Part 4. Science → great convergence → mass extinction event

For memory the multiple side-effects of Western-Modernity, that are presently converging, are accelerating both : — the unleashing, by each one of them, of tipping points that are sooner than later going to flip the Geo-bio-chemical state of the earth into new states from where there is no return — the creation of new critical areas of instability like the atomization of the societies, that reach the Late mode of development of Western-Modernity — the destabilization of the existing world-order due to the US refusal to accept the implications of the shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world, outside the realm of the Western civilization, which might eventually lead to a 3rd World War that would be fatal to our present societal arrangements and possibly for the survival of our species.

The atomization of Western nations incapacitates their ability to undertake any large scale project successfully while the destabilization of the existing world-order negates workable answers to most of the side-effects of Western-Modernity which guarantees the worse possible outcome for the human species ! And the fact is that the worst outcome of the Great-Convergence has already been engaged in the form of a process of mass-extinction of life on earth (1) !

The emergence, of the processes leading to such a dire outcome, results from the convergence and interactions between different forms of rationalities : — the economic rationality of Modernity — the rationality of science — the governance rationality of power-societies. There is no avoiding the conclusion that each one of these rationalities shares the responsibility for the dire outcome that I just mentioned. But their convergence and interactions are greatly multiplying their individual potential.  

4.1. Conceptual Clarification

In “Part 3. 3.1.2. Atomism is the paradigm of a system of knowledge formation that assembles atoms into larger structures”, I give a sketch of the different links in the chain of causality that animates the process of societal evolution. The first 6 links read as follows :

1. A knowledge paradigm generates a system of knowledge formation.


2. Those in charge of a system of knowledge formation try to generate a foundational worldview to share with their fellow citizens


3. A foundational worldview generally results is a new societal paradigm.


4. A new societal paradigm generally results in an archetypal model of society.


5. An archetypal model of society always generates a system of societal logic


6. A system of societal logic eventually generates a civilization with its historical worldview like a religion or a philosophy.

But as the millennia long transition from small bands to tribal societies, and later from tribal societies to power societies, illustrate this is an extremely long process that is fraught with numerous uncertainties.

At this point we have to acknowledge the fact that Europe dominated the field of archaeology, for nearly 2 centuries which bestowed a perception of truth to its approach that was reflected on the world market for ideas over the last centuries. People were blindly following the conclusions of the history departments of European universities until sometime after the 2nd World War when Western big capital holders started to seed the idea of expanding their reach to the whole world.

This means that the bulk of the research about power-societies and civilizations was done until quite recently by Western European researchers who focused their attention near exclusively to the area that, in European parlance, was called the Middle-East which is a term that should be averted for its Eurocentrism. The appellation Middle-East conveys the prejudices, that Western Europeans held throughout their history toward the peoples from the East, which Edward W. Said laid out so convincingly in his book “Orientalism”, that was published in 1978. To avoid the suggestion of a subconscious reference to this kinds of Western prejudices I call this region the “Tri-Continental-Area”.

Having said this the fact is that the TCA and East-Asia followed a different kind of transition from tribal societies to power-societies that has profoundly affected their vision of the world and their treatment of “the other”. In the TCA the knowledge paradigm of animism that had sustained the emergence of the archetypal model of tribal societies was violently rejected while the new knowledge paradigm of religious belief sustained the emergence of the archetypal model of power-societies.

But the power-societies, within the territory of present-day China deviated from this model. Their transition from the tribal model of society operated in continuity without rupture from the past worldview. As I laid out in the Volume 0 “Concepts and Synthesis. Part 2. Transition to power-societies”, the immensity of the Chinese alluvial plains allowed the continuous territorial expansion of tribal societies through the dynamic of tribal population growth. In other words the tribal model of society, and animism, were never interrupted and their transition operated thus as a slow evolution spanning thousands of years. As a result the changes in governance and in worldview were imperceptible and animism shifted thus automatically into the foundational worldview of China’s power-societies.

