The Great Turning (10)

9. The Fall of Modernity

At first sight one might think that what is at stake, in these two-thousand twenties, is the rejection of Western hegemony which, the large majority of citizens by now know is entirely geared toward privileging the biggest Western capital owners, their Multi-National corporations, and their armies of servants : — state bureaucracies and their units of force — the intellectuals and scientists — the managerial class — the professionals in charge of those technologies that sustain the systems of state and corporate institutions.

This is certainly not wrong. But such a first observation misses the true nature of our present predicament which resides in the historical processes that started some 5,000 years ago with the reproduction over the long haul of the institutions of power societies which instituted the systemic social inequality that eventually laid the ground work for the eruption, in South-Western Europe sometime after the year one thousand AD, of the paradigmatic shift from religious belief to “the reason” of Modernity.

This paradigmatic shift was one of the most consequential turning points in the history of Homo-Sapiens. And Modernity got celebrated by the world at large for centuries. While its completion is still not in sight, many signs are already pointing to the predicament that it has been fostering all along ! And now that this predicament is sinking in our consciousness the younger generations want immediate action to preserve their future. But those who don’t have a future at stake rebuff at such an action …

What is even more astonishing is that so few of us are aware that such a paradigmatic shift took place at all. While its — historical — cultural — and social significance are shaping the behaviors, the thinking and the actions of all the individuals and their societies, nearly nobody has any inkling that such a paradigmatic shift originated the emergence of Modernity nor that the control of the minds under Modernity reached such profound depths that so few of us are aware that such a paradigmatic shift took place in the first place.

This ignorance explains why the differentiation, between those who own the state decision-making processes and their citizens, is still viewed as the normality of the day in all power-societies on earth. And, whatever my anarchist friends might pretend, the prospect for the citizens to take back the decision-making processes of their societies in their own hands is non-existent.

It would take an institutional collapse, and a complete disintegration of state and corporate systems, for citizens to feel the need for local systems of cooperation. We are not there yet but the prospect of such a catastrophe is certainly approaching very fast as is suggested by the President of France Emmanuel Macron :

“What we are currently living through is a kind of major tipping point or a great upheaval … we are living the end of what could have seemed an era of abundance … the end of the abundance of products of technologies that seemed always available … the end of the abundance of land and materials including water... 

This overview that I’m giving, the end of abundance, the end of insouciance, the end of assumptions – it’s ultimately a tipping point that we are going through that can lead our citizens to feel a lot of anxiety. Faced with this, we have a duty, duties, the first of which is to speak frankly and clearly without doom-mongering”. (1)

Unfortunately President Macron understands the present moment through the lens of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” and its more contemporaneous extensions, “the gamble” and “totalitarianism”, that substantiate the Western contemporary ideology of a rationality that, he thinks, will unveil the path forward for us all. A more detached observation gives us to see a far bleaker reality. The present moment is the outcome of the imposition, during many centuries, of Western Modernity on the world. In other words the predicament of humanity is the natural outcome of the 4 phases of Modernity that I describe in the following chapters :

9.1. Unspoken mental submission to “the reason” of Modernity 

9.2. Slipping into Philosophic rationalism, science, and its liberal militancy 

9.3. The Great Convergence of Late-Modernity 

    9.3.1. Societal atomization, poverty, extreme inequality 

    9.3.2. Peak resources

    9.3.3. Side-effects of Modernity 

    9.3.4. Shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world 

    9.3.5. Resistance of the West to the shift / possible nuclear war 

    9.3.6. A Southern led multipolar world 

    9.3.7. Tentative western ownership grab of the world’s nature 

    9.3.8. The Great Convergence 

9.4. The fall of Modernity

 

9.1. The unspoken mental submission to the “the reason”

One determinant factor has remained entirely unspoken all along Western Modernity. I mean that, the subconscious mental submission, to the logic of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”, has forced the human species to stay put in a mental cage. Rationalism has indeed been instrumental in separating humanity from “the First Principles of Life” since the first conscious transformation of money into capital and this instrumentality — helped capital holders to generate ever more profits — helped societies to hasten their advancement on the road of progress — helped to print the illusion in the individuals’ consciousness that they can free themselves from the constrains of the nature of life.

The paradigmatic shift that emerged in the 12th century, in the minds of the first Frank long distance merchants in the form of “the reason”, was the determinant factor that drove Western Europe ever deeper into the abstractions of rationalism. This world-changing fact has unfortunately been missed by most of us and this includes all Western star thinkers.

The mental conversion to the paradigm at work in “the reason”, first of long distance merchants and then of copy-cats eager to emulate their accumulation of financial fortunes, explains the unfolding of the unfinished process that has gradually shifted the working of Western minds from the belief in a religious authority to a rationalism that is rooted outside of the imperatives of life.

But being outside of the domain of life rationalism never had any scruples to destroy the habitat that sustains life on earth ! Not surprisingly very few have come to understand how the mental conversion to the paradigm of Modernity is the determinant factor at work in the present Geo-political conflict that opposes functional knowings, like Liberal progressivism and internationalism, to holistic knowledge, like national sovereignty and the freedom of action within one’s national borders. The mental conversion to the paradigm of Modernity has nevertheless been the determinant factor in the unleashing of the 6th mass-extinction of life on earth which the Geo-political conflict that I just mentioned is accelerating.

The paradigm of Modernity forced the submission of the minds to its ever more encroaching rationalism which is at the core of the most advanced technologies. Rationalism today promotes the idea of transhumanism as an eventual bifurcation of life from naturally evolving molecular biological processes to the intelligent design of AI robots that self manage and self replicate.

The bifurcation from naturally evolving molecular biology to the intelligent design of AI machines is the ultimate outcome of the ever more encroaching logic of the reason and its extensions, rationalism, and science. But the price exacted by such a post-human intelligent design is the inevitable extinction of Homo-Sapiens which gets rationalized by arguing that the design of AI self-replicating machines is evolution in action which implies that AI machines will be the individual particles of a new self-replicating AI species.

The problem with such a straight-line logic is that it has separated itself from the big picture of the enfolding of reality by “the whole” in which we are merely infinitesimally small particles. And having separated, from the enfolding of reality by “the whole”, the mind is meandering in the illusion of a reality existing outside of its own vital ensemble.

