Modern civilisation is primarily the Western Civilisation
dominated by the white man. For the time over all preceding civilisation
and that is had got a permanent and stable basis and thus would survive for
ever, unlike the other civilisations which had their day and then perished.
But this belief has been shattered by the two world wars that have been
fought in the present century and inventions of the Atomic’ 3rd
Hydrogen’ bomb, and other such terrible means of destruction have
almost convinced every one that not only the end of our civilisation is
near, but that along with it there may be the end of mankind.
Such a view was voiced by Bernard Shaw in 1932, when
addressing the American Academy of Political Science, he remarked.
“Within my lifetime our knowledge of history has been greatly extended.
We used to be taught that antiquity meant the roman Empire, which had absorbed the Greek city States- with the pyramids of Egypt looking on,
hinterland. The one belief that we got out of it all was that modern
and with Jerusalem and a sketchy Babylonian collection of idolaters in the
civilisation was an immense improvement on these barbarous times, and
less savage, more and more enlightened, until the pinnacle had been
that all the white people had been steadily progressing, getting less and
reached, represented by ourselves. We are now beginning to have been
serious doubts whether we ourselves are in any way remarkable or
unprecedented as specimens of political enlightenment; for our new
knowledge of history tells us that our picture of the past is false. Thanks
largely to the researches of Professor Flinders Petrie, we know if five or
six civilisations which were just like our own civilisation, having
progressed in the same way to the same artistic climaxes, the same
democratic and feminists climaxes as we; and they have all perished. They
reached a certain point and then collapsed, because they had no internal
stability. When they grew into huge populations crowded into big cities,
the internal strains shattered them, the civilisation sank back into primitive
life for the survivors. That puts us in a very different attitude from our
fathers and grandfathers, because what we are up against now is the fact
that we too have reached the edge of the precipice over which these
civilisations fell and were dashed to pieces. There is no mistaking the
situation, the symptoms are the same; the difficulties are the same; and the
possibilities of destruction are much greater. Are we to bridge the gulf or
full helplessly into it. Can wee, if I may change the metaphor, steer our
ship round the hinterlands or which all the ancient navigators were
wrecked.
It is obvious that the warning given by Bernard Shaw, in 1932,
and repeated by various thinkers of modern times has gone unheeded. The
situation is fraught with graver now than twenty-seven year ago. We are
now living in a world which is destroying itself; we are taking part in the
ruin of the civilisation. The dates of two world wars of our time are filled
with significance for the history of the world, and our present misfortunes
very largely result form them. It may be said that a whole historical epoch
is closing and a new epoch is beginning. None of us knows what the new
epoch will be like. Often in the past the end of one epoch and the
beginning of new has been marked by a feeling of joy; but that feeling is
absent today. At the time of the Renaissance, a German humanist spoke of the exhilaration of the spirit. Today the feeling of distress is stronger than
that of joy.
At present modern civilisation is facing the biggest crisis of its
history, and it is feared that it may not survive it. Mankind is brought face
to face with an extraordinary paradox. On the one hand, the world had
manifestly become one world; war no longer is localised, but is universal
and total. The world is being made one by the press, by improvements in
communications, by the cinema, by broadcasting, and in many ways of
which the older societies never dreamt. In all these ways, men and
societies are being brought together. At the very time, that all this taking
place, however, we see the development of extreme forms of nationalism
such as the nineteenth century never knew. We have on the one hand
universality and on the other a national separation which is now
threatening us with a third world war in which humanity may be
destroyed. Indeed, Man in our day gives the impression of being in his
death-agony, or very close to it, the foundations of his existence are
disappearing, he is experiencing a process of disintegrations from within,
rather than from without.
The principal cause of this state of affairs lies in the fact that the
physical and above all the psychological make up of man does not
correspond at all to the technological civilisation of our epoch, which has
developed in a way which is not only extra ordinary but almost
miraculous. The technological progress of the world has been
unbelievable, and the inward development of man has not kept pace with
it, because the spirit of man was formed another epoch, when he lived in
harmony with the rhythm of nature and war attached to the land; whereas;
today he is detaching himself more and more from the soil as a result of
technological progress. We are, in point of fact, coming to end of an
epoch in which the life of Man depended on the soil, and man was in
harmony with Nature.
