What does it mean to live in human civilization?

Question from the Internet:

“Is civilization overrated in the 21st century?”

“Civilization” itself is the actual state of humanity, it is as it is.

Whether we are “civil” or not, that is a different question.

“Civil, polite, and courteous mean following the rules of good behavior. civil is used for showing only enough proper behavior to avoid being actually rude. I know you’re angry but try to be civil. polite is used of good manners and thoughtfulness.”

If we take such definitions into consideration, we can see that we are not civil at all, in this respect we cannot call our human system a “civilization”.

We might say nice things, we might force political correctness on each other, but in practice, each and every person is only for themselves, we all blindly follow our inherently self-serving, self-justifying, egocentric, and individualistic nature.

This is the root cause of all helplessly recurring, vicious historic cycles, as each following “civilization” self-destructs as we simply do not know how to be “civil” with each other in practice.

In order to build a positive, sustainable, equal, safe, and peaceful human civilization, we would need to change, upgrade ourselves, and how we connect, relate to each other.

And it is not because of some moral, ethical consideration, or due to following our arbitrary ideologies, philosophies, or religions. Without positive, mutually responsible, and mutually complementing interconnections, cooperation, we remain incompatible with the fully integrated and interdependent Natural system we exist in, and thus our continuing collective survival is at peril.