Saving civilization from itself

In his recent lecture series, Guilt about the Past, Bernard Schlink observes, "What is both historically unique and persistently disturbing about the Holocaust is that Germany, with its cultural heritage and place among civilized nations, was capable of those kinds of atrocities" As he poignantly notes, this "elicits troubling questions: if the ice of a culturally-advanced civilization upon which one fancied oneself safely standing was in fact so thin at that time, then how safe is the ice we live upon today? What protects us from falling through it? Individual morality? Societal and state institutions? Has the ice grown thicker with time or has the passage of time only allowed us to forget how thin it really is?" Schlink is right to further highlight that these "questions concern the very foundation of our individual moral existence and our ability to live together in our society and its institutions. They are questions that are unsettling and challenging even after decades of relative safety within the political, economic and cultural realms of civil society:'' In order to get an idea of just how thick or thin the ice of civilization that so many of us are skating on is, this chapter explores the nature of civilization and the less-than-straightforward relationship between civilization and some of the perceived threats to it. I begin by briefly outlining the generally accepted socio political nature of civilization and its relationship to the idea of progress and human perfectibility. I then examine the nature of the relationship between civilization and war, an assumed ever-persistent threat to civilization. Following this, I consider the relationship between civilization and the environment, including the ironies of the threat posed to civilization by anthropomorphic climate change. The chapter concludes with some thoughts on the growing necessity to rethink how we conceive of civilization.