Boomers — as Zoomers label the 60+ cohort — are trying to pressure Zoomers with a morality they have turned into dogma.

A morality built on a single interpretation of history: the one canonized after Germany’s defeat, institutionalized in Nuremberg and The Hague, elevated to an absolute, and declared final.

This morality is not debated, not refined, not updated. But it rusts beautifully.

It gets pulled from the pocket whenever there’s a need to justify the next piece of institutional nonsense — restrictions of rights, economic self-sabotage, censorship, selective humanism. Millions of dead Jews are transformed into a universal argument that shuts down any discussion in advance. Not as a tragedy, but as a cudgel.

The fight against fascism has effectively been privatized by left-liberals. The very people who, with high probability, would never have picked up a weapon or risked their own lives against fascism — or against anything at all. For them, fascism is not a threat; it is a convenient moral asset.

Judgments of events grow more polarized the closer the observer is to direct participation. History demonstrates this relentlessly. Today we speak of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne with academic reverence. Yet Phoenicians, Persians, Gauls, Picts, and dozens of exterminated or displaced peoples saw them as butchers. And they were right — from their vantage point.

That is why today’s sacralized criticism of Schmidt and his “Reichs” looks especially grotesque in a world that is racing back toward exactly that logic: bloc-based, imperial, Reich-like structures. An American Reich. A European one. A Chinese one. A Russian one — with a question mark that grows fainter by the day. Moral condemnation of the past unfolds at the very moment the present reproduces the same architecture of power, merely under different flags and vocabulary.

And this is where a young man appears — unpleasant, provocative, often stupid — whose very existence exposes the shortsightedness and toothlessness of boomer moralizing. A moralizing that explains the scale of historical tragedy solely through the lived experience of its victims, while pretending this is a universal and eternal criterion for political judgment.

History does not work that way. It never has.

The conflict between fathers and children has always existed. And it always will.

Artificially transmitting guilt across generations does not work. It does not produce responsibility; it produces cynicism and rejection. Children must have their own mistakes. Their own illusions. Their own catastrophes.

And if you, the boomers, lack the capacity to preserve restraining institutions yourselves — if today it is you who are dismantling them with your own hands, not “thirty-year-old kids” — then what exactly are you demanding from the latter?

Morality without personal responsibility and institutional competence is not morality.

It is grumbling.

And it is no better than crude provocation.

That’s how it is.

This is not a feel-good essay. It’s a pamphlet. A hostile one. Sharp, cold, and necessary. Because we’re drowning in fakery — and pretending not to notice.

You know it. The world feels off. News cycles end before the lie lands. People play roles they never chose. Institutions run on PR and collapse on contact. Products, ideas, relationships — all interface. No weight. No structure. No truth.

This is a philosophy text — but only in the sense that a scalpel is medical equipment. We’re not theorizing. We’re cutting. We’ll slice open polished narratives and see what survives outside the spotlight.

Intriduction: Against Everyone

Here’s the claim: almost everything around you is a simulation. Not just fake. Worse. It looks like truth. Feels like form. But it collapses the moment support is removed. That’s the only test.

We’ve replaced reality with optics. Belief with branding. Truth with vibes.

“Everyone has their own truth,” they say — not as a philosophical stance, but as a way to avoid conflict. A way to avoid discernment. Because to call something false is to imply that something else is true. And in the 2020s, that’s almost a hate crime.

But truth does exist. And it’s brutal. It doesn’t ask for your opinion. It doesn’t need your feelings. It simply holds.

Discernment is the act of separating form from imitation. Structure from noise. What still holds after you stop pretending — that’s form. Everything else is aesthetic.

CHAPTER 1: Everything Is True — and Everything Is Fake

You’ve heard the phrase: “everyone has their own truth.” It sounds inclusive. Fair. But let’s be honest — it’s mostly used when people run out of arguments. It’s not philosophy. It’s a way to end a conversation without resolving anything. And somehow, this intellectual white flag became the default operating system of Western culture.

Relativism is the ideal product of late-20th-century liberalism: friendly, harmless, inclusive, and safe. It says, “Everyone’s right.” You’re an artist, I’m an artist, the NFT monkey is an artist. No one gets hurt. Except truth. Truth didn’t survive.

What used to demand evidence now arrives as “personal perspective.” You’re not allowed to say something’s stupid — even when it is. Disagreement is framed as violence. You can believe the Earth is flat, powered by quartz crystals, and governed by moon spirits, and no one’s allowed to say “you’re wrong.”

The problem isn’t stupidity. It’s the fear of discernment. Because to say something is false is to imply that something else is true. And today, that sounds almost authoritarian.

We’ve replaced reality with optics. Belief with branding. Truth with vibes. What matters isn’t what holds, but how it feels. Philosophy stopped drawing lines — it gave up on truth, then on structure, then on hierarchy. It all seemed liberating, until the world collapsed into formless context, where everything depends on everything and thus on nothing.

Take “family.” It once meant structure, continuity, children, responsibility. Now it can mean anything: a couple sharing a Netflix login, a Discord server with emotional support memes. That feels progressive — until life hits. Inheritance, care, crisis — and suddenly the old structure is needed. Not because it’s moral. Because it holds.

If it looks nice but doesn’t transmit — it’s not form, it’s decoration.

Discernment isn’t moralism. It’s survival. In a world where everything is imitated, repeated, stylized, and performative, you need to know what endures. Form is often boring. Rigid. Demanding. But when the likes vanish, the money dries up, and the illusions crash — form is what remains.

CHAPTER 2: If It Holds, It’s Form

Let’s start simple. Imagine a staircase in a trendy architectural project — minimal, raw concrete, no handrails. It looks sleek in a photo. But climbing it is terrifying. If you’re old, injured, or holding a child, it’s not just uncomfortable — it’s dangerous.

That’s not form. That’s a visual gesture. Aesthetic, maybe. But structurally useless. It collapses at the first contact with real life.

Philosophy in the 20th century retired the idea of form. Replaced it with narrative, desire, discourse, and affect. And for a while, it felt deep, liberating, playful. But then everything started to dissolve. Because nothing — not even desire — holds without form.

So what do we mean by “form”? Here’s the test:

Form is what survives without external support.

Form is what can be repeated, transmitted, preserved.

Form doesn’t beg for attention — it just endures.

If you need to explain something a hundred times for it to make sense — maybe it doesn’t.

Take craftsmanship. A carpenter who knows how to build a chair doesn’t need a university, a theory, or a grant. He teaches his son, who teaches his son. Five generations later — chairs still exist. That’s form: transmissible, repeatable, real.

Now compare that to a modern art performance. You show up. Someone drags a dumpster into a gallery, covers it in slogans, sets it on fire, and calls it a statement on late capitalism. You nod. You leave. A week later, no one remembers. It didn’t hold. It didn’t repeat. It didn’t transmit. That’s not form. That’s hype — at best.

We all know someone with “a ton of projects.” All of them genius. All of them “at launch stage.” But after two years, there’s no business, no failure, no residue. Just talk. That’s not form. That’s smoke.

Form doesn’t inspire. It endures. It repeats. It survives.

In a culture obsessed with uniqueness, stability is a radical act. Because anything that transmits requires repetition. Repetition means structure. And structure means limits.

But that’s the secret: what can be repeated, can be passed on. And what can be passed on doesn’t die alone.

Form is anti-Instagram. It’s anti-drama. It’s the boring, durable foundation that outlives your identity crisis. It doesn’t care if you’re original. It only cares if it works.

That’s why any serious philosophy of discernment must start not with an idea, not with a feeling, not with morality — but with one blunt question:

Does it hold?

CHAPTER 3: The Filters — Body, Mind, Lineage

In a world of simulations, you need a filter. Not a metaphor. A method. A way to test what actually holds. I propose three. Simple, brutal, and non-negotiable:

Body. Reason. Lineage.

That’s the operational ontology of distinction.

If a form doesn’t pass through these — it doesn’t hold.

1. The Body

If a structure doesn’t manifest through the body — it’s fantasy.

You can have thousands of followers calling you a spiritual guide. But if you can’t wake up, make breakfast, and live a day without emotional collapse, your practice is hollow. It has no skeleton.

Modern “spirituality” talks a lot. Insights, retreats, candlelight meditations. But test it in the flesh: is your body calmer? Stronger? More stable? Or did you just learn how to breathe better on camera?

The body doesn’t lie. It reveals whether something works — or falls apart.

2. Reason

Some forms seem “profound” — until you try to explain them. Then you hear: “It’s too deep to explain.” Which usually means: it falls apart under logic.

If you can’t articulate the internal structure of what you believe — even once — you’re not discerning. You’re echoing.

Form must be logically coherent. Not necessarily scientific. But traceable. You can explain it. You can defend it. You can hand it to someone else and have it still make sense.

Take “new ethics.” It sounds like progress — until you start asking where it begins, where it ends, and what sustains it. And you quickly realize: it’s not a structure. It’s a posture. Held together by fear of public disapproval, not reason.

If a form can’t survive articulation — it’s not a form. It’s a slogan, dressed up as principle.

