On "civilization"

After the fall of the Roman Empire came a period history refers to as The Dark Ages.  The area and people formerly under the yoke of Rome dissolved into smaller organizational units, while the technological achievements of the empire decayed; roads, aqueducts, etc that allowed Roman society and culture to flourish.  The label of this period of dissolution betrays some paradigms--calling it "dark" implies that what came before was light; that the loss of an oppressive centralized plutocracy was bad, while "local control" was somehow a step backward culturally or technologically.  History seems to have the opinion that the period beyond Roman rule in Europe was a loss of civilization, a return or regression to barbarism.

This makes me wonder what "civilization" as an historic label is exactly. The period following the gradual decline (rather than the historically preferred word "fall") of Rome is rather marked by a realignment of political structures.  The strong, centralized political force of the Emperor and aristocratic plutocracy run from a single European city dissolved into something almost tribal in nature.  Through competition for resorces these many parts congealed into the kingdoms that would dominate the Middle Ages, but did so largely along the cultural lines that Rome was supposed to have erased.  These kingdoms, in turn, looked geographically similar to the nation-states of Europe today, even after several political experiments tried to forge smaller areas into larger political structures (the Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon, the first and second World Wars).  The Roman labels of areas such as Gaul and Germania are largely France and Germany, with border areas fractured into smaller nation-states such as Belgium, Switzerland and Austria.  It is these border areas that have been cause for conflict throughout European history.

So if the cultures of these areas have been able to remain largely distinct despite attempts to merge them into larger political structures over centuries, what civilization was Rome offering that didn't already exist, and what was lost when Rome declined?

The key may be in the political structures.  While cultural norms were maintained within regions controlled by the Roman Empire, Rome imposed political norms on conquered territory.  What are these political norms? A standardization of political structures.  This standardization of political structures allowed the dissemination of Rome's political will, but also of how "the state" provides for its citizens.  This required Rome's standard answers; technological achievements, entertainment, judiciary, coinage, and so forth which influenced but did not, or could not, supplant cultural aspects and ties.  At its core, the Roman system offered standardization.  The period that followed Rome's influence was decidedly unstandardized, politically speaking, but not culturally.  So what is "civilization?"  Political standardization, simply put.

This raises the question about the many smaller political units that emerged as Europe found its own way; did these smaller units, almost tribal in nature, not have internal standardized political structures as well?  And given this standardization, were they not civilization?  Historians would argue they were not, due to paradigms about size and complexity of societies, but where the line is drawn to define what is big and complex versus small and simple is another arbitrary distinction.  As I've demonstrated in many posts, arbitrary markers are signs that no marker exists at all, functionally
speaking.

At best, civilization is the ability to impose political standardization on a society, regardless of cultural distinctions, size, or complexity.  At best.  At worst, it is a meaningless label full of arbitrary distinctions that are meaningless in themselves, and does nothing to further our understanding of human organizations, past or present.