But the fact is that this differentiation, between the transition to power-societies in the TCA and in China, appears nowhere in academic history books ! And the otherworldliness, of Chinese in Western eyes and of Westerners in Chinese eyes, remains thus largely a mystery that continuously feeds Western dualism and its rejection of “the other” without there ever being a conscious effort to correct the ugliness of this Western automatism !

The conclusions of Western history, about the formation of empires and civilizations, are so deeply rooted in the history of the TCA that historians, including non-Western historians who were educated to the content of Western text books, are reading the formation of other civilizations through the lens of Western European studies of the civilizations of the “Middle-East”.

This means that the concepts and the processes applying to the TCA are being projected, until this very day, on other civilizational sites around the world without taking into account the reality of their regional specificity which leads to the absurd projection of Western concepts like “religion” or “god” or “empire” on an animist field of culture, as in China for example, that was governed by “Power Confederations” for some 2,000-3,000 years which regrouped “Tribal Cultural Confederations” and a big city and some agricultural villages before a centralized empire absorbed these “Power Confederations” some 2,250 years ago.

China’s transition, from “Tribal Cultural Confederations” to “Power Confederations”, shows that this process varied according to the specificity of different regional geographic contexts. And this differentiation in the transition process also indicates that the new archetypal model of power-societies could be sustained by different foundational worldviews.

Western-Modernity emerged, nearly 4,000 years after the emergence of the earliest power-societies, as a complementary extension, of the religious paradigm of power-societies, into a new paradigm addressing the secular productions relating to daily life. Thomas Acquinas’ humanism was a projection of the complementarity, of the new paradigm of Modernity, to the paradigm of religious knowledge. His humanism eased the coexistence of Modernity with Christianity by reconciling the secular formation of knowledge, about daily life, with God’s revealed truth.

Centuries later during the Enlightenment “the reason”, that is at work in the paradigm of Modernity, got illuminated in most Western minds thus expanding it into the new normality of philosophic rationalism and science that rapidly split into various silos separated by an ever more profound specialization.

Today, 2 centuries after the Enlightenment, scientific specialization has driven the various sciences very deep into their abstractions and they now follow autonomous paths that are no longer interconnected, among themselves, and with the holistic “First Principles of Life”. This peculiar state of science is one of the determinant characteristics of the societies that have reached the stage of development of Late-Western-Modernity. The other parameters are — the atrophy of religious belief and the practice of its rites — the atrophy of belief in secular foundational narratives like Marxism for example — the atomization of societies and their incapability to undertake successfully any large scale national project like fighting an epidemic, or answering the emergencies following natural catastrophes, or winning a world war for that matter…

Late-Western-modernity increasingly looks like a funeral car driving a dead body to the incinerator. While TIDAA instills hope, that “There Is Definitely An Alternative” to Western-Modernity and that non-Western-countries are on the right side of history when claiming the equality of all nations and their right to self-determination, Western countries behave like drunken sailors who have lost their compass. What strikes me most in the present moment is the contrast between the hope of the South and a Western dualism that destabilizes the mental state of its citizens by pitting a mad rush to Armageddon against a blind optimistic faith in mathematics as the ultimate Holy Grail of the rationality of Western modernity.

The field of mathematics, ontologically, is abstract logic for its own sake just like “the reason that is at work in the transformation of sterile money into a dynamic process of capital accumulation” is another abstract logic for its own sake that gradually displaced the religious paradigm of belief in a narrative imposed by power. Knowledge paradigms imply that an ontology is flowing throughout the continuum of the field of culture of societies. This ontological flow fixes the path of the societal knowledge formation and animates the internal evolution of societies. Such a process is at work throughout the territorial realm of all civilizations.

But how did mathematics come to occupy such a preeminent role in Late-Western-Modernity ?

It first was assigned the ontological determination of the financial rationality through taxation, of early power societies, in parallel with the invention of their written languages. And, over the last half a century, it determined the ontology of the digital transformation of all human activities that powered the implementation of the silent revolution of the 1970’s. And it finally is assigning the ontology ascertaining artificial intelligence as the latest technological iteration of a new economic cycle that is being marketed by its protagonists as an ultimate trans-humanist revolution that will first connect the human brain with artificial intelligence apps which will ultimately replace the human body by a machine that is bound to replace Homo-Sapiens.

