Civilization is the most comprehensive, extensive and inclusive life
pattern achieved by terrestrial humanity. Starting locally and following
the three basic principles of urbanization, expansion and exploitation,
each civilization has charted a course that led from tentative local
beginnings through a cycle of growth, maturity, decline, decay and
dissolution.
The civilizing process is essentially collective, subordinating the
interests of each part to the interests of the whole, while allowing
sufficient home rule to enable each part to have the political, economic
and cultural advantages enjoyed by the other parts, always excepting the
privileged position occupied by the civilization's dominant empire and
its nucleus.
Necessarily a civilization is composed of more or less disparate
segments, each one (before its inclusion in the collective whole)
maintaining a large measure of sovereign independence. Utilizing
advanced techniques of communication, exchange, and transportation, the
separate sovereign units are coordinated, consolidated, unified and
universalized. The result is an aggregate of parts, differing in many
local respects, but acknowledging the authority of the power center and
contributing material goods and manpower to its support and defense. The
main sociological purpose of each civilization has been to impose
central authority and universality upon political, economic and
ideological diversity.
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