The idea of barbarism is associated with the absence of civility.
Barbarism is the absence of civility, education , courtesy or respect . The concept, which comes from the Latin word barbaries , also refers to brutality and savagery .
For example: “What is happening in Syria is a barbarism that no one should tolerate” , “The match ended in barbarism: two people died and dozens were injured due to clashes between the followers of both teams” , “The people "He no longer supports the barbarity of drug traffickers and demands concrete responses from the authorities ."
history of barbarism
The idea of barbarism is linked to the behavior of barbarians . This name was granted, at different times in history , by certain peoples to others whom they considered inferior or uneducated. In the Middle Ages , for example, the groups that attacked the Romans and expanded throughout various European regions used to be called barbarians.
The barbarians, in this sense, were those who acted with violence and without respect for social norms . By extension, the state that the barbarians fostered was called barbarism.
Savagery and brutality are synonyms of barbarism.
Its stadiums
The period known as barbarism is characterized by the appropriation of enemies' property after confrontations. Unfortunately, it was then that human beings began to consider women as an object, which men also took from their victims. Within this period we can distinguish three stages:
- Lower : began with the creation of pottery . It is known that in almost all communities clay was used to cover wooden or basketry vessels with the purpose of making them resistant to fire, and that at the same time these two materials stopped being used in favor of a design completely based on clay. This stage is also characterized by the presence of polygyny (a form of polygamy that only man can enjoy), the domestication of animals and the cultivation of food plants.
- Medium : human beings began to work metals (except for iron), to practice livestock and agriculture using irrigation systems. Marriage also arose in this stage of barbarism.
- Upper : finally the iron foundry appears and the wheel, the alphabet and the iron plow are invented.
The concept of barbarism today
Nowadays, the concept of barbarism is often used to name that which, due to its excessive cruelty or lack of civility , escapes what is usual in a community.
Suppose that serious incidents occur at a rock concert. A good part of the public causes damage to the stadium, injures some police officers working at the event and destroys cars and shops at the exit of the venue. In the journalistic chronicles, the reporters speak of barbarism since it was a situation out of control, where the laws were left aside and many people did not respect the basic criteria of coexistence and social behavior.
positive meanings
As a curious fact, in some countries, such as Argentina , the adjective barbaric has certain positive meanings and is used to describe an exaggerated reaction or things that generate a good impression on the interlocutor. For example, if we understand this term as a synonym for extraordinary , excessive or great , we can say that "When he found out that he had been expelled from school, his mother made a huge scandal for him."
On the other hand, barbaric can be something magnificent , striking or excellent , as can be seen in the following example sentence: "The act was great, much better than I expected." In this same context, it is possible to use the interjective phrase "how barbaric" when we want to express surprise , admiration or astonishment . There are regions in which, for cultural reasons, people learn these uses before those related to the origin of the words barbarian and barbarism.