Starting with the return of Frank aristocrats and clergymen from the crusades, in the 12th century, Greek and Arabic mathematics books got translated into Latin. The absorption by Western Europe of the content of these books prepared the scientific explosion of the 17th and 18th centuries. It makes no doubt that the logic of mathematics was the determinant parameters in the illumination of the minds of Frank long distance merchants to the paradigm of Western-Modernity. It makes also no doubt that the popularization of the economic rationality of Modernity operated in sync with the development of mathematics into the foundational parameter of science.

What I'm trying to show here is that the path, from a paradigm of knowledge to an archetypal model of society, is a very long process indeed that is not automatically destined to be completed successfully. Let sink in the mind, for a moment, the fact that mathematics has established itself as the paradigm of knowledge in the societies that have attained the level of development of Late-Western-Modernity.

Starting some 5,000 years ago mathematics fostered the ontology of the systems of taxation that financed the institutional reproduction of early power-societies which the belief in a religious worldview had originated. And its mark got even more profound with the origination of the paradigm of Modernity which explains the foundational character that it exerts presently on the practice of science.

The determinant impact of science and technology on the system of logic, of the societies that have attained the level of development of this Late-Western-Modernity, is suggesting that mathematics could possibly transform into a new fully fledged societal paradigm… But as I mentioned earlier the path to the triumph of transhumanism, against the realization of the belief in Armageddon, is along, strenuous and uncertain process indeed.

The following chapter shows how bleak are the chances, of the knowledge paradigm of mathematics, to ever reach the maturity of a foundational worldview that gives rise to a new societal paradigm. The great convergence, of the side-effects of the rationality of Western-Modernity with the rationality of science and the rationality of power societies, is annihilating the habitat of life on earth, and without habitat to live in, Homo-Sapiens will not be left the time to realize their dream of transhumanism

4.2. Rationality of Western-Modernity + science → great convergence of side-effects

The rationality of Western-Modernity is economic in nature. It is the rationality that is being impulsed by “The reason that is at work in the transformation of sterile money, + the transformation of speculative debt + “the transformation of the gamble on nature, into a dynamic process of capital accumulation”.

The rationality of Western-Modernity has transformed everything that was on its way in its own image : — from the rush, by nearly 95% of the population, out of agriculture to occupy blue and white collar industrial jobs — to consumerism and hyper-individualism — from traditional knowledge formation and their shared worldviews that boosted the cohesion of societies to the rationalism of Western-Modernity that killed shared worldviews and left people on their own to solve their unanswered existential questions — from the slow life of small, cohesive communities, to the mad rush of large, atomized societies, awaiting collapse — and so on and on.

Science is no stranger to this transformation. The owners of capital who have converted to the paradigm of modernity feel obliged to invest in the design, production and sale of new products. In doing so, they own companies and control public institutions that recruit scientists to provide them with the necessary know-how. And scientists invent the necessary knowledge, based on snippets of reality, that drive the technological development of new products and services. In the process, they specialize and sink ever deeper into their silos of abstractions, while their increasingly complex hardware and software are used to manufacture ever-new products. Finally, they devise strategies to sell as many of these products as possible to unsuspecting consumers.

But the fact is that scientists don't care for a second about the damage their inventions will eventually inflict on the habitat of life and on life itself. They're not paid to care about this, and if they did, they'd be at the mercy of the capital-holders' manager-servants, who'd fire them.

In the eyes of Western younger generations, who are observing the withering of their chances to thrive as adults, and in the eyes of non-Western nations that have been forced to live through the holocaust inflicted on them, over the last 9 centuries by Western-societies, the scientists and capital holders have to assume the full responsibility for :

4.2.1. The holocaust Western nations have inflicted to non-Western-societies over the last 9 centuries needs reparation

The success of China in climbing to the top echelon, of the economy-world under Western-Modernity, instilled the hope of TIDAA in the minds of the citizens of non-Western-countries that there is an alternative to Western hegemony and that there is a better future awaiting them. So their countries awakened to the possibility of rejecting any further Western hegemony. This fostered a profound desire to leave poverty behind for the production of an equitable economic development.

