The Civilized Animal
That's us! Depending on how badly we abuse language and each other.
Royal authority is a noble and enjoyable position. It comprises all the good things of the world, the pleasures of the body, and the joys of the soul. Therefore, there is, as a rule, great competition for it. It rarely is handed over voluntarily, but it may be taken away. Thus, discord ensues. It leads to war and fighting, and attempts to gain superiority.
Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah
Before we start, I need to mention what I mean by history. I’ll be saying it several times. History, to me, is a written account produced via an inquiry into past events. It is not the past itself. It is mostly lies about the past itself. The rest is just inaccurate.
I read as much of it as I can. But to quote a syphilis infected philosopher, what I see is human. All too human. Oral histories don’t count, as oral histories are never faithfully transmitted no matter how many lies the speaker believes. Now, onward and upward.
History mostly concerns itself with inquiries regarding civilization. This is unsurprising, as most events occurred within the context of a civilization. We have no history before it, anyway. Archaeology isn’t history. But it does tend to falsify history.
For example, the accepted history of how human beings came to populate North and South America asserted human beings rolled into the hood about 19,000 years ago. But digging in the dirt, archaeologists discovered footprints from 23,000 years ago.1
A chunk of the Clovis theory of settlement and migration was falsified by evidence. No doubt nomads, who don’t appear to have built anything sturdier than a footprint. But what a footprint it is. These folks didn’t do history, but they ended up in it years later.
History doesn’t exist without civilization. Without people sitting still long enough to be boring. To create letters, the implements used to scrawl them, and to imprison kids long enough to abuse them into understanding any of it. Nomads just don’t do this.
Civilized animals came up with the practice of history to explain the thing giving birth to the practice of history. They also wrote all the histories we have regarding nomadic tribes and people from the perspective of a civilized animal. May as well call it zoology.
But it is fun to read. It is interesting to see how someone believed Genghis Khan went about handling his business. Or how various Berber tribes conquered the Caliphates of Islam. Or how Cain slaughtered Abel for eating meat instead of brussels sprouts.2
These stories are all about nomads starting to sit still, becoming boring and sedentary. Like your children once you discovered it is socially acceptable to drug them into a more manageable stupor. Changed them, didn't it? Here's hoping for the better.
Genesis, a delightfully violent exploration of humanity’s roots is full of insight about our ongoing illness and obsession with civilization. On the surface, it concerns itself with a tinkering god spending most their time quite confused about their creation.
Back in the day, one could dodge God by ducking into the nearest bush.3 This goes some distance to explain why this same god revealed itself to Moses as a burning bush. It is unclear how much distance. Maybe none. But it’s in there.
I bet it was a fig bush. God hates figs.4
Genesis is full of these little human touches sprayed all over a supposedly omniscient god. During the first controversy on how to sacrifice stuff to him, he rejects one man’s offering and then asks him why he looks so sad. You know why. Don’t be a dick, God. Sometimes I just want to roll up a newspaper and start swinging, you know?
I didn't at first. Understand it. I had to puzzle it out. It turns out the Cain and Abel story is about the advent of both murder and civilization. Their pairing is relevant. So is the fact the first instance of cancel culture correlates with the first two belly buttons.
Cain and Abel were the sons of Adam and Eve. Unlike their lazy, hippy parents they both pursued trades rather than laying around naked banging and reproducing full-time. Cain was a farmer, presumably the inventor of such. Abel was into animal husbandry.
Abel never did find a wife. It had to be difficult sussing out attractive and available women, considering they were all his sisters. So, he turned to shepherding to fill his lonely nights. He roamed the earth with his goats, hunting women and grazing rights.
Cain sat still to farm. His strategy was more productive, as he did have a wife. Familial relations didn’t seem to bother him. But his morals are famously sketchy.
While Abel was out roaming the countryside, looking for love in all the wrong places, his brother grew veggies. But once in a while, as families do, they would get together and try to figure out what they should throw away so some god would love them.
Unfortunately, their god was right there, passing judgment like Gordon Ramsay. He accepted Abel’s offering of meat and fat and blood, but Cain’s kale or whatever got snubbed like the garbage it objectively is.
There could be several reasons for this other than simple taste, most of which I’ll just ignore. But I will point out two I think relevant.
First of all, any sacrifice to the gods needs to cost something. I don’t mean monetarily, though that should be included in the bargain. But it needs to be something not so easy to replace. A life, for instance. But not a plant life. That stuff grows on its own.
Second, more specifically, the God of Genesis absolutely hates change. The status quo for human beings was a nomadic lifestyle. The means of survival relied on moving animals around so they can eat vegetables. Kale is their food’s food. Figs are right out.
This god doesn’t like fruit, vegetables, or change. With the advent of civilization and farming, they suddenly had to wrestle with all three. And to top it off, they couldn't find Abel anywhere. He wasn't even in the last place he looked.
Turns out Cain murdered him. He didn’t even try to hide it. Didn’t bother to produce an alibi. This makes sense, since he is civilization, and civilization has never once apologized for anything at all. As punishment, God curses Cain to live as a nomad.
