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On the secrets of Civilization

Unfinished Leaf

THIS ARTICLE IS MISSING LINKS

Many people contribute to the conversation on measuring a civilization’s advancement. Some scales like the one proposed by Nikolai Kardashev are renowned and formalized, others are merely inferred sentiment in political commentary. In the case of the Kardashev scale it is mostly concerned with energy use particularly as it relates to alien civilizations, in contrast, commentators assert the significance of ancient civilizations like Rome or Greece by holistic measures such as military prowess or cultural dominance.
Although two assessments of a civilization’s advancement are of in different contexts, I wish to unify them into one conversation. I believe the Kardashev scale could be applied to Rome and so could any proposed holistic measure to modern society which entirely alien to what an ancient roman would have imagined. Furthermore, understanding the underlying conditions on which any measures on the spectrum of empirical to holistic are contingent upon is important to knowing what is worth pursuing for our society.
I must disclaim though, that I do not believe this I myself, in this conversation, can provide any groundbreaking aspirations for society and even if such a revelation exists it must remain a secret for it’s own sake.1

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The Secret

Now to the crux of the matter, I do not believe that energy use alone is the most prominent indication of any civilization’s greatness. Central to natural law is conflict management, that is, the idea any two individual actors will never be perfectly aligned and therefore the most important thing to do is to mitigate and manage the inevitable conflict.2 Any advanced civilization would constitute individuals, that is, to classify as a civilization. If the desires of the group completely dominate the individual desires of its constituents (such as in ants for example) then it would much better be described as an organism and not a civilization.3 However cooperation between those individuals is also necessary to classify as a civilization.4 So in a system of both individuals and the forces that compel cooperation (or make it beneficial) there has to be some way of resolving the inevitable conflict. My proposal is that a measure of the conflict resolution process utilized by the group is the most important measure if it’s advancement and it is the most meaningful, reliable, and universal standard of civilizational height.
What is a highly advanced civilization if there are merely a flash in the pan and cannot survive on the timescales that actually make them significant? I believe that any such measure of conflict resolution will necessarily constitute a time element. More importantly is the question of sustainability. What is a highly advanced civilization if they cannot defend themselves existential risks or conquest by other civilizations? If any civilization is imposed any such risk, it takes a conflict resolution processes even recognize the issue as collective as opposed to disparate individual concerns. To be clear I am not saying that any civilization be recognized only on the merits of its might, but this ability to resist threats must be taken into account. What is a highly advanced civilization if it is constantly war with itself? What is a civilization if it destroys itself the instant it discover the tools that enable a destructive enough capacity? Time spent in conflict is not only destructive but it also takes up space and resources from productive activity. In our understanding of past civilizations we have known them to have detailed processes for threats of domestic origins, these are not to be taken for granted. The importance of conflict management continues even in the absence of conflict, that is, if conflict is to be defined as passing a certain threshold, past that threshold, individuals who are not at odds with one another, what becomes relevant is how complex and resilient their cooperative arrangement is, considering that we have established these individuals to be first and foremost self serving organisms.
Say we have three systems. In one system conflict is arbitrated by some understanding of a democratic process, another by the universal notion of property rights and a system of contracts and the third where the conflict is resolved as it is won. If these three systems were composed of a randomized sample of individuals with personal interests of their own, and each systems is left to its own for some time, eventually we can take measurements to determine how truly effective its conflict resolution protocol way. In this sense it could be said that our capitalism, socialism or any other economy are themselves ways to manage conflict, that is, the multitude of complex conflicts that occurs on the scale of the economy.5
We do of course have to broaden our understanding of economies as we know it. Now say we have two systems, one with a system of individual entitlements that are loosely defined where contradictions on what entitlements belong to who occur frequently, and another more rigorously defined. In the first we can say the space of resolutions is not thoroughly mapped out and hence system on will spend more time in conflict than in peacetime compared to the second system. The second would be notably superior on how much better each individual can enjoy his entitlements without encroaching on that of others. Such an state of affairs could only enabled by virtue of the detail and intricacies of its agreement superstructure. But of course within these systems themselves the methods conflict of resolution themselves will change, and so we have to think the meta- of the dynamic, that is, the method of methods of resolving conflict. In any case how rigorously mapped the resolution space any such system of agreements is an objective mathematical reality as long as we perfect knowledge of the individuals within the system and the system itself. However, in the absence of perfect knowledge as long as we can understand some information to be more accurate that what it was previously, the conclusion stands, that is, if we have a perfect understanding of logic itself. Hence the act of civilization attainment is actually just maximizing what is an objective mathematical reality.