This dream naturally implies a juster world order that protects their territorial integrity, their fundamental right to implement the mode of development and the form of governance of their own choosing, as well as win-win international rules of the game that allow them a chance to procure a better future to their populations.

Assuring, that non-Western-countries have a better future, is the smallest compensation that Western countries should be held accountable for their past holocaust. It is their moral duty to let non-Western-countries develop economically while they revise their own model of development to levels of consumption that are sustainable.

Only those countries that have reached the advanced stage of Western modernity should feel obliged to fight against the side-effects of this mode of development. Countries still in the early or intermediate stages of Western modernity's mode of development should feel encouraged to develop their economies as quickly as possible. And if the daily cultures of Western societies call for immediate action by all nations on the planet, their countries should be obligated to offer, free of charge to the South, the technologies suited to a cleaner development.

What I mean to say here is that, for the whole world to willingly engage in a restructuring of its ways of life, the consumption of the South has first to increase, while the consumption of the North has to decrease. As long as there are privileged countries and poor countries a common restructuring of their ways of life will remain unfeasible.

Humanity’s target is to avoid the extinction of the species. And the best strategy, to realize this objective, is to balance National consumption averages in a far narrower band than today while ensuring that these national consumption averages are sustainable for life in the habitat procured by the earth.

4.2.2. The refusal by the USA to accept the shift of the center of gravity of Western-Modernity to Beijing hampers a valid answer, by the international community, to the great convergence

Younger generations in the West and non-Western countries have a common interest in implementing remedies to make the homo-sapiens’ way of life sustainable with the resources generated by the Earth. This is not an ideological statement. It is the evidence imposed to our individual intelligence by a world that annually consumes more resources than those that the earth can generated !

Humanity is consuming today the seeds that should supply tomorrow’s resources to its children. In other words each year humanity is eating a part of its natural capital which implies that the resources available tomorrow will be less than in the present ! Our species better awakens to its absurd behavior !

In light of this the West's current temper-tantrum is unwelcome, to say the least. The U.S. imposed its model of world order after World-War2. It goes without saying that it was a flawed order. But the fact is that all the countries of the world became members of the United Nations. To short-circuit the natural evolution of Western modernity, with the shift of its center of gravity to Beijing, the US is now sabotage the order it created and leaving the world in turmoil.

The fact is that China's economic development is an integral part of Western modernity. The rush by the U.S. to use all means at its disposal, including war, to prevent China's access to the top economic spot is simply morally unacceptable. And it is so much more unacceptable now that humanity has to urgently face the prospect of irreparable damages by the great convergence of the numerous side-effects of Western-Modernity !

 

 

 

 

4.3. rationality of power-societies + the great convergence → mass-extinction

Taken individually science, the rationality of Western-Modernity and our present model of societal organization in the form of power-societies, have each the capability to damage individual life but they do not yet have the capability to eradicate life from the ensemble earth.

The convergence of the rationality of Western-Modernity, and the rationality of science, render both of them pathological. And left unchecked the great convergence will annihilate many species on earth. This pathology is already destabilizing fragile human complex systems and will terminate them if we don’t break its chain of causality.

But when the convergence, of the rationality of Western-Modernity with science, converge with the pathology of power-societies, in the form of the US’s rejection of its own world order, we assist at an abrupt acceleration of the process of mass-extinction that veers into a potential mass-annihilation.

Mass-extinction is the consequence of the convergence and interaction between — the economic rationality of Western-Modernity — and the rationality of science. But the convergence of mass-extinction with the pathology of power societies threatens an abrupt mass annihilation :

4.3.1. The rationality of Western-Modernity

The nature of the rationality of Western-Modernity resides in its societal paradigm that fixes the ontology of the system of logic of its societies.

An ontology is a vision about the working of reality while a societal paradigm is the choice of one specific ontology among the multiple visions that are theoretically accessible. But in practice humanity does not really choose a paradigm. A societal paradigm is forced upon it at the end of a long process of changing contextual settings, that are no longer suitable for the old societal paradigm and its system of societal logic, impulse a transition to a new societal paradigm.

