The end of Present World

The End of thePresent World; Post-American Future

(London conference 12.10.2013)

 

Part 1. Philosophy of the Presence. Present/absent modern World.

(philosophical)

 
1. The Present World is not something given. The world is something that is created in the process of human existence. We don't exist in the World as something taken for granted. Existing, we constitute the world by the very fact of existing. Modernity insists on the objectivity of the world. But the objective world can really be present – because in order to be present it needs to have being, it to has to be, to participate in the Being Essence. But the question of being demands a witness who must be a thinking, judging entity. Only the intellectual moment defines whether or not the world is present and by judging the presence it automatically constitutes the world as something present. So the world in order to be should be present and has to be installed as such.
2. In the contempary world, modernity is increasingly disinclined to endeavour to make the World present. So it is relaxing and here begins Post-Modernity. Post-Modernity is the refusal to try to make the World as something present, refusal to be-in-the World. German philosopher Eugen Fink has dedicated very important philosophical phenomenological works to the problem of the world. According to him the world can not be equated with the sum of worldly things. It is something more than them because it is the whole. The intuition of the whole is the existential effort creating the world as a whole. So only human beings know the World precisely because only human beings create it by the fact of being human.
3. Martin Heidegger in “Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik” explored the subject, pointing out that the stone is worldless (weltlos) and the animal is poor of the World, destituted of the World (weltarm). So the World is present when the human is human, when man exists authentically. But to be human is difficult, it demands to affront the death and the End. To exist really is to exist in front of the End, on the Edge. And that means to exist creating the event of Being, the understanding of Being as something limited and ending, surrounded by the Death and nothingness. To be in such way is possible only in the realm of the sacred. If we abandon the sacred we can not perceive the Being as the event. So we are loosing the world as something present; it is precisely the end of the present world understood as the process of Ending. Not End as something given, but the Ending as something lasting. Ending more and more. More and more approaching the End but never reaching it effectively.
4. So the End of Ending begins when we refuse to exist authentically – in the midst of the sacred, surrounded by death and apophatic nothingness, intensively and dangerously. Modernity is precisely such an epoch. It is based on the objectivation of being, the commodification of it is the last stage. So being modern in the sociological sense means being not present. It is the famous oblivion of being, the absence of being, the occultation of being. So modernity is the phase where being more and more refuse to exist. Refusing to exist we stop the process of the presencing of the World. Stopping the process of the presencing of the world, the world ceases to be present. It begins to be absent. But it holds still. It's vanishing is delayed due to the fact we are not working any more in order to make it present. What does that mean? How can we explain the metaphysics of the delay?
5. The only solution is virtuality. Under the conditions of virtuality nothing needs to be really present, but at the same time nothing is really absent. Why is nothing really absent? Because the absence demands the witness who can testify that there is not a particular thing or that there is nothing at all. But in order to stand witness we need to be and to exist. But to exist is the same as to be-in-the-World. To-be-in-the-World is the same as to make the World present. But this is not the case today. That is why the World doesn’t end effectively as it should. That is why it proceeds to “be” as a simulacrum. It is the nature of the virtuality. The virtuality is the delay, the lapse of  (post) history when there is no more World but there is not nothing. Nor something, nor nothing. The virtuality is precisely this: the never ending End, eternal ending.
6. The Post-Modern conditions try to make such a situation normal and normative. If the Ending never ends it is not the Ending at all. So they mock the eschatology or promote its caricatural versions. So the never-ending End laughs at itself playing with the paradox. So the End of the present World is not beyond it nor fixed in time: it is the other side of the virtuality and it produces itself here and now. But nobody sees it because the virtuality doesn't give us the distance to perceive its other side. We are in trap. The End is here but it eludes us. It feigns not to be what it is.
7. Our aim is not to save the World. To save the World today signifies to save the Ending, to help it to be ending even more and more, to support its fake eternity and prolong the illusion. Our aim is not to end the process of Ending because doing this we would help but to further endorse the decadence. Our aim is not to begin something new because in the midst of Ending anything “new” will be immediately seized and appropriated by the Ending and turned into a new virtual distraction. Our aim is to fix the Ending as Ending and to demonstrate its real nature – the nature of the End. Only thus we can reveal the absence of the present World and disclose the fact that the End is really the End. So we need to expose the ontological nature of the virtuality in what it is not present and is not World.
8. If we try to compare the virtuality with reality in the sense of modern philosophy we are doomed from the beginning. The concept of reality is simply the first stage of transition to the virtuality, its beginning. Reality is the product of the desacralization of the Sacred so it is profane in its core and the result of the reductionist disenchantment of the World. The reality is in its essence already the virtuality. Reality as a Modern concept is virtual and nihilistic. So we should compare the virtuality with something Pre-real, that is Pre-Modern, that is Sacred.
9. The philosophical dilemma is Virtual vs Sacred. Both are beyond the real – one from beneath, other from above.
 

