Fall of the Leviathan

We are living in a period of profound change. Humanity is attempting to transition from the Modern Era, constructed around the notion of nation-states, where citizens shared national creeds, to a new model that encompasses all human beings around the globe coexisting in a single ecosystem.

This journey has been long in the making starting from overcoming pre-Hellenic notions of race and religion when Greek societies proved, through their immense success, the superiority of political models drafted on consensus, capable of extending universally natural laws and principles founded on Humanism, the belief in the centrality of the human individual. But even the most reliable systems are not immune to corruption. The collapse of the Graeco-Roman world destroyed the innovation, the entrepreneurship and social mobility of Hellenic societies, and for much of the Middle Ages, European feudal societies became far more similar to those of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Pre-Colombian America, relying on notions of ethnicity, religion and blood lineage, rather than universal ideas such as Humanism, and thus became incapable of generating the dynamic and innovative societies of their Greek ancestors. After the Reconquista in the Iberic Peninsula and as Italian city-states learned to fend of larger monarchies, emulating the successful experiments in consensus societies of their Peloponnesian ancestors, the preservation of Hellenic teachings by the Church, now incorporated in its own canon, allowed European societies to rekindle Hellenic Humanism, reviving the abandoned practices of entrepreneurship and innovation on European soil. It wasn’t long before the Renaissance spilled over the northern borders of the Italian Peninsula and as the innovative fervor spread throughout Europe, resurrected world views founded on universal creeds rather than race or religion, culminating in the Enlightenment and expressed this time through the creation of the modern nation-state.

Hobbes wrote the Leviathan during this transition, a transition away from those feudal societies that had nearly forsaken the Hellenic sanctity of individual authority. His argument in favour of an authoritarian monarch with unhindered powers, and accountable only to God almighty, was formulated as a result of the horrors of the English Civil War and a desire to return to the comfort of feudal stability. Today we are witnessing the same challenges of disorder threatening the achievements of the past, a disorder expressed in globalist world views that have shaped our thinking for the last half century since the end of the Cold War and are now being challenged by nationalist popular movements. One would imagine that the adherents of globalisation are the Jacobins of today espousing change towards a unifying global creed. Ironically, though it may be surprising to many, the opposite is true. As counterintuitive as it sounds, globalists tend to uphold divisive beliefs rooted in artificial concepts of ethnicity, gender and religion, whereas those national creeds that allowed humanity to transcend ethnic and religious divides during the Modern Era are now held dear by nationalists rather than globalists. In order to understand this irony, we need take a step back in time and seek the root of this modern-day misplaced faith in divisive tribalism. Towards the end of the 19th century the inefficiencies of modern nation-states, notwithstanding momentous improvement from feudal societies, led to the rise of ideologies that while inspired on the surface by universal principles required the elimination of those very liberties that humanity had already acquired. Socialism, the paramount expression of this barter of present-day liberty for future utopias, eventually failed in all its mutations, whether it be Communism, Fascism or National Socialism. Today, summoned by the difficulties and the complexity of our interstitial transition to a global eco-system, these old genocidal ideologies have gained newfound fervour in the shape of identity politics and post-modern nihilism. Just like a century ago, these caustic worldviews call for the destruction of our contemporary societies and wish to curb human freedom in favour of ill-conceived and ill-expressed ideals, rooted this time on ethnicity, gender and religion. Ironically thus, those who espouse these modern reinventions of failed ideologies, are unwittingly requesting a return to the very same pre-Hellenic tribalism humanity had successfully overcome nearly 3 Millenia ago.

Let’s breakdown how we got to this surprising stage where a large portion of humanity living in advanced liberal democracies, by far the most diverse, most tolerant and most inclusive societies in human history, are calling for the revival of pre-Hellenic views on ethnicity, gender and religion, and thus requesting a regression to Neolithic, prehistoric societies.

On Human Nature and the First Cognitive Revolution – Awareness

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Humans differ from other animal species through our ability to formulate ideas. Nor does this distinction affect our social relationships in individual lifetimes, this ability also defines the drivers of human evolution, shaping societies generations apart. Unlike other animal species that can transmit social behavior only by direct contact from one generation to the other, humans can express ideas that transcend physical persons. We are capable of cultural transmission beyond our physical existence. These ideas, when successful in creating an evolutionary advantage, provide the locomotion for the evolution of our species. It is not physical traits that have allowed humanity to evolve to our current state of individual emancipation but the spread and adoption of successful ideas. This transition in evolutionary modality from physical adaptation to the survival of better ideas did not occur all at once. Many factors led to this transformation. Factors such as the reversible thumb, our mobility, our cerebral capacity, the ability to use tools, harness fire, coordinate hunt and work, all these factors contributed to making humans unique animals that evolve through the spread of ideas rather than physical traits. There is nevertheless a determining landmark in this passage from physical species to a species shaped by ideas. That landmark is our ancestor’s ability to create symbols in the form of objects, etchings, and paintings that brought us awareness of ourselves and our physical world in a way that can be communicated beyond or physical presence. These Paleolithic artifacts characterize the First Cognitive Revolution, when our ancestors became capable of communicating awareness of themselves and their surrounding world in a way that transcends their physical presence and their immediate needs. They began to create tools of the mind that could be utilized universally by other early humans living generations apart. This cognitive transformation of awareness has been depicted in many forms both in painting, etchings and carved statuettes, as the earliest attempts to represent the world though images and symbols. There isn’t a specific example as the phenomenon of depicting the world through images arose in several distant regions of our planet during similar timeframes, but the ochre cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira are excellent examples we can use as reference. Nor were these skills unique to a single hominid species. Our evolution at that time was still heavily influenced by our physical traits. Besides the Homo Sapiens, the dominant ancestor in our lineage, also the Neanderthal and the Denisovan are known to have made representations of the world with paintings, etchings and statuettes carved from bones. Later with the advent of language, ideas assumed an ever-growing importance, and by the time the Greeks started to breakdown our world into comprehensible laws universally applicable to all human beings, ideas became the sole agents capable of influencing our evolution. Today in fact, the physical traits that distinguish humans of different ethnicities are practically insignificant and yet the ideas held by different societies are so distinct as to dictate the prosperity and success of one people, and the misery and despair of another. At the core of our enquiry thus, we must dedicate a few words to describe what is intrinsic and defined into the nature of our species.

