First in a series on Civilization
Some years ago, my wife and I lived full-time in a motor home. We traveled the United States from Florida to Idaho, from New Mexico to Virginia. During COVID, we stayed in the Rocky Mountains, well away from civilization.
And yet—civilization was there.
Town after town, we saw business enterprises along the road. Tooling along gently in our big bus, on the outskirts of town, I’d see large, spread-out buildings. Industrial. Usually with a sign out front and a unique logo. “UTQ Enterprises, the world leader in product” I frequently wondered what they did. What sort of products? Who were their customers?
I marveled at the number of such companies. Everywhere. Perhaps “UTQ Enterprises” in Littletown, Kansas, manufactures gaskets. They can tool up to shape those gaskets in whatever dimensions a client requires, but they sell common sizes to a distributor who markets them through Amazon to the public.
But that’s not their only business model. UTQ also sells their gaskets to other companies. Perhaps one of their regular clients is “Kleinmetz Manufacturing,” three states over, who includes specialized gaskets into the hose fittings Kleinmetz offers to its clients. Kleinmetz might be a solid, well-established company located in Mountain Town, Idaho. UTQ delivers their product in quantity to Kleinmetz using Bluegrass Shipping, a trucking company based in Paducah, Kentucky.
Meanwhile, Kleinmetz sells hose fittings perhaps to Bosch in Farmington Hills, Michigan. (Yes, this one is the first real company in this list.) Bosch uses them to build fuel injection systems for engines. Then Bosch may sell those systems to Cummins to build diesel engines, who sells the engines to Freightliner, who builds them into chassis they sell to Newmar, who manufacturing my motor home.
What an amazing network. UTQ to Kleinmetz to Bosch to Cummins to Newmar … to me. I’ve only conveyed one chain, but it is truly a network, because each of those companies received supplies from many other sources, and each one sells its products to many other clients.
This is a small touch of what civilization is about. It’s a network of cooperation.
Each of us is a part of civilization. We do things that contribute worth to others. It may be tangible products, as in the chain above, or it may be thoughts, ideas, labor. For many years, my contribution to civilization was to guide engineers in the development of complex systems. The results of my efforts were completed systems that provided value. For some other years, my contribution to civilization has been to help others do systems engineering better, a contribution I still perform. Also these days, I provide an entertainment product in my books that I hope also helps people better understand other people.
We do this together. Civilization involves every human on Earth and beyond.
In coming installments, I will explore this system called civilization. I’ll put it in context of “systems of systems,” write about interconnectedness, about individual actions that support and deter civilization, about politics and how it fits in. I hope you’ll follow along.
In the meantime, check out the links here on DocHonourBooks.com to see my fiction. Or join my newsletter to get some informal insight into writing—and an occasional freebie.
Doc Honour
July 2025
Doc Honour Books 