Unlike Cher, an omnipotent god can turn back time. They already have a way. They could take back those words that hurt Cain. They just didn’t want civilization to stay.
God dislikes the entire affair. Civilization. Definitely not a fan. A rather unwelcome innovation akin to nudists gobbling fruit. Cain’s death isn’t explored in Genesis, but the Book of Jubilees covers it. His house collapses on him. Civilization kills itself.5
Gods damn I love this stuff. But let’s leave it alone for now, as I also love history and historiography. A civilized animal needs a balanced diet, after all. One can't just eat meat, no matter what the bloodthirsty and confused God of Genesis seems to think.
Humans need a bit of ruffage to help the lesson go down and eventually slide right out.
Historically, civilizations are planted and propped up by outlaws, ruffians, and exiles. Rome was famously founded by two fugitives raised by wolves. It was then populated with criminals who abducted their neighbors’ wives and daughters at a dinner party.6
The United States was founded similarly. Lots of murder. Lots of drinking. Lots of rape. Some historians try to ennoble these folks, akin to Titus Livy giving Romans legendary heroes from history to worship. This is mostly propaganda. Still, there are some greats.
Ethan Allen is one of my favorites, with his drunk Green Mountain Boys. Or Thomas Young, who practiced and studied illegal medicine proscribed evil between organizing the Boston Tea Party. He was a unique character, I think.7
The first generation in any civilization is rough. They’re not sitting around nodding to each other at Hamilton or enjoying a census-taker’s liver with a nice chianti. They were getting shot by Aaron Burr and chugging raw milk. Probably, anyway. I don’t know.
As time went on and power stabilized somewhat in the eastern United States - with a slight hiccup involving Canada burning down the gods damned Whitehouse and the union finally doing away with slavery - the rough fled west to more lawless pastures.
American men were vociferously encouraged to do so.
“Washington [D.C.] is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go West, young man, go West and grow up with the country.”
Horace Greeley, New-York Daily Tribune, 1865
Civilization spit out millions of men and vomited these new nomads out in a generally westward direction. They moved west, flush with unearned authority and utter faith in the future. If not faith, trust at a minimum. There was gold in them hills, they said.
The problem for these men is there were already men when they got there. Forts popped up to help civilization combat the native nomads who simultaneously disbelieved in property rights but somehow still owned the land. They were mostly murdered by civilization piously observing all property as its own property.
But this isn’t always how it goes. Sometimes, nomads give civilization worse than they get. Until they themselves become too civilized, anyway. Cities have a habit of corrupting the austere lifestyle nomads are forced into. To a nomad, Reno looks like Las Vegas. It’s all the electricity and strippers, I think. Hell of a town. Sensibly sized.
A 14th century historian named Ibn Khaldun found himself deeply interested in this sort of thing. I don’t mean beautiful women. Islam doesn’t allow that most the time. But while living among the Berbers - nomad tribes - he felt he found a pattern.
His philosophy of history states a collective needs something to keep them together. This glue arises naturally in tribes and small groups who stick together on the move. They tend to act as one in solidarity. He called this glue asabiyyah. I call it glue.
But this glue didn’t become mortar in cities. Instead, it crumbled behind walls under the weight of bureaucrats divorced from the practical life of the people they taxed. Too many laws stifle the pragmatic, innovative mind, and so a civilization crumbles.
The crumbling continues until some barbarians come howling in out of the desert to take it away. They tended to simplify the laws, lessen taxes, and unleash the business mind to be as great or greedy as they like. Until the cycle happens again, anyway.8
Often, these conquerors were nomadic tribes, attracted by the bright, biggest little city lights of Reno. Or so Ibn Khaldun said of the Berbers and Caliphates.
If this sort of thing sounds familiar - the idea subsequent generations grow dumber as time goes on - it should. It is by far the most popular interpretation of people through history. Many modern historians do it, too.
It is an ever spring of comfort for the disaffected elder, to blame the destruction of a society or city on the kids. To me, it always seemed the parents were to blame. Don’t outsource your child’s education to bureaucrats if you don’t want more bureaucrats.
Mr. Macky of South Park fame is the ultimate educational bureaucrat.
If you don’t want soft kids, don’t refuse to beat the little brats. I don’t have any kids, obviously. But I won't have my cats contributing to the degradation of society. No sirs, madams, and whatever honorific I’m supposed to grant gender indeterminates.
Also, I don’t actually beat my cats. That’s monstrous. But you should beat your kids at least a little. You know you want to. I know you want to. We know you want to. We are all just civilized animals, after all. Violence is baked into the cake.
We could talk about the monopoly on violence, sure. How the state is the institution which reserves the right of murder, imprisonment, and similar evils all to itself in any given society. But that’s always temporary. That power will always return to the people.
Just ask Marie-Antoinette. She tried to give them cake and they still cut her head off. Fast forward years later and cake appears to be all they eat at the opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics. You know. The one with all the fit athletes. The Olympics. Oof.
Recommend keeping an eye on Germany, mes amis. They have a dark history of civilization.
Sic vivitur.
“Unlike Cher, an omnipotent god can turn back time.” This line really cracked me up 😂