On Life & Death Cycle, Human's Tragedy and Return of Unity

Reflection on Great Powers, Invaders and The Promise (previous analog here)

I. The Analytical Tools

4.?And We conveyed to the Children of Israel in the Scripture: You will commit evil on earth twice, and you will rise to a great height.

5.?When the first of the two promises came true, We sent against you servants of Ours possessing great might, and they ransacked your homes. It was a promise fulfilled.

6.?Then We gave you back your turn against them, and supplied you with wealth and children, and made you more numerous.

7.?If you work righteousness, you work righteousness for yourselves; and if you commit evil, you do so against yourselves. Then, when the Second Promise comes true, they will make your faces filled with sorrow, and enter the Temple as they entered it the first time, and utterly destroy all that falls into their power.

8.?Perhaps your Lord will have mercy on you. But if you revert, We will revert. We have made Hell a prison for the disbelievers.

This is an attempt to describe the past, present and future by using historical archetype from QS17:4-8. The Children of Israel as Great Powers, servants of Ours as Invaders and The Second Promise as the scheme of reminder and protection for ourselves.

II. The Historical Review

Lesson from the past could makes us feel comfortable. The idea that we’ve experienced many ups and downs, through rise and fall during the course of history could lead us into thinking that we’ll get just through about everything. Humans are really good at adaptation, aren’t we? Those days in history happens and things have been continuously changing. Against all odds, we managed to survive and human civilization is thriving. It seems that there is nothing new nor special about thing we call Life, so there is no point we should be overthinking it. Isn't it?

The very human civilization under investigation, from every respective Ages: the Bronze Ages, Iron Ages, Classical Ages, Dark Ages, Enlightenment to Industrial Revolution have its own Great Powers. From structuralism point of view, those Civilization were evolving and emerging both as hierarchy and network. The former structure gives rise to the hierarchical layers, while the latter facilitates interaction. Generally speaking, hierarchical layers have been used to maintain social integrity. The few elites manage to control the mass by enforcing and introduce the homogenizing power, such rituals, prohibitions, norms, customs, codes, rules and laws. At first approximation and early stage, such homogenization effect will create harmony and its own logic of growth. The imitation, homogeneity and copying others can be seen both as the mode of interaction, as well as mode of survival while also creating virtuous cycle for such Civilization, thus empowering the rise of Great Powers. Until, it fails.

The rise of each of this Civilization also started with accumulation of knowledge. During the beginning of this pursue of knowledge, things had been explored both intensively and extensively, firstly may be due to internal thirst and curiosity about it, secondly as the Civilization itself, it’s inquiry concerning such knowledge has just begun. We can then see then how those accumulated knowledge manifested itself in construction of its personal (subjective), interpersonal and objective Reality. One interesting dynamic to be observed is how the balance, nuance and spectrum of this Pursuit get disturbed. From the beginning, where attainment of knowledge, its understanding and implementation considered as actualization of our intellect, love and wisdom, the very Pursuit has become politicized, turned into sports (read:ruthless competing interest), or in general has just degraded and corrupted. One primary example can be seen where, first during the Dark Age, we saw how the institution of immaterial knowledge suppressed, demolished, and ignored the spirit of material knowledge accumulation. But, just like pendulum, since the Enlightenment Age, it has swung to the other extreme where the institution of material knowledge has crowned victorious over its counterpart. The institution of Science and Technology has prevailed, New Atheist movement has become the mainstream, and any perspective implying immaterial knowledge considered as not real and un-scientific. Things are always moving, changing and every Great Powers is struggling to maintain its coherent.

III. The Present Moment

There is no better embodiment than the modern Civilization, acting as the living proof of such struggling. The Great Powers with ethical frame that believes everything is permitted and permissible, nothing in the world that human can’t and must not do. This leads to unprecedented extensive resource extraction, exploitation, and expansion to justify human’s needs, the corrupt institutions that serve political and selfish interest, to the death of God. This pursue then will have many derivatives. To mention some, take capitalism which argues that we can’t have natural and material world without economy, therefore to focus on expanding and growing at all cost. But, few realizes that we won’t have economy either without the natural and material world. Take science which aims for the self-certainty of material world and is even trying to answer moral question, without realizing its own Procrustean Bed and how the reality does not need the model at the first place. Take the globalization agenda that argues to enable constant flow of goods and human around the globe, therefore we can get everything we want anytime we want. But, the realization about fragility of interconnectivity and how we can be more resilience with localism is seems to be lacking. Take the internet which claims to democratize information access, only to create medium for propaganda, info-demic and confirmation bias. Indeed, such Great Powers culture and value, which is embodied mostly by the West, where human’s subjectivity is imposing its power, pushing boundaries and try to invades and corrodes every possible human's social construct.