Man, stands today in an altogether new relation to the cosmic
forces, in a sense it may even be said that we are taking part in end of the
cosmos, in that we have left behind the order of nature contemplated by
Greek thought, the thought of the ancient world and of the Middle Ages
which survived even in the firs centuries of modern history. The splitting
of the atom, the invention of the atomic bomb, symbolizes a dissolution of
the cosmos in its very core. We are no longer confronted with nature
considered as a whole, as the creation of God, but with something else which may be said to be no longer nature, the world as the scientists see it
is altogether different from the reality of nature. We are faced no longer
with what is called inorganic reality or natural organic reality, but with a
reality invaded and organised by Man himself through the means of
technology.
Man adapts himself with difficulty to the new technological world
and its civilisation, and he suffers in the process. At the same time he is
driven to adapt himself at an ever-increasing rate. Indeed, he has even
very little time to bethink himself. He is called on to display immense
activity, and yet by a paradox this activity on his part involves a passivity
in adapting himself to it, he often becomes spiritually passive. It is very
curious and one of the contradictions of our time, that a very active man
should be inwardly passive. Man becomes an instrument in an inhuman,
rather than a human process. Not for a moment does he regard himself as
having any value in himself, he is only a means towards the next
successive instant. This speed is very hurtful for the soul of Man. His
spiritual changes do not keep pace with the material changes around him,
which are faster, stronger, and more intense. The result is a state of
disequilibrium in Man, because he cannot adapt himself quickly enough
and is no longer in harmony with his time. The epoch of capitalist
industrialism, has made of Man a function in the process of production
leading to the alienation human nature. Man becomes a thing, he is treated
as a thing and not as a human being, he is exploited by the very existence
into which he is plunged.
Thus the world today is entering a fluid area in which there is a
very little solid ground, and it is just this fluidity this inward state of
dislocation, chaos and anarchy, which had led to the establishment of the
dictatorships which have been so characteristic of the last years of our
epoch, to the supremacy of the state which is already so strong and which
is growing stronger, and which is causing so much anxiety to those who
value liberty. This is a result of the two world wars, which greatly
strengthened the totalitarian tendencies of States and of Governments. The
instincts or tendencies which were developed in man during the war have
remained after the war; for example, tendencies towards violence, towards
compulsion or constraint, towards mutual estrangement and enmity. The
world seems to be entering into a condition of chaos. It is not enough to
say that it is the war which itself was possible simply because this
condition of chaos already existed in the heart of man. When society is drifting into chaos there is need to organize it, so that it shall not perish
altogether. The easiest way to organize society is by coercion, and even by
violence. If the mutual state of society and Man is such that no other form
of re-organisation is possible, society will try to reconstruct itself
by
coercion.
Thus the modern civilisation is based on violence and conversion
and may be rightly termed as war-making civilization. The political State
of the world are all, in greater or lesser degree, war-making institutions,
Their Minister of war are ministers of a function which is not incidental to
their nature as States, but essential to it. Never is the nature of the State
more clearly revealed than when the war drums and throbbing. The State
speaks in the voice of the guns. States spend more of their wealth on war
and on preparing for it than they spend on public health, education, or
anything else. It has been shown by statistical research that the leading
nations of the world have spent more on it during the last fifty years than
on all other objects put together. And they are spending more on it than
ever before.
