Civilization or Society?

I think that now days we find it hard to differentiate a civilization from a community or society for many reasons. One reason is that we get confused because of the word uncivilized. We think of uncivilized to be barbaric and rude but some of the things that the Romans did were barbaric. For example gladiator fights. They would make people fight each other and just for the fun of it they would through in some lions and things in order to make it extra fun. That can make people believe that they weren’t one of the most advanced civilizations of all time because of the fact that some things they did that were considered uncivilized. The definition of civilization is: the stage of human social development and organization that is considered most advanced of its time. So 500 years ago their might be a society that is most advanced of its time but now it wouldn’t be considered a civilization because right now we wouldn’t consider it highly advanced.

I think it is hard to understand what a civilization is because we use it so often that it is almost a synonym for society or community. I think that a civilization is a self- sustaining community that has surpassed its basic needs for survival. If there is a group of people who have formed a community that are only meeting their basic needs then they don’t have a civilization because they are only focusing on eating where as in civilizations there are also focuses on things like art and music. Also most civilizations have a governmental structure so the people need to be well fed and have access to water in order to care about government or be able to create a structure of government. I feel most civilizations have a sense of harmony within itself. If they had to many conflicts then they wouldn’t be able to keep going. Also they have to have some type of justice system so that people can’t just go around murdering people. Also I think that a civilization has borders and has a distinct place that is their land where as a society or a community might have loose borders or just live in a forest. I think in many ways a civilization is up to interpretation but there are still basic guidelines that separate a civilization from other terms about groups of people. 

What makes you part of a culture??

As we mentioned in class, it's difficult for us to really think of what it is that makes us part of culture. In my mind, you don't become part of a culture, you are born into it. The culture develops through the interaction between people and the infusion of common ideals and differing opinions, all people are born in some kind of community. Culture is something that all communities/civilization contain and rely on as a way of life and incorporate into their daily lives.

How did people living hundreds of years ago know if they were part of a culture? Well, considering that the geographical location of a "Civilization" was not as easy to know as it is now that we have maps, knowing exact limits of a civilization without some kind of mapping is difficult. Like I said before, if someone lives in a community, the community/ civilization is bound to have a set culture so they are born into it. It doesn't really matter if later in their lives, they decide that they disagree with the culture's ideology, but the point is they are born into it and grow up with the customs.

When not born into the culture, at what point do you know that you're part of it? I don't think that this is a question of time and how long you live in a place. You could spend you're whole life somewhere and not adopt the culture. How? Well, it could be that if the culture involves a different language from yours, you don't try to, or never learn the language, therefore setting a language barrier between you and those part of the culture and the culture itself. There are many ways to be excluded from a culture and the process of becoming part of one varies in circumstances and is different depending on the customs if it. So better, what are ways to become of one? It is a better question because while it still varies, it easier to explain. Assimilation and complacency are key factors. You mimic those around you and follow certain rules set by the society.

What process of acceptance can be the most closely related to that of a culture's? I think society. A civilization's society reflects and is built upon the culture, so why is there a difference? There isn't. To be part of a culture you have to be part of their society and abide by their rules, more often than not, to be accepted by society, you must know of their culture.

Basically, you must be willing to become part of a society and accept their traditions and customs and all that is part of it. Answering the initial question, how did people living hundreds of years ago know if they were part of a culture? The answer I have come to after all this thinking is that they don't. They don't really know when they do, they just feel comfortable with the people who they share the culture with or they realize that they were after they no longer are. Its something complicated to explain. If its a person who lives in the middle of two, they might just have their own sectional culture created by the merge of the ones surrounding.

The concept of "Civilization"

The reading, "What is a Civilization?" confused me very much. I understood what it was taking about but it made me confused on what word I should really use. I think that finding the correct words for things such as 'civilizations' is something very hard and tricky to actually do. There are many things that can be said are wrong in a word used to describe or name something.

To me, the idea of having a right or wrong word for things is something almost unrealistic for someone to pick. I mean, one individual can think a word is perfect and can have multiple explanations as to why it is, and then another could find many things wrong with it and why it shouldn't be used. I think it really just depends on the people who have opinions on the word used. The point brought up in the reading was really interesting. The things that were being said about the word civilization made sense to me. Why is it that the word civilization is used to describe other.... Communities? Populations? When most of the time, the ones talked about are in one way or another considered a bit more primitive? Civilization has the word civilized in it, and to be civilized is to be more advanced, more modern while the opposite or lesser of civilized is almost considered an insult and means you are Uncivilized, a savage, one who lacks the communal intelligence or who isn't very up to date on technology, yet when we, the more “advanced” civilizations look back in time, we realize that we owe much of our advancement to these uncivilized civilizations.