3. The Lineage

This is the harshest filter — especially for modern individualism.

If a form doesn’t transmit — it vanishes. No matter how bold, poetic, or revolutionary it seemed. If no one carries it forward, it didn’t hold.

Lineage doesn’t just mean biological descent (though that counts). It means sustained transmission: through family, apprenticeship, practice, repetition. A form that dies with you wasn’t a form — it was an episode. You might be living inside a sincere experiment. But if it cannot be repeated — it’s unstructured. Temporary. A lifestyle without continuity.

Lineage isn’t nostalgia. It’s persistence. It’s the capacity of a form to continue when you are gone — not because people liked it, but because it proved livable.

The filters don’t judge. They verify.

If a form passes through body, reason, and lineage — it stays.

If not — let it go.

CHAPTER 4: If It Doesn’t Hold — It’s Imitation

Imitation is the defining condition of our era. And no — it’s not just lying. It’s worse. It’s something that looks like form but collapses under pressure. It borrows the appearance of truth — without content, without structure, without the intention to survive winter.

Imitation doesn’t always come from malice. It can be wishful thinking, lazy adaptation, or branding dressed as belief. But it fails the test. The moment you remove external support — it vanishes.

Anything that doesn’t hold through body, reason, and lineage is not a structure. It’s an imitation. Even if it’s trendy. Even if it’s beautiful. Even if it gets quoted on TED and defended in The Guardian.

Need examples?

Modern Western military doctrine. You don’t need a body anymore: soldiers pilot drones, generals meet on Zoom, war becomes a tech demo. But when real threats appear, the ones who win are those with bodies trained to kill and die. Without that — it’s just interface warfare. Imitation of force.

The digital church. Once a physical discipline: fasting, confession, standing through liturgy, submission of the flesh to form. Now — livestreams, spiritual content subscriptions, soft language. But a church without embodied commitment becomes a brand of moral aesthetics. A good one — but a brand.

Effective altruism and impact capitalism. Sounds noble: make money, save the world. But ask for concrete logic: how does profit scale with long-term resilience? What exactly is being transmitted? The answer dissolves into ESG reports, marketing decks, and “impact storytelling.” That’s not structure. That’s a pitch.

Startup ideology. Mantra: fail fast, disrupt everything, reinvent meaning. But ask: what exactly are you disrupting? What remains after your “reinvention”? Mostly, it’s just a LinkedIn graveyard of buzzwords. No architecture. No form. Just capital and noise.

Therapy-driven self-knowledge. Sounds deep. But press further — when does reflection become self-absorbed looping? Often, the answer is: “I’m allowed to feel whatever I want.” Sure. But if your emotions destroy everything around you, that’s not healing. That’s indulgence. Not structure — performance of sincerity.

Living “for yourself.” “I owe nothing to anyone.” “I just want to feel good.” “I don’t repeat other people’s stories.” Sounds like freedom. In reality — it’s zero transmission. No obligation, no weight, no continuity. That kind of life dies with you. Even if it was loud.

Cosmopolitan identity. You speak three languages, belong to no nation, reject every origin. Beautiful — until someone asks: what will you pass on? If you have no language, no myth, no ritual, no memory — you’re not a lineage. You’re weather. You don’t carry a form. You just dissolve in context.

We love imitation because it’s easy. It gives the feeling of movement without cost. It simulates change while everything stays the same. But here’s the danger: imitation doesn’t just disappear — it displaces. It occupies space, consumes attention, burns energy. And when you finally need something real — you find nothing but style guides, personas, and slide decks.

That’s why discernment isn’t snobbery. It’s survival.

You look at a thing and ask: Does it hold? In the body? In reason? Through lineage?
If not — it’s imitation. Smile. Appreciate the packaging. Then move on.

CHAPTER 5: You’re Not the Center — You’re the Filter

We were told that humans are the pinnacle of creation. The source of meaning. The moral compass. Humanism, Kant, the sacred individual — all taught with the confidence of a motivational speaker on SSRIs.

Here’s the truth: you are not the center. You are a filter. Forms pass through you. If you don’t distinguish, preserve, and transmit — they vanish. No tragedy, no symbolism. Just disappearance, like a trace that fades before anyone can follow.

You may believe you matter because you “feel deeply.” Great. But what remains after the burnout? What outlives your crises, your aesthetics, your sensitivity?

You don’t matter by default. You matter if something survives through you — not because you’re original, but because you’re capable of transmission.

Postmodern freedom made disconnection sacred: from family, from history, from roles. Cut every root, shed every tie, reject every obligation — and what’s left? You. Alone. Unattached. A signal with no receiver. Like a Wi-Fi router in the desert.

But true freedom isn’t breaking ties — it’s holding form without freezing it into dogma. Like cooking a dish not from a blog post but because someone showed you once, and your body remembered. Not saved to the cloud. Just repeated until it reappears.

The most dangerous modern figure isn’t the tyrant — it’s the one who transmits nothing. Who consumes every style, every practice, every “experience,” but carries none of it forward. They may have a polished profile, a curated feed, and years of introspection. But twenty minutes after they’re gone, so is everything they ever “stood for.”

And then there are others. They don’t declare values. They don’t explain themselves. But around them, things settle. Less noise, fewer theatrics. Not because they perform well — but because they carry something lived. A posture. A tone. A rhythm. You don’t quote them. You repeat them.

A person without discernment is a sealed node. Everything enters — nothing leaves. No structure survives. That’s the real irrelevance.

So no, you’re not the protagonist. Your value is not your uniqueness. It’s your capacity to hold form and let it pass through you — unchanged, alive.

You are a filter. That’s the job.

Take it or vanish.

CHAPTER 6: Truth Is What Doesn’t Disappear

Still believe in truth? Or did you give up after hearing it’s “subjective,” or just a product of discourse?

Forget that. Truth isn’t what sounds clever in a seminar on post-structuralism. It doesn’t survive in curated debates about power and privilege. Truth is what remains when the words run out, the budget dries up, and the audience disappears.

It doesn’t care about your feelings. It doesn’t seek your consent. It simply holds.

Truth isn’t opinion. It’s not a point of view. It’s a structure that survives — regardless of belief, consensus, or attention. Call it truth, reality, form. The name is secondary. What matters is that it persists without support.

Modern culture confuses truth with agreement. If 51% believe it, it must be valid. That feels inclusive — and weak. Consensus creates warmth, not structure. If your version of truth only survives in a room full of affirmation, it’s not truth. It’s mood management.

Take math. You don’t have to like the Pythagorean theorem — it still applies when your balcony collapses. That’s truth: independent, indifferent, invulnerable.

Now compare it to a corporate mission statement. “We create value through empathy.” Sounds nice. Shut down the company — it vanishes. That wasn’t structure. It was branding.

Here’s the test: imagine a belief, a practice, a conviction. Now remove all support — no praise, no likes, no fear of being judged. What’s left? If something still functions, that’s truth. If nothing remains, it was a costume.

And here’s the distinction: not everything that is truth needs to be expressed all the time. What we call “truth” in everyday speech is often just a moment where something real shows through — a local manifestation. A flash of coherence. Call it situational truth. It’s not separate from truth. It’s what truth looks like, here and now.

But if you only believe in something when it’s convenient, validated, or applauded — it’s not a belief. It’s theater.

Truth doesn’t wear costumes. It doesn’t market itself.
It stays — even when you collapse.

CHAPTER 7: Morality, Knowledge, and History — Stripped of Illusion

We like to think morality is timeless, that knowledge is sacred, that history teaches. But remove form — and all of them collapse.

Without form, morality turns into aesthetics, knowledge into trivia, history into content.

Morality used to be a practice: posture, ritual, duty. Not because it was written down — but because it was embodied. Not declared. Carried.

Today, morality is presentation. You perform it online, align with the language of the moment, display empathy like a feature set. Not because it costs anything — but because it looks right. And when no one’s watching? What remains?

Here’s the test: if your morality doesn’t function without spectators, it’s not morality. It’s theatre.

Knowledge once meant something that could be transmitted under pressure — when there were no books, no signal, no discourse. It passed through bodies and hands.

Now it means: “I watched a video.” “I read a thread.” “I have strong opinions.”

But if your knowledge can’t survive offline, can’t be rebuilt from memory, can’t sharpen discernment — it’s not knowledge. It’s packaging.

And history? It’s become narrative. Entertainment. A storyline with good guys, bad guys, and symbolic twists. But that’s not history — that’s a media product with engagement metrics.

Real history isn’t what gets told. It’s what keeps getting lived.

If a historical event leaves no enduring form — no ritual, no memory, no embodied consequence — it disappears. If all that remains is a Wikipedia article, it didn’t make it.

History, like everything else, is either transmitted or forgotten.

So let’s be clear:

Morality that doesn’t act without a witness isn’t moral.
Knowledge that doesn’t sharpen distinction isn’t knowledge.
History that doesn’t pass into bodies, reasons, and lineages — isn’t history. Just content.

You want to be good? Don’t declare it. Show what form you can hold.
You want to know? Stop repeating headlines. Learn to distinguish.
You want to matter? Pass on something that doesn’t vanish when you do.

