Civilization
A lot of you agreed with some of the ideas in my last post. I don't think that will be the case with this one.
Civilization describes the way that humans live, when they have a surplus of food, and therefore labor. Civilization requires the development of cities, arts, cultural institutions, recreational and academic institutions under conditions of relative surplus and peace. Civilizations, like great cities have their own cultural memories, they last for centuries, even millennia. A civilization is stable, like the eye os a solar hurricane, it is a fixed constellation made of tremendous and often violent motion. The imprint and life-span of a civilization, like the imprint and life-span of a city, is much older than the bricks and stone from which it is constructed. These physical elements may be replaced many times. It is the abstract ideal that allows the civilization: a point of intersection, a focal point for human activity, a center for religion or culture to persist beyond human lives and beyond any of the objects that those people might create. Civilized society is defined by the development of cities. And cities are the icons, and incarnations of civilizations.
Civilization is dependent on the existence of cities not only for trade and centralization, but also for cultural development. To abandon cities is to abandon civilization. Hence the distrubuted, decentralized ideal of total suburbanization without cities cannot be called civilization. The idea that cities might be obsolote, because of improved information technology, or because of inexpensive energy, or for any of the other reasons that have been used to justify decentralization is a philosophy that necessarily abandons the project of civilization building. This is not a value judgment. A provincial, nodal mode of living may produce a lifestyle with many benefits. Mid-century planners seemed to strive to make such distributed living possible and, in many places, they have succeed.
In suburbs discontented from any urban center people live highly compartmentalized and isolated lives that are nonetheless dependent on global networks. But, this arrangement is not a civilization. Without an urban center there is no cultural focal point, and the diversity, difference of human experiences remains largely hidden. Suburban living cloaks differences in class and culture by providing each person exposure only to those people who belong to their own social order. Hence, one rarely becomes aware of differences in class, education or opportunity. Decentralization blocks cross-cultural and tans-class transmission of ideas and innovations. Order and unity must be maintained by the central transmission of cultural information-- leading to massive conformity within social and class groupings.
Without cities, there is no need for the civic virtues. These are the unwritten rules that maintain social order and that allow people from all walks of life to interact and live in dense vibrant places. The deterioration of our cities represents an attempt to end the most human of projects and to destroy the most human of environments. Cities have always been what people have created when the resources and collaborative spirt to support them was in place. To abandon and lay waste to cities is to give up some essential part of what it is to be civilized.
Civilization describes the way that humans live, when they have a surplus of food, and therefore labor. Civilization requires the development of cities, arts, cultural institutions, recreational and academic institutions under conditions of relative surplus and peace. Civilizations, like great cities have their own cultural memories, they last for centuries, even millennia. A civilization is stable, like the eye os a solar hurricane, it is a fixed constellation made of tremendous and often violent motion. The imprint and life-span of a civilization, like the imprint and life-span of a city, is much older than the bricks and stone from which it is constructed. These physical elements may be replaced many times. It is the abstract ideal that allows the civilization: a point of intersection, a focal point for human activity, a center for religion or culture to persist beyond human lives and beyond any of the objects that those people might create. Civilized society is defined by the development of cities. And cities are the icons, and incarnations of civilizations.
Civilization is dependent on the existence of cities not only for trade and centralization, but also for cultural development. To abandon cities is to abandon civilization. Hence the distrubuted, decentralized ideal of total suburbanization without cities cannot be called civilization. The idea that cities might be obsolote, because of improved information technology, or because of inexpensive energy, or for any of the other reasons that have been used to justify decentralization is a philosophy that necessarily abandons the project of civilization building. This is not a value judgment. A provincial, nodal mode of living may produce a lifestyle with many benefits. Mid-century planners seemed to strive to make such distributed living possible and, in many places, they have succeed.
In suburbs discontented from any urban center people live highly compartmentalized and isolated lives that are nonetheless dependent on global networks. But, this arrangement is not a civilization. Without an urban center there is no cultural focal point, and the diversity, difference of human experiences remains largely hidden. Suburban living cloaks differences in class and culture by providing each person exposure only to those people who belong to their own social order. Hence, one rarely becomes aware of differences in class, education or opportunity. Decentralization blocks cross-cultural and tans-class transmission of ideas and innovations. Order and unity must be maintained by the central transmission of cultural information-- leading to massive conformity within social and class groupings.
Without cities, there is no need for the civic virtues. These are the unwritten rules that maintain social order and that allow people from all walks of life to interact and live in dense vibrant places. The deterioration of our cities represents an attempt to end the most human of projects and to destroy the most human of environments. Cities have always been what people have created when the resources and collaborative spirt to support them was in place. To abandon and lay waste to cities is to give up some essential part of what it is to be civilized.