Apeiron

There are three inescapable layers of reality that define all aspects of our existence. The first layer is the Universal layer. No matter how hard we try, we cannot escape that all things we encounter in this world belong to a single unique Universe. The second layer is Duality. Everything in this world has its exact opposite, down to the most elemental theoretical particles of physics. The third and final inescapable layer is Plurality. All of us, without exception, are endowed with an individual entity that is distinct from that of everyone else. Human nature does not reside in the two subset layers, Duality and Plurality, which respectfully separate our ability to perform good and evil actions and exercise our freewill. Human nature resides in the Universal layer of reality. It is neither good, nor is it evil, it is simply an infinite realm of possibilities awaiting to manifest themselves.

The Greeks had understood the underlying Universal layer of reality upon whose fabric our universe unfolds. They called it Apeiron, and it was the source of all manifestations in the Universe. Apeiron was not merely an inanimate platform, it was provided with a soul called Psyche. This soul was indivisible and was the universal soul of creatures endowed with breath, (all living creatures according to their incomplete understanding of living beings). Thus, good and evil are merely directions. Good represents a journey towards Apeiron though the unifying elements of our universal and indivisible soul, whereas evil is the result of moving away from Apeiron by refusing the universal nature of our soul.

Hobbes believed humans to be intrinsically evil, requiring control, without which chaos would reign. Others believed the opposite. Entropy is also an inevitable reality of our Universe, a reality deeply engraved in the human psyche due to the awareness of our own mortality, and consequently instigating a desire for a pure origin, a past free from the effects of entropy. The longing for an idealized primordial goodness of human beings, while incorrect, has deep roots. It is to be found in the Abrahamic tradition of the Garden of Eden, and has parallels in several other cultures. This idea is best expressed in Rousseau’s concept of the noble savage, which became the cause of much disillusionment as early European explorers rapidly discovered that, cast aside the initial intrigue of exotic lifestyles unhindered by Abrahamic constraints on physical expression, people from less developed societies harbored the same capacity for selfishness and greed as anyone else. In conceiving an idealized noble savage, Rousseau had failed to realize the root of the Garden of Eden and other idealized origin myths, lies not in history, but in the subtle Universal realm. These myths merely express our longing for a unifying state where we can exist freed from Duality and Plurality. Ironically, patronizing views of societies technologically less developed than ours, are no less racist than the opposite views whereby people living in less structured societies cannot be our equal.

Hobbes was wrong. Human beings are not intrinsically evil; they are capable of extraordinary acts of courage, generosity and selflessness. Rousseau was also wrong. Human beings are not intrinsically good. They are capable of inconceivable evil. The nature of human beings belongs to the Universal realm which lies beyond Duality. Human beings are neither good nor evil. Only their actions are. There is though a saving grace for which we must embrace good over evil. It is the aspiration of all sentient beings to elevate themselves to the Universal layer of reality. Thus, whatever we do to unite humanity is good, and whatever we do to divide humanity is evil.

The inability to perceive the unifying component of our existence, the incapacity to understand the Universal layer of reality, lies at the heart of the failure of all utilitarian worldviews. Existentialism, when focused on matter to the extent of losing sight of the Universal layer plunges in a void state of despair. Similarly, utilitarian social models, including all forms of Socialism, eventually degenerate into totalitarianism due to their incapacity to fathom the ties between all human beings and their universal nature. Post-modern nihilism and all its appendices, such as critical race theory, intersectional feminism, and exploitative historical revisionism, depict human interactions as nothing more than bleak, and dreadfully quantifiable, exercises of power relationships amongst human beings, categorized by ethnicity, religion and gender. These world views fail dramatically to understand the underlying evolutionary drive of all living beings and that of human beings in particular. Furthermore, once all aspects of life are demeaned to series of power exploitations, we are left with an underlying void which eventually determines the failure of all such philosophies. No utilitarian categorization of human beings as commoditized units has ever produced evolutionary results in terms of prosperity and emancipation. The current imposition of identity politics that has de-facto replaced past reliance on common creeds for the cohesion of societies, is the most suitable example to showcase the fallacies of nihilistic philosophies. In fact, by replacing abstract concepts such as liberty and happiness with race, gender and religion, these nihilist philosophies are creating a new form of pre-Hellenic tribalism founded in divisive physical traits rather than unifying ideas. Unsurprisingly, these novel hateful ideologies are reinterpretations of the failed ideologies of the past, that collectively caused the slaughter of over 100 million human beings in just a handful of decades over the course of last century.