From what we know living species are emerging, thriving, and passing away on the surface of the ensemble earth and most probably on the surface of many other planets. And in that sense their ensemble is vital to living species. Seen from the perspective of the whole it is pure mental “illogicism” to ignore that the reality of living species is enfolding from the contextual settings in their planetary ensemble which is also a sub-system that enfolded from the whole Universe. All sub-systems emerged thus from the contextual settings of the whole. And it is in that particular sense that the whole enfolded them and all their parts.

In light of this it is pure mental “illogicism” to ignore that the enfolding of life, in sub-ensembles of the whole, comes in the form of an activation mechanism. The individuals of all living species are composed of two non-detachable polarities : — the body’s processing machine — the mind or the reflection in the individual self, mostly in the unconscious self, of some processing sequences by the body’s processing machine.

The mind is de-facto nothing else than an interacting polarity, which means that the polarities are complementary, and their constant interaction ceases with the death of the individual or as the outcome of a mental “illogicism”. 

 

But where does this “illogicism” originate from ?

We have seen in “The Continuum of the Societal Cultural Field” that polarities are nondetachable in the continuum of entities. Positing that a nondetachable part, in the continuum of entities, could be creating a reality outside of that continuum is an “illogicism” of the first order in the perspective of a worldview rooted in the idea of continuity.

But in a civilization whose mode of thinking is axiomatically rooted in dualism this “illogicism” is the normality. Opposites are, by the nature of dualism, forced to separate and once separated from their dual track they have to single-mindlessly invent the new narrative of a new societal cycle.

Posthumanism is the ultimate outcome of the extension of the process of rationality to everything there is under the sun that got powered by “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” or one of its later extensions : — “the gamble that is at work in the transformation of debt into capital” — “the totalitarianism that is at work in the transformation of nature into capital”. Post-humanism is thus the ultimate axiomatic development that announces the death of Western Modernity.

What is always left out of the conversation by post-humanists is that self-replicating AI machines are not new organic living species that are interconnected with all the other organic living species. They are at best material artifacts that mimic life which contrasts with living species which are part of the dominion of life. In light of this the post-humanist pretension to transform life into a material artifact that mimics life is laughable at best.

But what is the impact of such material artifacts on life ?

We just saw how they run counter to the “first principles of life” that are the founding tenets of all sane societies that respect the primacy of biological evolution. In that sense post-humanism, as the ultimate stage of development of rationalism, signifies a rupture with the continuity of life. At this point we have to remember that post-humanism is a mental signal of the insanity that got Western societies overwhelmed.

In other words the West has terminally lost touch with “the First Principles of Life”. And that explains why the protagonists of “the reason”, rationalism and science want to hide the enormity of what their belief ultimately entails. They are indeed so thoroughly convinced about the truth of their ideological constructs that they have no longer any qualms whatsoever to unleash their societal madness in order to shut down any reasoned conversation.

It just goes to show that the implications, of the logic at work in the paradigm of the “reason”, run far deeper than the satisfaction of the privileges of the biggest capital holders. The fact is that the submission, to a rationality rooted in factors originating outside of life, is following a path that is eerily similar to a carcinogenic process.

As we are now discovering this mental conversion has already set the human species on a road to extinction. The dysfunction, of the synaptic processing in the brains of Western elites, has not only driven postmodernism and post-humanism it has upset the balance of the bio-Geo-chemical processes of the earth which underpinned the climatic stability of the last 12,000 years !

In their panic Western elites now seem to be toying with the idea of speeding things up. We hear talk of : —preemptive nuclear strikes against the "evil Russians and Chinese" that would undoubtedly result in a nuclear winter and what is flabbergasting is that such madness is entertained by some members of the US congress ! — the generation of chaos to procure the necessary fog to hide the transformation of nature into Western capital.

The "the paradigm of modernity" should thus be understood as a system of reasoning, that not only originated outside of life, but that also has no concern for the advancement of life. And in light of this, I wonder if the generalized state of popular indifference toward the necropolitics of Western societies, in this late modernity, is not the ultimate natural outcome of modernity. But that's a whole other question.

My purpose here is to question Modernity from the more holistic perspective of “the First Principles of Life” (2) that were originated by the animist (wo)men of knowledge and that got further expanded by the philosophical school of the Dao.

When “the reason” emerged in the 12th century, as is attested by the emergence at the Champagne Fairs of the old French notion of “capital” instead of invoking “the precautionary principle” to test or inquire about its possible side-effects the authorities of Champagne, by the end of the 12th century, rushed in an all-out effort to define the legal and financial rules of the mercantile game of long distance exchanges which gave a decisive boost to the circulation, in the whole of Europe, of ideas relating to “capital”, letter of Credit, commercial law and so on.

This shows how from very early on Modernity was running in parallel to the religious worldview. Its unique objective was to generate an accumulation of capital by reproducing the capital base and generating profits. And this process of accumulation got equated to progress. Generating progress through complexification is not questioned here. What is questioned is the singularity of that target that dismisses the dance between individuals and societies which addresses the balancing between complexification and societal reproduction that are at the heart of “the First Principles of Life”.

 

 

9.2. Slipping into Philosophic rationalism and its liberal militancy

Five centuries after the emergence of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital” the philosophers of the enlightenment, and the classical economists, were stuck in the continuity of this Western European rationalist mental drive to trade and to process material stuff which had been instrumental to the generation of returns on investments that procured the ultimate richness of the Western European biggest capital holders.

As their predecessors the philosophers of the enlightenment were stuck in this mental drive to accumulate richness and in this continuity they missed to detect the fundamental transformation of the human vision of the world that the paradigm of Modernity had impressed, over the last 6 centuries, on the individuals and their societies. This is how they failed to notice that the traditional holism of knowledge had been substituted by a specialized system whose function is to form instrumental knowings.

In the context of effervescence of the 18th century, that was rooted in the continuity of the mental drive of their predecessors, they felt compelled to boost the instrumentality of the process of knowledge formation that had already started earlier. And this is how the traditional process of knowledge formation got irremediably broken into pieces to better satisfy the specific demands of knowings by those who financed their scientific enterprise.

These specific knowings got stored in silos of specialization that rapidly expanded the instrumentality of science at increasing the profits of its financiers who were by then engaged in a harsh competition to mechanize the spinning and weaving of wool and cotton cloth that launched the industrial revolution in Britain. And from then on the rationalization of the instrumentalization of knowledge continued to expand by leaps and bounds.

The following quote illustrates one of those leaps that originated the quantification of the social sciences which resulted in their instrumentalization to the political needs of capital holders for social control in Western societies that were entering the spectacle of mass consumerism.

