Western civilization differs from its predecessors in one crucial respect: it is planet-wide. Previous civilizations known to history have been limited by oceans, deserts and other geographical barriers. The revolution in communication and transportation has by-passed geographic barriers.
The French saying "the more things change the more they remain the same" finds ample justification in the story of western civilization and its predecessors. In one instance after another, for at least six thousand years, civilizations have been built up to summits of wealth and power. Then, on the downward sweep of the cycle, they have declined, decayed and been dumped on the scrap heap of history. No two of these cycles were exactly alike. Each cycle was a social experiment that followed a well marked path. There were variations, innovations, deviations from the norm, but institutions and practices were strikingly similar. In this broad sense, and despite minor departures, the life patterns of civilization have appeared, disappeared and reappeared with close similarity in structure and function.
Western civilization has had a life cycle of approximately a thousand years. During that millennium it has undergone many changes--political, economic, sociological, ideological. Throughout these changes its basic characteristics have remained; have appeared and reappeared. In the 1970's western civilization retains the essential features which justify us in describing it as a civilization.
The great revolution which began about 1750 and has increased in breadth and depth throughout the past two centuries had led to vital changes in structure and functioning, particularly of the West but generally in the entirety of human society. So far-reaching are these changes, and so deep running, that human society, particularly in the West, has outgrown or is outgrowing the life pattern evolved by civilizations during the past four or five millenia. As a consequence, geographical expansion by the time-honored method of grab-and-keep has become more difficult, far more expensive in manpower and material wealth and is in growing disrepute among a sizeable minority of individuals and social groups, even in the centers of western civilization. It is in notable disfavor among the former colonies and dependencies of the European empires.