painting and thinking: First devastating societal blow in Late-Modernity (14)

Part 6. The paradox of humanity’s predicament

6.1. Modernity, is the greatest achievement of humanity but it fosters life extinction

6.2. the shift in the governance-world leads to uncertainties

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I started to write, a few years ago, about what I coin “the great convergence of the side-effects of Modernity” (1). By that I mean the following :

under Modernity human activities are unleashing a multitude of side-effects

these multiple side-effects are now converging and starting to interact among themselves unleashing a mass of feedback loops that escape our present understanding

we observe that these feed-back loops eventually reach tipping points when rapid and devastating change is set in motion that destroys the niche habitats of the different species that materialize the principle of life.

the species whose habitat is being destroyed eventually go extinct and this leads to a shrinking of the earth bio-diversity. If the ultimate cause of the destruction of niche habitats is not stopped soon most living species will vanish from the earth. The ultimate cause of this destruction is the human species.

The converging side-effects of Modernity are now also converging with ‒ the trap of debt and economic corruption ‒ Western societal atomization & loss of societal cohesion ‒ the shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world from the West to the East. All these factors are now converging. This is what I call “The Great Convergence”.

Is it a coincidence that, just after writing these words, an article flashes before my eyes with a title that says : “Plan urgently needed to meet threats to human survival” ? This article points to a new report that addresses the concerns implied in the concept of “the convergence of the side-effects of Modernity” :

“A new report is calling for humanity to urgently prepare a plan so our species can survive and thrive well into the future in the face of multiple catastrophic risks.

The report, from the Commission for the Human Future (CHF), identifies 10 potentially catastrophic global risks, including pandemics of new and untreatable diseases. Other major risks include ecosystem collapse, rising food insecurity, nuclear weapons, and global warming, sea level rise and a changing climate. “ (2)

Modernity gave rise to “the reason that is at work within capital” and this idea powered the most successful human economic system ever. Along the way this idea transformed in an economic ideology that propaganda forced in the citizens’ minds. And the origin of the idea was soon lost on everyone.

While being successful this economic system was also extremely destructive. The idolization of capital gave way to a class war between the big capital holders and the working class. The capital holders wanted to reduce their production costs while the workers wanted to maximize their wages. This led to a class conflict that concealed many other things and most notably the side-effects of industrial production in the form of a population explosion, air-water-land pollution, chemicalization of health, industrialization and chemicalization of agriculture, emissions of CO2 that increased plant growth while also provoking a warming of the world, an explosion of the volumes of garbage, the infiltration of biological cells by plastic nano-particulates and so on and on...

All this confronts us with a paradox :

Modernity without any possible doubt constitutes somehow the highest human achievement in term of producing material goods

but lately we came to realize that, in parallel to that achievement, human activities unleashed a slew of side-effects that could possibly wipe our very own species from the face of the earth

This paradox calls us to awaken from our sleep-walking into the abyss. We have to come to terms with the fact that “the reason that is at work within capital” does not represent the truth about human living. The reason at work within capital has the merit of maximizing the efficiency of our production of goods and services. No doubt about it. But the fact is that the production of goods and services is only a very small part of what constitutes life.

To help us get rid of this paradox of Modernity we have to discover where we went wrong. And the only way forward is to rediscover the basics about what life is all about. Goods and services address the needs of the individuals about surviving, keeping healthy, and enjoying life. But in matter of fact this only forms the tail end of what life is all about. Here follows a sketch about what I consider are the “basic principles of life” (3) :

life emerges in the form of species. Millions of living species inhabit the earth today but a lot many more have gone extinct in the past :

“In simple terms we have had life on Earth for about 4.5 billion years. Although for a long time life would have been simple in structure and with few species, that is a very long history. Looking at the fossil record we can tell that most species don't actually last very long from the time they first appear till they vanish from the rocks (for example the average is about 4 million years for mammals).

Now diversity clearly varies over time (during big extinctions there won't be many species left for quite a while), and currently there are estimated to be somewhere between 30-50 million species on Earth. Now given that each species can only be expected to survive from around 0.5-5 million years, its perhaps not surprising that taken over 4.5 *billion* years, over 99% of all species that have ever lived are no longer with us”. (4)

species try to survive and to reproduce over the long haul. All species act to ensure their continuity. It is as if continuity was their core missions. How could it not be ? The fact is that life stops with death or extinction. With that in mind it becomes clear that any other dream is necessarily playing out as a second fiddle…

to ensure their continuity species (life) rely on “the dance between their polarities” :
The “species’ chain of reproduction” is composed of different links ‒ individual reproduction participates in ‒ family reproduction which participates in ‒ the reproduction of societies which in turn participates in ‒ the reproduction of the species.

