The Direction of Civilisation

Originally written in Oct 2001 in personal diaries

Descartes once said, "I think, therefore I am" and thus laid the foundation of the realization that in the scheme of things, the job of a human being is to think. In the process of evolution, a huge, almost magical gap lies between human beings and other species - a gap created by the fact that human beings have a well developed brain, a brain which can think, a brain which has the capacity to be intelligent, to make schemes. A brain which is occupied not only by the need to control the parts of various body cells, but which also has the capacity to question things outside the human body, to make designs and to implement them. A brain which can go into the question of "why brain" and "why me".

Yet, what do human beings do with that brain? For majority of the part, they are either working to earn their livelihood or sleeping or engaging in a hobby that escapes from the thinking process. While sleeping is entirely biological and as yet, human species needs sleep or rest for its survival, the other two aspects, namely our work-life and our leisure, are primarily a product of what we have learnt from the civilization. It is an indication of where we, as a species, are going. And it clearly indicates that our civilization prompts us to make less and less use of our brains.

Consider history. We started by being hunters in the jungle. Our brain helped us to make weapons to be better hunters. We captured fire. Then, we invented agriculture. We began to be less dependent on other animal species for our food. Nevertheless, our primary occupation in life was still food. Then civilization began, societies were formed. Here a deviation began. Our basic needs increased from food to shelter and clothing. Since people now needed shelter and clothing, they began to make shelters and clothes. This was perhaps the first indication that human beings, inspite of having created time for themselves by needing less time for their food production, used up that time in producing things which they themselves had brought into their basket of needs.

Take clothes for example. From the cave man who simply used an animal skin to cover his body from various forces of nature, we have moved on today to a time when clothes are a part of personality, an indicator of your status in the society etc. What you wear is what you are, or almost. Along with this have come other advancements in other make-yourself-comfortable products like artificial heating and air-conditioners and what not. This has actually led to a situation where the need of clothes as a protection for body has almost vanished. But have clothes vanished? No. Or rather, the advancement in these other products have led to a situation where you can were dresses with practically no cloth/ fabric in them. And what happens? Instead of realizing that we don’t need clothes anymore and coming up with a “No to clothes” campaign, what we start doing is – create different lobbies. One for cultural protection which criticizes skimpy clothes, one for women stating that clothes are a measure of female independence, one for dress designers stating that they need their freedom of expression, one comprising of men who state that wearing sloppy clothes is their birthright and yet another one comprising of staid professionals criticizing the clothes young generation wears to work.

I mean, isn’t it amply clear that clothes are an indication of the civilization gone in the wrong direction? So much of human thought, human energy wasted on some idiotic cells of cellulose. Or human ego, which is not much useful either.

Then there’s the omnipresent work ethic. Work is supposed to be the aim of human existence, not thought. Since childhood, we are trained to learn things so that we would be able to earn a living. Vocational training is in major vogue. Study hard, because that will fetch you good marks, that will fetch you a good professional degree, that will fetch you a good job. Study engineering, don’t do research in physics, because there are lesser jobs for physicists. The emphasis is not only to discourage thinking at the childhood stage, but also to encourage getting into non-thinking jobs.

However, man has to pamper himself as a thinking animal. So he will label day-to-day problem solving as thinking, he will label people management as thinking, he will label the tactics involved in driving as thinking. I agree that most of the jobs involve use of brains and thought, but wasting your thinking on mundane activities – is this what your mind was made for? 99% of human mental energy goes into thoughts that should not be labeled as thinking, because they leave humanity no richer at the end of it. I mean, how does homo sapiens as a species benefit or progress or evolve if a significant proportion of its mental capability is involved in thinking how to transport himself to office next day. Crazy. Emphasis on productive work rather than thought is another indicator of civilisation gone in the wrong direction.

I can go on infinitely. The whole concept of sophistication sucks. How does it matter if I eat with fork and knife or use chopsticks or hand? Or whether I shake hands or do a namaste or bend 90 degrees or touch feet? And yet, these are the very basis of civilization. How do I find sense in any of this?

If you honestly ask me, everything indicates civilization is taking us in a direction where we are being encouraged to make less and less sensible use of our greatest evolutionary strength, out mind. Or in short, civilisation is counter-evolutionary.