Part 2. The emergence of Western exceptionalism and its consequences
Northern Western Europe has inherited Christianity after the fall of the Western Roman empire. During the Early Middle-ages, which spanned from the late 5th to mid 10th century, Christianity got confronted with the cultural values of the Franks and by the 10th century it had reconciled with these values by absorbing them. This fusion procured the specificity that distinguishes Western Christianity from the Orthodoxy of Eastern Christianity to this very day.
In the 12th century Western Christianity started to be confronted with the Greek Classics, and the works of Muslim intellectuals, which eventually resulted in the emergence of a Christian humanism in the 13th century that created the conditions for the smooth ride of Modernity along the following 5 centuries while preparing the path to the secular humanism of the Enlightenment.
This part 2 addresses the interweaving of the Frankish cultural values into Western Christianity and its chain of inevitable consequences that are still with us to this day :
2.1. Interweaving Frankish cultural values into Western Christianity
2.2. Nature of the Frankish cultural values
2.3. Consequences of the absorption of Frankish values in Western Christianity
2.4. The spreading of the paradigm of Modernity
2.5. The paradox of Western-Modernity
2.1. Interweaving Frankish cultural values into Western Christianity
The Frankish animist values of forthrightness, and freedom diverged radically from the values of obedience that characterized Christianity.
But both the Papacy, and the Frankish men of power, had a profound political interest in the reconciliation of Christianity with Frankish cultural values :
2.1.1 The papacy
During the era of the Byzantine papacy, that spanned from 537 to 752, the papacy, which had lost most of its territorial realm with the fall of the Western Roman empire, was in need to broaden its base of followers in order to legitimize its religious representativity in its negotiations with the Byzantine emperor.
This stunning turn of events was realized in two phases :
“The Byzantine Papacy was the period of Byzantine rule over the Roman Papacy. ...During this period, popes required the approval of the Byzantine emperor for the consecration of bishops, and many popes were apocliciari (liaison from the pope to the emperor) or elected from the papacy. An inhabitant of Greece, Syria, or Sicily under Byzantine rule, Justinian I reconquered the Italian peninsula in the Gothic War (535-554) and appointed three popes: This practice was continued by his successors and was later entrusted to the Governorate of Ravenna.After the fall of the Roman empire the Popes also defended a “double sword Doctrine” that later procured them the same kind of authority over the confirmation of kings and emperors that emperors of the Eastern Roman empire had enjoyed during the Byzantine Papacy. By early 8th century, Rome replaced the traditional primacy of the emperor, that had been in application before the fall of the empire and later during the Byzantine Papacy, with a theocratic authority that had primacy over secular power !
With the exception of Martin I, no pope of the period questioned the authority of a Byzantine monarch to approve the election of a bishop of Rome before the consecration took place. However, there were frequent theological conflicts between popes and emperors in areas such as monotheism and iconoclasm. During this period, Greek-speaking people from Greece, Syria, and Sicily replaced the Roman nobility as pope. Under the Greek papacy, Rome constituted a "melting pot" of Western and Eastern Christian traditions, reflected not only in liturgy but also in art and Byzantine traders came to dominate Roman economic life. People from all parts of the Byzantine Empire could follow traditional trade routes to Rome, making it a truly "international" city in its composition". (1)
This stunning turn of events was realized in two phases :
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2.1.1.1. Pope Gelasius’ letter to Emperor Anastasius
This letter, written in 494, argued the superiority of spiritual power over temporal power and mentions the following :
"There are two powers, august Emperor, by which this world is chiefly ruled, namely, the sacred authority of the priests and the royal power. Of these that of the priests is the more weighty, since they have to render an account for even the kings of men in the divine judgment. You are also aware, dear son, that while you are permitted honorably to rule over human kind, yet in things divine you bow your head humbly before the leaders of the clergy and await from their hands the means of your salvation. In the reception and proper disposition of the heavenly mysteries you recognize that you should be subordinate rather than superior to the religious order, and that in these matters you depend on their judgment rather than wish to force them to follow your will." (2)
By mid 6th century Rome, Ravenna and Venice had been conquered by the emperor Justinian and these cities came under Byzantine rule while Justinian had also enforced the primacy of the emperor on the Papacy. The discussions, about the 2 swords doctrine and the primacy of the Papacy over secular rule, would thus only restart later with the decline of Byzantium. -
2.1.1.2. The Donation of Constantine
“This is perhaps the most famous forgery in history. For centuries, until Lorenzo Valla proved it was forgery during the Renaissance, it provided the basis for papal territorial and jurisdictional claims in Italy. Probably at least a first draft of it was made shortly after the middle of the eighth century in order to assist Pope Stephen II in his negotiations with the Frankish Mayor of the Palace, Pepin the Short. The Pope crossed the Alps to anoint the latter as king in 754, thereby enabling, the Carolingian family, to which Pepin belonged, to supplant the old Merovingian royal line which had become decadent and powerless and to become in law as well as in fact rulers of the Franks.
The rise of Frankish Carolingian Francia and the decline of Byzantium fostered the conditions for the ascendancy of papal power.
