People are people, and I love them all. But today and historically, some collections of people have been described as “civilizations,” and some time ago (okay, okay, while hiking through beautiful scenery from friendly but rough village to friendly but rough town, craving a hot, clean shower and a net connection) I began to ponder what this word meant.
I concluded that, for me, the defining features of a civilization are persistent traditions and bodies of knowledge, of exactly the sort that are maintained, preserved, and shared in recognizable libraries.
