Civilization and Beyond: Learning from History

by Scott Nearing

CHAPTER NINE

IDEOLOGIES OF CIVILIZATION

This study was laid out along inductive lines: an examination of the facts with such generalizations as the facts suggest or justify. We began our social analysis of civilization by presenting noteworthy facts concerning the politics, economics, and sociology of various civilizations. In the present chapter we deal with their ideologies.

We are accepting and following the fourth variant definition of "ideology" presented by Webster's New World Dictionary: "The doctrines, opinions or way of thinking of an individual, class, etc." In this case we are reporting on the doctrines, opinions, thought forms and action patterns of entire civilizations.

Our concern is not with the doctrines, opinions and ways of thinking and acting advanced by elite minorities. Such an approach would involve a study of comparative ideologies. Rather we are asking what civilized peoples were trying to do, as measured by their political, economic and sociological activities, programs and purposes.

It may be presumptuous for an individual to generalize about civilizations of which he knows so little. On the other hand, if we recognize the limitations under which all assumptions and generalizations operate it is possible and often helpful to assume and generalize, although the generalizations may be no more than interim reports, subject to later amendment, correction or rejection.

What were the prevailing ideas of civilizations and what ideas were put into practice? What purposes dominated and directed the lives of civilized peoples? How successful have civilized peoples been in achieving their objectives?

At the outset we must realize that in any complex society there are wide ranges of ideology, from the body of ideas held by small uninfluential sects to the purposes, ideas, policy declarations and actions of governing oligarchies. We do not wish to defend or attack the ideas, but to summarize them and understand them in a way that will give a group picture of the purposes, ideas, policies and day-to-day activities of the civilizations in question. For convenience in our discussion we will take up, first, civilized societies as collectives, and then the operation of civilized ideology as expressed in the lives of individuals.

Presumably the most immediate purpose of all civilized peoples has been survival, getting on as a collective or group from day to day, through summer and winter, under normal conditions, and/or in periods of stress and emergency. If the group cannot survive it loses its identity, breaking up into the self-determining parts of which it is composed.

Survival means continued existence as a group—in the face of disruption from within or attack and invasion from without. The group which survives continues to exist and to act as a group that maintains the common defense and promotes the general welfare.

Each social group competing for survival has a sense of its own identity and a belief in its capacity to survive. This ideology is strengthened by the belief that the group has special qualities and is protected by powerful entities that will guarantee its success in the survival struggle. The group considers itself better qualified to survive than neighbor groups. Such ideas, carried to their logical conclusion, make the group in question superior to its neighbors in survival qualities and a people chosen by its gods.

A superior people, chosen by its gods, is in a class by itself. Other people, by comparison, are inferior. It is the destiny of the superior people to take the lands of their inferior neighbors, and, whenever opportunity offers, to defeat the neighbors in battle, capture them and force them to do the bidding of the captors.

Cults of ideological superiority are widespread. Put into successful practice by a victorious tribe, nation or empire, they develop into cults of superiority which assert: "We, the victors, are stronger, better people than our weaker neighbors." As one victory follows another the belief in superiority grows. People in an expanding empire or burgeoning civilization are obviously better survivors than their less successful competitors.

Competitive survival struggle modifies the cultures of both victors and vanquished. The dispersal and adoption of culture traits, supplemented by negotiation and accommodation, broaden the geographical area of the victors, increasing the population and adding to the material resources, the wealth and income of the enlarged group. It may also involve the corresponding decrease of the geographical area, population, wealth and income of the vanquished.

In order to protect itself, preserve itself, to enlarge itself and, where possible, to improve itself, each competing groups aims to set up standards of ideas and conduct to which all living members of the group are presumed to agree and to which they must adhere. When new members enter the group, by birth or adoption, they are duly indoctrinated with the group ideology. Early in their history the individuals and sub-groups composing every civilization adopted such standards and promulgated them by the decree of a leader or by the common consent of associated groups, as the outcome of negotiation, discussion, give and take. During the history of every civilization such agreements were reached and recorded in compacts, treaties, laws, constitutions, specifying the nature and limits of the collective cultural uniformity at which the community aimed.

