_History of the World
What caused the shift out of barbarism to civility? This is a really stunning change in the history of the world, something truly new.
So let me explain exactly what I mean here. I call this trend "barbarism vs sanitation". Barbarism has a negative connotation, and that's generally how I mean it, whereas "sanitation" has an ominous sound to me -- something that sounds good at first but is actually sterile. Sometimes I mean it in this negative way, but lots of times I don't. So I just want to clear that up that barbarism and sanitation may or may not be bad, depending on the context. For the most part, it's just a matter-of-fact description of this larger trend, which I think is the driving force behind all of history. Again, let's put this in the context of the UQ. Barbarism would be physical, and sanitation physical. This is because sanitation is the trend towards abstraction, whereas barbarism is focused on the concrete.
Also, while somewhat tangential, I still think it's useful to think about this issue in terms of the question -- is the world a better place now, or in the past? Are things getting better and better? I've never been able to make up my mind on this. In some ways it's better, much better, and in some ways it's worse. To make things even more difficult, none of us have lived that far into the past, and so we'll never really know for sure. For someone who's empirical like me, that pretty much means that we'll never be able to get a definitive answer. But I still think it's an important question.
So what exactly is barbarism and sanitation? Have you ever noticed that we consider the people who lived in the past to be more barbaric? Likewise, we consider ourselves to be more civilized. If you're familiar with Foucault, and his book Discipline and Punish, you probably already have an idea of what I'm talking about. I'm not saying I got this idea from him -- it's something I had observed long before ever hearing about him and his book, but there is a whole book out there on this one aspect of barbarism and sanitation, and I think like Foucault, it was in this context of punishment that I first made this observation.
For example, torture was once considered a valid form of dealing with enemies, whether to punish them or extract information or cooperation out of them. I don't think this was considered a controversial thing, like it is today. In fact, I'm not even sure if torture is considered a controversial thing -- everyone knows it's bad and the only reason it might become controversial is because of cover-ups. So even though we might consider ourselves more civilized today -- resorting to more diplomatic and "abstract" methods of dealing with the enemy, torture is still used. Yes, even "civilized" people can become barbaric.
Similarly, methods of punishment and execution were once a lot more gruesome. Drawing and quartering; for example, throwing people to the lions in the Coliseum, or having gladiators fight to the death, largely for the spectacle; people coming out to watch public executions and hangings as a form of local entertainment; the list goes on and on. If you have much knowledge of history, you understand exactly what I'm talking about. Bottom line, we consider these things to be cruel and unusual forms of punishment, and definitely inhumane. But the most important thing is our gut reaction to these things -- we're appalled. And we don't so much think of these things as wrong (which we do), but more in terms of being barbaric. There's a sense that these things are backwards, primitive, and that we've come a long way since those times.
Nowadays, punishment has gotten much more "sanitized". It's clean, not gory. It's quiet, subtle, not in-your-face like a public execution to the acclaim of cheering and overly-excited crowds. Most punishment now involves simply going to jail, ie, a curtailment of freedom, the freedom to come and go as you please, the freedom to spend your time the way you see fit, the freedom to not be constantly monitored. So the punishment is a lot more psychological rather than physical (torture, beatings, starvation, etc). The only thing physical about it is that they're physically detaining you, but nobody actually harms you bodily.
A lot of so-called punishment these days isn't even really about punishment, but about rehabilitation. In the past, justice was a lot more clear-cut. There were really only 2 reasons for punishment -- 1)as a form of retribution, to balance out the scales of justice and 2)as a deterrent, not only in hopes of preventing recidivism, but also for the general population. Now in the 2nd reason, there is some rehabilitation built in, but it's indirect. The criminal must work out for himself that being bad just isn't worth it, to him personally, and therefore, he may consider rehabilitating himself. But there's no 12-step program, support group or anger management counseling. Of course, we also use this same indirect form of rehabilitation in our own justice and prison system, since we also hope that the criminal, stuck in jail, will see the light and realize that jail is not where he wants to be. But we also give him a lot more direct help that that. There's even job training and educational courses you can take in jail nowadays, besides all the rehab and counseling. People nowadays aren't so concerned with "balancing out the scales of justice", but in mind control -- extracting a true repentance from the criminal, a real change of mind and heart. The ultimate goal is to return the criminal to society as a non-criminal. Going even further than rehabilitation is the fairly new restorative justice, which is the most Christian (and therefore abstract/sanitized) form of justice I've come across. Restorative justice goes much further than mere rehabilitation because the victim also plays a crucial role in the process -- forgiving the offender. The offender also meets his victim/s, confesses, repents and does penance. Normally (in retributive justice), the offender and victims don't meet, except in court, and never actually speak to each other, and in this way the victim remains the abstract sub-human target that the offender always had of the victim from the beginning, the very mentality that allowed the criminal to wantonly hurt another person. Restorative justice pulls away this illusion and reveals to the offender that he hurt real-live human beings like himself. In turn, the victim also comes to realize the humanity of the offender, enabling them to forgive a fellow fallible human being.
So the very first act of sanitation was when God outlawed human sacrifice, ironically, by commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. I'd like to credit Max Dimont in his book Jews, God and History (very well written) for this observation (although he doesn't talk about barbarism and sanitation; however, he goes into several reasons for why Judaism was such a great leap in the development of religion, and this is one of the reasons). Before this, human sacrifice appears to have been commonplace among mankind, especially child sacrifice, which makes sense given that children are weak and helpless, making them easy prey. Sacrificing enemies and prisoners of war was also highly expedient, however.
But it wasn't just this act of sanitation that moved humanity along, but the tenets of this new religion itself. (Again, I got these ideas from Dimont.) The dichotomy between polytheism and idolatry on one hand, and monotheism and belief in an invisible God on the other can also be considered a development in the history of sanitation. We see here that the Hebrew God is a lot more abstract than all other so-called gods that came before him. So religion, and therefore history, was being spiritualized. [You may want to look at the discussion on idolatry on the (Actual) Divine Plan (Biblical History) page.]
