Civilization and civility, power and liberty

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Some things that have been on my mind lately:
As social populations become more concentrated, the members of those populations must take greater and greater care to formalize not only their social behavior and niceties towards each other (ie, 'being polite,') but they must take greater responsibility for their use of resources. This is in order to not only avoid intra-group struggle, but to avoid causing so much damage to the environment that it becomes less useful to the population as a whole.

Just as an example: when I go out to the country, I let my dog run around and leave his poop wherever he deposits it. In the city, he has to walk on a leash, and I have to pick up his poop. This is because some other people are afraid of dogs, and I don't want to scare my neighbors; cars are dangerous to dogs, and I don't want my dog to be squashed; and dog poop is nasty: if the social order of everyone-picking-up-their-dog's-poo breaks down, I as well as everyone else will have to see and smell a hell of a lot of dog poop.

Lately in politics we seem to be seeing a lot of people who seem to think that we can go on living in the old, free-range way despite being more closely concentrated to each other both in literal terms - the vast majority of us now live in or near cities - an in figurative terms, as we are now all virtual neighbors on the internet. Yet we see people figuratively not only being uncivil, but virtually sh*****g in their neighbors' yards.


Another line of thought:
As individuals gain greater and greater access to power (ie, fertilizer bombs capable of blowing up huge buildings a la oklahoma city, planes with fuel that burns hot enough to melt the structure of sky scrapers, hackers sophisticated enough (or computer security weak enough) that state secrets must be more closely guarded if they are to avoid leakage) the government must exercise greater and greater power in order to keep the majority of the population safe from those few who would inflict mass casualties in order to make a point. Yet, inevitably, the invisible exercise of unlimited government power will lead to greater and greater consolidations of more power and eventually to greater and greater abuses of power by the government and/or the wealthy power brokers.
Is there a way out of that trap? Do we simply accept a few terrorist strikes here and there as the price of our freedom, or full-body scans as the price of our safety? Is there some balance that will not seem horrifically dystopic to us in a few decades' time?

I would not have left you hanging - I only just spotted this one.

What you talk about runs with a lot of thought and discussion here at home.

I am afraid I cannot see a light for anything but a drastic reshuffle.

There is this scenario http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops which I think was picked up on in Wall-E - things break down and adjustrment HAS to happen. Then there is the fall of Rome - invasion. Or revolution [my wife's betting that way].

A lot of critters have a tendency to eat and excrete until their environment cannot support them - then all but a few die off from disease or starvation, a couple survive and start a new colony somewhere else.

Unless we see a radical change in human selfishness and shortsightedness, I suspect we are one of those species.