There is a consoling story told about socialism, and like most consoling stories it is false. The story goes that socialism is a noble idea spoiled in the execution; that the famines and the camps were betrayals of the dream rather than its harvest; and that the thing itself remains young, barely attempted, forever about to be done properly the next time. History, however, seems to disagree, as none of this survives contact with the record.

Ideologically charged socialist movements have been with us for more than two thousand years. State socialism is older still, nearly as old as civilization itself. And the horrors that socialist societies have reliably produced were unfortunately never simply the residue of a botched attempt. Rather they were, often unbeknownst to its minions, the thing working as designed.

The clearest map of this terrain was drawn by Igor Shafarevich, the Soviet mathematician and friend of Solzhenitsyn, in a book whose German title says the quiet part aloud: The Death Drive in History, known in English as The Socialist Phenomenon. Shafarevich separated two things that are usually confused. On one side stands what he called chiliastic socialism: the theoretical dream of a perfected communal society, the utopia held in the mind before it is laid upon the body. On the other stands state socialism: those societies which were, in their actual workings, socialist. The second kind is ancient and nearly universal; it surfaced in old Egypt, in the China of the Qin, in the Inca state strung along the Andes. The first kind, the utopia as theory, seems to be an almost exclusively Western disease.

Heresies in the language of their age

Starting from Plato’s musings on the ideal state, the dream passed into the gnostic sects of the first Christian centuries, and from there it ran like fire through the heretical movements of the Middle Ages and into the early modern world. By the Reformation the most radical of these heretics were openly competing for primacy: the Hussites, and the followers of Thomas Müntzer, who rode into battle, as it happens, beneath a banner of the rainbow.

It is not too much to say that the Reformation was the first successful socialist revolution in the West. Lutheranism prevailed not because it was the purest expression of the impulse but because it was the most moderate, the most willing to compromise, set beside the absolutists of the Cathars, the Adamites and the several breeds of Anabaptist. Lutheranism, in other words, was socialism light, and that is precisely why it won where the harder heresies broke themselves.

What deserves notice is how little the substance changed beneath the religious dress. Strip away the theological vocabulary of each century and the same demands recur, almost word for word:

• the abolition of private property;

• the dissolution of the family and its replacement by “free love”;

• the abolition of religion in favour of belief in an ideology;

• enforced communality and equality, and the suppression of the individual;

• the vision of a new world and a new man waiting to be made;

• the levelling of inherited hierarchy in favour of a bureaucratic order run by a chosen few;

• and an unqualified readiness for violence against anyone who stands in the way.

It would be foolish to assume these were just local accidents. When Thomas More published Utopia in 1516 he described a far-off commonwealth in which most of these demands had been fully realized, so fully that readers later wondered whether he had modelled it on the Inca state, that closest of all approximations to a developed state socialism. But the Spanish did not reach the Andes until 1531. More imagined from first principles what the Andes had built in fact. Apparently, the dream needs no contact between cultures to recur.

The Enlightenment changed the costume, not the body beneath it. Where the medieval heretic dressed his socialism in scripture, the philosophe dressed his in reason. Jean Meslier, forgotten now though he worked a deep influence on Voltaire, translated the old utopia into the idiom of his age. The Jacobins held him in such regard that when the Convention enthroned the Cult of Reason in 1793, Anacharsis Cloots proposed setting a statue of Meslier in the Temple of Reason, since it was he who had first cleared away the “confusions” of religion. One could find the philosophical fumbling of these men almost endearing, were it not for the trail of blood their ideas dragged through the Revolution and its tremors across Europe.

The nineteenth century swapped the cult of reason for the prestige of science, above all in the historical materialism of Marx. This is the costume most people now mistake for the body itself. Yet, once again, the Bolshevik terror was no misreading of Marx; as it was a fairly faithful application of him, however unwelcome that observation remains in the company that still grows misty-eyed over his revolutionary genius.

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The redeeming butcher

The early Soviet terror, before Stalin closed his grip, shows the splintered character of every socialist movement. Like the medieval heresies and the warring clubs of the Jacobins, the Bolsheviks were far less a single bloc than hindsight makes them. The famous fissure ran between Lenin and Trotsky, but Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin each carried their own shade of the creed, which is why the purges fell as heavily within the party as upon its enemies.

