| Civilization and Cultural Transmission This book aims to demonstrate that there is a feud between two civilizations. It probably started at the very beginning of recorded history. It may very well continue without an end in sight. The assumption is based upon the belief that the main reason for this conflict is a complex of differences in the behavioral patterns of both parties. Put simply what is black for one is white for the other, and vice versa. It will, indeed, be shown that the conflict is not only a question of difference, but that the attitudes of both sides, in nearly all civilizational aspects, are the exact opposites of each other. There is also the factor of economic inequality used as a stick by one side to beat the other. If we wish to point out the exact differences in the main points of the conflict, we have to compare or rather contrast the two civilizations. One is to the south and the east of the Mediterranean, and the second is to its north. If a large-scale map is unfolded, with the Mediterranean in the middle, then what is called Islamic Civilization today is a wide strip of land stretching along the southern shores of the Mediterranean, from the Atlantic coast of Morocco to the eastern border of Afghanistan. Pakistan and the other Islamic states to the east are not parts of the conflict described in this book. Western Civilization is the whole of the European continent west of the line separating Orthodox civilization from the West. These are the protagonists in the feud. In order to simplify the presentation of the thesis, neither Orthodox civilization, nor the overseas parts of Western Civilization are mentioned here. Although, Orthodox Civilization has a long and continuing conflict with Islam, it is comparatively modern and has not such deep roots as the conflict with the West. The same also applies to the overseas appendages of Western Civilization, that of North America, Australia, New Zealand, and possibly the southern part of the South American continent. They exist only a few hundred years as European outposts. They certainly inherited the same conflict, some even in a central way, but the root of the conflict is found only in the territory as delineated above. If we look at the map again and wish to emphasize the conflict, we have to paint the map with different colors for each civilization, with the Mediterranean and the Black Seas as neutral barriers between the two camps. The West has the advantage in the conflict now, and the islands of the Mediterranean belong to the West. When the advantage was with the opposite camp, the very same islands belonged to them. If we take the same map and color it as it changed since the beginning of Urban Civilization, we can discern in the area, occupied today by the Islamic civilization, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Syriac, Hittite civilizations In the North we have to color separately, first the civilization of Crete, of Mycenae, and finally the Classical civilization, which reached the line of the Rhine and the Danube. North and East of this border there were no special civilizational entities. These territories joined the present civilizational map of Western Civilization not later than early modern times, at the end of the First Millenium AD. The basic assumption of this book is that as far as civilizations are concerned, there is total historical determinism, and their development was solely controlled by the interaction of environmental factors and innate biological attributes. According to this, it was demonstrated that there was a climatic upheaval that changed the environment on both sides of the Mediterranean, favoring the North and punishing the South. The climatic upheaval and its consequences initiated the advent of agriculture and the Neolithic Revolution. As the climatic change was gradual, so was the need for agriculture too. The desiccation of the south and the clearing of the glaciers in the north was a slow and gradual process, about 5,000 years from the beginning of the start of agriculture in the South until such time as the north of Europe reached its present stage. The time lag between the beginning of the Urban Civilization in the South and the North was rather shorter, probably because of the influence of the already urbanized South upon the North. It should be noted here that the South to North movement and a corresponding time lag existed in all aspects of the change from hunter-gatherer existence to that of fully civilized life. The time lags existed at the start of agriculture, at the beginning of Urban Civilizations and the same time lag had a role in the development of religions too. This movement was especially visible on the European side of the division. The first urban center in Europe was on Crete, then on the Greek mainland, Mycenae, Tyrins and then Athens. Rome followed next and then the cities spread to northern Europe with the Roman armies. Urban civilization reached Northern Europe only in the beginning of the Second Millenium AD. Another basic assumption of this book is that the people who lived, and still live, on both sides of the dividing line of the Mediterranean, were of identical extraction, therefore any difference between their civilizational development and behavioral patterns, could be caused by environmental factors alone. It is known that in the southern part of the divide there are racial groups such as Berbers, Hamitic people, Semitic people, Indo-Europeans, but it is also known that anthropologists recognize only three racial groups, Mongoloids, Negroids and Caucasoids. Anthropologists can be right, but there are also subjective feelings. According to the feelings on both sides of the dividing line, there is a racial differentiation, which exists at least in the minds of the participants of the conflict. Both views can be correct. According to the theories of Fernand Braudel, civilization and behavioral patterns tend to remain constant if there are no environmental changes. The civilizational conflict that is the subject of this book resulted