My students are taught a simple list
that defines ‘civilization’ as distinct from ‘culture’.
All seven of the following developments are requisite in order to qualify:
Art
Religion
Technology
So far, so easy. All cultures have
various beliefs, make and practice art, and create man-made tools. The line
between ‘tool’ and ‘technology’ is a little blurry, but carrying on:
Social Structure
Stable Food Supply
These are harder – a stable food
supply rules out hunter-gatherers, and insists on
pastoralists or farmers. A social structure means different jobs and tasks –
more common, perhaps, but it rules out the egalitarian societies. Finally there
are the two big disqualifiers:
Government
Written Language
A nomadic group may have a
government – a democratic council of elders overseen by a hereditary king,
perhaps – or they may not. It is by no means required. ‘Government’ also seems
to imply ‘laws’ and not just ‘norms’.
Written language is the real
sticking point: Very few cultures developed writing. The Middle East and Egypt
were first, then India and China. From these centers all Eurasian and African
languages developed. In the Americas only the Maya and later Aztecs had written
language. Australia and Polynesia had none.
This definition of seven traits,
though, still leaves room for blurry boundaries. For example, the Indus Valley
Civilization had writing, but seemingly no government. The Inca, on the flip
side, had a massive empire, but no writing – the only nonliterate empire in
world history.
Given these traits and the potential
for blurriness, what is Western Civ – or what was it? People say ‘the West’
doesn’t exist in the era of globalization. In some ways that’s very true.
Economically, the West is entangled with the world as a whole, in mind-boggling
supply chains. These are made possible by modern technology, which increasingly
seems global, too – computers may have been invented in the West, but their use
is global. The power of the U.S. dollar influences the stock market in Japan,
and USBs, created in Singapore, were once prevalent in European homes. The
“developed world” or “first world” economies are hardly exclusive to the historic
West. South Korea has a higher standard of living than Portugal. Disparities
within the West abound: Chile outshines Bulgaria. New Zealand is more developed
than Moldova.
Politically, things get muddled
again. NATO exists to be a counterweight to Russia – but is Russia not part of
the West? Turkey, twenty years ago, was applying to be part of the E.U. And does
Ukraine get to be a member of the E.U.? Religion gets mixed into this, as well.
Europe was predominately Christian and Jewish, with Muslim enclaves. But since
at least the 1500s, and perhaps as far back as the Crusades, the Islamic world
has been seen as geographically and culturally distinct. Yet, the boundaries
are blurry again – Islam is monotheistic, and based
on the same faith as Christianity and Judaism. Greece and the Balkans were part
of the Ottoman Empire well into the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s. Islam,
meanwhile, stretches from Iraq to India to Indonesia – and is hugely popular
throughout Africa. Atheism, too, complicates the picture, as much of the West
is increasingly secular.
As for social structure, arts,
stable food supply – these are clearly intertwined. Hunter-gatherers are a tiny
percentage of the population, isolated in places like Papua New Guinea and the
Amazon. Everyone else has bought into the global agricultural food chain.
Everyone else has complex hierarchies of social strata and differentiation of
jobs. The arts are globalized, too, as K-pop bands become popular the world
over playing on Western – not traditional Korean –instruments. Bollywood movies
are enjoyed in Europe, and American TV shows translated for Vietnamese
audiences. Nigeria’s Fela Kuti is nominated for Ohio’s Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame.
Based on all this complicated
intermingling of the other traits, this leaves one final outpost: written
language. And it’s here, I think, that some vestige of Western Civ still
survives. There are three stages to this story. The first, previously
mentioned, is the infrequency of developing writing. Outside of a few areas,
most of the world did not develop written language. The Middle East and Egypt
spread their language to Europe, geographically proximate to the region, but
not further south into Africa – due to the impenetrability in the ancient world
of the Sahara barrier. India’s first language went extinct, but a second
replaced it, and China developed a script which became the basis for both Korean
and Japanese. These Asian centers had their writings migrate and morph down
into Southeast Asia, but, again, did not make the leap to Australia or
Polynesia. The Mayan language didn’t move outside of their Central American
region – despite being part of a continent-spanning trade and cultural network.
