[ ARC forum 2 ]

Re: CULTURE

Written by Ivan at 11 Apr 2003 04:41:50:

As an answer to: CULTURE written by Rood at 11 Apr 2003 04:32:24:

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>>As for the Soviet regime being 'civilized,' at root 'civilized means nothing more than living in settled, relatively stable communities. Big deal! (We really do need a word that expresses more than just 'city-dweller')
>The word is "culture". A civilization is just a way of life. A culture is a way of making that life beautiful. There was a Frenchman who said that the United States is the only country to have gone from barbarism to decadence without any culture inbetween. He wasn't too far off.

Well, I'll let that swipe at we Americans pass. I thought of culture, but that really embraces an even broader concept of socialization than civilization, After all, even hunter-gatherer tribes have cultures, really quite fully developed ones. They are literally not civilized - not in the sense so misused of being tame, but in the "civitas" sense of living in cities. I am looking for something beyond civilized - in an earlier age, we might have said noble, I suppose, but that does not work in a democratic age.


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