Civilized to Death: What Was Lost on the Way to Modernity

by Christopher Ryan

“Disaster is sometimes a door back into paradise,” says Solnit, “the paradise at least in which we are who we hope to be, do the work we desire, and are each our sister’s and brother’s keeper.”

Solnit’s conclusions are dangerously subversive.

“everyday life in most places is a disaster that disruptions sometimes give us a chance to change.” Got that? Up is down, black is white, and earthquakes, tsunamis, and landslides aren’t the true disasters; rather, they’re disruptions to the ongoing, mundane disaster that most of us call “normal life.”

everyday is the horror

Fritz found that natural (and man-made) disasters liberated surviving victims from an oppressive normalcy:

growing body of political and social analyses that points to the failure of modern societies to fulfill an individual’s basic human needs for community identity.”

Our primordial cravings for intimate community are thwarted and twisted by the institutions that constitute civilized life.

Fritz points to the elements of the “social utopia” disaster survivors report: feelings of group solidarity, intimate communication, and physical and emotional support.

We clamor toward tribalism: anything that promises group identity, mutual protection, and even a faint echo of belonging. We are starving for what our ancestors ate every day of their lives.

Why were they stuck for so long? I’d suggest that they weren’t stuck at all; they were home. If necessity is the mother of invention, why is it so hard for us to surmise that they were happy and comfortable—without any apparent need for “progress”? In our world, where the present is habitually dismissed as a staging area to a better future, and disinformation concerning the long prehistory of our species is ubiquitous, it’s hard to acknowledge that our ancestors’ lives weren’t solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, or short. It’s nearly impossible for us to conceive that they could have been happy to stay right where they were. But this is what the evidence suggests.

the game of life is not to be won. The point of life is the living of it. Keep playing, enjoy and prolong the experience. Maybe distant intelligences haven’t been sending out signals because they realized that where they are, where they’re from, is exactly where they want to be.

Denial and Anger. Collapse:

Bargaining and Depression:

Acceptance.