A civilization is a shared system of values. To those not sharing the particular values, that civilization may appear deficient, even uncivilized. Then we have a clash of civilizations. International agreements try to manage clashing civilizations, and mostly rely on armies to back up the deals. However, the main problems with civilizations are internal. Almost always there are large numbers of people who privately do not believe in the core values of their civilization, but publicly pretend to do so. After all, it is a big ask to have millions of people with radically different agendas sharing a system of values. Those who secretly disagree with public values are often amongst the most ambitious members of a particular civilization, indeed frequently its leaders. The upshot is a corruption of idealized values by one means or another. Over decades and centuries leaders will seek to reinterpret public values. This might be necessary, for in a changing world old ideas may no longer be practical. Many hidden changes however will be for the personal advantage of leaders. A typical pattern of corrupted values might result in, for example, the degradation of women, exploiting the less lucky, restricting opportunity to certain social classes, or the double-speak abuse of ideas like ‘freedom’, ‘the people’, ‘equality’, ‘order’, ‘subversion’ … and so on. Past and present it is pretty hard to think of any civilization, Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Communist, Fascist, Dictatorial, Libertarian, Democratic, Socialist, Capitalist, or whatever, which has remained mostly decent at its political and social core. ‘Decent’ here is defined by the originating ideas of right and wrong within each civilization. Thus all civilizations are unstable, have moral crises, and may fail, though the people in them ‘go on’. Perhaps they then accept belief in some new model. Each ‘new civilization’ will also, of course, eventually be weakened by the corruption and abuse of its new values. Now think hard and name your own examples.
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