The Making of Civilisation - Simplicity is the King?

In short, isn't civilisation the process of making simple things complex and feel good about it? 

Yes, feeling good is what matters - when the so-called uncivilised groups feel good with the least complexity in life, not even being aware of their being fulfilled, the so-called civilised groups feel good by making things complex and finally feel good about having accomplished something. 

A typical example is eating:

Basically, we eat to survive - energy needs for our functions as living beings.  

It can be coarse and uncooked material, obtained through gathering or hunting (a kind of gathering).  Availability is a contingent factor. Contingency is removed through the cultivation of food, growing food, and harvesting it. This process makes culture, and the varying modes of the process lead to civilisation. 

From raw material to cooked material is another step towards civilisation. This adds to the complexity. The animal survival mode is refined or made complex, leading to greater vulnerability. Once used to this stage, having no cooked and readily available food can leave humans helpless and susceptible to illness. 

Perhaps, both agriculture and cooking came to be by sheer accident, and finding them useful and advantageous, they were improvised and refined further to make them part of the lifestyle. 

In the initial stages the food could have been eaten directly as obtained. Now it requires vessels to store, vessels to cook and vessels to eat as well. From a standing position, one needs to sit to eat. And once eaten sitting on the floor, is refined further to sit on a tool that makes sitting easier and then a tool to keep the vessels so that human beings could eat without the trouble to bend low. 

The next step is avoiding the trouble to use one's hands to insert food into the mouth, which necessitates washing of the hands, to keep it clean for other activities. Cleaning typically requires water which is cold in the witner, and this is avoided by introducing tools that help one to insert food into the mouth without soiling the hands - spoons, fork etc. Or if one has to use the hands directly, a towel to clean it, without having to wash it during the meals. 

To avoid the trouble of washing those tools - utensils, what could be used and thrown away is conceived - disposable plates, cutleries and tissues. 

An entire manufacturing chain is created to manufacture materials that help one eat - of varying qualities like durability, safety, beauty etc., making the process further complex. 

There are ancillary processes at each stage or with each aspect of this complex process. Thus, in growing food, there are efforts to boost growth - faster and abundant. A whole lot of inputs are created for that, and research and experiments for the same are carried out in a big way. 

While promoting growth and abundance, there emerge pestilences and then there are any number of efforts to check them leading to devising and manufacturing of pesticides. 

Then there emerges threat from pesticides and there is need to introduce safety standards and processes for the same - at each stage of the food creation and consumption chain - seeds, soil, harvest, storing, processing, eating and post-eating. 

And education and training for all these aspects and processes as well. 

And policies to govern and control all these and personnel to guide and enforce them!!

At this complex stage, eating and related activities - growing food, processing it etc. become culture. And activities like cooking become an art, a profession, a job calling for education and training.  Even agriculture could take the form of an art in some cases. 

This is how civilisation is built by making very simple things complex and further complex, and undertaking those complexities with precision, and feeling good about having done this.