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As it Relates to Modern Society

Like I said earlier I don’t really see any prescriptive value to this conversation. However, at least for me, it opens my imagination up to new visions for our civilization and to alien civilizations. For us it helps me see problems that I would have otherwise viewed as mundane as truly great tests for our civilization. For example solving traffic.
Have you ever understood traffic to be a great filter? Of course the problem of traffic is not all too pressing but in a certain sense it is one of the most painful problems we as a civilization experience. It hurts each one of us in tiny ways constantly over our lifetimes, a total calculus of the negative utility of traffic would make it equivalent to a catastrophic natural disaster, yet we allow it to happen everyday. Well it’s not that we allow it to happen, as I said earlier it takes a certain amount of advancement to even recognize the issue as mutual, maybe we are not there yet. Traffic is in many ways the ultimate sort of test for our civilization, I can recall of moments being stuck on the highway after a in a particularly bad day, in moments like these I would often blame the driver who caused the track, maybe the road designers and if I was really feeling particularly cerebral that day I would the local government for not preventing the incident. What I fail to recognize is that the person most responsible for traffic is simply the car directly in front of me, after all it he who is directly obstructing me. So to be able to lay blame on anyone besides the car directly in front of me implies my acknowledgement that the issue of traffic traverses. So using that logic we ought to recognize that of course the chain of responsibility does not stop at the particular car that caused the incident but rather all people that have used the road and contributed to its development, making nearly all of civilization culpable.
Some claim that traffic is not a technological problem, they do have some ground to that claim, after all one could imagine a conveyorbelt-esque system of transport where all cars have preprogrammed destinations, all the technology necessary for that solution already exists. Further inquiry into the idea reveals it fundamental flaws, how could any technology know where one was going in an efficient manner that also minimizes any sort of compromise, compromises such as time preference, privacy, comfort and even ownership. All of these compromises are necessary for it to represent any greater utility over the status quo, otherwise people would just choose to go in their cars and endure the traffic. So unless someone can figure out how to design a system that delivers all of that then this problem is truly a technological one. In that sense the interstate system we have today is a technological marvel in its own right, because it provides all those benefits with traffic being the only cost. In my opinion simply eliminating cars or car-centrism does not provide a viable alternative, I however have ideas of what I believe a future without traffic may entail.
Whatever the solution is it must provide an option for the vast majority of road users taking common routes to work or school without excluding other users who are not taking common routes, accommodating even the abusers. It must minimize traffic uncompromisingly, and only when we can do so can we claim to be truly be an advanced species. Solving traffic is emblematic of a certain type of problem, problems caused by a conflict of incentives, problems that require innovations in accommodation. Only when we can solve these problems through superior methods of conflict resolution can we say that we are the stewards of this planet. I can think of other problems like these some of which we have solved already such as unlocking the atom and reaching the moon with the apollo missions, and others which remain unsolved such as, fixing climate change, pensions, redoing the internet. There was a time where seemingly unrealistic ideas like mine were taken seriously, sometime in the 80s, back then society was more optimistic about technology, was it the case we were at a greater height back then than we are now ?

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As it relates to Alien Civilizations

