"I’ve been thinking about civilization lately, and I had this notion that civilization is something like a dedicated stalker. It arrived uninvited, insinuated itself into every aspect of our lives, and now we’ve just convinced ourselves that this is how things are supposed to be—because breaking up would be melodramatic and possibly fatal.
We tend to see civilization as synonymous with progress, but it actually seems to behave more like a slow-moving pathogen, one that claims to strengthen the host while secretly consuming it. We applaud our achievements—things like laws, indoor plumbing, and Wi-Fi—while most of us are staggering under debt and a spiritual emptiness that has become so routine and ubiquitous it might as well be direct deposited with our paychecks at this point.
The question "Do you like civilization?" is about as absurd as asking "Do you like your nervous system?" It’s not really a preference; it’s a condition. And like most conditions, it comes with some rather nasty side effects. Some are manageable, but some are, unfortunately, terminal.
The earliest humans didn’t opt into this arrangement. There was no referendum on whether to swap autonomy for agriculture or open horizons for permanent addresses. There was no vote on self-determination for bosses who weaponized phrases like "per my last email." It simply emerged. One day you’re roaming the open plains with your kin, free to wander as far as your stamina will take you, and the next you’re in a climate-controlled box, clicking "accept all cookies" on a device that tracks your every move, while wondering if your ancestors would recognize you as a success or just a particularly pampered captive.
The strangest part of all this is that we mythologize this shift. We call it the "dawn of civilization," as though we stepped into the light of a magical golden sunrise, when in reality it might have been the flicker of fluorescent bulbs in a 24-hour Walmart—illuminating a world of convenience at the cost of something we didn’t even realize was non-renewable.
So here’s my proposition, just between us: What if civilization isn’t the cure for humanity’s ailments, but the underlying pathology? As Marshall McLuhan warned, "the medium is the message," and maybe civilization itself is the message that we really shouldn’t ignore. If that’s true, what does it mean for the rest of us still out here pretending to live the dream while secretly researching how to disappear into the wilderness without succumbing to dysentery or pure boredom?
When viewed as a medical case history, civilization’s first symptoms appear roughly 10,000 years ago. Until then, Homo sapiens lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers—small bands moving with the seasons, subsisting on wild game and edible plants, bound together by the kind of social ties forged by necessity rather than HR-mandated trust-building exercises. It wasn’t exactly idyllic, but it was coherent. You lived according to the rhythms of nature, not the fiscal quarter. Survival was certainly a challenge, but it was an honest one.
Then came agriculture—the human equivalent of saying, "I’ll just try this once," and waking up to discover you’ve accidentally invented an empire. Cultivating crops allowed us to settle down, but it also tethered us to the land. A fixed location meant property, property meant territory, and territory required defense. In other words: congrats, you just invented borders, militias, and neighbor disputes.
Farming was also labor-intensive in a way our ancestors never expected. This wasn’t the "build a shelter, rest in the shade" kind of work. It was unrelenting, season-bound drudgery. Crops didn’t care about your fatigue, your personal growth, or your seasonal affective disorder. There was no sick leave or PTO; the barley wasn’t going to plant itself while you took a long weekend to find yourself.
Surplus food had another side effect: population growth. More mouths to feed meant more land was required, and the easiest way to acquire land was to take it by force from someone else. In short, farming gave us bread, but it also gave us organized warfare.
Later on, philosophers tried to make sense of this pivot. Rousseau mourned the loss of our natural state, idealizing a "noble savage" uncorrupted by property or politics. Hobbes painted the pre-civilized world as "nasty, brutish, and short." Both were partially correct, and both were conveniently romanticizing a past they’d never actually have survived. Pre-civilized life was probably more like a lifelong camping trip with your extended family: moments of staggering beauty, punctuated by discomfort, scarcity, and the occasional fight over dried meat.
The crucial point is this: civilization didn’t begin as a cure; it began as a compromise. We gained stability, but we lost mobility. We gained abundance, but we invented hierarchy. We mitigated starvation, but we institutionalized inequality. And once it began, there was no real way back.
Every cure has its side effects. If you take antibiotics, maybe you get gut issues; if you drink coffee, you get jittery. If you invent civilization, you get everything from Instagram-induced depression to nuclear weapons.
One of the most persistent side effects of civilization is alienation. We traded the tight-knit tribes of our ancestors—where everyone knew each other’s quirks and who not to sit next to by the fire—for sprawling cities where you can live next to someone for ten years and only learn their name when the ambulance shows up.
This brings to mind Marx’s theory of estranged labor: how our work and lives become alien to us in the modern maze. We gained privacy, but we gained loneliness. Modern life has this peculiar combination of isolation and crowding: you are surrounded by people, yet most wouldn’t notice if you vanished—unless, of course, you stop paying your rent.
