The essential act of civilization, preceded by reliable surplus food existing, is to form a commons of stored food and empower some kind of a fiduciary steward to administer that commons coupled with the creation of a comprehensible economic surround and the consistent enforcement of invariant societal protocols or laws defining a polity by their purview.
Those conditions empower the arts of civilization, as inventoried by the Sumerian god Enki, the mes, as he bestowed them on humankind in the Sumerian myth. The Sumerians had a clear view of civilization and its origins, there being no precedent. Their myths are valuably suggestive as to the process.
As humans we are invariable as to deriving meaning by task and our role in the accomplishment of it. Small farmers, road crews, irrigation crews, these are the work parties that define economic existence. Small and close, heavily invested in what Ibn Khaldün called asabiyyah or group solidarity, these work parties might compose larger work parties to a limited degree keeping meaning, task and role and task domination, in sight constantly.
As stewards and work parties do their jobs society grows richer and loses its sense of task domination in a constant bleeding off of meaning. This is in perfect parallel to Khaldün's proposed cycles of civilization, a different construct from a different point of view of social decay but in point for point coincidence.
Societies grow. Societies grow clever. Societies grow rich. Societies gradually lose their economic meaning generation capability to leisure and recreation and economic meaning is the foundation of civilization. Robots will put this in critical focus and civilization may not survive them.
Do Well and Be Well.
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