In return, Pepin seems to have promised to give to the Pope those lands in Italy which the Lombards had taken from Byzantium. The promise was fulfilled in 756. Constantine's alleged gift made it possible to interpret Pepin's grant not as a benefaction but as a restoration.” (3)
Byzantium suffered a series of military setbacks and lost control over most of its Italian possessions. The claim of primacy by the Papacy, over secular power, inflamed its relations with Byzantium and the Pope de-facto separated his Western territorial realm from the East while addressing the Byzantine emperor as the "Emperor of the Greeks" while claiming for itself the prerogatives of the emperors residing within the territorial realm of the papacy.
Following the death of Pepin the Short, in 768, his eldest son succeeded him as king of the Franks under the name Charles. Nearly 50 years after having crowned Pepin the Short, as king of the Franks, the papacy, in 800, crowned his son Charles 1 as the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne.
By crowning the first emperor in western Europe, since the collapse of the Western Roman Empire three centuries earlier, the Pope imposed himself not only as the supreme head of the Church but also as the supreme authority over Western European kings and emperors !
2.1.2. The access to Francian power by the Franks
The Franks were a Germanic “Tribal Cultural Confederation” living on the east of the lower Rhine River. In mid-4th century the Franks invaded the Roman territory and took the control of the area between the Meuse and the Scheldt rivers (now Belgian territory) and by 480 they controlled the former Roman province of Germania and two former provinces of Belgicae that expanded into present day North-Eastern France. The Gallo-Roman population assimilated among the Franks, and Latin ceased to be the daily language. The actual linguistic divide of Belgium originated from that time.
In 481 Clovis became the ruler of the Franks of Tournai. He was the grandson of Merovech the founder of the Frankish Merovingian dynasty and he converted to Western Christianity to unite his Frankish population into one nation with the Gallo-Roman population. By 494 the disintegration of the Roman Empire had helped him to conquer the entirety of northern Gaul.
Clovis successors extended their power east of the Rhine and ruled until by the Pope crowned Charlemagne as emperor in the year 800. This crowning symbolized the launch of the Carolingian dynasty which, in association with the Pope, restored the western Roman Empire while spreading Christianity to the north of the Alps.
2.2. The nature of Frankish cultural values
The etymology of the word Frank irrevocably conveys the nature of its peoples' values as well as the exceptionalism that they attached to them.
Here is what Merriam-Webster writes about the etymology of the word "Frank” :
“The word frank comes from the name of the Franks, a West Germanic people who lived long ago. In the early Middle Ages the Franks were in power in France. (It was from them that the country got its name, in Latin Francia.) The Franks eventually merged with the earlier Gaulish and Roman inhabitants, and their name (Francus in Latin) lost its ethnic sense and referred to any inhabitant of Francia who was free, that is, not a slave or bondman. As an adjective, francus came to mean simply ‘free’. From the English adjective frank, which means ‘free’ or ‘forthright’ we get the verb frank, which means ‘to mark mail with an official sign so that it may be mailed free’. “And here is how Etymology Online completes the picture :
“c. 1300, ‘free, liberal, generous;’ 1540s, ‘outspoken,’ from Old French franc ‘free (not servile); without hindrance, exempt from; sincere, genuine, open, gracious, generous; worthy, noble, illustrious’ (12c.), from Medieval Latin francus ‘free, at liberty, exempt from service,’ as a noun, ‘a freeman, a Frank’.The nature of the values of the “Franks” as a conquering class, that venerates freedom, liberty, nobility and greatness, projects an exceptionalist image of power and of nobility that contrasts with the condition of the population at large.
A generalization of the tribal name; the connection is that Franks, as the conquering class, alone had the status of freemen in a world that knew only free, captive, or slave.
... It was noted by 1680s that, in the Levant, this (frank) was the name given to anyone of Western nationality.”
This image is also corroborated by their history of military conquest that fostered the suzerainty system of the European Middle-age power relations.
Knights were at the service of lords who in turn were in the service of a king. Historians generally agree that a knight typically worked 40 days per year for his lord. This practice was well established by the time of Charlemagne who granted lands to the best knights in his territory in exchange for fighting for him. In other words knights were offered the opportunity to ascend to the status of lords owning land.
This principle of suzerainty forged the social relations of the European Middle-ages from the 8th to the 14th century and the minds, of the citizens of Western Europe, are unconsciously marked to this very day by this social relation template.
2.3. Consequences of the absorption of Frankish values in Western Christianity
The reconciliation of Frankish cultural values, through absorption by Western Christianity, substantiated the foundational worldview of the Western civilization. This means that the historical worldview shared by the citizens of all the societies, that later integrated in the territorial realm of the Western civilization, is de-facto rooted in this reconciliation of Western Christianity with the cultural values of the Franks.
This fact is unfortunately deeply concealed under the semantic confusion, that is befuddling the concepts, of — worldview — religion — nation — empire — civilization. And so the profound interrelatedness of these concepts, that was at work along the entire societal time-span of the human species, escapes the perception of nearly all of us (4) which leaves us unaware of our inheritance of the cultural values of the Franks.