These links are fragile and they can easily be broken with the introduction of more societal complexity. That’s why the large majority of the individuals (society) deem it prudent not to perturb the existing state of human affairs in order to avoid a crash of their own individual chances to reproduce (self-centeredness).

the dance between polarities is thus naturally fraught with conflicts. But sometimes conflicts have a positive contribution. The resolution of conflicts is indeed what is powering societal evolution. It conciliates ‒ continuity in the “species’ chain of reproduction” with ‒ the integration of the elements of complexity that the majority of the individuals deem will not fragilize that continuity. Continuity is the 1st core mission of a species and the search for more complexity has to fold and adapt to this 1st core mission that is at the heart of the evolution of species.

This basic principle of life constitutes the foundational reason for the existence of societies and societal institutions are first and foremost in charge of the mechanics of the reconciliation between the common good and the drive for change. Societies act as arbiters between two forces that have antagonistic goals :

These “basics principles of life” point to a close inter-dependency between a species and its polarities and also between the polarities themselves which appear to have complementary roles in playing the game of life. The same kind of close inter-dependency applies equally to the relations between the diverse species and between the individuals of these species which constitutes the realm of life on earth.

And this principle of inter-dependency is observed to expand always further ‒ from, the realm of life on earth that in mathematical abstraction we would call the ensemble earth, to the ensemble constituted by the solar system ‒ from, the ensemble solar system, to the ensemble constituted by our galaxy the Milky Way ‒ from, the Milky way, to U or the whole universe that contains all the other galaxies. What we discover here is that everything in the universe is connected with everything else through such inter-dependencies.

In light of that discovery it appears reasonable to think that the human priority, in its search to solve the quandary of “the great convergence”, would be to expand the minds of all individuals to this idea of the inter-dependency of everything within the whole. But such a feat implies a successful modulation of the “cultural field”.

The “cultural field” is an analogy, of the concept of field in physics (5), that I apply to the domain of societal evolution (6). Physical fields “are not visible to us directly at all, but only through their effects”. The same goes for the “cultural field”. It is not directly visible to us but we can observe how it shapes the daily culture of any given society. The “cultural field” is not as complex as physical fields in the sense that it was shaped along the path taken by societal evolution. We can approach it by studying its three dynamic components (7) :

    • the axioms of civilization

    • the societal worldview

    • daily culture

Human behaviors in the present are given by these three components of the “cultural field” and by their interactions.

"The concept of culture has been used and abused to the point of meaning completely different things for different people. In my personal approach I view the concept ‘culture’ as being the sum of all societal characteristics, – behaviors – actions – creations – beliefs – knowledge – productions – fashions, that the citizens of a given society share in a specific ‘present moment’ along the entire time-span of that society. And in this sense culture is like the evolving skin of a society as it manifests in the present.

But how does culture evolve in its present manifestation?

Culture is not the product of an exceptional human inventiveness. It is nothing else than the skin of societal evolution as it manifests in the present.
The fact of the matter is that the cultural context is imposing on all of us a very particular way to see and understand what reality is all about which explains why people in different cultural contexts experience such difficulties in understanding each other.

The axioms of civilization nullify the possibility of individual free-will. And free-will is thus a pure illusion. Only wise-men have free-will but they are scarcely distributed in our modern societies; if they exist at all. But societies nevertheless push this illusion in order to encourage the individuals to adapt their present daily culture to the changing conditions in their habitat.

And there is more. Worldviews force a view of the world, a view of what reality is all about, in the minds of the individuals. Some of them may consciously gain an understanding of their worldview’s public narrative but they don’t seem to understand, or is it care, about its real purpose which is to solidify the cohesion of their society.

For those individuals, who are gaining an understanding of their worldview’s public narrative, this acts as a powerful incentive to adapt the narrative to the cultural memes that actualize daily culture to the changing conditions in their habitat. ” (8)

The “cultural field” leaves no space for individual free-will. Instead our axioms of civilization and worldview fill our minds with the illusion of free-will. But our illusion of free-will is nevertheless pushing us to adapt our daily culture to the changing conditions in our habitat. In that sense the “cultural field” is perhaps gradually forcing us to behave in a sustainable way.

6.1. Modernity, is the greatest achievement of humanity but it fosters life extinction

The conversion of the human mind to the ‘reason that is at work within capital’ was not a religious type of conversion. The reason had indeed a more pragmatic purpose. It emerged in human minds in order to satisfy its own priorities and in the process humanity gained a more reasoned approach :

the fear to lose one’s invested capital : in a first phase of capitalism during Early-Modernity (commercial capitalism), long distance trade consisted in shipping voyages that were financed primarily by capital collected from the aristocracy or the clergy. It was only later that long distance merchants added their own capital contributions. The ship’s captain and his associates were constantly at the mercy of events and the loss of a shipment meant the loss of their credibility and the impossibility to collect capital to finance new ventures. The stakes were thus extremely high and this instilled a new found discipline in the actions of the ship’s captain and his associates

the urge to grow one’s capital : capital is money that is being invested and savings procure the money available to invest. But in the early centuries of commercial capitalism money available to invest was not the fruit of savings. It was the fruit of incoming taxation contributed by the citizens. The aristocracy, and the clergy, were the men of power and the men of knowledge who administered the affairs of states and their vassalities. Those in power were always in need of more money in order to defend from usurpers or to usurp the power of others. That’s how the taxation of the paisants often reached extremes that provoked revolts or revolution. The money invested in long distance trading voyages participated to this same logic of always needing more and so the urge to grow one’s capital base in order to grow future returns.

