A Theory Of Civilization

“For ignorance provides the happiest life” – Sophocles

There are three types of humans to be found in our present world. Which type you are depends on what you believe about how the world works.

Adversaries believe there is not enough for everyone and only the physically strong will survive. They believe humans are coercively dependent on others, and they best understand the language of force.

Neutralists believe there is enough for everyone, if only you work hard enough and take care of yourself. They believe humans are financially independent and should be self-sufficient unless they are too lazy or defective. They best understand the language of money.

A new type of human is emerging called synergists. Synergists believe there is enough for everyone but only if we work together and act responsibly. They believe humans are interdependent and can only obtain sufficiency by working together as community. Synergists best understand the language of love.

But, to be successful in our present world, the synergist must understand all three languages and know when to use them. Synergists must sometimes use the language of force, and sometimes the language of money, it depends on whom they are talking to. However, when synergists are seeking allies – when synergists are seeking to build community – they must speak the language of love.

Synergists are trying to heal the wounds inflicted by those who don’t understand how the world could work. This then is the essential challenge to the Synergists. Can we work together and act responsibly in time to save our ourselves on this planet?

Philip Atkinson

This work is a theory of civilization; an attempt to explain what it is, why it occurs, and why it rises and falls; an achievement that has previously been beyond our species ability. Using short words and simple arguments a suggestion is advanced that appears to make the whole matter so clear that any one can understand what it is, why it is so important, and why is goes wrong. A feat that seems to significantly improve our understanding both of humanity and our private selves.

Pursuing truth carries the risk that revelations will not be pleasant, which seems to be the case here, for there is little to gladden the heart offered by this tome. There is no joy in discovering the source of disconcerting social changes could well be a fatal incurable disease that condemns the whole of society. Despair is the over-riding feeling that accompanies the belief that humanity is sinking into a new dark age. The theory offers some small relief by explaining why events are unfolding, and hope that civilization can rise again, cleverer and stronger, but this is little compensation to offset its grim prediction of our future. Nevertheless the author is convinced that it is better to try to understand our fate, regardless of its awful implications, so we can direct our energies into useful rather than useless causes; and above all, it helps us distinguish between good and bad, and right and wrong.

PREMISE

  • Understanding is the invoking by reason of a set of values (a morality) to recognise right from wrong , good from bad.
    • It cannot take place until a set of values have been adopted.
    • And once adopted all understanding must reflect these values. For every time the individual attempts to grasp the meaning of what has been observed it is by invoking their founding values. A process which is similar to the use of a lever which always requires a fulcrum. The lever is reason and the fulcrum is values. The lever cannot be employed without the fulcrum. Which in turn means that once a human understanding is formed ( at the age of reason – seven years of age) , it is for the life of that individual. And reason can never be used to change values because the process of reason automatically invokes the values of infancy.
  • The most crucial human value is the one formed first in infancy, which is the decision to be selfish or not. If the child is not taught to realise that there is something more important than their own private demands, they become selfish. But if they are taught there is something more important than themselves they become unselfish.
    • Once this value has become resolved it becomes the parent of all other values and it is for life.
  • A crucial difference between the states of selfishness and unselfishness is the nature of their understanding.
    • The selfish are ruled by the tyranny of their emotions which vary their understanding. Good is what is good for them, which of course changes with circumstances. If a murder realises private profit it is good, it uncovers a threat to their survival, it is bad. But they cannot form the understanding that something has a value independent of their own interests , which undermines their understanding of the world. The selfish cannot form a clear and constant understanding.
    • The unselfish are ruled by a fixed set of values which is more important than themselves and therefore independent of their feelings. This moral code allows them to resist the tyranny of their emotions and form a stable understanding of the world.
  • The condition of selfish or unselfishness of a citizen is decided by the experiences of infancy, which is when the foundations of understanding (morality) are established.
  • Language is the foundation of understanding.

  • THE THEORY:

    1. A civilization is the tangible creations of a single community.
    2. A group of people become a community when they share the same morality, which in turn allows them to develop a collective intelligence, which reveals itself through a single shared language.
    3. The collective, or communal, intelligence of the community is superior to the individual intelligence because it is more than the sum of its citizens’ efforts .
    4. The character of a community is that induced by the founding morality of its understanding .
    5. The wisdom of a community is the accumulated experience of its understanding .
    6. A community reinforces itself by recording its wisdom through
      • Tradition
      • Custom
      • Manners
      • Laws
    7. A community recreates itself by each successive generation being imbued by the previous generation with the founding set of values clarified by wisdom.
    8. A community exists in one of two modes; it is either waxing or waning.
    9. The mode of a community is a result of the majority mode of their citizens, who themselves exist in one of two separate modes. A citizen is either
      1. unselfish and prepared to sacrifice private interest for the common good.
      2. selfish and prepared to sacrifice the common good for private interest.
    10. The community waxes when the majority are unselfish, it wanes when the majority are selfish.
    11. The majority persecute the minority mode. The majority will always treat the minority as outcasts, forcing them to become isolated and alienated. In the vital mode the immoral win social stigma, in the dissolute mode the moral are viewed as simpletons.
    12. A community fails when its citizens no longer imbue the founding morality into their off-spring (see the law of reverse civilization). This is because the majority of parents are either
      1. Selfish and so:
        • Have no fixed morality, so cannot imbue the traditional morality of the community, so any offspring who are not taught to be selfish have an unpredictable set of values
        • Find it difficult to resist the biological urge to indulge their own off-spring, which is teaching them to be selfish, and so creates more citizens like themselves.
      2. Unselfish but lacking the founding morality of the community because of a failure in their upbringing.
    13. When A Community Fails it enters into an irreversible decline where:
      1. It Becomes Progressively Sillier And Weaker though officially there is no change. Under the inevitable influence of selfish citizens who can only impoverish and confuse, the inadequate are promoted while the most capable are alienated. Governments misgovern, the courts promote injustice, schools foster delusion and the bureaucracy becomes a giant parasite impoverishing the community. The paradise fashioned by intellect becomes a hell inspired by delusion, because lies replace truth.
      2. An Explosion Of Legislation Marks The Change because the order won by morality is lost so the dissolving society attempts to halt the collapse with legislation. An imbued sense of morality is what restrains citizens’ immediate physical desires, allowing public harmony and cooperation; this is the essential cement of any group. Once it is discarded by the self-seekers so does order, and anarchy prevails; the trickle of social disruption unleashed by abandoning traditional morality grows into a torrent that eventually undermines all social order.
      3. The Bureaucracy Becomes A Tyranny Imposing a set of arbitrary rules by force is tyranny, which is the inevitable position of government in the face of growing anarchy resulting from the discarding of morality. And the situation is made much worse by laws framed by delusion, and the self-serving nature of the administration.
    14. A group of communities cannot create a collective intelligence because they do not share the same basic morality, which makes their separate understandings irreconcilable. So one community will dominate the others.
    15. Once a community declines it is only a matter of time before it becomes to feeble to resist the demands of other communities who will overrun and extinguish the dissolving community.

    Go to Philip Atkinson’s website