Civilization, Chris Rock, & Will Smith

A civilized person is one “…with inborn instincts inhibited.”

That phrase stopped me short, even though it was embedded — mid-paragraph, page two — in Peter Schjeldahl’s review of “As They Saw It: Artists Witnessing War,” the current exhibit at The Clark (The New Yorker, March 22, 2022).

I like to think of civilization as an unalloyed, if imperfect, good. The accumulation of human potential and achievement over time, evolving ever onward towards equity and light. I never considered that the fundamental building block of civilization — the civilized person — could be defined by how well we inhibit instinct.

Yet, as a child, I grew up on the myth of the American West and therefore equate ‘real men’ with wild, lawless, open space. As an architect, I witnessed the testosterone throb of Bosses who thrive in chaotic Haiti, and the countervailing deference every worker in China displays. These international experiences helped me appreciate Haitian culture even as I recognize it as so fundamentally different than our own that direct comparison is useless. Meanwhile, I understand how China’s culture of conformity is the fuel of its economic juggernaut.

While mulling the tradeoffs between the benefits civilization provides against the constraints each individual must accommodate for a supposed greater good, I…