this fear and urge instilled the need for more reasoned approaches in :

the conception of new products and the production processes : the starting call on science to contribute new knowings was motivated by 18th century British mercantile policies that incentivized merchants to localize cotton productions that hitherto had been imported from India at the cost of much gold and silver. Localizing cotton productions implied the use of spinning and weaving machines… and scientists were called to contribute their knowings. This is how science and industrialization emerged simultaneously.

the management of production : new scientific disciplines were gradually added to the university curriculum to rationalize economic activities (law, accounting, micro-economics, macro-economics, etc…)

the marketing and design of goods and services : new scientific disciplines were gradually added to the university curriculum (psychology, propaganda, advertisement, marketing, design, etc...)

“The reason at work within capital” has been the principle that gradually “rationalized” the economy of nations. And as Marx noted the result has been nothing short of, astounding, revolutionary. The ultimate sign of the revolutionary power of the reason of capital is best visualized in the following graph :

How has the world population grown over time ? Our World in Data. Revised 2019-05

The industrial revolution multiplied the goods necessary to survive and the more the market grew in mass the cheaper the goods became. In the meantime public administrations instituted basic hygiene services in the cities like running water, waste water disposal systems, garbage collection and so on. The result was immediate as the graph lets us visualize so clearly.

Anywhere industrialization occurs it is accompanied by a population explosion due to the combination of the following 2 factors :

cheap food, clothes, and shelter is available in abundance and people can feed more mouths

better hygiene conditions cut drastically infant mortality rates as well as maternal mortality rates.

In view of these factors the reason of capital has undoubtedly been an extraordinary historical revolutionary force. But it came with a similarly extraordinary historical cost the depth of which we have not yet started to measure. When our descendants awake to the reality of that cost they’ll inevitably conclude that their ancestors were fucking morons who had passed a Faustian pact with the devil. (9)

Our descendants will come to see the veneration of their ancestors for “the reason at work within capital” as one of the most egregious absurdities humanity has ever reveled in along the entire history of the species.

We are remembered in these pandemic days how everything is interrelated, interdependent, and how COVID-19 may be just the beginning of recurrent mass pandemics :

“As Wuhan grew, it sprawled into the surrounding countryside and forests; people were pushed off their small farms and moved into the city’s vast slums. The slums served as a bridge between wild and urban spaces. To get by, residents ventured into the neighboring forests; they hunted and raised wild game, trapping, caging, and breeding pangolins, alligators, bats, civets, and other roaming animals on a scale that blurred the line between domestic and industrial animal husbandry. By harvesting animals from the forests, they flushed out pathogens, drawing them into a thriving city that was just a flight away from Singapore or Sydney. … technologies that have made it possible for more and more of us to inhabit the earth have also made it less hospitable to human life. “ (10)

A virus is, by no means, a Chinese or an Asian exclusive phenomenon. It is a part of human reality and it can break-out the world over. The worldview of Modernity, and its particular economic form capitalism, have expanded to the entire earth and we are now starting to pay the price of the shortsightedness of that worldview and its accompanying economic system :

“Research adds to growing evidence about the role of humans in the emergence of new infections. … The researchers pointed out that sprawling human populations had created more opportunities for people to live in proximity with wild animals. Rodents, bats and primate species living near homes or farms – in some cases expanding their populations near settlements – presented a high risk for ongoing transmission of viruses to people. “ (11)

There is no doubt that Western countries are still mired in the illusion of their exceptionalism. But Covid-19 has been a hard lessons of realism for them. And good governance has now unequivocally been proven, in the eyes of all the citizens of the earth, to not being a Western universal privilege. The time has come to retire this Christian white man’s mythology :

“… Western countries ignored the Covid-19 experience of East Asian nations as it unfolded before them. Why did they waste the month and more that East Asia’s more or less successful battle against the virus bought them? One answer is that they thought they would deal with the epidemic in the matter-of-fact way that Sweden has adopted, but lost their nerve when push came to shove. The other answer is insularity: accustomed to scientific and policy leadership, these cultures didn’t have the humility to learn from East Asia’s example. “ (12)

When thinking about the future we should always remember the damages that resulted from the shortsightedness of Modernity and our minds should be aware at all time that pandemics can break out for multiple reasons. The institutions of “the world order” have the responsibility to prepare the world population for the necessary changes necessary to mitigate these multiple causes but :

“Back in 2014, the IPCC did not identify human pandemics among potential climate-induced tipping points, but it did provide plenty of evidence that climate change would increase the risk of such catastrophes. This is true for several reasons.