"Quantitative social science launched its invasion of American history during the years 1957 to 1961.

… In a paper delivered in 1957, two Harvard economists, Alfred H. Conrad and John R. Meyer, reinvigorated the discussion of an old historical problem and initiated the new "econometric history" by demonstrating the profitability both of slavery and of applying modern economic theory and techniques to history." (3)

The irony, that "econometric history" demonstrated the profitability of slavery, is not lost on anyone I suppose. But all irony put aside this is an example of how the rationalization of the instrumentalization of knowledge at the service of capital holders opened the daily culture of Western societies to its possible capture by “the reason” and its extensions rationality, and science.

Rationalism, in the 18th century, proved to be the most potent instrument of capital in devising mercantile strategies to avoid the exit of gold and silver from Western countries particularly in Britain. This is also when a militancy arose among capital holders, and in university circles, that glorified both capital and rationalism while dismissing the dogma of Christianity and of conservatism. This militancy focused primarily on the following 2 ideas :

1. The consent of the governed versus the divine right of kings --> democracy and rationalism
   
   In the wake of the legendary freedom of the Franks Western capital holders, who had accumulated fortunes through long distance commerce since the 13th century, had come to resent the power of the nobility and the clergy that constrained their freedom of enterprise.
   
   At the end of a cycle of pauperization of the French population at large the French revolution terminated the privileges of the church while capital holders and intellectuals emerged on the political scene clamoring for a representation of their interests in the decision-making process.
   
   Intellectuals focused on — the consent of the governed — representative democracy — market freedom — Laissez-faire — property rights — rule of law — due process — etc …
   
   The French revolution evolved in a separation of church and state while instituting a representation of big capital holders, and big land owners, in the political decision making process. The French model got emulated far and wide while under the reign of Napoleon measuring systems and the civil law were unified that influenced the working of Europe’s continental state systems.



2. Free markets and non state intervention --> liberal market economics and free trade
   
   By the 18th century European long distance merchants were striving to find sources of investments in their countries of origins which they viewed as safe havens in contrast with the countries where they extracted their profits.
   
   They found an opening to their concerns more particularly in Britain. The Brits had assuaged the place of religion in the political decision-making process along the past century, and while the French were absorbed by their political revolution, British rationalism and mercantilism came to their rescue. In the 2nd part of the 18th century the British merchants, the nobility and the clergy, found common ground on the necessity of investing in local productions to substitute imported goods from India and China in order to counter the flight of silver and gold to those countries…
   
   Intellectuals focused on — market economics — market and trade freedom — the Wealth of Nations and their comparative advantage — state non-intervention — property rights — rule of law — etc …
   
   While the French were absorbed in their political revolution the newly found common ground of the 3 national estates in Britain gave way to the industrial revolution that rapidly increased the wealth of the country while growing its imperial advantage.

It is in this ideation context of “democracy and rationalism” and “liberal market economics and free trade” that Liberal parties imposed their presence on the political landscape in the 19th century. But with the growing influence of socialist thinkers a social-liberal wing divided traditional liberal parties until, sometime at the turn of the century, they left to create socialist parties. The Bolshevik revolution of 1917 then inflated the left wing of socialist parties that upon ideological clarification quit to form communist parties. This evolution of ideas forced Western elites to adapt their policies but the real ultimacy of the societal impact, of “the reason” and Liberalism, only starts to dawn on us with the discovery of the predicament of humanity that is unleashed by “the Great Convergence of Late-Modernity”.

 

 

9.3. The Great Convergence of Late-Modernity

The Great Convergence of Late-Modernity is the convergence and the interaction, within the short time-span of Late-Modernity (approx. 1980-2030), of the following societal categories :

9.3.1. Societal atomization, poverty, extreme inequality

9.3.2. Peak resources

9.3.3. Side-effects of Modernity

9.3.4. Shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world

9.3.5. Resistance of the West to the shift / possible nuclear war

9.3.6. A Southern led multipolar-world order

9.3.7. Tentative western grab of the ownership of nature

9.3.8. The Great Convergence


The convergence, among these different factors, initiated interactions among them which forced feed-back loops that accelerated the passing of tipping points into the unknown from where we now discover that there is no way back to the preceding state.

In other words the great convergence of Late-Modernity is pulling humanity in situations that are littered with unknown existential risks for which we have no known answers ! All this engages societal management in a day to day mode that separate us from the long haul perspective of life.

 

9.3.1. Societal atomization & extreme inequality

Western Modernity confused its societies while forcing them to adopt an ever more individualistic approach that crashed into a new vision of reality, conceived as specialized interlocking bits and pieces, that science had first confined in its silos of specialization and that Postmodernism later amplified into a societal belief rejecting all foundational narratives.

In this collision of individualism, with a new vision of reality conceived as bits and pieces, 2 factors got intertwined that enfolded the emergence of societal atomization :

1. The disintegration of the grand narratives, of the 2 important Western worldviews of the 20th century that were Christianity and Marxism, resulted in a void of meaning that unglued and separated the individuals from one another which isolated them in a state of mental loneliness



2. Social media instrumentalized the individuals’ mental loneliness in order to capture their eyeballs so as to suck information from them that could be monetize but, as has been observed recently, this came at the social cost of a rabid individualism that shuts down the individuals’ patience to listen to the others which transforms them in keyboard warriors.

This combination of mental loneliness and rabid individualism irremediably separates individuals from one another and from their societies. It is as if the atoms of “H” and “O” had suddenly detached from each other and had started acting independently, which would imply the sudden disappearance of water. As long as, they are bound by the constrains of chemistry and physics, the atoms of “H” and “O” are keeping water stable. The same can’t be said of human societies !

Daily-culture is the synchronization of the individuals’ perception about the context of the day with the continuum of their societal cultural field. Over the last half a century, in the West, this synchronization terminated the foundational narratives, of Christianity and of Marxism, and this unglued the minds of the citizens which resulted in a rapid societal atomization.

As a consequence the cohesion of Western societies has literally disappeared. They lost their capacity to act as “unified entities”. Only the memory of the past keeps their institutional skeletons momentarily in place. But the disaffection of the younger generations, who in their large majorities during this Late-Modernity are forced to live in abject poverty, is irremediably placating the viability of their societies’ institutional skeletons !

