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Civilization and Modernization1
CIVILIZATION AND MODERNIZATION
"Reflections of Humanity"
by: Dr.
Ali Shariati
Debates on the definitions of culture versus barbarism, or on the question
of who is civilized and who is modern are best discussed in the light of
Islamic doctrine. Quite significantly, this point must be kept in mind,
particularly as a matter of concern to individuals of the educated classes
of Islamic societies upon whom lies the burden of responsibility and leadership
of the Umma.
Modernity is one of the most delicate and vital issues confronting
us, the people of non-European countries and Islamic societies. A more
important issue is the relationship between an imposed modernization and
genuine civilization. We must discover if modernity as is claimed is a
synonym for being civilised, or if it is an altogether different issue
and social phenomenon having no relation to civilisation at all. Unfortunately
modernity has been imposed on us, the non-European nations, in the guise
of civilization.
For the past 150 years, the West has undertaken the task of modernizing
men with missionary zeal. All non-European nations were put in close contact
with the West and western civilization and were to be changed to 'modern'
nations. Under the guise of civilizing nations, aquainting them with culture,
they presented us with this modernity, (when I say "us", I mean the non-European
and third world nations), which they persisted in calling "ideal civilization".
Our intellectuals should have understood years ago and made people realize
the difference between civilization and modernity. But they failed to do
so. Why did the educated not notice this issue during the 150 years of
western modernization of their nations? I will discuss their failure in
this paper later.
Before any further discussion I should like to define certain terms
on which I intend to concentrate, which, if left ambiguous, should render
the discussion vague. After explaining the terms, I shall address myself
to the subject.
1. Intellectual: An everyday term
frequently heard in Iranian society and in all societies, European or otherwise.
What does it really mean? Whom do we name intellectual? Who are the intellectuals,
and what is their role and responsibility in their own societies?
An intellectual is one who is conscious of his own "humanistic status"
in a specific social and historical time and place. His self-awareness
lays upon him the burden of responsibility. He responsibly, self-consciously
leads his people in scientific, social and revolutionary action. (See also
"From Where Shall We Begin" and "The Intellectual and his Social Responsibilities"
by Dr. Shariati for further discussion on this).
2. Assimilation: This is at the
root of all the troubles and constraints facing the non-Western and Muslim
countries. Applies to the conduct of an individual who, intentionally or
unintentionally, starts imitating the mannerisms of someone else. A person
exhibiting this weakness forgets his own background, national character
and culture or, if he remembers them at all, recalls them with contempt.
Obsessively, and with no reservation, he denies himself in order to transform
his identity. Hoping to attain the distinctions, and the grandeur, which
he sees in another, the assimilator attempts to rid himself of perceived
shameful associations with his original society and culture.
3. Alienation: The process of forgetting
or becoming unfamiliar with or indifferent to one's self. That is, one
loses the self and directs perceptions from within another person or thing.
This grave social and spiritual illness manifests itself in many different
shapes and forms and depends on many factors. One factor alienating a human
being is the tools with which he works. Sociology and psychology report
that a man, during his lifetime gradually tends to forget his real, independant
identity as he increases his contact with a certain tool or profession
more and more every day. He begins perceiving his tools in place of his
selfhood.
For instance, in a person who deals with nuts and bolts every day from
8a.m. to 6 p.m. all feelings, thoughts, affections and personality will
gradually become suspended. He must perform a certain mechanical task continually.
Possibly an assembly belt runs in front of him and he is ordered to skip
two nuts and twist the third nut once. This man, who has diverse emotions,
aptitudes, thoughts, tastes, tensions, hatred, feeling and talent, becomes
a body which skips two nuts and twists the third one once most of his time,
during his working hours, which is also the time when he is most active
and energetic. He becomes an instrument, simply a piece of equipment for
production and his effort is confined to a monotonous job which he must
do day after day, and in so doing, suspend all the characteristics which
make up his personality.
The best among many examples of such situations was given by Charlie
Chaplin in a famous film, "Modern Times", in which he plays a man originally
free from any attachment or obligations, with all his desires, emotions,
feelings, excitements and needs. He feels love for his sweetheart, respect
for his parents and sympathy for his friends. He enjoys sitting and chatting
with others, partaking of their normal customs, and exhibits a normal variety
of fears, hopes, talents and responses. For instance, when he sees his
mother, he displays feelings towards her as if he had not seen her for
a long time. When he meets a friend from the past, he wants to spend some
moments with him talking about what happened, about life and the good old
days. He feels love and affection when he sees his sweetheart; he feels
hatred and rancour boil when he sees his enemy. He wants to fight, attack
him and gain revenge. He is a human being, with complex needs and expectations.
