The Architecture of Civilization
True vs. Faux Civilization: How Saddam Hussein Represents the Latter, Featuring a Special Guest Post from a Young Historian Who Interviewed an Iraqi Citizen Who Lived Under Hussein's Regime
Gracious Reader,
In this issue of Civic Renaissance, we explore:
A note from Lexi
The essence of a true civilization
An excellent guest post by a young historian, Sam Cain
The Soul of Civility in the news- Bridging the Divide: Civility Expert Offers Tips on How to Flourish Across Differences
Civic Renaissance Retreat: Would You Join Us?
Review The Soul of Civility?
A year ago on Civic Renaissance
A note from Lexi
In my book, The Soul of Civility, I reflect on the nature of true versus faux civilization, using Saddam Hussein as an example of the latter. To enhance this discussion, I've invited a young historian, Sam Cain to contribute his original research. Sam conducted an interview with an Iraqi citizen who lived under Hussein’s regime to provide deeper insights.
Be sure to check out Sam’s Substack, World History Threads, which features history-related essays written by high school students from around the world.
True vs. Faux Civilization
By Alexandra Hudson
Historically, the words “civility,” “civil society,” and “civilization” have been used interchangeably to describe a state of being opposite that of barbarism. These words have often been weaponized to justify a society’s perceived superiority on the grounds of its cultural or infrastructural achievements and complexity.
People have long looked to such superficial things to judge other cultures as lesser and distinguish themselves as better. But that is merely the “pursuit of luxury and a false civilization,” as the French Revolution leader Mirabeau wrote. The civilization of a nation is not located in impressive architecture or institutions. It is instead located in the character of a people. Civilization is the cumulative effect of individuals’ decisions to take the humanity of their fellow persons seriously.
Consider a modern ruler who tried to define his nation as a civilization through beautiful and extravagant national architecture. Saddam Hussein built over eighty ornate palaces across Iraq during his reign. He built one of his palaces in Babylon, where King Nebuchadnezzar II had built his vast palace of six hundred rooms as well as the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon during the seventh century BC. Saddam razed two-thirds of the historic city to make the foundation for his new palace. He enlisted more than a thousand workers and had sixty million bricks made. Each brick was inscribed: In the era of Saddam Hussein who rebuilt civilization, and who rebuilt Babylon.
Iraq is the location of ancient Mesopotamia, the region of the world that housed the ancient civilizations of Sumer and Babylon and gave us The Epic of Gilgamesh. In building his palace on the site of ancient Babylon, Saddam’s aim was to redefine his empire as the new cradle of civilization. He misunderstood civilization as being composed of extravagant shows of power through beautiful buildings and sophisticated urban designs. Saddam showed himself to be a latter-day Gilgamesh: a leader of a community of people in the cradle of civilization, but a barbaric leader nonetheless. He failed to recognize that, in employing violence, murder, torture, and otherwise capricious abuses of power—not to mention his systematic persecution of vulnerable ethnic minorities—his reign would never be civilized, nor the cradle of any true civilization.
Our desire to see ourselves, and people similar to us, as better than those around us—as Saddam sought to do with his architectural feats—is a perennial, harmful expression of human self-love. The word “barbarism”—a term often weaponized toward the “other”—derives from the ancient Greek word barbaroi, meaning “all who are non-Greek.” The Greeks had the unfortunate habit of assuming that their language, customs, and culture were the most sophisticated in the world, and of dismissing all other groups as not just culturally deficient, but morally inferior.
The Greeks were hardly the last people to “otherize” those who were different from them. We are all inclined to make such judgments. We are all susceptible to preferring people to whom we are related and people we like over people who are dissimilar to us and who do not benefit us. These sentiments point to an important truth about civility. We have obligations to friends and to family, but we also have more general obligations to the rest of mankind, and civility helps us uphold our duties to the generalized other. True civility, true civil society, and true civilization are about our humaneness to our fellow persons, friends, family, and strangers alike.
Civility obligates kindness in its literal sense: treating strangers and visitors with the benevolence with which we would treat our kin. The word “kind” is etymologically related to the word “kin,” as in “kinship,” derived from the Old English word for “family,” “rank,” and “race.” Being kind is literally about treating a stranger with the benevolence one would offer a family member, a person of the same social class, or someone from the same tribe. Incivility and barbarism all consist of being hostile and cruel to the stranger, to those in need, and to those who are powerless and unable to repay acts of kindness.
