In a russian country, there once lived Kardashev. Kardashev, an astronomer, devised a categorization system to classify types of civilization based on their energy consumption. Why he did this will probably remain a mystery. But he did. And like most scales, the Kardashev scale starts at zero.

A type 0 civilization is really bad... Barbaric conditions prevail there. Personality wars, neighborhood wars, clan wars, tribal wars, country wars, continental wars, world wars... I should actually go into the many other characteristics of a type 0 civilization, but... naaa fuck it! We humans are a type 0 civilization! There you have it! ...More precisely, a type 0.7 to 0.8 civilization.

https://youtu.be/nc7A8magTng

Until we get to a type 1 civilization, we need to see ourselves as a global civilization, which is what the world is currently striving for. This requires such a civilization to dominate the energy supply of an entire planet (things like renewable energy and such), as well as achieve political-global unity. To tame weather and environmental disasters etc. We are already witnessing the birth of such a civilization. The internet, for example, is often seen as the poster child of such global communication technology. Even if we get up tomorrow morning and go about our daily routine, something great is happening out there.

It will be hundreds, if not thousands, of years before a type 1 civilization will take its next evolutionary step, namely the ascent to an interplanetary one! So while a type 1 civilization knows how to use the planet, a type 2 civilization knows how to use its own star system. Such a civilization uses the energy of an entire star.

A type 3 civilization goes even further. These people travel to other stars. So they are traveling interstellar. At the end of this extreme, such a civilization uses the energy output of an entire GALAXY. From here on, such a civilization should be .. well, not quite immortal, but almost. Asteroid impacts and even a brutal supernova are no longer a doomsday scenario.

...and at this point Kardashev had stopped thinking. It's not that he died at this point, but for some reason his thinking never went beyond level 3. Maybe back in the days they didn't know about other galaxies, multiverses, dimensions, hyperspace and warpdrive and stuff... So if you continue this thread, a type 4 civilization should have access to intergalactic travel!

A type 5 civilization plays around with black matter and can probably change the laws of the universe. Such a civilization is on the brink of leaving our own and known space-time dimension in order to look for other universes in possibly other - better - times in a higher-dimensional space above us. Such a civilization survives even the slow death of this universe.

Truly free would be a type 6 civilization that uses the energy output of several universes for itself. They could create their own universes with their very own physical laws.

On the threshold of a type 7 civilization, becoming a god awaits. Must be funny. Maybe what we always call God is a type 7 civilization? Maybe "only" a 6, or 5. Surely it would still be divine if primitive, prehistoric apes met star travelers and just didn't realize that they were just a type 3 or type 2 civilization.

___

"The main problem is that we,as an Earth civilization,have not come to understand ourselves- see ourselves in a cosmic sense at all."

___

noted Edgar Mitchell, American astronaut and sixth man on the moon. We now find ourselves on the threshold of two gigantic epochs. Yesterday was the Stone Age. It was cold and it was harsh. We survived racial segregation and the Inquisition. And today, as I write these lines, I ask myself: "What will be tomorrow?"