The Lotus Eaters

Chapter Sixteen

No society can truly be called civilized which is unable to deal with barbarians, of both the external and the home-grown varieties. This is so unless one cares implicitly to define "civilized" as "that which is comfortable but weak, unwilling to defend itself, and in the last stages of life before descending into barbarism."

Of course, since good and evil must be measured by duration as well as scope and intensity, and since such a "civilization" has no prospect of having much more duration, that "civilization" is hardly worth defending anyway. That said, should the people of such a civilization choose to defend it, its probable duration and thus its intrinsic value will increase in proportion, just as those decrease when the people reach a consensus not to defend their society.

But what then is civilization? Arts and letters? Education? Public Order? Rule in accordance with law? Trade? Specialization of function? Urbanization? Public works and roads? Ports?

Civilization shows all of those things, yet it is more than any of them, singly or in combination. At core, civilization is a system of society which permits something near the maximum number of people, for any given geographic area, to enjoy the maximum feasible quality of life, for the longest possible societal duration.

—Jorge y Marqueli Mendoza, Historia y Filosofia Moral, Legionary Press, Balboa, Terra Nova, Copyright AC 468