What is the purpose of civilization?

I stumbled upon this question as I was reading some conversations about welfare and hunter-gatherer societies...Why is it that human beings find it necessary to organize into civilizations?

In theory, I think that civilization should make it much easier for our species to survive. By working together, we should be able to bend the environment to our benefit and we should be able to give everyone an equal chance of happiness in the process, more or less.

In practice, we have achieved some of that, but civilization has also given rise to terrible side-effects—war, poverty, social inequality, and oppression to name a few, which are very precisely counter to the benefits of living in civilization. On the individual level, people are forced to cope with pressures and hindrances to personal freedom that they would never have to deal with outside of civilization

In my country, for example, socialism is a bad word. We have an ideology of pulling ourselves up from our bootstraps, working hard to be successful. But nowadays an increasing number of people are working hard—really hard—just to be able to provide the bare minimum of basic needs, never mind "success." I sometimes wonder if these people would be any worse off just removing themselves from civilization and moving to the woods or something. Subsistence should be a given in modern society, at least, I would think. Mind you, I'm not really an anarchist, I just wonder what the purpose of our government/society/civilization is if not to make human existence easier?

edited 14th Jul '11 9:48:25 PM by sketch162000

These things happens/happened outside of civilization as well, so the real question is whether they're better or not in it or out of it.

Regardless, it'd be impossible to support anywhere near today's level of population without civilization. So that's something to consider- it must have some positive effects on overall surviveability, and losing it would mean a pretty large die-off.

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

why civilization need to have purpose ?

a lot of thing exist simply because they better at survival, agricultural civilization always defeated non-civilized / hunter gatherer society it encounter. so it continue to exist.

war, poverty, and oppression all occur without society anyway. That only leaves social inequality. Life is inherently unfair*

so I don't see the problem as we gain several benefits from civilization.

Please.

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of thei… Er, no, that's the purpose of tearing down one. Ahem, yeah, pretty much what you said, to pool your resources for mutual long-term benefit, or at the very least to get along with each other easier.

Eric,

Science.

Fight smart, not fair.

It doesn't need any set "purpose". All it needs to be is useful. It and the framework of ideas that support it are tools. Implements that us Humans fashion for ourselves to better ourselves and benefit us.

yey

Hunter-gatherers vs. civilization is a bit of a simplification, it's more like a branching tech tree, with:

• Hunter-gatherers (a few tribes in pre-modern Africa and America, Australian Aboriginals)

• Hoe-based farming (Most of pre-modern Africa; farming is more like gardening, and a lot of work is done by the women), +1 population -1 happiness

• Plough-based agriculture ("farming as we know it" aka "Civilization", work is physically demanding and done by the men, women shut up and stay at home), +3 population, -2 happiness

• Pastoralists (an alternative to farming - raising cattle or horses or goats), often nomads, tend to be considered as "barbarians" by the neighbouring farmers (huns and mongols), +1 population, +1 war, -1 happiness. Special move: take over farmers and become their ruling class.

The more "advanced" forms don't have a "purpose", they just tend to win in the long run.

Most of our ancestors lived as Hunters-Gatherers (Agriculture is a recent invention, evolutionary speaking), so our psychology is mostly adapted to that lifestyle, hence slight unhappiness in the others (which tend to be less egalitarians).

edited 15th Jul '11 1:50:07 AM by SlightlyEvilDoctor

Point that somewhere else, or I'll reengage the harmonic tachyon modulator.

I think of civilization in terms of partnerships, ranging from "I'll ship you my coal in return for your wood" to "I like you, you like me, let's hang out."

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

Agriculture for humans. Bugs have been at it for quite some time.

Fight smart, not fair.

Civilisation is incidental to humans banding together. What form that civilisation takes determines the value of it. But yeah, its our term for the protective mechanism humanity has developed by banding together into large groups, and the interactions between those groups and sub-groups.

edited 15th Jul '11 5:58:15 AM by GameChainsaw

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

At its most basic, it's safety in numbers - and more food, better technology, all the things you can get when large numbers of people co-operate in an organised way. There's a whole school of thought called primitvism that tends to idealise life before civilization, but for all its problems I'd have to be at a very desperate level before I concluded that being a hunter-gatherer was better. It's marginal, hard and dangerous.

"Well, it's a lifestyle"

Dunno if this was said already but...

Civilization is just continuation of herd growing. Humans moved first in herds, which grew into tribes. These tribes later grew bigger and buigger untill we had nations, cultures etc. later humans wanted to separe themselves from nature, making themselves not part of it, thus new level of tribalism was needed, thus creating "civilization" in versus of animals.

tl;dr

Another form of "Us vs. Them", Humans vs. Animals.

and

Nah, I disagree, and I expect most historians and anthropologists would too. Civilization isn't just because of human groups growing large. Humans lived for tens of thousand of years in groups of roughly the same size; the "number of humans per square mile" in populated areas didn't go up much in populated areas, because a hunter-gatherer lifestyle only supports low population densities.

Civilization started with agriculture, which meant more efficient ways of producing food, which meant bigger communities could be supported.

edited 17th Jul '11 1:43:44 PM by SlightlyEvilDoctor

Point that somewhere else, or I'll reengage the harmonic tachyon modulator.

People wanted to live longer and not strave to death.

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

I'll agree on war to a point...ants and chimps do it, too IIRC. Of course, the difference between animal and human warfare seems to be that the individual animals all stand to benefit directly from fighting, whereas the grand majority of humans who fight are usually only tangentially affected by the whole conflict.

I think that poverty and oppression are inherent to civilization, though. Both of them require you to be dependent on civilization to begin with. Like, you need some kind of economy to be poor. The same with oppression, people are only going to stay under oppression if they cannot remove themselves from that situation—if you are dependent upon the oppressive society. If you can survive by yourself, why would you subject yourself to other people treating you badly?

I don't think ants directly benefit from war.

Fight smart, not fair.

Apart from looting losers nest.

But on the other hand, it really doesn't hurt them either. There is a reason why they are poster boys for Zerg Rush in nature.

scales of economy vis a vis calorie inputs/calorie gains (agriculture vs hunting), surplus food production > specialisation in activity. requires more complex social structures

but mostly, the purpose of civilisation is: indoor plumbing

The terrible downside to multiple identities: multiple tax returns

Amazingly No

ancient Dara Happa have indoor plumbing. it was totally ignored by most civilized people. Europe indoor plumbing only surpass Dara Happa very recently.

Civilization has no "purpose". It just happened, and by existing it perpetuates its own existence. While you could certainly debate whether or not this is useful to the individual, no one ever sat down and said "I think this civilization thing would be a great idea" and then founded a civilization. As mentioned, it's a natural consequence of agriculture.

I kinda see it as a side effect of people seeing benefit in sharing or exchanging things - from defense and boundaries of conduct set by laws, to education of their children, to roads and construction of them, information, and all manner of goods. No shared interests, goals, profit in exchange - no civilization.

She of Short Stature & Impeccable Logic My Skating Liveblog