Characteristics of Civilized People by Reginald Firehammer While the possiblity of civilization can be curtailed by a political system, it is not ultimately a society's politics, or its economy, or the artifacts of its culture that determines the degree of its civilization. Whether a society is civilized or not is determined by the kind of people that comprise it. American society of the fifties was dominated by young and middle-aged people who were the most civilized of the entire 20th century. The clearest picture of the fifties can be formed by examining the characteristics of the people who dominated it....