Final Note: Choose to Discern — or Fade into Noise

We live in a world where almost everything is stylized. Everyone has a take, a look, a backstory, a playlist, a trauma, a cause.

But very few carry form. Because form doesn’t care how you feel. It only cares whether you can hold it.

You can be anything. But if what you do doesn’t survive you — you’re just noise. A temporary pattern on the surface of entropy.

So what do you do?

Don’t imitate. Don’t declare. Don’t signal.
Learn to distinguish.

Distinguish what holds in the body.
What repeats in reason.
What survives through lineage.

Distinguish what stands without permission, praise, or consensus.

This isn’t a comforting philosophy.
It’s not a belief in human potential.
It’s a tool — maybe the last one left — for not disappearing into the swamp of imitation.

Postscript

I care more about people who brush their teeth, show up on time, and don’t waste other people’s time than those who want to “save the planet.”

I’m not interested in complexity if it can’t be held or passed on.
Not interested in uniqueness if it dies with the trend.
Not interested in emotional vulnerability if it destroys more than it builds.

You can be anything. But if all you leave behind is a vibe, a context, and some unresolved tension — you’re not form. You’re background. Or interference.

So make a choice:

Discern. Or disappear. ■

The manipulability of consciousness has become the central trap of late modernity. Unlike the body, consciousness doesn’t scream or starve. It can be theorized, formatted, streamed — and it appears to comply. Or so it seemed. The rise in mental disorders is not merely a function of improved diagnostics. The mind has become a stage onto which any idea can be projected, with no concern for whether it coheres with the structure of being.

Where the body imposes hard boundaries — illness, fatigue, death — consciousness appears infinitely stretchable. Ideologies, identities, ethical models, theories of reality — all tested in sequence — have rendered the mind a laboratory stripped of ground. The commercial success of this elastic domain has only intensified the pressure.

The emergence of artificial intelligence is a symptom of nearing the limit. Once the mind’s capacity to construct meaning is exhausted, and postmodernity runs out of ways to deceive itself, a quasi-substitute enters the scene. AI is not merely a tool — it is the system’s reflex to its own depletion. We no longer believe that human consciousness can generate anything truly new without dismantling itself.

And that dismantling is already underway. The heirs of postmodernity — having long ignored the body, lineage, instinct, and being — now find their abstractions losing followers. These concepts, detached from the real, lead to degeneration: demographic, existential, civilizational. Where the body and lineage are erased, no next generation appears. The future withdraws.

Taking their place are those who never broke the continuity — those still grounded in land, blood, structure. Those who did not fracture their being into diagrams and projections. The restoration of the ontological continuum — from body to lineage, lineage to culture, culture to metaphysics — is no longer a matter of preference. It is necessity.

The question is no longer what to invent, but what to recover. Not in the name of archaism, but in the name of reality.

The body. The lineage. The limit.

There is no future in abstraction without ground.

The limit is not the enemy — it is the condition of form. ■

This text continues the argument begun in "From Metamodernism to Truth“, where the meaning of life was defined as alignment with structure. Here, that structure is unfolded through three existential limits: bodily, rational, and generational. These are not properties, choices, or social roles — they are conditions for the reproduction of life, thought, and culture.

Each level sets its own criterion: biological, cognitive, and historical. They determine which forms can endure, be understood, and be transmitted. Outside these limits, stability collapses.

The problem of modernity is not the absence of values, but the loss of discernment. Meaning has come to be seen as personal feeling, truth as social consensus. Yet the structure of life continues to operate. It selects, excludes, clarifies. And any proposition, to be viable, must pass the test across all three axes.

Body

The body is neither a “platform“ nor a “subject of experience.“ It is the carrier of the species, a filter of viability, a mechanism of differentiation. It is limited — and precisely for that reason, form is possible within it.

Contemporary body discourses — from body-positivity to cyber-utopias — begin with the claim that “the body must not define.“ But the body always defines. It provides the limits on which reason depends. Without limits, there is no orientation; without orientation, no sustainable form.

To declare every body “normal“ cancels the mechanism of selection. When normativity disappears, so does the ability to distinguish the viable from the unviable1. This is not merely a theoretical error — it undermines the very capacity of form to reproduce.

Dominant bodily ideologies insist that all physical states are valid, and that form is merely a cultural construct. This inclusive gesture ignores a central fact: biological form is functionally and environmentally constrained. To sever that constraint is to deny the selective conditions of durability2.

The more accurate position is this: the body may vary, but not every body is fit for continuation. Epigenetic factors play a decisive role here: bodily form is not only inherited, but also shaped by the conditions in which it develops34. Environment, nutrition, stress, and activity influence gene expression — and with it, the viability of future generations. Physical resilience is not an aesthetic standard but a structural condition. Caring for the body is not self-expression, but acceptance of life's form.

Reason

Reason is not a source of freedom but an instrument of measure and constraint. Its task is to find the point at which sustainable existence becomes possible. It does not create meaning; it uncovers it5.

One of the last contexts where truth and falsehood still matter is the context of survival. I recall speaking with a man in a rural area, where everything depends on precise decisions: weather, land, livestock — nothing forgives error. His speech was clear, his judgments tightly bound to outcomes. Rationality was not a posture — it was a condition of harvest. In such settings, falsehood is not theoretical. It kills. Where reason fails, life fails.

In contrast, error is de-risked in environments where consequences are deferred. In urban intellectual circles, one can spend decades theorizing without testing for survivability. There, reason loses its anchoring in reality because falsehood bears no cost. Theoretical error doesn’t starve. Debate replaces selection. Rationality becomes a style rather than a mode of alignment. This is the paradox of late modernity: the higher the abstraction, the lower the resilience. Reason detaches from necessity — and loses its function.

Modernity exalted reason; postmodernity dismantled it. Metamodernism attempts to save reason through irony. But irony offers weak footing. One cannot rely on reason that no longer believes in itself.

Cognitive traditions — from constructivism to post-structuralism — argue that reason produces reality. This is partially true. But one thing is forgotten: reality still resists. It has a form that cannot be imagined away.

Today, reason is often reduced to a servant of desire — a rationalization machine, not a discerning faculty. Thought becomes a means of self-confirmation. Meanwhile, the idea of subjective meaning suggests that everyone constructs their own truth. But if meaning is wholly subjective, the possibility of the shared vanishes — and with it, the very space where discernment matters.

These approaches displace the function of reason. Thinking becomes an act of expression, not discovery. But reason detached from measure and order ceases to be reason. It dissolves into infinite interpretation or collapses into rhetoric6. To think is not to express oneself, but to orient oneself. Not to be free, but to be exact.

Lineage

Lineage is the most unacceptable topic in the contemporary philosophical landscape. No concept provokes such discomfort as the idea of continuation — because it negates individualism.

But lineage is not an opinion. It is a part of the structure one does not choose. You are either included in it — or disappear. Life continues only through those willing to be a form for what comes next. Lineage is not just about offspring — it is about the transmission of a stable form. If a life project cannot be passed on, it is not a form. It is noise.

Today, the link between philosophy and reproduction is broken. Contemporary culture rejects lineage as a structural condition, making itself vulnerable to systems where lineage remains central7. One example is the cultural Islamicization of Britain and parts of the EU. This shift is not driven by ideological superiority, but by the loss of transmissible form on the other side. Where philosophy and culture lose connection to lineage, their form cannot withstand competition.

Modern thought, influenced by theorists like Foucault and Butler, tends to view lineage as a construct or instrument of oppression, and transmission itself as a kind of violence. This makes continuity impossible. But lineage is not suppression — it is selection. It distinguishes the viable from the unstable not at the level of belief, but at the level of structure. Continuation is not a duty, but a test: does the form endure across time and transmission? Only what can be passed on possesses resilience8. Everything else is a closed biography.

Conclusion

Body, reason, and lineage are not domains of choice, but levels of structural verification. Every concept, every way of life, can be assessed along these three axes: does it preserve biological viability, allow cognitive validation, ensure continuity?

Truth in this framework is not an ideal or a conviction. It is what reproduces, explains, and persists. What fails selection, thought, or transmission is not morally false — it is structurally invalid. It simply fails the test of form.

Contemporary relativism offers a multiplicity of meanings. But not all survive. What survives is what finds convergence across the bodily, the rational, and the generational. That is the measure of truth. To live as a human being is to sustain a form that endures life, thought, and continuation. ■

My previous statement may have seemed like naive foolishness. But I assure you — it was a mature philosophical position, which I had tried to present accessibly, using familiar imagery. Today, I will lay it out in full, leaving no room for irony. Philosophy departments, take note.

Truth is not invented. It emerges from the very structure of life — from how we are built, what constrains us, and what lays claim to us.

We live in a state of suspension — between collapsed modernity and exhausted postmodernity. Metamodernism offers no ontological ground, only oscillation between irony and hope. In such a vacuum, Plato becomes necessary again. Not as an author, but as a principle of distinction: between what is grounded and what is not. This text continues his trajectory — a return to truth through structure, in which body, reason, and lineage are unified.