Another new thing about the Jewish religion was that God was asexual. First of all, God is pure spirit, and so he has no gender, much less, any consort. This had never been seen before. This even carries over to Jesus -- although he is indeed a man, he's asexual. Suggesting otherwise is just downright blasphemous. It is just part and parcel of the Judeo-Christian conception of God.
Furthermore, whereas other gods and goddesses were just as flawed as mankind, the Hebrew God was morally perfect, and his only demand was that we also be morally perfect. However, even this went through development, which you can also read on the same The (Actual) Divine Plan (Biblical History) page. Something which I didn't include there, however, is the Old Testament emphasis on blessings or curses from the Lord (which we can categorize as a type of appeasement* concern), something which pretty much disappears from the New Testament, where the only concern is with making moral progress.
*In primitive religions, the emphasis is not on the distinction between right and wrong and living a morally upright life, but on appeasing the gods, winning their favor, so that you can get what you want out of them -- a good harvest, fertility, prosperity, protection from and defeat over enemies, etc. This is done primarily by following superstition (superstitions that have nothing to do with right and wrong, but that are instead often completely arbitrary), performing rituals, uttering rote and repetitious prayers, offering animal or plant sacrifices, etc. Therefore, the purpose of religion here is to control the gods, not about following God's will. It's completely the opposite from Abrahamic thought. In any case, the move from appeasement as the purpose of religion to submission can also be thought of as progress in sanitation.
I'd say the next biggest milestone in the history of sanitation was when all sacrifices were abolished, except for the sacrifice of the mass, which itself was thoroughly sanitized, it being called "the bloodless sacrifice". Of course, the original sacrifice on the cross was extremely bloody, human (and divine), mankind having murdered their own creator, making it all the more outrageous. But Jesus instituted the sacrifice of the mass even before his death. Thereafter, a change in thought came over the partakers, and even over those who merely heard about this new type of sacrifice, or had been raised in a Christian society -- any kind of animal sacrifice was seen as barbaric and backwards. There was pity for the poor animal and disgust at the bloodshed. Things are so much tidier now with our plant sacrifice of wheat and wine, familiar and harmless staples of the everyday diet.
How does this compare with other religions? Judaism, of course, has always had animal sacrifices, and although this isn't practiced anymore (since they no longer have a temple), this new (non-practice) of sacrifices is actually what you might call a necessary evil. There's animal sacrifices in Islam, some forms of Hinduism have them and others don't (not surprising since with all the many different variations on this religion, you can find any variety of anything in it), and Buddhism, not surprisingly, does not have sacrifices, first, because they have no god to sacrifice to, and second, because you're not supposed to kill any sentient being. Yet even here we can see an example of sanitation, since Buddhism can be considered the sanitized version of Hinduism. Secondly, it can be said to be even more abstract than Hinduism, since it's atheistic. [I talk about atheism as both a regression and progression in the evolution of religion on the (Actual) Divine Plan (Biblical History) page, regression into materialism {idolatry} and progression into abstraction.] However, if you truly understand the Eastern religions and philosophy, you will see that they are all atheistic at heart, and therefore materialistic (even with the outward veneer of idealism), and therefore, regressions from the worship of the True God, "in spirit and truth". (Jn 4:24) You can read more about this on the UQ page.
Another example of sanitation is the adoption of monogamy throughout the world. Although most of the world started out polygamous to some degree (even if in actuality most men couldn't be polygamous because they couldn't afford it), most of the world has adopted monogamy. This is especially curious since men naturally want to be polygamous, which is exactly how things started out. It's kind of hard to see why they would eliminate something that they like, especially since polygamy is really just sanctioned adultery, which always comes in handy if you're sick of your old wife or find a new woman that you're attracted to. But monogamous societies don't just see polygamy as wrong -- they see it as backwards and barbaric. Except for primitive tribes and most Muslim countries (where it's explicitly allowed according to the Quran, and therefore, kind of hard to ban unless you have a secular government [as in Turkey]), everyone else has agreed that polygamy is a really bad idea.
Economic and social structures around the world have also been sanitized by the abolition of slavery. Not that slavery has truly been abolished, but it's now illegal the world over, and those who practice it must do so in secret, or at least, with the cooperation of corrupt police, whereas in the past, most societies saw nothing wrong with it and it was considered perfectly normal. So you can see where this sanitation issue also ties into the question "Is the world a better place now, or in the past?" Due in part to all the sanitation that's taken place, it's probably hard to argue that things are worse now than before, but that's also probably too simplistic, but I guess we can save that for another time.
In any case, it's also hard to see why slavery would be abolished, given that for slave owners, they have only to benefit, and given that the strong always overpower and take advantage of the weak, and given that they can get away with it, why would it be abolished? But the real question I'm after is -- why will people agree to be good, not because they're really interested in right or wrong or the rights and dignity of others, but because they wish not to be seen as barbaric, backwards, or otherwise behind the times, in other words -- unsophisticated? Now obviously, unsophistication hurts one's pride, but why is it that these things have become unsophisticated? To put it another way, what is the process by which something becomes sanitized? Couldn't it have gone the other way? After all, in times past, men were no doubt very proud of their large harems, and proud of the number of their slaves. These things could be seen as status symbols. Nowadays, in the US for example, Mormon polygamists are seen as extremely backwards -- modern-day pariahs. Maybe within their own communities a man with a large harem might be considered a great man, but if he were to leave his own world and enter into the larger one, he'd get nothing but backlash if people were to find out, and he would probably know this and make an effort to hide this. In fact, the larger Mormon community ended up buckling to the mores of the larger world and have rejected polygamy (yet another instance of successful sanitation), and they sure aren't proud of their polygamist past. The same thing has happened to Christianity. In Judaism, God allowed multiple wives, but the Church outlawed this, and depending on your interpretation of Jesus' teaching on marriage and divorce, he also outlawed it. And even Jews no longer practice polygamy, although it's not forbidden in their scriptures, and they haven't been polygamists for a long time (like centuries).