Notwithstanding such a societal calamity Western elites are still dancing to the 'woke' tunes of their 3-letter agencies while shouting insanities at Russia and China whose leaders fortunately have the wisdom to stay cool, while patiently waiting for the collapse of Western societies, thus momentarily avoiding an Armageddon that could wipe out humanity.

But the Western institutional skeletal remains have lost any capacity to act as the cohesive societal entities that they were in the past and the individuals’ memory is not going to resuscitate these faculties. Western societies today are no more than amorphous masses of disconnected individuals who believe that they know better than anyone else in all matters. And in their incapacity to listen they incessantly accuse each other and their traditional authorities of incompetence and more.

The mishandling of Covid-19 by the West, and the US incapacity to win any of the wars it has engaged in over the last decades, amply demonstrates the sheer incapacity of such societies to act as cohesive entities.

Bizarre as it may seem the risk of societal atomization is something that Laoze (Lao tze) had intuitively perceived and he repeatedly insisted in the “Dao De Jing”4 on its root causes which he thought was an encumbering of the brain by knowledge. I had struggled from 1970 till sometime around 2014 with his recommendations, at the attention of public decision-makers, to keep their citizens into ignorance by avoiding sharing knowledge with them.

Nobody, that I know of among the many analysts who have focused their attention on the “Dao De Jing”, has argued about the significance and the meaning of this particular aspect of Laoze’s thinking which focuses on 2 factors :

1. The preference for small societies


2. Keeping citizens into ignorance

While I started to write about societal atomization sometime around 2014 it downed on me that the formation of societal cohesion, that was at the core of tribal life, was also at the core of Laoze’s thinking about the Chinese Zhou empire that he served as a librarian.

Contrary to tribal societies the societal cohesion of the Zhou imperial confederation was extremely low. The local kingdoms used that weakness to affirm their primacy. Observing this reality Laoze expressed his preference for small societies. It is most probable that this preference was linked to the vague memory, about tribal societies, that subsisted in the oral transmission, about the Chinese sages who served as their (wo)men of knowledge. This oral memory formed indeed the substance of the Chinese early writing that was stored in the imperial library.

In other words Laoze referred to tribal societies as the ideal model of society. He contrasted the piece of mind and the cohesion of such small societies with Confucius’ praise for the ever enlarging societies of the mid-third millennium before present that occasioned bickering and incessant conflicts.

Small tribal societies had proven the world over, for tens of thousands of years, that power was not a necessity to govern societies. The (wo)men of knowledge had been their sole institution and they were in charge of helping tribesmen to avoid suffering and be content. The traditional animist knowledge, and its secret transmission from generation to generation, remained in practice among local (wo)men of knowledge.

This animist practice was adopted by Buddhism in India approximately in the time of Laoze and Confucius’ lives. This shows that the idea of keeping the population in ignorance was still largely shared at the time. So Laoze's idea of “keeping citizens into ignorance” was most probably a memory reliquary of the practices of ancient Chinese sages.

 

9.3.2. Peak resources

 
The application of “the reason” has generated a huge demand for commodities that are produced from natural resources. At first the easiest to attain are extracted and gradually the extraction becomes more difficult and more costly. The phenomenon of peak resources has been well documented among other by the US military (5). It concerns the stage after the extraction of the first half of the deposits of any given resource.

The remaining last half of deposits are ever more difficult and costly to extract. Increasing extraction costs eventually push the sales prices of commodities over the top of what consumers agree to pay. Demand first stabilizes then starts to fall. This is generally when new competing processes start to replace the demand for the peaking resource. The best example of such a process is the present peak of fossil fuels that encourages all kind of new approaches to produce energy resources.

Peaking resources concern all kinds of raw-materials and energy resources. The elements in yellow in the following graph (6) are at risk of not satisfying future demand.

Fossil fuels like coal and oil have peaked sometime between 2015 and 2020, and their emission of anthropogenic gases have furthermore fostered strident calls to abandon them. This offered an opportunity for competing renewable technologies like sun and wind electricity generation. But as Elon Musk stated recently :

"Realistically I think we need to use oil and gas in the short term, because otherwise civilisation will crumble," Musk told reporters on the sidelines of the conference. Asked if Norway should continue to drill for oil and gas, Musk said: "I think some additional exploration is warranted at this time. One of the biggest challenges the world has ever faced is the transition to sustainable energy and to a sustainable economy," he said. "That will take some decades to complete." (7)

But the limited deposits of lithium contrast with the gigantic demand from the transportation sector. And the fact is that the transition from fossil fuels to renewables necessitates a new cycle of production of solar panels and wind turbines that can only be satisfied by a new cycle of increased use of fossil fuels. And a third problem is going to arise soon with the 20 years cycle of solar panels that have to be dispensed with.

For all these reasons some researchers are already clamoring that the renewable energy sector will never be able to replace fossil fuels (8). Whatever is the fate of renewables, in replacing fossil fuels, the fact is that transitioning to another system is never an easy feat.

Peak fossil fuels is accompanied by peak resources. We live on a finite earth and the human population growth is imposing ever higher demands for resources : — metals — minerals — drinking water — forestry products —agricultural products — etc… All resources, in each of these categories, will necessarily peak sooner or later. Many of them have already peaked or will soon which implies higher costs and the search for substitutes.

Humanity’s hunger for resources has reached the point of over-using the earth’s renewable resources. We are just halfway through the year, and humanity has already used up all the resources the Earth can sustainably produce. From now on, we are borrowing from the future.

By July 28, humanity will have used up all the natural resources that the Earth can sustainably regenerate. For the rest of the year, mankind will be inflicting an unsustainable toll on the planet, according to the calculations for Earth Overshoot Day. 

"It's like if you spent all your money by July 28, and then the year you live off deficit spending. It's actually even more serious because with money, you can print or borrow it. With resources, we can borrow from the future as well, but we cannot print them,"  (9)

The problem with overshoot is that at a certain threshold the supply of resources becomes unstable and prices increase wildly which is followed by the destabilization of societies.

 

9.3.3. the side-effects of Modernity

 

The side-effects of Modernity are processes caused by the externalities that the profit logic of “the reason” has rejected in the habitat of life or directly in the food, drinks, and pharmaceuticals that are absorbed by the individuals.

Among the most destructive side-effects figure the following : — industrial agriculture leaves the soil bare which eases the running of top soils that, in turn, shrinks the fertility of agricultural land and reduces the quality and quantities of harvests — the chemical pollution of air-water-soils directly impacts the molecular bio-chemistry of the individuals of multiple species which weakens their metabolism and threatens their species with extinction.