First, warmer temperatures and more moisture are conducive to the accelerated reproduction of mosquitoes, including those carrying malaria, the zika virus, and other highly infectious diseases. Such conditions were once largely confined to the tropics, but as a result of global warming, formerly temperate areas are now experiencing more tropical conditions, resulting in the territorial expansion of mosquito breeding grounds. Accordingly, malaria and zika are on the rise in areas that never previously experienced such diseases. Similarly, dengue fever, a mosquito-borne viral disease that infects millions of people every year, is spreading especially quickly due to rising world temperatures”. (13)

The IPCC has identified climate change as a threat to humanity and is demanding action from the nations of the earth but it has unfortunately not connected climate change with the multiple other side-effects of Modernity nor with the impact of their interactions. The scientific community has nevertheless accumulated much evidence about the fact that the interactions between these side-effects are precipitating an avalanche of tipping points that are starting to overwhelm the world (14) :

“The most extreme risks of climate change can’t be ruled out -- including the collapse of human civilization, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. “The response to climate change should be motivated not only by central estimates of outcomes but also by the likelihood of extreme events,” bank economists David Mackie and Jessica Murray wrote in a Jan. 14 report to clients. “We cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes where human life as we know it is threatened.”

When Bloomberg News starts to relay, warnings by JPMorgan Chase about the risk of a coming collapse of human civilization, it is a sign that the greatest human achievement ever is going seriously off the rails and that the damages are becoming unbearable.

6.2. the shift in the governance-world leads to uncertainties

The shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world from the West to the East is a process that unfolds over time. But the different national answers to Covid-19 have inadvertently accelerated the rhythm of this shift. In short Western economies are suffering far worse damages than China and this differential in damages alone is rapidly bringing China’s GDP, calculated in $US, at parity with the GDP of the USA.

This unexpected consequence is directly related to a governance differential that impacted the quality of the national responses. Notwithstanding this very fact, or perhaps because of it, the US instigated an all out Western propaganda campaign to belittle China’s governance achievements and this resulted in the Western public’s fast increasing Sinophobia. In the meantime the rest of the world is watching the spectacle of what can only be described as the tantrum of a sore loser.

Seen that the US presidency, under Trump’s tantrums, is literally collapsing the Western-World-order the rest of the world is aghast and watching incredulously while protecting its economic interests. Paradoxically the US retreat from globalization is increasing, by as much, the importance of trade for the rest of the world which, in finale, is playing out to be in China’s interest.

China’s early eradication, of the 1st phase outbreak of the corona-virus, is pushing the country’s economic pick-up at the forefront of the rest of the world and everyone is eager now to profit from China’s early recovery and to receive Chinese investments.

6.2.1. Russia and Central Asia

The bilateral trade between China and Russia exceeded 110 USD billion in 2019 and China was already Russia’s largest trading partner while Russia had established itself as China’s largest oil supplier. Nobody should thus be surprised that trade and cooperation between them would continue to grow :

“The possibility that China will mount an economic recovery more quickly than Europe or the United States is perhaps the only bright spot for commodity exporters in Russia and Central Asia. While Russian oil shipments to Europe continue to fall, volumes pumped to China have remained stable so far, thanks to Beijing’s desire to fill its strategic reserve at favorable price levels.

The Kremlin and Russian elites pin their hopes on the proposition that China will roll out massive measures to support its tumbling economy and prevent growing unemployment from causing social unrest and will continue government-driven spending on construction and infrastructure, including accelerating rollout of 5G networks, giant data centers, and more.

Following cuts envisaged by the OPEC deal, Russia will have to decrease shipments of oil to Europe while continuing to supply oil to China in order to meet the obligations of Rosneft, the largest state-owned oil company in the country, under its multiple long-term contracts with Chinese energy companies. With these two developments in sight, China’s current position as the dominant trade partner for Russia and Central Asia will be reinforced.

The first-quarter data published by Chinese Customs supports this trend. As China’s trade volume with the outside world has plunged by 8.4 percent, trade with Russia has grown by 3.4 percent to $25.4 billion. Trade with Kazakhstan, its other important source of oil, has jumped by 17.8 percent. “ (15)

6.2.2. the Tri-Continental-Area

China had engaged in a “comprehensive 25 year China-Iran strategic partnership” during the year 2019. This partnership has been extended to the military field. In addition to the ‘Iran deal’ China has also agreed to a similar ‘Iraq deal’. These 2 deals (16) will see China investing the equivalent of half a trillion dollars over the next 5 to 10 years in these 2 countries. In counterpart Chinese companies will be given ‒ preference in building their transport and communication infrastructure, oil industries, and consumer goods factories ‒ strongly discounted oil to cover charges and repayment of these loans.

