The Litmus Test For African Progress

A Warrior Scholar Speaks:

“Warriors have to know just what is meant by the term “civilization” in order to understand exactly what we are dealing with in this crude, despiritualized reality. We must remember that civilization is derived from the word “civil,” which references the treatment of people toward each other.

Any intelligent, feeling human who gives it some serious thought would naturally come to the conclusion that civilization should not be measured by the amount or level of mechanical technology a society produces or accumulates, the height of its buildings and monuments or the expanse of its empire or breadth of its domination.

In agreement, many take a more human approach. They contend that the most important factor determining whether a society is a civilization or not is the quality of the life of its women. And, though this is a more than reasonable measuring rod, they have not gone far enough. They stopped short of the highest definition, one based on the conditions of the children. We say children because they are the most defenseless of all and are dependent on adults, both women and men, for their well-being.

Therefore, as Afrikans conscious of the importance of definitions for perceptions, and as student-practitioners of our Ancestors’ family/child-centeredness, we must employ the knowledge of the children’s treatment foremost in our assessment of the degree to which a society is civilized.

This will lead us to conclude that the state of their lives most reveals the human quality of the character of the society developed by their parents or those who rule their parents’ minds. When this more spiritually-grounded definition is used, if significant numbers of a society’s children are starving, homeless, mis- and diseducated, sexually violated, drugged or otherwise intoxicated, spoiled, obese, suicidal, incarcerated (and/or are on death row), then that society is not a true civilization. So, obviously, people lost in love with the West are using the wrong indicators for measuring civilization.”