Situational Assessment 2025
*Updated Situation March 1st, 2025: The US mediating the "Peace" in the ongoing 3-years Russo-Ukrainian War
*Updated Situation March 2nd-5th, 2025: The Europe (NATO) is blocking the very "Peace", showing that it is indeed, their goal to sustain the Ink, the Blood, the (Fake) Science & Technology at the expense of the People they shall serve
*Updated Situation March 6th, 2025: The China is responding to the War ("...be it tariff war, trade war, or any other type of war...") declared by the US
Peace, neither Ink nor Blood.
The modern world is basically just another eternal pursuit of power, some form of “imitation” project along with its consequential competition, yet at much grander scale compared to the traditional and ancient world. The homogenization & conflict can be even more powerful than ever. Our current war-situation cannot exist in primitive societies and tribes. The imitation and influence of such war is contained and its homogenization effect (in this case, infecting & impacting other parts of the world) can’t spread extensively around the globe. However, in the modern world, potential for Civilizational & International clash and collapse is almost a certainty given to the fact of the “flat world” we’ve been building together to support our social-political-economics systems.
Power originates from the ability to bend or shape the reality. In warfare, it is the one with better ability to change and manipulate the battlefield according to their advantage who will win the war. In transactional and game theory dynamics, it is the one who can push and turning their self-interest into reality. In politics, it is about creation of institution to solve and manage the complex human’s reality of coordination problem and relationship. In domain of peace, all three power-play dynamics: warfare, transaction and politics will interact and creating all sort of things, from Orthodoxy, West Hegemony, Neo-Socialism to civilization collapse, such latest Allies vs Axis 20th century world-war. There has been too many talks and ink from the top (read: bureaucrat & politician) in the expense of human’s blood coming from the bottom. The question that need to be asked as of today is: can we afford another world-war & civilization collapse?
Today, human civilization exists as one entire civilization, in which the imitation project will impact our modern lives in unique profound ways. There was no time in human’s history preceding the second world war, where we are capable to kill another human at massive scale. The level of destruction is unimaginable compared to the primitive/tribal warfare. This war and geopolitics are mainly driven by imitation that leads to competition which generates arm race, nuclear race and any evolution of this kind of weapons, which might be able to kill virtually every living species in this planet. In general, any imitation will create sense of homogeneity and the notion of undifferentiated & sameness, which inherently possess potential for violence, precisely what happens to the hundred years’ war on the Holy Land. The seemingly insoluble problems, when two People imitating each other, claiming the same thing to the undifferentiated-rivalrious-scarce-hyper Object. Things can also get more problematic on personal level. Given the undifferentiated state and the sameness of how things organized can influence our obsession towards becoming the best and beating everyone else. Worse, whether intentionally or not, this kind of mentality is actually nurtured. We compete for the sake of competition, winning the race at all cost, forget about the bigger picture: the cost of unleashing ultimate violence/conflict and massive destruction. It is also interesting to see that by beating someone in competition here does not necessarily means winning or succeed, it could also be fulfilled with one of the deadly sins: envy. Perhaps, it is enough to see your enemy’s failure. Zizek’s joke of Slovenian farmer?[which goes something like this: a godlike figure come to this farmer and said he will do anything that the farmer wants, but on the premise that he will do the same to farmer’s neighbor twice as much. Farmer’s response: take one of my eyes]?precisely illustrates this variation of unhealthy thought on imitation and another source for violence act.
By necessity of logic, it is pretty sound to conclude that we can’t afford another civilization collapse since potentially it means our collective extinction. The problem is, there is something so-human about us: that we are prone to incentive. So, when posing question like how can we motivate and move the person to do hard things? One of the answer is by introducing competition. However, as we can see together where imitation turn into competition act as the invisible background, the power of gods that our modern social-political institution have been accumulating cannot be stable. It will always frame thing as zero-sum game and even worse into omni lose-lose dynamics, thus the End of Humanity. One important question is then how can we still create the situation and motivation for people to do sacrifice, hard work, and deferred gratification that is inherently non-violence? It is perhaps a strange situation in which the antidote to this situation may lie, paradoxically, not in doubling down our trust to resolution from politician’s ink & bloody warfare, but rather a simple return to more traditional values and beliefs. To fight and win the Spiritual War.
Peace, neither Science nor Technology
There is a kind of pressing obsession with material world due to the virtuous cycle which generates really powerful coupling between Science and Technology. The Science has making us better at understanding objective reality, while in Technology, we use such understanding to modify or change the reality. There is no wonder why human has been really enjoying this kind of pursue of knowledge. As civilization, we’re doing a great service to the development of Science and as byproduct, Science has rewarded us with the idea of perfect rationality and infallible human being. It promises us to deliver a perfect model for understanding the world. It is exactly the domain of Science to answer the question of “what is” and it has proven to be a really good at it. Perhaps, it is this same attitude and vision towards superhuman intellectual power and knowledge that give rise to the idea of Communism and similar Utopia which is based on perfect knowledge of material world. Despite of Zizekian attitude towards Marx’s idea that philosopher need to change the World, not only interpreted it in various way, the statement “all bend to my will” is perhaps still prevail, one of the reasons why Science, Technology and knowledge of material world is so attractive and compelling.
