Civilization Against Culture

Richard Ostrofsky
(April, 1996)
Judging by sales and customer inquiries, religion, philosophy, history and
art, are among the hottest subject areas at our store. I take this as evidence
that the search is still on for the basis of an intellectually serious resistance
to our increasingly distasteful civilization of Commerce and Scientistic
Rationalism.
Ultimately, the only standpoint for resistance to any encroaching
civilization (imperial by its very nature) is a widely shared cultural identity.
Together with mother-tongue (which is not acquired primarily from books),
religion, art and history are the great sources of cultural identity and
therefore, corner-stones of an (essentially Romantic) insistence that Nature
and individual lives are not finally controlled by the “bottom line” of
economic exploitation and “development” but by their human, cultural
meanings. The fourth area, philosophy, tries to adjudicate – at least, discuss
in civil tones – the disputes that must arise between competing mythic and
metaphorical schema. Along with legal and financial systems, it is therefore
one of the chief instruments of civilization – defined as cross-cultural free
trade in materials and artifacts and ideas.
The traditional aspiration of philosophy was “to see life steadily and see
it whole” – and see it (if possible) from a universal standpoint, outside any
special interpretive framework. Against this philosophical ambition, the
Romantics insisted that life without subjectivity and passion was neither
desirable nor possible. In particular, they insisted, the “liberal” belief that
personal and social choices should be made in a scientific spirit – that lives
and societies should be governed by objective considerations – amounts
simply to an idolatry of greed: the worship of wealth and profit. The
continuing interest in religion, art, history and philosophy suggests that the
ancient conflict between culture and civilization for individual loyalties –
yours and mine – is still alive and well in Ottawa today.
This article is meant to introduce a series on the contemporary relevance
and central issues in each of these areas for post-modern citizens of a post-
imperial, provincial capital city – that is to say, for our customers. Needless
to say, the opinions expressed will be mine alone, and are intended to be
provocative. Whether you agree or disagree with them, please tell me so
next time you drop in to browse. Free conversation is on offer at Second
Thoughts, along with reasonably priced books.
My point in this introductory article is that culture and civilization have
always been, and continue to be, antithetical values. The reason is that
cultures are necessarily exclusive: Its members share something–a
language, a religion, a bonding experience or interest – that connects them
to each other, and separates them from non-members. Civilization –
etymologically, the skill/habit of living in cities – is precisely the condition
for doing business across cultural lines. A civilization is a faded derivative
of its various component cultures. Its goods and values are local articles,
transformed and packaged for universal consumption. Its manners are
cautious and respectable. Its mind-set is mercantile, sophisticated, and
relativist.
What makes civilization such a complicated and fragile enterprise is that
its commerce in goods and ideas is perennially threatening and disruptive of
the cultures that comprise it. In addition, each of the specialties of civilized
Man – business, law, engineering, or what have you – becomes a culture on
its own, transcending and sometimes obliterating the more obvious cultural
boundaries of language, art, religion and custom. The fact is that personal
identities today are composites of many memberships and loyalties.
However many “consciousness raising” campaigns may urge us to serve
and value one of our cultural memberships before all others, few of us can
be this single-minded. For most of us, life will not be a clean choice among
our various loyalties, but a perpetual balancing act. Clearly, for individuals,
there is loss as well as gain in the civilizing process; for cultures
(considered as entities in their own right) there is gain as well as loss. The
dilemma of ethnic “rootedness” vs. cosmopolitan sophistication goes to the
core of human identity, shaping whole lives at their very core.
The question I’d like to raise is this: In this dilemma, is it possible to
have one’s cake and eat it? Is it possible to enjoy the excitements of big-city
living and a secure ethnic identity at the same time? Does cultural
authenticity requires us to live in ghettos among the others of our kind? Or,
on the contrary, does real authenticity require the individual to risk himself
and his identity everyday in the marketplace, among strangers?