Civilization
By zevi770 · November 18, 2011
Civilization it’s a funny word
Civilization means civilized
Is civilization civilized?
The common assumption is that once cavemen we were, and then we civilized ourselves.
Was German Nazi organized-to-the-tee civilized?
Can order and anarchy meet?
Heck yes!
Judaism of course had the only true realization of civilization!
In a letter to a one enquiring the fact that Judaism was the first book of ethics for civilization, a book that changed the conception of civilization, the questioner enquired that the code of hamurabi predates the Bible to the great Lubavitcher Rebbe who replied that the code of hamurabi which recommends the chopping off of the arm of the son of a contractor who built a shoddy apartment for a purchaser, is not civilized rather barbarism.
One of the fundamental mistakes we make is to equate order with civility as opposed to security.
Groups of people aren’t civilized if when the fear of punishment, jail etc. is removed they will eat each other alive (as we see all too often in Africa.)
Hence the civilizing of civilization as the Rebbe teaches, is only in the civilization of the individual, when you and I both learn to overcome our selfish side and become givers, when we learn to love and to forgive, when we can control our baser side, that, and only then, have we become civilized.