These 2 deals are prolonging the New-Silk Roads coming out of Central Asia and are laying the foundation for an Iran-Irak-Syria transport corridor that in the years ahead will be linking ‒ to the West with the transportation infrastructure of Eastern Europe ‒ to the South, through Syria Jordan Israel and Egypt with an, as of yet to be build, African transportation infrastructure.

The Iranian deal was concluded before the corona-virus break-out but disagreements between Iranian power factions delayed its official publication. In the meantime Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian major general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, commander of its Quds Force, and the second most powerful Iranian leader, was assassinated by the USA, on January the third 2020, in Baghdad. This had the immediate effect to unite the Iranian power factions while intensifying the perception that the country urgently needs an economic lifeline.

Figures indicating the impact of this deal on Iran-China trade, for the first 6 months of 2020, are still not available but there is no doubt that these figures are bound to explode in the coming months and years. But perhaps even more important than this Iran deal is the forging an unbreakable Russia-China-Iran military axis that will not only have wheels but also wings. And the most hilarious aspect of this deal is that the US temper tantrums against Iran finally got China far more advantageous conditions than it could ever have gotten from the marketplace.

6.2.3. ASEAN

The South-East Asian countries of ASEAN increased their share of China’s total foreign trade during the first half of 2020 and for the first time surpassed the share of the European Union that had been China's top trading partner over the last decade (17). The trade figures, for the January-May period, show that China’s total foreign trade dropped 4.9 percent year on year while its trade with ASEAN countries was up 4.2 percent.

Before the virus’ outbreak China was already the most important trading partner for Japan and South-Korea. But due to the corona-virus Japan’s exports to the US fell sharply and its exports to China suddenly represented nearly double the amount of its exports to the US. And all that while its imports from China were nearly half its exports. This shows just how far Japan has become entangled economically with China.

For all the talk of decoupling the fact remains that, in this greatest of all economic depressions, economic relations will inevitably prime ideological and political considerations. And if politicians forget about this reality their citizens will shortly remember them that they are the source of the national interest.

Sources: see note (18)

There could be no better demonstration, of how China circumvented the fall of the Western world-order, than what has been happening in trade over the last 2 years. US tariffs and sanctions have put the brakes on China’s exports and threatened China’s supply chains. But from the very start of this trade conflict China focused on compensating the resulting international losses by re-centering its efforts on accelerating the consolidation of the East-Asian Regional Economic Bloc (REB).

China paid the price of this consolidation in the form of a large trade deficit to the advantage of the ASEAN countries which puts them in a bind. But its evasion, of the consequences from the fall of the Western world-order by centering on its REB, is not only integrating more deeply all the ASEAN nations in an Asian centric network of supply-chains. It also reaffirms their historical bonds that go back more than 2000 years which promises to ignite a rebirth and an expansion of the Confucian civilizational space.

The European depredations that have marked Modernity’s first economic phase, commercial capitalism : 13th-18th century, have sowed the seeds of divisions among Asian nations and the US, in the first decades of this 21th century, is trying by all means to keep those divisions alive. But the price that China is willing to pay to overcome these divisions leaves little doubt about the outcome of this great 21th century game.

I’m afraid that the US and its vassals don’t realize that the price China pays today is cohering the East-Asian REB member states, not only into a Confucian civilizational space but also, around a common worldview. Those nations have not forgotten the suffering and misery that the West has inflicted on them and their people are hungry to finally share in the consumerist goodies promised by industrial development.

The people of ASEAN nations know that to reach this goal they need China’s help and they also trust that China has the will to help them. Their 2000 years of shared history, and the present promise of their surfing into Modernity as a space that shares a common destiny, are affirming the inter-dependencies between their nations and also the cultural commonalities shared by their people. And the more the West tries to divide them the faster their cultural commonalities and inter-dependencies will glue them together.

There is no escape from these East-Asian cultural commonalities and inter-dependencies. That whole region is now firmly engaged behind China on a trip into Modernity :

“China is evidently not a paradise it has much to improve on. However, there is no lack of reporting on China’s negative side in the ‘Anglosphere’ press. What is missing is China’s point of view and how it justifies its actions from its own historical and civilizational vista. Addressing, these issues require brave introspection into our own civilizational contradictions which opens up painful cognitive dissonance on our part.

From the Chinese perspective the cry for human rights and democracy are disingenuous. They see a manifold of discrepancies where democracy works at the expense of national interests and where the levers of power are all too easily captured by U.S. and transnational capital.“ (19)

The billion dollar question today is if the West has the capacity or the willingness to engage in introspection. From where I sit what I see is that a vortex of madness has absorbed Western minds. A mob of angry people has engaged in a Western cultural revolution ransacking the place and frightening their fellow citizens. This is not a suitable context for introspection, for thinking or for listening to what “an other” civilizational space has to offer.

