Thursday, January 9, 2014

What is a "Civilization"?

A dictionary definition of the word "civilization" describes it as
the stage of human social development and organization that is considered most advanced.
Using this definition of a civilization, I would say that a civilization  has some form of government, whether that form of government works or not is another story. Within this government there should be a person or peoples in charge of the day to day government of the civilization. They have means of feeding themselves, whether it be through advanced agricultural farming or through hunting and gathering. They have a heritage of sorts, something that they can all trace their personal history back to and identify with that connects them. And I also think that they should have some kind of distribution of work, such as certain people farming, others protecting the civilization, others still that focus on building infrastructures and things that the civilization needs.


For a civilization to reach the "most advanced" benchmark, I think there does need to be some level of success in the above mentioned things, because without the success, the civilization really doesn't have the means to continue to flourish and become the "most advanced" stage of human development. This success can be short lived or remain a success for hundreds or thousands of years like many world powers have and continue to do so today. A civilization is not something that has just popped up over night, but rather something that has taken years and years of effort and trial and error to make into something that can sustain itself, at least long enough to become the most advanced stage of human social development and organization.

No comments:

Post a Comment