Great post! You covered a very broad stroke of hundreds of years to piece together some very relevant contemplations.
I was contemplating a similar vein of thought this morning in relation to "racism".
Where, a country may have refugees due to famine or civil war, or some other cause, and the U.N. or NGO steps in to "save the day" - is that not racist or culturalist to do so?
Should they not be culturally, or civilised enough, to rally to support themselves in their own rite? Or are we assuming that they are un-civilised or un-cultured to have enough IQ or empathy to correct course?
And if another culture offers a helping hand, does that introduced culture have the right to impose their values in order to advance the troubled one?
Is it more of a culturally fluid situation that will leak and immerse as a natural outcome? As I have heard that, "Your cultural influence is either growing or dying - there is no status quo." (I think I heard some European leaders mention it at some point to justify conflicts.)
I recall when the US&A was initially in IRAQ and one of the bases was celebrating Christmas with a Santa Klaus and Beers and unwittingly expecting the locals to understand and participate without realising the layers of problems in doing so.
RE: How Civilised is Civilisation?