from a major environmental change. The opposing sides of the conflict can perceive the resulting changes as a racial differentiation. It was demonstrated that unchanged environmental and biological factors tended to produce identical behavioral patterns within very large time spans.1 Following the same deductio ad absurdum, changed behavioral patterns with unchanged biological factors, must stem from change in environment. However, identical extraction does not preclude enmity. The Maoris of New Zealand and the Moriori of the Chatham Islands were both immigrant people from Polynesia. They were the same people with the same language, but still the different environment and conditions of life since their separation brought the Maori to exterminate the Moriori, and that without any provocation. One of the theses in this book is that with the advent of agriculture, the Neolithic Revolution, and even more with the arrival of Urban Civilization, the people who were the main subjects of those changes, underwent a kind of psychological change. The effects of that indoctrination exist even today, indeed they are still increasing. What happened to the people is nearly identical to what was described by the anthropologist Colin Turnbull in "The Mountain People", in which the author describes the plight of a simple hunter-gatherer tribe called Ik (also known as Teuso), who were displaced from their traditional territory in west-central Africa, where they lived since time immemorial as a hunter-gatherer group, moved to another area and compelled to make a living as farmers. According to the author, the Ik underwent a tremendous change. Out of a kind, friendly and generous people, they developed into a group of monsters, full of jealousy and aggression, abandoning their children and their elders. Turnbull sees in the change of the Ik a parallel to what was happening in Western Civilization in the last couple of centuries. It is certainly identical to what has happened to humanity with the advent of Urban Civilization. This is what happened on the southern side of the conflict. The northern side was much luckier and most of the side effects of the Neolithic Revolution were felt less than south of the dividing line. There were a number of reasons for the luck. - The northern part of the conflict was much richer than the South. This meant that the periods of the Neolithic Revolution and of Urban Civilization were much shorter than in the south. It also meant that the demographic pressure was much less, with less strife and despotism. - When Urban Civilization was developed north of the dividing line, the example of the South was before their eyes and they could attempt to avoid its worst features. The expression 'Oriental Despotism' did not start with the emergence of Islam, it started at least a thousand years before. Eventually, Oriental Despotism reached the north, but it affected only the Orthodox Civilization, - When the emerging southern predatory states started moving westwards with armed forces, they were too weak to cross the sea. When they were strong enough to do so, the West was strong enough to defend itself. So Sargon of Akkad reached only the Mediterranean and when the Persians were strong enough to cross into Europe, the Greeks were ready for them. It is assumed by this book that developments which were directly caused by Urban Civilizations in the south, affected civilizational values, and human behavioral patterns as well. It is entirely possible that patterns of relations between rulers and ruled, as were shown in Egypt during the building of the Pyramids, are still valid today, certainly in that civilizational area. It is logical to expect that anyone confronting adverse conditions should adapt his behavior to minimize the effects of the conditions. This is what has happened to the Ik and also to the people who suffered most from the effects of the Neolithic Revolution. The questions are whether the changed patterns of behavior to meet the challenges could be transmitted through generations, and whether they are still felt today? It is assumed that the same process which in the long term would cause biological mutation to adapt best to new environment challenges, in the short term would create cultural transmission controlling patterns of behavior to provide the best chances in adversity. The Mongoloid race underwent a biological mutation, which put an extra layer of fat on their cheeks to preserve the cavity of the mouth from the cold. This layer pushed up the cheekbone and caused the effect of the slanted eyes. This was the biological response to the challenge. In addition, they also developed the fur parka of the Eskimos; this was the cultural response. In order to prove the assumption that there are short-term cultural transmissions that control patterns of behavior, it must be shown that basic principles of cultures are indeed universal in all civilizations and there are meaningful differences only in their applications. If it can be proven, then the validity of the assumption of cultural transmission is proven too. The principle of behavioral patterns changed by cultural transmissions can be demonstrated with a simple example: When we look upon the pyramids of Egypt, the Ziggurats, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, or the Gothic Cathedrals in medieval Western Europe, we may reach a conclusion that rulers, whether spiritual or temporal, tended to originate huge building projects for their own glorification or ad maiorem Dei Gloriam - to the greater glory of God. As the rulers were either gods themselves, or at least were appointed by God, the buildings were really for the glorification of the rulers. When the projects of the building of the pyramids in Egypt and that of the Cathedrals in medieval France are compared, it is found that more stone was quarried in France to build the cathedrals than in Egypt for the pyramids. It certainly shows that the same wish to glorify the ruler or the ruling elite was active in both places, with nearly 5,000 years between the