letion of natural resources create a future civilization where it is more humane to denude the earth in order to save humans? Even with the neo-liberal straw man as a foil, Gill's idea of civilization rings hollow; after all, while one ideological pole would have us include plants as neo-sentient beings deserving representation in society, another would proclaim human dominion of the earth (a la Genesis 2) as the paradigm for rational human interaction with the planet. Where Thoreau might call a cabin in the wood civilized, Donald Trump sees a new apartment building. Though we can prefer one model to the other on a subjectively aesthetic basis, it seems artificial and indeed impossible to create a salient line of progress that could possibly reconcile drastically different worldviews and material realities.To replace Gill's self-congratulatory historical determinism, we must be far more careful about our definition of a civilization. At the risk of being overly vague, I would posit the following: "Civilization is characterized by the self-conscious actualization of a systematic ethos defining the relation between self and community." In other words, all that is truly required of civilization is a certain self-consciousness, (as a civilization), and a certain level of complexity characterized by the desire for progress towards a goal or set of goals other than survival. By distilling the most general aspect of the dictionary definition, namely social or political complexity, this new definition allows us to avoid the sort of subjective aesthetic of civilization that underlies Gill's democratic eco-humanism. Though the result may be less satisfying, the more cautious, general nature of this new approach allows us to avoid confusing the ought of civilization, (that which we think it should be), with a useful objective claim about the is of civilization, (a common standard on which to judge all civilizations).The fact that Gill's claim that...
