Civilization is not only complex and interdependent in form, it is avowedly competitive in its functioning.  Politically, nation building, empire building and the establishment and maintenance of each civilization is a competitive struggle between declared rivals to gain and keep place and power.  Economically, the efforts to get and keep natural resources and labor power and to use them to Our advantage and Their disadvantage dominates the field of livelihood.  Ideologically We are right, while They are wrong.  Culturally We are superior. They are inferior.

The We-They relationship developed very early in the history of the human family.  Individuals and small, more advanced groups have reached a level of understanding and living based on the cooperative inclusive formula of "We, Ours, Us", but every civilization known to history has accepted and adopted the competitive, divisive formula and poured energy and wealth into the political, economic, ideological and cultural struggle to take and keep for individual, local or class advantage.

Resulting oppositions fragmented civilization:  (1) urban vs. rural life, city vs. hinterland; (2) cooperation vs. competition; (3) acquisition and accumulation vs. sharing; (4) riches vs. poverty; (5) the individual vs. the group; (6) status vs. change.

These fragmenting forces have been accepted, adopted and given priority by civilizations as they developed predominance.  As they grew in magnitude they limited or subordinated the forces of integration and unification.

Opposites and oppositions lead to confrontations along class lines, geographic lines, cultural lines, color lines, racial lines.  The traditional confrontation of rural vs. urban life is doubly underlined by two factors:  first, the countryside operates generally on a use economy with pay for services largely in kind or by barter.  The city operates under a market economy with payment for services usually in money.  Second, the standards of life and work are more primitive in the countryside than in the city.  Third, as the civilization advances toward maturity, city population increases while it declines in the countryside.  Consequently vigorous, energetic, adventurous people leave the deteriorating countryside.

Increasingly the owners of land and capital live in the cities, visiting the countryside for holidays and recreation, leaving rural areas to servants, peons, serfs and slaves.  Small owning farmers are bought out or expropriated.  Unable to make a living in the countryside they move to the city.  Lacking city skills they work as casual labor or are unemployed.  The city is divided between enterprisers, their subordinates, owners of country estates and members of the state bureaucracy on one side and vassals, servants, serfs, and slaves and the unemployed on the other.  The rich and powerful become richer and more powerful.  The poor and dependent grow in numbers—­protest, demonstrate, riot, revolt.