LiberalArtsOnline Volume 1, Number 8
September 2001
by Tim Padgett
Miami & Caribbean Bureau Chief, Time Magazine
The recent death of Great Books guru Mortimer Adler makes this a good time to ask: What ever happened to Civ 101--the civilization survey course, usually accompanied by readings from Confucius to Camus, that once gave the liberal arts puzzle some cohesiveness? It died, largely because it dealt inordinately with Western civilization. In its place today is a loose mix of multicultural offerings that, by themselves, are a welcome addition to the liberal arts curriculum--but which, collectively, fall short of tying the theme of civilization together.
That's sad, because today's new multicultural complexities cry out for a way to see the forest from the trees. It's also sad for journalists, especially foreign correspondents, who have spent the past two decades chronicling the emergence of a new, 21st-century model for a civilization survey.
Hacks though we may be, we would no longer use the West-Orient map of the world. Nor would we employ the politically correct North-South map. Many of us would refer instead to an Old World-New World model, which views North America, Latin America and the South Pacific, long pigeon-holed as cultural colonies of Europe, as fully detached from the Old World of Europe, Asia and Africa. The New World's history and culture are of course greatly and richly informed by the Old World; but by the start of this new century the New World had become, and will keep becoming, an utterly different world, and should be studied as such.
This summer my friend and former Latin America colleague, Anthony DePalma of the New York Times, has published a refreshing book, titled "Here," that speaks directly to that new paradigm. It explores the rapid integration of Canada, America and Mexico under NAFTA, in terms of identity as well as trade. DePalma invents a useful term: Newlanders, we who are today part of a civilization venture that is neither European, Asian nor African--but rather a hybrid that has now transcended hybrid, producing something wholly distinct in forms as varied as American-style democracy, Australian country music and Latin America's entirely new human race, the mestizo. The point is that the New World term "melting pot" was mostly a forecast in the 20th century; in the 21st, it's a reality.
At Time magazine we wanted to drive that point home this summer with our special issue on the U.S.-Mexico border, "Welcome to Amexica," which envisioned the border corridor itself as a distinct country, neither Mexican nor American. It's the kind of cultural, social and economic miscegenation that can be seen today from Alaska to Argentina to Australia. And it's fused by a shared ideal--that the New World is, or is supposed to be, the common man's refuge on this planet, a place of human renewal whose magical realist opportunities as well as geography bring us, as Fitzgerald wrote, "face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to [our] capacity for wonder."
As a result, my ideal Civ 101, or Civilization Studies, would take up the Old World in the freshman year, starting with civilization's origins in prehistoric Africa and the Ancient Near East. It would continue to move through Europe, from Socrates to Sartre, helping students appreciate Western culture; then modern Africa; and finally Asia, exploring Oriental culture. The course would then tackle the New World in the sophomore year: America & North America, Mexico & Latin America and Australia & the South Pacific, with an emphasis throughout on what is meant by New World culture--or, as DePalma would put it, the culture of HERE.
This is at least how we who chronicle the world day by day see it now. It may seem more of an adjustment than a revolutionary way of viewing civilization. But to us, it's a New World order that could help arrange the trees into a forest again.
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LiberalArtsOnline is an occasional email essay on the liberal arts, provided as a public service of the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts.
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