The struggle for collective uniformity was long and often bitter. Individuals and factions resented and resisted the imposition of group authority. Internal conflict led to civil wars in the course of which the group was divided or the solidarity of the group was reaffirmed despite hardships imposed on disagreeing, divergent minorities.

Closely paralleling the group need for survival and uniformity (solidarity) was the need for group expansion, or extension. In the competitive struggle for survival which played such an important role in the life of pre-civilized communities, strategic geographic location was often decisive. Soil fertility, mineral deposits, timber reserves, access to waterways, location on trade routes all played a part in community survival, stability and growth.

Such geographical advantages are few and far between. Often they are already occupied and defended by stable communities. Their control and utilization are basic in determining the survival or elimination of rivals in the competitive struggle.

Above and beyond the need to occupy the "corner lots" of the planetary land mass was the urge of civilized peoples to advance from littleness to bigness as a goal in itself. Confined by limitations on communication and transportation, pre-civilized man was circumscribed and localized. With the advent of cultivation, land workers were tied to a particular piece of real estate on which they lived and worked. When asked whether the village across the valley was Sunrise Mountain the local peasant could reply: "How should I know? I live here."

Reacting against restricted living and pressed by curiosity and the spirit of adventure, the imaginative and adventurous members of each generation pressed outward from the homeland toward wider horizons. Many traveled. Some migrated. Others pursued the will o' the wisp of expansion by adding field to field. The grass always looked greener on the other side of the mountain. The ambitious expansionist therefore tried to control both sides.

"Move on! Move on!" became the watchword, without any particular emphasis on quality. In one civilization after another bigness (magnitude) was accepted as a symbol of success, because "the more you get and keep, the happier you will be."

Mastery of strategic advantages, plus the illusion of mere bigness, without any specification to quality, became keys to survival and success.

Civilized man exploited natural advantages and augmented his power over nature and society by increasing his wealth and multiplying the population. At the outset of the struggle strategic geographical advantages were occupied and utilized by local groups. Through survival struggle, one of the groups, better organized, better led, more determined and productive, succeeded in securing possession of one strong point after another, until an entire region, like the Nile Valley or the Mediterranean Basin had been conquered and occupied by a single great power. The measure of success in the power struggle is the occupation of strategic strong points. Natural resources, including land and labor power, are among the chief spoils of victory.

Seven basic goals or principles were involved in the building of civilizations: group survival; propitiating the gods; recognizing and following aesthetic principles; achieving and stabilizing property and class relations; expansion (bigness); individual conformity to the collective pattern; and collective uniformity in a united world of human brotherhood. At times and in places the basic propositions were accepted, rejected, fought over. Each civilization which followed them successfully was able to establish itself, maintain itself, and up to a certain point add to its prestige, wealth and power.

The first goal was success in the struggle for survival. Collective uniformity and expansion opened the path to wealth and power, in the city, state, the empire, the civilization. From a multitude of local beginnings the struggle for expansion and consolidation led to ever larger aggregations of land, population, capital and wealth concentrated in the hands of an increasingly rich, powerful oligarchy, protected and defended by a military elite pushing itself ceaselessly toward a position from which it could make and enforce domestic policy and order.

A second collective goal has been propitiating and wooing the unseen forces of the universe: holding their attention; keeping them on "our" side; relying on their influence for defense against enemies, mortal and immortal, and help in providing water in case of drought, fertility, assistance in healing the sick, comfort for the dying, consolation for the bereaved and success in business deals. These multiple aspects of ideology are summed up under the term "religion".