Some may call me an evolutionist. Or an essentialist. Others — a dogmatist who rejects relativism. But I deliberately reject the idea that meaning is an individual project. I believe life has a structure, and meaning arises not from fantasy, but from alignment with that structure.

Meaning as Form

The meaning of life is neither a subjective feeling nor the result of personal choice. It arises at the point of proportionality — between who you are and what the structure of life demands.

A human being is not just consciousness. We are a body with limited resources, a biological species with an evolutionary vector, and a bearer of reason capable of self-reflection. These three levels — bodily, species-level, and rational — are not options, but conditions. They do not compete; they define the field within which meaningful existence becomes possible.

Plato called this participation in the Idea1 — the human being does not invent meaning but enters into an already existing order. In contemporary terms: to live is to conform to a form that demands two things — reproduction and understanding.

From an evolutionary point of view, life has only one mechanism of verification: selection. That which produces no offspring disappears. That which does not adapt is displaced. Species are not merciful; they select for resilience2. This is a harsh filter: not everything that exists is entitled to continue. Hence the first criterion of meaning — effectiveness: the capacity to transmit life further, not necessarily biologically, but always through a form that can withstand competition.

The second criterion comes from reason: the path of understanding. We pursue knowledge not because it’s useful, but because we are compelled to. Consciousness seeks totality, structure, truth3. It requires not just action, but reflection on action. Meaning, therefore, is not exhausted by reproduction — it demands orientation: where, why, and in what order.

The problem of present lies in the disconnection of these two vectors. We live as if reason could be separated from the body, and intellect from the constraints of survival. But meaning arises not in either direction alone, but in their alignment. This is what form is: a stable configuration of life in which the species does not go extinct and reason does not stagnate.

Truth, in this framework, is not an abstract idea. It is the point of convergence between biological necessity, cognitive capacity, and ontological proportion. Everything that fails under selection is eliminated. Everything that defies explanation is rejected by reason. Everything that falls outside of order is excluded from meaning4.

We are used to thinking of meaning as a space of freedom. But perhaps it is a space of precision — of accurate placement within one’s role, measure, and lineage. Meaning does not lie in self-expression, but in alignment with the structure we are given. We do not create the world — we respond to it. And only in that response do we become truly ourselves.

To live as a human being does not mean to be heroic or to be happy. It means: to accept the form of a human — its limits, its capacity for knowledge, its embeddedness in lineage — and to fulfill it with dignity. Not for reward. Not for eternity. But because there is no other way to be. ■

Previously on this theme:

• On Philosophy

• On Modernity

• On Postmodernity

• On the Core Deficiency

Education as Skill

Originally, learning was part of life. It wasn’t separate from practice: someone hunts, someone gathers — children watch and imitate. No abstraction. Knowledge = skill, mistake = risk.

This kind of education didn’t require theory or institutions — its function was strictly practical: survival in a world that repeated itself.

Education as Knowledge

With the rise of the state, markets, and science, learning ceased to be a craft and became institutionalized. Subjects, standards, and exams appeared. The goal: to teach universal structures — logic, arithmetic, history, physics.

In an industrial economy, this worked. The system needed doctors, engineers, accountants, teachers. It was built on the idea that knowledge is capital — something you can invest in, formalize, and measure.

When Knowledge Became Too Cheap

That model is now breaking down. Access to knowledge is instant. Algorithms “know how to do” in nearly every field — from coding to cooking. This isn’t a hypothesis; it’s an observable fact.

In this environment, a new scarcity emerges: not knowledge, but judgment. What used to be a soft skill is now the core — because the human is no longer a carrier of knowledge, but a filter: to distinguish the relevant from the irrelevant, the accurate from the flawed, the safe from the risky.

Common Sense as the New Center

In practice, this means a shift toward heuristic, contextual thinking. Not just critical thinking in the academic sense, but the ability to understand a task that’s not yet in the database. Not “what does gravity do,” but “should gravity matter in this case.”

In countries attempting reform — Finland, Estonia, Singapore — the educational process is already built not around subjects, but around questions. The focus isn’t on “definitive answers” but on learning how to decide which questions are worth answering in the first place.

What’s Next

This doesn’t mean knowledge is no longer important. But it’s no longer a unique resource. What becomes unique is judgment — the ability to build a simple model of a situation, test a hypothesis quickly, discard what’s irrelevant in time. If the old school taught: “do it this way — because that’s how it’s done,” the new reality demands something else: “try to understand what’s actually happening here, and only then decide whether to act.”

This kind of education is harder, more expensive, and offers no guarantees. But there’s no alternative left. Everything else is a repetition of what machines can already do.

One area that will grow, though, is education tied to physical labor and hands-on professions — from contractors to massage therapists. At least until we have cheap machines with human motor skills, warm skin, and the ability to adapt to unpredictable situations. ■

Previously on the topic:
On the Core Deficiency
On Modernity
On Postmodernity

Postmodernity did not emerge as a distinct school of thought but rather as a historical mood — a reaction to the failure of the modern project with its cult of reason, progress, universals, and metanarratives. The philosophical articulation of postmodernity is typically traced back to 1960s France: Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. All three engaged in dismantling structures of power and knowledge, deconstructing “grand narratives,” and exposing supposedly neutral categories.

In The Postmodern Condition (1979), Lyotard proclaimed the death of the metanarrative — any universal explanation of historical processes. Foucault proposed understanding power not as a vertical structure but as a network of discourses. Derrida ultimately rejected the idea of objective meaning, giving intellectuals the tool of total critique applicable to any text or institution.

Philosophically, postmodernity was an act of destruction — not of the mundane, but of the fundamental: truth, reason, morality, even the subject itself. It rejected the very idea of objective reality, shifting the focus to interpretation, play, and simulation.

Made in USA: America’s Export Model of Postmodernity

French postmodernity was elitist and theoretical. The American version became applied and mass-market. In the U.S., postmodernity was first absorbed by universities — especially humanities departments from the late 1980s onward — where it gained institutional backing through “identity studies” and “critical theory.” Over time, these ideas passed through layers of institutionalization and entered mass culture — via journalism, film, television, the digital industry, and HR policies.

Export occurred through the global network of American universities, NGOs, grant programs, and the cultural industry. It coincided with the U.S. victory in the Cold War and the global dominance of the English-language media sphere. Postmodernity became the cultural analog of the dollar: it did not so much persuade as displace alternatives.

Modest Gains and Clear Failures

Postmodernity did help deconstruct certain colonial and racist narratives. It contributed to symbolic inclusion for minorities. It fostered methodological pluralism, expanding the boundaries of the humanities.

But its failures are more telling.

Postmodernity excels at dismantling but fails to build. It offered no positive program. Where modernity constructed intellectual architectures, postmodernity delivered only critique and irony.

The erosion of all forms of authority and truth led not to emancipation but to relativism and apathy. Cynicism became a cultural norm.

Many academic disciplines collapsed into self-referentiality, producing texts legible only to colleagues — not to the public. The result: intellectual decay.

Postmodernity not only failed to challenge capitalism — it became its ideal interface. The logic of simulation1 and commodification made it structurally compatible with late capitalism: flexible, decentered, and infinitely appropriable. Any protest is easily absorbed and rebranded (cf. Nike and BLM, Pride and corporate logos). Society fully capitulated to the market.

Cancel Culture and Other Products of Postmodernity

Cancel culture is the fusion of postmodernity with the normative rhetoric of the new morality. It tries to replace the loss of universal truth with identity-bound moralism: what matters is not what is said, but who says it. Rhetoric becomes total; distinctions vanish. A tweet error equals a crime.

Its logic stems from the idea of omnipresent power — a core concept in critical theory and late continental philosophy. Hence the compulsion to detect “oppression” even in its absence. Since truth is deemed unreachable, the only thing left to fight for is narrative primacy. Cancel culture operates as an aggressive meme — spreading without explanation or justification, but through coercion and fear.

Other destructive memes include the concept of microaggressions and the culture of safe spaces, where political engagement is displaced by demands for psychological comfort; administrative intersectionality2; performative ethics3, where symbolic displays of loyalty override actual behavior; and finally, a new form of censorship — exclusion from public and professional life, driven by institutional pressure and the threat of online retaliation.

Conclusion

Postmodernity won. And it failed.

It dismantled hierarchies — and failed to replace them.

It delegitimized norms — and left only fragmentation.

Truth became optional. Language became tribal.

The result was not emancipation, but entropy.

Only the first wave meant something. What followed was mass-produced simulation — critique without substance, grants without ideas, thought without effort. The rest was completed by free communication and algorithmic affirmation.

What’s Next

In 2010, Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker wrote Notes on Metamodernism, describing “oscillation” between modernity and postmodernity as the core of a new sensibility. Metamodernism today is an attempt to move beyond the dead end of postmodernity without reverting to the naivety of modernist ideals. It accepts the loss of truth but persists in the search for value. Not a new paradigm — a symptom of intellectual interregnum4.

