Guide to Civilization

So you might have noticed that I go on and on about civilized humans and civilization as the underlying cause of much of the world's problems. Unfortunately, I'm a civilized human myself so I could be called a self-hating human or something like that; fair enough.

But seriously let's take some major crises: climate change, nuclear waste, fish stock collapse, rainforest felling, bird numbers declining, a plastic island of garbage the size of the continental US floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, genetically modified foods and the list goes on. All caused by civilized humans. If we were as smart as we think we are we might consider stopping or even doing the honourable thing and putting one of our sophisticated firearms to our collective thick skull and pulling the trigger.

Some of you might not share my belief in the destructive nature of civilization. You might point to art and culture and healthcare and sustainability (it's still just a word). So I want to suggest a good, quick, amazing read that will help you to understand civilization. Don't worry it's not too preachy. And you'll even get a glimpse of uncivilized humans in its pages. Now unfortunately there are few uncivilized humans left to provide us with another option. Most were hunted down and absorbed or murdered by the civilized, this was deliberate by the way. We are a monoculture as much as fields of genetically modified soy and corn are.

The book is a Canadian classic no less: Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat. It's the story of his work with the Department of Mines and Resources (precursor to Natural Resources Canada and now NRCan--oh I'd love to tackle the semantics of this name change and change again to something barely mentioning its mission of repeatedly raping the earth). He observed wolves in modern Nunavut over a year in order to understand this savage, murderous animal and learned a lot along the way. I just read it in one day.

It challenged me in that I'm not sure if I could shed my civilized self much like the narrator. Have I been indoctrinated too long? Have the muscles grown too slack? Do I look at other beings only with dollar signs in my eyes? Can I walk under cool trees and feel at home amongst the black flies?

Read it, you won't be disappointed and you might just get to understand a little better the problem of civilization. Let me know what you think.