Dec 29, 2016. Civilization-c-e-m-joad-philosophy-book/ ‘The Story of Civilization’ by C.E.M. ‘The Story of Civilisation’ (1931). Page 1 of 46 Lesson No-01 A Dialogue on Civilization - C.E.M. Joad Meanings:- 1) Make a fuss:- Pay a lot of attention. 2) Raphael:- A famous Italian painter. Read story The Story of Civilization by CEM Joad by rational with 8,128 reads. THE STORY OF. OUR OWN CIVILIZATION 83.

“ being civilized mean[s] making and liking beautiful things, thinking freely, and living rightly and maintaining justice equally between man and man. Man has a better chance today to do these things than he ever had before.” CEM Joad’s The Story of Civilization is one of the best examples of the cliche that awesome things come in small packages. All of 94 pages in big font, it packs in some profound philosophy in palatable, often delicious, lines. I read it as a child when my guru, my English teacher, lent it to me (he used to say I bought this book only for two rupees from a roadside book vendor). The book and its take on what it means to be ‘civilized’ have stayed with me ever since. If you want to introduce a child or a young mind to philosophy and good ideas, this is the go-to book. In fact the book’s intended primary audience, when it was first published, was kids.

The Story of Civilization was written in 1931. Author Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad was. It is very difficult to find this book or references to it these days: I was surprised to see that even goodreads‘s does not mention it. The oblivion that the book currently is in prompted me to write this post.

While a lot of what Joad wrote is out-dated information, the beauty of some of his ideas is eternal. Joad begins his discourse on civilization with a chapter titled ‘A Talk’, in which he describes a wonderful conversation with Lucy (probably his daughter). Below are screenshots of the first two pages of the book: The remaining post contains select lines and passages from the book, chapterwise. (I have italicized my personal favorites. I urge readers to remember, at all times, that all of this was written some 90 years back.) Introduction: Most of the people who appear most often and most gloriously in the history books are great conquerors and generals and soldiers, whereas the people who really helped civilization forward are often never mentioned at all. We do not know who first set a broken leg, or launched a seaworthy boat, or calculated the length of the year, or manured a field; but we know all about the killers and destroyers.

And I think most people believe that the greatest countries are those that have beaten in battle the greatest number of other countries and ruled over them as conquerors. It is just possible they are, but they are not the most civilized. Fighting means killing, and civilized peoples ought to be able to find some way of settling their disputes other than by seeing which side can kill off the greater number of the other side, and then saying that that side which has killed most has won.

And not only has won, but, because it has won, has been in the right. Chapter 1 – The Great Religious Teachers: The earliest civilizations of which I shall write are those of India and China In the sixth century before Christ there arose in India and China three great teachers who tried to make men understand that it was important to do what was right for its own sake, quite apart from whether there was a God or not The teachings of Buddha, Lao-Tse and Confucius are known in China as the Three Teachings. He is the only king I shall mention in this book, and his name is Asoka (264-227 B.C.) Unlike other conquerors in history, he seems to have realized the suffering that war involved He did much to make India prosperous by digging wells, planting trees, founding hospitals, and educating his people. He even tried to educate women, which was an unheard-of thing in those days. Chapter 2 – Greece and the Making of Beautiful Things: From time to time in the history of the world a small section of the human race has gone up like a rocket, and, breaking out like a shower of sparks, lit up everybody and everything around it. Of all these soarings of the human spirit the uprising of the fifth century (B.C.) Greeks was the most startling.

Socrates used to go to the market place and ask people inconvenient questions, the sort that children sometimes ask grown-up people, and which always annoy grown-up people when they find that they don’t know the answers, although they thought they did. Socrates annoyed the Athenians so much that they accused him of harming young men’s minds and had him poisoned.

[Joad proceeds to talk about the ancient Greeks being doctors, historians, scientists and philosophers, and also talks about Dutch and Italian painters, and German musicians. I omit chapter 3.] Chapter 4 – How Science Has Changed Our Lives: Human beings today know more than they did two hundred years ago. And they are not so much afraid of things. Auto Loot Hack Rf 2 here.