I found it thought provoking when I read the quote by Marvin Harris that said, “Human beings learned for the first time how to bow, grovel, kneel, and kowtow.” Its true. With all the advancements brought to us by those previous to us, we also inherited a type of oppression that came from a kind of slavery/ captivity of ideology. We received many negatives from them and morphed them into worst version. These could be things easily seen as uncivilized actions, so I understand why it would create uneasiness to use civilizations as a word to describe them. It sounds better as complex societies. Complex, as in something hard to describe because every civilization has had good and bad, right and wrong, and having to explain them would be a very complex thing.

How do you know when something has become a civilization, or better said, a complex society? Do you know this by the amount of time it has been around, the population, or the advancements it has made? Does it not become clear until the complex society collapses and marks it’s end or is there a list it must fill before it can be considered one? In our world now, are we all just one big civilization/ complex society, or are we multiple small ones? I think its hard to actually know because we are living in it, the world as a whole is very connected to each other, but areas still have their own cultures, languages, etc. Is this what separates each group into their own complex society or is there something much more to it?

The Pyramid of Hierarchy

After the discussion on the way that the pyramid of hierarchy works, i found myself agreeing with what molly had briefly mentioned, or rather said, asked during that discussion. What happens when the two bases are cut off? This was asked in relation to another question as to how the pyramid connected with what had happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina had hit. The discussion led to talking about the way in which the culture was still intact even after people were struggling with the basic necessities like food and water, and soon after, safety. This got me thinking, if the bases of the pyramid of hierarchy are basically chopped off and taken completely out of the picture, how long is it before we can see significant damage in the structure of the societies/communities affected? I think maybe a few ways of seeing this is when chaos breaks out. To me, chaos is caused by the sudden removal of something found or thought of as necessary to a group of people. When some people get chaotic, it spreads. Fast. The speed in which it spreads also determines the amount of damage the community/society will suffer because it has less time to try to build it's bases up again.

This subject of quick recovery after a tragedy is essentially what every government nowadays aims at after a disaster hits. But I think it's like the idea of Janga, the pyramid can have many holes in it and still be there, but it is no longer strong and at any moment, a change of balance can knock it all down. I think this was what molly was trying to explain.  Now, when a country is in need, and it’s bases are destroyed, other countries help create a temporary hold, they do this by sending in resources. Receiving resources is not the same as getting them your self, at some point, you have to find a way to provide for yourself, and this is what helps us maintain the pyramid without our whole civilization collapsing. But even with all this thinking, I’m still unsure, Is it possible for a civilization to survive without the two base levels, not necessarily long term but for a substantial amount of time?

Creating a First Civilization

In class, we were given the project of creating/ inventing our very own first civilization. While many might think it is something that comes very easily, there were many factors that we had to consider while making our civilization. Just coming up with the area in which it would be placed in was difficult. We had to think of things such as to what environment would be the most convenient to our civilization based on it's fertility, access, and available resources, primarily water. We also had to think of what we would have to face in such environments. Would this civilization be affected by hurricanes? Could it receive significant damage if it was hit by an earthquake? If a disease came to the community, what type of resources would the civilization have to be able to overcome it? Were floods a possibility?

Considering the fact that as a primitive, first civilization, it possibly had no real way of accessing water easily as we do now, my group thought the best way to have access would be for this civilization to be placed near some kind of body of water, preferably a fresh body of water. We chose a river because unlike a lake, it has a constant flowage of water passing by which would be good for us since it would serve as a place where we could bathe and also get clean water out of without risk of having to ingest what was used to be cleaned and also avoiding the ingestion of dirty water due to accumulation of animal's waste.

With the idea of a river, we then came to trees and vegetation if any. We thought of various possibilities and settled on a lush green forest, to be precise, a rain forest. It is said that the rain forests are one of the most diverse places both when it comes to plants and also animals/ insects. This would be a positive thing for us because it would provide our civilization with a great amount of food already there, it could avoid the need to farm, and to storage large amounts of food. This doesnt mean that we decided it wouldn't farm. There are many things that can go wrong with the forest's food so farming would be something needed, not in a large amount but more of a small amount in which way the civilization wouldn't have to be dependent upon the environment's production patterns and possible tragedies/disasters.

All in all, we used this type of critical thinking to come up with our civilization. While in this process, i wondered, Would it be as simple a thing to just die out and fail as a civilization if those settling in the area, who planned to grow later as a civilization, made the wrong decision or forgot to factor something in while choosing a place? Did this happen often, or where there some that found ways to overcome their mistakes?