two. There was, however, one very important difference. When we look at the stones of the Cathedrals, we can see that each stone has two chiseled marks on it. One of the marks was by those who dressed the stones, and the second by the masons who fitted the stones into place. The marks were for recognition of the craftsmen, and for accounting purposes. There were some marks on some stones of Egyptian pyramids too, not marks of individual craftsmen, but marks of work gangs, and it is not altogether certain for what purpose the marks were made2 Here is the real difference between the two. Both in Egypt and in France huge building projects were executed without any obvious underlying economic sense. The whole purpose of the buildings in both places was to enhance the pride and prestige of the rulers. In Egypt it was done most probably by slave labor, meaning that resources were wasted without any return, while in France the buildings served a profound economic service by infusing money into the economy. It is doubtful that it was intentional, but in this respect the building of the Cathedrals served the same purpose as the building of the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge in the U.S.A. during the great depression. There is a need to find suitable definitions for culture and civilization so those events could be compared at distances of thousands of years in a way that would give credible answers. Not only does the reason for the existence of the conflict await credible answers, there are other questions too. V. Gordon Childe asked two pertinent questions.3 : 1. Four to five thousand years ago, the natives of Europe were on the same level of development as the natives of North America a few hundred years ago. Why did they not remain illiterate Stone Age barbarians as the Indians did? 2. If the barbarian natives of Europe were helped by the nearness of already existing Middle Eastern civilizations, as indeed they were, and if there was a continuity in the Middle East since the earliest times up today, as indeed there was, then why did the European barbarians outstrip their original teachers in all scientific and technological matters? What has caused Western civilization to advance, even despite a long and dark period following the collapse of the Roman Empire, and what has caused the civilization of the South to halt, and even to regress? The answers to the questions posed by V. Gordon Childe and to the main question of the reason for the existence of the feud between Islamic and Western Civilizations can be given only by looking at events through prisms of cultural and civilizational definitions. There are many definitions for civilizations, and even more for cultures. Fernand Braudel reported on the existence of 161 definitions for the word 'culture' and at least 20 more for the definition of 'civilization'.4 He also gave good advice, not to arbitrate among the definitions. Braudel himself has attached the concept of geography to that of civilization. He maintained that society and civilization are inseparable, the two refer to the same reality 5 and since every civilization can be located on a map, a civilization is an entity depending on geography. Indeed, he himself has specifically referred to the Islamic Civilization: "Islam is the desert...it is the emptiness, the ascetic rigor, the inherent mysticism, the devotion to the implacable sun...Bring together a Manchou and a Bass-Arabian Tartar (wrote Baron de Tott) and you will search in vain the interval of fifteen hundred leagues that separate their countries; the climate offers but little; the government is the same".6 6 Central Asia is being referred to here, but it would be applicable to the geographical area of the present Islamic Civilization too. Braudel used geography in his definitions, which is suitable to our needs here. But probably the most comprehensive of modern definitions is that of Samuel Huntington 7 : 1. Civilization is a cultural entity, involving values, ideals and higher intellectual, artistic and moral qualities of a society. It is an overall way of life of a people. It involves the 'values, norms, institutions and modes of thinking to which successive generations in a given society have attached primary importance'. 2. Civilizations are comprehensive, in that none of their constituent units can be fully understood without reference to the encompassing civilization. 3. Civilizations are mortal but also very long-lived; they evolve, they adapt and are the most enduring of human associations. 4. Civilizations are cultural and not political entities, they do not do any of those things which governments do. There are a number of contradictions between the definitions given by Braudel and Huntington. If a civilization is connected to a geographical area and to a specific environment, then a civilization cannot be mortal, as the same people in the same environment will always have identical civilizations. Another point is that civilizations cannot travel. Travelling in this sense means that a group of people belonging to a certain civilization cannot be transferred to a different type of environment and expect that they continue their life as they did before their migration. Spain conquered Central and most of South America in the 16th Century AD. Since then the whole of the South American continent, except for one country, Brazil, and the whole of Central America are Spanish speaking. Mexico freed itself from Spain by a revolution in 1821 AD It was a political revolution; the descendants of the original Spaniards continued to rule in Mexico. The second revolution came in 1910 AD and it was really a revolution to complete what had begun in 1821 AD; freedom from Spain and from the Spaniards. It seems that European rule in tropical and subtropical America might yet prove to be ephemeral.8 The cases of Proposition 187, the gated communities in California and the continuing Latin immigration to the southern United States probably show that not even the United States has immunity. In all other parts of the