In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present by Michael Bonner
Wherever you are on the political spectrum, it isn’t hard to see something’s amiss in Western Civilization. Hypermaterialism, disintegration of the family unit, social atomization and present day culture wars are a few of these symptoms.
Referring to a wide body of anthropology, theological and historical sources, classicist, historian and political advisor Michael Bonner successfully attempts “to explain what makes civilization what it is; to show what we are in danger of losing in the event of a collapse, and to point the way toward renewal.”
Although the book’s author states his book is meant as a sketch of the big picture, I’d disagree to say it’s more than that. After surveying older civilizations and defining what civilization is, Bonner explains where civilizations went wrong in the past, discusses how they renewed themselves and why beauty, clarity and order are fundamental to civilization.
Bonner notes that civilization has always been fragile; drought, salinization, crop failure, climate change, warfare, civil strife, zoonotic diseases and other troubles, “we are all the more surprised that civilized life managed to pull through at all.”
Like today, but spanning back as far as the Epic of Gilgamesh (2700 BC), Bonner notes “we encounter a certain pessimism about the world’s constant state of flux and vicissitude. Yet we also perceive a delight in the variety of human experience and in the full exercise of all man’s faculties.” Our news media likes to remind us of existential threats like nuclear spillover from the Ukraine conflict or suggest worst case scenarios resulting from the ongoing Gaza conflict.
Bonner takes aim at Rousseau’s Noble Savage idea that there was no war or violence before the appearance of civilization and using examples of mass graves from Palaeolithic and early-Neolithic sites in Jebel Sahaba in Egypt and ‘Talheim Death Pit’ in Germany states. “… the prehistoric homicide rate in what is now Illinois has been estimated at 70 times higher than that of the United States in 1980 and 1,400 times higher than that of 1980s Britain.” Bonner reminds us we can need look no further than the the ancient epic poems of Homer for its lyrical depictions of battle.
“The lineaments of this story are a scheme of ages classified with reference to gold, silver, bronze, and iron; and as the value of the metal decreases, so do the conditions of human life and the moral worth of the people then living.”
By surveying old civilizations in the East and West, Bonner states that “every great civilization has been inspired by the past. Rebirth comes not as the result of random experiments that happened to turn out well, but the deliberate imitation of what had worked before.” IDOC’s chapter on rebirth takes the reader on a tour of antiquity spanning Assyria and Phoenicia, Rome, China, India and Iran. Like China, Singapore’s miraculous transformation involved returning to Confucian values for renewal.
What went wrong? This chapter was quite dense with heavy thinkers, ideologies and philosophy. Certainly all of us have experienced that we are not as socially connected as we once were. Especially before COVID19. Marriage rates and birth rates have been steadily declining. Most institutions have seen participation decline like churches and volunteer groups with the exception of banks and credit card companies.
Social media, postmodernism’s encouraging break with the past, declining civic participation and family formation have all been contributors to the growing social atomization we’re experiencing.
In his chapter on Beauty, Bonner states “architecture, which, more than any other art, is capable of making our lives better and fuller. Buildings not only protect us from the elements, but also facilitate and shape social interaction because we live or work, or conduct other business in them, and are surrounded by them in every human settlement.”
It’s not hard to appreciate the effects of architecture and building maintenance have on our psyche. Look no further than the Broken Windows Theory popularized by New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani in the early 1980s where a significant drop in crime and antisocial behaviour was observed by fixing buildings starting with broken windows and unsightly repairs.
The chapter on clarity introduces us several fascinating thinkers like Ibn Taymiyyah and Al-Ghazali, Peter Abelard and but doesn’t lend itself quite as well to the book’s conversation as the others. Bonner treats postmodernism as a failed ideology lacking in clarity and and mentions that postmodernism is the main ideological force behind identity politics. Bonner balances his critique of postmodernism with the outsized disruption and confusion the Trumpian Right creates.
The final chapter on The Future, Bonner isn’t optimistic nor pessimistic that our civilization will see a renewal, but does point the reader to learn from China as an example of culture that’s shedding the notion of pursuing progress at the expense of order and stability. “Western science and technology, he thought might raise everyone’s standard of living, but otherwise the West was crippled by a great spiritual emptiness, for which only China had the cure.” This cure was a return to Confucian values as practiced by their ancestors. Although China has learned a great deal from the West, The West has much to learn from China if it wishes to renew itself like China has done in the past.
I absolutely loved this book but felt the conversation around taxation, the drug epidemic and crime should have found their way into this book.
Recommended for anyone interested in the longview of history, an interest in politics or for the intellectual curious who wish to be exposed to previously unheard of philosophers, theologians and ideas.