Western civilization has also shown an amazing ability to re-define itself. At one point Western civilization is defined as a bunch of feuding slavery-dependent city-states opposed to a multi-cultural, tolerant, abolitionist absolute monarchy, then it was feuding autocratic empires descended from said city-states unified by a fringe kingdom, then it was defined as an empire run by God-Kings who ruled in a grim darkness in which there is only war and endless backstabbing, then it was no less than three rival descendants of said grim and dark empire, then it was a part of that area which had seen complete governmental collapse and was regularly overrun, then the emerging New Monarchies and little petty-states, then the militarized, brutal colonial empires in constitutional monarchical and absolutist forms, and then totalitarianisms and democracy.

At no point has Western ever had a consistent definition or a consistent idea of even what it claims to represent.