Each civilization has had its religious ideas and ideals, its religious practices and institutions. Many civilizations have divided their attention between civil ideology and religious ideology. In some cases religious ideology took precedence, resulting in a theocratic society under the leadership of religious devotees. In other cases, notably Roman civilization and western civilization, religious ideology was subordinated to secular interests.

In the early stages of western civilization, religious ideology took precedence over secular ideology. With the rise of the bourgeoisie, secular ideology moved into the foreground, making loud religious professions, but also making sure that business-for-profit had the last word in the determination of public policy.

A third collective ideological goal of civilization has been aesthetic; the yen for symmetry and balance; the love of beauty; the desire for harmony; the quest for excellence; the lure of magnificence; the search for truth. Out of these urges have arisen the pictorial and plastic arts, architecture, music, the dance, science, and philosophy, providing outlets, occupations and professions that have colored and shaped many aspects of civilized living.

A fourth collective goal of civilization has been the establishment and maintenance of social structure, including classes and/or caste lines based partly upon tradition, partly on function and partly upon proximity to the honey-pot, the wellspring of wealth, income, prestige and power.

Since the principle of private property has been implicit in every known civilization, the ownership of land, capital and consumer goods and services has been a prerogative of the ruling oligarchies, shared by them with their associates and dependents and used as their chief means of establishing and maintaining the "you work, I eat" principal of economic relationships.

Private property, and its derivative, unearned or property income, has enabled the ruling oligarchies of civilized communities to receive the first fruits of every enterprise. They have also enabled the oligarchs to establish a priority scale of income distribution under which those who held property and its derivatives could have first choice among available consumer goods and services. Second choice went to the associates, retainers and defenders of the oligarchs. Third choice went to the preferred, professional experts who spoke for and represented the oligarchy. Fourth choice went to the artisans—skilled designers, builders, fabricators. What remained went to hewers of wood and drawers of water, the workers, women and men, who provided the necessaries, comforts, luxuries upon which physical survival and social status depended. Generally this proletarian mass, including chattel slaves, serfs, tenant farmers and war captives, were outside the pale of respectability. In a caste-divided community they were scavengers and untouchables, living a life close to that of domestic animals.

Most civilizations have permitted gifted individuals to move vertically, from the bottom toward the top levels of the social pyramid. Vertical movement was severely restricted, however. Generally people lived, served and died on the class or caste level into which they were born.

Members of classes and castes are not free agents. They have privileges and rights. They also have obligations and duties. Classes and castes are functioning parts of an interdependent social whole which can maintain balanced order only so long as each segment recognizes its obligations and performs its duties.

Social balance therefore depended on class collaboration. Successful collaboration, in its turn, is the outcome of a general acceptance of class and caste and general willingness to go on living and functioning in a class divided society.

A fifth collective goal of civilization has been expansion from the nucleus outward, with final authority exercised by and from the nucleus. At the outset of the survival struggle which led to the establishment of one language, one religion, one law, one authority, one loyalty, each among the many contestants had its own language, its own religion, its own law, its own authority.

These rival forces were temporarily confederated against internal disruption or foreign invasion. ("Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable.") In the course of the survival struggle, the separate parts of which the civilization was composed began with the local autonomy permitted by confederation, and ended up with one among the many contestants donning the imperial purple and establishing itself as the master and supreme dictator—the Caesar or Pharoah of the conquered, unified world.

Foreign territories conquered and brought by force of arms within this imperium were subjects of a central authority which they never really accepted. Authority continued to be exercised from the imperial nucleus. The newly conquered territories were policed by professional soldiers whose primary loyalty was national but whose responsibility was to the aggregate composing the Roman or the Egyptian civilization.

The acid test of the expanding civilization was embodied in the degree of acceptance of wholeness as opposed to self-determination. Were the individual members—the provinces and colonies composing the whole—willing and able to sink their differences in an unquestioned wholeness, or were they prepared at the first opportunity to exercise their right to self-determination and declare their independence of the whole?

