“Move on!  Move on!” became the watchword, without any particular emphasis on quality.  In one civilization after another bigness (magnitude) was accepted as a symbol of success, because “the more you get and keep, the happier you will be.”

Mastery of strategic advantages, plus the illusion of mere bigness, without any specification to quality, became keys to survival and success.

Civilized man exploited natural advantages and augmented his power over nature and society by increasing his wealth and multiplying the population.  At the outset of the struggle strategic geographical advantages were occupied and utilized by local groups.  Through survival struggle, one of the groups, better organized, better led, more determined and productive, succeeded in securing possession of one strong point after another, until an entire region, like the Nile Valley or the Mediterranean Basin had been conquered and occupied by a single great power.  The measure of success in the power struggle is the occupation of strategic strong points.  Natural resources, including land and labor power, are among the chief spoils of victory.

Seven basic goals or principles were involved in the building of civilizations:  group survival; propitiating the gods; recognizing and following aesthetic principles; achieving and stabilizing property and class relations; expansion (bigness); individual conformity to the collective pattern; and collective uniformity in a united world of human brotherhood.  At times and in places the basic propositions were accepted, rejected, fought over.  Each civilization which followed them successfully was able to establish itself, maintain itself, and up to a certain point add to its prestige, wealth and power.

The first goal was success in the struggle for survival.  Collective uniformity and expansion opened the path to wealth and power, in the city, state, the empire, the civilization.  From a multitude of local beginnings the struggle for expansion and consolidation led to ever larger aggregations of land, population, capital and wealth concentrated in the hands of an increasingly rich, powerful oligarchy, protected and defended by a military elite pushing itself ceaselessly toward a position from which it could make and enforce domestic policy and order.

A second collective goal has been propitiating and wooing the unseen forces of the universe:  holding their attention; keeping them on “our” side; relying on their influence for defense against enemies, mortal and immortal, and help in providing water in case of drought, fertility, assistance in healing the sick, comfort for the dying, consolation for the bereaved and success in business deals.  These multiple aspects of ideology are summed up under the term “religion”.

Each civilization has had its religious ideas and ideals, its religious practices and institutions.  Many civilizations have divided their attention between civil ideology and religious ideology.  In some cases religious ideology took precedence, resulting in a theocratic society under the leadership of religious devotees.  In other cases, notably Roman civilization and western civilization, religious ideology was subordinated to secular interests.