Alsatian-German doctor, theologian, philosopher, and Nobel laureate Albert Schweitzer spent over two decades reflecting on the nature of true civilization. As a young man, Albert’s conscience was sensitized by the plight of colonial Africa. Horrified by the brutality of colonial powers toward the people of Africa and the European occupiers’ cavalier disregard of human life, he emerged as one of the twentieth century’s harshest critics of colonialism. He saw the transparent self-interest and imperialism that motivated European colonial powers, disguised beneath the name of spreading “civilization” to other nations. Schweitzer wrote,
Oh, this “noble” culture of ours! It speaks so piously of human dignity and human rights and then disregards this dignity and these rights of countless millions and treads them underfoot, only because they live overseas or because their skins are of different color or because they cannot help themselves. This culture does not know how hollow and miserable and full of glib talk it is, how common it looks to those who follow it across the seas and see what it has done there, and this culture has no right to speak of personal dignity and human rights. . . .
He saw the Western world’s hypocrisy: its claims to support human rights and dignity rang hollow in the face of its ruthless colonial legacy. Schweitzer wanted to change the way the world understood civilization, and how it viewed humanity. He decided to start with himself. “My life is my argument,” he was fond of saying.
In 1913, Schweitzer opened a hospital in Lambaréné, a small town in what was then a part of French Equatorial Africa and what is today the West African country of Gabon. Immediately upon its opening, thousands of people traveled hundreds of miles to reach the hospital and seek much-needed medical care. When World War I broke out in 1914, Schweitzer and his wife, Helene, were German citizens in French occupied territory, and were placed under supervision by French authorities.
During that time, they were able to continue their work serving Africans in need of medical care. In 1917, they were sent to in- ternment camps in France, and were released in 1918.
After his release, Schweitzer processed his years of instability and tumult by writing about his firsthand experience in Africa. He wrote about the barbarity of colonialism, exposing the sham of this atrocity committed under the name of “civilization.” He offered an account of true civilization in his book The Philosophy of Civilization. In this work, Schweitzer said that there were two definitions of civilization: the material and the ethical. The material view defined civilization purely according to its creative, artistic, technological, cultural, and other material attainments—in other words, the sort of superficial attributes that Saddam Hussein thought defined civilization. For Schweitzer, the material view was false civilization. He favored the ethical definition as true civilization, which he defined as a “mental attitude” premised on “reverence for life”—a phrase he coined for the view that saw human life, and all life in general, as intrinsically valuable.
In an argument similar to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, Sch- weitzer said that to perpetuate and foster life is an unalloyed good; to degrade it is an unalloyed evil. Individuals in a society must adopt a weltanschauung—a “theory of the universe,” or worldview—that respects personhood and the intrinsic dignity of the human being in order to be a true civilization. Reclaiming a high view of personhood begins with appreciating the capability and potential within each of us. After that, Schweitzer says, we become inspired to realize our potential in ways that benefit our fellow human beings and the world around us and bring about social, cultural, and scientific advancements.
In other words, the things that lead to achievements in culture, technology, and infrastructure are by-products of a society that values the intrinsic worth of human life. They do not make a true civilization—a true civilization, one that values the dignity of the person and nurtures his or her potential, makes it. Once a society has lost its reverence for life—once it has come to see its value as a civilization in purely material terms, and degraded the personhood of its own citizens or other people groups—it begins to decay. Only a vigilant commitment to a reverence for life can prevent civilization from descending into barbarism and chaos, Schweitzer argued.
But how can one begin the process of transforming their society from faux civilization into a true civilization? Schweitzer understood that big, heady concepts such as civilization are intimidating and abstract, but that everyone has a role to play in preserving these values and transforming a society’s values for the better. “Everyone must find their own Lambaréné,” Schweitzer asserted. Everyone has their own sphere where they can practice a reverence for life, esteeming and preserving its intrinsic beauty in all of its forms. Each one of us has a role to play in defending against inhumanity, cruelty, and barbarism, and in reviving true civilization, he felt.
Saddam Hussein was one of many leaders who have misused the language of civility, civil society, and civilization. Such leaders misunderstand true civilization. Civilization depends on the disposition, or “mental attitude” as Schweitzer might say, of civility: a citizenry of individuals who respect the fundamental human dignity of their fellow human beings. It’s not wealth, sophistication, or complexity that make a society civilized. Civilization is compassion for the weak, oppressed, and vulnerable. It is kindness in the face of animosity. It is the decency and benevolence of its people toward our fellow human beings, especially the vulnerable, other, stranger, and outsider. It’s practicing reverence for life, in all its forms—but especially valuing the dignity of the human person—that makes a society truly civilized.
Living History: The Regime of Saddam Hussein
by Sam Cain
Saddam Hussein was a key figure in Middle Eastern politics for many years - here's an interview with an Iraqi who lived through his reign
Iraq's recent history has been characterized by a struggle for stability, security, and political legitimacy amidst sectarian divisions, external interventions, and the ongoing threat of extremist violence.
