When asked what makes civilization better than barbarism, you are likely, dear reader, to be at a loss for words to answer; but the reason why you are at a loss for words will be one of two opposite reasons, depending on your temper and character.
If you are of the temper and character that is instinctively and unselfconsciously loyal to civilization and to all that it implies, you are likely to be at a loss because the answer is too big for words.
Perhaps you will think of a dozen things in an instant, or see a dozen things in a moment, reminding you how precious civilization in all her aspects shines: civility, peace, order, rule of law, security in possessions and realty, commerce and travel by land and sea, literacy and philosophy and poetry, domestic comforts and domesticated animals, the fellowship of man, medical and technological advantages, the lengthening of the average lifespan, low infant mortality rate, electric lights, books, music, and, in short, all the beauty and dignity of life inside the city walls and civic institutions.
Again, you are likely to be at a loss to answer because you will think of a dozen things in an instant disagreeable or deadly about the anarchy, savagery and barbarism which spreads once the lamps of civilization are extinguished: dirt and toil and heartbreak of nature, the degradation and starvation, the disease and want, the brevity of life, and the continual violence and fear of violence. If you are philosophically inclined, you will think of the mental environment of the savage, who lives without record of the past or hope for the future in a cosmos dark with ignorance. The arbitrary and capricious dark gods who walk the forest or haunt the clouds may this day send victory in battle or may send defeat; or send a plague or famine to take your loved ones from you; and may indeed wipe out your whole warband, tribe and nation, so that the forest will swallow all traces that you and yours ever existed, except, perhaps, for a few carven totem poles rotting in the glade, or perhaps the painted walls of an unlit cave.
On the other hand, if you are of the opposite temper and character, you are likely to be at a loss because the question is unreasonable if not repellant to you.
Perhaps you have some romanticized idea of the liberty and dignity of the noble savages, their freedom from the cares of owning land, their spiritual insights and consequent elevated levels of kindheartedness and simplicity of life. To prefer civilization to barbarism in effect is to close that great mute book of the life experiences of those who live at oneness with nature, or to burn that book. Book-burning is the crime and pastime of such institutions as the Spanish Inquisition or the National Socialist Worker’s Party of Germany; to burn a book is a confession of intellectual weakness and grave moral evil. Hence, to prefer civilization to barbarism is tantamount to fanaticism or bigotry.
Indeed, the very idea that the different ways of life can or should be ranked into categories of better and worse perhaps strikes you are unscientific, unreasonable, partisan, self-serving, biased and ignorant, perhaps even racist.
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