Civilization's Transformation in the 21st Century

by Urban Frost

Civilization's transformation in the 21st Century By Urban Frost Over the course of the past century, civilization has gone through an astounding organizational transformation. Many of the earliest civilizations developed on the basis of agriculture. Agricultural economies prevailed in much of the world for millennia. During the 20th century, the agricultural paradigm collapsed in most highly developed nations to be replaced by industrialization as the preeminent economic model.

Industrialization overtook agriculture as the favored model because of its superior ability to produce goods. It was embraced by a majority of peoples where it was introduced due to its promise of a better, more secure life. But as agriculture declined in favor of industry, so did the organizing principles of civilized societies.

Agriculture is based on principles of cultivation, nurturing and husbandry. Those principles eventually spread beyond crop production and raising animals, to encompass societies at large. Before agriculture, primal, Darwinian tribes lived by brute force. Only the fittest survived. Agriculture was the great development that changed mankind. Its principles of cultivation, nurturing and husbandry also eventually became the foundation for the religions most of us espouse today.

However, with the shift from agriculture to industry as the cornerstone of our economies, we also moved away from the fundamental organizing principles of our societies. Our contemporary societies bear more resemblance to primal tribes with their "winner-take-all" mentalities and "survival of the fittest" attitudes. Cultivation, nurturing and husbandry in their social sense have declined in favor of aggression, competition and gluttony as basic values. That only the strong should survive has become an accepted economic principle as well as, increasingly, a social principle. This is the economic paradigm that corporate capital, led by United States corporations, now attempts to impose on all other nations. Corporations led by men like Jack Welch (former chairman of General Electric) and Al Dunlap (former chairman of Sunbeam) have diabolically uncoupled social responsibility from the economic arena. They have made profit, not people, the penultimate value. They have cheapened human life, turning labor into an exploitable commodity much like coal or oil. For men like Welch and Dunlap and the minions they inspire, profit has replaced God as their guiding spirit.

One might ask, "how, in a democratic nation where most people are average workers, could this be allowed to happen?"

Democracy works best with an informed population. In a changing world, people must rely on media to inform them. But when the media is controlled and underwritten by people like Welch, for instance, it is used to manipulate public opinion for self-serving reasons. One need look no further than GE, Disney, Fox or the Chicago Tribune Company to see that very few people control most of the information and opinion that we do or do not get.

It is between these two forces, globalized corporations and concentrated media, that the working people of the world are now being squeezed. A government made compliant by corporate money and media favoritism has enabled corporations to dictate national, and in many cases, local policy.

Wresting government from its wealthy and corporate sponsors is the first step we must take to reclaim our society as one constituted to serve the needs of individuals. The second step is to demand of our governments minimal labor and environmental standards for all exporters of manufactured products to the developed world. The third is to make sure those standards are enforced.

In this new century, as in the last, it will be up to the people to set the course of our children's future. It is up to us to resist manipulation by short-sighted elites who refuse to see beyond their self-interests to the greater good for society at large.

In this land of individual liberty and democracy it must be individual human beings whom we cherish and nurture, not the profits of soul-less entities called, "corporations."

This article originated in the People's Tribune (Online Edition), Vol. 26 No. 1 / January, 2002; P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL 60654, http://www.lrna.org.

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