He enjoys a good view and hates seeing a depressing one, just as a normal,
free man might be expected to.
Then he goes to work in a huge and complicated factory whose functioning
he cannot even conceive. He neither knows what the factory produces nor
what synchronizes its many diverse elements. He applies in an office, fills
out some forms and then is told to report to Mr so and so. Then, he is
taken through a hall and into a room. A man comes along and tells him what
to do. And just what is his job? Here is what his job is all about: there
is a big hall used as a place for an assembly line where a huge metal belt
constantly moves. The belt comes in from one side of the hall and goes
out the other to other sections of the assembly line. He does not know
where the belt comes from and where it goes and why it does so. Seven or
eight workers are standing there beside each other. His job is to skip
two nuts on the moving tape and twist a third nut once. And again he is
to skip two and twist the third, and this he has to repeat over and over
during his 10 hours of work. Then the bell rings and his day of work is
over. He goes home without knowing what the nuts were and why he did what
he was told to do, where they came from and where they went to and what
they were used for. He cannot understand this job at all. Beside him stand
the 7 or 8 other workers; they cannot even speak to each other because
the belt is moving at such a speed that if he tries to find out about the
worker next to him, and neglects the moving belt, he will miss the third
nut, the whole factory will stop, and he will be punished or fired.
This man must be all eyes to watch the nuts. The work that he performs,
this human being, is to twist the nuts once or twice and that is all. But
a human being is a creature with certain characteristics. First of all,
he must know the purpose of his work, and secondly, he must do a job in
order to achieve a particular goal. He chooses the goal, and then, once
chosen, he creates a job as a means toward that goal. He then begins during
the job, to touch and feel the essence of his purpose. A certain goal and
a chosen outcome limits one's work, and eventually one achieves the goal.
Apart from seeking a goal while he works, being aware of the job, the man
is a human with diverse feelings and urges.
Charlie Chaplin, in the role of this particular worker, sees his mother,
fiancee and friend, who have come to see him in the factory. He is not
yet accustomed to the rough and monotonous system of machinery; he is not
broken in yet. While he is working, suddenly he sees his mother, fiancee
or friend, and putting down his tools, leaves his job behind to go to say
"Hello . . .. how are you?" "Where have you been?"It's been a long time
since I've seen you. I missed you . . . sit down, let's have a cup of tea
and. . . ."
Suddenly he sees policemen rushing in, red lights on, alarm bells ringing,
inspectors coming in. What has happened? The factory control system has
reported that one single nut has been skipped without being twisted, and
everything has come to a standstill. "What have you done?!"How could you?!"
He is arrested, blamed and punished for his negligence.
A momentary manifestation of a simple and natural human sentiment in
him causes the system of machinery to break down. This clearly illustrates
that in the present system there is not the slightest room for expression
of a human sentiment. However, they train and control this very man who
once had feelings and emotions until he becomes like a machine, too, and
after 20 years of work the phrases "a human is a rational being," and "a
human is a worshipping animal" and "a human is self-conscious and creative
animal" and similar phrases normally used to apply to a human, no longer
apply to him.
What has this man, after all, become? He is now a "nut twister animal"
who skips two and twists the third nut once. On the street when this man
sees a policeman with buttons like nuts on his uniform, he immediately
takes out his wrenches to tighten them. He sees a woman with decoration
on her hat or coat: immediately it comes to his mind to go and twist it
once or twice or whatever! For him the whole world is summarized in the
phrase, "Skip two and twist the third." That is his philosophy, identity,
reality and title to being a human. Why does he twist? In order to eat.
Why does he eat? In order to twist! A circular man!
This man no longer perceives himself as the being who once had varied
sentiments, desires, needs, weaknesses, sensibilities, memories and virtues.
Those have tumbled down and he has become, in the words of Marcuse, a "one-dimensional
man." But Shondel calls him a "circular man" who produces for the sake
of production.
This man who once was a little world, a microcosm, like God and with
the attributes of God, has now been reduced to an extension of a wrench;
which is to say that the character of the machine, of the bolts and of
the mechanical motion, has penetrated him. He no longer considers himself
as such and such, the son of so and so, from such and such a family, such
and such a race and background, with such and such peculiarities. Rather
he perceives himself and his reality as nothing more than part of a machine.
Alienation may sometimes become a serious mental ailment requiring the
attention of a psychoanalyst. At its highest degree of intensity, it may
necessitate confinement in an asylum. Alienation, which affects men through
mechanical and dehumanized discipline, may be caused by bureaucracy and
technology as well. As one of the sociologists put it, either Max Weber
or Marcel Moose, in a complicated bureaucracy where there are many booths,
all numbered, the man who has been working in, say booth 345, for 20 or
30 years and has been doing the same job for that long, generally considers
himself as booth 345, rather than one having any other name or title. People
address him as "booth 345" and think of him as "booth 345." And the general
feeling that he is not attached to anything except "booth 345" generates
in him a feeling that he is "booth 345" not Mr so and so, the son of so
and so, with such and such characteristics. Such is the alienation caused
by bureaucracy.
