blog 2 (10-25-11)

In any "civilization" there are ways in which you can sustain the civilization so it last for a long period of time. The given categories which pretty much determine the organization of the communities are growth of territories, daily life, interactions among citizens and outsiders, distribution of jobs, economics, and religion. In order to have an organized civilization, each of these categories needs to be organized as well. To me, growth of the territories means how populated the area is, and also physically how large the living environment is. There should be a continuing growth of people in the civilization because you cannot have a civilization without lots of people, and also the territory in which those citizens live needs to be healthy. Daily life means how the individuals go about their daily life from when they wake up to when they drop to sleep. If their daily lives are constantly hectic, than the environment displays disorganization. If the members of the civilization cannot work and benefit from one another in their daily lives in order to accomplish tasks, you can be sure the civilization will not last long. Interactions among citizens and outsiders is slightly similar to daily life, however interactions among citizens and outsiders also involves trading because that is interaction with people outside of the civilization, which is important and essential because if you never know life outside of your own, you would not have as much knowledge and experience. Distribution of jobs refers to how the people of the civilization work and how fairly work is distributed. If only the rich people were offered jobs, and none were available to the poor, than the rich would only get richer and the poor would only get poorer, therefor the civilization would crash eventually. Economics deals with the currency system of a civilization and how the leaders choose to deal with the economy. An organized economic system is the basis to a sustainable and well-run civilization. Religion is a major component to civilizations as well. Religion is super important because the individuals often rely on religion in order to create values and beliefs for themselves which helps them maneuver and make decisions during their every day lives. Religion is something people lean on, and it brings people together due to common interests, yet also defines the differences in one another.  Each one of these categories relate in some way, and they are all in the interest of benefitting and helping protect a civilization. One example of how the Mesopotamian civilization existed for longer than the Indus valley civilization is that in the Indus Valley there was a lot of controversy over politics and religion. This was apparent partially because Alexander the Great came into the valley and left a major impact, mostly a negative one, on all of the citizens. And when a ruler and an authority like that storms in on a civilization and makes some major decisions, the civilization is effected in the long run and because of him and his leadership, lots of things were unorganized. On the other hand, in Mesopotamia, political centralization started, city states were formed, and there were intelligent and structured leaders. This one aspect of the civilization affected many things, just like a food web in science. Once one animal is taken out of a food web some become over populated and some die out, in other words one slight change can make all the difference.