What is the difference between civilized and primitive

Typically, most of us immediately point fingers at years of subjugation — Mughal rule, followed by the British Raj — as being responsible for exploiting our country and resources, repressing our culture and civilisation, thus leaving India impoverished, illiterate and backward. Ample evidence has emerged that colonial rule certainly dealt a body blow to India's growth, handicapping us from taking independent advantage of the industrial revolution that helped Western countries take a quantum leap forward.

Mughal rule, however, doesn't really seem to have caused lasting damage, either materially or culturally. Indeed, with its remarkable ability to tame, embrace and assimilate other influences into its own, India was probably far more vibrant and stable, than much of the world during those centuries. One has to then look deeper, as to what elements of our 5,year-old civilisation hold us back from becoming a progressive society in today's world.

Could some of the aspects be the following:. Religion: Almost all the backwardness of India is in some way related to our unhealthy obsession with religion — never-ending rituals, traditions and customs, superstitions and dogmas, fatalistic outlook, caste divisions, gender discrimination, undue importance to worship and piety — all have kept us sub-consciously tethered to medieval ideas and practices.

It also begets a tremendous resistance to change. How can we progress in today's day and age, if we as a nation are obsessed with cow protection, mandir-masjid and such completely irrelevant, energy-sapping issues? How is any of this going to improve our lives practically or enrich us culturally? When are we going to stop giving religion a disproportionate hold over our lives? Idealism deficiency: As a people, we seem to have no use for idealism, values, principles, in daily life.

We think of these as abstract concepts that have to be striven for by mankind, nations, society or the world as a whole. We just don't think it is our job to actively practise any of these individually. Perhaps this is the coping mechanism of the powerless, given that we were ruled for centuries but this trait has become so ingrained in our DNA, that our entire system rewards and supports the bent, the crooked, the mediocre, the mightier — a primitive paradigm that's antithetical to modernity.

Instead, we hide our apathy or complicity behind easy, empty, jingoistic displays of love for our country, as if chest-thumping and slogan-shouting are going to help India achieve greatness. Culture of contempt: Our subcontinent is infected by terrible contempt for other people and their rights. We want total freedom only for ourselves. The concept that our personal freedom does not mean impinging on the liberty, dignity and legal, human and social rights of others is almost alien to our thought process.

We follow only those laws that suit us or don't cause too much inconvenience. Democracy, in our limited, crude understanding, is the rule of the majority not just religious, but any group with superior numbers and those in the minority simply have to accept this, swallow their dignity and live at the mercy of the majority. This lack of sophistication and nuanced understanding of democracy stunts our metamorphosis into a mature, liberal society based on the rule of law and mutual respect, because the culture of contempt provides fertile grounds for injustice, inequality, intolerance to rear their head and go unpunished.

Indeed, it's time we stopped gloating over the glory of our ancient civilisation and fast-forward our evolution into a modern society by dumping regressive legacies. Murder over wet matchbox: Kin protest, accuse police of inaction in Amritsar. Youth turns Naag Kalan into a floriculture hub. Language clearly divides society, says Chetan Bhagat. Indian classical music evolved tremendously: Pt Bhaumik. Seeking pay parity, nurses go on indefinite strike in Bathinda.

Tags: Helping Theory. No Comments. Post a Comment Cancel Reply. For instance, scarcity of and competition for essential resources such as land, food, water, and energy are potential catalysts for violent conflict Dyer ; Mazo ; Homer-Dixon ; Pumphrey And these are not just imaginary scenarios; the period — witnessed violent food riots in as many as thirty countries around the globe, some of them developed Western nations.

If the dire predictions are correct, then this is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. Today the world average life expectancy is somewhere in the mid- to late sixties, and life expectancy is considerably higher in many parts of the world. In respect to the global economy, it has been calculated that in the past millennium, during which the global population increased some twenty-two-fold, global per capita income rose by approximately thirteen times, while global GDP expanded by a factor of almost The vast majority of this growth can be attributed to advances made as a consequence of the Industrial Revolution; since the global population has grown by a factor of five, while per capita income has increased approximately eight-fold.

It might seem then that civilization is chugging along quite nicely, just as so many have imagined it; we live longer than our predecessors, we are better educated than ever before, and we have access to far more stuff than most of us will ever need.

But at what cost have this civilization and progress come to us and our planet? It is difficult to believe that the human condition is really that perilous, that the thin ice of civilization is melting away so quickly and so dramatically that its future is at risk.

Are we really lurching toward some sort of post-apocalyptic world like that depicted in Mad Max or The Road? While climate change skeptics might beg to differ, at the very least, all is not well in the world of civilization. I suggest that a good part of the problem may well be the very way in which we conceive of civilization and progress, which for so long now has been predominantly all about the social, political, and material dimensions of civilization at the expense of its ethical and other-regarding dimensions.

The question of moral progress appears to be at the heart of the major challenges to civilization outlined above. In respect to both the relationship between civilization and war and that between civilization and the environment, we can see two potentially self-destructive processes in which civilization brings about its own demise as it cannibalizes itself in a kind of suicidal life cycle. The relationship between civilization and war is seemingly one in which war making gives rise to civilization, the organizational and technological advances of which in turn promote yet more bloody and efficient war making, which in turn eventually brings about the demise of civilization either through overstretch or internal collapse.

Similarly, up to this point in human history, the march of civilization has largely been at the expense of the environment and the natural world more generally. And now, in turn, the environment is threatening the future of civilization through the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change.

In both cases this represents a sort of vicious circle in which civilization is ultimately its own worst enemy. On top of this are the less than savory things done in the name of civilization; for centuries civilization has proven to be hell bent on expunging that which is not civilized, or that which is deemed a threat to civilization.

The consequences range from European conquest and colonization to the global war on terror. The Nobel Peace Laureate of , Albert Schweitzer , offers a different take on civilization that owes more to moral and ethical considerations than to sociopolitical and material concerns.

Alexander, J. The Dark Side of Modernity. Find this resource:. Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law. Bagby, P. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bagehot, W. Physics and Politics. Bauman, Z. Modernity and the Holocaust. Benveniste, E. Problems in General Linguistics. Translated by M.

Boswell, J. Introduction and notes by Margery Bailey. London: William Kimber. Boulter, M. Extinction: Evolution and the End of Man. New York: Columbia University Press. Bowden, B. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Bozeman, A. Bury, J. New York: Dover Publications, Childe, V. Man Makes Himself. Cicovacki, P. Collingwood, R. The New Leviathan. Edited by D. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Coulborn, R. The Origin of Civilized Societies. Donnelly, J. Durkheim, E. Dyer, G. Climate Wars. Toronto: Random House. Eckhardt, W. Elias, N. The Civilizing Process. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Oxford: Blackwell. Fagan, B. London: Granta. New York: Bloomsbury. Febvre, L. Edited by P. Translated by K. Fidler, D. Fiore, P. New York: Baker, Voorhis and Company. Franck, T. Galor, O. Gat, A. War in Human Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gibbon, E. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Abridged by D. Gong, G. Mozaffari, 75— London: Routledge. Guha, R. History at the Limit of World-History. Guizot, F. The History of Civilization in Europe. Translated by W. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Hall, M. Jackson, eds. London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hobbes, T.