When the archetypal model of tribal societies became in-operational in the TCA this model was rejected and a transitional period was initiated that after 5,000 to 6,000 years resulted in the archetypal model of Power-societies.

The length of this transition was primarily due to infighting among men of power that challenged any successful institutional reproduction. The sharing of a religious foundational worldview boosted the trust of the individuals among each others and increased the cohesion of their societal groups. And at a certain threshold of societal cohesion their institutions started to reproduce over the long haul of many generations.

The rationality of these early power societies continued to focus on the primacy of their reproduction to the detriment of greater complexity. One particularly striking example of this primacy of reproduction, to the detriment of greater complexity, was the custom of canceling debt when a new king was crowned. Contemporary economists have unfortunately captured this process of debt cancellation to justify their unrealistic proposals for solving the present systematic over-indebtment of the societal actors.

By the end of the 11th century a chain of causes and effects had metastasized, in the territory of the Franks, that put the propitious context of pre-Modernity on fire. This context was the political ambition of Western Christianity which wanted Rome to have have full authority over Eastern Christianity while having primacy over Western-European secular power.

This led to the East–West Schism of 1054, between Eastern-Christianity and Western-Christianity, and Pope Urban II’s call for a 1st crusade to liberate Jerusalem. Urban II was a descendant of a Frankish noble family and the participants to the 1st crusade were mostly Frank aristocrats, their knights, and serfs.

The 1st crusade resulted in a profound cultural shock, in the minds of the Western European aristocracy, that fostered a demand to local Frank merchants for luxury goods from the Eastern Mediterranean. The satisfaction of this demand forced Frank local merchants to practice long distance trade and during this practice their minds were blown away by an illumination. They had suddenly discovered “the reason that is at work in the transformation of their sterile money into a dynamic process of capital accumulation”. And their religious like conversion to this “reason” procured them fortunes that popularized “the reason” with their fellow-citizens. As I mentioned earlier, by reconciling this secular reason with God’s revealed truth, Thomas Acquinas’ humanism initiated a half a millennium long peaceful coexistence between Western Christianity and the commercial capitalism of Early-Modernity that never got interrupted until the Enlightenment. By the time of the Enlightenment “the reason” had expanded to everything under the sun thus assuring the triumph of philosophic rationalism and science and their competition with religion for believing minds.

But as we discovered, along the 20th century, “the reason” initiated a separation of knowledge into specialized knowings that got completely detached from each other and from the big picture of “the First Principles of Life”. In their detachment, from what really counts in life, Western nations’ industrialized by externalizing all kinds of costs which were absorbed by the habitat and the species living in it. We discovered recently that this absorption came at the cost of side-effects that have initiated a mass-extinction of life on earth !

4.3.2. The rationality of science

A case study, of the responsibility of science in the economic production of side-effects, is given by the pathologies resulting from the intrusion of nano-particles in the biology of life.

Chemists discovered the process to produce plastic materials, at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. This scientific discovery led to their massive production. It has been observed over the last 2 decades, that by the end of their life, these materials fragment into ever smaller particles.

Environmentalists observed how nano-particles of these materials have been spreading to the farthest reaches of the world and that water anywhere on earth has been contaminated. This means that these particles are now inevitably being absorbed by all living species on earth including humans.

This conclusion has been rushing biologists, over the last few years, to study what happens with these particles after their absorption in the human body. And the news is not good. These particles have been observed in each organ of the body. Even worse they have been observed sipping in the cells of newborns ! Biologists are still studying the impact this will have on human life in the future but one thing is already certain. Life will be negatively impacted !

This plastics case-study shows us how science, and the economic rationality of Modernity, share the responsibility of what is already known to end up in an inevitable catastrophe for life on earth. But until now this responsibility does not lead to any coherent societal corrective path.

4.3.3. The rationality of power-societies

The rationality, of the archetypal model of power-societies, rests on the will of a small minority to impose, with all means at it disposal, their appropriation of privileges at the detriment of the large majority of citizens which results in a two tier societal order that procures richness and luxury to a small minority while procuring poverty to the large majority.