Today’s identity politics, the ideological downfall into new forms of tribalism we are experiencing across all aspects of our societies, whether it be media, social media, sports, pop culture, schools, public institutions, and even corporate structures, suffers from the same elementary (and patronizing) mistake of Rousseau. By reviving the desire to label human beings by their ethnicity, religion and sexual orientations, post-modern nihilism seeks to distance itself from unifying creeds in favor of an idyllic pre-Hellenic purity that does not exist. This novel nihilism refuses the consolidated and proven success of national creeds that raise human beings above skin color in favor of an illusory Garden of Eden that has never been, and by doing so creates the same suffocating void experienced by all those philosophies which failed to study the unifying elements of humanity. Modern day tribalism trivializes the human spirit labeling human beings according to skin color and sexual practices, imprisoned in perennial artificial power struggles, conjuring nothing more than a spiritual void where the Universal layer that connects all human beings is foolishly denied.

Consensus Societies and the Second Cognitive Revolution – Authority

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…

— Winston S Churchill

Logos, Ethos & Pathos, Birth of Consensus Societies

In order to further our understanding of how humanity reached our contemporary state of prosperity, knowledge and individual emancipation, we must look at what distinguishes those societies that allowed for social and technological progress to flourish, and for us to inherit the comfort we have become ungratefully used to. These societies, set aside few exceptions, are consensus societies. More specifically, they are societies resulting from the Second Cognitive Revolution, that in which humanity discovers the location of highest authority lies in our individual freewill. Once again, just like the ochre cave paintings of our Paleolithic ancestors offered a clear landmark for the previous transition, the Cognitive Revolution where humanity discovers the fundamental nature of individual authority can be traced to one of the oldest works of literature narrating the human condition, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Written before the invention of alphabets, the Epic of Gilgamesh is the first work of literature to explore the human condition from the perspective of the individual, and our innate craving to attain the highest form of authority. It is the beginning of an evolutionary transition towards Humanism, that will mature only a Millenia later when small Hellenic city-states organize themselves around the concept of citizenship, understood as shared ownership of the state, to fend off the drudgery of Persian slavery. Swiftly, having organized their societies around consensus, the Greeks rapidly rose above all previous civilizations not only in terms of social and technological progress, but also in terms of quantifiable power. At the height of the Hellenic era, a single free citizen fighting alongside Alexander the Great could easily keep at bay ten Persian slave soldiers. Unlike previous societies, Hellenic societies and all consensus societies derived from this original mold, require that the ruler persuade their citizens through logos, ethos and pathos, the modes of persuasion defined by Aristotle. Logos representing reason, ethos the character of a leader defined by its empirical history, and pathos being compassion. Reason, empiricism and compassion have endured as the foundational pillars of all consensus societies to this day and provide the recipe that has driven human evolution over the last 3 Millenia. Other civilizations whose authority rests either on a divine emperor or a divine body of tribal elders have gifted us with splendid contributions in the form of music, craftsmanship, architecture, literature, poetry, but even after the collapse of the Classical World no other civilization could ever attain the depth of empirical knowledge, the advancements of reason and the ability to extend universally these principles, as had been achieved through the Humanism of Hellenic consensus. Thucydides, father of the discipline of history, did not work for any master when he recorded the Peloponnesian Wars. Similarly, Aristotle owned his knowledge, which he sold to whom he pleased, including foreign rulers. No other society could boast the same level of entrepreneurial emancipation, and humanity would once again have to wait for a Genoese sailor, Christopher Columbus to put the wheels of evolution in motion once again, resuming the pursuit of individual emancipation and individual authority through the practice of freewill and entrepreneurial skills.

Globalisation, the Leviathan and the End of Consensus Societies

By the turn of the 20th Century, notwithstanding the disparity between consensus nation-states and their colonies, and the rising belligerence amongst nation-states, the last two empires upholding pre-Hellenic social models based on divine authority rather consensus, the Ottoman Empire and the Manchurian Empire finally collapsed. Both Ataturk, father of modern Turkey and Sun Yat-Sen, father of modern China attempted without success to modernize their collapsed empire through the introduction of Western Hellenic Humanism, attempting to build consensus models, founded on the authority of individuals. Even after two World Wars, at the height of decolonization, no political leader in the developing world would have imagined reviving pre-Hellenic social models. The understanding of the absolute superiority of consensus societies was unanimously embraced by every newly founded nation around the planet. Nehru in India, Sukarno in Indonesia, Nasser in Egypt, Reza Sha in Iran, even Mao Zedong, though adopting a corrupted form of consensus, never once suggested reproposing Confucian political models. Surprisingly, much has changed since the end of the Cold War. Today academics, politicians, diplomats, corporate leaders, even pop culture celebrities, speak of the three dominant models in the world’s geopolitical arena as having moral equivalence. The Washington Consensus which emerged after the Second World War is compared to the rapidly rising Beijing Consensus and the Riyadh Consensus (contested internally by Teheran and Ankara), as perfectly legitimate alternatives. This idea of moral equivalence, though born out of a laudable desire, remains nevertheless a gross fallacy. Whereas the Washington Consensus is genuinely founded on consensus, the other models are not. One model proposes the revival of Confucian political and social models, the other the revival of Islamic political and social models. Neither of these two pre-Hellenic models are founded on consensus. Neither model acknowledges the human individual as the recipient of ultimate authority.

