Civilization
One would like to believe that civilization advances, ever
upwards and onwards. Unfortunately there is a counter-trend visible.
Genghis Khan's Mongols, a backwards pastoral people devoted to
horse-breeding whose only technological boast was the stirrup,
rolled over China and other advanced civilizations, whose school
primers they could never have understood, leaving pyramidal piles of
skulls to show where they had been. The Comanches, savages, who
barely even practiced agriculture, displaced far more advanced
Indian tribes, taking over the American plains. The Goths, the Huns and the
Vandals, warrior tribesmen, dismembered the mighty Roman empire.
Need I go on? This happens all the time, often bringing on a dark
age as the triumphant savages cannot consolidate their gains or
install any governing system remotely comparable to the one they
destroyed.
Why does this keep happening? Why is civilization not a one-way
street, a ratcheting process which relentlessly advances, and holds
the terrain it has conquered? Partly it seems that improvements in
societal ethics cannot sustain themselves against invading barbarian warrior
tribes. War is barbarism:
"'Live and let live,' writes a clear-headed Austrian
officer, 'is no device for an army. Contempt for one's own comrades,
for the troops of the enemy, and, above all, fierce contempt for
one's own person, are what war demands of every one. Far better is
it for an army to be too savage, too cruel, too barbarous, than to
possess too much sentimentality and human reasonableness.'"
(Quoted in William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures XIV
and XV, Kindle location 5029).
It is said that, 'the race is not always to the swift, nor the
fight to the strong, but that's the way to bet.' This is generally
speaking true; no army would forego advanced technology, even
realizing that backwardness can triumph. The French brought more
fire power into the field than did the Viet Minh, but the French
left; Mohammed ibn Abdallah's Arabian tribesmen were uncivilized
savages compared to the Byzantines, but they marched all the way to
the Atlantic. Idealistic young men of Basil and John Chrysostom's
acquaintance wanted to be monks, not warriors. And that was OK, or
so it was thought, because you can hire soldiers; the war-like Goths
are eager to fight. Except when it is their brother Goths who stand
at the empire's gates; then they lay down their arms and embrace
their relatives.
In the present situation, we see semi-civilized peoples from the Middle
East who show no comprehension of why civilians are exempted from harm in war by the Geneva Convention, and so
attain a tactical advantage. One can hope they do
not end up triumphing simply because they are barbarians. If that is
the way it goes, then there can be no progress in civilization. Beating
them at their own game, racing them to the bottom, is the way to see
them prevail, not fail; if we, too, become uncivilized, then who
will carry the torch for civilization?
Does non-violence work? Is it ever possible to achieve justice
and social change through persuasion rather than at the point of the
sword? Abimael Guzman, the leading luminary of Peru's brutal Shining
Path guerrillas, thought not:
"There are people who are sick and tired of rotten revisionism who, in such difficult conditions, within the belly of imperialism where the struggle is complex and difficult, are taking up arms to change the world, which is the only way it can be done."
(Abimael Guzman, El Diario Interview, at
lesmaterialists.com).
Notice that this atheist visionary believes that "taking up
arms" is the only way "to change the world." Let's take a case
in point. Jesus of Nazareth and his near-contemporaries, the
Zealots, both had concerns about social justice in the Roman
world. The Zealots took up arms and brought disaster to their
compatriots. Jesus, within several centuries of His death on the
cross, was acclaimed as Lord by the same people who had killed
Him, the Romans. When people take up arms, they do indeed
succeed in changing the world, but often in ways they never
anticipated and would not want. When the English took up the
challenge of beating back Hitler's aggression, did they realize
the net result of World War II would be the loss of their
empire? War does that, certainly it brings change, but what the
change will be is a roll of the dice. And after the Roman empire
embraced Christianity, there did not come the beneficial social
changes that might have been expected, at least not immediately.
Still, one must in the end admit, non-violence will bring no
change if it is never even tried. What is certain is that violence
doesn't work; refusing to forgive your enemies does not work: "It
[America] rejected the temptation to punish its opponents as the
Europeans had done at Versailles, recognizing the wisdom of Herbert
Hoover's advice to Harry Truman in 1946 that 'you can have
vengeance, or peace, but you can't have both.'"
(Capitalism in American, Alan Greenspan, Adrian Wooldridge, pp.
277-278).
The sect of the Quakers came early to the American debates about
slavery. Most of their arguments against slavery were similar to
those used by others, but one was distinctive. The Quakers were
pacifists. As Benjamin Lay pointed out, there is no slavery
without war: "He also argued that the slave trade utterly violated
the peace principle so central to Quaker identity: 'We pretend not
to love fighting with carnal Weapons, nor to carry Swords by
our sides, but carry a worse thing in the Heart.' In Benjamin's view
there was no 'greater Hypocrisy, and plainer contradiction, than for
us as a People, to refuse to bear Arms, or to pay them that do, and
yet purchase the Plunder, the Captives, for Slaves at a very great
Price, thereby justifying their selling of them, and the War, by
which they were or are obtained.'" (The Fearless
Benjamin Lay, Marcus Rediker, p. 83). What saith the
scriptures about slavery?:
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