Plastic nano-particles, for example, have been observed to penetrate the cells of human babies and scientists barely started to inquire what will be the consequences. They immediately observed some problems but the bulk of the impact of plastic nano-particles on the biology of life is still unknown. So one of these days we could possibly be informed that plastic particles have put our species on the line of extinction.

The question that immediately comes to mind is why are scientists always ignoring the impact of their discoveries. And a more pointed question that must absolutely be asked is why are scientists always escaping the responsibility of the side-effects of their discoveries ? I think here not only about the responsibility of those scientists working on the enhancement of the power of viruses and bacteria to damage the health of humans and other species but more generally of all the scientists who procure their knowledge to corporations.

The example of plastic, whose nano-particles are now invading the cells of human babies, comes directly to mind. These questions just show the profound perversity that is at the root of “the reason” and the rationality of Modernity. This perversity now extends to the whole domain of science.

 

 

9.3.4. The shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world

The center of gravity of the economy-world has been shifting to East-Asia over the last decade while the West got destabilized by internal contradictions like — the benefits, of national productivity growth, go exclusively to the 1% — de-industrialization leaves only available poorly paid shit jobs — record historical levels of social inequality provoke a massive flight of haves-not from these shit-jobs — haves-not retreat en masse into localism and crafting — First world infrastructure transforms into Third-world infrastructure — corruption becomes generalized — falling levels of security increases the anxiety of the citizens — falling levels of life expectancy are tipping points signaling negative societal progress — societal atomization, and the impossibility of Western nations to act as one “whole entity”, signal old age or approaching death— etc …

The natural shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world destabilizes the governance-world at a time when, — the earth’s health is weakening — the side-effects of Modernity are weakening societies and individuals — and the peaking of resources are limiting further progress. All these factors are so many urgent call on countries that it is past time to sent their representatives to the negotiation table where answers and models of cooperation have to be found in order to implement them worldwide.

But the fact is that in the present Geo-political moment the countries on this earth have reached such levels of enmity that a new world order imposes itself as the priority of the day. Unfortunately, if the world’s problems have to wait, for a new world order, to be solved, these problems could possibly have terminated human life before such an order materializes…

 

9.3.5. Resistance of the West to the shift

The West feels it is being destabilized by the shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world to East-Asia. During earlier shifts the new center of gravity always remained Western and Christian. But even that did not avoid 2 world wars that terminated the lives of tens of millions.

Today the shift goes from the Christian West to an East-Asia which is not Christian but is mostly rooted in animism, Confucianism, and Islamism on its Southern and Western shores. So the tension between the West and China as the locomotive of East-Asia will in all probability be extreme.

This transfer of economic dominance to “the other” does not fit in the catalog of Western exceptionalism. After the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine the West was stupefied that the countries of “the global South” had rejected its diktat to sanction Russia. A diplomatic waltz ensued that was confronted locally with recriminations of unacceptable bullying. This was a first during the entire reign of Western imperialism and it shows that the mood of the non-Western world has turned decisively against the West.

Now, that the world economy is entering in a phase of sharp acceleration of the greatest depression ever, the Dollar is made to appreciate rapidly. This immediately threatens some 35 to 50 indebted Southern countries with defaults on their debt charges. Traditionally the West used such periods of financial instability to provoke corporate bankruptcies in defaulting countries that Western capital then grabbed for cents on the dollar. Will this Western strategy be tolerated to operate once more now that the mood has turned so massively against the West ?

Only China could answer this question and the world took notice recently when the country announced it had waived 23 interest-free loans for 17 African countries. But Chinese public and private lenders accounted for merely 12 percent of the continent’s US$696 billion external debts in 2020. Having said this China’s action sets an example that suggests similar actions should be demanded from Western lenders.

The small proportion of China’s loans to African countries also suggests that the coming defaults of African countries have to be attributed to the trap set by Western lenders and their International financial organizations. Even if China was willing to waive the totality of its loans African countries would not escape their financial difficulties. This suggests that saving these countries would only be feasible by rejecting all loans contracted with Western or Western controlled institutions.

This is something that had been proposed earlier by Russian Geo-political analysts. But such an initiative could only be undertaken after the Global South has massively subscribed to a new set of global institutions which does not seem to be in the card within the foreseeable future. Having said that it is most probable that discussions will effectively start to cancel Western loans the day after the Global South has massively subscribed to a new set of global institutions. But realism wants us to recognize that we are not there yet… and as I indicate elsewhere a new world-order impulsed by the Global South should not be taken for granted, for, it's a long process that's littered with many obstacles…

The troubles between the West and the Rest started as early as the Crusades. In “The Continuum of the Societal Field” I expounded the theory of “the axioms of civilization” as the determinant factor causing the West to initiate conflicts with different people. In short Western axioms of civilization engage a dualistic vision of the world that forces a view of “the other” as not being really human nor really being civilized. Having thus painted “the other” Western propaganda scapegoats “the other” for all the evils that restrain the advancement of its own nations.

China got thus accused of : — unleashing Covid-19 on the world — stealing US technology — committing a genocide against its Uighur minority — stealing the freedom and democracy that Britain had procured to Hong Kong — hamstringing Southern countries into debt-traps — and so on and on. Russia is more generally accused of imperialism and the desire to annex its neighbors by force.

Dualism places Westerners on the side of god and of good while placing the other on the side of evil and the devil. In such a vision of the world, not only is “the other” scapegoated for all Western internal failures, it also is painted as the aggressor on the international scene even if the West de-facto just killed 20 million people in its latest military interventions in countries of the South.

In such a context news has rapidly turned into propaganda and now nobody is sure any longer about what is true and what is false. This fog of war isolates the individuals in bubbles of sheer uncertainty and fear prepares them to accept whatever folly those in power will decide to unleash upon them. This was at least how things have been working until recently.

But with the advent of fast speed web interconnections the individuals are indeed able now to find escapes routes in all kinds of apps from gaming, to sex, to local homesteading and other acts of resistance against the representatives of hegemony, etc… So a set of questions is nagging Western decision-makers today that are flowing along the following lines : — How long do they have before popular resistance occupies the streets of their nations and hangs them to lamp-posts ? — How far does the use of force need to go to incentivize their populations to stay put ? — How to cancel fractious individuals by using new technologies ? — and so on.