While the Washington Consensus was indeed the most recent manifestation of humanity’s evolutionary course seeded in Hellenic civilisations, the Beijing Consensus and the Riyadh Consensus (contested internally by Ankara and Teheran) are not. Both of these latter consensuses are an attempt to revive social and political models believed extinct early last century, the Confucian model and the Islamic model. Both models are pre-Hellenic. The first models itself after the Bronze Age empires whereby a divine emperor represents the highest source of authority over all of society; the latter instead is even more archaic, fashioned after Neolithic social models founded on the divine powers of gods and goddesses, later revised as a single God, interpreted by a body of tribal elders such as the Ulama, or the Sanhedrin. Over the course of evolution humanity outgrew this Neolithic tribal model around the turn of the First Millenia BC when King David successfully placed his authority above the Sanhedrin. As in all significant transitions of human evolution, this transition also can be sealed with a symbolic landmark occurring when King David takes the consecrated temple bread for himself and his soldiers on Sabbath, thus overruling the authority of the Sanhedrin. This episode marks for the people of Israel the end of the Neolithic tribal model and the beginning of the Bronze Age imperial model. Later, this model too would be superseded once the Greeks discovered and adopted the Humanist consensus model. An easy way to understand the difference between these three models, surprisingly competing once again with one another for influence in the affairs of humanity after three Millenia, is by identifying where the ultimate authority of a society resides. For our purpose, we can simplify societies into three fundamental elements: the ruler, the institutions and the individuals. The ruler would be the equivalent of our president or the executive body in our advanced liberal democracies. The institutions are our schools, our courts, our media, our banks, our private and public infrastructure and whatever other structure required for the functioning of our societies. The individuals are obviously citizens in advanced liberal democracies or the subjects of other systems. In Islamic societies the ultimate authority rests on God as interpreted by the tribal elders, thus the monarch and his (no need for gender neutral pronouns in this case) subjects are accountable to the tribal elders, more specifically in the case of Islamic societies, the Ulama. In Confucian societies the emperor is a god incarnate and the ultimate seat of authority over the society. Thus, the institutions and the subjects are ultimately accountable to the ruler. Only in Hellenic societies is the seat of ultimate authority residing amongst the individuals participating in the life of the society. This in fact, from Hellenic civilisations onwards, notwithstanding the set back of the Dark Ages when advanced civilisations collapsed under the weight of their own success and with the ensuing decadence became easy prey for nomadic hunter gatherers, the rulers and the institutions are accountable to the citizens of our societies. Even during the Middle Ages Christian monarchs almost always had to take into account to a far higher degree than their Eastern counterparts, the will of their subjects as mediated by the Church (usually the only institution of the time capable of mediating on behalf of the people). Just like Hobbes was suggesting a return to feudal societies, the Leviathan proposed by today’s globalists, wishes to eliminate the requirement of civil representations. Consensus societies in fact, while infinitely more successful than all the previous social models are extremely complex, and our rulers now believe they have sufficient power through economic monopolies and a dystopian use of information to eliminate the need for such complicated systems.

What has changed in recent years to put in question the very same models that allowed for the bulk of human progress in favor of failed pre-Hellenic models discontinued for over a century? Why are we witnessing a prolonged period of democratic recession around the world? And what is the West doing about this authoritarian drift? Let’s start with the last question. The West is actively partaking in the rise of pre-Hellenic authoritarianism. Not only are countries that did not succeed in adopting consensus models regressing to past totalitarianism, but that very same totalitarianism blossoming abroad is actively being pushed on our advanced liberal democracies. We see these changes in the rising censorship, the new tribal ideologies of identity politics, the historical revisionism constructed to demean the achievements of consensus societies, the assault on science and empirical evidence on which to base arguments, the rejection of dialogue, the use of intimidation and harassment to silence political adversaries. Leaders in our advanced liberal democracies are increasingly abandoning the need for logos, ethos and pathos, relying on censorship and intimidation instead. How did this happen? These phenomena are widely documented, but not easily understood were it not for a brilliant Austrian economist with a bewildering ability for synthesis and intuition, Joseph Schumpeter. Schumpeter provided us with the answer 78 years ago. In his Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, published in 1942 at the height of World War Two, well before the tides of war had shifted, Schumpeter formidably predicted all the forms of Socialism to him contemporary, including Communism, Fascism and National Socialism, would eventually fail under the weight of the disproportionate success of capitalism. He also foresaw that the success of capitalism would prove so formidable as to consolidate economic power into very few enterprises that would eventually develop a global oligopoly. This oligopoly would impede the creation of new enterprises, thus stifling innovation, and would eventually result into a new form of Socialism where the authority no longer came in the form of governments over citizens but enterprises over their employees. This is exactly what we are seeing today with governments in the West transformed into bureaucratic appendices of global corporations. This new global corporate authority that rules over national institutions, sovereign governments and supranational institutions alike, is the Leviathan. As we all know, while the best corporations may be very meritocratic, corporations are not run by consensus. On the contrary, companies need chains of command that are very distinct from the decision making processes we have become accustomed to in liberal democracies, at least in times of peace.

