I recently reviewed Howard W French's Born in Blackness, which described the contributions of Africa and Africans to Modernity. I couldn't help but think while reading your piece that your "civilization" and French's "modernity" are the same questionable animal. He talks about the roots of the Industrial Revolution in the systems of exploitation developed on Caribbean sugar plantations. The average lifespan for an enslaved person on a sugar plantation was seven years. Your take on London functioning because of the disposability of the poor reminded me that the Industrial Revolution was born on the premise of disposable people. Of course, one of the hallmarks of present day "civilized" life that you point to is disposable plastic units. I think at one point Monsanto talked about "sustainable" agriculture as anything that a farmer could continue making money at indefinitely. I think the sugar plantations of the Caribbean were models of sustainability as long as there was an inexhaustible supply of Black bodies. They pioneered using manure systematically to maintain soil fertility. Their model was sustainable right up until the Haitian Revolution.