a barbarous fail!!

I looked up the definition of civilized online at The Free Dictionary (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/civilized) and this is what it says – civilized, adj.

1. Having a highly developed society and culture.

2. Showing evidence of moral and intellectual advancement; humane, ethical, and reasonable: “terrorist acts that shocked the civilized world.”

3. Marked by refinement in taste and manners; cultured; polished.

In the light of the current social, global economic and political scenario’s I was thinking about just how we got to where we are right at this moment.

Now I’m not in any way an expert or a professional economist but I don’t owe the bank or anyone else anything and I can somehow manage to feed and clothe my family from day to day without stealing. Nor am I a qualified historian but like the fool on the hill, I see the sun going down and the eyes in my head see the world spinning round *  …. and I also don’t need to pull sleazy, cheap shots to attempt to legally gag any web journalist who reads my blog postings or personal correspondence for simply publishing what I actually say and do.

But as I read through the 3 definitive explanations of the word civilized I can’t help thinking that the west can only honestly say that we only partly align to the definition of a civilized status in the first category and then only scraping through based purely on the possible interpretations of the concept “highly developed” culture. Let’s face it, most of our highly advanced development over the last few hundred years has really only achieved the present pinnacle of existence on which we now so boldly teeter.

I’d give us a 20% mark at best (and only because I’m such a nice, positive person).

And isn’t it amazing that we tend to regard the rest of the world as uncivilized even though in such a relatively short time we’ve virtually almost destroyed our planet, terrorized sovereign nations, violated human rights hand over fist, degraded ethical and moral standards globally, legalized robbery, made an acceptable art form out of lying, stripped the planet of vast amounts of it’s natural resources, and yet some of the ‘super powers’ we regard as uncivilized and undeveloped ruled and flourished for sometimes thousands of years a very long time ago? Some of them still even exist today (but trust me on this, we are rectifying this quite effectively even as we speak).

And if we are so supremely successful in this debacle what might it say of our spiritual standards?

But let’s not take this all too seriously, after all, it’s the weekend soon.

* The Beatles – “The Fool On The Hill,” http://www.lyricsondemand.com/b/beatleslyrics/foolonthehilllyrics.html

the developed world – developed into what?

We assume that developed is an exclusively advantageous, more sophisticated, beneficial state of being. Development is viewed almost exclusively as a positive term directly related to a better, more advanced context or state of being. We use the concept of development in a global sense to distinguish the have’s from the have not’s. But what have we developed into? And what do we have and what do we have not? Can we have all things? Can we have all things at the same time? Do we lose certain things in order to gain others?

Perhaps we in the developed world are of the opinion that we have a better, more advanced and even superior life? Perhaps we feel we have a higher standard of living? One of the celebrated aspects of the so-called developed world is a longer life expectancy. But that measurement is quantitative and not necessarily qualitative.

It seems clear that we in the developed world do have more material possessions, more disposable income and we clearly seem to celebrate this as wealth. But why would we work so hard only to dispose of it all so easily? We may live longer but a lot of what we produce doesn’t. A lot of what we produce threatens not only the quantity of our lives but also the quality. The big drive seems to be cost effective production. More at less cost to us. But is this possible? Is it sustainable? A great deal of what we are and what we do is disposable. Sure, we are great at producing stuff, but what do we actually get in return? Of what sustainable value is it?

What comes back at us?

It’s not reasonable to measure wealth only in terms of material benefits? What about non material things such as ethics, justice, equity, respect, honour, honesty, dignity (to submit just a few). Which of these do we need to dispose of in order to make sense for ourselves of what we have spent ourselves for? What energy do we need to spend to justify that which we produce? If we are so creative why would we need so much recreation? What is it we need to re create? Was it not all that good when we created it at first?

So, we are the developed world and development is our game. But what exactly are we developing? … and what are we developing into?