Just like Hertz physically demonstrated the radio waves theoretically predicted by Maxwell decades earlier, for proof of the Leviathan’s rise to power today, we need look no further than the monumental work of Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Thomas Piketty, unequivocally demonstrates how Globalization has stifled social mobility and made inhabitants of advanced liberal democracies poorer over the last two decades. This decrease in purchasing power is so dramatic as to have had an impact on the life expectancy of the citizens of the country that leads the Washington Consensus. Life expectancy in the US while improving immensely for the wealthy, has stagnated for the rest of the population and even diminished in low-income populations[1]

Globalization has successfully lifted over 1 billion souls out of absolute poverty.[2] (insert image) We should all be grateful for this phenomenal achievement. This success though was not the occurrence of free markets performing their natural course. Globalization has not merely produced novel wealth but relied greatly on the transfer of existing wealth. Nor is this transfer of wealth market driven. We haven’t merely witnessed a southward or eastward transfer out of advanced liberal democracies, rather an upward transfer from middle class wealth accumulated over generations within liberal democracies in favor of a globalized class of ultra-high net worth individuals. This transfer has occurred outside of the laws of free market as new economic practices of state owned or state-linked corporations became involved in Globalization, partnering with the global corporations of the West. We have experienced an upwards transfer that is not geographical, but a consolidation of wealth in highest echelons of society to be shared with oligarchs openly hostile to democratic principles. Globalization has forced a consolidation of markets and industries into the hands of an ever-shrinking number of companies with ever-increasing power and authority. The access to global markets has required unprecedented consolidations with dramatic consequences on SMEs and its middle class. The worst part of this transfer of wealth and power is that those who supposedly would have benefitted most from Globalization, the 1 billion human beings lifted from absolute poverty, have experienced only marginal benefits compared to the losses in advanced liberal democracies, and have remained completely unaffected by the principles of consensus societies. The 1 billion human beings that overcame absolute poverty are not the direct beneficiaries of the recent transfer of wealth and continue to be excluded from the political life of their respective countries. The direct beneficiaries in these rising powers that saw a bewildering influx of capital from advanced liberal democracies over the last several decades, are the rulers that control that flow of liquidity. These rulers grounded in pre-Hellenic models allocate only a minimum amount of wealth to their people in order to prevent uprisings due to excessive poverty, but make sure to prevent their people from actively partaking in the decision-making processes of their respective countries. People outside of Western or Western styled liberal democracies have had no previous experience in nation building though consensus. The idea that the underlying humanist principles of consensus societies 3,000 years in the making, would readily be embraced effortlessly and automatically with just a bit of free market economy was, in hindsight, completely naïve. It gets worse. The oligopoly successfully anticipated by Schumpeter, the new Leviathan embodying the global corporate apparatus that has neutered sovereign governments into mere bureaucratic appendices, has discovered along the way that the pre-Hellenic models of social control – especially in this Orwellian day-and-age of dystopian technologies – are far more desirable than the fragile and complicated consensus models of our recent past. Globalization is no longer (or possibly never was in the mind of our rulers) about exporting democracy. It’s about importing authoritarianism. For decades I remained under the impression that the small shops, local industry, family-owned businesses forced to give way to global brands was a necessary cost for global stability, and yet the opposite has come true. The sacrifices of Western middle classes have been exploited to fuel violence abroad and import censorship and intimidation at home.

Beyond Consensus, the Third Cognitive Revolution – Creation

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.

– Max Planck, Interview on The Observer (25 January 1931)

U superchiu è come mancante (what is in excess is as good as missing)

– Sicilian proverb

Just like the First Cognitive Revolution can be traced to Paleolithic paintings introducing symbols to represent our world and the Second Cognitive Revolution dates back to the Epic of Gilgamesh with the human desire for ultimate authority and sovereignty, also the Third Cognitive Revolution has its landmarks. These landmarks are the pivotal discoveries that separate Modern Physics from Classical Physics. The first landmark is Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, responsible for breaking once and for all the limits of classical physics and the confidence that Physics would eventually quantify everything in the Universe relying exclusively on Newtonian formulas. The second Landmark is Plank’s discovery of the quanta, packets of waves of probability that when triggered by an observer (i.e. the presence of a conscious being) release particles, the actual bits of matter that construct our physical world. Einstein shattered the walls of Classical Physics, Planck provided a glimpse of the building blocks beyond those walls, revealing a layer of reality previously excluded from the interests of empirical researchers. Consciousness has baffled humanity from our inception, but with just few exceptions such as Francis Bacon, Giordano Bruno and Bishop Berkeley amongst others, consciousness was kept out of the field of science and left to the speculation of philosophers, poets and mystics.

By the turn of the last century humanity’s knowledge was pressing at the edges of our understanding of the universe with unresolved mysteries such as the nature of light and its puzzling wave-particle duality. Quanta are fundamental units of matter that exist in the form a probability wave until someone – the presence of an observer, cuases them to manifest themselves in packages that materialize, or collapse, from infinte mathematical realm. Physicist, mathematicians and neuroscientists still struggle to understand where matter disappears to while awaiting the collapse of the next package wave of probability. A universe of equal mass in reverse made of dark matter and dark energy is a possible solution. Another solution proposes strings that lead to an infinite array of alternative universes where the matter we perceive in our world continuously slides to and from (possibly generating a novel universe with each passage). But there is a far simpler explanation for the relationship between the subtle state of unrealized matter and the packets of matter that we witness with our 5 senses. If only we allow ourselves the slightest counterintuitive effort, we can easily realize that the Apeiron described by our Hellenic ancestors is in fact the Quantum realm of waves of probability where matter exists as an unrealized potential. The realization that our consciousness authors the physical universe we perceive dramatically transforms the way we perceive the world. This universe is our creation and we do not require artifices to value it.

