Is the Human Civilization Actually Developing ?

There seems to be so much emphasis on development today that hardly anybody seems to be interested in objectively asking as to whether what we are witnessing in our age is actually in the overall interest of human civilization. Long back, Rousseau cautioned against the tendency of equating pursuit of luxury with advancement. May be it is time we heed his words once again. 

“Our greatest evils flow from ourselves”, these words of Rousseau remind us of one of the most important threats that we face all the time. It is the threat from our own selves. It is a threat that can arise from our own misconceptions about what is good for us and what is not.

Rousseau is not the only one cautioning us against the side effects of luxury on human psyche, capacity and character. In fact, one look at the industry of human fantasies, called Hollywood, will make you aware that a hero is always borne out of crisis and challenges. It is difficult to think of a movie where in the main protagonist lived a life of luxury and abundance without any problems from the beginning to the end of the movie. It is an irony that human beings strive for luxury and fantasize about adversity that would give them an opportunity to prove their worth.

Early Civilization & Evolution of Human Values

When a civilization begins to take root, survival is the primary objective. At such primitive stages of social evolution, human values are primarily geared towards ensuring survival. In a tribe of humans, which is facing all kind of threats from all sides, there is very little scope for tolerating a person who cannot be trusted. A person whom other members of the tribe do not believe and trust will soon be abandoned, and without the social support and protection of the society, a human being is as good as a lame duck in the vast expanse of nature. Thus the human values of truthfulness, honesty, fairness, sacrifice and compassion - the basic tenets of morality, are essential for survival of the group, and any deviation from these values is unlikely to be tolerated by the group as a whole.

Once the civilization takes roots and expands, it grows both in size and complexity. It establishes means and methods of its security and its survival is not under the kind of threat as faced during the initial phases of civilization. As people are free to pursue higher learning, there is development of science and technology, as well as arts, with which the civilization is able to meet most of the challenges posed before it by nature.

As a civilization continues to grow further, individuals who are a part of it have greater resources to experiment and indulge in adventure. Security and safety combined with advances in science and medicine lead to population explosions. In time, with development of urban societies, there are just too many people around, and gradually it becomes a state where everyone is practically anonymous. This has important implications for social values. An anonymous individual in a sea of humanity is threatened not by nature but only by fellow human beings, with whom he is faced to compete on a constant basis for her survival. This struggle for survival leads to a premium for individualism. As everything becomes highly individualistic, arts and sciences provide luxury, which becomes a status symbol - a symbol of strength and importance in the society.

In a highly developed society, individuals strive for luxury, which is valued much more than the social values or morality that have enabled the society to reach this far. The interactions of modern society demand its own new norms. In a modern industrialized society, interactions between individuals are usually governed by the parameters of modern social institutions, like market, firm and government. Often they are limited or focused upon financial transactions, which are highly impersonal in nature. Once such impersonal interactions become the norm, everything becomes a commodity priced in the market, and anything that cannot be traded there loses its value. In an impersonal world, projections and images matter more than the reality. A person's value and importance is often judged by the wealth that he owns, and the mad scramble for wealth and show-pieces overshadows whatever significance might be left attached to things like values, ethics and morality.

Advancement of Civilization Leads to Moral Decline

Rousseau suggests that advance of civilization leads to moral decline. While our concept of morality remains enshrined in the values that protect the civilization as a whole, in advanced civilizations, there is just too much competition between individuals to allow room for concern about the society as a whole. At the same time, the threat perceived for the society as a whole is too little to make people concerned. The need for tools that can urgently create wealth and bring individualistic recognition totally overtakes the need for values that ensure social cohesion and its long term welfare.

The implication that flows from the concepts advocated by Rousseau is that morality which lies at the root of every civilisation is finally a casualty resulting from its advancement. In other words, at a particular stage of evolution, advancement of civilization begins to lead to its own decay which may even lead to the final destruction of the civilization. No surprise then that the rise of every civilization is followed by its fall.

Is Modern Human Civilization also Going the Same Way

If there is a question that we must be asking ourselves at this stage, it is whether we are also falling into the same decline that can only end up in our own decay and destruction. Today, we have a very large number of people, and expectation of an ever rising life. We have the scientific tools and have made great advancements in technology as well as in arts. So can we just pat ourselves on our back and be happy or do we need to be cautious about the decay that might be setting in within ourselves.

I will point at just three areas that we need to be conscious about for our long term welfare, though there could be more areas of concern. First is the family. Human existence, survival and society has revolved around the concept of family, which has always been much more than just a living together of two persons of opposite sex. Today, the modern family is only a shadow of what it used to be, and is far away from the selfless commitment and dedication that marked its existence throughout our evolution and history. Perhaps we need to look at where we are heading. Families are far from permanent today. Populations in developing countries are both shrinking and ageing as we move forward, and Governments have to shell out subsidies for encouraging people to have children. Developing countries are not in the same league as yet, but they are already striving hard to follow suit and will also be there soon, if the current trends continue.

The second factor that we need to be cautious about is our interaction with nature, and its impact on the environment around us. We are already consuming more clean air than the nature can regenerate, and the ensuing effects of global warming and climate change are leading to severe climatic instability. If this goes on, it can severely impact our welfare, and if there is any accuracy in the reports that are making the rounds, even our existence may be at stake.

The third threat that we must guard against is perhaps the most serious one. In the age of globalization, where our fortunes have become very closely interlinked, we are still far away from developing any identity that represents the humanity as a whole. The globalized human civilization is still divided in all possible ways, as countries, communities, races and linguistic groups. That we were always divided like that is also true, but then never before we had the tools with which we could destroy each other so easily. 

Our scientific advancement and our knowledge may have already become the greatest threat to our existence, and unless we are able to do something about it, we may remain in a constant state of threat .... till we last!