Metropolis Organism blog post #27, CIVILIZATION ACCORDING TO SCIENCE
Metropolis Organism blog post #27 CIVILIZATION ACCORDING TO SCIENCE A Manifesto (#3) I. The System Civilization is not merely a human creation. It is a large-scale, self-organizing system arising from the coupled interaction of humans, technologies, infrastructures, institutions, and energy flows. This system persists across generations of individuals, maintaining structural continuity despite the constant turnover of its human components. Each generation is born into a pre-existing network of constraints—roads, laws, machines, communication systems, and economic structures—that channel behavior and coordinate activity at scales beyond individual comprehension or control. From a scientific perspective, civilization can be understood as a planetary-scale metabolic system. It continuously absorbs energy and materials, transforms them, distributes them through vast networks, and expels waste, thereby maintaining its organization over time. Humans are necessary to this metabolism, bu...