Western Hemisphere (like Argentina and Chile) where the environment is similar to the original environment of the Europeans, the rule of the descendants of the original Europeans probably will not be seriously challenged. It is not only true for Central and South America. Spengler claimed that no civilizational migration is possible. Either the migrating group carries with it its original environment, if it is at all possible, or eventually it has to leave or adapt to the new environment.9 So, the Europeans who migrated to other parts of the world with similar environments to that of Europe remained and struck root. Even those Europeans have changed. Australians are not Britons, and Chileans are not Spaniards. Those who reached areas which are in tropical or subtropical territories, have either left, or been ousted, or will be assimilated to the indigenous population, if possible. Look at Rhodesia and South Africa. In order to be able to answer the questions asked by this book, a new set of definitions for civilization and culture is being proposed. The definitions are a synthesis of those of Braudel and Huntington. 1. Civilizations are permanent, if there are no changes in the environment. It really means that environment can assimilate people and not vice versa. Of course it can happen only if the immigrants sever their ties with the old homeland. If not, it is a kind of invasion and not immigration. People who move to a different environment must be assimilated, sooner or later, or leave the area. That happened to the Muslims in Spain, once they severed their connection with North Africa, and to the Crusaders in Outremer. These two examples are not conclusive. According to all testimonies, both the Muslims in Spain and the Crusaders in Palestine were indeed under way to full assimilation, but in both cases the framework of the environment rejected their assimilation, and both the Muslims in Spain and the Crusaders in Palestine, were forcibly evicted. Spengler has expressed the possibility of assimilating into a new environment with an analogy. He wrote that the Romans transplanted the vine from Italy to Gaul and to the Rhine, where every hillside assimilated the wine, and changed it. 2. If civilizations are permanent, then the definitions of both culture and civilization must be broad enough to cover the possible internal changes. Accordingly, the present Islamic Civilization is identical to the previous civilizations which existed in the same environment; and Classical Civilization was but one of the phases of the rule of the same family of people living in Europe. The Western Roman Empire did not collapse, but because of many factors a northern branch of the same Indo-European language speaking family which established the Roman Empire, took over. Painful it must have been, the Romans themselves saw it in the same vein. The word 'germani' in Latin means relatives through brothers and sisters. So, when the Romans fought against German tribes, they meant that they were fighting against relatives who wanted to have a share in the patrimony. The split between the West and the East was also a simple civilizational act. The divide was always there; the official separation in 395 A.D. only put a seal on the facts. The West was always ruling in the East through force of arms alone; that dominance ceased when the force diminished. 3. Our thesis recognizes that any human society, in the broadest sense of the word, should be time and material independent, and human societies must be based on two levels. The first level is that of culture and the second is that of civilization. The level of culture is only a framework within which the rules of civilization are applicable. The framework is permanent and unchangeable and it has three relationships: the individual versus family the individual versus society the individual versus authority The relations mentioned above are bi-directional, i.e.. not only individual versus society, but also society versus individual. Family, society and authority cover the whole spectrum of possibilities, including extended families, clans, tribes, nations and civilizations. Authority can be both secular and temporal. 4. Civilization is a road map that governs the life of a society. The road map works within the framework of cultural relations, involving values, ideals and the higher intellectual, artistic and moral qualities of a society. It also involves modes of thinking, patterns of behavior and all the values to which successive generations in a given society have attached primary importance. It must be clearly shown here that when a geographical unit is mentioned, the meaning is the area of a civilization, and not its component parts. There might be great differences between countries on both sides of the civilizational divide, but the same civilizational rule applies to all of them. It is well known that on the West Bank in Palestine there are great differences between the towns of Hebron and Nablus. These towns were the nuclei of forces that split Solomon's kingdom after his death, about 3,000 years ago. However, there can be no doubt that both towns belong to the Islamic civilization. The dress, the behavior, the quartertone notes in the music from all transistor radios give civilizational testimony. The same goes for Europe. There are differences, but the common patterns are overwhelming. These are the principles and rules by which civilizations can be defined and compared. They are time and material independent. With them the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations can be measured against Islamic civilization, and also against Western civilization. There remains another important point. It is well known that there are evolutionary processes, which can change any living species, including humans. This process, natural selection, works, however, in a biological time frame, i.e. within a very long time, much longer than the estimated 6 - 6,500 years since the start of Urban Civilization. If there is no biological transmission of behavioral