Quote by E.B. Tylor

[HowardRoarkSpaceDetective]

I’m reading Edward Burnett Tylor’s Primitive Culture and the first chapter - introducing evidence for his theory that civilizations typically evolve from lower states to more advanced ones, rather than degrade from an initial “divine” state - finishes with this bit:

“We may fancy ourselves looking on Civilization, as in personal figure she traverses the world; we see her lingering or resting by the way, and often deviating into paths that bring her toiling back to where she had passed by long ago; but, direct or devious, her path lies forward, and if now and then she tries a few backward steps, her walk soon falls into a helpless stumbling. It is not according to her nature, her feet were not made to plant uncertain steps behind her, for both in her forward view and in her onward gait she is of truly human type.”

Thought that was nicely put. 

[Boydstun]

That book by Tylor was published in 1871. Beyond nice writing and on to the mountains of anthropology research since then, one I heartily recommend: Religion in Human Evolution – From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (2011, Harvard) by Robert Bellah.

Edited October 20, 2023 by Boydstun

[HowardRoarkSpaceDetective]

@Boydstun Actually, I bought Tylor in order to get more context for Bellah, which you recommended in a past post. I also went ahead and read Clifford Geertz’s essay, which Bellah takes as a starting point. I really appreciated his theory that religion is more or less ethics and metaphysics mutually reinforcing one another through emotion.  

[Grames]

On 10/19/2023 at 5:44 PM, HowardRoarkSpaceDetective said:

“We may fancy ourselves looking on Civilization, as in personal figure she traverses the world; we see her lingering or resting by the way, and often deviating into paths that bring her toiling back to where she had passed by long ago; but, direct or devious, her path lies forward, and if now and then she tries a few backward steps, her walk soon falls into a helpless stumbling. It is not according to her nature, her feet were not made to plant uncertain steps behind her, for both in her forward view and in her onward gait she is of truly human type.”

Much old writing (old meaning before Hemingway) is very nice to read.  Some old writing is just too ornate for my taste, for example I could never get through Melville's Moby Dick.  This example anthropomorphizes an abstraction 'civilization' as a woman for poetic effect but it doesn't work as well upon reflection as it does on first impression.  People get lost, wander in circles, walk into danger and disaster, and can forget and die.  Forward is not synonymous with progress.   The problem is that forward is entirely relative, not an objective direction or a goal.

[HowardRoarkSpaceDetective]

 

The problem is that forward is entirely relative, not an objective direction or a goal.

Fair enough. I was listening to Douglas Murray yesterday talk about how Muslim/Arab countries have such an awful track record in building civilizations, which is true, but unfortunately you can't make that argument to an Islamic fundamentalist. Their conception of "civilized" is different, depending on how true they are to Allah. American leftists, however, have to make the argument that Israel is rigging the game since, at least to an extent, their definition of "civilized" resembles that of most westerners (technological progress).

That said, I think it was the last sentence of Tylor's quote that got me in that it reminded me of Rand's conviction that human excellence is the natural state of man - a very radical idea, at least to me, and one that, whether he meant to or not, Tylor expressed very eloquently.

[Doug Morris]

2 hours ago, HowardRoarkSpaceDetective said:

Muslim/Arab countries have such an awful track record in building civilizations, which is true, but unfortunately you can't make that argument to an Islamic fundamentalist. Their conception of "civilized" is different, depending on how true they are to Allah.

There have been times in the past when this wasn't true.  For example, Muslims invented algebra.  Does anyone have any thoughts on why the difference?

    

[Grames]

15 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

There have been times in the past when this wasn't true.  For example, Muslims invented algebra.  Does anyone have any thoughts on why the difference?

Muslims contributed to algebra but did not invent it entirely.  A contributing factor was the increasing use of a more compact notation for numbers instead of the Roman numerals, what is now called the Arabic numerals.  But the Arabic numerals were not Arabic, they first occurred in India.  This gives the clue that Arab culture flourished when they could be peaceful trading empires.  Unfortunately for those peoples who were not part of the Arab culture, such periods of peace only occur after victorious jihads that leave behind no handy additional targets for conquest.