In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, it was suggested that we could witness how fragile is man’s grip on civilisation. Our television screens and internet reports were filled with stories of widespread looting, people settling old scores and violent reactions by the police. The impression of a first-world community turned into a third world nation overnight was broadcast to the globe. What had been a largely impoverished but stable community had been transformed into a sea of tribal destruction. Civilisation had come to an abrupt end wreaked by nature’s wrath. One might even say, “Civilisation only lasted twenty-four hours”. And yet, whilst this may be an attractive point of view, I believe it to be totally erroneous for several reasons.

Naturally this discussion must begin with the definition of civilisation. Encarta describes it as, “an advanced level of development in society that is marked by complex social and political organization, and, material, scientific and artistic progress”. Dictionary.com says, “a society in an advanced state of social development (e.g. with complex legal, political and religious organizations.)” Wikipedia provides a basic benchmark from the anthropological community: “Civilisation can also mean the standard of behaviour, similar to etiquette. ‘Civilised’ behaviour is contrasted with ‘barbaric’ or crude behavior. In this sense, civilization implies sophistication and refinement.”

It is most likely the Wikipedia-style definition that inspired the comment, “Civilisation only lasts twenty-four hours”. After all, witnessing wanton destruction of private property for personal gain and murder in the midst of police chaos, can hardly be described as sophisticated and refined; barbaric behaviour indeed! However, in order for these acts to represent the state of civilisation throughout that community, they would need to be widespread; the majority of citizens should be behaving in this manner for civilisation to be deemed to have broken down. This was simply not the case. In Katrina’s instance whilst there was, without a doubt, a sizeable group of people who used the disarray to their advantage, the vast majority responded in the most humane and one might say, civilised, manner.

Katrina displaced millions of people, destroyed billions of dollars in property and yet was responsible for little over 1000 deaths. The significant majority of those who died either drowned or we killed by debris scattered by the powerful hurricane winds. The few who died in squalid conditions, already, for the most part, existed in squalid conditions. The point is, that while the regular activities of a community were disrupted, the predictable habits of thousands of years of evolution and civilisation were not. Most people helped each other survive nature’s fury, provided amenities for those who had none and rallied to their neighbour’s hour of need. The priorities during the immediate aftermath of the hurricanes necessarily changed for those affected. A clinical need for sanitation, dry food and shelter became paramount. These needs are not unique to the victims of natural disasters. Rather, as society is not functioning in the regular fashion, the manner of achieving these basic needs differs dramatically but this difference does not indicate in itself a breakdown of civilisation. Fetching food from a supermarket or standing in a queue at a makeshift soup kitchen is fulfilling the same nutritional requirement.

Crime and criminality lurk within every society and the presence of that behaviour does not imply a lack of civilisation. Man’s nature is a constant tension between expected and acceptable behaviour patterns and those activities that provide the most advantage with the least effort. The wanton acts of criminality throughout Louisiana may have been more widespread than usual during the Hurricane and its destructive repercussions but unless we know what average level of crime the state already experienced, the Katrina crimes themselves can’t constitute a breakdown of civilisation.

In1993 Louisiana had 874 murders* and since then the trend has been heading steadily lower. By 2000, for example, Louisiana had only 560 murders and in fact in every category of crime since 1993, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny and theft, the level of incidence has been trending lower in the state. Even if Hurricane Katrina produces a sizeable spike in 2005 crime statistics, it is unlikely to exceed 1993’s level and would therefore indicate that in fact society held together in spite of the extraordinary circumstances.

Civilisation appears to be something achieved over thousands of years and rather than being destroyed in twenty-four hours takes hundreds of years to break down. If the height of the Roman Empire can be timed to 27 BC when Octavian Caesar became Imperator of Rome and effectively the first Emperor of the Roman Empire, it took approximately 475 years thereafter for the empire to collapse and for the onset of what is commonly known as the dark or middle ages. The associated subsidence in European cultural enlightenment could far more easily be described as “uncivilised” than some undisciplined plundering of a flooded community where order was restored within weeks.

I do not believe that Man is necessarily on a perpetual path to improvement. That we are more sophisticated than our ancestors who populated the plains of Africa after the last ice-age is not in doubt. Societies appear to go in vast cycles from basic to complex to near total destruction. Our history books are littered with past glories of civilised culture; the Mayans, the Egyptians and the Romans, whose subsequent descents from domination of their environment and surroundings to oblivion are well documented. In each case the cultural and civilisation decay took decades or hundreds of years.

For those of us who expect the American Empire to eventually collapse, the media coverage of Katrina, did not presage an imminent acceleration of that path. It in fact demonstrated that American society is currently robust, sophisticated and in the anthropological sense, civilised.

Toots

4 November 2005



*http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/lacrime.htm