The resolution of this question constituted the sixth collective goal of civilization: to establish a whole in which the component members were able and willing to recognize the axiom that the interests of the whole come before the interests of any of its component parts.

The issue of central authority versus local self determination has been one of the basic issues of the present century because during the preceding period, the British, French, Dutch and Spanish Empires had been built up by the conquest and occupation of foreign lands. If the nineteenth century was an epoch of expanding imperial authority, the twentieth century has been an epoch of the dismemberment of empires by movements for independence and self-determination.

Seventh, and finally, among the collective goals of civilization, each has developed an ideology that justified empire building by conquest, exploitation, chattel slavery, peonage, wagery, the supremacy of the empire nucleus, the subordination of the periphery to the nucleus and other aspects of ascendancy and mastery including "divine" rights in politics and "natural" rights in economics.

Civilizations expect the individuals and groups of which they are composed to preserve the status quo, work as disciplined members of an effective team and be satisfied with the outcome. This brings us back to the goal with which we began this discussion of the collective goals of civilizations: The primary task of any civilization is to survive.

Each individual human being, living and working in a civilized community occupies a sphere of action, enjoys the advantages and disadvantages and accepts the responsibilities and duties which pertain to his sphere. Within his sphere the individual succeeds or fails in so far as he leads a rewarding personal life and contributes his share toward the collective life of the group to which she or he belongs.

If the individual in a civilized community is to live a good life, the first task is to maintain normal health, good spirits and a determination to get the most out of life and to contribute at least the equivalent of what he receives in service to his group.

As a civilization expands and extends its influence, the individual must contribute his mite to the entire enterprise while adding to his own store of goods and services. Acquisition and accumulation satisfy a human desire to have and to keep. They also add to the wealth and well being of the community on the widely accepted utilitarian formula: happiness comes in direct proportion to the extent and variety of ones possessions.

In most civilized communities the building unit is a family. It is this family unit, usually directed by a male or father figure, who acts for the family and represents it in the community.

In passing, the reader should note that the breakdown in family life now so prevalent in many parts of western civilization is a departure from the civilized norm. It is really a measure of the extent to which western civilization itself is disintegrating.

The revolution in science and technology, mass production and the distribution of goods and services through a mass market have put acquisition and accumulation of goods and services as a life-goal to a severe test. Until the early years of the present century no civilization had provided affluence for more than a small fraction of its population. The vast majority consisted of slaves, serfs, war captives, and tenant farmers. Only an exceptional few were in a position to live in comfort or luxury on unearned income. As each civilization matured, ownership of land and capital diverted the flow of consumer goods and services into the coffers of a diminishing proportion of the total population. The vast majority lived at or below the subsistence level. General affluence was a goal that was talked about and dreamed about, but there was no way to test its practical effects on the population as a whole.

Under conditions presently existing in many parts of the West, millions of individuals and families following the utilitarian principles of acquisition and accumulation have secured and kept an abundance of goods and services in strict accordance with utilitarian principles. Yet they have not been and are not happy.

Quite the contrary, in many cases they are unhappy, particularly in the second and third generations of affluent family life. This is notably true in the United States, Scandinavia, Switzerland and other parts of western Europe. It is true to a lesser degree in New Zealand and Australia.

Millions of families in these countries, with all their possessions, fail to enjoy peace and happiness. On the contrary, they are so acutely unhappy that many of them have come to regard acquisition and accumulation as a sterile rat-race. Consequently multitudes of people, young and old, have turned their backs on civilization, separating themselves from their affluent homes with their glut of consumer goods to live at non-civilized or pre-civilized levels. These individuals are avowedly anti-civilization in so far as its material incentives are concerned.