The minority invariably protects its privileges and the means at the disposal consist in the mental manipulation of the large majority of citizens, by submitting them to an unrelenting onslaught of propaganda that normalizes the idea of the reproduction of its power institutions over the long haul of many generations. And in the rare cases, when the propaganda does not succeed to assuage the large majority of individuals, brute force is used to constrain them into submission.

Force implies the physical force of professional units in charge of the implementation of law and order while mental manipulation implies propaganda peddling the ideology of the men of power that is codified by their servant men of knowledge.

In early power-societies the ideology consisted in a religious narrative like in the TCA, or in an animistic narrative like in East-Asia, that was peddled by men of knowledge. In the TCA the men of knowledge were subservient to the men of power while in China, or Tibet for that matter, they were exercising power by themselves.

In the present late-Modernity of Western societies traditional worldviews have atrophied and the individuals are left on their own to answer their existential questions. As a result their trust in each other, and in their society, has vanished which caused their separation from one another and from their societies. Isolated individuals soon succumbed to loneliness that they tried to escape by absorbing mind altering substances like alcohol or drugs.

The epidemic of loneliness has furthermore been compounded, over the last decades, by social media platforms that riveted the individuals in front of their screens where their loneliness exploded in an unhinged hyper-individualism that viscerally rejects any orders by powers that be and any truth by knowledge authorities.

The individuals’ rejection of the diktats of the traditional protagonists of power-societies, that are the men of power and the men of knowledge, atomized Western societies and, as a result, they have lost the ability to successfully undertake any large scale national project — like fighting an epidemic — like answering peoples’ social needs during natural catastrophes — or like winning a world war for that matter !

Societal atomization implies that the rationality, of the archetypal model of Western power-societies, has been squandered which questions what is their path forward :

4.3.3.1. Or societal collapse and a new path from chaos to order

The present political dysfunction could continue unabated and an increasing social inequality could force an ever greater reduction of life expectancy which would further destabilize the working of societal institutions. The fact is that dysfunction and rot are sweeping inexorably throughout the societal body and one day something, that in normal circumstances would have been seen as banal, will act as the catalyst of a social explosion that opportunists will rapidly try to lead in order to satisfy their own ambitions or interests.

Such explosions will most probably lead to the collapse of societies and their partition in smaller polities that will fight among themselves for resources. In this scenario a future of chaos inevitably awaits Western societies and their citizens.

4.3.3.2. Or totalitarianism and order

Or the real authorities, that hide behind their professional servants at the steering wheel of public decision-making, decide that enough is enough and force the citizens to submit to a new form of totalitarianism embedded in the large scale deployment of the new digital technologies that today make the titles of the media.

I’m afraid that such a Neo-totalitarianism would succeed to put to shame all its preceding forms. The combination of the following factors implies total surveillance of the individuals : — cameras registering the presence of individuals in all places — A.I. scrutinizing these videos for “out of normality” individuals whose information is stored in their databases — the transmission of the information, that is relevant to the protection of the exiting order, to policing servants.

Total surveillance, in turn, implies complete conformity to the new normality ! But our behemoth technology corporations will not be the real power-holders in this Neo-totalitarianism. The real power-holders will be a small number of very big capital holders whose ownership confers them the control of the corporations and state institutions, that control the working of the societal connection nodes, that are strategic to impulse the movement of humanity in the direction that is most profitable to their interests.

I honestly don’t see how Western societies, in their present state of atomization, could reform out of the hole they have been digging for themselves over the last half a century. So whatever is the outcome of the present dysfunction of Western societies the fact is that their citizens will soon be confronted with the complete control over all their movements, all their actions, and most probably all their thoughts by a pervasive Neo-totalitarianism that serves the interests of a few families.

In the eyes of these few families, and their civil servants and private employees, the greatest enemy is not their anesthetized population, who will eventually be provided drugs and free games as a distraction, but Chinese state capital that threatens their hegemony over 85+% of the world population in non-Western countries.

The struggle for hegemonic control of the minds of almost every citizen on earth is the great monopoly game of the 21st century. Unfortunately, there is no mechanism to constrain, in any way, the small minorities in charge of the levers of power on both sides of this great game.