It's also important to talk about instances of regression back into barbarism. Taking Christianity, there's been readoptions of polygamy, although this has only happened with corruptions of Christianity, for example, the Mormons, who aren't even Christians, even if we can call them a Christian-"inspired" cult, and some forms of Protestantism, most notably, the first Protestant -- Martin Luther, who allowed Philip of Hesse to take a second wife (concurrent with his first wife), Lutherans and Anglicans (albeit with limitations, kowtowing to the wishes of African converts), and some evangelical Christians in America. I have to wonder if these same people would be OK with slavery? Many of them make the argument that since it was allowed in the Old Testament, it must be OK for them too, but slavery was also allowed in the Old Testament -- what then? I can only say what I've said before -- that these regressions only occur with corruptions of Christianity -- those groups who have left the true church -- the Catholic Church, and this cannot be helped, since there will always be people who lose faith and succumb to degradations of the true faith.
Another interesting regression to barbarism is Islam. This is because although it lifted many people out of paganism and proclaims an invisible, transcendent God with the same basic attributes as the Jewish God (all-powerful, all-knowing, asexual, etc), it backtracked from the advances made in Christianity to go back to the primitiveness of Judaism. Perhaps the most salient of these regressions is polygamy, which puts half the Muslim population under the category of "inferior", an especially terrible thing when it comes to marriage, which ought to be the most equalizing and harmonizing of human institutions, at least from a Christian perspective, in which the husband and wife are seen as "becoming one flesh". And probably equally regressive is the tenet of jihad specifically as it relates to holy war. Although the Old Testament relates many stories that in many ways could be considered equivalent to holy war (you can read more about this under Unjust Warfare/War), Christianity has totally rejected this, Jesus instead preaching "to turn the other cheek", a radical departure from everything human nature wills.
A further regression, which must be described in much more depth than the other instances listed, has to deal with the dichotomy between sin/crime, the separation between the state and religion, and the distinction between personal vs public wrongdoing. Jesus did something really radical here, which his followers have imitated ever since. Please read the story of the woman caught in adultery in Jn 8:2-11 if you're not already familiar with it.
Previously, the Jewish people lived under a semi-theocratic society, however, not as theocratic as in Islam. This is because although their (the Jews') religion, laws and culture were heavily intertwined, there was still a separation between the state and religion because the king and high priest were 2 separate offices held by 2 different people. In fact, the king was never even a priest, or from the priestly tribe of Levi. God chose the first king of Israel from the tribe of Benjamin, and the second from the tribe of Judah (the Davidic dynasty continuing until the time of the Babylonian exile). This contrasts with Islam, where the caliph was considered the highest religious and civil authority in the Muslim community, and in fact, was considered the successor of Muhammad, he himself proclaiming himself Prophet and becoming a great conqueror and political leader.
In any case, there wasn't really a distinction in the Mosaic law between what we would call a crime, and what we would call a sin. Breaking the sabbath, for example, could bring the death penalty, although I don't think this ever happened except for one time (Nm 15:32-36). The Mosaic law covered everything from sacrifices to be offered for certain sins, punishments for crimes, civil laws about inheritance, land boundaries, etc, (religious) festivals and a whole lot more. It was all lumped together.
In the case of the woman caught in adultery, the punishment prescribed in the Law was the death penalty, which is exactly what the people who brought her to Jesus were intending to do. (Although it is interesting that they even questioned Jesus about this, since the interpretation of the Law would not have been ambiguous, but explicit. I'm not sure what they were after [other than to get Jesus in trouble some how, something they were always on the lookout to do], or what they thought Jesus would do [since they obviously did not expect his actual reaction]). Although this story is often used as an example of the proper balance between justice and mercy, righteousness and love, and I'd agree that this is the most important lesson to draw from this episode, there's a lot more to it than just that. Jesus was also drawing a line between the 3 things I enumerated above -- sin and crime, the state and religion, and public vs private wrongdoing. Now this also has a lot to do with politics and paternalism (of which Islam is a great example [and which would bring us back to our discussion of it from above], as well as Singapore, which is far more interesting example for all sorts of reasons), but I'll get to that later on the Ethics page.
Although adultery is a serious sin, and God (in the Old Testament) certainly thought it was serious enough that it ought to be punished by death (by the community, ie, the state), Jesus classifies it as only a sin (against God and one's spouse, one's family and no doubt society in general, although in regards to society, in an indirect way), and not as a crime, and therefore, it no longer has to be punished by the civil authorities. An adulterer no longer needed to be put on trial, or condemned on the basis of 2 or 3 witnesses (always a necessary requirement when it came to the death penalty as prescribed in the Mosaic Law). We could ask: is this actually the better way? Although in general sanitation is better than barbarism, the paternalistic factor has to be taken into account. But again, this will be saved for the Ethics page. In any case, the only countries that consider adultery (or other sexual misdeeds) to be a crime, and punish it civilly (often by stoning), tend to be Muslim countries, because there's no distinction between the state and religion; an offense against God is equally considered an offense against society, whereas in a Christian context, an offense against God is not necessarily an offense against society, although an offense against society is also an offense against God. But to a Muslim, a sin (if it's considered severe enough) is also a crime. So not being a Muslim, or blasphemy (which are severe sins), would be considered crimes, possibly punishable by death. I'm not saying that Christian societies (in the past) have never burned or tortured heretics, as happened during the Inquisition, but such a stance couldn't be defended using the Gospel. Christianity, having been fairly sanitized from its inception (although not completely, Christianity and the Church also going through a process of sanitation itself [for example, the bible never forbids slave-holding, considered barbaric nowadays]), would have been interested in the true conversion and repentance of an unbeliever rather than forcing people to confess something that they don't actually believe, for the sake of "harmonizing" society for example (that is, unifying the social order, getting everyone on the same page, and forcing this to happen if it isn't going to happen naturally). To a certain extent, this is also related to the individualism/communalism debate, in which Christianity also furthered the cause of individualism, since it mainly focuses on personal moral progress and perfection, something that it does to a much greater extent than in Judaism (we can go over this down below). And not that I want to pick on Islam here, but it just happens to be a good counterexample to Christianity in many respects, but Islam is much more communal, and must be, even though they also believe in the Last Judgment (in which each person will be judged on his own merits), because of the lack of the distinction between state and religion. Furthermore, I don't want to say that individualism is superior to communalism, or that Christianity favors individualism, since like all things in the UQ, the 2 sides must be balanced, individualism being physical and communalism being spiritual.