But the fact is that the interweaving of the cultural values of the Franks, into Western Christianity, had profound consequences, that shaped the future European Zeitgeist, most particularly during its existential highlights like the crusades which further reinforced these values by making them the foundations of a new Eurocentric normality. The exceptionalism of the Franks, and their deep awareness of self that was reinforced through their Christian conversion, got adroitly exploited by the papacy to launch crusades against the enemies of Christianity for political gain.
"Urban II combined into a new synthesis two elements that were traditionally considered incompatible: the fascination with Jerusalem as a destination for pilgrimage — an aspect of Christian piety — and the warrior ethics of the feudal class inherited from their barbarian origin.The crusades indirectly infused the High-Medieval-Period with a dynamism that generated a remarkable rate of economic growth, and legal, financial, and cultural advancement that culminated with the Northern Renaissance.
...The first character of the crusades is their universality; all Europe concurred in them; they were the first European event. Before the crusades, Europe had never been moved by the same sentiment, or acted in a common cause; till then, in fact, Europe did not exist. The crusades made manifest the existence of Christian Europe.
Through the Crusades, North-Western Europe made a place for itself in history. “Before their inception,” wrote Steven Runciman in his unsurpassed History of the Crusades, ‘the centre or our civilisation was placed in Byzantium and in the lands of the Arab caliphate. Before they faded out the hegemony in civilisation had passed to Western Europe’ “. (5)
In the 13th century Thomas Aquinas furthermore reconciled Christianity's cultural belief, in a truth revealed by God, with the capability of human thought to adapt the material world to human needs. This reconciliation consummated Christian spiritual truth by canceling man to concern himself with the satisfaction of his material needs, thus paving the way for a humanist justification by Christianity of the complementarity between the materialistic use of nature and the belief in the truth revealed by God.
The reconciliation by Thomas Aquinas, of the revealed religious truth with the accommodation of the material world by human thought, opened a 600-year peaceful coexistence between Western Christianity and modernity that allowed the expansion of its rationality.
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By the end of Early-Modernity, in the 18th century, this coexistence got challenged by the militant wing of the Enlightenment. Liberalism was the ideology of long distance merchants who wanted to transform the sterile money accrued to them, through profits realized overseas, into national processes of capital accumulation by promoting the use, of philosophic rationalism, of science, and of investments in national productions. The intellectuals, the scientists and the artists, joined them claiming the primacy of the rationality of Modernity over religious belief.
Thus started a competition, between Liberalism and Christianity for the minds and hearts of Western citizens. The high-point of this competition was attained in the first part of the 20th century with the advent of Modernism but its fall into “whatever is art” was sized as an opportunity by US state propagandists, and their affiliated art merchants, to grab the control of the art world as revealed in “Modernity 02. 1.1. the way of art and 1.2. propaganda & the financialization of the arts”.
The silent revolution of the 1970s, that was initiated by Western big capital holders, then promoted Postmodernism, with the help of their intellectual servants, to smooth the social acceptance of their gambit to expand their reach to the whole world. As a result the populations rapidly got estranged from the Christian revealed truth, and other grand narratives like Marxism. The resulting loss, of big picture narratives, opened the level playing field of culture to the competition of ideas that, at the image of what happens in science, were reduced to bits and pieces of reality.
Without any opposition, from grand narratives, the rationality of Modernity, as the societal system of logic emanating from the paradigm of Modernity, could suddenly flourish unimpeded. But in contrast to holistic worldviews this rationality did not develop a grand narrative shareable by all for the good reason that the paradigm of Modernity is not concerned with the reproduction of the individuals, of their societies, and of the species which had been the “raison d’être” of foundational worldviews since the very start of societal evolution.
But bits and pieces of reality never satisfied the thirst for the trust between the individuals that is procured by sharing a common societal worldview. The approach of reality, through bits and pieces, was merely satisfying the abstraction of transforming sterile money into a process of capital accumulation which originated outside of the first principles of life and, as a consequence, the trust among the individuals rapidly bottomed and the cohesion of Western societies finally tanked.
The silent revolution of the 1970’s accelerated the breakdown of the Western societal contract. Market fundamentalism and social inequality fostered hyper-individualism and loneliness and this particular context appeared as the holy grail to social media technologists in search of an income from their games of power on the WWW. In the process the individuals got glued to their screens and within the span of a short few decades Western societies were atomized which means that they no longer are able to undertake successfully any large scale project like addressing an epidemic, or answering natural catastrophes, or supplying a prosperous economy that satisfies everyone, or even winning wars for that matter.
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The first Medieval Universities were built on the model of “the Muslim Houses of Wisdom”, that the first crusaders encountered in the Eastern Mediterranean while inheriting the corpus of ideas that were in vogue in the cathedral schools which, during the early Medieval Period, had integrated the cultural values of the Franks in Western Christianity.
