by Claudiu Secara

The problem with trying to solve the world’s problems is that most people, especially in the West, are bound by traditional principles of thinking. One is that the Earth is flat and another is that we are moving in a direction of linear extrapolation, in an eschatological way.

Not only does the man on the street think this way, but our politicians and intellectual elites think the same. We discuss and search for the best solution. But today’s solution is bound to be tomorrow’s problem in a dialectical, dynamic cycle of contradictions.

We argue over what is “the best system.” Serious people believe in this system or that system. The free market was one such mantra for decades, if not longer. Socialism is another magic solution. We argued ad nauseam about the success story of Singapore vs the Soviet Union, or the United States vs China. Which system is best?

But we know at least since the Classics that everything is transient. What is born today must die tomorrow. The world moves in cycles.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

Or as Giambattista Vico describes it in Aristotelian socio-political terms.

The classical Aristotelian account on the matter of political cycles distinguishes five forms of public government: monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny.

In the beginning there were what Giambattista Vico called (1)domestic monarchies9 – the rule of the supreme sovereign over all of a nation’s life. His absolute power and the general equality of all his subjects are, however, only of relative endurance. Slowly, an invisible process of stratification takes place. This process consolidates itself into (2) the constitutional monarchy. The absolute rule of the autocracy is, at first, diminished by an emerging power-sharing compact made with the growing class of the (3) oligarchic aristocracy. This is meant to consolidate a common defense against the growing ranks of the poor, but classical class warfare is the sorrowful consequence of the new compromise. Soon, the new order explodes into violence and the (4) reign of the popular government begins.

Unstable from the beginning, the self-empowered legislature of the many soon extends to all in an inexorable evolution toward social dissolution, from democratic participation to generalized anarchy. Yet this unbearable result and the obvious collapse of former social structures call for the reinstallment of the rule of order and unity through the (5) civil (presidential) tyrant. For Aristotle, tyrants arose “from among the common people and the masses, in opposition to the notables, so that the demos should not suffer injustice at their hands. . . The great majority of the tyrants began as demagogues, so to speak, and won confidence by calumniating the notables. — The New CommonWealth. From Bureaucratic Corporatism to Socialist Capitalism p. 258.

For centuries Russia was a backwater, a hopeless, sclerotic giant with feet of clay. Today, Russia is one of the most dynamic societies on Earth, with the energies of its millions of citizens engaged in finding and developing innovative solutions in technology and creative thinking. Yesterday, the United States, as the workshop of the universe, was building a New World, but today it is a gerontocracy choking from lack of exercise and run by morons.

The very success of the American open system has caused the paralysis of today. At the same time the monolithic command system of the vast landmass of Russia now enables the mobilization of its vast resources in one swoop.

We are misled in engaging in this competitive existential struggle to overcome the other, the challenger to our way of life, as if this would guarantee our security and happiness until the end of the world. Our minor successes today are only tactical, while strategically the battle goes on forever.

The discovery of bronze tools gave an insurmountable advantage to the lucky few . . . until some other lucky ones came up with iron tools.

The idea that our struggles have a terminal point, are finite and we can achieve our goal, is a fallacy, like the mirage at the end of the horizon. This fallacy gives us motivation as the target seems near and reachable, but at the same time it causes the aggressiveness and the sense of impunity, the impression that our adversaries are just about to be wiped off the face of the Earth. It’s a rat race, a hamster wheel, it’s like driving on the highway always trying to pass that one last car in front of you.

The US has lived for the past 70 years in such an ideological mirage, proclaiming itself the ultimate hegemon, based on full-spectrum domination of the rest of the world.

The problem here is not so much one of technological shortcoming but of philosophical immaturity. The naivety of such a crazy belief defies credulity, but the leaders and the man on the street really believe that the United States has reached the end point of history, the end point on its flat Earth.

More mature societies who have had their share of highs and lows are a bit more humbled by the experience, but not the United States. And that is a cause of trouble for the rest of the world.

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Claudiu Secara is the author of The New CommonWealth. From Bureaucratic Corporatism to Socialist Capitalism (1998) and Time & Ego. Judeo-Christian Egotheism and the English Industrial Revolution (1997)