I watch a lot of sci-fi, and to be honest it was the initial inspiration for this entire article. The problem for me was something accepted universally, in movies, digital content or merely in everyday conversations. The issue was that whenever extraterrestrial contact was discovered it was always taken as a given that the aliens would make contact as a species, that is, they would come (peacefully or through conquest) under one banner. As I have discussed earlier a more advanced civilization would not be one where its constituents are forcefully aligned rather they we be the opposite, more diverse, than we currently are sprawled out over many systems of stars. A more accurate picture of extraterrestrial contact would be contact with a faction of the alien species. They would however, be more advanced in the fact that they would exist an arrangement where when contact is made by one its many factions the entire apparatus of that alien civilization is aimed into that point to deliver their full civilization’s might.7 It’s easy to imagine this, we already have pictures of this sort of arrangement in recent memory, because of course, this is exactly how colonialism happened. Considering communication with is inherently bound by causality to the speed of light then this arrangement is no easy feat.
For some reason hollywood portrays aliens as fairly unremarkable beings, even in the best portrayals of aliens such as in stories like arrival or the three body problem, it is implied that the aliens would superior in the fact that they are fully aligned and above the lowly bickering of humans. Why would it be the case that in a world where evolution led to herd animals like ants, fish and cows becoming dominated by the individualized human species that superior aliens would also exist in some hivemind? It is not that they wouldn’t cooperate, they would but much more significant would be their disagreement and the proceeding resolutions.8 Arguably we humans have done the same as the peaks of our technological advancement have happened mostly in our disagreements and their resolutions. I don’t even think that any alien would prefer to identify as one species much the same way as there is an american flag on the moon and not a humanity one. I’d much rather imagine contact involving an alien christopher columbus or an Elon musk making contact with another species. In many ways, if Musk was to be successful in colonizing mars then that would be on the merits of the ability for his company to acquire the raw materials and complex parts to build the rocket and mars habitat, both of which are a simple benefit of globalism, making him a more advanced version of christopher Columbus.10
Aliens would also not wage war as we picture nation states waging war. A war with a higher civilization would be very complex although they would ultimately win. They would wage war on multiple fronts, with multiple factions, with multiple technologies, some of which way work against each other. Again, I can draw another analogy to ancient way being fought only between armies with swords and shields in contrast to the complicated mess that is modern warfare, with new fronts some of which are completely abstract and by different agencies, which have historically worked against each other. Even in the instances where a higher civilization may opt for an instantaneous solution it is unlikely that they will completely agree on that action.12 Instead if such an action was to be taken then it would be by a rouge faction of that alien species, but there very well might be factions interested in protecting us against themselves as they would disagree. They would however have the ability to resolve such a disagreement before we can even comprehend it.

※ Article written in days (no spellcheck), completed in weeks. Edited once November 2025. Edited a second time December 2025.

  1. Granted that such holistic measure is objective. Can we expect this to be an agreeable premise? I do. ↩

  2. Since we all contribute to any meaning of civilization any knowledge that determines success Self-serving secret is a idea of a ↩

  3. Conflict here is understood in a broad sense, merely existing is standing in a position and appropriating a piece of land, taking up space and breathing some air, all at which another individual may desire for themselves. You don’t even to complicate this abstract idea any much further complicated to see it relevance to current wars and conflicts. ↩

  4. The square-cube law prohibits life as we to being to a certain size limit but any theoretical life would benefit from being not being physically bound as it sprawl thanks to the laws of the universe tha. So if some singular organism is unlikely to be significant enough to classify as a civilization. If however measuring a singular organism was to classify as a civilization in this case, a further generalization of this idea of measuring conflict management would just be measuring it size relative to the basic units. ↩

  5. In a broad sense cooperation is inevitable in any system where individual entities share locality, as long as the energy of the system remains constant. This is say that even in the instances of conflict where one dominant species may eliminate a subordinate, if their parts are repurposed in someway, say maybe eaten, there is some kind of cooperation happening there. ↩

  6. At this point I will have to introduce the fact that in any measurement of the effectiveness of a conflict resolution protocol the quantity that is time in conflict vs time not in conflict will be understood with a fundamental unit of physics in mind such. ↩

  7. Their “might” would be how much of their civilizational apparatus they could effectively deliver to that point considering losses. ↩

  8. I also believe that the disagreements of any superior be of a matter much higher matter than we currently have, they would be concerned with intricacies much deeper than we care for and timescales much longer that we do, and with theories much more complex than we do.9 ↩

  9. i prefer to keep even the things much more complex than we know off within the scope of imagination as that is how i believe progress occurs ↩

  10. This is how broadly I want to interpret any such “arrangement of civilization apparatus” it could merely mean just through an economy in which acquiring scare resources or specialized supplies is not only possible by that those supplies are cheap readily available. ↩

  11. abstract: cyber and information warfare ↩

  12. Some have imagined hostile aliens instantaneously sterilizing our planet using technologies like solar system scale electron beams. ↩