The interweaving of the Greek Classics, the works of Muslims scholars and the ideas circulating in the Christian cathedrals, rapidly maturated in the 13th century, most notably at the University of Paris, into a Late-Medieval philosophy of Christian humanism that triumphed during the Renaissance. This philosophy was focusing, all along, on 4 core values that portended its later secular evolution :
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1. Individualism
The expansion over centuries of Christianity’s conversion of the Franks by encouraging a direct communication of the individuals with the Christian God resulted in a deep awareness of the self that later morphed into “me me is all there is”, which Margaret Thatcher interpreted to mean that “society does not exist”. -
2. Materialism
The Christian mantra, that God created nature for the pleasure of men, separated them from their natural state of interrelatedness, with all the other elements in the ensemble earth and in the whole, that had so deeply marked the traditional animist belief system. -
3. Freedom
Frankish individual forthrightness foreshadowed the idea of individual free-will that got propagated during the Enlightenment by Liberalism which demanded individual freedom to vote, and popular representation in state decision-making, as a means of procuring an access, to the political decision-making process, for the new social class represented by the capital holders. -
4. Dualism
Dualism is a system of thinking that was rooted in Christian and Frankish irreconcilable opposites, like the Christian opposition of “good and evil or God and the devil”, like the Frankish opposition of “the individuals and their society”, like the Christian opposition of “nature and culture (the Christian culture)”, like the Frankish exceptionalism opposing “Frank conquering free men and ‘the other’ captive or enslaved individuals”, and so on and on.
Such a vision of reality de-facto positioned Western Christians on the side of :
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1. Goodness
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2. The individual
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3. Culture
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4. Freedom
And the difference of “the others” was thus automatically perceived as :
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1. Their adherence to evil (followers of the devil)
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2. Their adherence to the primacy of society (followers of a soulless leviathan)
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3. Their adherence to nature (followers of savagery)
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4. Their adherence to a captive state of mind (followers of the individual’s self-hindrance)
Such a dualistic vision has unfortunately opposed Westerners to “the other” since Frankish cultural values and Christianity got interwoven which, in Frankish Christian eyes, created a perception that the ideas, behaviors and actions of “the other” are in-acceptable. The difference of the other was simply never accepted.
And so the later Western estrangement from Christianity, that was encouraged by Postmodernism, did not erase, from the minds, the vision of reality that had emerged originally from the interweaving of Frankish values with Christianity. This vision of reality remains indeed deeply embedded in the unconscious of all Westerners to this very day which explains that the present rejection, of the natural evolution of Western Modernity principally by the USA, is an irrevocable testimony of its non-acceptance of the difference of “the other”.
Western religious believers and rationalists, followers of right and left, members of the establishment and anti-establishment, all continue to believe to this very day that they are naturally on the side — of good — of the primacy of the individual — of the primacy of culture — of individual freedom — of the primacy of Western culture, all traits that, in their eyes, imply that they are highly civilized. Unfortunately this belief automatically implies, that “the other” is non-civilized.
Is this not the most glaring demonstration of the totalitarian nature of Western culture ? The crudeness of these words does not erase the fact that they offer a hyper-realist picture of the present state of Geopolitical relations. But the fact is that this Western societal logic is merely shared today by less than 10% of the world population. The non-Western countries, that have acceded to industrialization and to service economies, are not really sharing these Western traits !
China’s rise to the top economic spot is fortunately questioning the Western mantra of TINA or “There Is No Alternative” and it is affirming high and loud that “There is Definitely An Alternative” to Western Hegemony after all (TIDAA). And it is TIDAA that has encouraged Russia to master the courage to stand up to NATO and to claim the security of its Western borders. The out of hand refusal by the West to even talk about Russia’s treaty proposals of December 2021 resulted in the February 2022 launch of its Military Operation in Ukraine.
The audacity and arrogance of the West, which then urged all countries to sanction Russia, has provoked such disgust that one country in the South after another resisted Western bullying. For the first time in the history of Geopolitics a Western diktat got rejected without any prior deliberation. This is proof enough that TIDAA is awakening non-Western nations to claim their right of sovereignty and self-determination which is confirmed by their rush for inclusion in the BRICS+.
I hope that after its enlargement the BRICS+ grouping gets renamed as “the United Nations of the South”, or UNS in testimony of these nations’ high hope of attaining a true United Nations of really equal sovereign nations that are free to determine their own future and are free to engage in negotiating solutions for the betterment of the human condition in a shared future.
2.4. The spreading of the paradigm of Modernity
The goods plundered in the Eastern Mediterranean, by the Frank aristocrats who were leading the first crusade, made a splash back home that unleashed a demand of more such goods by the local aristocracy and the high clergy. That demand was addressed to local Frank merchants participating in local and regional markets.
The novelty, and the extreme risks of traveling Medieval roads while carrying gold and silver, caused an illumination of the merchants' minds that was calling for the transformation of sterile money into a dynamic process of capital accumulation. And their mental conversion, to this new paradigm, generated a flourishing long distance commerce of luxury goods as well as the transfer of literature from the Muslim Houses of Wisdom that inspired the creation of the first European universities.
The dualist vision of the world, in the minds of the first Frank long distance merchants, got confronted during the 12th century, to the existential uncertainties they encountered on the long distance roads to the Eastern Mediterranean and the intensity of this confrontation, in their minds, eventually resulted in trance like illuminations about the profound meaning of the new societal paradigm that was implied by their long distance commercial endeavors.