Part 2: The End of the USA - The End of the Other Countries - Peak Behind

(geopolitical)

 
1.    Geopolitically: The USA is showing the signs of its collapse. We see the agony of the unipolar world. The USA cannot propose any more realistic programs for the various parts of its global imperial control. There are some important points that are central to the global system. 
2.    Economy. The present liberal system is based on the concept of progressive, unlimited and infinite growth. In the financial economy the factor of time and timing acquires more and more significance. So if we are sure of the growth of the progress of the world economy we evaluate the future in a very particular way. It affects not only the problem of refinancing credit  but also a huge segment of special financial and credit instruments, economization ofthe debt and so on. In the 80s and 90s the whole liberal economy aided in persuading the entire world of the certainty of everlasting growth – the growth of the middle class, of salaries, of industry and the world economy. The world has believed their story. And that was not benign because this credulity has opened a new economic strategy of globalization – a new speed of globalization that was defined in completely the wrong way. So the limits of growth taken for unreachable were reached in the early 2000s and that was a clear sign of catastrophe. The crisis of 2008 was the last call. The collapse of the banking system was avoided only by the acquisition of debt by the USA. But the credit policy remained the same. Since the appointment of Ben Bernanke everybody has understood that we are entering the Apocalypse: the Federal Reserve policy will surely remain the same and ahead of us there is only the bankruptсy of the USA. The toxic deposits were transferred to the US government and all global financial systems became toxic. So we are approaching the moment of the bankruptсy of the USA. What next? The bankruptсy of societies- because the last to answer for the collapse of the faulty prognosis of eternal growth are the people. So the people are doomed. They will be obliged to pay the expense for a few decades of the global oligarchy's rich life which has already past. The future has already been sold and eaten. There is no future, it was demolished by the post-cold war euphoria of the recent past.
3.    Geopolitics. The unipolar moment of exclusive American domination is also behind us. The website of The Project of New American Century created by neo-conservatives is in a lamentable state – no updated items, all is frozen in the position of the early 2000s. Nobody dares to predict a positive future for the US. The US empire is sinking down swiftly. The BRICS countries are rising and communist China, instead of all twaddle about incompatibility of the totalitarianism and economic growth, is soon going to be an economic leader. The example is clear: liberal democracy doesn’t automatically mean economic prosperity. They are absolutely independent. You could be democratic and poor, totalitarian and rich, but also democratic and rich or totalitarian and poor. It all depends.
4.    The other aspect: The US was obliged to step back in two concrete and sufficiently humiliating situations: The August 2008 Russian attack on the Georgia, a devoted liberal ally of the USA, and the joint Russia-China refusal to let the US bomb Assad. The British refusal to follow Washington is very symptomatic. That is the real end – finished and final end this time – of the unipolar World.
