What Is Civilization?

It just dawned on me that most of my posts here began as responses, in one way or another, to a friend or Twitter follower who made certain comments or statements to me. Here is the latest.

One of my followers on twitter asked me to elaborate on what I meant by civilization in this tweet I posted:

"We May Be Able To Delay The Collapse Of Civilization A Little Longer http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/07/opinion/going-beyond-carbon-dioxide.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0 … ...But not likely."

@jennyfrky replied, quite unexpectedly, with:

"Can you give me your definition of civilization?"

(The little devil thinks she's clever doesn't she?)

Well, that immediately turned my briskly posted tweet into a deep philosophical and scientific question that I felt required to answer, as though I had pulled a fast one, hoping no one would notice I was brushing over my failure to define the terms. Of course, this led me to reply with three tweets that was a summation of what I fleshed out after the fact.
The flesh I outed was this:

What, exactly is 'civilization'? Some would say "Well, civilization is when we can make things like cars, phones and what have you." (Of course, the Romans didn't have the same things we have, but the principle is nonetheless the same.)

Others would say "Well, civilization is when groups form governments, and then make laws to make sure things don't get out of hand."

And still others would say "Well, civilization is when you have most of the population making all the stuff that everyone uses and getting paid for it so that they can live."

Well, the real definition is obviously a combination of these and probably a few other archetypical descriptions ...and I believe it would go something like this:

Civilization is said to exist when a species (In this case, humans) form a larger group with sub-groups working together to make their existence individually and as a whole, more comfortable through the use of the various tools the groups can assemble. The advancement naturally increases over time because improvements are made to the existing tools, thereby making a wider variety of tools.
The production and use of these various tools (everything man-made is essentially a tool; a car is a tool to move you to other places, using minimal effort. Television radios etc., are tools to spread manifestations of information, that all initially begin as ideas), are divided into subsets of groups who receive compensation for the expense of their time and energy, thereby allowing them to continue living in the greatest amount of comfort that the current technical advancement level of said civilization can provide
The global group will also set up a much smaller architecture to place controls on society and administer the rules, thereby enforcing order. These subgroups can use one or more of various established political ideologies or religious ones (religion and politics were once one and the same, but as civilization evolves, the two begin to separate due to the speculative nature of religion) that comprise the foundation that the structure of this enforcement of rules is based upon. After all human brains are the most complex structures in the universe that we know of, and the most unpredictable.
There is a system in place that enables the dissemination of ideas from one individual or group to another group or individual by means of invented tools. In our case, writing, which was the first iteration of artificially produced 'external memory', then radio, TV and currently our artificially simplified brains, other wise know as computers.

So, this is the best short-paper of a description that I can come up with at 3:14 in the A.M., hastily cobbled together from what started as a response to a tweet. So I'm sure there are other aspects of civilization not thought of by me at this present moment, likely because my eyes are staring to droop and my bed is beginning to seem very appealing. If anyone would like to expand or add to this (without writing a college thesis), I would encourage you to do so if I was still awake! (Please do.)

G'nite/morn y'all!