Could the fact, that they know to have no responsibility to any societal actor, unhinge their actions to the point of ordering their servants to push on the button to start the distribution of nuclear missiles on their adversaries ? Those who follow the daily news assiduously will certainly not be reassured. In their separation from human societal realities the power minorities could indeed push on the button at any moment.

Note that this would terminate the cycle of societal evolution and open the path of a new cycle of biological evolution.

Logically the responsibility of science in the generation of side-effects should engender calls for it to address the damages that the application of its research and production caused to the individuals and their habitat. But the rationality of Western-Modernity is so strongly ingrained in the minds, as the contemporary normality, that its questioning does not even arise to individual awareness.

But what if peak resources terminates the industrial dream of continue to live as we have lived over the last decades ? And what about human sperm counts reaching zero a few decades down the road as some scientists believe will be the case ? Or what if societal atomization terminates with the atrophy of the societies attaining the last stage of Late-Western-Modernity as I myself suggest ? We could continue to enumerate a litany of other side-effects that science initiated in light of its loss of the traditional knowledge about the precautionary principle that wants the preservation of the habitat of future o generations.

Knowing that one single such side-effects could possibly result in the degradation of the habitat of life, a few decades down the road, we would think that their convergence and interactions, which are de-multiplying the risks of degradation that could cause the collapse of societies, would lead us to take radical actions to preserve the life of future generations. But this is not what we observe.

4.3.3.3. Humanity's predicament or the Great convergence

The rationality of science and the rationality of Western-Modernity are incontestably the root of humanity’s predicament in this Late-Western-Modernity. But before our species comes to its senses, and takes the necessary corrective measures, today’s normality of plenty could be gone and people’s minds could be dragged into another ‘cu-de-sac’ of a normality that leaves little available food.

It could thus be argued that humanity no longer disposes of the necessary time-frame to reach a sufficient conscious awareness to find the right answers to counter the predicament that Western-Modernity has force on the whole of mankind.

This just shows that shifting away, from an existing societal normality, is not a given. Systems of societal logic are logical derivations from societal paradigms. But these are buried so deeply in the historical past, or in our subconscious minds, that they do not normally surface in human awareness. The long haul history, of our species, indicates that the emergence and adherence to new knowledge and societal paradigms, that privilege the reproduction of the species over the future long haul, was always the consequence of a dramatic destabilization of the existing model of society.

This was the case with the destabilization, of the small band model of societal organization, by the Eamian abrupt climate heating that occurred some 130,000 years ago. The normality of stable high temperatures, over the next 15,000 years, eventually resulted in the emergence of a model of society that could accommodate larger quantities of individuals while letting them self-organize around the principle of decision-making at the unanimity.

A burst of knowledge formation must have been at the origin of the sudden abundance and richness observed in the archaeological remnants of African tribal societies dating from the millennia following the Eamian. This burst of knowledge formation played a determinant role in the chain of events that led to the emergence of the archetypal model of tribal-societies. But in matter of fact this role had gotten ‘subcontracted’ by late small-bands to specialized (wo)men who were supplied the goods necessary for their daily life in exchange for their knowledge services to the group.

Here after follows a sketch of what I think animates the coming rejection of the rationality of Western-Modernity and mathematics which acts as its most potent instrument.

 

 

 

 

4.4. The West is rejecting the natural evolution of Western modernity !

The archetypal model of "power-societies" emerged some 5,000 to 6,000 years ago in the TCA. This model was adopted by the Roman empire and, starting in the 2nd part of the 5th century directly after the fall of the Roman empire the Franks inherited it with the help of the Western Christian church. The Franks’ origination, of the archetypal model of power-societies, imprinted a mental framework of exceptionalism in the minds of the inhabitants of Western-Europe who viewed “the difference of the other” as an unacceptable danger to themselves and their god.

Today the economic center of gravity of Late-Western-Modernity is shifting on an evolutionary path that is not acceptable in the eyes of the Anglo-Saxons who inherited the culture of the Franks. And they are refusing the natural evolution of Western-Modernity that is shifting the center of gravity of their economy-world to Beijing that sits at the core of an impregnable East-Asian Regional Economic Block.