5.    The present crisis of US government refinancing and shutdown is another sign. The USA could fall very quickly. It is certain that US will fall. No matter whether tomorrow or later. That is the end: both theoretically and empirically. Theoretically: the USA has lost its power of fascination. It doesn’t sufficiently inspire anybody any more. They had the chance to rule the World and they pretended to rule it. They have lost that opportunity. It is time to pay. The unlucky empire will pay a hundred times more – it is the price of the fear of some and the deception of others. The USA is doomed sooner or later.
6.    Where are we with Israel? A serious question. The problem of Israel is not geopolitical or economic. it is theological. Their Messiah is not coming. Jewish calculations unanimously say: it is high time, he certainly should hasten. If USA falls there will almost immediately be one Middle-Eastern country less. Guess which one? So he definitively has to appear because all political and military actions of the jews in the second half of the 20 century were orientated toward his coming. If he delays any more they are lost. He willcome neither now nor later. It is really bad news. Bad news for good jews. They could promote a simulacrum of the Sabbatai Zevi kind. A Virtual Messiah. It seems they could. And maybe will. So much worse for them. The internet can not save. Nor can a golden calf, nor a big lie.
7.    The definitive default of the USA could be regarded as good news (this time) for BRICS countries and for all partisans of multipolarity – in the East, in Latin America, in Eurasia and so on. But there is also a problem. The level of liberalization, democratization, Americanization, globalization and so on is too shallow to be irreversible but too deep to quite be benign. It has just reached the middle of the Non-Western societies. That is not enough for them to be Western and modern (post-modern) but enough to no longer be Eastern or traditional. So the collapse of the USA will not signify a definitive victory and triumph for Russia, China, Latin America, India or the Arab countries. Their elites and a considerable part of their societies are Westernized enough to not even be able to imagine the alternative. Everybody there continues to religiously believe in the USA and the golden calf. The counter-current and the enemies of USA are the modernists and Westerners within. Everybody wants the USA to be weaker but nobody wants it to disappear entirely. But it will disappear. That will be a catastrophe for all countries, because they will inevitably fall just after. So seeing the USA collapse, everybody will run to help it. It will be useless. So the turn to collapse will come quickly.
8.    The USA is liberalism, its final stage. The USA is modernity itself. The USA is post-modernity. The Empire of the End. The last one. The end of the USA  will be the end of the Modernity as such. It will destroy all that is Modern. Not only the financial capitalism of the new economy, not only financial oligarchy but all economy including the industry that is too deeply embedded in the global financial structure. Only agricultural, rural, almost-self-sufficient communities could survive. Something like the imagery of “Mad Max” is ahead of us.
9.    So the End of the USA will signify the End of Modernity as a sociological, historic and philosophic concept including science, anthropology, economy, technology and so on. All that is contaminated by modernity will collapse. So we are approaching the end of the modern world. When exactly? Nobody can say definitively – I think soon. Or a little later. We will see.
 

Part 3: The Choice - Platonopolis. The 4th Political Theory and the multiplicity of Daseins. The Titans

(moral issue)

