The Thin Veneer of Civilization

Cross posted at Gadfly's Muse

With family still unaccounted for in Mississippi, blogging hasn't been high on my list for the last few days, but the images and stories coming out of my beloved South have affected me deeply. 

I grew up in a "community".  I am not certain how many people can truly say that anymore.  I suppose most of us are dying out as the baby-boomer generation passes into the initial stages of gentrification and approaching senility.  But  to my thinking "community" is pretty much synonymous with "civilization" and pretty much antithetical to "barbarianism."  In "community" it is not so much the legal codes which regulate human behavior, but the social mores (from Wikpedia - strongly held norms or customs ...  the established practices of society rather than its written laws ).  In "community" there is a sense of place and worth which is, in part, communally derived.  It matters what our neighbors think of us and whether or not that esteem or disapproval is justified.  In community the social bond helps sustain and elevate noble impulses and restrain those which demean and degrade us.

When "community" is lost, often all that remains to aid in the regulation of human behavior, is coercive force.  By its very nature coercive regulation is inefficient and often counter-productive.  The old saying about "absolute power corrupts absolutely" establishes the general point.  Coercive force requires a network of intelligence gathering, bureaucratic judgments, counterpoised checks and balances and a host of other measures which all constitute "overhead" inefficiencies.  But the major problem with coercive regulation of human behavior is that it rests upon a basic principle.  It must be feared.  When the fear of coercive regulation is lost the very inefficiency of its power will mitigate against its  restraint.  The natural tendency will be to re-establish its basis through terror.  When this tendency is fulfilled, the result is totalitarianism and barbarity.

Thus "community" is an essential component, in my thinking, of civilization and by corollary, of freedom.

What a heart-ache it is to see the instantiation of these ideas in the break down of human restraint in the looting and lawlessness that is characterizing much of what is happening in New Orleans and other locations down South as a result of Katrina.  The New York Times  today  reported the terror of gangs and rapes inside the New Orlean's Superdome.  We have videos of leering  youths and adults making off with such essential  survival items as televisions and jewelry.  Reports are coming through of armed bands, equipped with stolen weapons taking pot shots at police and robbing and raping their fellow survivors. 

Why is this going on?  Because the threat of effective coercive force as a counter to these behaviors has been removed.  The thin veneer of civilization that characterized large sub-elements of society in the ghetto-ized urban environment was blown away by Katrina just as effectively as she blew away the dikes which restrained the waters of Lake Pontchatrain.

The sobering reality  of the images on our TV and the pictures in our papers ought to awaken us to how tenuous is our national condition.  New Orleans is no different than just about any other big city, and, anyway,  the urban pressure-cooker environment only makes extreme a condition which is prevalent throughout the entire social construct of our country.  The trend toward "hyper-individualism" pursued and promoted under the heading of "individual liberty" has effectively undermined the basis of true civilization among us.  What is left is a veneer which only barely covers the "me and mine first" pre-occupation of a purely materialistic, empirically-minded, fundamentally hedonistic  philosophical trend.

I will readily admit that many non-Christian cultures have had strongly developed senses of community and have been able to develop as civilized people.  I also readily admit that "community" alone does not guarantee civilized behavior, especially outside the community.  But I know of very few truly civilized cultures which achieved that status apart from religion.  For community to exist there has to be shared values and agreements with regard to status.  There has to be a coordinated sense of approval and disapproval and a binding sense of heritage and tradition.  Religion is emininently capable of achieving these things apart from the immediacy of coercive force.  The threat of future punishment has some effect in these matters but surprisingly little when push comes to shove.  So even the threat of Hell has never truly been very effective at restraining man's barbaric impulses.  But community has.  And religion as a basis of community seems, at first blush, to my mind, to be the most effective ground for civilization ever to be shown.

Perhaps all of those who today are so intense upon despising religion in all of its forms might at least consider the alternative.  On what other basis can community be achieved?  And even more importantly, why is it that the human psyche is so disposed toward barbarism apart from community restraints?  And is this fundamental disposition and the prevailing need for  "community" to offset it, an indicator that it is time for some sobering reassessment of the policies and practices and pseudo-intellectual content of much of the "progressive" agenda being promoted by many of the more strident voices throughout our land.

What is happening in New Orleans lacks only a sufficiently widespread catastrophe to make it a nationwide phenomena.  The barbarians are not at the gates, they reside in our midst.