But can we really attribute all this sanitation to Christianity? Many would say that actually, it comes from the Western Enlightenment. This is a good hypothesis, but unfortunately, I don't think I know enough about history to say one way or the other. For example, even though Europe had been Christian for many centuries, and society had been sanitized at least to a certain extent (for example, you didn't have bloody, gory gladiator games or throwing of Christians to lions in the Colisseum anymore, to the roaring of crowds), public executions still had the dual purpose of punishment and public entertainment. Even though the same logic is behind both practices (Roman and European), the Romans were doing this on a "grander" scale, while European executions were more sporadic and not so well organized, publicized, or monetized. Furthermore, many who died in the Colisseum (or in games held elsewhere), were condemned to death for no other reason than being a slave. If your master said that you could provide him with an income by dying/killing for sport, then that was your purpose in life. At least European executions were for condemned criminals only. In fact, the reason the gladiator games went out of fashion was because of the adoption by the Roman Empire of Christianity as the state religion. The games were also a much more integral part of Roman society. Not only were they for entertainment and punishment, but they also played a role in politics (politicians putting on games for acclaim and votes). So we see that Christianity partially sanitized Europe when it came to punishment, cruelty, and murder and killing for sport, but not completely. So the question is, to what extent did Christianity sanitize the world, and to what extent the Enlightenment? Or did the Enlightenment actually, at least partially, come from Christianity? Or did Christianity have within it the seeds of its own destruction? After all, isn't it interesting that the most godless places on earth were once Christian? It's almost as if secularism is birthed by Christianity. This is a rather large topic, and I'm going to have to investigate this and discuss it at a later time.
But let's go into the barbarism of Catholicism. Whereas many corruptions of Christianity (like polygamy, discussed above), arose not from Catholicism but perversions of it (the various Protestant sects), Catholicism itself has had its fair share of regression into barbarism. Flagellation, and extremely harsh (and unusual) ascetic practices (like living on top of a pillar), along with the whole suffering-for-suffering's-sake mentality would fall under this category. Of course, Catholicism has emerged from this with a new and much improved attitude towards mortification (in fact, it could be argued that the Church has made it too easy on everyone -- you only have to fast twice a year now -- on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday!) but at the same time, it's interesting that the Church didn't start out with such harsh ideas about mortification. Flagellation didn't reach its heyday til the Middle Ages.
It could even be argued that notions of romantic love and marriage have been sanitized. This seems to be the common view, although I've never been convinced of this. It seems to me that people have always fallen in love and wanted to get married to the person they fall in love with. But supposedly, marriage was seen as a far more practical, utilitarian affair, and people didn't have much expectations about it. I'm throwing this out here just as food for thought, since I personally haven't bought this theory, which just seems much too simplistic to be believable. After all, a lot of people in this day and age are jaded by love and see it as the only practical solution to keeping costs down and raising the kids. I'm always wary of this sort of analysis since no one really knows what it was like, since no one alive now lived back then to tell us what it was really like. Again, this is just one more version of the "Are things better now or were things better back then?" question, and I guess we'll never know for sure because no one has actual first-hand experience of "back then". The only plausible part of all this is that it's true that society has become more individualistic, and in that respect, people are seeing all aspects of their lives, including their romantic relationships, as another outlet for their individuality and self-fulfillment. But I think that says a lot more about individualism and the rise of selfishness, then it does about romance and marriage. For all the negative views about marriage in the past, the inequality of women, arranged marriages based on social status and economic considerations, my guess is that marriages were probably happier back then than now, if only because divorce (and marriage) weren't taken so lightly.
Which brings me to wonder -- could there be an opposite to sanitation, that is, a barbaric kind of sanitation, a sanitation that is regressive, not progressive? I'm thinking about divorce here. While it's hard to think of divorce as barbaric, since there's nothing blatantly gory or primitive about it, isn't it regressive in that, even for those who believe in it as a necessary evil, no one considers it a good thing in itself? But attitudes have definitely gotten more lax about it, and many people do think of laws in favor of divorce, making it easier to get, as progressive. So it seems that not all developments in society and history have been for the better, progressive as they might seem, and therefore that muddles up the case for sanitation as an overwhelming, all-encompassing force on the scene of the world. It almost seems as if there's actually 2 forces at work -- what I'll call for now for lack of better terminology "good sanitation" and "bad sanitation". This might explain the Enlightenment -- having been born, somehow or another, out of the Christian milieu, it spawned a deviant branch which would begin to attack its very root (Christianity)-- modernism, and all its accompanying evils. However, again we have no better place to turn than to perversions and corruptions of the Christian religion to explain this regression to barbarism, an "enlightened" barbarism, which in this case is Protestantism and the Reformation.
Perhaps the most obvious example of good and bad sanitation is the transformation of idolatry into materialism, which I've already discussed on another page of this website [The (Actual) Divine Plan (Biblical History)], and which is actually the reason I even started working on this question (on this page). So we've come full circle -- always a good thing in philosophy.
How has philosophy affected the average person? Or has it even?
They say farmers allowed for specialization (in occupations), and that that’s how greatness developed, but hunter-gatherers have so much free time, so why didn’t they come up with all sorts of cool technology and culture first?
“zeitgeist” – do cultures come in “package deals”? That is, is there some unifying essence to cultures that causes them to manifest themselves in particular ways? For example, Asian languages, dress, art, music, even the geography and fauna and flora all go together. Likewise all other cultures, be they African, American, etc. Is this just my imagination, having been brainwashed by familiarity and a taking-for-granted mentality? Or is there really something to this?
Western culture is more masculine and Eastern is more feminine. So does this mean that Eastern men are better at understanding women than Western men? Sure doesn't seem like it. But why not?
When and why did it become more intelligent to not believe in God? Seems that this is rather recent development.