Similar attitudes were expressed in previous civilizations. Socrates went barefoot through the streets of Athens. Diogenes lived in a tub. Uncounted numbers of Indian holy men and early Christians rejected all affluence, embraced poverty, lived simply and austerely. Religious asceticism is no novelty. But the wholesale rejection of acquisition and accumulation as a way of life certainly marks a turning point in the popular attitude toward the utilitarian axiom that human happiness is directly proportioned to the quantity and variety of material possessions.

Civilization presupposes getting, keeping and exercising power over nature, society and man. Each civilization has added to man's utilization of nature. This has been a notorious aspect of western civilization since the inauguration of the scientific-technological revolution. After a century of intensified exploitation of the natural environment, entire communities are reacting with dismay and disgust against the resulting pollution of air, water and land, the wanton waste of soil fertility, forests and minerals, and extermination of various forms of "wilderness." Freedom to exploit nature's storehouse has not brought happiness. On the contrary, it threatens the existence of other life forms and even the continuance of human life on the planet.

Private enterprise and other forms of permissiveness have led to practices that circumscribe and hamper life. Their declared objective is the liberation and enlargement of human life and well being. Where they have been tested out they have proved themselves to be obstructive and destructive rather than creative and constructive.

Notable advances in science and technology have greatly increased the human capacity to transform nature and remake society. Designed and executed as a means of enhancing the general welfare, science and technology might have promoted human well-being. But employed as a means of exploiting nature and society for the benefit of a favored few, science and technology, whether directed by European and American promoters of the African slave trade, Spanish conquerors in Latin America, by Belgians in the African Congo, by European whites in their dealings with the North American Indians, by the Nazis in Europe, or by Americans in South East Asia, have involved merciless exploitation accompanied by revolting atrocities.

Never in recorded history was the capacity of man to modify nature and exploit society more publicly tested out than in the atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the purposeful devastation of jungle life and village life in large parts of Vietnam and Cambodia. Reported in the public press and pictured, live, over radio and television, these latest developments in the ugly record of man's exploitation of nature have become part of the record of the decline and dissolution of western civilization.

Exploitation of human society for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many is an old story that extends through the entire record of written history. Every civilization has produced a cluster of institutions and practices that enabled a few rich and privileged to live in affluence at the expense of the impoverished many. This juxtaposition of riches and poverty is the logical outcome of a system of social relations designed to provide the few with comfort and luxury while the many are forced to accept penury and hardship. Exploitation, carried to its logical conclusion, permits and requires a parasitic minority to live in abundance while the majority must content itself with scarcity, extending to death from malnutrition.

Another goal presented to individuals by the promoters and fashioners of civilization is individual perfection, physical, mental, emotional, moral. Every generation of human beings contains individuals who are beyond the average—bigger, stronger, more talented, seeing farther, searching more deeply, endowed with greater sensitivity, working more conscientiously, imbued with a love of their fellows and determination to serve them. Such individuals have genius in one or another form and offer themselves and their products as a gift to the general welfare of their generation. Scientists, poets, musicians, inventors, artists, teachers, healers, philosophers, statesmen have appeared in each civilization adding their mite to the sum-total of community culture.

Innovators, moralists and counselors of perfection have played a noteworthy part by advocating and often by living noteworthy lives. Reports of their sayings and doings are part of the folklore and the history of each civilization. If they did not set the tone of their generation, they provided it with a model toward which their less talented, less creative fellows might aspire. If they were creative artists their works provided models which were admired, copied and emulated by their successors. If they were moralists or philosophers their sayings were recorded, respected and repeated by successive generations.

Each civilization has adopted lines of thinking and codes of action which embody the best and most advantageous in theory and in practice. These codes of thought, feeling and action are attributed to some outstanding individual and passed on from generation to generation as codes of conduct to which all right-thinking individuals may or should aspire.

Human beings know everything about themselves except whence they came, what they should do and whither they will go. To compensate for this lack of knowledge and wisdom each civilization has established and maintained religious organizations and institutions whose duty it was to search out the truth, record it and teach it to successive generations.