Alienated, as a word, means being possessed by a 'spirit', or in persian,
a "Jinn." People believed in such 'spirits' in the past, and when a person
became insane, they believed that the 'spirit' had possessed him and affected
his brain. They thought that the 'spirit' had ejected his intellect and
taken its place, so that the possessed no longer felt himself human but
was rather an evil being. The word today means a type of sickness described
by psychologists and sociologists.
As men were possessed by 'spirits' in the old days, today a man is reduced
to the position of a cog in a strict, monotonous and ruthless bureaucracy
due to perpetual contact with a certain mechanical tool. He no longer feels
and comprehends his individuality; he has "lost" himself. As they used
to believe that a "jinn" possessed man's spirit and made him insane, so
today, means of production, tools and his type of work, possess him and
control his spirit. They gradually obliterate his true personality and
fill it instead with the characteristics of machine tools, job routine,
bureaucratic hierarchy, and eventually he begins to identify himself with
these.
There is another kind of "control by jinns" which possesses humanity
and alienates a person or an entire class from itself. This type of alienation
is more real, more frightening, and more damaging, and it is this . . .
omnipresent form of alienation which affects us, the Iranians, Muslims,
the Asians, and Africans. It is not an alienation caused by technology
- we have not been alienated by machines. No machine is involved, nor any
bureaucracy. A few administrative departments with a limited personnel
are in no position to alienate any one. Nor has the Bourgeoisie reached
the stage from which it could alienate us. Rather, what we are at grips
withis something extremely unpleasant and dangerous - "cultural alienation."
What does "cultural alienation" mean? As we have already mentioned,
alienation, in any shape or form, indicates a condition in which one does
not perceive himself as he is, but rather perceives something else in his
place. A man in this condition is alienated. What he conceives himself
as is not his real self at all, and whether it be as money or as machine
or as booth 345, his conception makes no difference at all and depends
only on luck or taste.
What is culture? I am not going to quote the differing definitions of
culture here. However defined, culture includes a collection of intellectual,
non-material artistic, historical, literary, religious and emotional expressions
(in the form of signs, traditions, customs, relics, mores) of a nation
which have accumulated in the course of its history and acquired unique
form. They signify the pains, desires, temperaments, social characteristics,
life patterns, social relations and economics structure of a nation.
When I feel my own religion, literature, emotion, needs and pains through
my own culture, I feel my own self, the very social and historical self
(not the individual self), the source from which this culture has originated.
Therefore, culture is the expression and super-structure of the real being
of my society, actually the whole history of my society. But certain artificial
factors, probably of a dubious nature, creep into a society which has well
defined social conditions or social relations, developed through a specific
historical framework, and aquaint it with pains, sufferings, emotions and
sentiments which have an alien spirit and are a product of a different
past, a different society (different both socially and economically). These
artificial factors wipe out any real culture and substitute a false culture
suitable for different conditions and an altogether different historical
stage, a different economy, and a different political and social setup.
Then, when I wish to feel my own real self, I find myself conceiving another
society's culture instead of my own and bemoaning troubles not mine at
all. I groan about cynicism not pertinent to cultural, philosophical and
social realities of my society. I then find myself harboring aspirations,
ideals and anguishes legitimately belonging to social, economic and political
conditions of societies other than mine. None the less, I treat these desires,
ideals, and anguish as if they were my own.
Another culture has alienated me. The dark skinned man of Africa, the
Berber of North Africa, the Persian and Indian in Asia, each has a particular
past and unique present. However, they feel inside particular pain and
concern which they regard as their own, but which are actually offshoots
of problems of periods following the Middle Ages, the 16th Century renaissance,
17th Century liberalism, the scientific progress of the 18th century, and
the ideologies of the 19th century and the capitalist societies that came
into being after World Wars 1 and 2.
So, African, Asian people, how does it concern you? Which problem do
you have that causes you so much concern regarding its existance, solution,
feeling, and reaction? It is as if I had a foot pain and put it down to
nerves! Why? Because I associated with people I think more intelligent,
polished, respectable and wealthy than myself, and they have "nervous disorders."
Rather than admitting that my foot aches, and seeking medication for, let's
say, corns; I seek a psychiatrist for the "nervous disorder" to which I
attribute my pain.
My conceptions of myself are not as I actually am in reality, but as
"they" are; that is, I am alienated. Is it not ridiculous to have, in a
