Should we try to make our country and our world as civilized as possible?

What is Civilization?

By Joseph Pearce

• Is civilization worth defending?
• Should we aim to conform to it so that we can be considered civilized? 
• Should we aim to bring our children up according to its norms so that they can also be considered civilized? 
• Should we try to make our country and our world as civilized as possible? 

The chances are that most people will answer in the affirmative to all of these questions. 

Most people, even in the dark ages in which we live, consider being civilized a good thing. 

The problem is that most people have no clear understanding of what civilization is or, perhaps as important, what it is not. It might be a good exercise, therefore, to begin to seek a clear definition of the thing to which most of us are happy to subscribe.

What is civilization?

Perhaps the best place to start would be to consult the oracle of oracles, the palantir of all palantiri, by which, of course, I mean Wikipedia. 

According to this seemingly omniscient cyber-seer, civilization is defined most broadly as “any complex state society characterized by a social hierarchy, symbolic communication forms (typically, writing systems), and a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment.” 

Along with this broad definition, Wikipedia adds other key characteristics of civilization as being “urbanization (or the development of cities), centralization, the domestication of both humans and other organisms, specialization of labor, culturally ingrained ideologies of progress and supremacism, monumental architecture, taxation, societal dependence upon agriculture and expansionism.”

At this point, some of us might be questioning whether we still see civilization as something that is good and worth defending. 

How many of us would fight for civilization if we thought that we were fighting for the increasing complexity of the state and its social hierarchy?

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