But the fact of the matter is that the Western answer is in the hands of its big capital holders and their servants. I fear that they are the ones who instigated the spectacle of this Western cultural revolution that the citizens of this earth are now watching aghast. The reason for instigating this is clear enough. Fear and confusion have always been the preferred instrument of power :

“How do you persuade a populace to embrace totalitarianism, that goose-stepping form of tyranny in which the government has all of the power and “we the people” have none?

You persuade the people that the menace they face (imaginary or not) is so sinister, so overwhelming, so fearsome that the only way to surmount the danger is by empowering the government to take all necessary steps to quash it, even if that means allowing government jackboots to trample all over the Constitution.

This is how you use the politics of fear to persuade a freedom-endowed people to shackle themselves to a dictatorship.

It works the same way every time.” (20)

But what are the big capital holders really after ? They are after, power, total-power. I summarized their strategy, as follows, in 4.1.3. The gamble of Western big capital holders :

“Accepting the economic fundamentals would wipe out the dreams of total control by big capital holders and so they are now positioning the political decision making process to use the ensuing social chaos as a springboard to further enlarge their capture of the world’s wealth that is already historically out of proportion in their hands (CARES act + conditional dollar swaps). (...)

For internal necessity of population control nation-states will primordially transform into dystopian governance systems that maximize the use of technology to out-compete their citizens wages and to lower the workers’ social expectations. (…)

The strategy of Western big capital holders targets a worldwide radical reset in the following fields :

the relations between labor and capital (capital has already won in the West)

human daily life (hyper-individualism leading to social Darwinism and societal atomization)

the standing of nations (a state governance that is captive of transnational big capital holders)

the relations between nations (geo-political power-play to impose a financial system controlled by these transnational big capital holders)

What this grand strategy entails is a grab of a greater share of existing assets by big capital holders that is intended to force a drastic reinforcement of neoliberalism and austerity which, if successful, will inevitably lead to the emergence of a new political economy and social system characterized by the following :

big capital and its army of servants are already managing their worldwide holdings free of national laws and taxes from tax hide-outs in supra-national islands out of reach of any national legislation. They have full control over, ‒ the decision-making process of nation-states ‒ the international financial institutions and the national banks, at the exception of a small bunch of recalcitrant nations like China, Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, North-Korea, ...

within the borders of the traditional nation-states poverty will increase at levels not seen in the present and we’ll assist at a worldwide acceleration of human misery that will reach unprecedented historical levels

dystopian national governance systems will ensure that ordinary people stay put and submit to the new order

national governance will be delegated to a fringe vassal middle-class of servants that will act as :

a new feudal power within nations : the new vassals, or local representatives of the supra-national class of big capital holders, will impose their authority over the institutions of power of nation-states

managers of the national branches of Multi National Corporations : these vassals will act like yesteryear lords, towering over a mass of peasants who till the land, buying their produce for distribution. They’ll head the corporations in charge of maintaining the infrastructure and manage the factories and offices. Their workers, chosen among the mass of have-not, will be remunerated at third-world starvation level wages.”

This leaves open the question of the international order. What already appears as a certainty at this stage is the following :

Western globalist big capital holders want to find a way to integrate China and other recalcitrants in the Western centric financial order :
All other matters they want to leave to the decisions of the community of nations. The “Great Reset” (21) is a transnational power jig, about the restructuring of the world order, intended to recuperate the energies of the ecologist movement and to propagate a solution to climate change that satisfies the interests of Western controlled transnational globalism. The “Great Reset” is the poster child of the “Davos World Economic Forum” which is a forum managed by, the servants of the globalist big capital holders, the Davos-men :
“The rewards of an increasingly integrated global economy have brought forth a new global elite. Labeled 'Davos Men', 'gold-collar workers' or . . . 'cosmocrats', this emerging class is empowered by new notions of global connectedness. It includes academics, international civil servants and executives in global companies, as well as successful high-technology entrepreneurs.
Estimated to number about 20 million in 2000, of whom 40 percent were American, this elite is expected to double in size by 2010. Comprising fewer than 4 percent of the American people, these transnationalists have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite's global operations.” (22)
But what I find most intriguing is that the ‘globalist big capital holders’, the bosses of Davos-men, have no public presence at all and this fosters all kinds of conspiracy-theories about this transnational social class and the institutions that promote their class solidarity like, ‒ the Trilateral Commission ‒ the Bilderberg club ‒ the Opus Dei ‒ the Free-Masons ‒ the Knights of Malta, among others.

Western nationalist big capital holders have a somewhat simpler vision. What they want can be summed up in 2 points :
As I showed earlier the share of the world’s capital pool, that is controlled by these Western nationalist big capital holders, is insignificant. This is why I do not view them as valid torchbearers of a New World Order.