In some civilizations the religious institutions have dominated the secular. At other times and in other places the secular has maintained its ascendancy over the religious. In still other cases the religious and the secular forces have maintained an uneasy balance leading to acrimonious bickering and sometimes to civil war.

Central to their discussions is the nature of life. Is it continuous, as it appears in vegetation and the animal kingdom, or is it discontinuous like the rocks on the mountainside or the grains of sand on the seashore? Those who live for the moment prefer discontinuity. Those who observe their natural environment are forced to the conclusion that life today is part of a sequence or progression which relates the life of yesterday to that of tomorrow.

Recorded history, from fossil and geological remains, to the books on library shelves assures us that man has had a past. Projecting this experience, it seems quite reasonable that barring accident or a purposed intervention, man will have at least some future. To prepare for that future, using the knowledge and wisdom at our disposal, seems to be a must for any reasoning creature.

Even for the short planetary life-span of the average human, the logic of this position seems inescapable, whether it applies to the next hour, day, year, or century. In terms of our children and grandchildren it is even more impressive. Today we find it desirable to live as well as possible. If there is any future, the same principle should apply to its implementation and utilization.

If the "hereafter" begins tomorrow and if those whose well-being concerns us will probably be "alive" tomorrow, the science and art of the future (futurology) takes its place beside other fields of theory and practice as a must for all responsible members of the human race.

If the conditions presently existing in human society affordment, skills and technical experience necessary to make significant changes, why wait? Why not proceed forthwith to live a better life?

This dilemma has confronted individuals and sub-groups in various civilizations. It has been particularly in evidence during periods of decline and social disintegration. It has led people of both sexes and all ages to uproot themselves from the old social order and reestablish themselves in a social order "nearer to the heart's desire."

Such efforts have been described as "intentional communities" to distinguish them from a traditional, currently existing social order which emerged from the past encumbered with vestigial remains and obsolete institutions and practices having little or no relation to the needs and wants of a changing world.

Pilgrim Fathers in New England, William Penn in Pennsylvania, Lord
Baltimore in Maryland aimed to organize local intentional communities.
Similar efforts were made by the Mennonites, the Dukhobors, the
Hutterites, the Mormons in North America. The Christians during the
decline of Roman civilization led a movement to convert a large
geographical area to a new and better way of life. Followers of
Mohammed, several centuries later, made a similar effort to convert the
Eurasian-African world to their ways of thinking and acting.

Young people by the thousands, in the United States and other western countries, are turning their backs on western civilization and are organizing enlarged families and communes that provide their members with a modified social order which aims at improvements here and now.

Necessarily such social experiments are looked upon with suspicion by the Establishment. They are "new", "different", "subversive", "godless", "wicked." Hence, they are criticized, denounced, raided and often broken up as threats to existing law and order.

Intentional communities may grow out of consumers' cooperation. They may begin as farm collectives. Generally, however, they consist of the followers of outstanding leaders of religious or ethical sects. Many intentional communes spring up, mushroom-fashion, and disappear with equal rapidity. Others endure for generations and centuries.

In a very real sense they are pilot plants designed to correct individual or social maladjustments and substitute new ways for old ones. As pilot plants they experiment with deviations from existing social norms, acting as a social laboratory in which new ideas and practices are tested, modified, accepted, rejected.

Change is one of the essential aspects of every society. There are changes in personnel. In each generation individuals grow old and retire. Others grow up and take over the tasks of organizing the communities in which they live. Profound social changes result from discoveries and inventions: the wheel, the arch, steam and gas engines, electricity, atomic power. Cyclic changes occur in the economy. Social changes follow alterations in the weather. Nations, empires, civilizations are produced by the changing life forms.

During long periods, social changes are so gradual that they are unnoticed save by the more sensitive and perceptive. At other times, social changes tumble over one another in an overwhelming revolutionary flood which sweeps away the old, yielding place to new, "lest one good custom should corrupt the world".

