Put side by side the words civil and wild and it is not very difficult to imagine two different environments.
Those who got the chance to watch the events of January 6, 2021, on the U.S. Capitol, put side by side the opening decorum in Congress and the disruption on its Capitol later in the day. It is hard to forget the contrast between the opening decorum and the disruption.
If I remember correctly, the initial exchange between Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell went in few words as follows.
Sen. Mitch McConnell: "Mr. President;" VP Pence was the presiding officer at the time.
VP Pence: "Majority Leader;" Senator McConnell was the majority leader of the Senate at the time.
It was my first time watching that level of formality in U.S. Congress live on television. I could only appreciate the level of formality even if it sounded archaic.
Then put side by side the moments when Senator Mitt Romney had to be swerved by a Capitol Police officer inside the halls of Congress and the book The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt. It may not be difficult to then realize why Thomas Jefferson belabored so much to understand the past in order to chart a better future for the republic he envisioned.
In my book, understanding civilization is as simple as understanding these three contrasts. Many people view civilization in light of shiny buildings, new discoveries, and so on. I do not think that those can be achieved and sustained without conducive environments to build or make them.
Pyramids were built in ancient Egypt. Pantheons were built in ancient Greece. A Collesium was built in ancient Rome. A constitution with resilient checks and balances was written in the U.S. before the country was able to make headways in building new structures and making new discoveries.
Thomas Jefferson and his contemporary constitutionalists probably tried to envision the best conducive environment for the republic that they envisioned, even if they meant it to be exclusive.
One could argue that Thomas Jefferson's wanton study of history going as far back as Athenian democracy and laying out American democracy in constitutional terms may be in order to avoid repeating the decline of Greece's Classical Civilization.
Did he and his contemporaries envision the potential happenstances of January 6, 2021, on the U.S. Capitol. Envisioning a potential happenstance in the future requires a raison d'etre. One can argue further that in their days, they probably wished to be the rocket scientists of politics, their rocketship being the three branches of government with checks and balances.
If they believed in democracy and their rocketship of democracy was functional before the riots of January 6. 2021, on the U.S. Capitol, what would be their raison d'etre to foresee the disruption of the U.S. Congress on that day?
If Donald Trump believes in democracy, if the November 3, 2020, presidential election was substantiated to be fair and free, and if there was a clear winner in terms of both votes and electoral colleges, what was the raison d'etre for him to encourage the disruption on January 6. 2021? None.
So, one might ask where in Donald Trump's faculty western civilization was when the world watched Senator Mitt Romney swerved in the hall of U.S. Capitol by its officer? That is just one example.
Subsequent to that disruption, Sen. Mitch McConnell went public and pronounced that Donald Trump was responsible for being party to the disruption. Yet, the U.S. Senate that he was leading then until he became a minority leader took baby steps and failed to find a constitutional means to hold the responsible person accountable. Finding responsibility and failing accountability is suggestive of a real constitutional crisis or dereliction of duty on part of the Senate leader at the time. Amends by the new Senate at a later time or the subsequent legal process will never amend the potential trajectory of the gap that was avoided by heroic actions of officers.
One can only imagine how much more chaos would have followed in the U.S. if the disruption went as planned by some. Could the Supreme Court have been its next stop? I couldn't imagine why not.
With two branches of the three branches of the U.S. government overtaken by an unelected party, it goes without saying that America's democratic experiment of nearly two and a half centuries would be gone.
The more important question to ask may be that if western civilization understands itself well enough, why is it that it pendulates between what is civil and what is wild? After Greece saw its Classical Civilization, why is it that Athens isn't the most shining city on our planet? After the Romans learned new ideas from the history of Classical Civilization, why did Rome fail to maintain its vibrancy after it was able to build the Collesium?
After Europe saw its medieval anarchy, how is it that many on the continent were still able to watch the Holocaust unfold on the continent?
It may not be hard to imagine that Europe's medieval anarchy was seared more into the consciousness of America's founding fathers than many others. Thomas Jefferson, who spearheaded the study of ancient Greece in order to plant a vibrant democracy in the U.S., may have various reasons to roll in his grave today. One of them would be the disruption of January 6. 2021, on the U.S. Capitol by an unelected group in order to infringe on the rights of an elected group.
Another is to the extent that the U.S. is widely acknowledged to have committed an original sin on the natives and the abducted, he would be remembered forever for being one of the fathers of the original sin.
With a propensity for a scholarship, if he were to find that Greece's ancient seafarers learned new ideas that led to the debate for democracy since then, he would have an appetite for those new ideas and may discover that he failed to go as far back as Pharaoh Akhenaten after his first discovery of Goddess Athena.
If this observation is studied and found to be true, it may be suggestive of the essence of what makes the wild west what it has been and why it has been pendulating between what is civil and what is wild for a long time.
