WESTERN CIVILIZATION ATTEMPTS SUICIDE (1914-1945)
Each bit of handiwork, each artifact, tool and machine is an expression of man's wish and will. Each transcends nature and is an affirmation that takes its place in the vast storehouse of human culture.
Cities, the building blocks of civilization, not only transcend nature; they replace her. Up to a certain point man lived more or less consciously as a part of nature. Bit by bit and step by step man shifted from the stream, the glade, the tree and the cave to the hut, the village, the city, the nation, the empire, the civilization.
Early in this study I wrote of civilization as an experiment: an aspiration, a creative urge, a concept, a purpose, a unity of thought and act, a conscious sequence of related actions, a construct of multiplying complexity.
These terms, by and large, are constructive and, to a degree, creative. I might have written a parallel series of words associated with destructiviness. In every social situation construction and destruction are Siamese twins. One does not appear without the other. The same forces, the same implements, the same institutions and practices that construct can be used to destroy.
Through ages, men learned how to establish, maintain and perpetuate community and organize society. At every stage of the building process it was necessary to check, to question, to evaluate, unlearn, tear down, make a new start. Pushing up and tearing or wearing down is implicit in nature. It is an essential aspect of human society.
Each human being is a living example of production and destruction. Each generation repeats the affirmation, modifying it little or much in accord with circumstances.
Modification means purposeful change—partially or wholly abandoning the old and replacing it with something new. In the course of these changes the conservative elements in man and in society, voluntarily or under coercion, give up the old and learn how to use the new. The learning process is always more or less painful, especially to people past middle age.
The world-wide revolution resulted from a long-continued related series of affirmations, punctuated and interrupted by contradictions and conflicts.
Trends inherent in the world-wide revolution of 1750-1970 suggest a cycle that reached its high point at the turn of the century and began its downward course around 1900. The chief European empires were jointly and severally involved in the bitter struggle for survival and supremacy from 1870 onward. Until the outbreak of war in 1914, events followed an irregular course marked by the shifting relationships of Italy and the increased pressure from Germany for a showdown. The showdown was the war of 1914-18, continued in a second phase from 1936 to 1945.