So we come to understand that, while Western decision-makers started resisting China’s economic ascent and all those who were on China’s side, their legitimacy was rapidly melting away because they had forgotten the golden rule of the exercise of power which is to serve the interests of the people. Western decision-makers ignored their people and year after year social inequality got more extreme while poverty became rampant and people started to flock on the streets shouting that their politicians are illegitimate. This kind of story always ends in violence and totalitarian adventures…

 

9.3.6. a Southern led multipolar world-order

Since some time already a one-bullet theory is overwhelming the alternative media. This one-bullet theory posits the following certainties :

1. The Western world-order is irremediably collapsing


2. A new world-order is in the making at the initiative of the Global South


3. After this new-order is in place the North, which represents 15% of the world population, will face 85% of the world population

I do not subscribe to such a dualistic vision. Part 2 of this text conveys one scenario, among many other, that could derail this dualism. This Part 9 furthermore sketches the complexities characterizing the present moment and indicates that the 3 certainties in the one-bullet theory of the alt-media have a very low probability to ever make it in the reality.

For one the alt-media fails to grasp the central role that China plays in the present rout of the West. Take China out of the equation and their entire mental edifice falls flat. From my perspective, here in Beijing, it has furthermore become evident over the last few months that China’s path is not set in stone.

The coming 20th CPC National Congress will open on Oct 16th in Beijing and, apart from electing the members of the new CPC Central Committee and the new CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Congress will also most probably adjust existing policies. The world will experience radical changes over the next five years and decisions have to be taken to better position the CPC in the face of its tentative strategic suppression by the US. In light of this the priorities of the country are going to be adjusted by giving priority to the following :

1. Internal circulation
   
   The internal circulation is going to be strengthened by continuing to push the development of the central and Western parts of the country. A higher percentage of GDP will be dedicated to science and technology and the management of grants and loans will be re-organized. The real-estate sector needs to be cleansed of the debt excesses of its private developers and an answer, to the demand for social housing, will gain priority.
   
   But what is most interesting, in light of the increasing Geo-political contradictions is that, special attention will be given to the further development of the communication channels running to the Western border. Expecting ever more suppression initiatives from the West China will privilege the further development of its land corridors to its Western border that are destined to be connected to further corridors outside of the country. These external corridors will interconnect Eurasian nations while opening China’s access to Africa and to Europe as indicated in 3 and 4 here after (freeways, high-speed rail tracks, and high speed quantum cryptography internet).



2. ASEAN
   
   ASEAN is already the most important trade and investment partner of China and it is China’s priority over Europe and the USA. Decision was already taken to develop autonomous supplies chains in all sectors and China’s supply chains will extend to its ASEAN neighbors thus gradually forming a Chinese cultural and economic sphere that counts some 2 billion people.



3. Southern and Western Eurasian corridors to Africa
   
   Past China’s Western border the central and Southern corridors will gain priority in order to ease the communications and transportation of goods to Africa and to Europe. The countries along those corridors will receive priority investments from China and, at the image of ASEAN, will become its industrial extensions on “the flying geese” model of Development that had been initiated, in the nineteen thirties, by the Japanese economist Akamatsu (10). The countries along the Southern and Middle corridors total a population of some 600 Million.



4. Africa
   
   Africa is destined to eventually surpass Europe and the US in importance for China’s trade and investments (11).
   
   
   
   
   The increase in trade with Africa was 35% from 2020 to 2021 and is expected to reach a little over 40% from 2021 to 2022. The rapid annual increases in trade, Africa’s rapid GDP and population growth (1.4 Billion today) are suggesting a huge potential growth in the exchanges between Africa and China that in the coming decades will bring Africa to a top position as a China trade partner.
   
   The growth in trade with Africa is important for China because it will compensate for expected decreases in trade with the USA and with the EU. This is how Africa is viewed by China as being of such a strategic importance. And this is the real reason why the land transport corridors, that evade the strait of Malacca, are taking such a strategic importance for China.
   
   The role of Iran is inescapable here and it will be prioritized to ensure a safe land-route to Africa. Once work starts on Iran’s infrastructure, corridors and ports, both China and Iran are going to ensure the security on the short maritime lines to and from Africa. And a middle and southern corridor will be built connecting Iran to China. Both are necessary to minimizing the risk of being trapped by Western political interference blocking the circulation on one of them.
   
   The 4 first priorities, just mentioned, are inescapable. They shape an economic space, totaling some over 4 Billion people that, from China’s perspective, forms a political and military safe zone. This notion of safety is prime in the Geo-political context of Western Late-Modernity. And in light of this China views the rest of the world as being fraught — or with political and ideological prejudice — or is separated by transportation distances that are difficult to secure in case an open conflict erupts.
   
   



5. BRICS+, SCO, North-East Asia development zone, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), …
   
   The BRICS+ is a core association grouping members from Eurasia, Africa, and South-America. BRICS+ is in charge of regrouping the Global-South while the SCO is engaged in ensuring the security of the Eurasian land-mass while the AIIB is the BRICS financial development vehicle. These organizations are in a rapid development mode and their role is bound to expand along the lines of BRICS+.
   
   The North-East Asia development zone is destined to join China’s 4 priority zones but its development is rather slow due to the geographic centrality of North-Korea in that zone that regroups North-Korea + Russia’s South-Eastern Siberia + Outer and Inter-Mongolia + the 3 Manchurian provinces in North-East China.
   
   The countries interested in participating in the development of this economic development zone are Russia, China, South-Korea, North-Korea, Mongolia, and Japan. The list of participants indicate the strategic role that this zone could play first in de-conflicting and later in unifying the whole of North-East Asia. In the meantime China is investing in infrastructure works to connect Russia’s South-Eastern Siberia and the 3 Manchurian provinces in its North-East.

China undoubtedly favors the one bullet theory espoused by the alt-media but the country’s millennial governance experience has imprinted in the minds of its political leaders the idea that the country has to remain open to all emerging opportunities. In light of this openness to the future, if the Global South succeeds to set up a new world-order, the West would have to choose — or to fight to destroy the unity of the 85% (12) — or to participate in a community of nations sharing a common future. But if, for whatever reasons, the Global South does not succeed to set up a new world-order China’s path will already have been traced.

The adjustment of priorities by the 20th Congress has to be understood in that particular light.

 

9.3.7. the west generates a fog of war to hide its grab of the world’s natural resources

I exposed in Part 2 the new capital formation strategy of Western big capital holders which is “the totalitarianism that is at work in the transformation of nature into capital”. The most flipping, to anyone who has grasped what is at stake, is the observation that the elites in charge of the decision-making process of all nations on earth share a vaguely common conviction in the tenets of Western Modernity.