Has philosophy ever really accomplished anything?
So let me explain exactly what I mean here. I call this trend "barbarism vs sanitation". Barbarism has a negative connotation, and that's generally how I mean it, whereas "sanitation" has an ominous sound to me -- something that sounds good at first but is actually sterile. Sometimes I mean it in this negative way, but lots of times I don't. So I just want to clear that up that barbarism and sanitation may or may not be bad, depending on the context. For the most part, it's just a matter-of-fact description of this larger trend, which I think is the driving force behind all of history. Again, let's put this in the context of the UQ. Barbarism would be physical, and sanitation physical. This is because sanitation is the trend towards abstraction, whereas barbarism is focused on the concrete.
Also, while somewhat tangential, I still think it's useful to think about this issue in terms of the question -- is the world a better place now, or in the past? Are things getting better and better? I've never been able to make up my mind on this. In some ways it's better, much better, and in some ways it's worse. To make things even more difficult, none of us have lived that far into the past, and so we'll never really know for sure. For someone who's empirical like me, that pretty much means that we'll never be able to get a definitive answer. But I still think it's an important question.
So what exactly is barbarism and sanitation? Have you ever noticed that we consider the people who lived in the past to be more barbaric? Likewise, we consider ourselves to be more civilized. If you're familiar with Foucault, and his book Discipline and Punish, you probably already have an idea of what I'm talking about. I'm not saying I got this idea from him -- it's something I had observed long before ever hearing about him and his book, but there is a whole book out there on this one aspect of barbarism and sanitation, and I think like Foucault, it was in this context of punishment that I first made this observation.
For example, torture was once considered a valid form of dealing with enemies, whether to punish them or extract information or cooperation out of them. I don't think this was considered a controversial thing, like it is today. In fact, I'm not even sure if torture is considered a controversial thing -- everyone knows it's bad and the only reason it might become controversial is because of cover-ups. So even though we might consider ourselves more civilized today -- resorting to more diplomatic and "abstract" methods of dealing with the enemy, torture is still used. Yes, even "civilized" people can become barbaric.
Similarly, methods of punishment and execution were once a lot more gruesome. Drawing and quartering; for example, throwing people to the lions in the Coliseum, or having gladiators fight to the death, largely for the spectacle; people coming out to watch public executions and hangings as a form of local entertainment; the list goes on and on. If you have much knowledge of history, you understand exactly what I'm talking about. Bottom line, we consider these things to be cruel and unusual forms of punishment, and definitely inhumane. But the most important thing is our gut reaction to these things -- we're appalled. And we don't so much think of these things as wrong (which we do), but more in terms of being barbaric. There's a sense that these things are backwards, primitive, and that we've come a long way since those times.
Nowadays, punishment has gotten much more "sanitized". It's clean, not gory. It's quiet, subtle, not in-your-face like a public execution to the acclaim of cheering and overly-excited crowds. Most punishment now involves simply going to jail, ie, a curtailment of freedom, the freedom to come and go as you please, the freedom to spend your time the way you see fit, the freedom to not be constantly monitored. So the punishment is a lot more psychological rather than physical (torture, beatings, starvation, etc). The only thing physical about it is that they're physically detaining you, but nobody actually harms you bodily.
A lot of so-called punishment these days isn't even really about punishment, but about rehabilitation. In the past, justice was a lot more clear-cut. There were really only 2 reasons for punishment -- 1)as a form of retribution, to balance out the scales of justice and 2)as a deterrent, not only in hopes of preventing recidivism, but also for the general population. Now in the 2nd reason, there is some rehabilitation built in, but it's indirect. The criminal must work out for himself that being bad just isn't worth it, to him personally, and therefore, he may consider rehabilitating himself. But there's no 12-step program, support group or anger management counseling. Of course, we also use this same indirect form of rehabilitation in our own justice and prison system, since we also hope that the criminal, stuck in jail, will see the light and realize that jail is not where he wants to be. But we also give him a lot more direct help that that. There's even job training and educational courses you can take in jail nowadays, besides all the rehab and counseling. People nowadays aren't so concerned with "balancing out the scales of justice", but in mind control -- extracting a true repentance from the criminal, a real change of mind and heart. The ultimate goal is to return the criminal to society as a non-criminal. Going even further than rehabilitation is the fairly new restorative justice, which is the most Christian (and therefore abstract/sanitized) form of justice I've come across. Restorative justice goes much further than mere rehabilitation because the victim also plays a crucial role in the process -- forgiving the offender. The offender also meets his victim/s, confesses, repents and does penance. Normally (in retributive justice), the offender and victims don't meet, except in court, and never actually speak to each other, and in this way the victim remains the abstract sub-human target that the offender always had of the victim from the beginning, the very mentality that allowed the criminal to wantonly hurt another person. Restorative justice pulls away this illusion and reveals to the offender that he hurt real-live human beings like himself. In turn, the victim also comes to realize the humanity of the offender, enabling them to forgive a fellow fallible human being.
So the very first act of sanitation was when God outlawed human sacrifice, ironically, by commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. I'd like to credit Max Dimont in his book Jews, God and History (very well written) for this observation (although he doesn't talk about barbarism and sanitation; however, he goes into several reasons for why Judaism was such a great leap in the development of religion, and this is one of the reasons). Before this, human sacrifice appears to have been commonplace among mankind, especially child sacrifice, which makes sense given that children are weak and helpless, making them easy prey. Sacrificing enemies and prisoners of war was also highly expedient, however.
But it wasn't just this act of sanitation that moved humanity along, but the tenets of this new religion itself. (Again, I got these ideas from Dimont.) The dichotomy between polytheism and idolatry on one hand, and monotheism and belief in an invisible God on the other can also be considered a development in the history of sanitation. We see here that the Hebrew God is a lot more abstract than all other so-called gods that came before him. So religion, and therefore history, was being spiritualized. [You may want to look at the discussion on idolatry on the (Actual) Divine Plan (Biblical History) page.]