Why is this important today? Because the Modern Era of nation-states was founded on the certainty of a quantifiable Newtonian Universe where creeds could embrace all humanity above and beyond primitive superstitions based on sex, gender, ethnicity, and religious dogmas. The loss of this certainty in our worldview has led to the collapse of our unifying creeds and the re-emergence of pre-Hellenic superstitions that defy reason, logic, scientifical evidence or any other form of empirical truth, be it even merely the pursuit of such truths. Even the Meriam Webster seems comfortable today in defying the laws of mathematics (forget mentioning biology altogether) by defining the term sexual preference as offensive.[3] The reason for this unexplainable shift from reason is that sexual orientations are according to contemporary LGBTQ+ ideology, rooted in superstitions, unalterable. The motto, “born this way,” wishes to imply that human beings have no control over their sexuality. Thus, while the intention may be praiseworthy to the extent that it wishes to defend members of the LGBTQ+ community from discrimination the effect is actually the opposite as it demeans their humanity by claiming they do not possess freewill. This superstitious prejudice depicting human beings as creatures born with unalterable sexual orientations does not only demean their humanity by depriving them of freewill, it is also stumbles on an obvious logical impossibility as it contradicts the presence of a significant number of human beings whose sexual orientations change over time, or remain either fluid or undefined. An entity can have a certain characteristic either sometimes or all the time. It cannot possess that characteristic both sometime and all the time. A cannot be equal and unequal to B at the same time. It just cannot be. The idea that human beings are defined by unalterable sexualities is a logical impossibility which illustrates perfectly well our recent drift away from reason and science as we surrender to pre-Hellenic superstitions.

Having shattered the limits of Newtonian physics we now discover that we need to enter the realm of consciousness to understand the mechanics of our universe. Undoubtedly our consciousness is far more difficult to map than our mountains, our oceans, or our national borders. Nor are the causational links determining our actions as straightforward as the laws puling two led cannonballs of different sizes form a leaning tower.

So how can we find our bearings in a new unchartered universe so foreign himanity has barely scratched its surface and whose outer edges we have yet to start unfolding with our quantifiable transmissible knowledge. There is a simple solution provided by our Hellenic ancestors, Apeiron. We need make only one simple, but highly justified assumption. We must assume that our consciousness, as we perceive it individually, is indeed the Apeiron from which all manifestations of our universe are generated. (It is still an assumption because there currently several hypothesis of parallel either universes in either finite or infinite numbers, which would lose significance if Planck’s assumption of the nature of consciousness is properly understood and asserted). Thus just like our Hellenic forefathers used the concept of Apeiron to start making sense of the Universe we can once again do the same with this novel more subtle and vast universe we have recently discovered. Anything that unites humanity and the universe surrounding us is good, anything that divides us form one another and our surrounding is evil. Universal creeds are thus what we must cherish and defend while superstitious beliefs regarding skin color, sexual behavior, gender, or any other form of irrational constraints must be overcome and shed. Just bear in mind that an emancipated humanity will no longer need the artifices on whose income the Leviathan depends. That is why archaic superstitions are so dear to the Leviathan as it is a manner to snare and enslave us.

This scientific breakthrough, once coupled with the realization that humanity could easily overcome what Keynes defined as the ‘economic problem’, the need to sustain our physical existence which has dominated the humanity since its birth, shatters completely the traditional mechanical worldview of markets and hierarchy. A humanity that has grasped these concepts realizes that no amount of wealth can provide the gratification of genuine friendship, love, intimacy. We come to see that the most satisfying banquet need not be the costliest. A surfboard can provide more gratification than entire wardrobes of jewelry. But such humanity poses an immense threat to those who cannot grasp these concepts, are enslaved by artificial needs and have amassed their fortunes on the fabrication of artificial needs. If we all rose above the manufactured desires of our consumer economies, our rulers would rapidly cease to serve a purpose. The Leviathan would lose its main source of income, us, captive consumers depended on the global oligopoly.

Thus, just like Hobbes sought to turn the clock of human evolution back in time, the Leviathan today seeks to erase all the progress made in the course of 3 Millenia of evolution since the existential rummaging of Gilgamesh. The global oligopoly has provided the opportunity for the Leviathan to do so.

Conclusion

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions – English proverb

The fall of the Berlin Wall signed the end of the Cold War, the demise of the last ideological rival to capitalism and the launch of our current Globalization led by the Washington Consensus. With the threat of social unrest instigated from Socialist ideologies gone, also the willingness to share the rewards of capitalism’s profits began to wean. Globalization rapidly transformed in an instrument to consolidate wealth into the highest ranks of society rather than an instrument for the creation of new and widespread prosperity. Furthermore, as individuals with a strong indoctrination in pre-Hellenic political models were welcomed into the highest ranks of this from of globalization, our foundation on Hellenic Humanism came under attack. The early years of the Age of Great Exploration brought to Europe an influx of practices that had long been abolished and were not resumed even during the Dark Ages wherever the Church successfully exercised its influence. Just like contamination from Arab and Ottoman traders, African empires erected on slave trade, and slave traders in the Asia and in Pre-Colombian Americas reintroduced this barbaric practice that had been successfully abolished by Emperor Constantine in the 4th Century, Globalization today, has rekindled a desire amongst our leaders to overcome the hurdles of democracies by eliminating foundational creeds altogether. The use of technology in particular allows them to manufacture popular consensus in an formerly unimmaginable manner, allowing them to dictate to large masses of human beings whom to love and whom to despise, without much need for empirical evidence or reason. Media and technology have defacto done away with the need for politicians to practice logos, ethos and pathos, allowing for a return to Neolithic superstitions facilitated by tech censorship and manipulation. If they succeed, humanity will enter a prolonged Dark Age, a novel Digital Neolithic from which we may never escape. It is highly improbable that corporate board directors and tech tycoons are aware of what they are doing, but it is also extremely unlikely that they are actually aware of the mechanisms of human evolution. They are a product of post-modern revisionism that believe the pyramids appeared effortlessly by carefree, happy-go-lucky, eternally blissful slaves frolicking in ever-lasting feasts of appreciation for their equally blissful masters. In this context, Moses was just a greedy capitalist that wanted to exploit people by deceitfully ripping them away from their blissful Heaven on Earth, and Jesus freed slaves only to exploit them Himself. It is highly unlikely that the mid-level executives responsible for the Google, Facebook and Twitter algorithms that deceitfully transform reality on a daily basis, have even the most elementary notions of human history and its mesmerizing millenary struggle towards emancipation. We cannot hold them accountable for their ignorance, but we can seek genuine knowledge ourselves, and we can elect representatives to break up the monopolies on information.