The fact is that the particular contextual settings, that illuminated the profound significance of the new societal paradigm of modernity in the minds of long-distance Frankish merchants, never materialized in any other region and this is the reason why the paradigm of Modernity never spontaneously emerged anywhere else !
In the absence of the particular contextual settings, that illuminated the profound significance of the new societal paradigm of modernity in the minds of long-distance Frankish merchants, the minds of Chinese merchants were never illuminated about the profound meaning of the new societal paradigm of Modernity.
The absence of this particular context in China answers Needham's question as to why Western countries have outperformed China economically in recent centuries. And the reason, for the non-emergence of this particular context resides most probably in the constant monopoly of the State on the modalities of the country’s long distance trade. China’s foreign trade, by land routes or by sea routes, got always settled with foreign merchants in state managed entrepots where the state controlled what entered and what left the country while collecting taxes to sustain the states’ treasury.
Chinese merchants were never free to trade at will with foreigners. This protected them from the kind of uncertainties that exacerbated the risks incurred by Frankish merchants. It was these risks, confronting the cultural certainties in their minds, that provoked their trance like illumination about the deeper meaning of the emerging societal paradigm of modernity ! So by controlling, and protecting its merchants, the Chinese state constantly prevented the exacerbation of risks that might have confronted their cultural certainties and by extension might have enlightened their minds about the paradigm of modernity.
The fact is that the paradigm of modernity emerged exclusively in the Frankish lands of the 12th century. And the interweaving of Frank cultural values in Christianity fostered the Western exceptionalism that forced the ramifications of their Modernity on non-Western-nations whose context was different. The centuries long difficulties of non-Western-nations to adopt this paradigm implies that Modernity was not adapted to non-Western contextual settings which ultimately means that Modernity is not a universal paradigm but is typically a Western-Modernity !
"During their medieval heyday, the Champagne fairs took place six times a year and rotated among four towns – Bar-sur-Aube, Lagny, Provins and Troyes – none of which was a major merchant center in its own right. Each fair lasted for about six weeks, followed by a break for merchants to move on to the next fair, so the Champagne fair-cycle constituted an almost continuous market throughout the year, a notable advantage over many other medieval fairs.I try here after to formulate a definition of the paradigm of Modernity as it emerged in the 12th century. This definition takes in consideration the concepts, that were in use in late 12th century and early 13th century, in the realm of Francia and of the Italian city-states which already participated extensively in the Champagne fairs. Fernand Braudel mentions for example, that in Late 12th century early 13th century, there was already a linguistic distinction between “sterile money” disappearing with a payment, and “merchant money” that fostered a process of capital accumulation (7). In light of all this my formulation of the early paradigm of Modernity reads as “the reason that is at work in the transformation of sterile money into a dynamic process of capital accumulation” where the reason acts as the abstract rationality of Modernity.
... Their early success and international importance have made the Champagne fairs a standard-bearer of the medieval Commercial Revolution, from which many scholars draw lessons about the institutional basis for impersonal exchange and long-distance trade. Economists in particular have drawn lessons from the medieval Champagne fairs for modern developing economies.
... Between 1137 and 1164, merchants from Flanders, Arras, and many parts of the kingdom of France began to attend fairs in Champagne, and by 1174 they had been joined by Italians. By 1190 Italian merchants were visiting Champagne in significant numbers and the annual cycle of six fairs was well established. On this basis, the beginning of the Champagne fairs' European preeminence is usually taken to be about 1180." (6)
The Counts of Champagne promoted this rationality by institutionalizing the implementation of new legal and financial instruments whose acceptance they negotiated diplomatically with other European regions and cities. This institutional standardization by the Champagne counts has to be seen as the single most important factor that determined the unification of the European implementation of early commercial capitalism since the late 12th century. (8)
Once the Champagne region came under the jurisdiction of the conservative kings of France, in 1285, they neglected to promote the rationality emanating from the reason and European merchants rapidly left the Champagne fairs for Flanders where the city of Bruges offered a permanent infrastructure to long distance merchants with living quarters that they could self administer. The Counts of Flanders also offered a legal, commercial, and financial framework that expanded the protection of the interest of long distance merchants from afar.
Over the following centuries the spread of the rationality emanating from the reason greatly increased the material possessions of the long distance merchants and this bewitched the minds of Western European citizens whose envy attracted them to the rationality they observed at work in the practice of their long distance activities. This rationality was understood to foster their financial success And people were thus attracted to learn the secrets of this rationality through education.
By the end of the 11th century a boom in city development had already fostered a burgeoning merchant class that created a demand for skills like reading and writing, for communication with suppliers and customers, and mathematics, for balancing books. That demand had been echoed by the Papal bull of Pope Gregory VII’s that ordered the transformation of cathedral schools into universities.
Monks got most of the teaching positions in Medieval European universities, for the good reason that they were the only ones who could read and write Latin, and they acted as the determinant force advancing the materialist rationality, of the reason at work in the paradigm of Modernity. By the 13th century Thomas Aquinas had proposed that God’s revealed truth be complemented by the human thoughts about the nature of the material world. This initiated a Christian humanism that contained the seeds of the future secular humanism which 5 centuries gave rise to the philosophic rationalism, the science, and the secular humanism of the Enlightenment.
