Civilisation', like 'love' or 'freedom', is a word that means something different to everyone. By 'civilisation' I mean a society organised upon the conviction that mankind is on earth for a purpose. Though there is no commanding logical or rational reason why 'concern with quality' should depend upon 'sense of purpose', human nature is such that without the sense of purpose, it is in practice impossible to maintain that essential unwavering concern - a concern which involves the personal determination to master greed, ambition, envy, jealousy, avarice and so on, all, those aspects of ourselves that make the world what it is. Progress' is a parody of civilisation, understood in this sense. Knowledge is a parody of understanding.
Information is a parody of knowledge.
We live in an age of information, and if we swallow whole the bait of modern education, the thought, art and literature of civilised men is, to us, incomprehensible. Egypt was a civilisation, and the academic Egyptologist stands helpless in the face of its accomplishment. It is for this reason that, in all our schools, we are presented with an obvious paradox. Muhammad Ali spends no afternoons in the local gym watching tankers slug it out. Escoffier never hung about a hamburger joint ferreting out secret recipes.