In light of this Western elites focused on upsetting a Ukraine red line that Russia would eventually feel necessary to answer. Ukraine is indeed merely one episode in the Western strategy of refusal that the center of gravity of Western-Modernity could be leaving the territorial realm of the Western civilization !

The Russia-China alignment fostered a Western approach to the destabilization of China that focuses on all means available at the exception of kinetic blows which are restricted until presently solely to Russia. In their delusion of exceptionalism Western elites convinced themselves that Russia is no more than a gas station. Destabilizing this gas station appeared like a child's play and they would have destabilized Russia they thought that they would have access to its natural resources thus cutting China's land supply roads.

After one year and a half Russia's military operation has annihilated the Western stock of conventional weapons as well as Ukraine's operational capabilities as a state. In other words Russia has projected, in the minds of the people on this earth, the idea that it has the most formidable and strongest military !

In these conditions the next step, in the conflict on the Ukrainian territory, is :

4.4.1. Or a recognition by the West of Russia's security needs

Russia is presently in an incontestable position of force and only after a last offensive West, giving it control over a larger portion of Ukraine’s territory, could a mediation by China eventually lead to a negotiated settlement that recognizes Russia’s 3 initial demands about — the security of all Ukrainian regions where Russian is spoken — the institutional obligation of Ukraine to denazify — the guarantee that Ukraine will not become a NATO member.

But the million dollar question is if the USA and the EU will ever consent to a Russian win. It will take all the patience and finesse of the Chinese to craft a proposal that is acceptable by all parties but that gives Russia satisfaction on its 3 original demands.

But the most difficult will be to ascertain the flawless implementation of this agreement. Russia will indeed want strong guarantees that the implementation goes as is written on the paper. The recognition by both Merkel and Hollande that the Minsk agreement was merely a delaying tactic, to allow the weaponization of Ukraine by NATO, undoubtedly justifies Russia’s hesitancy about recognizing the validity of Western signatures. The implementation guarantee by neutral parties will thus be a must to convince Russia to trust the words printed on the paper.

4.4.2. Or the West pushes the conflict further in new territory

The West will in all probability want to delay as long as possible its recognition of a Russian win and it will thus try to extend the conflict to other regions. But the further the conflict expands the higher becomes the risk of a nuclear exchange.

Now that Poland refuses to continue arming Ukraine an extension of the conflict in Eastern Europe appears less feasible.

But a new area of tensions is emerging in Armenia and Azerbaijan that the US and the EU are cajoling in a process of integration into NATO and the EU. Russia and Iran will inevitably oppose this Western stratagem and it certainly does not please China. But China’s red line in central Asia, against any affiliation with the Western block, has not been made public as of now. It is nevertheless evident that the country will not accept the presence of NATO or the EU on its Western border. So it is only a question of time before China will take sides.

Another area of tension is the Taiwan strait and the South China Sea. The next election in Taiwan, in the spring of 2024, will supply a fresh outlook on Taiwan’s willingness to soldier on the front line of America’s conflict with China.

A territorial expansion of the conflict will inevitably sketch the first lines of a worldwide positioning of forces that will fragilize the accommodation of a neutral stance by Southern observing countries. But the more time passes the more the health of Western societies will become an inevitable factor in any equation that tables a conflict between the West and the triangle Russia-Iran-China. The atomization of Western societies is never talked about but its resulting societal dysfunction is more and more apparent mostly in the USA and in France where poverty, hyper-individualism, loneliness and the rejection of all authorities is crippling the normal working of state institutions. The men of power are trying to contain this societal rot by justifying the curtailing of free speech and by hardening the totalitarian character of their institutions of power which becomes a further justification for their rejection by their citizens.

All in all it becomes apparent that the strength of Western societies is weakening while the strength, of Russia and most importantly of China, is continuing to grow albeit at a slower pace than over the decades preceding the Covid epidemic. The health of the protagonists is thus becoming a determinant parameter in the outcome of their conflicts. The probability of a financial and economic collapse of the EU and of the USA is also increasing dramatically and this could radically change the balance of power.