What makes a culture civilized?

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The word "civilization," comes from the latin civis, meaning citizen. At root, civilization means a society in which individual members have a stake in the society. If you are merely present in a place, living your life independently of those around you, you are not a citizen, and you are part of no civilization.

I do not think, though, that there is a checklist under which a society that can check off a sufficient number of boxes gets to call itself, "civilized." We have certainly seen some indiciae of civilization listed here. Some we can likely agree on, others will be more controversial. It bears noting that civilization is relative--to the point in history in which we examine a society and to the prevailing conditions in which a society finds itself. The classical civilizations were certainly that--but by today's standards they might be found woefully deficient.

All that being said, here's my list of indicia (off the top of my head):

1) Agriculture, aquaculture and hunting: A civilization needs sufficient technological advancement to permit a society to feed itself, either through its own endeavours, or through trade.

2) Money: A civilization requires that people be able to sell their labour and to meet the necessities of life through the proceeds of that labour. I am fairly certain that money is an exclusive answer to this required, but there may be an historical circumstance in which a sophisticated economy existed without a medium of exchange.

3) Towns: Civilizations cannot function without some degree of centralization. This means sufficient engineering knowledge and a trading economy of sufficient complexity to permit the development of towns.

4) A framework for the exchange and retention of knowledge. This includes schools, libraries and universities, but is not limited to them. Note that I have not included public education, free at the point of delivery. In a contemporary context, I firmly believe that public education would be a necessary component of this, but that is not the case in evaluating ancient civilizations in their own contexts.

5) Rule of Law. Here's a controversial one. While Romans had a sophisticated legal system, it is abundantly clear that the legal system did not have the capacity to bind the sovereign. It was, however, sophisticated enough to resolve private disputes, which is an essential feature. On the other hand are tyrranies any less "civilized" than their democratic peers? We may be crossing over from an objective assessment of civilization into a more subjective assessment of political systems here.

I am hesitant to wade into questions like democratic institutions, human rights protections, women's emancipation and the like. While they are certainly features of any society that I would choose to describe as civilized today, I am not at all sure that they are an appropriate lens for an historical understanding of civilization. If we were able to find a description that considered human rights through a context specific lens, that might provide us with a greater degree of comfort around this particular item.

Nude models and red wine.

It is how well we treat the "other" or the "neighbor" or the person we don't know that makes a civilization or not.

You can treat those within your group or tribe well but tolerance of those who are different from you or that you don't know determine how civilized you are. Since it is not a battle to do the first, and a challenge to do the second, treating the other well gets my vote. The father three faiths became so on this basis.

I agree. How much humanity man has towards man, as well as rule of law, are the big pointers for me.

As such, I honestly don't think there's likely to be a culture or country in existence that is truly civilised. Or, you'd have to look very very hard for it. Certainly not the UK anyway. Not even the UK, giving due acknowledgment and appreciation to its role on furthering civilisation in the world.

I'd say it's how civilized they say they are.

i think the meaning of civilized is quite different from the fact of being a civilization.

I've always considered the level of privacy available to the individuals within the society as a good barometer of the level of civilization. Notice that in a tribal society there is no privacy whatsoever, the tribesman's entire life is public.

Knowledge and the desire to learn.

Everything else, even human rights, come from that.

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I think "civilized" is a chronologically relative term.
Thousands of years later, we will be regarded as barbaric by our descendants.

As an aside, I think very few nations on the planet have their legal doctrine based on a rights system. Off the top of my head, I can only think of America. Many other nations don't recognize rights at all. These aren't necessarily backwater nations, mind you, they include Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Hong Kong.

Although those citizens don't have, say, the right of free speech, the stance of the authority is more or less: don't say anything wrong, and we won't put you in the slammer. What the law defines as "wrong" is left to common law precedent, which is, largely, still very forgiving. Same end effect, just using different mechanisms.

I just thought of another thing. A culture is more civilised, the more its members stand up to and challenge prejudice.