However, one should notice as well that human Civilization today can be seen through the lens of few competing Great Powers. The West Hegemony is certainly weaken by the so-called another Invaders: Orthodoxy & Neo-Socialism. The question is, should we continue such clash? In the past, we know it will be about tribe A vs tribe B. It is also about how each past Great Powers (Babylon, Mayans, or Roman Empire) as civilization collapsed through Invasion from Greeks Invaders, Spaniards Invaders and Germanic-Nomad Invaders. We also still remember the impact and collapse from Allies vs Axis world war. The question that need to be asked as of today is: can we afford another civilization collapse? Since potentially it will means our collective extinction. The stake and risk had never been higher. Fortunately, at least in theory, we know that the basic and front-end of risk management is elimination and prevention. Therefore, our goal is to avoid such collapse by getting more awareness of this problem and orient ourselves towards omni win-win situation. One important question is how can we still motivate sacrifice, hard work, and deferred gratification that is inherently non-violence? This is the very Promise that we urgently needed, to remind us about our death and mortality. To protect ourselves from the corruption and evil things that such Civilization & its Great Power had been imposed. Meanwhile, we are only capable to do sacrifice, doing the hard work, and delay our reward by introducing competition, and as we can see together where such corrupted imitation turn into zero-sum competition act as the invisible background, the Great Powers (of God) that have been accumulating cannot be stable. It will always frame thing as omni lose-lose dynamics.

IV. The Future Speculation

There are always many reasons to be pessimistic. On the surface, it is kind of obvious that most of the time we don’t learn that we didn’t learn. Marx said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Perhaps, it is. We’re actually clueless about the current situation and keep thinking everything will be fixed by itself. Things can be framed differently because this is perhaps the very first time in history, humans turn into one risk society thanks to Globalization and Hyper-connected world. On top of this, it is also due the fact that we’re getting more effective at doing science and building exponential technology, which basically agnostic to the question of morality. “We are as gods and might as well get used to it” one quote read. Actually, No. It is not sufficient to be “might as well get used to it”, we must get good at it. We also should learn about the love and wisdom of God. Otherwise, those Great Powers will eventually self-destructed, accelerated by the "attack" of the Invaders, hence coming of the Second Promise.

The religion (of Amor Fati, The Dao, of Tawhid) is where the secret silent call to return of Unity to be made. That every silent moment and event, unique and non-repeatable, as differentiated and distinct as they are, stand out as its own. Ultimately, no one really knows, how could we know? The version of falsification proposition by Timur Kuran: Private “Truth” & Public “Lies”. We will publish our “pain” and “gain”, as the history is unfolding, along with its unexpected unforeseeable “gift & reward”. We just can’t see it, only mediated by the religious spirit. When you could be justified to do anything you wish and desire with impunity, the lack of accountability and consequential frame, don’t you think you will get rewarded? punished? How we reward and punish such corrupted Great Powers? with the coming of (another) competing Great Power possessing great might? Denouncing Violence with more Violence?

The ever-unfolding of meta-crisis, exemplified by civilization’s inability to fully grasp and withstand the violence from seemingly all-powerful and omni-scient corrupted Great Powers & its Institution. It is perhaps one of many great ironies of history, are to be exposed and unmasked when we’ll come to realization that actually the Christologue of Christ itself is looking more Islamic than the modern proper Christianity. That the earliest Christianity doctrine is revived (&preserved) by the later Islamic doctrine. That the Jewish people ditched their Judaism, where the teachings were only to be found later in the earliest Christianity. That the pagan gods and the quality of the sacred are both identified with “evil angels” who rule the Nation only to be defeated by the Christ, who appears to do battle with these “powers” and “principalities”. But, the Christ himself is dead, one at the same time telling all Nation during his romanticized cry of “why have You forsaken me?”, paradoxically the nature of violence as an instrument of Hamletian to kill or to be killed version, that is where our ultimate decision and choice making to be made. So, are you really free? Or it is due to this invisible force of Ultimate Violence, the severity and painful punishment, the powerful Master that you are afraid of?