As we are “progressing”, trying to attaining the eternal peace in the post-modern civilization, thanks to all these historic & ongoing industrial and technological revolution moment, it seems that we keep "forgetting". The rise of modern nation-state, techno-capitalism and our globalized world had seemingly increased the distance of the close relationship between human and nature as we’re also getting smarter to manipulate our natural world. In theory, if we refer to back to human-nature relationship, with the ontological assumption that the Nature is just a passive thing acts an infinite resource ready to be exploited and acted as a perfect sink for all of human’s disposal without any power to respond accordingly, then the ‘game’ will be able to sustain and stable. It could be suggested that the world is indeed just the raw material to be exploited and will remain silent about human’s activities, therefore Science will do a better job at answering (or rather justifying) our questions and fulfilling our will to will as Technology is giving us more capacity to change the world. However, in practice, it can be seen and proved that at some point, the assumptions are wrong, hence breakdown will eventually occur.
On top of this, the so-called contemporary discourse on human rationality, particularly as glorified by the "New Atheists", offers a rather reductionist portrayal of humans as ideally rational entities, driven solely by logic and reason. This phenomena potentially leads into the return of Dark Ages in the modern context, set by our superficialities of perfect-rational human and dogmatic believe in the power of Science & Technology. The whole modern worldview is based on the illusion that so-called Laws of Nature are the explanation of natural phenomena. So, as Wittgenstein noted that post-modern people stop at the laws of nature as something unquestionable, just as the medieval once did at God & Fate. They are both right and wrong, however people in the past were clearer in as much as they acknowledged where things stopped, whereas the new system and modernity attempts to make it seems as if everything were and will be explained. This modern idea of replacing God and the gods running future events with science and technology, is turning our Civilization into something even more religiously fundamentalist: the unconditional belief in the idea of scientific prediction & technological miracle, regardless of the domain, context and application, with the aim to squeeze the future into numerical reductions & human as the idol-worshipper of materialist-consumer-centric-simulated thinking machine. For we managed to transfer religious belief into gullibility for whatever can masquerade as science and technology. It is perhaps a strange situation in which the antidote to this situation may lie, paradoxically, not in doubling down the trust to these (corrupted & institutionalized) Science & Technology, but rather a simple return to more traditional values and beliefs. To fight and win the Spiritual War.
The Ultimate Peace
There must be a limit to be drawn, to that which can be said at all and to that which only to be shown & cannot be said, a priori logic that comes before any experience and to any how of possibilities.? ?
Our historical understanding is continued to be distorted, framed and biased. The idea of peace can be attained through ink & blood, through modern science & technology, is a myth that conveniently overlooks and underestimate the intricacy and intrinsic nature of human who guided by a multitude of factors beyond the assumed perfect-rational actor, advancement of understanding in penetrating Nature’s logic and bending the world with technology. This relentless pursuit of power, rationality & technology has shaped the discourse in various spheres, notably in science, economics, and politics over last few centuries. However, it seems that this pursuit has led to a world in which the broken system and meta-crisis, sweeping across the scientific & technological institution and New-Atheist movement that glorifies materialism and natural evolution, celebrates the death of God, claiming themselves as the front-runner proponent of humanity where hidden authoritarianism and violent political/geopolitical multi-polar traps is prevailing and hypocrisy of socio-political institution is pervasive. We follow and play with our own desire & assumption, becoming the slave and worshipper of our own Procrustean Bed. The potential of competition turning into bloodshed & corruption is happening in vicious cycle, turning humanity as its “sacrificial” foundation to the making of all our socio-political, even religious life. What a theatre of ignorance and aggrandization of arrogance, the perfect medium for eco-chamber we’ve been accomplished so far?
To pursue the Ultimate Peace is by not being one who could be easily turned into a fool fooled by one’s own illusion of understanding & the seemingly randomness generated by Reality. The ever-unfolding of crisis, exemplified by civilization’s inability to fully grasp and withstand the violence from seemingly all-powerful nature and omni-scient institution. Don’t we get it wrong all along? That every silent moment and event, unique and non-repeatable, stand out as its own and is actually perfectly planned. Ultimately, no one really knows, how could we know? As far as human’s understanding & power goes, we will be limited to only publish & show our “pain” and “gain”, quantitatively. As the history is unfolding, surprise along with its unexpected & unforeseeable “reward” and “punishment” is waiting and qualitative change, non-empirical things that can’t be known in advance only could bring us back to the world we don’t understand. Perhaps, we just can’t see it, but only when mediated by the religious spirit we then can see through unique lens and turning such unseen into metaphysical realms & ultimate reality, often beyond the reach of our rational understanding.
Only when you cannot be justified to do anything you wish and desire with impunity, only when there is a real deep sense of accountability and consequential frame, only when you think you will get rewarded or punished in the most just way by the Most Just reality. The Word of Truth and power of Good is yet forever to be found in the city of Man, where the humanity will be reminded over and over again since the beginning of prophetic tradition and Revelation, about their creation and only act as the humbling mechanism to our weakness, arrogance and ignorance to understand how the Spiritual War is the only struggle and fight we need to win.