The Implications of the Word "Civilize"
In humanities we have been discussing the Human Rights and how the Scramble for Africa over the last few decades relates to the Human Rights. We looked at different questions combining these two topics and the questions I chose to look are: What are the negative and positive interpretations of the word civilize? How has the definition of this world impacted our entire understanding of history and of the present day? What other words can you think of that have had the same impact on how we map out the world?
There are quite a few negative interpretations of the word civilize. The first one being that, civilize, is one of those words that can mean different things to different people. It can depend on where you’re from, whom you like, or you dislike. There is no TRUE meaning of the word civilize. It is all relative to what is around or what knowledge each individual person has. Another negative interpretation of the word civilize can be the fact that the word itself sets standards for countries who the majority of the world considers uncivilized. Countries who are deemed uncivilized can feel ashamed and like a failure for not living up to the standards of others. On a social aspect, the word civilize can give a false sense of power to those who believe their country or population are better than the other. People start to classify each other based on where they are from and how “developed” that person’s country is, and that just isn’t fair for two reasons. One being that a lot of people do not have that much control over how their country’s leaders are running said country. Also, classifying people based on their country is like judging a book by its cover. These people could be incredibly intelligent but instead they are seen as uncivilized based on their roots.
Unfortunately, the negative interpretations outweigh the positive interpretations. However, the positive interpretation of the world civilize was also a negative interpretation; setting standards for so called uncivilized countries. Sometimes, standards are good. Standards can give a country (or anyone for that matter) a goal to work towards and once they reach that goal, they raise the bar to become better and better. I think having that negative interpretation of one place being better than the other can give motivation for the countries deemed “third-world” or “uncivilized” to strive to no longer be that country that was once called uncivilized.
The definition of this word has definitely impacts how we see the past. For example, when we sit in history class and are taught on who won a battle or a war and why, obviously one of those countries or states is better, which people then directly connect to civilization. We see the people who won the battle as the better man because they had the better weapons, the better brains, and the better country or state. With this it is obvious that it would effect how we see the world now. It has impacted our understanding of the present more so than it has impacted our understanding of the past. We now have terms like “third-world country” for more powerful countries to describe a place that is deemed “uncivilized” or “developing.” The word impacts how we see others in the present and the past, it impacts how we see where we are from and where others are from, and it impacts the way we interpret the information of our history.
Other commonly used words that also impact how we map out the world are words like, third-world, developing, and in the opposite of those two, advanced. I used these words throughout this writing as well. We all use them to describe places, whether intentional or not, or to offend or not, we use them.