patterns, a process which we call mutation, then it means that present-day behavioral patterns, which originated under force of circumstances in that period, were transmitted to the present by some form of cultural transmission, or activated by some kind of collective memory. Societies can change in a very short time, at very short notice, if circumstances require it. A famous example of such a change is that of the Uskoks, a Balkan pastoral tribe, who fled before the invading Turks, reached the Adriatic and turned into very efficient pirates, preying on Turks and Christians alike.10 They changed the means of making a living, but not civilizational principles. That they were formerly shepherds and then pirates on the Adriatic, is not a question of principle. If in their former homeland, they used to meet and discuss their common problems, most probably they did the same in their new environment. The same rules apply also to the change of a latter-day hunter-gatherer tribe into farmers. Here with the tribe of Ik, the change was similar to that which happened to humanity at the onset of the Neolithic Revolution.11 So, over short periods there can be changes, insofar as they do not conflict with civilizational principles. They are the dominant factors, provided there are no changes in the environment. Still, it does not answer the main question that is how behavioral patterns can change within a constant environment. If there are no changes in the way of life of present Khirgiz and Kalmuck tribes from that of the Scythians, as described by Herodotus12, there is some mechanism which instructs the Khirgiz how to behave, as if the experience and traditions of the original Scythians, or even before them, were transmitted over the years to the present. We can disregard the possibility that there are no alternatives to a particular way of life. The Communist rule in that part of the word proved, that there are always alternatives. It is true that Communist rule attempted to change not only the collective memory and patterns of behavior, it attempted to change the environment too. Instead of pastures, the land was turned over to huge fields of cotton. So even this extreme example proves the rule, that unchanged environment means unchanged way of life. Not everybody accepted the possibility of cultural transmission of collective memory. Eric Hobsbawm wrote "history is not ancestral memory or collective tradition. It is what people learned from priests, schoolmasters, the writers of history books, and the compilers of magazine articles and T.V. programs."13 Undoubtedly, Eric Hobsbawm was right, but it does not change the main issue. It is obvious that a Khirgiz boy knows about his past and the collective memory, from the sum total of impressions he receives from his surroundings. The books he reads are parts of them, the teachers are another and his family is yet another. When the past was taken over by the authorities, as happened in the Communist era, the "collective memory" was falsified for political reasons. After nearly seventy years the original collective memory has been restored. The important point is that what we call 'collective memory' is so deep-seated and all-pervading, and it comes from so many sources, that any conscious tampering must inevitably fail. What would happen if a European radio station decided to play only quartertone music? Or, if in an oriental town a local young woman decided to walk around wearing a miniskirt? Nobody taught western listeners that they are not supposed to enjoy quarter tone music, still one can be sure that their first reaction will be to shut off the receiver, and the second is to phone the radio station to demand the firing of the responsible disc jockey. In the oriental town, there will be a similar spontaneous reaction, perhaps in a rather more violent way. This is what 'collective memory' means. Eric Hobsbawm probably referred to a process that in the early nineteenth century was called nation building. This was especially virulent in Central Europe and the Balkans, and was aimed at furthering genuine or bogus national pretensions. Bishops, aristocrats, poets and statesmen were busy creating academies, putting together dictionaries and inventing national traditions. So it was in Hungary and Czech to counter the Habsburgs, and in Slovakia, Transylvania and Croatia to counter the Hungarians. However, no one invented the basic facts. When the bishop of Zagreb created a dictionary of the Croat language, the language was already there; the peasants spoke it, it was the patois of the people. What he did was to create a formal framework for the patois. The same happened in Hungary and in other countries. Without an existing base no artificial implantation could help. The littoral of the eastern Mediterranean was under effective Greek rule for nearly a thousand years, since the time of Alexander the Great to the Arab conquest. During those years the official language was Greek, which meant that anybody with any standing had to speak the language, and at least be aware of the culture. There cannot be stronger indoctrination than that. Still, after the end of Greek rule there, nothing has remained, apart from a few distorted names of towns. The same goes for Latin in western North Africa. None of the people in the territories mentioned had the wish to assimilate languages and cultures that for them were unwelcome intrusions. Indeed, cultural traits apply here to all non-genetic transmission of learning. Children - by imprinting, conditioning, observation and imitation and direct teaching do it.14 In its conception, the cultural transmission of traits of behavior is not much different from genetic selection, where a test of survival and fertility comes into play. If a group of people, a nation or a tribe, reaches a conclusion, by trial and error, that a certain type of behavior gives some advantage over another type, then while the advantage is obvious, each generation will attempt to transmit the importance of that type of behavior to the next generation. It