No compelling idea has yet emerged. Some thinkers (I call them realists) are returning to metaphysics: one now sees appeals to Christianity as a response to the so-called Islamic threat — something postmodernity clearly cannot address. Others try to invent a new vocabulary — one that cannot yet support thought, and whose purpose remains unclear.

I’ll return to that another time. ■

The Origins of Modernity

As a historical and intellectual project, modernity began to take shape in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, crystallized in the 18th, and was institutionalized in the 19th.

I. Proto-Modernity (c. 1550–1650)

• Francis Bacon (1561–1626) — proposed the inductive method and the idea of knowledge as a tool of power (“knowledge is power”).

• René Descartes (1596–1650) — laid the foundations of rationalism and articulated the autonomous subject of thought.

• Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton — provided a scientific model of nature based on measurement, mechanics, and universal laws.

Core idea of this period: Reason is the source of knowledge; nature is an object of calculation; knowledge is a tool of control.

II. The Enlightenment (c. 1680–1800)

• Immanuel Kant — affirmed the autonomy of the subject and called for an “exit from self-imposed immaturity” through reason.

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot — secularized morality, embraced belief in progress and human rights.

• Adam Smith — rationalized economic life through the idea of self-regulating order.

Core idea: History has direction; progress is attainable; universal norms exist and should be implemented.

III. Modernity as a Social Project (19th century)

• Auguste Comte — positivism and the idea of “scientific governance of society.”

• Karl Marx — conceptualized history as a process subject to direction and transformation.

• Hegel — interpreted history as the unfolding of reason.

• Max Weber — saw rationalization as key to understanding modern society.

These thinkers concluded that society could be governed rationally, the historical process could be subjected to theoretical engineering, and the human being was both the object and the subject of transformation.

What Is Modernity?

Modernity is not merely a historical epoch, but a mode of thought. It rests on belief in progress, reason, universal truths, and the human capacity for rational self-organization. At its core lies the idea that history has direction and society a structure amenable to engineering. This was the age of the Enlightenment, the scientific revolution, industrialization, liberal democracy, and socialism — projects differing in content but united by a shared modernist logic.

Modernity began with the rejection of theocentrism. In place of God — reason. In place of revelation — method. In place of divine order — an order derived from nature or history. Political regimes, economic theories, social reforms — all were to be constructed as if they were machines. Rationally. Efficiently. Based on universal principles.

Social and Political Forms of Modernity

In the 20th century, modernity produced two grand forms: liberal capitalism and planned socialism. Both were offspring of the same project, despite their apparent opposition. Both believed in the possibility of rational governance of society. Both sought to shape a new kind of human being: rational, functional, interchangeable.

Scientific and technological progress, urbanization, the emergence of mass society, standardized education, institutions of modernization — all expressed the conviction that human reason could and should subject the world to its control.

The Collapse of Modernity

Modernity did not collapse overnight. Its erosion was a gradual process, beginning after World War II. The main blows came from within.

Modernity presumed a single developmental path for all countries and peoples. But in practice, universal models failed to translate across contexts. Modernization frequently resulted in authoritarianism, violence, and systemic breakdown (Latin America, the Middle East, Africa).

The more rationalization modernity introduced, the less room remained for freedom. Bureaucratization, technocratic management, and alienation were the by-products of efforts to organize everything.

The collapse of Nazism — and later of the Soviet project (discussed below) — ultimately undermined belief in grand systemic models. Postmodernity emerged precisely as a refusal to believe in metanarratives — whether liberalism, communism, or progress.

The shift toward relativism and pluralism rendered the modernist idea of objective knowledge as a universal foundation increasingly obsolete.

Socialist Illusions as Catalyst of Collapse

The Soviet project represented the most radical and consistent attempt to realize modernity. It proposed an alternative universalist model — not market-based, but historical-dialectical, claiming knowledge of the laws of development and the ability to institutionalize them. The logic was straightforward: if history follows laws, and those laws are known, then history can be governed. Hence — the Party as the bearer of reason, the Plan as the structure of order, violence as a legitimate mechanism of transformation. Not as a failure, but as a systematic instrument of modernity.

Yet it was this very internal consistency that led to systemic catastrophe. Violence, embedded as a rational tool of restructuring, rapidly turned into a mechanism of dehumanization: the individual became raw material to be processed for the sake of an ideal future. The economy proved persistently unmanageable — the command-administrative model collapsed in the face of real-world complexity. The reason was not a lack of democracy, but the illusion of total calculability. Ideology lost its cohesive power: by the 1980s, belief persisted only in ritual form. As a result, the collapse of the Soviet alternative was not merely the end of a specific political system — it was proof that even the most ambitious project of rational social engineering ends not in utopia, but in disintegration, cynicism, and tyranny.

After 1991, the world ceased to believe not only in communism. It ceased to believe in the very possibility of universal progress. The “end of history” was not the triumph of modernity, but the transition to postmodernity.

Legacy and Ruins

Today, modernity survives as infrastructure: railroads, universities, legal systems, the scientific method, nation-states. But as a project — it is dead. Contemporary consciousness no longer believes that society can be improved through reason, universal values, or theoretical models.

Both liberal modernity and socialist modernity failed — one through internal emptiness and market logic, the other through dictatorship and planning. In this failure, socialism was not merely a casualty but the central experiment — whose defeat made a return to modernist certainty impossible. ■

Not among the so-called “right-wing radicals,” as recently suggested by German intelligence services.

External threats are convenient. They offer a narrative framework to explain systemic decline without addressing healthcare, immigration, or labor market dysfunction.

A comfortable delusion is a form of security, too. ■

The American political machine is often likened to Rome: an empire, decline, barbarians, and all that. But this is a misreading. The United States is not a project of civilizational transmission. It is a syndicate — a coalition of temporary interests. And if one seeks a historical analogue, it is not an empire but rather Tortuga: a community of private actors bound by a code, discipline, profit-sharing, and a willingness to wait.

A Code Instead of Law

Pirates operated under contract — articles of agreement. These determined who earned what, who made decisions, and who was compensated for injury. This wasn’t mob rule; it was a system. The function of the code was to constrain the captain’s authority and reduce internal conflict.

The U.S. system mirrors this logic. Formally, it is grounded in the Constitution and the separation of powers. Substantively, it is a risk-management device within the elite coalition. No one has absolute power. Everything is shared, everything is checked.

Authority Is Instrumental, Not Sacred

Pirate captains were elected before the raid. They commanded in action, but remained accountable otherwise. If they violated the code, they lost their position.

U.S. presidents are not monarchs. They are front men for political coalitions. As long as they deliver, they are tolerated. When they become a liability, the system initiates replacement under the banner of "renewal." This is not about ideals. It is about performance.

No One Fights Without Incentive

Pirates didn’t attack every ship. They waited. They calculated. They acted only when the expected value was positive. Losses were discouraged.

U.S. foreign policy operates on similar logic. Intervention is not a mission; it is a tool. Decisions are made based on calculation: balance of power, resource exposure, allied reactions. Moral language is often used, but strategy remains pragmatic.

Institutional Form Does Not Imply Ideology

The pirate republic was not a political model; it was an adaptation to a space beyond sovereign order. Stability emerged only through internal regulation.

The U.S. as a global actor follows the same logic. It is not a universalist empire. It is a network — military, financial, legal, technological. Its stability is conditional on structural constraints and internal cohesion.

Reputation as Capital

Pirates relied not just on force, but on predictability. They were feared because their behavior was legible. Fear was part of their soft power.

The U.S. invests in institutional reputation. Human rights, rules-based order, international law — these are all capital, as long as the rules serve. When they stop serving, the rules are revised. Not arbitrarily, but within a logic of systemic risk.

Not an Empire, But a Syndicate

Empires build institutions, civilize, assume responsibility. The U.S. does not. Its system is modular, not vertical. It upholds order where profitable, and tolerates disorder where indifferent. This is not a global state, but a managed network.

Strictly speaking, the United States operates closer to the pirate principle: collective governance, internal risk minimization, and opportunistic external behavior.

Conclusion

Comparing the U.S. to Tortuga is not rhetorical. It is a working model. This is not a state in the classical sense, nor an empire. It is a self-regulating association with an internal code, situational hierarchy, and full rationalization of coercion. As long as the hand is good, the game continues. When it isn’t, the players scatter and reassemble under a new flag.

This frame clarifies much about American democracy and its leadership class. And it stands in sharp contrast to European statecraft, where order rests more on institutional inertia than on the balancing of temporary coalitions.

Arrrr. ■

Sources:

1. Peter T. Leeson, An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 115, No. 6 (2007): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/521240

2. Peter T. Leeson, The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, Princeton University Press, 2009: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691137476/the-invisible-hook

3. David Graeber, Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374610197/pirateenlightenmentorthereallibertalia

4. Gabriel Kuhn, Life Under the Jolly Roger: Reflections on Golden Age Piracy, PM Press, 2010: https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=314

5. Colin Woodard, The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down, Harcourt, 2007

6. Charles Johnson (attributed), A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, 1724–1728

7. Wikipedia — Pirate code

There’s a widespread assumption that anti-colonial discourse is the voice of the oppressed — a collective speech act by formerly colonised peoples demanding justice from former empires. In reality, it’s almost the opposite: the idea of structural guilt tied to colonialism was invented, refined, and institutionalised within the metropoles themselves — mostly by people with excellent educations and plenty of spare time.

