Civilization

What Is A Civilization? In elementary school I was taught it was any social organization meeting 3 criteria:

• Division Of Labor
• build cities (Urban)
• Agriculture

Here's a list of 5 requirements, which seems poorly structured.

A civilization is any complex society characterized by the development of the state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond signed or spoken languages (namely, writing systems and graphic arts).[2][3][4][5][6] Civilizations include features such as agriculture, architecture, infrastructure, technological advancement, currency, taxation, regulation, and specialization of labour... Social scientists such as V. Gordon Childe have named a number of traits that distinguish a civilization from other kinds of society.[24][25] Civilizations have been distinguished by their means of subsistence, types of livelihood, settlement patterns, forms of government, social stratification, economic systems, literacy and other cultural traits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization

In college I enjoyed Sigmund Freud's "Civilization and its Discontents" (excerpt). If Civilization imposes such great sacrifices not only on man's sexuality but on his aggressivity, we can understand better why it is hard for him to be happy in that civilization. In fact, primitive man was better off in knowing no restrictions of instinct. To counterbalance this, his prospects of enjoying this happiness for any length of time were very slender. Civilized man has exchanged a portion of his possibilities of happiness for a portion of security. Alienation, BigWorld

Feb'2007: Kevin Kelly assembles a taxonomy of models of stages of Civilization. The most robust multi-axis space of possible civilizations that I’ve come across is one created as a world-creation tool kit for Role Playing Game-s: The Cosmic Creation Netbook (BeyondHeroes)... The earliest ones rank civilizations by their use of materials (stone, brass, iron), the later ones rank by a society’s use of energy (Energy Accounting), and most recently the schemes rank by the civilization’s control of information. (Information Economy)

No-one ever expects the Collapse Of Complex Societies!

As my "Is A" usage implies, why does it matter how one defines civilization? It only matters when one generalizes. "Because A Is A civilization,...", either "it's better than B which isn't" or "it alienates people", or whatever.