This doesn't mean that no lessons have been learned from the propensities of some in the wild west. As a matter of fact, it may be quite arguable that the very observation of the detriments of the propensity for lawlessness in ancient times is what gave birth to cultural norms and written laws.
It may well be that what humanity has been observing over the ages is the gradient of transitioning from lawlessness to lawfulness. whether they come in cultural norms or written laws. It may also be that humbling experiences for a propensity for lawfulness were learned from conquering practices with a propensity for lawlessness.
I do not think that the concepts of Namaste, Karma, Shalom, and so on can be easily seared into the consciousness of any part of humanity in so ancient times without ample humbling experiences in those times. The same can be said about the seared consciousness of Gaia when it comes to nature's humbling experience against humanity.
These experiences must have had their own influences on thinkers of the past that reckoned with and wrote about the Nile Valley Civilization, the Mediterranean Basin Civilization, the Indus Valley Civilization, and so on.
If it is irrefutable that the Mediterranean Basin Civilization had a meaningful influence on the writers of the U.S. constitution, it is by standing on the shoulders of these civilizations that the western civilization has been claimed, to use Isaac Newton's expression.
So, it appears to me that the suggestion that western civilization was born and stood on its own is a myth.
If the research by Stephen Greenblatt, as published in his book, is well-founded, and I have no reasons to second guess it, it is arguable that Thomas Jefferson tried to hinge American civilization on the Mediterranean Basin Civilization and Donald Trump has effectively tried to unhinge it nearly two and a half centuries later by challenging the results of a substantiated free and fair election.
One need not have to see the disruptive events of January 6, 2021, in order to understand the myth and unhinging practices over the last several years. One could easily posit that there is an inverse relationship between civility and gun violence. As a matter of fact, I would argue that the very reckoning of the power of law over spears and putting down the latter in favor of the former may well be the genesis of civility and hence civilization. at least in some parts of the world.
I have heard frequent news of gun violence in the U.S. in the last several years. During most of those events, there was one question that came up again and again but got no answer in perpetuity. That question with no answers is the motive of the violence. I can't say if Karma speaks through the lack of answers for motives.
Taking the inverse relationship between civility and violence even further, not racing for armament but disarmament follows the reckoning with civility and hence civilization.
So, when wild elements race for armament while claiming civilization, it only goes to show that they either lack an understanding of what it is or that they are adultering a frontier of conquering and plundering that is yet to humble them enough following in the footsteps of those who came before them on that frontier.
Greece's ancient seafarers may not be today's Astronauts. However, they were humbled enough to start a debate about democracy based on the new ideas they learned in their voyages elsewhere, according to a documentary funded by the National Science Foundation.
Contemporary astronauts may have traveled the farthest from the earth. However, I don't think that there are many other humbling events than seeing from outer space the blue ball float in the cosmos.
To go back to Thomas Jefferson, I do not know if he was the wealthiest man of his time. However, according to Stephen Greenblatt, he incorporated the concept of the pursuit of happiness in the U.S. Constitution. I also do not know if his study about the pursuit of happiness included the same outlook of the East, including those by the Dalai Lama.
It appears that these days, among some elements, the pursuit of wealth supersedes the pursuit of happiness. But, what virtue is there in a wealthy pocket without a healthy faculty? What virtue is there in being called the richest man, or a billionaire, in the world when millions, including in the U.S. live as homeless people? In this kind of environment, what doesn't make the richest person in the world the most savage person in the world? Isn't there virtue in being known as the richest person with the happiest associates? Does one need to be Oprah Winfrey's audience and receive generous gifts to imagine the virtue in an association between happiness and richness?
I do not know if Donald Trump's focus all his adult life before he entered political campaign was the pursuit of wealth instead of virtue. Then again, it doesn't take a genius to quickly make the simplest of checking his claim of part of former President Obama's achievements. In his classy motto, Obama says don't boo, vote. Years later, Trump comes forward to claim that he received a record number of votes of any sitting U.S. President, without acknowledging the former President's campaign to get out the voters to vote.
This is another sign of what is not civil. When one is with a wild mindset, the success of another is not complementary to one's own success, but adversarial. When one is with such a mindset, I can only imagine how much one is removed from a noble civilization let alone claim to have given birth to one. When one is with such a mindset, one can only be subconscious to self-respect, which likely bewilders many.
Finally, I submit that I am not a social scientist but only guided by intuition and limited reading. It was out of this guidance that I personally thought a few years ago that Donald Trump unhinged the myth of western civilization. The same guidance made me think only a few weeks ago after watching Mitch McConnell pronouncing responsibility but failing to bring the responsible to account that it took baby steps in the U.S. Senate led by Mitch McConnell.
I hope young social science researchers, which are my target audience here, find logical statements in my observations and build their own thesis out of these logical statements.