Two other areas require a word of comment.  Among human faculties are ambition, imagination, ingenuity, inventiveness, creativity.  Human beings are, to a greater or lesser degree, cosmically aware.  In the physical field western civilization handsomely rewards initiative.  In the social field it has been far less generous.  Imagination and cosmic consciousness have been quite generally listed among the undesirable endowments of mankind.

Western civilization, in the early years of the present century, produced a generation of insecure, unsettled, anxious, worried, harried people.  This is generally true of young, middle aged and old, of rich and poor.  Rapid social transition from expansion and advance to contraction and retreat is a traumatic, hectic experience for any human being.

Western civilization in the early years of its decline has not brought out the more generous aspects of human nature.  In the best of times a materialistically oriented society appeals to the more material and less spiritual aspects of human beings.  A period of social decline leads away from principled conduct toward unashamed opportunism.

The current generation, born and reared in a disintegrating civilization has been sorely tested and tried.  From such tests the strong and purposeful are likely to emerge stronger and more determined.  For the weak and vacillating the consequences are likely to prove disastrous.  The individual born into western society during its current “time of troubles” has not had an easy row to hoe.

What has western civilization done to human society as such?

Western civilization has urbanized its society.  Until recently in Europe and until very recently in North America, the majority of people were living outside of cities, in villages or on the land.  From their flocks and herds or from their cultivated land they fed themselves and the cities.  Mechanization reduced the demand for labor power in the countryside.  At the same time the growth of industry, trade, commerce and “services” increased the demand for labor power in the cities.  Relatively the countryside was poor while the cities were rich.  The high prizes were in the cities, bright lights, crowds and the seductive excitements of seething mass life.  Incessant human contacts were part and parcel of city life.  City landlords collected high rents, city merchants found many customers.  City manufacturers could pick and choose their wage and salary underlings among throngs of young and not so young jobseekers.

Western civilization grew in and around its cities.  Both in form and function it was urban rather than rural.

Western civilization specialized its society, mechanized it and later computerized it, making social relationships depend less and less on personality and more on the position of the individual in a working team or on an assembly line.  Human beings ceased to have names.  Instead they acquired numbers on the payroll, on their homes, on their identity cards.