On account of this constant preparation for war or actually
fighting a war, the economy of the world has became, in the course of
history, so closely linked with the war-making functions of political States
that it is in danger of being shattered in case war is abandoned. The wealth
of nations has now become, pre-eminently, taxation fodder for the war-
chest, as their manhood is common fodder for the battle-field. Wealth and
war are a married pair, and never was the marriage so close. The
industries directly engaged in the service of the war machine, in particular
those producing armaments of one kind or another, are closely interlocked
with industry in general. It follows that any cessation or interruption of the
former will be accompanied by repercussion all along the line; from guns
to butter and from atomic bombs to chocolates there will be a fall in
production and in the number of the unemployed. That is why the w
Street became depressed at the prospect of peace in Korea in 1954, and the
press report said, “The prospect of peace in Korea had a depressing effect
on the market. Losses of one to three dollars were common among
the
leaders and the rest followed suit.” It is clear that if the reduction of
armaments, for defence or otherwise, ceases there would be an economic
crisis. The relief to taxation would certainly be great, but great also would
be the reduction in wealth of nations on which the taxation is levied. The invention of the ‘A’ and ‘H’ bombs have made things more
gloomy, and it seems that modern civilisation cannot escape the deluge
any longer. The bad faith of the parties concerned, or their lack of trust in
each other’s good faith, renders the problem of controlling the bomb by
international agreement quite insoluble. Whatever agreements were made,
or controlling authorities set up, would be broken, or the authority
certainly that the agreement would be broken, or the authority defied,
when one or other of the belligerents deemed it essential to its safety to do
so. The armed forces, when preparations for war have made them
sufficiently powerful are apt to dominate their own government and to
force on the war for which they are now ready and eager as German army
did in 1914, and 1939 and other armies, or their High Commands have
often done, and doubtless will do again if they get the chance,
Thus the modern civilisation, which is basically a war-making
civilisation seems to be doomed unless a miracle saves it. It has obviously
failed as the preceding civilisations, and it is bound to perish, but its
failure and destruction may mean the destruction of mankind, and the end
of the rule of man on earth. Referring to this Prof. Toynbee, the greatest
of modern historians, has remarked.
“On the assumption that the future of mankind is to be very
catastrophe, I should have prophesied, even as lately as a few years ago,
that whatever future we might be going to have would lie with the
Tibetans and Eskimos, because each of these people occupied, till quite
lately, an unusually sheltered position. ‘Sheltered’ means, of course,
sheltered from dangers arising from human folly and wickedness, not
sheltered form master of its physical environment, sufficiently for
practical purposes, since the middle Paleolithic age, since that time, man’s
only dangers but these have been deadly dangers – have come from an
himself. But the homes of the Tibetans and Eskimos are sheltered no
longer, because we are on the point of managing to fly over the North pole
and over the Himalayas, and both Northern Canada and Tibet would, I
think, be likely to be theatres of a future Russo-American war.
“If mankind is going to run amuck with atom bombs, I personally
should look to the Negrito Pygmics of Central African to salvage some
fraction of the present heritage of mankind. Their eastern Cousin in the
Philippines and in the Malay Peninula would probably perish with the rest
of us, as they both live in what have now become to be dangerously
exposed positions. “The African negritos are said by our anthropologists
unexpectedly pure and lofty conception of the nature of God and God’s
relation to man. They might be able to give mankind a fresh start and
though we should then have lost the achievements of the last 6,6000 to
10,000 years, what all 10,000 years compared to the 600,000 or a million
years for which the human race has already been in existence.
“The extreme possibility of catastrophe is that we might succeed
in exterminating the whole human race, African negritos and all,
“On the evidence of the past history of life, on this planet, even
that is not entirely unlikely. After all, the reign of man on the. Earth, if we
are right in thinking that man established his present ascendancy in the
middle Paleolithic age, is so far only about 1000,000 years old, and what
is that compared to the 500 million or 800 million years during which life
has been in existence on the surface of this planet? In the past other forms
of life have enjoyed reigns which have lasted for almost inconceivably
larger periods – and which yet at last have come to an end. There was
reign of the giant armoured reptiles which may have lasted about 80
millions before the present day. But the reptile’s reign came to an end.
Long before that perhaps 300 million years go- there was a region of
giant armoured fishes-creatures that had already accomplished the
tremendous achievement of growing a movable lower jaw. But the reign
of the fish came to an end.
“The winged insects are believed to have come into existence
about 250 million years ago. Perhaps the higher winged insects – the
social insects that have anticipated mankind in creating an institutional life
– are still waiting for their reign on Earth to come. If the ants and bees
were one day to acquire even that glimmer of intellectual understanding
that man has possessed in his day, and if they were then to make their own
shot at seeing history in perspective, they might see the advent of the
mammals, and the brief reign of the human mammal, as almost irrelevant
episodes, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’.
“The challenge to us in our generation is to set to it that this
interpretation of history shall not become the true one.”