can, therefore, be said15 : "Behavior, like any other phenotype trait of an organism, is amenable to selection. This behavior may influence the differential reproduction success of a lineage over time. If the presence of a new behavior increases the probability that a lineage will prosper (in numerical terms), the change of behavior has increased the fitness of that lineage". If the example of the Egyptian pyramid builders is taken, not the pharaohs for whom the pyramids are named, but the slaves who actually built the pyramids, then the slaves might have reached the conclusion, by painful trial and error, that their chance of success in revolting or escaping is nil. They might have come to the conclusion that the only way was to accept it in silence. If those conditions went on for a long time, and there is no doubt that in that part of the world they did, and are still going on, then it is obvious that after a certain time this trait of resignation appears as a proverb: "Sixty years of tyranny is better than one day of anarchy" To western ears it sounds like a serious case of sour grapes but to those who coined the proverb, it must have been an essentially useful rule. It has been shown that there is cultural transmission of memories and traditions. It is one of those things which are difficult to prove scientifically, but are extremely obvious empirically. There were attempts to codify a set of rules for cultural transmission of values. One of the definitions, probably the most accurate so far is quoted:16 "According to the attempts to tackle the problem by anthropologist Ralph Linden and psychologist Abram Kardiner, the concept of 'basic personality types' rests upon the following postulates: 1. That the individual's early experiences exert a lasting effect upon his personality, especially upon the development of the projective systems. 2. That similar experience will tend to produce similar personality configurations in the individuals who were subjected to them. 3. That the techniques which members of any given society employ in the care and rearing of children are culturally patterned and will tend to be similar, although never identical, for various families within the society. 4. That the culturally patterned techniques for the care and rearing of children differ from one society to another, If these postulates are correct, and they seem to be supported by a wealth of evidence, it follows: 1. That the members of any given society will have many elements of early experience in common. 2. That as a result of this they will have many elements of personality in common. 3. That since the early experience of individuals differs from one society to another, the personality norms for various societies will also differ." Not everybody accepts these postulates, although there seems to be ample empirical support for them. Another anthropologist-psychologist pair, Kluckholm and Murray, claim that groups can no more have a 'common character' than they can have a 'common pair of legs'. What they really advise as a definition of national character is: "the sum total of the motives, traits, beliefs and values shared by the plurality in a national population"17, which on the surface does not seem to differ much from the previous definition. However, there is another point here too. It is true that national traits are transmitted from generation to generation in any society. Both the transmitted material and the means of transmissions are specific to any particular society. Another point is the consciousness of national groups. If a member of a society is aware that his group should react in a certain way to an outside stimulus, there is every chance that he will react in that way, even if he sees no particular reason to do so. This results of course, in a positive feedback.18 If I react in a certain way, because I assume that this is the correct reply, my action will only increase the number of similar reactions, which will influence others to behave in the same way. It was shown with the examples of the reaction to an unfamiliar type of music and to the obvious breach of the dress code, that people need not be consciously trained for that type of behavior. Subjecting someone to a permanent diet of a certain type of music will automatically put them off any other type. Similarily, if anyone is constantly indoctrinated that showing the human body is taboo and an abomination, he will instinctively react against the appearance of a miniskirt. Therefore, it can be stated that if environmental conditions remain unchanged the modality of national traits will remain unchanged. So, if a civilization has developed a tyrannical attitude by its rulers towards its subjects, and those subjects have developed a behavioral pattern to cope with the tyranny, the attitudes of the civilizations and those of the citizens will remain unchanged, to be culturally transmitted between generations. In the history of the 20th Century there are two examples which prove the point that civilizations and traditions are stronger than ideology and individual rulers, however strong and determined. Stalin in Russia and Mao-Ze-Dong in China attempted to uproot ancient cultures and replace them with utopian, planned societies. The result was that in both countries, the original despotism, on the pattern of Ivan the Terrible in Russia and the Sons of Heaven in China, remained the dominant factor, slightly modified for large- scale industrialization. Traditions, in both countries, were stronger than the utopian dreams even when the dreams were enforced by wholesale terror. The dreams did not fit the civilizational pattern, transmitted through the centuries, the terror did. So, the dreams dissipated and the terror remained as in the past.19 It seems that it has been adequately demonstrated that early experiences can be passed on to future generation by means of cultural transmission, and it is possible that present civilizational behavioral patterns originated in very early times, even at the very beginning of the civilizational period. Notes: |
