The Tendancy to Rebuild

Here I wish to continue on a theme I began on July 10 and July 16. The theme is why modern civilization won't collapse.

The expression 'bomb them into the stone age' has become a hack cliché. Many with an ear to the cultural memes honestly believe we will be using 'bows and arrows' again. Electric lighting, communication and speedy transportation will be things of the past, and eventually forgotten.

There are ample reasons, both in principle and precedent, why this is entirely baseless.

Human beings are unique among animals in that they choose their future. And that they maintain collective memory through history, written and oral. When a gorilla wakes atop a mountain in the Congo, he has no concept of yesterday. He has no history. His day begins entirely in the context of that day. Even his memories he cannot place in an abstract 'past,' a concept he doesn't have the capacity for. Nor can he imagine tomorrow, yet another missing abstraction. Everything is today for him.

But humans see their present surroundings in a complex context of yesterday and today, and could not even make sense of it without such a context. In short, people never forget yesterday, and never stop hoping for better things tomorrow.

So when a people, a cohesive community, sees destruction, they come together to rebuild. Baba was one who pointed this out.

"In war, science is used for destruction. But destruction ultimately means renewal and improvement. What happened when they burned London during the [Great] Plague? They rebuilt it later, and it is always better than before. So when the world is destroyed, a new and better world must spring up from the ashes. "

— Meher Baba (LM 1986 print ed. 2621)

Now, the destruction of the entire surface of the planet is impossible. Anyone who disagrees does not understand its size. But whole landscapes can.

Terrorists recently destroyed Aleppo in Syria.

But today, the people are rebuilding their 8000 year old city, one rebuilt many times in the past. They do so because they remember it's beauty and want it back. They do not wake like the gorilla into the same day eternally.

 A restored flower fair in Teshreen park in the center of the Syrian capital, Damascus.

People rebuild because they want to. People do what they want to. The only way men could 'return to bows and arrows' is if they wanted to live in the dark and cold and heat and struggle for survival without modern conveniences. But only a mad man wants to be miserable.

Those who claim with so much confidence that we will not rebuild, don't want a modern world. They are not citing any actual principle of human nature. They are at best demonstrating something lacking in their own will to recover and build with their brothers.

They'd rather live with bows and arrows.