No one agrees on what a civilisation is or what it may constitute. Marxists, cultural relativists and internationalists believe that any and all societies are 'civilisations'. Thus we read and hear of the improbability that the child-sacrificing and sky-God worshipping Punics of Carthage, were just as 'civilised' as the Romans. Or that the impoverished mass of Hindu society which burned its widows was just as much of a civilisation as that of Victorian England. And that the pagan Mayans and later on the Aztecs contributed 'wonderful glories' to the upward march of men, even though neither had writing, the wheels, science, rationality, morality, an ethical framework, social justice or much in the way of intelligence, and both died in the blood of self-immolation, eco-exploitation, and internecine warring, notwithstanding the impact of a small number of Spaniards upon the latter. What civilisation implodes when confronted by 300 Europeans, 5000 miles from home, possessing a few dozen horses, some 50 muskets and little else? Why is such a febrile construct deemed to be civilised?

What about Islam and the Muslim Hubal or moon cult of Allah? Is this barbarism which denigrates in the Koran, and in Muslim practice; women, non-Believers, Jews and Christians a civilisation?  Is a political construct which sanctions war, pillage, rape, sex slavery, infidel slavery and the killing of  all Unbelievers a civilisation?  Did this theology actually invent anything which allowed men to become better, moral, smarter, more conscious of life and the world? Well certainly many people argue that Islam in its various incarnations and varieties did produce civilisation in some form. They point to the 'golden era' of the 9^th century and perhaps the 10^th century; of the Abbasids in Baghdad, or the Umayyads in Spain. When viewed objectively of course, both examples are failures. The Arabs and Moslems were squatters and any 'inventions' produced by their society, sparse as they were, were of course largely the products of non-Muslims, Jews, Greeks, Christians and atheists or transmitted from the Hindus.

This proves the rule that even in totalitarian states, those dissenters and men of genius will still find a way to express themselves. Thus the greatest of Muslim poets were non-Muslims and mostly Iranian including Khayyam and Razi. The greatest of scientific and mathematical minds were Jewish and Christian including Diophantus who invented the basis of modern algebra three centuries before Mohammed was born, yet Muslims take credit for this and sundry other inventions created by non-Muslims.  Then again, the Koran makes the claim that all religious prophets and leaders, from Noah to Christ, were Muslim. 

A precious few innovative Muslims such as Averroes or Avicenna did exist of course, but they were few and far between.  Both of these men were dissenting followers of the moon cult and suffered death threats, including the destruction of their books. Neither improved on ancient Greek ideals and both simply and rather stupidly just accepted the corpus of Aristotelian theology as the end-product of inquiry. Europeans, long aware of the ancient Greeks were even by the 8^th century busy revising and dissecting the legacy of ancient Greek thought and reforming it. Not so in the Muslim world.

But even this tiny, weak and incorrect incursion of Greek thought into Islamic anti-culture was too much for most of Islam. Averroes' entire works were burnt in 1164 outside Cordoba. The debate was long over. Islam was and is a total system. Everything you need is in the Koran. Mohammed said so. His alter ego and 2^nd personality Allah or Hubal said so. Long before the mid-12^th century, the communal Muslim mind was firmly shut to civilisation, to rationality, and to improving the lives of men. Islam is not a civilisation. Any system which engages in totalitarian brutality using the fusion of the spiritual and the political is a pagan fascism. It is really, that simple.

So then what constitutes a real civilisation? The definition is rather straightforward. In my estimation it is the following:

A civilisation is a society which improves the lives, the spirits, and the skills and consciousness of men and women. A civilisation will, over the longer-term, improve the conditions, morality, and dignity of men and women. This conscious elevation of the human, will be evocatively captured in the arts, in literature and in culture which extols, life, beauty, grace, dignity, courtesy and manners. Thus culture, in all its form, is the outward manifestation of a civilisation which strives in a humane manner, to enhance all the aspects of life and of human consciousness.

A civilisation is of course never perfect and it is never static. Western civilisation is a story about a long series of 'rebirths' and innovations. Our world today is far different than the Victorian era. But it is built just the same on that era. Humanitarianism, widespread charity, public concern about diseases, health and the efficient removal of human waste and refuse are just some of the legacies bequeathed to us by the Victorians. So too was the ending of slavery, child-labor laws, and the seriousness of female rights programs. So it goes with the passage of civilised time. Little is perfect, but perhaps over the longer-term one has a right to be optimistic about the corporeal health of our society even if the journey is rough and uneven. There is no utopia and never will be. But a civilisation never strives for perfection. Societies which do are not civilisations, but totalitarian constructs like Islam which are simple pre-modern barbarisms.

The 20^th century Irish poet Yeats was wrong on many topics. His view of Irish history was one clad in falsehoods and myths. He seemed enamoured of Mussolini and state fascism. His analysis of Cromwell and the English Civil Wars was uselessly and hopelessly mired in Marxian cant and anti-capitalist ignorance. But one of his poems did capture the weakness and sterility which can beset civilisation. When good men do nothing; when the conveniences of the modern world appear to be permanent and not in need of repair and defense; when the reality of our 5 senses becomes replaced by dogma, cant, bureaucratic cultural relativity; and when there is a general cowardice about confronting evil, hypocrisy and pagan ideals which mock civilisation, than indeed we have a problem:

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer: Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned: The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity." [The Second Coming]

Maybe Yeats is right. The centre which is so weak in some respects in our own civilisation, 'cannot hold'. The centre of logic, the centre of morality, the centre of knowledge, the centre of humanistic achievement. The centre when it is attacked by cultural Marxism, Islam, pop-culture vulgarity, Leftist ignorance and blindness, and widespread mis-education, will indeed never hold. The 'best' of us might well lack conviction or just assume that everything is fine. When the good do nothing we are all easy prey for the more fanatical full of 'passionate intensity', such as the followers of Mohammed's fascism and their Leftist allies. Usually in history the most fanatical, no matter how uncivilised, oftentimes emerge as the victors.

Culture is the outgrowth of the civilisational process. Art, literature, manners, courtesy, dignity, sumptuary, and the evolution of language are the main features which denote a civilisation. I-Pads, cars, high-speed trains, cloud-computing, jets, and the massive output of consumer and product genius is a derivative of a process which is a subset of that civilisation. But these conveniences and appliances, no matter how steeped in genius and innovation are not 'civilisation'. A civilisation is culture not products. Given that fact are we sure that the centre of our art, literature and social customs is strong enough to 'hold'? Or will it be crashed into dust by the anti-civilisation barbarities of cultural Marxism, socialism and Islam?