Civilization and the Advancement of Societies

I recently made some comments about society and civilization and the concept of advancement on my blog at OlyBlog.

Some questions that I think are worth asking: How do we measure the advancement of a society? Does the level of technological sophistication serve as a proxy to measure a society's level of advancement? Or are there other metrics, for example in terms of the degree of mutual prosperity, and the general health and well-being of society and all of its constituents (including the natural environment?)

You can read those comments here.