Stalin ended the quarrel, by consolidation or by extermination as you prefer, and set in its place a working state socialism. That he put a stop to the internecine bloodletting, always conducted on the backs of ordinary people, is part of the strange hold he keeps on a certain Russian imagination despite a genocidal ledger. The sheer scale of his killing obscures a stranger fact: Stalin was fairly unideological. He was the stable compromise, pragmatic to the marrow, indifferent to the global utopia his colleagues dreamed of. In this he resembled Napoleon, whom no one mistakes for a visionary, and who likewise put an end to the ideological squabbling of France’s revolutionary enthusiasts.

The pattern is worth holding onto. The ruthless men, Napoleon and Stalin, even Luther if you care to go that far, do not embody the socialist ideal. They are the compromise that answers the chaos the utopians make. The chiliasts are never one thing; they fracture into a dozen mutually devouring sects, united only, and only for a while, by their hatred of the order that already exists, be it monarchy or the patriarchal household, or whatever order already stands and already works.

This is cold comfort for conservatives, because the compromise comes with a hefty price and the revolutionary impacts are coming closer. One might almost speak of a revolutionary half-life. More than two hundred and fifty years separate the Reformation from the French Revolution. But only a hundred and twenty-five separate the French Revolution from the Russian. Barely fifty years after the Russian Revolution, 1968 happened and the legitimate question arises, whether we’ve entered the state of permanent revolution Trotsky dreamed of. The intervals are rounded, but the quickening is real, and it raises a question about our own moment that the rest of this essay must try to face.

A word on China, conspicuously absent so far. The Western paint called communism certainly marked the men of Mao’s era, most catastrophically in the Cultural Revolution; but the order that settled after Deng looks less like a Western compromise than like a return to the autocratic bureaucracies of ancient China, the thing Karl Wittfogel called oriental despotism and which Marx struggled to fit into his scheme under the awkward heading of the “Asiatic mode of production.” Where individualism never struck deep roots, state socialism met little to resist it.

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Thou needn’t

When we speak of modern socialism we usually begin in the 1960s, and though it would be wrong to see something wholly new there, a real difference does separate the men of 1968 from the revolutionaries before them. Earlier socialists wanted the immediate seizure of power. The children of 1968 were the heirs of Antonio Gramsci, perhaps the most consequential communist theorist of the last century, whose demand for cultural hegemony became their watchword.

Gramsci worked out his theory in one of Mussolini’s prisons, at almost the very hour Stalin was taking the Soviet helm. Against the open autocracies of his day he set a soft totalitarianism, one that would establish a new socialist order through the slow work of the intellectuals and make it acceptable to ordinary men. His chosen target was the institution that still set the cultural terms of the West: the Catholic Church. Only by offering men an alternative structure of belief, a substitute religion in plain words, could Marxism hope to take the Church’s place.

The Devil, who is of course the source of all these godless utopias, had taken a lesson from the Russian Revolution. In the Soviet Union the Bolsheviks tried to forbid religion and failed, for a forbidden thing only grows more desirable, and many Russians kept their Orthodoxy alive in secret. The persistence ran so deep that Stalin is said to have ordered the icon of Our Lady of Kazan flown above Moscow to shield the city from the advancing Germans. Whether faith or opportunism, the gesture admitted what a quarter-century of repression had not managed to undo.

So in the West the Devil changed his sentence. He no longer said thou shalt not. He said thou needn’t.

The wreckage of the Second Vatican Council on the religious sense of the faithful is the clearest case. In its announced wish to keep step with the times, the Church took the lead in dismantling its own certainties, opening “room for interpretation” where once the beauty of dogma had stood. Mass shifted, in the felt sense of it, from a necessity to a preference; attendance began a fall from which it has never recovered. No one had been forbidden anything. They had merely been told they needn’t.

The 68ers were more patient than their forebears. They did not lunge for power; they planned across decades. One has to take one’s hat off to the strategy of Rudi Dutschke’s “long march through the institutions,” all the more so since the march met little rough ground. Well-meaning conservatives handed the marchers every opportunity to settle into the universities, the press, the schools and the offices of the state.