Another new thing about the Jewish religion was that God was asexual. First of all, God is pure spirit, and so he has no gender, much less, any consort. This had never been seen before. This even carries over to Jesus -- although he is indeed a man, he's asexual. Suggesting otherwise is just downright blasphemous. It is just part and parcel of the Judeo-Christian conception of God.
Furthermore, whereas other gods and goddesses were just as flawed as mankind, the Hebrew God was morally perfect, and his only demand was that we also be morally perfect. However, even this went through development, which you can also read on the same The (Actual) Divine Plan (Biblical History) page. Something which I didn't include there, however, is the Old Testament emphasis on blessings or curses from the Lord (which we can categorize as a type of appeasement* concern), something which pretty much disappears from the New Testament, where the only concern is with making moral progress.
*In primitive religions, the emphasis is not on the distinction between right and wrong and living a morally upright life, but on appeasing the gods, winning their favor, so that you can get what you want out of them -- a good harvest, fertility, prosperity, protection from and defeat over enemies, etc. This is done primarily by following superstition (superstitions that have nothing to do with right and wrong, but that are instead often completely arbitrary), performing rituals, uttering rote and repetitious prayers, offering animal or plant sacrifices, etc. Therefore, the purpose of religion here is to control the gods, not about following God's will. It's completely the opposite from Abrahamic thought. In any case, the move from appeasement as the purpose of religion to submission can also be thought of as progress in sanitation.
I'd say the next biggest milestone in the history of sanitation was when all sacrifices were abolished, except for the sacrifice of the mass, which itself was thoroughly sanitized, it being called "the bloodless sacrifice". Of course, the original sacrifice on the cross was extremely bloody, human (and divine), mankind having murdered their own creator, making it all the more outrageous. But Jesus instituted the sacrifice of the mass even before his death. Thereafter, a change in thought came over the partakers, and even over those who merely heard about this new type of sacrifice, or had been raised in a Christian society -- any kind of animal sacrifice was seen as barbaric and backwards. There was pity for the poor animal and disgust at the bloodshed. Things are so much tidier now with our plant sacrifice of wheat and wine, familiar and harmless staples of the everyday diet.
How does this compare with other religions? Judaism, of course, has always had animal sacrifices, and although this isn't practiced anymore (since they no longer have a temple), this new (non-practice) of sacrifices is actually what you might call a necessary evil. There's animal sacrifices in Islam, some forms of Hinduism have them and others don't (not surprising since with all the many different variations on this religion, you can find any variety of anything in it), and Buddhism, not surprisingly, does not have sacrifices, first, because they have no god to sacrifice to, and second, because you're not supposed to kill any sentient being. Yet even here we can see an example of sanitation, since Buddhism can be considered the sanitized version of Hinduism. Secondly, it can be said to be even more abstract than Hinduism, since it's atheistic. [I talk about atheism as both a regression and progression in the evolution of religion on the (Actual) Divine Plan (Biblical History) page, regression into materialism {idolatry} and progression into abstraction.] However, if you truly understand the Eastern religions and philosophy, you will see that they are all atheistic at heart, and therefore materialistic (even with the outward veneer of idealism), and therefore, regressions from the worship of the True God, "in spirit and truth". (Jn 4:24) You can read more about this on the UQ page.
Another example of sanitation is the adoption of monogamy throughout the world. Although most of the world started out polygamous to some degree (even if in actuality most men couldn't be polygamous because they couldn't afford it), most of the world has adopted monogamy. This is especially curious since men naturally want to be polygamous, which is exactly how things started out. It's kind of hard to see why they would eliminate something that they like, especially since polygamy is really just sanctioned adultery, which always comes in handy if you're sick of your old wife or find a new woman that you're attracted to. But monogamous societies don't just see polygamy as wrong -- they see it as backwards and barbaric. Except for primitive tribes and most Muslim countries (where it's explicitly allowed according to the Quran, and therefore, kind of hard to ban unless you have a secular government [as in Turkey]), everyone else has agreed that polygamy is a really bad idea.
Economic and social structures around the world have also been sanitized by the abolition of slavery. Not that slavery has truly been abolished, but it's now illegal the world over, and those who practice it must do so in secret, or at least, with the cooperation of corrupt police, whereas in the past, most societies saw nothing wrong with it and it was considered perfectly normal. So you can see where this sanitation issue also ties into the question "Is the world a better place now, or in the past?" Due in part to all the sanitation that's taken place, it's probably hard to argue that things are worse now than before, but that's also probably too simplistic, but I guess we can save that for another time.
In any case, it's also hard to see why slavery would be abolished, given that for slave owners, they have only to benefit, and given that the strong always overpower and take advantage of the weak, and given that they can get away with it, why would it be abolished? But the real question I'm after is -- why will people agree to be good, not because they're really interested in right or wrong or the rights and dignity of others, but because they wish not to be seen as barbaric, backwards, or otherwise behind the times, in other words -- unsophisticated? Now obviously, unsophistication hurts one's pride, but why is it that these things have become unsophisticated? To put it another way, what is the process by which something becomes sanitized? Couldn't it have gone the other way? After all, in times past, men were no doubt very proud of their large harems, and proud of the number of their slaves. These things could be seen as status symbols. Nowadays, in the US for example, Mormon polygamists are seen as extremely backwards -- modern-day pariahs. Maybe within their own communities a man with a large harem might be considered a great man, but if he were to leave his own world and enter into the larger one, he'd get nothing but backlash if people were to find out, and he would probably know this and make an effort to hide this. In fact, the larger Mormon community ended up buckling to the mores of the larger world and have rejected polygamy (yet another instance of successful sanitation), and they sure aren't proud of their polygamist past. The same thing has happened to Christianity. In Judaism, God allowed multiple wives, but the Church outlawed this, and depending on your interpretation of Jesus' teaching on marriage and divorce, he also outlawed it. And even Jews no longer practice polygamy, although it's not forbidden in their scriptures, and they haven't been polygamists for a long time (like centuries).