In parallel to the advancement of materialist rationality in the universities the merchants had been forcing and cunning the entire world into submission. The “voyages of great discoveries” and the appropriation of the land of “the others”, under the guise of “the theory of discovery” that was promoted in such papal bulls as "Inter Caetera", procured the legal background and the moral justification for plundering the resources of “the others” and stealing their lands.
Imperialism, and the colonization of foreign lands by Western European nations, got unmistakably its intellectual and moral justification, from Western Christianity, and it was enacted by private capital holders under the protection of the public institutions of their nations of origin. The 3 European estates, the clergy, the aristocracy, and the long distance merchants (capital holders), were indeed closely allied during the 6 centuries of Early-Modernity that came to be known as “the era of commercial capitalism” as well as during the transition to High-Modernity.
Their united stance also played a determinant role during the industrial revolution and it continues to play a determinant, while invisible, role in shaping the mood and dualist outlook of Western populations at large during the present Geopolitical re-balancing.
2.5. The paradox of Western-Modernity
It's only with the benefit of hindsight that we can start to understand how the emergence, of a new societal paradigm in the minds of long-distance Frankish merchants in the 12th century, opened up a new historical era that later came to be known as modernity. An era that revolutionized people’s daily lives. Living in cities forced them into dependence of industrial and services jobs which forced them to purchase all the goods necessary to satisfy their needs and this originated the mass-market for consumer goods.
Today the rapid retreat from Western hegemony is forcing us to reassess the entirety of this historical era. The fact is that the barbaric brutality of the West over the last 800 years has put an end to many civilizations and societies, while killing hundreds of millions of people. This inevitably calls for a new recognition of the interests of all nations.
To satisfy people’s daily needs industrialization has also depleted the earth’s reserves of mineral, metals and energy resources, which increases their prices and threatens their future availability. Human production activities have also generated an accumulation of many side-effects that are converging today and accelerating the unleashing of tipping points by each one of them.
The convergence, of the depletion of natural resources + the numerous side-effects of Western-Modernity + the cultural aberrations of Late-Western-Modernity, like — the elimination of traditional societal worldviews — the cultural rejection of our biological sexual roles — the ideological conversion to transhumanism while ignoring the primacy of our biology, all these factors are rapidly shifting the Geo-bio-chemical state of the earth outside of its traditional life sustaining state.
Our drive toward mass-extinction is caused by the mental conversion of human societies to the paradigm of Modernity, that emerged in 12th century Frankish lands and impulsed a pathological rationalist system of societal logic. The fact that Modernity was so successful in churning out material goods while generating the annihilation of life on earth is nothing short of paradoxical :
2.5.1. Western-Modernity has been hyper successful
Western-Modernity has incontestably been extremely successful at producing mass quantities of goods and services that satisfied people’s needs which explains its popularity with the populations of all countries on this earth.
2.5.2. But this success came at a steep cost
The side-effects of Western-Modernity are rampant while the governance-world is destabilized by a shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world. Over the last decade there was furthermore a convergence of the side-effects, among themselves and with the destabilization of the governance-world, which suddenly accelerated the appearance of thresholds that induce tipping points towards new states of equilibrium ...
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2.5.2.1. The hegemony of Western-Modernity is now confronted with TIDAA or “There Is Definitely An Alternative” :
The barbarian brutality of Western-Modernity has caused centuries of incalculable damages and suffering to non-Western people. This forced suffering has evidently to stop and China’s rise to the top economic spot is proving that “There Is Definitely An Alternative” (TIDAA) to Western-Modernity that TINA, or the propaganda about “There is no Alternative, can no longer hide. -
2.5.2.2. Destabilization of the world order and transition to a new order :
Modernity has affected Western societies with various cohesion dissolving processes that resulted in their atomization which is an euphemism for saying that these societies are dying. The resulting shrinkage of the hegemony, of the West, has furthermore been confronted over the last decade by the rise of China which has rapidly been captured in acronyms, like TIDAA (There Is Definitely An Alternative) or REB’s (Regional Economic Blocks like ASEAN), that are energizing non-Western-countries to claim the respect of their sovereignty and their national right to chose their own cultural, economic, and political path forward.
Western societal atomization + the rise of China have definitely weakened international organizations and procured an opening to the non-Western-countries to contest the Geopolitical status-quo of Western hegemony. Russia, for example, is using the security on its Eastern border, procured by China’s TIDAA, to claim its security on its Western border from NATO and the West. Observing, that its December 2021 treaty proposals were rejected out of hand by the USA, Russia initiated a Special Military Operation in Ukraine that by this end of 2023 appears to have nearly neutralized Ukrainian forces.