Changes in society beget changes in ideology. Reciprocally, changes in ideology lead to changes in social structure and function. The more rigid the social order, the more stubborn its resistance to change. By the same token, more fluid societies lend themselves more readily to changes in practice and in theory.

It is not possible to discuss ideology without some reference to the closely related problems of means and ends. As we consider our existing social establishment, in the light of unceasing social change, we must deal with goals or objectives, with practicable modifications of social form and function and with the way in which changes can be, might be, will be brought about.

One fact is obvious. Whether social change is major or minor, local or general, it shifts the social balance. Any shift in the social balance involves reactionaries, conservatives, liberals, radicals, some of whom will gain, while others will lose in the course of each social transformation. All will be concerned and involved.

Since political change involves some alteration in the balance of social forces, it behooves those who advocate and those who oppose social change to maximize acceptance and minimize opposition in order to take advantage of the gains and cut down the losses incident to all change.

For present purposes we wish to make seven notes about means and ends.

1. Opportunists propose to act now and win what they can today. Never mind about tomorrow with its sequences and consequences of today's action. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.

2. Pragmatists believe in serving their own interests, on the theory that whatever serves personal interests must have first priority. "What is good for me/us is good for the universe".

3. Experimentalists are prepared to try out any suggestion which promises to achieve the desired goals. Singly and in working teams they test and try out, seeking the most effective means of reaching desired ends.

4. Innovators formulate projects and test out results, checking and rechecking as they search for more effective means of achieving results.

5. Radicals seek out the roots, digging, sifting, classifying, assembling their findings, announcing their conclusions and working to apply them in theory and practice to the structure and function of their communities.

6. Revolutionists are in a hurry. Disillusioned with the past and the present they seek by "direct action" to create a new social order, out of whole cloth, quickly, here and now. Never mind the means, get results!

7. Totalists have the whole truth, attained through reasoning, experimentation, revelation. Having learned the truth, they dedicate their energies to the propagation of the faith. Where they encounter opposition they counter it and, if necessary, annihilate it with its originators and advocates.

As a matter of practical experience, proponents of all seven approaches to social problems and social change employ a wide range of techniques from persuasion to coercion. To support their projects they advance logical arguments, elaborate half-truths, make emotional appeal; employ trickery, deceit, preferment, privilege, flattery, soft living, bribery, coercion, physical and social violence—individual and collective extermination.

Civilization as reported in history and in its current practice is based on five faulty ideological assumptions:

1. Competitive survival struggle results in social improvement. Survival struggle has certainly played a role in stimulating discovery, invention and the diffusion of culture traits. Its end results have always included civil and inter-group war with its unavoidable costs in destruction, dissolution and death.

2. The effort to grab and keep, with its accompanying competition, is a chief source of social progress. The game of grab and keep is play for children. Mature human beings should strive to create, produce, share.

3. The accumulation of goods and services brings happiness. At the out-set of life this may be true. But accumulation for its own sake produces the miser. Misers are not happy people. Riches yield happiness only as they are distributed. Accumulation brings many headaches, and few abiding satisfactions.

4. Successful accumulators "have fun." Perhaps they do, for a time, at the expense of others on whose backs they ride and whose life blood they suck. But mature men and women do not "have fun"; they shoulder and carry their share of social responsibility.

5. Progress can be measured by the multitude of personal possessions. Not so. True progress for humanity consists in movement from having to doing; from the possessive to the creative; from the material toward the spiritual.

Ideologies have played a role in determining the structure and function of every civilization. As civilization grows up, matures, and declines, ideologies change with the changing times. In its early history each civilization seeks acceptance for its picture of reality and its techniques for reaching individual and social goals. As each civilization declines and disintegrates, a multitude of counselors clamors for attention to a particular formula that will prove acceptable and workable in the existing emergent circumstances.

Part III

Civilization Is Becoming Obsolete