The French impulse: Sartre and Fanon

In postwar France, colonialism became a visible irritant. The defeat in Indochina, the Algerian war, and American pressure all pushed the intellectual class toward a moral reevaluation of empire. A new language emerged, framing colonialism not as policy but as existential violence.

Jean-Paul Sartre was the first to universalise the concept of guilt. In his view, the white European was guilty not for what he had done, but simply for belonging to a civilisation that once exercised power. The individual bore structural complicity, regardless of biography.

Frantz Fanon, born in Martinique and active in the Algerian revolution, went further. For him, colonialism deformed the psyche. It turned the colonised into an object, and the coloniser into a subject trapped in superiority neurosis. Liberation meant not a transfer of power, but a break with the very ontology of the coloniser.

Said and institutionalisation in the US

By the late 1970s, the West — especially the English-speaking part — entered a second phase: academic consolidation.

In 1978, Edward Said published Orientalism, a book that redefined scholarly authority. The argument was elegant and sharp: Europe did not describe the East — it invented it, discursively, hierarchically, asymmetrically. Knowledge itself was power. Philology, archaeology, history — all became implicated.

Said’s framework became the foundation of what is now known as postcolonial studies, which expanded rapidly across American and British universities. By the early 2000s, the lexicon was stabilised: white privilege, epistemic violence, decolonising the curriculum. The tone shifted — no longer critique, but accusation.

Political mainstreaming

In the 21st century, the discourse became political. It moved from monographs into university policies, grant criteria, and corporate ESG reports. The emphasis shifted from systems to identities — not colonialism as a project, but the white subject as a structural threat.

Anti-colonialism ceased to be a critique. It became a normative framework. Apology was no longer symbolic — it became the price of admission. Reflection wasn’t introspection — it was an entry condition. Guilt became a form of institutional loyalty.

The Soviet influence: direct and indirect

The picture is incomplete without a key actor: the Soviet Union. Often treated as a propagandistic footnote, it played a more foundational role — both crudely and effectively.

From the 1950s, the USSR systematically promoted the view that colonialism = capitalism = imperialism = racism. It was the standard vocabulary of Soviet foreign policy, aimed at the Third World. Through Cominform, non-aligned alliances, and universities like RUDN, Moscow exported a worldview in which the West was structurally evil and the Soviet bloc the agent of emancipation.

The rhetoric was crude, but the structure would feel familiar to today’s campus activists: the oppressed suffer not incidentally, but systemically; history demands restitution; freedom requires inner decolonisation.

More subtly, the West found itself forced to explain its own moral standing. The Cold War required demonstrable virtue — and that meant building a language of internal critique, a language that made clear the West was not imperial but self-aware, not dominant but capable of reform.

Out of this emerged a mirrored discourse — no longer Marxist, but still accusatory. Class was replaced by race and identity. The proletariat gave way to the postcolonial subject. The logic remained: structure is guilty, the subject is privileged, and liberation requires deconstruction.

Moral politics in place of confidence

What began as a strategic language of the Cold War became the moral operating system of the Western academy, media, NGOs, and increasingly, public institutions. It rewarded symbolic power through ritual self-accusation.

No other civilisation has embedded the presumption of its own illegitimacy into its institutional core. China, India, the Islamic world — none of them apologise for their imperial histories. Only the West has turned guilt into procedural morality — first under external pressure, then out of habit.

Conclusion

Anti-colonial discourse is not a moral import from the Global South. It is an export from the intellectual centres of empire, later repackaged as virtue. It was devised by those who governed — not by those who resisted — and it was embedded by the very universities that once trained colonial administrators.

The Soviet contribution, while blunt, was lasting. It helped stabilise the logic of Western guilt — later adopted not under duress, but voluntarily. Not because the West lost, but because it chose to appear righteous. And so, it began — with apology.

In historical terms, civilisations that relinquish subjecthood voluntarily don’t usually enjoy long-term stability. But they do simplify the playing field — for those who have no reservations about power. Voluntary Islamisation says hello.

We’re not talking about conquest. We’re talking about cultural substitution — cases where domestic elites, mostly in academia and public institutions, abandon their own normative frameworks in the name of inclusion. In their place comes a more confident, less self-questioning model. In British cities, this is visible quite literally: empty Anglican churches become mosques; humanities departments adapt syllabi to avoid offending students with strong traditional values — including restrictions on which authors, periods, or ideas may be taught.

While the West explains why it has no right to speak as a subject, others arrive without explanation. This is a competition over who defines the norm — one the West has largely opted out of, in the name of postmodern virtue.

And under the ruins of that postmodernism, it may well remain. ■

The framework that once separated force from its use has collapsed. The concept of a “deterrent” — whether in the form of nuclear arsenals, military bases, or the threat of sanctions — relied on a shared set of rules that actors agreed upon for the sake of predictability. These rules are no longer universal.

After the collapse of the USSR — the systemic adversary that balanced Cold War architecture — the United States began to search for new forms of legitimate expansion under unipolar conditions. That search included not only institutional projection (NATO enlargement, the export of democratic norms, globalization), but also precedents of direct force applied outside procedural bounds. The 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia marked the first break: a military intervention without UN Security Council authorization, framed in humanitarian language, effectively legitimized selective use of force — not as an exception, but as a tool of political influence.

Symbolic codes such as “surgical airstrikes” or “special military operation” no longer signal deviation. They are becoming part of the new norm. The legacy of the 1990s — including the illusion of a “post-historical” peace — was not the start of a stable phase, but an episode built on a temporary strategic vacuum.

The war in Ukraine is not an anomaly. It is an illustration of how force now operates: not as demonstration, but as destruction; not as threat, but as prolonged, indeterminate conflict. What matters is not the capabilities of the parties, but their political resilience to sustained costs.

Strategic coalitions that previously relied on institutionalized status quo management are losing the ability to contain escalation. Mechanisms of deterrence — from diplomatic engagement to economic interdependence — either fail or are ignored. They no longer set limits; they merely reflect the inertia of the previous order.

This is not a transitional moment. It is the beginning of a new historical phase — one in which balance is absent, actors are undefined, and norms are no longer universal. The world is becoming political again in the most literal sense: through contestation over what counts as a norm, not compliance with it.

The relative stability of the late 20th century rested on a unique configuration of mutual constraint. That configuration is no longer reproducible. ■

There isn’t even the structure of a proxy conflict involving China or Russia. Major wars are not started out of spite.

The notion of World War III triggered by Iran reflects media panic, not analytical reasoning. Neither the system’s configuration nor the interests of key actors support such a scenario. ■

Ukraine: Refusal, Emptiness, and Mobilization

Ukraine emerged from the Soviet Union without a positive image of itself. Its political identity was constructed on negation: not being part of Russia, not being heir to the USSR, not continuing the empire. This was freedom without structure, sovereignty without content.

Instead of a positive ontology, Ukraine embraced postmodernism: identity as flexible construct, statehood as administrative function, nationhood as procedural space rather than historical continuity. Postmodernism offered normality — to be a country without messianism, without metaphysics, without role. The pragmatic aspiration was to enter Europe as an institutional shell, lacking Catholic sacrality, Orthodox imperiality, or Soviet universality.

But postmodernism offered no defense. In the moment of crisis, it proved hollow. Its language failed in the face of a power that had not renounced truth. Ukraine was left without foundations — no sacred center, no historical myth, no philosophical framework. Everything it had rejected — empire, mission, canon — turned out to be necessary once war began.

To fill this void, Ukraine turned to figures that might serve as symbols of “authentic Ukrainianness”: Bandera, Mazepa, Petliura, the Cossacks, the UNR. These names were meant to serve as sacred markers. But they did not work. Their integration appeared artificial: historically insufficient, culturally fragmented, politically divisive. They offered no universal language — and thus failed to consolidate. These figures belonged to a different historical rhythm, and their return was more a gesture of panic than an ontological act. They were not foundations, but temporary constructs, not load-bearing structures.

Since 2014, and especially after 2022, a shift has occurred. Ukraine can no longer remain within the logic of postmodernism. It is returning to symbolism, to exceptionality, to the nation as sacred body. War generates a new ontology — no longer as choice, but as reaction. Belief in self becomes obligatory, as the only alternative to disappearance. Where there was plurality, there is now unity. Where there was plasticity, now there is boundary. Ukraine no longer negates — it attempts to assemble, under conditions of violence.

I will refrain from evaluating how successfully this is being done.

Russia: Universality as Violence

Russia never exited the empire. It inherited its structure, language, ambition, and style. It is not constructing a new ontology — it reproduces the old one. Russia remains a space in which truth is possible and necessarily singular. Those nearby are not others — they are distorted versions of the center. They are not to be recognized, only corrected or removed.