With no resolution of its security claims on the horizon the sole path forward for Russia is to annihilate any resistance from the Ukrainian state which should be followed by the latter’s rendition without condition (9). The West, and its NATO military alliance, are confronted with a real possibility of defeat for all eyes, in the International community, to see and it has thus only 2 choices going forward :
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2.5.2.2.1. Or a Western defeat that is hidden from Western eyes
Without a tacit acceptance by the West of its defeat in Ukraine Russia will remain stuck in its existential conundrum of insecurity that NATO's expansion East has provoked over the last decades. This is something that Russia will try to evade at all costs by sticking to its maximalist position in the resolution of the Ukrainian conflict. A Western acceptance of the bulk of Russia’s conditions will definitely motivate Russia to engage in security negotiations with the EU + the USA. But the de-facto defeat of the West would remain concealed under media noise in order for Western propaganda to transform a Western defeat into a victory in the minds of Western citizens.
But this is evidently something that the West will forcefully resist until it falls under the weight of its internal contradictions.
The determinant fact in the present Geopolitical moment is that both the West, and the non-Western-world, are focusing all their energies on destabilizing the economic, financial, technological and cultural stability of the other side. The West focuses primarily on propaganda and sanctions while Russia and China focus on : — the control of the price of raw materials and energy — on technological research (Huawei Mate60 anyone?) — on trying to destabilize the culture of the other, etc. And in this game Russia and China are seconded by most non-Western-countries ! 2.5.2.2.2. Or a military confrontation between NATO and Russia
A direct military confrontation, of Russia by NATO, would most probably end up with the launch of nuclear ballistic, and/or super or hyper-sonic, missiles that could possibly leave the world under a thick layer of ashes. All logically thinking parties will normally try to avoid such a MAD rush to Armageddon (Mutually Administered Destruction).
The fact that we even can think about such a MAD outcome shows us that the present moment is located temporarily at the intersection of the historical era of Western hegemony, that in reality was the era of Western-Modernity, and the historical era of After-Western-Modernity.
Logical thinking would imply a retreat of the West and the acceptance of the rise of China and the other non-Western-countries. But the level playing field of the Western market for ideas has been utterly destroyed over the last 5 years by the cancellation of voices whose message goes counter to the message of an establishment that serves the interests of Western big capital holders and the existing world order has been broken down piece by piece to foster chaos so that the action of China, or of other state actors, would be impeded.
The thinking of the West is constrained within the rationality of Western-Modernity that is not necessarily aligned with the logic of life or of the human species. This suggests that the present Western context is ripe internally, for a bout of totalitarianism, and externally to further destabilize the world order so as to impose a new order that is fully compliant to US interests ! This implies that going forward US actions, both internally and externally, will no longer align with the objectives of freedom, democracy, and the free market that marked the last 75 years of US hegemony !
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2.5.2.3. Externalization of costs and the destabilization of the Geo-bio-chemical state of the earth :
The application of the paradigm of Western modernity has led to the externalization, of numerous production costs over the centuries since the emergence of this paradigm. These externalities have poisoned the earth, water and air. And all species and all terrestrial environments have been forced to absorb these poisons. Today, we are witnessing the consequences of their accumulation in the biology of living species and in their terrestrial habitats. For example nano-particles of plastic, and of other inorganic materials, have been forced in the biology of the individuals of all species with consequences that will haunt them for millennia. The absorption of such particles has affected all earthly habitats and the Geo-bio-chemical state of the earth is furthermore rapidly shifting to new states that will render life far less sustainable than in the past.
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2.5.2.4. The great convergence of the numerous side-effects of Western Modernity :
All the factors at work, in — the depletion of natural resources — the numerous side-effects of Western-Modernity — the cultural aberrations of Late-Western-Modernity, are generating feedback loops among themselves that eventually will 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. My personal take, on the present societal and Geo-political moment, is that we assist at a Great-Convergence between the side-effects of Modernity, the peak of earth resources, and the destabilization of the governance-world. This Great-Convergence has now started to plunge living species into a maelstrom of causes and effects over which humanity has lost all control.
Here follows a table extracted from “Modernity 02. Part 2. Great Convergence of late-Western-Modernity“ that sketches a summary of the great convergence.
2.6. The center of gravity of Western-Modernity shifts to the regions best endowed with capital formation
By the early 15th century the voyages of great discoveries and the plunder by Spain and Portugal, of South-American gold, silver and precious stones, shifted “the center of gravity of the economy-world of Western-Modernity” from Flanders-Bruges to Spain which splurged the proceeds of its plundering on financing religious wars against Christian protestant sects in Flanders and in Italy.
As a result of Spanish shortsightedness “the center of gravity of the economy-world of Western-Modernity” shifted back to Flanders. The port of Bruges had started to silt in the 15th century and merchants and bankers fled the city for Antwerp which was easily accessible from the sea. As it was on the crossroads of Europe’s trade routes, Antwerp became the center of the European economy and was also the richest city in the world.
But in their fight to eliminate the protestants, in the 1590’s, the Spanish burned the city to ashes which forced long distance merchants, bankers, artists, and protestants to flee north to Amsterdam. The arrival of Flemish capital boosted long distance commerce and “the center of gravity of the economy-world of Western-Modernity” shifted there around 1600. Amsterdam became the European distribution center of spices but by mid 18th century its fortunes withered and “the center of gravity of the economy-world of Western-Modernity” shifted to London which by the 19th century was governing 25% of the earth land-mass.
