If I were to think of describing civilization, by which I really mean society, in a pithy little sentence, I think I'd describe it as an essential compromise that humans have to make in order to rein in the strong and facilitate the survival of the weak. For the strong it is unfortunate and for the weak it is the only way out. For those who are so inclined it may be interesting to try to see it from different angles, and to try to peel away its many sly machinations. At its very heart there is only one goal for any civilization: the survival of its own ideas and its own ways of doing things at the cost, if necessary, of individuals and their possibly inconvenient inclinations. The ideas of a society do change but these changes are glacial and are never willed by those who hold the highest stakes in the current scheme of things. The ones who hold the highest stakes hold them through power both political and economic and neither of these powers is ever in the hands of the masses despite what appearances might suggest. There are two main things desired of the masses: 1. to obsess themselves only with trivialities and 2. to have pride, faith, respect and other similar bullshit emotions when they think about the system that they have. Religion used to play the role of the agent at which human obsession could be safely directed but it has, in the modern world, been replaced by materialism and looking at the inanity of the modern human being, I think the latter is a far more potent opium than the former ever was. The modern human is a shabby and useless specimen, merely a tool in the hands of a digital and heartless machinery. Pride, faith, and respect are cultivated indirectly and the training begins at home when one is told to respect our elders (and external authority by extension.) I have never understood the concept of respect by itself and nobody that I have asked has ever been able to provide me with a coherent, let alone convincing explanation of what it is. I don't know what it means and, therefore, I don't know who deserves it. I most certainly cannot fathom how it can be automatically deserved. And yet we are all told to bow in front of various authorities all our lives, not because it would be a prudent thing to do in a master-slave relationship which is the way it really is, but because the expectation is that we would find something inherently good and worthy about it. I think we as individuals would do well to cultivate a little more contempt. Contempt for the intelligence of authorities and contempt also for our fellow human being both young and old. Neither is as intelligent, prudent, or innocent as it seems.