Location: Living room.
Listening: Fortunate Son, Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Deep in study for my midterm in Ancient Civilizations. The Study Guide my professor put together is ten pages long. That's all I have to say, I think.

While studying theories of state formation, I happened on the following paragraph. It struck me as something that, given the current discussion stemming from my most recent entry, would be food for thought:

Warfare can be rejected as a primary cause of civilization on other grounds also. In earlier times, the diffuse social organization of village communities had not yet led to the institutional warfare that resulted from the concentration of wealth and power in a few hands. Only when absolute and despotic monarchs came into power did warfare become endemic, with standing armies to control important resources, solve political questions, and ensure social inequality. This type of warfare presupposes authority and is a consequence of civilization.

Excerpted from Ancient Civilizations, Fagan and Scarre.

So we find ourselves in a theoretically democratic society, yet with the same structure that "absolute and despotic monarchs" established--the same structure that folks we decry for their inhumanity rely on to maintain power. Will we ever move beyond this--or are we destined to remain in this situation because it's the only way to protect our resources from those whom we are supposedly morally and ideologically opposed to? Will there ever be such a state as "post civilization", in that sense?