 
1.    A Philosophical and geopolitical survey of the situation with some points consciously emphasized in a somewhat excessive way in order to clarify things further raises a question of a moral nature: what to do? Do we Have a choice and if so what choice?
2.    I believe the choice always exists because the essence of the human being is freedom. But not always is the choice identical or indefinite. Every historic situation presupposes a special choice or set of choices.  And choices are distributed in very particular way among different kinds of persons. So I give my opinion – my choice.
3.    My choice is the Fourth Political Theory beyond three political expression of modernity – liberalism, communism and fascism. All of them are impregnated by modernity. I reject modernity (it is my choice) and I am very glad it is coming to its end. For me it was always the End and I enjoy the final End of Ending. I think that we need first of all to found a proper space beyond the virtual reality of modernity where we should establish the figure of a witness that can pronounce the truth of the absence of the not-present virtual World pretending to be present. So we need to emigrate from modernity into the realm of the Sacred and prepare our strategic base there. That is the main frame of The Fourth Political Theory – to create a completely new political Philosophy, political Metaphysics  completely free from modernity – against liberalism, against communism and against fascism.
4.    We need to affirm a new political subject: not the individual (as in liberalism), not class (as in communism), not race (as in national-socialism). So I propose it to be the philosophical term dasein – the Being There or Being T/Here. It roughly means the core of human existence as a thinking presence. From that point we need prepare an existential revolution, the uprising of dasein against alienating forms of modernity. Indivudual, class and race are simply concepts. Dasein is not a concept; it is Presence itself, the Presence constituting the World – as Event, as the existential space surrounded by the Death. Being on the edge of the Death – dangerously, thinking, creating the Whole as the outburst of the Light – it is the axis of dasein. Every man and every woman could discover the dasein inside of them, or better to discover themselves inside of dasein. Dasein is human essence – Menschsein. Everything could pass or change. Dasein is always here, can be here, should be here. It sleeps. Modernity is based on the sleep of dasein. It should awaken. It should stand up. It should begin to think and to act.
5.    Heidegger defined the Man as Watcher of Being. The term Watcher if Greek fulax is the name of the political head of Plato's ideal State, the ruling philosopher. The head of state in al-Farabi's perfect state is considered in Plato's sense the one who is united with the divine Intellect, the prophetic ruler, the Philosopher King. Authentically existing dasein is the Philosopher King. My alternative is Platonopolis where the phenomenologists rule – Philosophers of Martin Heidegger's school. So humanity is concentrated in the dasein of those who exist authentically. So I am in favor of an existential Empire – the Empire of the Event/En-Owning, Er-Eignis, the Empire of the Being that should be an absolute alternative to this ending and ever-delayed pseudo-World of simulacra.
6.    In order to make the decisive step we need to define the proper moment between too early and too late – that is the Kairos, the right moment. Such a moment is approaching us, coming nearer and nearer. The moment of their fall should be the moment of our (possible) rise, the window of opportunity at least. But that cannot be something mechanical – the fall of USA will provoke the fall of the others. So we need to be separated from such “others,” not to be with them in their end – they all deserve to stop being because they refuse to really be here, they refuse Being T/Here. So we need to go against what will naturally follow the fall of the USA. The fall of the main evil will be followed by the fall of the lesser ones. We should not be with them. It will be the time to attack. Our Kairos.
7.    The Fourth Political Theory is pluralistic. I believe in the multiplicity and diversity of daseins. Every culture or civilization. Every religion and society has its own special dasein. We could not impose our existential criteria on them. They need to awake their Daseins by themselves. Everybody understands the Event – en-owning in proper terms. For Iranians it is the coming of Mahdi. For the Aztecs the Return of Ketzalkoatl. For the Europeans the awakening of the sleeping emperor. For Indians it is Kalki. For Buddhists Maytreya. For us Russians it is the appearance of Saint Sophia the Feminine epiphany of the Sacred Logos. Let the people resurrect their gods. All of them were killed or chased away by the titanic theocide of modernity. As Friedrich Junger has said: “where there are no more gods there titans appear”. The Titans. Right name. They have risen to the top of the Sacred Mountain, they have driven out our gods, they have imposed their perverted materialist vision and their unjust and corrupted societies and greedy elites. They promote hubris as norm. That is modernity – in every version: capitalist, marxist or nationalist. Now is the right time for the titans to fall. And for the gods to return.
8.    Heidegger once said: “It is in vain to wait for God or the gods to come. He or they will not come. Because they wait for us to come and to prepare the place for their Return.” To put the End to the everlasting Ending is our task. Not theirs. Our gods are different. But the enemy of all gods is the same. The Titans. Now they are on the edge of their highest point imaginable. But nothing can grow infinitely. Once comes the moment of the fall. This moment is near. But when? That may depend on us.
Thank You for the Your attention.