The population size of the USA nevertheless surpassed the British economy between the 2 world-wars and in the wake of the 2nd World-war the US GDP reached some 50% of the world GDP while its gold reserves totaled some 80% of the world reserves ! In light of this the US was ordained to dominate the world and this is what it did for the following 75 years.
In 2014 the World Bank acted the fact that the fulgurant economic and technological rise of China was surpassing the US GDP (PPP method) by that same year. This awakened the West to the fact that “the center of gravity of the economy-world of Western-Modernity” was shifting outside of the territorial realm of the Western civilization.
The following table indicates the different shifts of “the center of gravity of the economy-world of Western-Modernity” along the era of Western-Modernity.
But the shift from Washington to Beijing indicates something new. The shift of the center of gravity is no longer solely a measure of being better endowed with capital formation. A newer iteration of the paradigm of “Western-Modernity” has shifted the Western economies far apart from the primacy of production of the Chinese economy and from the economies of the Global South.
During the silent revolution of the 1970’s, the traditional paradigm of Western-Modernity, that reads as “the reason that is at work in the transformation of sterile money into a process of capital formation”, has been shifted into the highly risky proposition of “the reason that is at work in the transformation of speculative debt, into a dynamic process of capital accumulation”.
Nobody speaks about this.
Some economists are vaguely sensing that something drastic has happened which changed the profound nature of Western economies. One such approach observes that service activities have gradually replaced production activities. But we know, from common sense, that the bulk of service activities are serving production activities. Another approach, followed by Michael Hudson for example, observes that over the last 50 years financial activities, or abstract activities summarized in spreadsheets, have been displacing industrial activities, thus crappifying their productions, and leaving Western corporations and their investors under an increasing load of debts that, from a mathematical perspective, is destined to end in in-solvability.
These approaches are not necessarily wrong. They correctly address the outcome of financialization. But they do not indicate what, when, and how financialization emerged in the first place and how this affects the working of societies. I personally address these what, when and how, in “Modernity 02. Part 1. Late-Modernity”.
Notes
1. "Byzantine Papacy", in Academic Accelerator Encyclopedia.
2. "Gelasius I on Spiritual and Temporal Power, 494", Internet History Sourcebooks Project / Fordham University, translated in J. H. Robinson, Readings in European History, (Boston: Ginn, 1905), pp. 72-73.
3. "The Donation of Constantine", Medieval Sourcebook/University of Fordham, (c.750-800)
4. The Volume 5 of the series “The transition from Western-Modernity to After-Modernity” starts with a clarification about the meaning of these concepts and about their interrelatedness in the theory of societal evolution that covers the transition from one archetypal model of society to another which starts with the transition from the archetypal model of small bands to the archetypal model of tribal societies. I'll upload this Volume to my website sometime by the end of 2025 but a first draft is available in my older series of blog posts from the 2010's (See posts 209 to 219, titled "From Modernity to After-Modernity (12) to (19)".
5. “The Crusade is Over”, Unz, by Laurent Guyénot.
6. "What lessons for economic development can we draw from the Champagne fairs?", Elsevier, Explorations in Economic History 49 (2012) 131–148, by Jeremy Edwards and Sheilagh Ogilvie.
7. According to “Etymology Online” the word “capital” originates in :
“...early 13c., ‘of or pertaining to the head,’ from Old French capitale, from Latin capitalis ‘of the head,’ hence ‘capital, chief, first ”.Merriam-Webster adds that :
“Both the French and Italians adopted capitalis with this sense in the form capitale. Their word eventually came to refer to an essential stock of goods used to enter into business.”This stock of goods to enter in the business of long distance trade was gold...
In “Civilization and Capitalism”, volume 1 “The Structure of Everyday Life”, Fernand Braudel, wrote that in the commercial city-states of Italy in the thirteenth century, capital meant the “money of a merchant” devoted to investment. It was called “Capitale”, a dynamic form of money capable of expansion through investment in commerce, that was different from “simple” money which was considered to be sterile and only existing for facilitating commercial exchange.
8. "What lessons for economic development can we draw from the Champagne fairs?", Elsevier, Explorations in Economic History 49 (2012) 131–148, by Jeremy Edwards and Sheilagh Ogilvie. https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/people-files/faculty/sco2/full-texts/Edwards-Ogilvie-2012-Champagne%20Fairs.pdf
9. See “An Endgame for the Ukrainian War with John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris and Glenn Diesen”, You Tube / The Duran, 2023-09-10.
John Mearsheimer recognizes Russia’s existential need to go for Ukraine’s rendition without conditions. It can no longer trust a western signature on a peace treaty. In other words the facts on the ground have to force the West into acceptance of “a defeat that remains hidden from Western eyes”. Alexander Mercouris hesitates to follow Mearsheimer’s conclusion and thinks that Putin could be satisfied with a frozen conflict. But the hundred thousands deaths in this conflict would then have been in vain ! President Putin will definitely not accept such a miserable outcome. It would be like reneging the substance of the public speeches he gave over the last 15 years.
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