The net result of rising overhead costs appears in the history of all
previous civilizations. They are eating out the vitals of western
civilization while we write and read these words.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE SOCIOLOGY OF CIVILIZATION

Sociology is the science and art of association.

Human associations range from kinship groups like the family, tribe and
clan to larger more complex groups like villages, towns, cities,
nations, empires, to still more inclusive leagues, federations and
civilizations.

In a broad view, sociology includes politics, economics and ideology.
For the purposes of our social analysis, we have divided the field into
four separate categories, beginning with politics, continuing through
economics and drawing our study together under the general headings of
sociology and ideology.

No civilization that we have studied can be regarded as an intentional
or projected or planned enterprise. On the contrary, civilizations have
developed and matured in true pragmatic fashion, taking one step after
another because their predecessors had followed this course or because,
given the human urges and the available natural and social
opportunities, the next step seemed to be determined by previous steps
plus the momentum of the enterprise. In the course of this development
an ideology was built up and modified in such a way as to justify and
strengthen the entire project.

When William Penn received a grant of land from the English Crown, he
was already committed, ideologically, by the Quaker faith to Quaker
methods. Without ever seeing his proposed home across the Atlantic he
drew up a plan for his City of Brotherly Love (Philadelphia), and for
the organization and conduct of his enterprise. The entire project was
formulated in Penn's mind and put on paper. This is a good example of an
intentional community.

No civilization so far as I know, has followed such a sequence.
Certainly in the civilizations with which we are most familiar,
political and economic forces, the principles of necessity and
availability have led to the formulation of an ideology that would
justify and promote the interests of the social group which was
controlling and directing the community or communities in which the
civilization was maturing.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that each of the component
elements making up the expanding civilization--each people, city, state,
nation, empire--developed its own t