The pretense, of Western globalist big capital holders, to control the world financial system runs counter to the ambitions of the following actors on the world scene :

the Chinese Communist Party represents the Chinese people who are the ultimate owners of China’s state capital. And it is in this sense that the Western big capital holders are designating the CCP as their real opponent. But China’s economic power and its benign foreign policy has also attracted, in its orbit, other world players :

the biggest among those are Russia and Iran but some European countries are not far behind…

In light of this the opposition, to the CCP of the servants of Western big capital holders, that we have seen flaring up in recent months makes real sense. Their conflict relates to the fundamental question of the ownership of the means of production and of societal governance : ‒ the factories producing goods ‒ the offices rendering services ‒ the distributors of goods and services ‒ the governance by the state institutions. Their fundamental opposition leaves evidently no room for capitulation.

This raise the question of the coexistence between Western big capital holders and the CCP :

both sides think that with time their opponent will eventually be defeated as was the case with the Soviet-Union. The West has assuredly been thinking for decades that the CCP would eventually collapse and that this would be the right time for Western big capital holders to take ownership of China’s wealth and resources. But the CCP’s resolution, to realize the Chinese dream of rejuvenating the nation, came as a shock to Western big capital holders and their servants. They suddenly realized something deeper than capital was at play in China that they were ill equipped to fight. This explains the deluge of acrimonious accusations that Western media have been hurling at the CCP these last few months

while waiting for the collapse of their opponents both sides try to demonstrate the superiority of their societal system. But their chances, in the present historical context, are not equally distributed :
keeping in mind, the conclusions in 1 and 2, one is led to think that within one or two decades China’s economy will be multiple times the size of Western cumulated economies. Seen the reality, of their axioms of civilizations and their Christian worldview, this perspective is not something that is easy to swallow for most Westerners. Some are thus thinking the unthinkable as in 4

some Westerners answer the conclusion of number 3 by saying “if we can’t beat them any longer at our own game then let’s change the rules of the game”. This has been Trump’s gangster way all along. But that way proved to be fatally counterproductive. The rest of the world is indeed taking its distance with the USA which ends up being more and more isolated. This leaves Western big capital holders with the sole alternative number 5

some in the US are thinking that their military is ‘the strongest the world has ever known’ and that war could thus reset the game in favor of the USA. But this is the ultimate unthinkable proposition because, in this day and age, there would be no winner. There would only be devastation. But this is no obstacle in the eyes of the neocons…

The fact of the matter is that in the present circumstances the US military establishment does not appear wanting to participate in a world conflict. They know that they can no longer win a frontal conflict with China, so much more so that, Russia is now standing firmly behind China. In terms of real politics this means that the neo-conservatives (neocon) have fallen outside of the domain of Western political feasibility. In the short to medium term conflicts should thus be restricted to the regional and ultimately be contained there.

In my view we have entered in a very volatile historical process that will not stabilize before ‒ or one of the opponent collapses under her/his own contradictions ‒ or China’s economy grows so overwhelmingly bigger than Western economies that the fact is simply registered by all and life continues under a new foreign relations paradigm.

The way I read, the Chinese leadership’s actions, makes me think that they are strategizing the realization of the latter by :

prioritizing momentarily the strengthening of the nation from the inside economically and culturally

prioritizing the following outside projects :

______________

Notes

1. I first used the concept “The Great Convergence” during the Winter of 2014-2015 while writing my series “From Modernity to After-Modernity”.
I published this series on Weebly but after their take-over by Square they deleted this free blog. By chance I had stored a copy of all my articles on my desktop. I then formatted all this material in book form. You can read my first version of the concept “The Great Convergence” in “From Modernity to After-Modernity. Part 1. Late-Modernity 1”. Chapter 3.3. “The Great Convergence”.

2. “Plan urgently needed to meet threats to human survival" Australian National University, published by Archeology News Network. 20201-04-22
“New report” by The Australian Commission for the Human Future (CHF) which is a body of researchers and concerned citizens dedicated to finding and developing solutions to the greatest challenge in human history – the complex of catastrophic global threats that now confront us all.

3. While writing “From Modernity to After-Modernity” I gradually developed a theoretical model about the basics of life that I systematized in Part 2 – Chapter 4 which, after formatting in book form, gave Book 2. Theoretical considerations. Volume 4. About societal governance and societal evolution. The reasoning in the following pages is based on that model about the basics of life.

4. “What do scientists mean when the say 99% of all species went extinct?” in sk a Biologist, by David Hone. 2007-07-21.

