreme duress.
And so I must refute the overly-optimistic notion that the human family is experiencing a quality of life that is consistently improving. Progress does not track a linear timeline. The facts seem to indicate a very different situation.
Ironically perhaps we seem to be experiencing an almost Dickensian ‘best and the worst of times’. Much depends upon our definition of wellbeing – just as the term aggression might mean anything from open warfare to routine norms separating one individual from another. Geography, education, the degree of state intervention, and personal wealth all have a bearing on whether life for the average citizen is becoming easier - or not.
Many of the original beliefs on which modern societies were constructed are no longer appropriate in today’s conditions. It stands to reason that these must change if that is the case. Trickle-down economic policies, for example, have been proven not to work. The promise of full-time employment and security can no longer be guaranteed by the state. Governments of every persuasion are in thrall to big business with only minimal regard for the rights of their citizens.
One of the great myths of our time concerns the role of commerce in reducing conflict. Technological advances have certainly resulted in expediting the exchange of goods and services over greater distances. But the rational view of people becoming more valuable alive than dead in that context in no way accounts for the escalating poverty and conflict in those parts of the world that have benefitted most from increased trade. Nor does the wide-spread application of scientific logic and reason automatically lead to those in power comprehending the futility of cycles of selfishness and greed-driven violence.
So I am firmly of the conviction that the worldview itself – that is the linear constructs and assumptions of progress informing the civilizational model – need to transition to one better suited to the demands of a global population heading for 8 billion by 2023.
In order to guarantee the continued advancement of the human family, on a healthy planet that has sufficient resources to meet our needs into the future, we must learn to accept several fundamentals as essential design criteria towards an upgraded world-system.
These are not new ideas by any means and I have written extensively about the need to incorporate all of these principles into a new model many times before. In the most simple and straightforward of terms:
1. Conflict of all kinds must be drastically reduced if not eliminated. Since aggression is primarily a male pursuit, except at the periphery of community life where anger is often expressed in malicious quarrels best exemplified by road rage or cruelty to children for example, cultures encouraging women to contribute equally with men are much more likely to shift away from the veneration of violence. This is not by any means a gender issue, although that is the most common and incorrect framing, but a resolve to inject more 'matristic' traits - such as nurturing, supportiveness, humility, understanding, empathy and tenderness - into governance and power structures.
2. Learning is a human necessity and an essential part of socializing young people into society. Education needs to reach everyone in a form that is appropriate, effective, and that leads to greater levels of participation and contribution. Today that means using a combination of literacy, mobility, and mass social media to increase levels of tolerance, compassion and generosity – particularly when this enables people to empathize with others who hold fundamentally different beliefs and values.
3. Reframing undesirable human urges, such as hostility, envy, greed and selfishness, as dilemmas to be resolved rather than disputes to be won, will increase the urge to collaborate while helping to shape a more empathic society.