As this turbulent and extraordinary year of 2020 draws to a close I think we should all take time to reflect on what we, as belonging to the species Homo Sapiens (“wise man”?), can start doing now and keep on doing into the future.
We need to reflect on the full meaning of the term “civilization” and how this is expressed by our current ways of life and the general disorder we generate.
Such reflections may, just may, help to redress the disastrous and damaging ways we, as a species are despoiling the very Earth, the Nature, we need for survival.
To this end I offer the following extracts from quite an old book – but the sentiments expressed are, to my mind, still very true:-
From “African Genesis” by Robert Ardrey, (Fontana Books paperback, 1970 pages 393/394) - as an aside, Ardrey was one of the first people to suggest that human beings first evolved in Africa:-
“But no animal compulsion stands alone in the debate of our instincts. And so I return to my second assertion, that civilization is a product of evolution and an expression of nature’s most ancient law. Far antedating the predatory urge in our animal nature, far more deeply buried than conscience or territory or society lies that shadowy, mysterious undefinable command of the kind, the instinct for order. And so, when a predatory species came rapidly to evolve its inherent talent for disorder, natural selection favoured as a factor in human survival the equally rapid evolvement of that sublimating, inhibiting, super-territorial institution which we call, loosely, civilization.”
…….
“The choice is not ours. Never to be forgotten, to be neglected, to be derided, is the inconspicuous figure in the quiet back room. He sits with head bent, silent, waiting, listening to the commotion in the streets. He is the keeper of the kinds.
Who is he? We do not know. Nor shall we ever. He is a presence, and that is all. But his presence is evident in the last reaches of infinite space beyond man’s probing eye. His presence is guessable in the last reaches of smallness beyond the magnification of electron microscope. He is present in all living beings and all inanimate matter. His presence is asserted in all things that ever were, and in all things that will ever be. And as his command is unanswerable, his identity is unknowable. But his most ancient concern is for order.”
……
“He does not care about you, or about me, or about man for that matter. He cares only for order. But whatever he says, we shall do. He is rising now, in civilization’s quiet back room, and he is looking out the window.”
