This work presents a General Theory of Stable Civilizations: a unified framework for understanding the structural conditions required for durable civilizational stability on Earth and beyond. The paper argues that a civilization is stable only when three foundational domains benefit simultaneously over time: individuals, society, and the environment. This requirement is formalized as the win–win–win condition. The paper develops a medium-formal systems model in which civilizational stability is represented through interacting state variables, coupled feedbacks, and domain-level indicators. It identifies six major subsystems that regulate long-run stability: ethical banking and finance, education, health, knowledge and intelligence architectures, governance, and justice. Ethical banking is treated as the circulatory architecture of value; education as the cognitive and civic formation system; health as the biological and psychological substrate of participation; knowledge systems as the memory and reasoning substrate of civilization; governance as the executive coordinating architecture; and justice as the legitimacy-generating moral regulator that sustains trust and cooperation. The framework is positioned relative to systems theory, ecological economics, governance theory, collapse theory, game theory, and AI alignment. It also introduces Civilizational Health Indicators (CHI), a diagnostic framework linking biological, psychological, social, and environmental signals to civilizational trajectory. The paper provides operational definitions, formal symbol definitions, subsystem equations, falsifiable implications, and an extended glossary. The central conclusion is that stable civilization is not fundamentally a matter of ideology, coercion, or centralized imposition. It is a matter of systemic architecture: circulation instead of extraction, contribution instead of predation, institutional legitimacy instead of arbitrary domination, education that produces capable participants rather than passive dependence, and intelligence aligned with multi-domain flourishing. This work is intended as a stand-alone reference framework for scholars, policymakers, institutional designers, and long-horizon thinkers concerned with civilizational resilience, governance, ethical intelligence, and future planetary development.
Moutsopoulos et al. (2026) studied this question.