It's also important to talk about instances of regression back into barbarism. Taking Christianity, there's been readoptions of polygamy, although this has only happened with corruptions of Christianity, for example, the Mormons, who aren't even Christians, even if we can call them a Christian-"inspired" cult, and some forms of Protestantism, most notably, the first Protestant -- Martin Luther, who allowed Philip of Hesse to take a second wife (concurrent with his first wife), Lutherans and Anglicans (albeit with limitations, kowtowing to the wishes of African converts), and some evangelical Christians in America. I have to wonder if these same people would be OK with slavery? Many of them make the argument that since it was allowed in the Old Testament, it must be OK for them too, but slavery was also allowed in the Old Testament -- what then? I can only say what I've said before -- that these regressions only occur with corruptions of Christianity -- those groups who have left the true church -- the Catholic Church, and this cannot be helped, since there will always be people who lose faith and succumb to degradations of the true faith.
Another interesting regression to barbarism is Islam. This is because although it lifted many people out of paganism and proclaims an invisible, transcendent God with the same basic attributes as the Jewish God (all-powerful, all-knowing, asexual, etc), it backtracked from the advances made in Christianity to go back to the primitiveness of Judaism. Perhaps the most salient of these regressions is polygamy, which puts half the Muslim population under the category of "inferior", an especially terrible thing when it comes to marriage, which ought to be the most equalizing and harmonizing of human institutions, at least from a Christian perspective, in which the husband and wife are seen as "becoming one flesh". And probably equally regressive is the tenet of jihad specifically as it relates to holy war. Although the Old Testament relates many stories that in many ways could be considered equivalent to holy war (you can read more about this under Unjust Warfare/War), Christianity has totally rejected this, Jesus instead preaching "to turn the other cheek", a radical departure from everything human nature wills.
A further regression, which must be described in much more depth than the other instances listed, has to deal with the dichotomy between sin/crime, the separation between the state and religion, and the distinction between personal vs public wrongdoing. Jesus did something really radical here, which his followers have imitated ever since. Please read the story of the woman caught in adultery in Jn 8:2-11 if you're not already familiar with it.
Previously, the Jewish people lived under a semi-theocratic society, however, not as theocratic as in Islam. This is because although their (the Jews') religion, laws and culture were heavily intertwined, there was still a separation between the state and religion because the king and high priest were 2 separate offices held by 2 different people. In fact, the king was never even a priest, or from the priestly tribe of Levi. God chose the first king of Israel from the tribe of Benjamin, and the second from the tribe of Judah (the Davidic dynasty continuing until the time of the Babylonian exile). This contrasts with Islam, where the caliph was considered the highest religious and civil authority in the Muslim community, and in fact, was considered the successor of Muhammad, he himself proclaiming himself Prophet and becoming a great conqueror and political leader.
In any case, there wasn't really a distinction in the Mosaic law between what we would call a crime, and what we would call a sin. Breaking the sabbath, for example, could bring the death penalty, although I don't think this ever happened except for one time (Nm 15:32-36). The Mosaic law covered everything from sacrifices to be offered for certain sins, punishments for crimes, civil laws about inheritance, land boundaries, etc, (religious) festivals and a whole lot more. It was all lumped together.
In the case of the woman caught in adultery, the punishment prescribed in the Law was the death penalty, which is exactly what the people who brought her to Jesus were intending to do. (Although it is interesting that they even questioned Jesus about this, since the interpretation of the Law would not have been ambiguous, but explicit. I'm not sure what they were after [other than to get Jesus in trouble some how, something they were always on the lookout to do], or what they thought Jesus would do [since they obviously did not expect his actual reaction]). Although this story is often used as an example of the proper balance between justice and mercy, righteousness and love, and I'd agree that this is the most important lesson to draw from this episode, there's a lot more to it than just that. Jesus was also drawing a line between the 3 things I enumerated above -- sin and crime, the state and religion, and public vs private wrongdoing. Now this also has a lot to do with politics and paternalism (of which Islam is a great example [and which would bring us back to our discussion of it from above], as well as Singapore, which is far more interesting example for all sorts of reasons), but I'll get to that later on the Ethics page.
Although adultery is a serious sin, and God (in the Old Testament) certainly thought it was serious enough that it ought to be punished by death (by the community, ie, the state), Jesus classifies it as only a sin (against God and one's spouse, one's family and no doubt society in general, although in regards to society, in an indirect way), and not as a crime, and therefore, it no longer has to be punished by the civil authorities. An adulterer no longer needed to be put on trial, or condemned on the basis of 2 or 3 witnesses (always a necessary requirement when it came to the death penalty as prescribed in the Mosaic Law). We could ask: is this actually the better way? Although in general sanitation is better than barbarism, the paternalistic factor has to be taken into account. But again, this will be saved for the Ethics page. In any case, the only countries that consider adultery (or other sexual misdeeds) to be a crime, and punish it civilly (often by stoning), tend to be Muslim countries, because there's no distinction between the state and religion; an offense against God is equally considered an offense against society, whereas in a Christian context, an offense against God is not necessarily an offense against society, although an offense against society is also an offense against God. But to a Muslim, a sin (if it's considered severe enough) is also a crime. So not being a Muslim, or blasphemy (which are severe sins), would be considered crimes, possibly punishable by death. I'm not saying that Christian societies (in the past) have never burned or tortured heretics, as happened during the Inquisition, but such a stance couldn't be defended using the Gospel. Christianity, having been fairly sanitized from its inception (although not completely, Christianity and the Church also going through a process of sanitation itself [for example, the bible never forbids slave-holding, considered barbaric nowadays]), would have been interested in the true conversion and repentance of an unbeliever rather than forcing people to confess something that they don't actually believe, for the sake of "harmonizing" society for example (that is, unifying the social order, getting everyone on the same page, and forcing this to happen if it isn't going to happen naturally). To a certain extent, this is also related to the individualism/communalism debate, in which Christianity also furthered the cause of individualism, since it mainly focuses on personal moral progress and perfection, something that it does to a much greater extent than in Judaism (we can go over this down below). And not that I want to pick on Islam here, but it just happens to be a good counterexample to Christianity in many respects, but Islam is much more communal, and must be, even though they also believe in the Last Judgment (in which each person will be judged on his own merits), because of the lack of the distinction between state and religion. Furthermore, I don't want to say that individualism is superior to communalism, or that Christianity favors individualism, since like all things in the UQ, the 2 sides must be balanced, individualism being physical and communalism being spiritual.
