Toward a Metrology of Civilizational Viability: Systemic Costs of Fragmentation and the Efficiency of a Constructive Civilization

Abstract

This article proposes a metrological model of civilizational viability intended for comparative analysis of different architectures of international and intersocietal interaction. Civilization is considered not as the necessary fragmentation of humanity into competing geopolitical blocs of West, East, North, and South, but as a multilevel and interdependent system of individuals, societies, states, cultures, knowledge, technologies, economies, infrastructures, institutions, and the natural environment. Historical, cultural, political, and institutional diversity is not defined as systemic noise in itself. A configuration is considered systemically adverse only when it reproducibly increases resource losses, information distortion, breakdowns of feedback, costs of reciprocal counteraction, infrastructure damage, reductions in recovery capacity, or other measurable losses of viability within the interconnected whole. Existing architectures and approaches are considered, including unipolarity, bipolarity, multipolarity, multilateralism, polycentric governance, regional integration, and institutionalized cooperation. None is equated automatically with optimal viability. The working constructs of Systemic Rivalry Cost, Systemic Fragmentation Load, Dominance-Maintenance Cost, Cooperation Dividend, Gross Civilizational Viability, Net Civilizational Viability, and Constructive Civilization Efficiency are proposed. As a limiting normative-theoretical model, the article introduces the Unified Constructive Civilization (UCC) — not as a world state, a unified ideology, or elimination of cultural differences, but as a model of coordinated diversity in which interactions among components are organized to optimize multilevel viability while minimizing reproducible destructive systemic costs. Keywords: Vitology, viability, civilizational viability, systemic fragmentation, systemic rivalry, multipolarity, multilateralism, polycentric governance, cooperation, dominance, systemic noise, Constructive Civilization, CLVA, CLVC.