Soviet ontology did not disappear. Within it, the subject does not exist as value in itself. It is a means. Ethnos is raw material. Geography is a function of ideology. The state is a transmitter of meaning — not subject to debate. In this context, Ukraine is not merely alien. It is a logical error. To acknowledge it undermines the very concept of Russia.

Russia does not merely reject Ukraine — it cannot permit its existence. Recognizing an independent Ukraine would imply acceptance of plurality, which contradicts Russian universalism. This is why Russia’s denial of Ukraine will never be pragmatic. It is sacral.

Chauvinism — in what Dzhokhar Dudayev termed “Russism” — is not aggression but institutional indistinction. The other is not someone else; it is you, gone astray. It does not evoke fear, but irritation — like a systemic fault. Ukraine’s insistence on difference is perceived not as partnership but as heresy.

Cosmism and Long-Term Immortality

Imperial Russian philosophy is not only about Orthodoxy or politics. It still contains residues of Soviet cosmism — the idea that both the individual and the nation are merely instruments in the movement of matter toward immortality. Hence, a readiness for self-sacrifice — and indifference to individual fate. Hence, the universal language — not spoken for one’s own, but on behalf of all.

Russia speaks in the name of humanity. Even in acts of barbarism. Even in destruction — it formulates its actions as a mission. This is what makes it dangerous: it sincerely denies the other’s legitimacy, yet feels no guilt, because it acts within a logic of salvation — as it understands it.

Instead of a Conclusion

Ukraine seeks to be itself. Russia cannot allow it. For Ukraine, difference is a matter of political survival. For Russia, it threatens structural continuity. Recognition of Ukrainian subjectivity undermines Russia’s ontological model.

Ukraine exited empire but failed to find a new center. Postmodernism offered safety without meaning — and delivered neither. Ukraine is now returning to meaning — through blood, sacrifice, and exclusion.1

Russia never lost meaning — and will continue to fight, even without rational grounds.

This is not a war for control. It is a war for being — over who has the right to be oneself, or to be everyone.

The structural incompatibility of such conflict with a postmodern framework is most evident in the persistent failure to articulate even basic political positions: both sides used a language fundamentally inadequate to the nature of the confrontation — and are still searching for the right words. ■

The conflict between Israel and Iran is not fundamentally about territory, resources, or nuclear weapons. Its structure is deeper — a rivalry over the right to carry the true revelation within the shared Abrahamic tradition. At its core, it is a contest over symbolic primacy, a struggle for the exclusive status of Covenant-bearer. This is not international rivalry in the conventional sense but a form of intra-confessional competition.

Primacy and Revision

Judaism is the first monotheistic religion, canonized centuries before the emergence of Islam. The Tanakh establishes a unique covenant between God and the Jewish people, one that does not entail universal salvation. Islam appears over a thousand years later, claiming that the preceding traditions — Judaism and Christianity — either distorted the revelation or limited it. In Surah 9:30, the Qur’an expresses this bluntly:

“The Jews say, ‘Ezra is the son of God,’ and the Christians say, ‘The Messiah is the son of God’… May Allah destroy them; how deluded they are!”

This passage reflects not only polemic but the core strategy of Islamic self-definition: acknowledgment of predecessors in order to negate them. Such a position makes Islam structurally vulnerable to the continued existence of Judaism. The State of Israel materializes that vulnerability — it returns an ancient religious tradition to the space of contemporary politics. This triggers in Iran not only geopolitical hostility but a metaphysical rejection.

Christianity

Christianity emerged as a universalist extension of Judaism: it expanded salvation beyond a single ethnic group. In its early stages, it positioned itself in opposition to Judaism, but eventually came to dominate Western civilization, relegating the Jewish model to the periphery. By the 20th century, Christianity in the West had lost its political-ontological significance — under the pressure of secularization, historical criticism, and postmodern philosophy.

Today, Christianity in the West survives as a cultural backdrop and private identity. It no longer defines state missions. Within the Abrahamic field of religious legitimation, three forces remain: Israel, Shiite Iran, and the Sunni Islamic world. But only the first two build their political subjecthood around the idea of exclusivity and final revelation. In Sunni tradition, such a claim is institutionally weaker and typically takes form not through centralized projects but through fragmented ideological modes (e.g., Salafism or movements of Islamic universalism).

Postmodernism

Postmodernism has leveled truth as a metaphysical category. In its place came narrative, constructs, and local identities. Within this context, Iran and Israel may appear archaic — yet they continue to appeal to the Absolute.

Iran is a state whose political structure is built on a theological model. The expectation of the return of the mahdi — the hidden Imam — is embedded in the legitimation of authority. Israel is a project based on the return of the people of the Covenant to their land, where sacred text continues to shape legal and political practice. Both sides still operate within a framework where truth is possible and must be defended.

This renders them incompatible with an environment where value is assigned not to truth but to interpretation — and simultaneously makes them potentially dangerous to each other.

Ontological Incompatibility

In Shiite tradition, political power is temporary: it is a means of maintaining order until the Imam’s return. Within this schema, Israel constitutes a symbolic disruption. Its existence calls into question the finality of Islamic revelation. It testifies that the Covenant has not disappeared, been revoked, or dissolved in history. Theologically, this is unacceptable.

In this light, the delegitimization of Israel is not merely political rhetoric but an attempt to remove a symbolic anomaly. Holocaust denial, the phrase “Zionist regime,” demands for dismantlement — all these are part of a theological defense structure.

Israel, by contrast, acts differently. It does not call for Iran’s destruction or respond symmetrically. It functions as a completed form: return, restoration, silent presence. This grants it ontological stability. But in a world where politics is based on narrative expansion rather than fact, such a position becomes vulnerable. Israel does not impose interpretation. Iran does.

Israel’s assertive defense of its interests on the global stage — including aggressive lobbying — is not a sign of strength but a mechanism to compensate for political vulnerability.

Conclusion

The conflict between Israel and Iran is not about borders or balance of power. It is an ontological conflict within the broken system of monotheistic succession. Its participants cannot recognize each other without abandoning the foundational premises of their own identity. This makes it fundamentally irresolvable in diplomatic terms.

Mitigation is only possible through the displacement of apocalyptic and exclusivist religious discourse from the level of state identity. Until that occurs, the conflict will persist in one form or another.

That’s the framework. ■

In recent decades, societies have encountered a paradox: despite expanded access to education, information, and technology, the level of basic common sense — as subjectively observed — appears to be declining. This phenomenon cannot be fully explained by cultural or educational decay. Its roots lie in deeper structural shifts, most notably urbanization and the gradual removal of individuals from survival-related risk environments. The rise of generative AI does not reverse this loss; it may, in fact, deepen it.

Technological Progress, Humanism, and Urbanization Have Displaced Natural Selection

For most of human history, survival required continuous orientation toward reality — detecting threats, intuiting intentions, and solving practical problems. Common sense was not optional; it was an embedded cognitive strategy for adaptive response under uncertainty. Mistakes had direct consequences: death, loss, or social exclusion.

Urbanization dismantled many of these selection mechanisms. The modern urban individual operates in a shielded environment: climate-controlled spaces, guaranteed access to water, food delivery, protection from violence, and access to social goods largely decoupled from behavioral adequacy. In such conditions, behavioral incompetence is no longer punished — it is absorbed by institutional safety nets. Social selection has shifted toward symbolic capital, while basic common sense — defined as the capacity to make realistic decisions — has been steadily devalued.

The Information Bubble and the Rejection of Empiricism

Urban life also fosters cognitive insulation. People increasingly inhabit environments where the consequences of their errors in judgment are either invisible or deferred. One can disseminate falsehoods, adopt dysfunctional ideologies, and make uninformed decisions for years — without facing meaningful repercussions. Empirical testing of ideas is replaced by social reinforcement: if everyone else is doing it, it must be fine. Collective absence of judgment becomes undetectable because it is ubiquitous.

Cognitive Rent-Seeking

The advent of generative AI introduced a new form of cognitive inertia. Instead of using models to refine their understanding of reality, most users abdicate the cognitive burden entirely — no analysis, no verification, no alignment with context. The output is an endless stream of generated text, devoid of grounding, reflection, or intellectual effort.

A person who consistently outsources judgment loses the ability to think clearly, just as muscles atrophy without resistance. Generative tools substitute reasoning with answer retrieval, empiricism with probabilistic hallucination. In this context, AI is not an assistant but an intermediary between humans and the real world — an intermediary that further erodes causal reasoning.

Conclusion

The combination of urbanization and cognitive automation produces a society that appears hyperrational and technologically advanced — but is, in fact, increasingly incapable of adaptive response to crisis.

Common sense returns only when guarantees disappear. That may be the core lesson of history — and perhaps, of the future. ■

Origins

Modern human rights doctrine traces back to the declarations of the 18th century: the U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776), the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), and the works of Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. These ideas gained renewed force after World War II, when the response to Nazism took the form of institutional mechanisms designed to protect the individual from state arbitrariness. This produced the European Convention on Human Rights (1950), the European Court of Human Rights, and the legal principles of non-refoulement1, due process2, the presumption of innocence, and universal jurisdiction3.