Saddam Hussein was a dictator from Iraq, and he ruled the country from 1979 until 2003, when he was overthrown. He was born on April 28, 1937, in the town of Al-Awja, Iraq. He rose through the ranks of the Ba'ath Party, and Hussein eventually took power in a coup in 1979. This made him the President of Iraq.
Hussein's regime featured authoritarian rule, including human rights abuses, and fierce suppression of enemies. He took aggressive measures regarding his foreign policy decisions. For example, his invasion of Iran in 1980, and the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, which eventually led to the Gulf War.
Saddam Hussein's regime was also infamous for its use of chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians in the late 1980s, resulting in thousands of deaths in what is known as the Anfal campaign.
Following the 9/11 attacks, and amid unfounded allegations of possessing weapons of mass destruction, the United States invaded Iraq. The U.S. intervention quickly led to the collapse of Hussein's regime. He was captured by U.S. forces later that year. Then, in 2006, he was tried by the Iraqi Special Tribunal for crimes against humanity. He was found guilty and executed by hanging on December 30, 2006.
Saddam Hussein was a key political figure in the Middle East, but what was it like to live under his regime? To answer this question, I talked with Mr. Raed Salman, an Iraqi banker.
Here’s Mr. Raed Salman (lightly edited for clarity):“Saddam Hussein actually governed Iraq for 24 years. His presidential reign was filled with war and international sanctions. He had positives and negatives. Let us start with advantages. He managed to improve literacy, improve education, and send Iraqis abroad to study in Europe, America, Japan, and more. He created a good healthcare system, making Iraq a destination for foreign talent. These people would come to work in Iraq, and thus Iraqis benefited economically from this situation. He worked hard to transform Iraq into an industrial base, establishing giant industrial facilities and large scientific research centers. He built giant dams to improve irrigation and sustain agriculture in Iraq. He also created a strong army that could curb the other greedy countries. He managed to benefit from the financial avenues of the oil resources.”
“On the other hand, he caused many wars. Some of them ended with diplomatic efforts, but he often opted for more violent approaches. I would like to say that these crises could have been ended diplomatically and resolved without the need for armed conflicts, but he preferred the decision of war. Most countries supported him in his first war with Iran, particularly Arab countries. However, when the war with Iran stopped, he invaded Kuwait. Kuwait was a country that supported him against Iran because of some financial and border issues.’’
“This invasion made Iraq prone to very fierce international sanctions, starting in August of 1990, which remained 13 years. After invading Kuwait, the USA and its allies started a war to drive him out from Kuwait. Iraq remained under the sanctions, which caused the killing of a tragically high number of Iraqi children over the thirteen-year period. In the period of international sanctions, Iraq fell behind and suffered from lack of food and medicine. The education system also became worse, the health care system collapsed, and corruption broke out in society. The Iraqi army became very weak. He did not know how to reform diplomatic relations with the USA. He was arrogant, and this caused Iraq to come under USA invasion. He was a dictator, and he did not care how many people were executed. He forced Iraqis to participate in his political party despite most people not believing in it. Overall, his first round of governance from 1979 to 1990 was kind of good. However, his second one from 1990 to 2003 was very bad.”
Connect with Sam and find out more about his work:
Looking ahead:
October 30- Whithworth University, virtual talk, find out more here!
November 12- Greater Muncie Chamber of Commerce, Muncie, IN
November 14- Berry College, Mt. Berry, GA
November 19- Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, MI
January 23, 2025- I am thrilled to announce that I will be speaking at Yale Law School this coming January, invited by the Crossing Divides Program, part of the Tsai Leadership Program, which is dedicated to building strong bridges across our differences.
In the news:
Bridging the Divide: Civility Expert Offers Tips on How to Flourish Across Differences by Lesley Kennedy
So thankful to hear how my book, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves, continues to empower local leaders to cultivate civility in their communities. Discover how the small Colorado ski town of Estes Park is prioritizing civility this fall.
Why Freedom Needs Manners- Thank you, Greg Collins, for this eminently thoughtful review of my book!
Blue Sky Podcast- Author Alexandra Hudson on Her Book, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves
Interintellect- Watch an inspiring conversation between Lexi and Sean Hughes on the urgent issue of civility in our modern world
TIME Magazine— What Emily Post and Daniel of Beccles Can Teach Us About Civility Today
Civility is our eternal project- review of the soul of civility by the George W. Bush Center
Thank you for being part of our Civic Renaissance community!
A Year Ago on Civic Renaissance:
Celebrate The Soul of Civility in NYC!
Thank you for having thought of Albert Schweitzer. IMHO, Schweitzer is the complete opposite of Nietzsche, and the better alternative. Unfortunately, everybody knows (and follows) Nietzsche, not Schweitzer.
Just FYI, your heading on the Home page reverses the order of True vs. Faux, and therefore totally misstates the premise!