We, Dena Hankins and James Lane, are sailors, traveling the world in search of an accurate, globally applicable definition of civilization. We consider a definition to be a description of the building blocks and a blueprint of where to put them. Over the course of our lifetimes, and more specifically during our 15 year circumnavigation of the world, we will travel by sail, solar, and human power to scores of islands and coasts in order to exchange subjective narratives of the meaning of civilization. We will find stories - myths - that can be applicable to each community’s work toward creating civilization, bringing positive commonality to global society.

How can humanity ensure that we have global civilization as well as global trade? Human beings can find and apply common, successful fundamentals of civilization. If individuals around the world have local culture but also make up part of the global culture, we will have commonalities as well as differences from which to develop understanding relationships.

We will find the building blocks of civilization by addressing these questions: what are the effects of civilization; how do you infer their causes; and how do you distill those causes into fundamentals that can be incorporated into the global community? We will explore these questions in a uniquely subjective way: by sailing around the world, finding our place in worker communities, and collecting stories and images of civilization.

It all started when James decided to look up “civilization” in his old college dictionary. One of the definitions was “a situation of urban comfort.” Time and again, we found dissatisfying definitions of civilization that focused on technology and tools. We believe that the things – the technology – of a people do not constitute civilization, but rather are by-products of civilized behavior. We want to examine the manifestations of civilization, and we believe that those are human, social, and artistic in nature. The dictionaries say that civilization manifests itself in a plow; we say that it manifests itself in people, their relationships with each other, and the stories they imbue with their understanding of civilization.

These stories of civilization are the tools most societies use to encourage development along lines of growth. We’ve long been multiculturalists and so knew that we weren’t being taught a wide range of tools we could use for being civilized or creating a civilized society. We are two people who came of age in the last two decades of the millennium, viewing civilization from a point of view that is critical of the United States. Using our understanding of what the words in the Constitution mean and what civilization means, we are trying to find a definition of civilization that can be applied to the entire planet instead of just one nation.

We developed a mission. We will sail slowly around the world using wind, solar, and human power as much as possible, engaging people in artistic exchanges using storytelling and images in order to create a better understanding of civilization and spark people to continue to think about, talk about, and work on recognizing and applying civilization on a global scale. We will focus on the working people of each geographical area we visit, finding jobs and working alongside them in order to better understand their contributions to global civilization.

We will find the building blocks of civilization by addressing these questions: what are the effects of civilization; how to you infer their causes; and how do you distill those causes into fundamentals that can be incorporated into the global community? We will explore these questions in a uniquely subjective way: by sailing around the world, becoming members of worker communities, and collecting stories and images of civilization.

To share in some of our adventure please check out our Gallery Page by clicking on that hyperlink.