But institutions created to protect individuals from totalitarianism gradually shifted emphasis — from legal presumption to moral sentiment. Where law once functioned as procedure, it now operates as empathy. This is a fundamental shift.

The Ontology of Humanism as Vulnerability

Classical humanism conceived of the individual as an end in himself, endowed with reason and will. In postmodernity, the subject is recast as a carrier of vulnerability. The postmodern human is not an agent but a victim — demanding recognition, compensation, and protection from even the most abstract forms of “harm.”

This generates a critical substitution: the ethics of responsibility (in Weber’s terms4) is displaced by the ethics of compassion. In a framework where suffering is sacralized, the protester is, by default, closer to “moral truth” than the private citizen disturbed by the breakdown of order. Even an aggressive offender is interpreted as unloved, unintegrated, marginalized. He is given priority within a legal regime where punishment is nearly taboo, and the defense of property is treated with suspicion.

Examples

1. Self-defense and property protection

   In the U.S., despite the Second Amendment and Stand Your Ground5 laws, thousands of individuals face prosecution for defending their lives or property. In Europe, the situation is often worse: in the U.K., a homeowner who stabs an intruder in his kitchen may receive a harsher sentence than the burglar himself.

   Cases involving “excessive force in self-defense” across the EU, Canada, and Australia illustrate the pathological prioritization of the assailant’s rights.

2. Protests and the paralysis of public order

   Hundreds of cases in the U.S. show businesses destroyed during protests (BLM, Occupy), with police instructed not to intervene for fear of being labeled racist or “aggressive.”

   In Germany and France, courts have repeatedly prohibited the dispersal of unauthorized demonstrations — even when they disrupt hospitals, schools, or public transport.

3. Immigration policy

   A refugee who crosses the border illegally often gains more rights to housing, medical care, and legal aid than a native citizen in distress.

   The protective rhetoric paralyzes repatriation mechanisms and incentivizes further violations.

The Collapse of Symmetry

Classical legal logic is grounded in a balance between liberty and responsibility, between rights and obligations. Modern humanism disrupts this symmetry: it preserves rights while removing responsibility. This renders it toxic to the very concept of legal order. The refusal to differentiate between the lawful and the aggressive, between protest and extortion, between defense and attack, erodes the legitimacy of the state as a guarantor of order.

On the Inversion of Justice

To protect the criminal from the victim — rather than the other way around — is to abandon justice in favor of an abstract idea of “humanity.” This is not humanism but its caricature. A state more afraid to punish the guilty than to expose the innocent to harm forfeits its claim to the monopoly on violence.

In political philosophy, this is a form of liberal masochism, where guilt becomes the driving force behind institutional decisions. But guilt cannot serve as a foundation for law. Only fair distinction can: who is right, who is wrong; who defends, who attacks; who bears risk, who receives benefit.

Conclusion

Modern humanism, by erasing the boundary between moral and legal categories, reproduces injustice under the banner of compassion. It turns the legal system into a mechanism that rewards antisocial behavior, thereby undermining the foundational social contract. This is not progress but a relapse into archaism — where protection belongs to those who complain the loudest, not to those who are right. Humanism requires a limit. That limit is justice — not the one envisioned by Rawls. ■

Caustic references included.

A meme explains how international law functions more clearly than most academic essays.

In its extended version, the meme reads:

self-defense: WEST

horrific war crime: REST OF THE WORLD

The formula “self-defense” for some and “war crime” for others is not a meme about hypocrisy. It is a compact diagnosis of how agency is distributed in the international system. Not a situational error — a structural feature.

The Source Is Not Double Standards — It’s the Architecture of Sovereignty

By the late 19th century, European powers had codified a standard: a full legal subject is a “civilized” state. All others are objects of administration. The Berlin Conference (1884–1885) institutionalized this via the right to violence under the guise of “civilizing missions.” Sovereignty was never granted as a universal condition — it was always a graded internal status. That logic didn’t vanish; it only changed its language.

The UN Charter and the Rome Statute Did Not Replace the System — They Supplemented It

The formal ban on force (Article 2(4), UN Charter) is neutralized by an exception: self-defense (Article 51). Who decides when that exception applies remains unspecified. The ICC — nominally a universal institution — excludes from its jurisdiction those who govern the system: the US, Israel, China, Russia. At the same time, the power to define threats and initiate interventions remains with the same set of actors.

Legal Enforcement Tracks Power

There’s a warrant for Putin. There’s one for Netanyahu too. Enforcement is selective. Mongolia (a member of the ICC) did not detain Putin; the Court recognized the non-cooperation but took no further steps. International law is not an autonomous machine — it is embedded in a network of political dependency.

Who Has the Right to Use Force

The legal subject authorized to use violence emerges from European philosophical categories: reason, autonomy, order. Those who do not match the template are rendered “non-subjects.” This is not a bug; it is the core access criterion. First comes the subject entitled to define order, then the norm declared as universal1.

Responsibility to Protect Does Not Eliminate Asymmetry — It Legalizes It Through a New Rhetoric

The 2005 World Summit introduced the “responsibility to protect” formula. In practice, it is applied by the same actors who operate outside constraints. Universality remains declarative. Enforcement still tracks status — what matters is not what was done, but who did it.

Conclusion

The structure of violence distribution remains colonial in form and institutional in function. The right to “self-defense” is not a precedent — it is an asset, held by a select few. This is why the meme works: it is not hyperbole, but a compressed ontology of a system where the label “war crime” follows not the act, but the passport.

This is the actual international law often invoked by liberals and leftists of various shades — typically without any grasp of how it operates.

Departing from the current framework is not an emotional question. It is a matter of institutional capacity. Preferred methods among this audience — foot-stomping, yelling “How dare you?!”, gluing oneself to asphalt, or staging tragedy on Instagram — do not shift structural arrangements. Neither does a full-scale war with hundreds of thousands dead in muddy trenches.

If anything shifts the frame, it is the accumulation of power, time, and subjecthood. Even the globalist project and its “end of history” did not shift the boundaries — the proclaimed universality came with exceptions carved out for legacy centers. The frame remained intact.

What we observe today is a contest over access to varying degrees of exclusivity at the table. Personal ambition, when substituted for statecraft, becomes a structural liability. ■

Understanding complexity is not a process of acquiring knowledge, but a practice of assembly — identifying structures, reconstructing linkages, and establishing perspective. This process operates across several levels.

Cognitive level: decomposition and connectivity

The first step is structural decomposition. Any complex object can be broken down into relatively autonomous components — not to simplify them, but to capture recurring modules.

The second step is reconstructing relations. Understanding does not emerge from isolated elements but from observing types of interdependence among them. This requires a shift from object-based inquiry (“what is this?”) to relational analysis (“how is this connected, and to what?”).

Epistemological level: frame differentiation

Ideas and theories diverge not in vocabulary, but in foundational assumptions. What counts as knowledge? Where is the boundary between individual and collective? How is time structured? What constitutes value? These are embedded in any complex idea and mark the core lines of divergence. Intellectual history is not a list of names but a means to reconstruct these divergences as maps of conflicting premises.

Communicative level

Complex systems do not speak for themselves. They are mediated through interpretation, distortion, and institutional channels of transmission. Communication theory here is not a set of tools but an analytic method for tracking how meaning is refracted, who has access to voice, and what filters govern reception.

Observation as practice

Understanding develops through prolonged and directed observation. This is not about data collection, but about cultivating the ability to detect structural recurrences in nonlinear processes. The minimal time horizon is several years. Without dynamic observation, no schema provides real comprehension.

Defense against false clarity

Salient, emotionally charged signals in complex systems almost always signal instability. The mind registers them as “important,” but analytically they are often noise. The base protocol: avoid objects that demand attention on their own.

Ego and perspective

Understanding requires minimizing the role of one’s own position. The more emotionally invested one is, the higher the risk of projection. The priority is not introspection, but systematic engagement with frameworks that conflict with one’s own. The most useful conversations happen with those whose world-model differs fundamentally. Not to reach consensus — but to clarify the terms of divergence.

Instead of a conclusion

To understand complexity is to see how connections form, where frames originate, who is speaking, and why certain things appear self-evident. This is not about finding answers — it is about sustaining a system without collapsing it into a convenient outline.

Very few people are capable of this. Most operate on the cognitive level alone, ignoring the rest.

This topic deserves more than a short note in a marginal blog. But I am not inclined to launch a lecture series in altruism — especially now that LLMs can recommend suitable teaching materials on demand. ■

Victory is not measured by exertion.

Victory is not measured by the number of deaths.

Victory is not measured by square kilometers of territory.

Victory is not measured by the duration of suffering.

Victory is measured by the balance of gains and losses — and by the prospects that follow.

What did the country gain? What did it lose? What are the real, not declared, outcomes?

Did its opportunities expand? Did it become freer, safer, more competitive? Or did victory entrench its vulnerabilities?

Did history come to a halt, or did it merely start the countdown to the next conflict?

Did the internal system grow more resilient? Did institutions strengthen — or did war merely legitimize violence and arbitrariness? ■