“I bruised a bone in my foot, and the doctor gave me a boot to wear. I got the common comments, of course. ‘Soccer practice?’ ‘No,’ I usually respond, ‘an elephant stepped on my foot.’ And I get a smile as I return the smile to the clever commenter.”
“Don’t you just hate it when that happens?”
“What?” I ask.
“You know, things like broken bones, burned down houses, and war.”
“What a combination of images! Broken bones and war? Are we talking playground accidents and nuclear holocaust?” I inquire.
“Well, what I meant is that things occur suddenly to change lives. Look at what wars do. Everything changes, even for the survivors.”
“I wish I could offer an insight,” I offer, “but I can only say it’s the nature of life to incorporate the unpleasant.”
“But when you consider that we’ve worked for 200 millennia on trying to organize things, to make things civilized, isn’t it a shame that we still have all the problems our Paleolithic ancestors had? About the only difference is that you get to wear a plastic boot until the bone heals. Is that what civilization has given us?”
“You mean plastic?” I ask.
“No, not just plastic. Yeah, we have that and a bunch of other stuff that Paleolithic humans never even dreamed of; in fact, not even the Greek philosophers or Renaissance scientists could have imagined plastic. No, I mean that we have ‘civilization,’ a highly developed scheme of living. We should be beyond all forms of discomfort and disruption. Two hundred thousand years and we still have the same types of problems, and, in reality, we’ve even added some that our ancient ancestors never knew.”
“So, are you saying that ‘civilized’ people are really ‘uncivilized’?”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that, but yes. There’s too much ‘uncivilization’ in civilization.”
“Here’s my take,” I offer. “Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said, ‘They come on the scene only in uncivilized conditions.’”
“Who is the ‘they’?”
“Heroes. It’s the heroes that come on the scene in uncivilized conditions. That’s how we know them. They show up intermittently, of course, because there is so much ‘uncivilizaton’ in civilization. But it is ‘uncivilization’ that draws them forth. They can be the inventors of a walking boot for someone with an injured foot, a person who rushes into the burning house, or the one who acts to save war victims. They provide the little glimpses of what I think you want civilization to be. They make a place and a person or persons better for a moment. Civilization pops up in their acts. The scene changes from desperation to at least temporary hope. Civilization and maybe all places, too, exhibit ‘uncivilization’ as a status quo. ‘Uncivilization’ is the proverbial elephant in the room as it was the mammoth in the Paleolithic rock shelter. Maybe the semblance of modern civilization is an artificial background or a mask or covering that hides our ties to the Paleolithic. Heroes emerge when the rudimentary uncivilized circumstances surface. They don’t necessarily restore complete civilized order; many of them have lost their lives in the very act of heroism. Their acts are always specific to time and place. As Hegel says, they arise only in uncivilized conditions. There is a personal question in this, one for all of us: When we encounter ‘uncivilized conditions,’ do we ‘come on the scene’?”
“Okay, so what really happened to your foot? Was it a soccer accident?”
“No, I already told you. An elephant stepped on it.”
“Don’t you just hate it when that happens?”
“What?” I ask.
“You know, things like broken bones, burned down houses, and war.”
“What a combination of images! Broken bones and war? Are we talking playground accidents and nuclear holocaust?” I inquire.
“Well, what I meant is that things occur suddenly to change lives. Look at what wars do. Everything changes, even for the survivors.”
“I wish I could offer an insight,” I offer, “but I can only say it’s the nature of life to incorporate the unpleasant.”
“But when you consider that we’ve worked for 200 millennia on trying to organize things, to make things civilized, isn’t it a shame that we still have all the problems our Paleolithic ancestors had? About the only difference is that you get to wear a plastic boot until the bone heals. Is that what civilization has given us?”
“You mean plastic?” I ask.
“No, not just plastic. Yeah, we have that and a bunch of other stuff that Paleolithic humans never even dreamed of; in fact, not even the Greek philosophers or Renaissance scientists could have imagined plastic. No, I mean that we have ‘civilization,’ a highly developed scheme of living. We should be beyond all forms of discomfort and disruption. Two hundred thousand years and we still have the same types of problems, and, in reality, we’ve even added some that our ancient ancestors never knew.”
“So, are you saying that ‘civilized’ people are really ‘uncivilized’?”
“I hadn’t thought of it like that, but yes. There’s too much ‘uncivilization’ in civilization.”
“Here’s my take,” I offer. “Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said, ‘They come on the scene only in uncivilized conditions.’”
“Who is the ‘they’?”
“Heroes. It’s the heroes that come on the scene in uncivilized conditions. That’s how we know them. They show up intermittently, of course, because there is so much ‘uncivilizaton’ in civilization. But it is ‘uncivilization’ that draws them forth. They can be the inventors of a walking boot for someone with an injured foot, a person who rushes into the burning house, or the one who acts to save war victims. They provide the little glimpses of what I think you want civilization to be. They make a place and a person or persons better for a moment. Civilization pops up in their acts. The scene changes from desperation to at least temporary hope. Civilization and maybe all places, too, exhibit ‘uncivilization’ as a status quo. ‘Uncivilization’ is the proverbial elephant in the room as it was the mammoth in the Paleolithic rock shelter. Maybe the semblance of modern civilization is an artificial background or a mask or covering that hides our ties to the Paleolithic. Heroes emerge when the rudimentary uncivilized circumstances surface. They don’t necessarily restore complete civilized order; many of them have lost their lives in the very act of heroism. Their acts are always specific to time and place. As Hegel says, they arise only in uncivilized conditions. There is a personal question in this, one for all of us: When we encounter ‘uncivilized conditions,’ do we ‘come on the scene’?”
“Okay, so what really happened to your foot? Was it a soccer accident?”
“No, I already told you. An elephant stepped on it.”
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