But can we really attribute all this sanitation to Christianity? Many would say that actually, it comes from the Western Enlightenment. This is a good hypothesis, but unfortunately, I don't think I know enough about history to say one way or the other. For example, even though Europe had been Christian for many centuries, and society had been sanitized at least to a certain extent (for example, you didn't have bloody, gory gladiator games or throwing of Christians to lions in the Colisseum anymore, to the roaring of crowds), public executions still had the dual purpose of punishment and public entertainment. Even though the same logic is behind both practices (Roman and European), the Romans were doing this on a "grander" scale, while European executions were more sporadic and not so well organized, publicized, or monetized. Furthermore, many who died in the Colisseum (or in games held elsewhere), were condemned to death for no other reason than being a slave. If your master said that you could provide him with an income by dying/killing for sport, then that was your purpose in life. At least European executions were for condemned criminals only. In fact, the reason the gladiator games went out of fashion was because of the adoption by the Roman Empire of Christianity as the state religion. The games were also a much more integral part of Roman society. Not only were they for entertainment and punishment, but they also played a role in politics (politicians putting on games for acclaim and votes). So we see that Christianity partially sanitized Europe when it came to punishment, cruelty, and murder and killing for sport, but not completely. So the question is, to what extent did Christianity sanitize the world, and to what extent the Enlightenment? Or did the Enlightenment actually, at least partially, come from Christianity? Or did Christianity have within it the seeds of its own destruction? After all, isn't it interesting that the most godless places on earth were once Christian? It's almost as if secularism is birthed by Christianity. This is a rather large topic, and I'm going to have to investigate this and discuss it at a later time.
But let's go into the barbarism of Catholicism. Whereas many corruptions of Christianity (like polygamy, discussed above), arose not from Catholicism but perversions of it (the various Protestant sects), Catholicism itself has had its fair share of regression into barbarism. Flagellation, and extremely harsh (and unusual) ascetic practices (like living on top of a pillar), along with the whole suffering-for-suffering's-sake mentality would fall under this category. Of course, Catholicism has emerged from this with a new and much improved attitude towards mortification (in fact, it could be argued that the Church has made it too easy on everyone -- you only have to fast twice a year now -- on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday!) but at the same time, it's interesting that the Church didn't start out with such harsh ideas about mortification. Flagellation didn't reach its heyday til the Middle Ages.
It could even be argued that notions of romantic love and marriage have been sanitized. This seems to be the common view, although I've never been convinced of this. It seems to me that people have always fallen in love and wanted to get married to the person they fall in love with. But supposedly, marriage was seen as a far more practical, utilitarian affair, and people didn't have much expectations about it. I'm throwing this out here just as food for thought, since I personally haven't bought this theory, which just seems much too simplistic to be believable. After all, a lot of people in this day and age are jaded by love and see it as the only practical solution to keeping costs down and raising the kids. I'm always wary of this sort of analysis since no one really knows what it was like, since no one alive now lived back then to tell us what it was really like. Again, this is just one more version of the "Are things better now or were things better back then?" question, and I guess we'll never know for sure because no one has actual first-hand experience of "back then". The only plausible part of all this is that it's true that society has become more individualistic, and in that respect, people are seeing all aspects of their lives, including their romantic relationships, as another outlet for their individuality and self-fulfillment. But I think that says a lot more about individualism and the rise of selfishness, then it does about romance and marriage. For all the negative views about marriage in the past, the inequality of women, arranged marriages based on social status and economic considerations, my guess is that marriages were probably happier back then than now, if only because divorce (and marriage) weren't taken so lightly.
Which brings me to wonder -- could there be an opposite to sanitation, that is, a barbaric kind of sanitation, a sanitation that is regressive, not progressive? I'm thinking about divorce here. While it's hard to think of divorce as barbaric, since there's nothing blatantly gory or primitive about it, isn't it regressive in that, even for those who believe in it as a necessary evil, no one considers it a good thing in itself? But attitudes have definitely gotten more lax about it, and many people do think of laws in favor of divorce, making it easier to get, as progressive. So it seems that not all developments in society and history have been for the better, progressive as they might seem, and therefore that muddles up the case for sanitation as an overwhelming, all-encompassing force on the scene of the world. It almost seems as if there's actually 2 forces at work -- what I'll call for now for lack of better terminology "good sanitation" and "bad sanitation". This might explain the Enlightenment -- having been born, somehow or another, out of the Christian milieu, it spawned a deviant branch which would begin to attack its very root (Christianity)-- modernism, and all its accompanying evils. However, again we have no better place to turn than to perversions and corruptions of the Christian religion to explain this regression to barbarism, an "enlightened" barbarism, which in this case is Protestantism and the Reformation.
Perhaps the most obvious example of good and bad sanitation is the transformation of idolatry into materialism, which I've already discussed on another page of this website [The (Actual) Divine Plan (Biblical History)], and which is actually the reason I even started working on this question (on this page). So we've come full circle -- always a good thing in philosophy.
How has philosophy affected the average person? Or has it even?
They say farmers allowed for specialization (in occupations), and that that’s how greatness developed, but hunter-gatherers have so much free time, so why didn’t they come up with all sorts of cool technology and culture first?
“zeitgeist” – do cultures come in “package deals”? That is, is there some unifying essence to cultures that causes them to manifest themselves in particular ways? For example, Asian languages, dress, art, music, even the geography and fauna and flora all go together. Likewise all other cultures, be they African, American, etc. Is this just my imagination, having been brainwashed by familiarity and a taking-for-granted mentality? Or is there really something to this?
Western culture is more masculine and Eastern is more feminine. So does this mean that Eastern men are better at understanding women than Western men? Sure doesn't seem like it. But why not?
When and why did it become more intelligent to not believe in God? Seems that this is rather recent development.
Has philosophy ever really accomplished anything?