I can sort of see why, if you take a Heart-of-Darkness take on the term, you might bridle at it. But Conrad's whole point is that it's the whites who are uncivilized, right? Firing blindly into a continent -- and that's on a good day. So: no implication that We Are Superior because we wre civilized. It's like Gandhi's joke, Asked what he thought of Western civilization, he said, It would be a good idea. True story. Not being civilized doesn't have to be bad; no brief to be made per se against indigeneous cultures -- no blind defense of them either. But civilization is a human ideal, valid as many and better than most, and it's _ours_, so if we fail to live up to it, well, it's a failing. No? Andie
--- On Sun, 4/5/09, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] 'I get so tired...
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Sunday, April 5, 2009, 8:20 PM
> On Apr 5, 2009, at 8:30 AM, Eric Beck wrote:
>
> > (Civilized? You guys really want to use that as a
> political label? Yeesh.)
>
> Yeah? What's wrong with it? Marx said that capital can
> be a civilizing force, and I agree. To me it means
> cosmopolitanism, art, comity. By that def, much of the USA
> is pretty uncivilized. Wish it weren't.
>
> Doug
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