Understanding Society
Is Our State of Civilization Only Skin Deep?
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
Bombing was supposed to shatter civilization’s thin veneer. Instead, Rutger Bregman compares the resilience it produced to a callus that thickened under assault. Doug carries that argument from the Blitz to Vietnam, where American forces dropped roughly three times the Second World War’s bomb tonnage without achieving their aims. The conclusion challenges claims of uniquely British fortitude: resilience under catastrophe may be broadly human.
A Note on the Original Text
Doug’s writings are presented as originally written. Spelling, punctuation, and grammatical irregularities have been retained to preserve his words and the integrity of the original record.
ORIGINAL WRITING
The content in this post is based on the book Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman.
“Hitler and Churchill, Roosevelt and Lindemann—all of them signed on to Gustav Le Bon’s claim that out state of civilization was only skin deep. They were certain that air raids would blow this fragile covering to bits. But the more they bombed, the thicker it got. Seems it wasn’t a think membrane at all but a callus.
Military experts, unfortunately, slow to catch on. Twenty-five years later, US forces would drop three times as much firepower on Viet Nam as they dropped in the Second World War. This time it failed on an even grander scale. Even when the evidence is right in front of us, somehow we still manage to deny it. To this day many people remain convinced that the resilience the British people showed during the Blitz, can be chalked up to to a quality that is singularly British.
But it’s not singularly British. It’s universally human.