The Literate Barbarian

The oldest use of the word Barbarian comes from Attic Greek. Attic Greek was the vernacular spoken in the province of Attica around Athens. The Athenians would denigrate other languages by mocking: "bar--bar--bar--bar--". Anyone who didn't speak proper Attic Greek was considered a foreigner who could only speak "barbarian." Due to these Greek influences, the word is used in the New Testament (Romans 1:14 and Acts 28:11 and Corinthians 14:11) and designates Romans who didn't speak Greek and foreigners. The Romans came to regard the Gauls and the Huns as barbarians. The Chinese considered the Mongols as barbarians and built the Great Wall of China to separate them. In all these examples, barbarians were illiterate or semi-literate cultures which were being judged by literate civilization. Apparently, the early Chinese and Japanese cultures considered the Europeans to be barbarians of inferior culture.

Barbarians are parasites on civilization extracting slaves, surpluses, and portable luxuries: booty, loot and plunder. In the words of Sir James Darling (1899-1995, an Australian intellect), "it is not hard in practice to distinguish between the civilised man and the barbarian. The one writes books, the other burns them. The one creates, the other destroys. The one loves his fellow man, the other kills and tortures him. The civilised man makes law, the barbarian breaks it. Civilised man enjoys the world of nature, the barbarian exploits it, or burns it, or befouls it. The civilised man savours his wine, the barbarian gets drunk". Yet, all these contemptuous attributes of the barbarian can be found among civilized peoples. Our so called civilized nations have all acted with barbaric characteristics such as vandalism, torture, oppression, colonialism, chattel slavery, hostile invasions, and especially genocide. For instance, nobody is going to argue much if you say that the city-states of Golden Age Greece were civilized; and yet, they exposed unwanted infants to die in the wilderness, kept women out of public life, and practiced chattel slavery. The Romans covered people with tar and lit them on fire, alive, as torches at their parties, and crucified thousands of people for even unsubstantiated small violations. Why do civilized societies commit barbaric acts? Because they are not totally civilized.

On the other hand, to add to the confusion, there are examples of barbaric cultures which became civilized such as the Lombards in Italy and the Manchu in China. Today, the fantasy of the Barbarian, still an illiterate such as Conan the Barbarian, has acquired admirable qualities descending from the enlightenment idealization of the "Noble Savage" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau 250 years ago. From this idealization, the barbarian is spontaneous, spiritual, and in touch with nature, while the civilized person is repressed, materialistic, and heartless. This adds a deserved broader dimension to the barbarian which makes him less contemptuous.

With all these contradictions surrounding the concept of the barbarian, use of the term has reached satirical proportions such as in the movie Barbarian Invasions and the book Barbarians at the Gates. Both of these examples intimate that we still possess qualities not that different from our "barbarian" predecessors. All that we have discussed so far presents a contradiction and dichotomy between the barbarian and the civilization in humanity.

The only way we can integrate all that we have covered here in regard to the barbarian and the civilized person is to say that at the dividing line of literacy we are all barbarians, in the broadest sense. After the advent of literacy, every evolving, living individual or society begins the transformation from a barbarian, with all the characteristics held in contempt by the civilized man, to become more and more infused with civility. This is a gradual transition taking sometimes a few years, and sometimes several centuries. The infusion of civility continues till there is there is experienced a total civilization of the individual resulting in the new viewpoint of the "Steward".

Now the thought might arise: "So, if we are a mixture of barbarian and civilized characteristics, I would rather emphasize the civilized part of me!" The danger in associating with this more evolved form is that it can fuel barbaric arrogance and self-righteousness to the point of neglecting to check one's own contemptuous characteristics. I believe this thought was expressed in the words of a well known, apparently objective observer of humanity: " Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" (Matthew 7:3).

So we introduce the Literate Barbarian as the second classification of humanity between the "illiterate populations" and the "steward". Most people today don't think of ourselves as literate barbarians; however, we are not that far advanced from the barbarians who defined the word in most people's minds. A detailed history of the literate barbarian evolution might begin with a newly edited large encyclopedia. Literate barbarians have formed the civilized world as we know it. The most capable literate barbarians have a sense of awareness that extends beyond themselves to their family, estate, country, and world. Their advanced social bonding enables hundreds of thousands of them to conduct orchestrated efforts of mass production, industry, warfare and commerce. For the literate barbarian, interaction with society is more of a competition than cooperation.

Natural409

RFHall

Chapter 17. The Fit and Capable