Civilisation as a power and principality

"The simple posing of these questions makes one thing clear: maintaining a civilization is far easier than pursuing our truest ends. Any civilization tends as a matter of course to turn its members toward an elemental dependency of body and soul on the grand, overarching political and economic system it has developed to sustain and organize human life. This dependency is crucially and fundamentally religious: an offering of the self to that which it believes will deliver what it needs. Civilization, rather than being a means to an end, becomes an end in its own right, and so a god. A false god. And in the name of this cult(ure), we end up justifying massive moral, political, and intellectual compromise for the sake of the lower-order pursuits—pleasure, painlessness, power, tranquility, identity, or simply survival—that “civilization” affords."

http://www.newpantagruel.com/issues/1.3/realism_against_reality.php