Then there is hierarchy on steroids. Pre-civilization, power was localized—maybe a respected elder or the best hunter. Now we have billionaires hoarding enough resources to fund entire nations while the rest of us get emails from HR about bringing our own pens to work because "supply budgets are tight."
Add to that chronic overwork and burnout. Our ancestors worked in bursts: hunt, gather, rest. Modern work is a sustained performance of productivity, even when nothing of value is being produced. We’ve created jobs so abstract that even the people doing them aren't entirely sure they're real. I once heard of someone whose official title was "Innovation Sherpa"—someone paid to guide corporations up the treacherous slopes of "thinking outside the box," only to lead them back down into the exact same box.
And, of course, good old existential dread: a flavor unique to civilization. Animals in the wild aren't sitting around worrying about their purpose. Domesticated animals, maybe—but humans have an entire economy built on our collective inability to feel content. We have therapy, self-help books, artisanal scented candles, and wellness retreats ad nauseam. Modern civilization provides the wound, then sells you the bandage. Albert Camus nailed this absurd condition when he wrote, "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart." Bless his soul.
Technology has amplified all this absurdity. We carry supercomputers in our pockets—machines that can access the sum total of human knowledge—and yet we mostly use them to watch funny cat videos or doomscroll human antics. There’s a beauty to the weirdness of human creativity, sure, but imagine explaining this to someone from 500 years ago: "We harnessed lightning, built machines that talk across continents instantly, and now we use them to argue with strangers about whether pineapple belongs on pizza." (It doesn’t, by the way.)
Even our pleasures are tinged with pathology. Civilization gives us convenience, but convenience strips life of its texture. You can get strawberries in January, coffee from halfway around the world, or order up a date to your phone like a pizza. But when everything is accessible immediately, satisfaction thins out. We are trading depth for efficiency.
Possibly the strangest side effect is that civilization makes us fragile. For all our infrastructure, medicine, and fancy technology, we are only ever one bad week of supply-chain failures away from total chaos. We’ve built complex systems that almost no one understands, yet we trust them with our survival—until the lights go out, and suddenly we're Googling how to make bread from scratch, realizing we don't even know how wheat is grown.
If civilization is a disease, it’s the type you secretly kind of like having. We can complain about the stress, the bureaucracy, and the crushing weight of existence, but deep down, we’re hooked. Civilization is like the heroin of human history: it’s bad for you, but the withdrawal symptoms are so unbearable we’d rather just keep using.
Why?
First, comfort addiction. Once you’ve experienced a hot shower, you’re never going back to bathing in a freezing river without feeling like you’re being punished. Once you’ve had antibiotics, you don't greet an infected wound with "I guess I’ll just die." Civilization makes us soft, and it makes us very unwilling to be hard again.
Second, status. Pre-civilization, status was simple: you were the strongest hunter, the funniest storyteller, or the person who made the meanest rabbit stew. Now, there's a massive infrastructure for status: job titles, designer brands, blue checkmarks, and gated communities where guards keep people out while keeping the illusion in. It's a daily marketplace where your self-worth is constantly auctioned off. Civilization gave us hierarchy on a scale nature never intended, and we learned to love it—or at least perform like we do. Look up Thorstein Veblen’s conspicuous consumption and you’ll see the machinery behind the madness.
Third, narrative. Civilization tells a great story about itself. Every culture has its myth about being more advanced than what came before, with an unspoken assumption that progress is linear, inevitable, and inherently good. We build skyscrapers, split atoms, and sequence genomes (and sure, we also invent novelty sandwich makers and scented trash bags, but that’s the price of genius, right?). The story works because it flatters us. We like thinking we're the protagonists in the grand arc of human progress, not just random animals who learned to make tools and got way too into it. We tell ourselves civilization is the pinnacle of human achievement—never mind HOA boards or Black Friday stampedes. Hasn't it always been two steps forward and one step back?
Fourth, fear of collapse. Civilization has convinced us that without it, life is nothing but chaos and suffering. The irony is that chaos and suffering are still here; they just have better branding. We’ve rebranded famine as "supply chain issues" and tribal warfare as "geopolitical instability."
Finally, the sunk cost fallacy. We’ve invested 10,000 years into this project. Generations have lived and died believing in the promise of civilization. Admitting it might be making us sick feels like admitting you’ve spent your whole life in the wrong line at the DMV. It’s easier to keep telling ourselves that the best is yet to come. So we keep building, consuming, upgrading, and feeding the system that exhausts us, because the alternative isn't a utopian return to nature—it’s learning how to survive without Wi-Fi, which most of us aren't willing to do.
We like to view progress as a neat, linear story:
Step 1: Fire
Step 2: The Wheel
Step 3: Smartphones
Step 4: AI (which might actually be the final step, but time will tell).
