Quote Originally Posted by leo9 View Post
That was pretty much the definition I came up with last time the question arose. "Civilised" is used as a moral description meaning "better behaved," but that's because it's the "civilised" people using it. Same way "urbane" (from a word original meaning "from the town") is used to mean "refined, sophisticated,", because the townies wrote the books.
Quite!

On the other hand, civilisations support (among other specialised types) thinkers, who can be racist, warmongering and repressive, but on average, over time, historically seem to converge towards such things as equality and respect for life; and being a part of a civilisation, rather than a hunter-gatherer tribe, means that their ideas get spread widely. So though on the face of it there's nothing morally good about the practical functions of civilisation, it does seem to work out for the better in the long run.
But when discussing civilisation in the sense of 'more complicated' you also have to count in all the infectious illnesses that so many people in small (relatively speaking) area makes, more big and more destructive wars, more oppression as in few (or one) person making all the decision and so on. The more you make complex and centralize, the bigger catastropies you can unleash.

Also, I am not so sure that equality and respect for life is the dominating factor of our time, in spite of all our complex societies?

I find that the question whether the good outweighs the bad rather complicated, but incredibly important with a view to the future. There has to be better ways than what we have now, and maybe the first step is to put a question mark on the concept of 'progress', and be more critical of what happens.