humanizing civilization

Civilization inspires a lot of ambivalence. Some even believe that we would be far better off without it. Others just believe it is a necessary evil. It supposedly prevents us from the ideal, which is to live in a natural state; however, what that natural state would be is usually not especially informed by actual evidence from anthropology and evolutionary biology. 

What we call civilization was made possible by the Agricultural Revolution, which is thought to have occurred about 12,000 years ago. While that seems like a long time ago, it is not long enough ago for what has happened since then to have had much influence on human evolution. During the vast majority of the time between the emergence of the human species and now, our ancestors lived in hunter-gatherer bands, so having some understanding of what life was likely to have been like for those ancestors from whom we inherited our genetic predispositions would provide the insights into what our natural state might be. 

Evidence about hunter-gatherers past and present demonstrates that even before anything that would be considered civilization, human life was not what seventeenth century philosopher Thomas Hobbes called “a war of all against all”. The hunter-gatherer lifestyle is far from ruthlessly individualistic. The very survival of hunter-gatherers depends on cooperating with each other. They might be suspicious of and even hostile toward outsiders, but they are deeply bonded with and intensely loyal toward members of their own tight-knit group. And while they might be “uncivilized”, they aren’t without culture. 

Our natural state is to be participants in a culture that fosters caring, generosity, and cooperation. The basic idea of being civilized ought to be to enlarge the group with whom we are caring, generous, and cooperative. The stakes are much higher. War is no longer fought with bows and arrows against the neighboring tribe. We’ve now had two “world wars”, and the next world war would likely mean the end of human civilization as we know it. Nonetheless, we can’t go back to some mythical natural state. Our best option is become more civilized. That is the only path to the recovery of humanity.