The second stage of our story is
that of two very different waves of colonization. The reason why The West
exists in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, is because
those European populations came to stay and settle, and to replace the
indigenous cultures they encountered. In those areas, settled between the late
14- and 1700s, the languages of the West came to be the languages of the
region. English, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Afrikaans, French. The parts of
the globe where these are the *primary* spoken languages, are still seen as
Western. From Argentina to Jamaica to Quebec – the Americas became Westernized
as they spoke the language, and thus inherited the literature, history, and
culture that comes with written transmission.
The later wave of colonization,
which covered the Middle East, South Asia, and most of Africa, did not have
this linguistic force. The colonizers remained a veneer atop the existing
civilizations and cultures. English, French, and Dutch may have become popular
secondary languages – but not what people learned and spoke at home. As opposed
to, say, Brazil, which, in this period of 19th century colonization,
was well a part of Portuguese culture, having spoken the language for
centuries. Angola and Mozambique – Portuguese colonies that gained 20th
century independence – each have populations where far less than half the
people speak the European colonizer’s language at all.
Most countries which got rid of
colonization in the 20th century simply did not stick to their
colonial language. Many people in Madagascar, Laos, or Syria may speak French,
but the majority do not. Compare that with Haiti, in which a French Creole is
the norm. There are exceptions, but usually these are very small and or
isolated nations where a European language will help connect them to the world.
Fiji is a nice example, Singapore another. Even though they are culturally very
disparate from Europe, both maintain French and English, respectively, as their
primary languages.
Very simply: for cultural purposes,
language helped define the boundaries of Western Civilization from those areas
that merely experienced colonial occupation.
The third, and final, stage
explaining why Western Civ may still exist due to language,
is literacy and population. In 1900 there were around 1.2 billion people in
the world – and only 12-15% were literate. By 1996 there were 6 billion people,
and the literacy rate had reversed – only around
15% were illiterate.
This is the sneaky truth we’ve been
dodging: Even “literate” civilizations, like China, India, and Europe, actually boasted very, very few people who could read
and write. The Mayan language never spread north or south, because only a
vanishingly small number of nobles and priests could write it – and they saved
it only for the most important stone inscriptions. Public schooling and mass
literacy are very recent concepts, historically, and only enforced in a
post-WWII world. In 1952 three-quarters of the U.S. Senate didn’t have a
college degree, and nor did the President, Harry S Truman. But Truman was the
last to hold that distinction, and today only one Senator in 2025 doesn’t have
a college degree (from Oklahoma).
Literacy can, of course, mean just
simple writing and reading, as the European monks did in their medieval
cloisters: rote recitations and transcription of volumes. But literacy with a
cultural impact – poetry, plays, novels – was also hampered in the 20th
century, thanks to political problems. China was the largest country on earth,
but under Mao and subsequent rulers there was little to no free speech.
Indonesia, the world’s fourth-largest nation, had two lengthy dictatorships
repress their freedom of expression from the end of Dutch colonization until
the early 21st century. Sub-Saharan Africa teems with examples: The
first half of the century they were under colonial oppression, then dictators
took control – and in some places are still in charge. In such circumstances
creating a vibrant literary tradition will be nearly impossible. The Middle
East and Central Asia (and the rest of the formerly Soviet-controlled bloc) suffered
similar hampering due to political forces. By around the mid-20th
century most of the world knew how to read and write – but huge swaths could
not do so freely or safely. Obviously places like China, Russia, and
Afghanistan are all examples of places still without free expression in 2025.
So, when we put all the pieces
together, the situation looks something like this: A handful of places developed
literacy, and in the first wave of colonization one of those places, Europe,
spread that literacy, culture, government (and the rest) to a broader West. By
the dawn of the 20th century most of the world, including the West,
was illiterate, but that changed by the century’s end. The stifling effects of
colonization and dictatorship also lifted – although only so far. As we’ve
become more globalized economically and politically, the West still persists
through the linguistic inheritance and the culture that goes with it.
Now this is not to say there isn’t
sharing. In the Philippines Christianity – a Western hallmark – has become the
primary faith. 7.2 million Jews live in Israel, and 7.5 million in the United
States. Japan makes movies based on Shakespeare’s plays, and the English, in
turn, enjoy eating sushi, teriyaki, and ramen.
That said, regarding the sharing of
language and literary culture, there is the major hang-up of translation.
