One may define civilization as a function of a society’s capacity for art, innovation in scientific and technological enterprises, refinery in economic and business practices, cordiality in diplomatic relations, fairness and reciprocity in the distribution of wealth, or any of the other trivial elements of so-called “civilized” culture. I reject these criteria.
The word “civilization” is thrown about in such a superficial manner that it has apparently lost its intended and most obvious meaning, replacing it with a synonym for “Westernization,” or more generally, a term intimating distance from the wild savage barbarians that Western society believes itself to antithesize.
Instead, I prefer to take the term at its face value and judge civilization as a function of a society’s civility, as measured by its collective propensity to violence – in words, acts, and thoughts.
None of the cultures in today’s world is civilized (and certainly there are no civilized nations, as nations are bodies of government, not bodies of citizens). Members of societies that claim civilization are continually violent in acts, words, and thoughts, if not as individuals, as groups. There are civilized people in the world, but not civilized peoples, since those who are civilized have yet to unite under a common banner.
Those in whom civilization indeed thrives, so in flourishes the potential for anarchy, and for ultimate liberty. Civilized people have no need for a governing entity; their civility obsolesces the function of a government. I lament that no historical precedent is available, if any have ever existed, to exemplify civilization.
But what good would such an example do? Like the maturation of a common citizen into a civilized one, the civilization of a culture must also be done in its own time, when all of its members have reached the saturation point of their uncivilized experience and have elected to strive for something beyond.
