What is Civilized?

The other night, I watched The Bridge on the River Kwai with my kids. I had not seen it in a long time. While ultimately the movie tries to do too much, it is always interesting to me how Colonel Nicholson (played by Alec Guinness) is willing to die for what is to him the high-minded principle that officers should not do manual labor. His motivation is that he wants the camp to be civilized. Since his thinking--and his understanding of what it means to be civilized--is muddled, in the end he collaborates with the enemy, and betrays even the basic principles that he fought for in the first place.

The book the movie was based on was written by Pierre Boulle, the same man who gave us Planet of the Apes. While the two projects may seem dissimilar, there is a common theme running through both: What makes a person civilized?
The Bridge on the River Kwai plays with this theme more subtly. By the end of the movie, in many ways the Japanese and Japanese commander seem even more reasonable--and thus civilized--than the British and Colonel Nicholson. Yet, the Japanese had conquered and enslaved most of Asia, and the Japanese commander was running what was essentially a death camp. No matter how sympathetically he could be portrayed, he and his men were animals. Whatever the faults of the British and British colonialism, there is no comparison between them and the Japanese.
If The Bridge on the River Kwai was subtle, Planet of the Apes hits you over the head with the same point. According to most definitions, the ability to speak and the ability to use technology are considered hallmarks of civilization. Yet, the apes had both, and were still nothing but animals.
The ability to form a coherent sentence, to use tools, and even to be genteel and polite, does not make someone civilized. Rather, the essence of being civilized is having a basic moral compass. Without this moral compass, it does not matter the eloquence of a person's speech, his mastery of his environment, or how convivial he can be--he is not a human, but an animal. This was true of both the Japanese and the Nazis in World War 2. And it is true of a lot of people today.
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Someone was irritated and deigned to judge me on the last post I made, because evidently I did not engage in polite discourse and I used some invectives. While a great many virtues are listed in the Bible, politeness is simply not one of them, and while I try to be congenial if possible, I have absolutely no patience with people that insist politeness is a virtue and who will only deal with those as congenial as themselves. Here's why:

• The Japanese are perhaps the most polite people on earth, and I am sure the Japanese prison camp guards and Japanese soldiers in the War could even be polite on occasion.
• The Nazis could also be very polite--Germans are known for being polite and well-behaved. Surely, many of the people carting the Jews off to extermination camps managed to maintain decorum. And within Nazi Germany itself, there was a debate over the extermination camps--not because Jews were being killed there--but over concerns that the guards and killers might somehow become coarsened by the experience.
  
• The slave owners in the American South were also among the most congenial people around--they absolutely lived for politeness and manners. Yet, they routinely raped their slave women (sleeping with a slave who cannot say "no" is certainly rape), and sold their own children into slavery. (Read the works of Frederick Douglass for more details on this point).
  

These people were all animals. Those who cannot wrap their heads around this simple truth, who cannot call things for what they are, are essentially enablers of such people, because they have sacrificed a knowledge of what is right and wrong on the altar of congeniality. It was true back then, and it is true now.
We need to speak frankly and honestly about things. While this does not mean we need to be hurtful, we need to understand who we sometimes truly hurt by our polite lies and social graces: Women and children being wounded and killed in warfare and fighting, prison inmates being tortured, people being forced to live as slaves and dying of hunger, a generation of aborted babies. These are real problems in the world today, and no amount of politeness and congeniality will change this.
"Oh, you're demonizing others! You're resorting to name calling! How uncivilized!"
If someone behaves like a demon, then it is just being honest to call him a demon--it is not demonizing. There are worse things in the world than calling people names, names such as white-washed tombs, sons of Satan, and a brood of vipers. And if this offends you, I can only say that I am trying to be Christ-like. Be offended.

Related Post: The Kind Face of Evil