At the time of the Enron crisis many of us were in disbelief that the fine gentlemen running the board rooms of listed companies could be so brazen as to deceit the rigors and scrutiny of the SEC and the NYSE, and proceed to ruthlessly plunder the savings of their employees to save themselves (and get rich along the way). A few years later who could’ve ever imagined that our duly elected representatives would fabricate allegations of weapons of mass destruction as a pretext to highjack the world’s most powerful army for no other purpose than personal gain. Later still, at the height of the 2008 Financial Crisis, how many of us could fathom that centuries old institutions on whose trust the global economy rested its foundations could deceit through sheer incompetence (mostly) millions of bank account holders, while even those institutions that hold banks accountable through credit ratings, responsible even for assigning ratings to entire countries, fell starkly short of their fiduciary duties in evaluating banking products.

When Salman Rushdie wrote The Satanic Verses, the Humanist hemisphere of the world, without exception nor hesitation, stood behind the Hellenic values of freewill carried down to us through Christianity. Today governments, publishing companies, our media, our corporate and our institutions, distance themselves from anyone who seeks the same pursuit of individual freewill within the Islamic world and disallows criticism both from within that universe as well as our own. Similarly, anyone in his right mind who recalls the catalyzing role Chernobyl played in the fall of the totalitarian Soviet regime, would’ve thought that the Coronavirus, or Covid-19, would’ve had the same exact effect. Instead, the opposite has happened. Our media, many of our governments, certainly our supranational institutions have gone out of their way to downplay the initial attempt to conceal the origin and spread of a pandemic whose impact on humanity is far greater than that of Chernobyl.

At home, the picture is just as bleak. The act of dehumanizing political adversaries, the ideological motivated street violence, the harassment campaigns, the assault on historical figures and history itself, the constant denouncing of teachers, professors or anybody that does not bend to a manufactured ideology, the public shaming and mob trials that have been brewing for years and finally spilled over onto the streets during the BLM protests, are an eerie reminder to anyone who has experienced it, or has studied the violence with empathy towards its victims, of the horrible persecutions during the Cultural Revolution. As one young Chinese American said of his father’s generation witnessing what is now happening in the US and the UK, “They had lived through it, and although they cannot put their finger on the why, they can feel a certain febrility in the air which reminded them of the events of half a century ago.”[4] Sometimes we need to practice empathy towards those who have suffered immense losses to better understand the value of the precious liberties we hold dear and their fundamental fragility.

Looking back at the end of the Soviet Era, the analogies continue. In 1979 Saint Pope John Paul II visited Poland, his native land, and took an unprecedented political stand for the Church in the Modern Era. He openly deified the Communist regime: "Allow me, venerable gentlemen, to continue to consider Poland's interest as my own, and to participate in it as profoundly as if I still lived in this country and were a citizen of this nation."[5] He took the side of the people and told them: “Don’t be afraid; the fate of Poland depends on you.”[6] He returned to meet the leader of Solidarnosc, Lech Walesa in 1983. Saint Pope John Paul II galvanized a generation of Poles who through the practice of non-violence became the first nation to break the Iron Curtain. Today, at the height of the sponsored street violence, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former Papal Nunzio to the United States wrote an open letter to President Donald Trump, warning him of the Deep State, and how it is manipulating the pandemic and the acts of violence and vandalism “to profit from the dissolution of the social order so as to build a world without freedom.”[7] These words did not come from the pen of a novelist or a conspiracy theorist, but from the highest representative of the Vatican to the United States under Pope Benedict XVI. No major media outlet picked up on it if not to ridicule it. And yet, millions of Americans echo the same feeling of betrayal as they lose their jobs, shut down their business, see their wealth expropriated by corporations, and are even publicly harassed for legally defending their lives and livelihoods from arsonists, rioters and looters. How can those responsible for informing the public not even have experienced the slightest nudge of curiosity to try and uncover the reasons for such a high-ranking Vatican representative to expose himself so starkly? Such is the arrogance of the Leviathan, that its servants are now incapable of hearing the voice of the people. “Let them eat cake,” Marie Antoinette would’ve said.

Human beings are wonderful creatures, but profoundly flawed. We would be fools to believe that concentration camps were run by demoniac fiends with goat hooves and pig tails. They were at most run by complacent bureaucrats who merely sought the path of least resistance – the rest performed their tasks with ‘good inattentions’, because they believed the rhetoric that had been drilled into them from the media, the government, the universities, the schools, their peers, and anyone who had disagreed had long been weeded out.

