Civilization Cancels Fruits of Culture

Several months ago I said that “civilized” is the new Aryan. Actually, I now think it is worse. The idea of civilization that belongs to a specific hemisphere, alliance or nation underlies racism, nazim and any other form of discrimination, exploitation and abuse. The very term has discrimination built in. Here is why.

The idea of culture is universal and egalitarian. Every nation, every people, every tribe, every ethnicity, community, etc. has a culture. Even the truest Aryans had to admit it, though they would always add the word “primitive” when speaking about anything South of Rome or East of Warsaw. The notion of civilization is different. Created and appropriated by the Western Europe (Adam Ferguson was among the first to use it), it was later spread to most willing colonies and dominions. That’s why North America and Japan, and South Korea are all considered parts of the so-called “collective West” in non-civilized countries like Russia.

Civilization is a brand that has a very good promotion. Even though 1492-style conquest missions are a thing of the past, colonial wars continue through selling admission tickets to the “civilization”. The keyword here is “selling”. The idea of joining the elite club of civilized nations maybe attractive for many reasons: trade benefits, social interaction, peace. But what is the nature of a deal offered by the original Executive Board of the Civilized? Well, if you have nothing to give back, you can only join the honorable squad of Traditional Cultures (traditional is the new primitive and implies useless untermenschen) with Native Americans and Australians. If that’s where you are, stop reading. You are safe as long as you have no ambitions beyond hoarding rain deers and entertaining tourists.

Yet, if you have something Civilization wants (oil and gas, land, white population), you are offered an honor to give it away. In exchange you are accepted as a candidate for membership in the greater circle of the civilized nations (still untermenschen, but useful ones). This group is loose. Sometimes it can include countries like Saudi Arabia, China or even Russia, and when these misbehave and refuse to supply oil for nearly free or insist on being anything more than gas stations where Ronald McDonald and LGBTQ+ activists can perform their kinky shows, the group is reshuffled. China and Russia out, Kosovo, Ukraine, Taiwan in. Rebels are banned from the realm of civilized, toppled from their place at the feet of the synthronon where the Rules Based Order is being worshipped.

So much for civilization. I don’t like it (well, of course I don’t, I’m Russian, so uncivilized by definition). The only thing to add is that I think it’s one of the reasons why Europe is still salty about the USA. USA is not peer among peers in the Executive Board of the Civilized. It is still a Wallis Simpson tolerated for money and power.

I prefer the idea of culture. The term is old, comes from the Latine verb for “cultivate” (grow crops) and was allegedly invented by Cicero. He spoke of “cultura animi”, of working on a personality and overcoming barbarism at a personal level (not ethnic or national). Interestingly, words “cultured” and “uncultured” are used far less often than “civilized” and “uncivilized”. I noted that I have almost never heard “uncultured” used outside Russia. I thought of it, and here it is again: a nation, an ethnicity or a hemisphere cannot be “uncultured”. The term is reserved for specific people. In Russian it is “некультурный” and we like the word very much. It doesn’t mean that someone cannot use a computer or silverware properly, rather it implies that a person fails to demonstrate the expected ability to appreciate art, literature, music. A person spitting on the ground or eating noisily is uncultured, but not because they break some rules of civilization, rather because it is ugly and the person fails to see how ugly it is. Aesthetic feeling and longing for beauty in a human make them part of a culture if not culture itself.

And, yes it has very little to do with Civilization or Rules Based Order where humans are ranged by usefulness and willingness to comply. It is civilization that invented cancel culture, the opposite has never been attempted.

Maria Kondorskaya

Linguist, [very] professional Content writer, Russian (and even Soviet), Muscovite, patriot, internationalist. Passive aggressive, vivacious pessimist, optimist with a morbid sense of humor. Made in the USSR in 1982.