What has “Civilization” given us?

Rome thought it was it’s prerogative to “civilize” the world. They did it through force, the threat of force, and materialism. They lived the “Good Life” of comfort, ease and pleasure, very tempting to those that live a rugged and hard life on the fringes of “civilization”. When Rome came to Briton many of the tribal leaders lead their people into wealth, comfort, ease, and pleasure by allying with Rome. Others saw the crushing truth of Roman military superiority and knew they must ally with Rome for survival’s sake. Others saw the materialistic way of life for what it was….destructive. Boudica led a famous revolt, and is quoted as to say something to the effect that “We should not trade our freedom for riches”. She fought and later died in the attempt to preserve her tribes culture and life, preserve it from the destructive ways of this so called “civilization”.

Rome emerged as one of the great city states of the early “civilized” world. Humans had been organizing themselves into larger and larger groups since the onset of farming. Previous to farming, humans lived mostly on the move in small bands and family units. Farming enabled humans to stay relatively in one place, to settle, work the land, grow the crops, form larger communities. With the onset of farming at last came “civilization”. People worked together on a common goal, food production. As time went on and farming techniques and technology advanced, hierarchies emerged. People began subjugating those they thought were “lesser” or weaker, slavery became normalized. Cities emerged, then States, then Empires.

Those city states and Empires sought to subjugate all of those that live on the fringes, away from the cities, the “folk”. Those from the cities sought to impose their “superior ways” on the “barbarians”, not much different than today really. The elite city dwellers of today with their “higher education” and “civilized conduct” seek to impose their will on those that live in smaller more rural areas. It has always come from a sense of superiority, the result is always colonization and subjugation at least to a degree. Freedom and culture is always compromised if not lost entirely.

Ancient hunter gatherer societies focused on spirituality more and materialism less. They didn’t have much or need much, and they were happy. How could I know this? True, I do presume here some, but there has been a decent amount written by modern anthropologists that live with and study hunter gatherer societies still in existence. In general they seem to conclude that the people of those tribes are way happier than us “civilized people”, work less hours per day, and spend way more time at fun and games with family and friends. They are truly free and free spirits. There lives revolve around the natural world, plants, animals, people. They practice animism and have respect for all life.

Our “civilized” lives in contrast, we are experiencing a mental health pandemic of epic proportions, families separate and move far away from each other, loneliness is also at pandemic levels. We work like dogs just to barely get by paying the rent, in a system fully designed to keep us in our place, toiling away for the elites that have created a global economic system, through our technology and wealth, that mandates we continue as cogs in their machine, their Empire. We are expected to spend our childhoods sitting still, being bored to death, being “educated”, then we are supposed to in-debt ourselves to the rich elites and go to College, so we can “get a good job” toiling and laboring away for too many hours just so we can afford a place to sleep (and if we are lucky enjoy a little down time) when we are not working making them richer. Families separate and live far from each other in order to find “good jobs”, losing the sense of being a “people”, losing culture, losing our roots. Modern life is almost straight up indentured servitude in the Western “civilization”.

So what, really, has “civilization” given us? We have an abundance of comfort, ease, food, pleasure, a false sense of security, all of which has weakened us. It’s given us a major deficit of love, culture, family, a sense of who we are and where we come from. We’ve lost the wild parts of ourselves, the joy and passion and zeal for life. We’ve lost so much freedom, lost an ancient way of life connecting us with our ancestors, lost our sense of who we are collectively and individually. We have lost almost all sense of true spirituality as we've embraced materialism and pursue comfort and pleasure.

We’ve lost our very souls.

I feel our only chance to get it back is to pursue spirituality not materialism, to get back to the land, back to the fringes, back to nature and living in balance with nature. Away from ruinous technology, away from “the rat race”, away from this so called “civilization” of oppression and colonization. It starts with each of us individually, de-colonizing ourselves, focusing on our spirituality, and doing the work to find balance within ourselves. Then coming together to help each other and the world.