The erosion of universal creeds, the rise of totalitarian systems around the world, the corporate collusion with totalitarian regimes abroad, the systemic elimination of the use of logos, ethos and pathos in consensus societies, the corporate looting of middle class wealth exacerbated by nonsensical Covid-19 lockdowns, unscientific and counterproductive measures rejected even by already colluded supranational entities such as the WHO[8] and imposed notwithstanding the appeal of the scientific community,[9] the rise of novel forms of superstitions celebrating divisive tribalism, the adoption of totalitarian methods in advanced liberal democracies, the incessant historically ridiculous attacks on the merits of consensus societies, all point inevitably at the Leviathan’s insidious, methodic and steadfast labor to annihilate any trace of consensus societies from human memory. Its decades long work has nevertheless found an obstacle in the rise of new popular movements that are primarily focused at defending national identities and rejecting Globalization. This is the historical context in which the alleged US election fraud of 2020 has matured. The humus for this attempt to circumvent the need for democratic elections has been taking shape over decades, but the presence of a opportunistic populist leader with immense following notwithstanding the monolithic mediatic opposition, in the world’s largest economy, unwilling to submit to the Leviathan’s oligopoly, accelerated and precipitated the manipulation of democratic elections creating far too many discrepancies.

To the best of my recollection there is no precedent in the United States where the United States Army has formally addressed in courts through sworn affidavits national security threat brought about by alleged election fraud.[10] Unsurprisingly, courts have been unwilling to this day to welcome hearings on such dramatic allegations, but eventually the thousands of affidavits will make their way either to a court or the parliament. Besides the alleged low-tech breaches relating to physical ballots and impairing observers, the most spectacular breaches reported are relative to the electronic systems used in this election. Amongst the various reports that have surfaced some of the most notable point to spikes in Biden votes that simply put do not correlate with the physical limits of uploading ballots on the machines.[11] There may be explanations for these spikes. Possibly ballots were added manually for valid reasons, accounting for the spikes, but there is valid reason for suspicion which to date the media has refused to address.

Another profound anomaly is found in the Biden biases counties utilizing Dominion and Hart machines have e revealed when compared with electoral machines of different brands. This anomaly is even more astonishing due to its consistency as it seems that Dominion and Hart machines systematically over-represented Biden ballots.[12]

Once again, we continue to assist a pervasive media blackout. In fact, even as the suspicion of fraud is going mainstream in the public, with 47% of Americans believing election fraud to be ‘very likely’, including 20% to 30% Democrats believing the same.[13] The media remains spectacularly unwilling to confront these matters. On the contrary, many still insist in ridiculing the American people by claiming there is no evidence of election fraud and that any reference to election fraud is a hoax.

Why are we to believe that the thousands of affidavits, the witnesses coming from all walks of life, the forensic cyber trails, the financial trails, the video footages are all fabricated. We merely need to persist that courts in the US overcome their resistance and confront the daunting task of looking into the most striking case of voter fraud in recent history, one that will not pass without repercussions. It is vital that a US court comes clean with a clear verdict expressed on the evidence provided, not mere technicalities, because failure to do so

will mean that the Leviathan will have prevailed. If our rulers can manufacture electoral results and circumvent the social contracts of our liberal democracies, the Leviathan will have triumphed. A new global pre-Hellenic authoritarian ideology will be successfully imposed on all human beings. They will not stop until any requirement for logos, ethos and pathos will be abolished. They will not stop until the last 3,000 years of evolution will be permanently erased from human memory.

Seen in its particular historical context, in light of the concentration of power we have witnessed in recent decades and the complexity of the interstitial transition we are currently going through as a species, a blatant attempt to do away with the electoral processes of consensus societies by those who have most benefitted from this unfortunate period of growing inequality is not only plausible but very likely. The cost of this involution is huge. Anglophile and Francophile scholars, with a tendency to dismiss the lineage of our consensus societies before the Dark Ages would be mistaken to think the Leviathan’s attempt at imposing their rule would merely usher a return to societies just 400 years back in time. The Leviathan does not merely wish for a return to simple Middle Ages, before the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, the age that troubled Hobbes so much. If the Leviathan were to succeed in abolishing the need for electoral representation, humanity would be left with only the other two competing pre-Hellenic models to choose from. We are not talking about a set-back of just a few hundred years, we are looking at a setback of at least two and a half Millenia, or three Millenia if we are to trace the root of humanism to the Epic of Gilgamesh. The evidence that has surfaced to date is vast and convincing. Even with the absolute media blockage still in vigor, it is rapidly reaching the attention of the public and their representatives in office. Eventually whether it be in court or in parliament the reports will be read, the witnesses will be heard, and people of the United States will make a decision as according to the laws of the Constitution. Thus, whatever the outcome, after the Leviathan shall fall, and it will fall, that portion of humanity living in consensus societies must find the means to rethink our current model of Globalization. Economic relationships are not sufficient. We will have to make sure that all participants in the global economy work towards unifying humanity rather than dividing it, and this can only be obtained through the practice of creeds that supersede superstitions founded on artificial ideas of race, gender and religion. We will need to be far more vigilant towards our governments and our institutions to manufacture artificial consensus, hold them accountable to the practice logos, ethos and pathos. We can no longer rest our trust on single individuals. Human beings are capable of immense good, but immense evil as well. We must use Apeiron as our Polaris on which to set our bearings. What brings humanity closer together will be deemed as good, what divides us through artificial labels, false ideologies and dogmas, will warn us of evil. We all must ascertain that everyone in the post-Leviathan Globalization will share the vision that all human beings are equal before God and in their fundamental driving force, the pursuit of happiness.