The Postman

Despite classes being cancelled because of the bombs, we still have to turn up to our unit meeting tomorrow morning, so I was planning to get an early night. The reason I'm still up at 3 a.m. is a combination of Turkish TV scheduling, in which you generally have to calculate the times of films by a complex algorithm adding time progressively through the evening, one of my favourite films, The Postman and the fact that they felt compelled to break it off in the middle to give us more bomb news.



Eyebrows may be raised at my counting The Postman as one of my favourite films, given that it was demolished by countless critics. I'm puzzled at why everyone hated it so much. I didn't like the music much, the American patriotism was a bit lost on me, and I could have done with a bit less Costner and a bit more of the other characters, but apart from that, it's a wonderful feel-good movie with a difference or three. The hero stumbles into his hero's role by accident and keeps trying to escape from it. In a post-apocalyptic world, most people turn out to be pretty decent, and the only major problem is the nutty survivalist militia. In the end, it is less Costner's clumsy heroics than the actions of ordinary decent people that win the day. And how do they win? Not by wielding magical swords or blowing up the power supply of the Deathstar, but by setting up something as mundane as a postal service. That's why I like it, why the author of the original book liked it (despite some major changes from the book) and why, probably, the critics hated it: "Civilisation, decency, comunication ... bah! Humbug!"

Civilisation

Pondering my rather uncharacteristic fondness for The Postman (see previous entry), the word "civilisation" came to mind several times. (Yes, I know that is a dangling participle. I like to dangle my participles.)

Once upon an Enlightenment, "civilisation" was assumed to be good more-or-less by definition, Rousseau and the Romantics notwithstanding. Since then, the name has acquired a bad name in some quarters. Civilisation was seen as artificial, unnatural, and an excuse for committing appalling acts of barbarity (irony intended) against native peoples, orientals, women, Gaia and what have you. Romanticism and its many children and grandchildren led us to believe that civilisation was something we needed to escape.

In some ways, and according to their view of civilisation, they were right. If I were an eighteenth-century gentleman required by social convention to spend three hours a day dressing and grooming myself, I might well hanker after a simple life in tune with nature. If I were a child of the industrial revolution, I would have good reason to rail against the "dark satanic mills". If I'd lived through two world wars, I might have despaired of civilisation altogether. And in all three cases, I would have the luxury of doing so only because of the very civilisation I was criticising.

I am not just talking about technology here, though it is true that advances in technology have enabled a substantial number of people to live long, healthy and relatively free lives for the first time since we gave up hunting and gathering. Wary as I am of arguments that draw in etymology, I think it is no coincidence that "civilisation" derives for "civis". However, when I am thinking of civilisation in the positive frame of mind that accompanied my Postman post, I wasn't thinking about cities in the physical sense (which can often be pretty ugly and unpleasant) but, to use another word derived from "city", politeia, the sum of relationships in the polis, or city-state (I admit this is only one view of politeia; it just happens to be the one I like).

What makes civilisation in this sense worth having, and worth making sacrifices for, is not the political (in the modern sense) structure, but the network of unacknowledged relationships, what Colin Ward calls "Anarchy in Action" (it's ironic that those who most acknowledge human co-operation are known as anarchists). It is the way we agree, usually without thinking, to treat each other as members of the polis (or these days, the cosmopolis). It is not so much the dramatic achievements of civilisation, like the Taj Mahal or the moon landings, as the unspectacular things, like schools, pedestrian crossings, libraries and, yes, the postal service.

Let's have another look at that scene from the film I posted.



It may just look like a scruffy girl sitting on a horse and handing out letters, but for me, it is iconic of how I see civilisation. It may sound daft, but an image like that evokes an almost religious awe in me, a feeling that this is what it's all about.