Central Civilization

= hypothesis by David Wilkinson : " "Central Civilization," born regionally in the Middle East about 1500 B.C. in the collision of two smaller, expanding local civilizations, expanded throughout the globe, engulfing all competing civilizations to become the unique global social system in the last 100-150 years". [1]

Introduction

Video by Robert Conan Ryan via https://www.facebook.com/robert.ryan.9279/posts/pfbid02jYEawSjq29D6Y1kvrLqnMwuYf7jqha7vH6voMRN1EqNh7QiiZ1GiUu1yJ1JL9ZUHl

"In this short video I briefly explain how world systems theory 3.0 is different from other approaches to analyzing civilization I stress the fact that there has never been a full collapse of the Magisteria. Civilizations come and go but the Magisteria only gets bigger and absorbs everything. Since the 20th century the world Magisteria has absorbed all Civilizations. All!! No civilization has ever fully collapsed that has joined the world Magisteria. Sure individual governments have fallen and borders are redrawn. But all Civilizations who joined the Magisteria have lived on through a shared system of knowledge. In other words, there won't be any civilization collapse because we are already in a post-civilization global landscape. Any local collapses will simply be restored by the world system as a whole - the Magisteria is a single global Knowledge system that already penetrates all major governments.. As such, reconstruction of smaller parts of "collapsed" world system is inevitable. Instead of thinking in terms of civilization collapse, we should be thinking in terms of a post civilizational world and the transhuman construction of posthuman creations. Even if the world goes through wars and resource shortages, the world will not lose the Magisteria (knowledge won't collapse). We should be more worried about the justification of HUMANS in a world where we can genetically modify and digitally augment the agents within this magisteria to posthuman statuses."

Description

David Wilkinson:

"Today there exists on the Earth only one civilization, a single global civilization. As recently as the nineteenth century several independent civilizations still existed (i.e. those centered on China, Japan, and the West); now there remains but one.

Central Civilization. The single global civilization is the lineal descendant of, or rather I should say the current manifestation of, a civilization that emerged about 1500 B.C. in the Near East when Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations collided and fused. This new fusional entity has since then expanded over the entire planet and absorbed, on unequal terms, all other previously independent civilizations.

I label this entity "Central" civilization."

(https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1130&context=ccr)

More information

* Article: Wilkinson, D. (1996). World-Economic Theories and Problems: Quigley vs. Wallerstein vs Central Civilization. Journal of World-Systems Research, 2(1), 117–185. doi

URL = https://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/jwsr/article/view/63

"This is one in a series of papers on civilizational issues. Its predecessors have argued for the existence of a world system/civilization, "Central Civilization," born regionally in the Middle East about 1500 B.C. in the collision of two smaller, expanding local civilizations, expanded throughout the globe, engulfing all competing civilizations to become the unique global social system in the last 100-150 years. If continuing social struggles both are and imply continuing social entities, there is social continuity-stabilities, trends and cycles--in the struggles forming and maintaining Central Civilization.ill A consequence of accepting Central Civilization as a genuine entity, or a reason for treating it as a fruitful heuristic, is, in particular, the finding that it possesses a political cycle (states system--univcesal empire) characteristic of other entities commonly treated as civilizations (Wilkinson, 1986; 1987, 53-56; 1988) as well as a political evolution (from multistate anarchy to balance-of-power) incipient but never successfully established in other world systems (Wilkinson, 1985)."