5. Field in physics : “the concept of the ‘field’ in physics” by the Department of Physics & Astronomy of the University of British Colombia :

“Quite generally, a field is defined as some quantity which can vary continuously in some domain (usually in the domain of space and time). (…) The idea that the world might be made of some fundamental elements or types of stuff is of course very old (certainly older than the pre-Socratic philosophers, where we first meet it discussed in detail). However a radically new idea began to emerge when physicists unraveled the nature of electromagnetic phenomena, in the work of Faraday and Maxwell. This was the idea that the fundamental building blocks of Nature were not particles, or atoms, or some similar set of objects localized in space. Instead, the fundamental entities were delocalized fields, spread throughout space and time. As such they have a much more elusive (one might say aetherial) nature - indeed, they are not visible to us directly at all, but only through their effects.”

6. Societal evolution : a domain that parallels the domain of biological evolution but in an accelerating time-frame. I developed the concept in the first 20 articles of my series titled “From Modernity to After-Modernity” that were formatted in book form under the title “A historical overview of societal evolution”. Check “Lessons of history”.

7. See “A historical overview of societal evolution. Clarifying concepts”

8. “What is going on ? Part 2. The cultural context forces human thinking and actions”

9. “Life’s survival is now in question” in Counter Solutions, by Lionel Anet. 2020-07-07

10. “The Pandemic Is Not a Natural Disaster” in the NewYorker by Kate Brown. 2020-04-13.

11. “Human pressure on wildlife increases risk of diseases like Covid-19, study finds" in SCMP by Simone McCarthy. 2020-04-10

12. “Fatal exceptionalism and lack of humility to learn from the Asian example” The Telegraph India by Mukul Kesavan. 2020-04-05.

13. “Rethinking Our Relationship to the Natural World After Covid-19 ” in The Nation by Michael T. Klare. April 3, 2020

14. Climate change, industrial agriculture, destruction of the habitat, the shortsightedness of the human worldview and so many other factors are impacting upon one another :
    • “We cannot ignore the links between COVID-19 and the warming planet” in TheHill by Richard Richels, Henry Jacoby, Gary Yohe and Ben Santer, Opinion Contributor. 20-05-27.
    • “JPMorgan Warns of Climate as a Threat to ‘Human Life as We Know It’ “ in Bloomberg by Katia Dmitrieva. February 22, 2020
    • “Industrial farming of livestock a ticking pathogen bomb, scientists say” in the SCMP by Simone McCarthy. 2020-06-02.
    • “Destroyed Habitat Creates the Perfect Conditions for Coronavirus to Emerge” in Scientific American by John Vidal. 2020-03-18.
    • “l’émergence des maladies infectieuses est directement liée à notre rapport à la nature” in Le Monde by Martine Valo. 2020-04-04.

15. “The Pandemic Could Tighten China’s Grip on Eurasia” in Foreign Policy by Alexander Gabuev. 2020-04-23.

16.   “China Inks Military Deal With Iran Under Secretive 25-Year Plan” in OilPrice by Simon Watkins. 2020-07-06.
       “Is Iraq About To Become A Chinese Client State?” in OilPrice by Simon Watkins. 2020-01-08.
      “China Makes A Move On OPEC's No.2” in OilPrice by Simon Watkins. 2019-10-15.
       “China Just Got Handed The Oil Deal Of A Lifetime” in OilPrice by Simon Watkins. 2019-09-17.

17.   “How the Coronavirus Turned Southeast Asia into China’s Top Trade Partner” by Ralph Jennings. 2020-06-17.
         “China turned to ASEAN to cover US trade dip” in Nikkei Asia review by issaku harada and kyo kitazume, 2020-01-14.
       “China-ASEAN trade continues to boom amid global growth slowdown, uncertainties” in CGTN by Xinhua. 1209-07-23.

18.   Sources :
    • US Trade in Goods with China,
    • China-EU - international trade in goods statistics,
    • 2020/01-06 :

19. “China Bashing in High Gear. Sustained by Western Media” in Global Research by Keith Lamb. 2020-05-31.

20. “Tyranny Without a Tyrant: The Deep State’s Divide-and-Conquer Strategy Is Working” in Global Research by John W. Whitehead. 2020-07-08.

21. The “Great Reset” by the “Davos World Economic Forum”
“Can Davos Man Punch the “Great Reset” Button?” in Naked Capitalism by Lambert Strether. 2020-07-06.

22. “Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite” in The National Interest-Spring 2004 by Samuel P. Huntington. 2004-03-01.

painting and thinking

2020-07-09

First devastating societal blow in Late-Modernity (14)

Part 6. The paradox of humanity’s predicament

6.1. Modernity, is the greatest achievement of humanity but it fosters life extinction

6.2. the shift in the governance-world leads to uncertainties

6.1. Modernity, is the greatest achievement of humanity but it fosters life extinction

6.2. the shift in the governance-world leads to uncertainties

6.2.1. Russia and Central Asia

6.2.2. the Tri-Continental-Area

6.2.3. ASEAN

Notes

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