"Both the West and the Rest presently subscribe to the same paradigm of Modernity that emerged in 12th century Frankish Western Europe which then morphed in the nineteen-seventieths into “the gamble that is at work in the transformation of debt into capital” ! The terminal episode of Late-Modernity is still hanging in the air and will most probably reach its conclusion sometimes during the coming thirties." (see 5.3.2 The Great Turning (06))

 The revolution of the nineteen-seventies, that propelled the societal phenomena of — Neo-Liberalism — postmodernism — globalization — and financialization, proved that to be successful a planned radical change must avoid getting debated publicly. The resulting secrecy shaped the right context to organize the systematic conversion of the minds, to the globalization of the reach of Western capital holders, that was necessary to ensure the participation of Western citizens to the dismantling of their own living conditions. 

 

Western workers thus willingly trained Southern workers to use the equipment in their factories and agreed to disassemble this equipment and to package it for shipment. And once the equipment had been shipped they got fired ! 

 

To keep their populations quiet Western politicians promised them better paying jobs that never materialized. And over the next 40 years the income of the, blue-collar and white-collar, working class got detached from national productivity gains while the cost of living continued to rise and wages were frozen. But everybody was nevertheless content because the price of daily commodities produced in Southern countries were constantly falling. 

 

 The Great-Recession of 2008 changed all that. But it was too late by then to oppose what had taken place in the nineteen-seventies. I fear that we are living in the same movie once more. The same techniques are being used to manipulate the populations into acquiescence to existential changes that will radically worsen their daily lives. In the present case the strategy of Western big capital holders is to push the application of “the totalitarianism that is at work in the transformation of nature into capital” with the least possible societal frictions. 

 

But such a move is in another league all together than what was “the gamble that is at work in the transformation of debt into capital”. So while also based on the greatest secrecy and the absence of public debate, the tactical implementation of the strategy necessitates a far more aggressive approach that I qualify as totalitarian. 

 

I have been a semi-conscious witness of the strategy implemented in the revolution of the nineteen-seventieths which is why I’m particularly sensitive to the revolution that Western big capital holders have in mind nowadays. In the way, I see things standing today, the strategy of big capital holders relies on the following principles :

1. Their plans are kept in the greatest secrecy


2. Without knowledge of what is going on there is no public debate


3. The proposition to transform nature into capital is so life changing that it has to be imposed by totalitarian means


4. The implementation of totalitarianism can only be done through treachery which means that while its promoters stay mute about their undertaking they preach about democracy and human rights for “the others”.


5. Sowing chaos appears to be a smart tactical principle — to confuse peoples’ minds so profoundly that they can not even imagine what their eyes are seeing — to frighten them so profoundly that they will acquiesce to whatever the powers that be will order them.

The madness that we perceive to be at work in Western societies today is just that. Chaos is being fostered all around to destabilize the working of peoples’ minds. When nobody knows any longer, what is true and what is fake, people are ready to accept whatever is thrown in their faces.

This is how “the gamble that is at work in the transformation of debt into capital” was imposed in the seventies and this seems the strategy at work today to force acquiescence to “the totalitarianism that is at work in the transformation of nature into capital”.

 

9.3.8. The Great Convergence

All the factors at work in the 7 categories, exposed in this chapter 9.3, are generating feedback loops among themselves that eventually return tipping points which is when the systems that they sustain are shifting their balancing act into new states of equilibrium with outcomes that are unpredictable for humanity and for life on earth.

In light of this complexity ‘one bullet theories’ have demonstrably lost their capacity to explicate the present societal and Geo-political moment that, from the perspective of a holistic approach, appears as one moment in the complex process leading to the inevitable ending of Modernity.

Here are some of the most often cited such one bullet theories :

1. Financialization, and lately the totalitarian transformation of nature into capital, are the forms taken by capital formation in Late-Modernity


2. Over-indebtment, of the societal actors in Late-Modern societies, will invariably lead to massive debt defaults in the West and in the Rest


3. These structural realities were accompanied by increasing levels of poverty that have now reached historical highs which impacts population health and results in falling levels of life expectancy


4. Societal atomization, and the demise of the unity of Western nations, are impeaching them to act as whole united entities which means that they no longer are able of successfully completing large undertakings like a world war or a successful industrial re-shoring


5. The peaking of energetic, and mineral resources, will put the brakes on further industrial development and will gradually provoke a worldwide de-industrialization


6. The abrupt irruption of epidemic diseases … the poisoning of air, water, and land in the human habitat … the corruption of the organic chemistry in the human habitat has expanded to the cellular build-up of the human body … all these factors are attacks against the principle of life


7. The abrupt heating of the climate is pushing the contextual settings of the human habitat outside of the bandwidth of livability


8. All these factors have, in an initial time-frame, shifted the center of gravity of the economy-world to East-Asia with China at the core. This destabilized the Western world-order that reigned from the end of the 2nd World War until recently. The nations on this earth are thus momentarily incapable to offer a global answer to the one-bullet categories expounded upon in this list...


9. And many other known and unknown causes of concern.

All the one-bullet categories, mentioned here above, have plenty of merit by themselves and each one, of them has the capacity to push the contextual settings of the human habitat outside of the narrow bandwidth in which life has been thriving over the last 10,000 years. But in the present moment all these one-bullet categories are converging, interacting among themselves, and rushing toward tipping-points that humanity is not equipped to counter…

I gave a summary graph in “Modernity. 4.6. The Great Convergence of late-Modernity” that indicates how these categories are interacting.

 

We have entered an age in which only multi-bullet categories, that interact, still make sense. And we have to remember that such interactions eventually reach tipping points that are unpredictable and could be fatal for humanity and perhaps even for all life on earth. This means that we are not only in an age that calls for multi-bullets, and interacting theories, more than anything else the present moment is a moment of great uncertainties that calls for the human species to urgently act as one entity that thinks and acts in the best interest of the species.

While I was writing this, yesterday September 05th, Alastair Crooke published an article that illustrates the implications, in the present Geo-political context, of this uni versus multi-bullets theories (13).

In short Alastair’s view is that, by de-facto aligning itself with the uni-bullet theory of climate change, the West has cornered itself in a systemic predicament that isolates it from the Rest which represents 85% of the world population ! I fully agree with Alastair but I feel sorry for him that he failed to mention the ultimate conclusion that is implied in his arguments.

