[pf] try#10 re: "Civilization".

· This is my "try#10".

· Below, I've edited-down my earlier post to its essentials, and then added
the actual questions I'm asking for comment on:


At 17:17 11/5/2001 +1200, David MacClement wrote:

>> >Gary wrote:
>> >> I am glad that I lived when I did.  I got a good public education.
>> >
>> At 12:11 9/5/2001 -0400, Molly Williams wrote {at:
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/2001II/msg00894.html } :-
>> 
>> >Ditto, even in the 1960s and 1970s.
>> >
>> >~ Molly
>> >
[now David: ]
http://csf.colorado.edu/mail/pfvs/apr98/0138.html in which I said:
>>“ Those of us who have lived through the flowering of western
civilisation since mid-century (we're clearly going down-hill now - no
longer hopeful, in general) often know that we've had a better, easier,
more interesting life than present and future generations will. ...”
>> 
>> · ... we might be able to agree on a meaning for Civilization, but we
would probably examine the last 5000 years and say that, with such a
definition, there have been varying degrees of Civilization, greater and
lesser, ...
>> as of sometime in the 3rd quarter of the 20th century, we had
reached the current peak of Civilization (capitalized, to indicate:
measured against some definition or other), and have since that time been
into a transition period where world-total civilization decreases ...
>> 
>> · So far I've said nothing much about a suitable definition.
>> I think a certain minimum of peace (maybe order) for most ordinary
people, would be needed.
>> · I'm adding that I regard expressing creativity publically, having a
certain amount of intellectual (and even emotional) ferment, would be
another component.
>>
· (and now I would add: "public education for all, to the level they
individually can reach".)


· There were actually two questions:

1. What human activities or conditions have to exist, before one can say
that those people, in that time, have some degree of civilization?

2. Can we agree that, on some scale, dependent on the definition (or set of
conditions), Civilization exists in greater _and_lesser_ degrees ("more
civilized"), and further that there have been periods in the past when
Civilization has decreased (perhaps "the Dark Ages" in Europe, the "Warring
States" period in China, and what the Aztecs and later the Spanish did in
Central America)?


· A possible conclusion is that Civilization is now no longer increasing.

David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.geocities.com/davd.geo/index.html#top
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