Nowadays, in visual media, we consider translation normal. If Disney is going
to make a movie for millions of dollars – from Star Wars to animated features
to the MCU – they will ensure it is translated into scores of languages, to
maximize distribution and profit. Translating the cultural heritage of other
countries, though, isn’t so easy. India’s works date back three thousand years
at least – and none were translated into English until 1785. China has a
literary history going back three thousand years as well. The first work
translated to English was compiled in 1841. Mayan texts only go back 1,000
years – but in English we finally got good translations a mere 30 years ago.
Cultural literacy is bound
geographically, but, as I hope is now clear, also linguistically. A teacher
from America working with students in Malaysia probably sees themselves as a
visitor – despite living in Kuala Lumpur, they are still a ‘Westerner’. At
least, that is, depending on their heritage – and the assumption they will
probably go home after. As many have noted, first- and second-generation
immigrants often struggle with their identity for this very reason. An Egyptian
woman whose parents moved from Egypt to Canada, may try to erase their
“Egyptianness”, may embrace it all the more, or may
try to balance it with their “Canadianness.” Indigenous identities in Western
societies can be equally complex, as can ethnic and racial descriptors.
So, while you can eat Mexican food
in Cambodia, and Ethiopian cuisine in Australia, accessing the literary culture
of these communities may be harder to achieve than ordering a tamale or some
injera. Those literary communities are still bounded
by linguistic heritage.
Most Americans, to take an example,
are ignorant of the rich history, built over millennia, of Indian philosophy,
or even a basic knowledge of the subcontinent’s main sacred texts of Hinduism
and Buddhism – despite being worshipped by some 1.5 billion people. Japan’s
famous Noh dramas are likely unknown by Greek audiences. The West African
epics, like the Sunjata and Mwindo, are not commonplace in Colombia, I suspect.
This all may suggest that we are still divided into linguistic civilizational blocs.
Notably, though, these are all
examples of Western ignorance. In nations where the colonizers brought their
culture, does the same apply? Do Nigerians know King Arthur? Are Malaysians
fond of Robin Hood? Does Jordan still teach its pupils Chaucer?
Increasingly, no.
Those countries which had only the
veneer of Western colonization are typically not very keen on preserving and
transmitting the culture of their former oppressors. A surge of post-colonial emphasis
on a pre-colonial identity is the norm. As such, the literary heritages retreat to their former, more geographically-bound,
origins. The written word – and the culture it transmits – is keeping
civilizational identities alive. Whether that is a good or bad thing is
somewhat a matter of perspective.
That said, I am fairly certain that, unless you dedicate your entire
life to studying civilizational heritages outside your own, you will remain
woefully ignorant of the complexities and depth these legacies have to offer.
Which leaves you with two options: Skim a little of each, and get a haphazard
taste of their cultures and identities, or, ignore them all together, and have
no real sense of their identity. But this latter option (I suspect the option
most take) comes at your own peril. Robert McNamara, to take a famous example,
thought Vietnam was going to be a puppet of China, due to his view of Ho Chi
Minh through a Cold War lens. He didn’t know that Vietnam had historically
loathed China for millennia – and would never follow their lead. McNamara's
lack of understanding, which he later admitted, cost thousands of lives.
Will Western Civ – in some form,
with all its complexities – continue? I suspect it will, at least for a short
time. Two generations from now, this may not be the case. There are demographic
concerns that will affect its continuation. Most of the economically developed
world is undergoing a population constriction,
which will only make their cultural heritage more fragile. Each generation is
tasked with choosing what will be passed down. For three centuries, in the Protestant
English-speaking world, from London to San Francisco, Pilgrim’s Progress was an
essential text, transmitted faithfully as vital to their identity. That is no
longer the case. The bulk of Classical Greek and Roman writings, once the
hallmark of a university education in Oxford, Bologna, or the Sorbonne, is
still, as then, read by a tiny minority off specialists – literacy and
education have increased, but the proliferation of voices has allowed us to
study and read people from our own time.
Does Western Civ exist? Yes, for now
– and it did for an extended period. But whether it survives as populations
drop below the replacement rate, as their own past is increasingly not read and
transmitted, and the heritages of others are made more available – that seems,
increasingly, unlikely.