What if it’s not a ladder, but a labyrinth? What if every advance is a detour leading us further from what actually matters?
For tens of thousands of years, humans lived in ways modern civilization treats as quaint anecdotes: small groups, deep social bonds, shared resources, and a pace that allowed time to think, create, and just be. The progress we celebrate usually means less time for those things—more schedules, obligations, and noise. It’s like trading a rich, complex meal for a lifetime of fast food: you eat faster, but does it really nourish you?
Psychology and sociology show that loneliness, anxiety, and depression have soared in modern societies. Systems meant to support us—like healthcare and education—often leave us feeling more isolated. Camus and Heidegger wrestled with this exact absurdity: the feeling that despite all our inventions, we remain trapped in a meaningless routine, waiting for meaning that may never come.
Maybe progress isn't a blessing; maybe it's an elaborate distraction—a story we tell ourselves so we don't look too closely at the mess we're making.
Imagine a world where we stopped viewing endless growth as good by default, where slowing down was a goal rather than a failure. What would that look like? Would we build fewer skyscrapers? Probably. Would we spend more time talking face-to-face instead of texting, or stop pretending the latest gadget will fill the void? I like to think so.
We’re tangled in a web we’ve spun for ourselves. Civilization is like a great party that got way out of control: there's spilled beer on the carpet, someone broke a lamp, and the neighbors are outside pounding on the door. But we ignore it and keep partying on. Recognizing that progress is complicated—both a blessing and a curse—might be the first step toward something a little less absurd.
If civilization is a disease, what's the treatment?
There’s no magic pill, ancient ritual, or secret society offering a cure. We’re stuck with the body we have. But maybe we can manage the symptoms a little better: less suffering, more clarity. Here are a few ideas:
Embrace selective withdrawal. You don't have to live in a cabin in the woods (though if that's an option, more power to you). But you can carve out spaces where the noise quiets down: a weekend without your phone, a walk without checking the weather app, a conversation without Instagram notifications every five minutes. It’s telling civilization, "Thanks, but I need a moment to breathe," without moving to a commune. We need to set boundaries and practice them.
Practice radical honesty (starting with yourself). Radical honesty is a fascinating approach to communication. It can be awkward and direct, but it's liberating. It means boldly admitting you’re part of the system, that it’s a show, and that it’s usually infuriating. Pretending everything is fine is the mental equivalent of stuffing rotten food into your mouth because you're too polite to say no. Own your contradictions. Laugh at the absurdity of trying to find meaning while scrolling TikTok at 3:00 a.m. That laughter is its own kind of resistance—existential rebellion, Camus-style.
Cultivate community on your terms. If the city is a desert of lonely people, build an oasis. Create a small community that values connection over convenience—real friendships, not social media likes. Even finding one or two people who get that the system is cracked is a spark that could lead to something more.
Slow down whenever you can. Civilization demands speed: faster productivity, faster information, faster dopamine hits. Slowing down isn't defeat; it's rebellion. It’s a calm, powerful way of saying, "I refuse to be hurried to death." Take your time with work, meals, and conversations. Stop multitasking and practice being present, even when it feels like swimming upstream.
Be skeptical of "progress." Just because something is new doesn't mean it's better; half the time, it’s worse. Question the narrative that technology, growth, and convenience equal happiness. Most of the time, less is more, and old is gold. Minimalism and saying "no" to the system are acts of rebellion and drivers of change.
We aren't going to dismantle civilization tomorrow, and maybe we shouldn't. It’s complicated—a beast with claws and teeth, part monster and part miracle. But we can learn to live with it in ways that don't obliterate our souls. Meaning is found in small, stubborn moments of humanity that civilization can never fully erase. Civilization may be a disease, but that doesn't mean we're doomed. It just means we need better treatment plans and the courage to ask what "better" actually means.
So, there we are: civilization, the great stalker, the slow infection that somehow made us kings and prisoners, creators and destroyers, heroes and punchlines in the same long joke we call history. It has given us wonders and horrors—convenience, chaos, meaning, and madness, all tangled up in the same relentless mess.
The truth is that civilization isn't a neat package we can unwrap and declare cured or broken. It’s a living organism: flawed, sprawling, and impossible to fully control. We didn't ask for it and we didn't choose it, but here we are, trapped in this web, trying to figure out how to keep breathing without losing ourselves.
The best we can do is be honest about the sickness, find moments of clarity in the fog, and refuse to pretend the whole thing is either perfect or beyond redemption. Because if civilization is a disease, laughter might just be the best medicine we’ve got. If that sounds bleak, remember: it’s also kind of hilarious.
Thank you for sticking with me. If you’re still awake and listened to this whole thing, you might just be a champion masochist—but of the best kind. Maybe that means you’re ready to take on the challenge of building a different kind of world—one that's a little less dystopian".
FM