We live indeed in the age of “the great convergence of Late-Modernity” or whatever other formulation that expresses the idea of multiple factors that are interacting and unleashing feed-back loops which hasten the emergence of tipping points which bring us in the unknown. Such is the complexity of the age that it could end with the demise of Homo-Sapiens without us having the opportunity to do anything about it.

Such an age calls for the guidance of First Principles and I personally posit that “the first Principles of Life” are the first among all First Principles. Part 10 is devoted to this need to return to First Principles.

 

 

9.4. The fall of Modernity  (14)

 

 

In principle the future is unpredictable. We know that we don't have the capability to create it. At best our awareness of the future can only be probabilistic. Many paths are indeed present at the different junctures of societal transformation, that humanity is going through presently. But only one of those paths is selected, at each different juncture, as the outcome of the shift engaged at that particular juncture.

This nevertheless leaves open the possibility for humanity to act at each bifurcation point, and to weigh eventually on the scale of change, by favoring one of the possible paths. We know that our weight on the scale of change is insignificant for the good reason that we are such minuscule particles in the cosmic dance. But our insignificance does not mean that we are nothingness.

Reason and rationality have no place here. What counts is logic and pragmatic common sense. Our dream about the future, our ideals and our visions, are what substantiates our human nature and our chance to be given a ticket to the cosmic dance. Think about it in term of the "butterfly effect" in chaos theory. A simple flapping of the wings of a butterfly, on the other side of the world, has the potential to set off a tornado in your local place.

So we come to understand that the dreams, ideals, and visions that substantiate our human nature, while weighing so little, can nevertheless have sufficient weight to sometime influence the balancing act of change. For sure our human nature will not have sufficient weight to influence the balancing act of change at each bifurcation points along our societal path. That would be like wanting to play god. But if we are serious enough and succeed to add the mental weight of enough individuals then perhaps we can really influence the balancing act of change at the most critical bifurcation points along our societal path.

The butterfly effect takes place in the real world so we have to be conscious about the general context in which a bifurcation point is emerging. In other words our human nature has always to be in sync with the realities of our times. The intellectual illusions, resulting from the arrogance and pomposity of modern and postmodern thought, have no place in the determinant realities of this moment.

We are concerned here about societal evolution along Late-Modernity. What we already know for a fact is that this societal evolution will conclude as the outcome of the convergence, between many one-bullet categories, that unmistakably threaten human survival. Such a convergence is a process unfolding over time. If I had to make a logical guess as to the time-span this process is going to conclude, with the emergence of the historical era that I call After-Modernity, I presently would put that turning point between 2030 and 2050. I'm not implying to say here that Modernity will have passed by that time.

What I mean to say is that the convergence of the determinant one-bullet categories, that I mentioned here above, will have forced the whole of humanity to internalize the immensity of what is at work and our perception will by then have turned sour on Modernity while new values and ideas about the working of reality will have started to pervade the minds of the citizens around the world which, in turn, will force societies to adapt to the newly forming paradigm of “the reason that is at work in the First Principles of life”.

As I see it presently to ensure human survival humanity shall, by necessity, have to discourage competition while encourage cooperation in localized settings. By then Western representative democracy will be perceived as a completely corrupt system and it will be superseded by a participatory decision-making process in localized institutions. This process will gradually be eased by the fact that the citizens of localized groups will be sharing a common understanding of reality that, over the decades and centuries, will unify around the same basic pragmatic premises all around the world.

The more Late-Modernity goes forward the more humans will become aware of the signs of After-Modernity that are sprouting in their habitat. As already stated the passage from Late-Modernity to Early-After-Modernity is a process of maturation that spreads over decades. Only once After-Modernity, or whatever it is called by then, has reached the first stages of its stabilization will we eventually have attained a sufficient distance to pinpoint when Modernity actually receded from our societal reality. 

 

Notes      

 

1.  "Macron warns of ‘end of abundance’ as France faces difficult winter", The Guardian, by Kim Willsher. 2022-08-24.

2. See “Modernity. 5.2.1. the First Principles of Life”

3.  “Quantitative Social-Scientific History” by J. Morgan Kousser
For a critique of quantification see “Complexity and the failure of quantitative social science” in Focus, Issue 14, November 4, 2014 by Brian Castellani.

4.  “Dao De Jing”, “Sixty Interactive Translations”, is a not-for-profit production of Mobilewords Limited.

5.  “US Minerals Commodity Summaries”, USGC. Department of the interior.
"Metal minerals scarcity : A call for managed austerity and the elements of hope", in the OIL Drum, by Dr. A.M. Diederen, MSc. TNO Defence, Security and Safety. March 10, 2009

6.  "The Periodic Table of Endangered Elements", Visual Capitalist, by David Cole-Hamilton. 2022-08-31.

"This visualization made by the European Chemical Society (EuChemS), shows a periodic table of these 90 different elements, highlighting which ones are in abundance and which ones are in serious threat as of 2021. " 

7.  "Elon Musk: focused on getting self-driving Teslas in wide release by year-end", Reuters, by Nerijus Adomaitis and Nora Buli. 2022-08-29.

8. "Why mining to make renewables will destroy the planet", Peak Energy & Resources, Climate Change, and the Preservation of Knowledge, by energyskeptic. 2022-08-26.
"Archives: Alternative Energy", Peak Energy & Resources, Climate Change, and the Preservation of Knowledge, by energyskeptic

9. "Earth Overshoot Day 2022: Humanity has already used its resources for the year", This article was originally published on May 4 when Germany reached its Overshoot Day. It's been updated on July 28th for Earth Overshoot Day. Edited by: Tamsin Walker, Sarah Steffen.

10. “Flying Geese Paradigm: Review, Analytical Tool and Application", Munich Personal RePEc Archive, by Widodo Tri. 2007-06-28.

11. Table by Laodan. Data sources : "Trade between Africa and China reached an all-time high in 2021", Quartz Africa, by Carlos Mureithi. 2022-02-08.

12. This is what China seems to suggest in the following article "War-addicted West must stop dreaming of global domination by force". Global Times. 2022-09-06. What is implied in stopping to dream, of global domination by force, is that the sole way forward is to participate in a community of nations…

13."Existential Disquiets: Financial War Against the West Begins to Bite", Strategic Culture, by Alastair Crooke. 2022-09-05.