And here the explosion of the graduate class since the 1960s has to be read as a central beam of the rebuild. With degree rates running at a third to a half of the population across much of the West, and past half in Russia and Canada, the men of 1968 manufactured in a single stroke both the architects of the new hegemony and the educated mass ready to welcome it. All of it was accomplished, to borrow the phrase, without a single shot fired.

The same gentle method dissolved the family. No one was compelled. The decoupling of sex from procreation by the pill, working together with the steady celebration of promiscuity, was enough to recast the ordinary family as a quaint and expiring arrangement. The bill for that hedonism now arrives in plain figures: in loneliness and a soured peace between the sexes, and in birth rates across the developed world that slope towards demographic winter. The full conscription of women into the labour market did not only halve the prevailing wage, the natural result of doubling the supply of workers; it pressed both parents into work to afford a modern urban life and handed the raising of children, by degrees, to the state. Long before any university was printing theses on the liberating powers of polyamory, or a German campaign at Greifswald was urging women in so many words to “end their bloodline,” parenthood had already been quietly discouraged into retreat.

With the Church’s nerve broken, two of socialism’s oldest demands were met without anyone seeming to will them: religion abolished and ideology installed in its room, the family loosened at its joints. And the religious hunger did not vanish when the faith was hollowed out. It went looking for substitutes, exactly as Chesterton predicted and Dawkins did not. Lately it has found them in a personified and suffering nature, Gaia weeps, propped up by a scientism that treats the latest finding as a final revelation. The Fall is rewritten as a new original sin, ecological or racial or merely a matter of unearned privilege, from which we cleanse ourselves by kneeling, or at the least by recolouring a profile picture. They are indulgences, sold as they always were.

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The horseshoe and the billionaire

One expects the free market, enterprise, the maker’s instinct, to stand as the creative pole of resistance to all this. It has not. Over recent decades the great supranational bodies and the men who staff them have made plain that socialist measures from above can run hand in glove with the interests of a global class of oligarchs.

LEO author gave this condition its name some years ago, reviving from Spengler the term billionaire socialism and making it respectable. The ambitions of the great corporations, he argued, are best called pseudo-socialist, because liberalism and socialism in their actually existing forms

are no longer to be thought of as fundamental opposites, but rather as converging forces which, though they argue from different starting points, finally belong to the same ideological school by virtue of their materialist picture of man.

Marx had foreseen capitalism’s drift towards monopoly and command, but he wrongly supposed socialism would overcome it. Engels answers that the two now work as complements, not antagonists.

The Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han traced the inner mechanism. In The Burnout Society he marked the passage in the late-modern economy from the repressive thou must to the apparently liberating thou canst, the yes, we can, which ends not in liberation but in self-enslavement, and so in depression and burnout. Made the entrepreneur of his own self, set loose in an economy of attention and limitless self-improvement, modern man becomes at once the victim and the author of his own exploitation. The freedom turns into a yoke, and a heavier one than any master could impose, since the labourer who drives himself needs no overseer. Han’s thou canst is the exact positivist twin of the socialist thou needn’t. Both bind by releasing.

Which yields a quiet irony worth sitting with. The most perfect form of socialism could only have grown in the most liberal soil. It needed the language of freedom to do its work. And so when the smiling promise arrives, you will own nothing, and you will be happy, it does not come as a threat. It comes as relief. You needn’t carry all this. Just sign here, says the Devil, and he is still smiling.

The reaction against the individual

Why should the loss of the last restraints end in servitude rather than freedom? Paul Gottfried offered part of the answer in Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt, where he described the slow mutation of mass democracy into a managerial apparatus that, to justify its own existence, takes on the work of educating its citizens. What he called a therapeutic tyranny is, on closer view, the natural ripening of a mass democracy defined by an ever-lengthening list of rights and grievances to administer. The engine of that missionary zeal he located in a liberal Protestantism given over to the search for personal salvation and the permanent crusade against discrimination.

Individualism is not usually counted among the marks of socialism; it is taken for the opposite of the collective. Yet freedom too needs its hedges. Where even the last constraints, thou must and thou shalt not, are surrendered to the open field of thou canst and thou needn’t, freedom curdles into its reverse. The free individual becomes the atomized one; individuality becomes the regimented delirium of inventing oneself as a forty-seventh gender.

Here Shafarevich reaches for Karl Jaspers and the Axial Age, that span across the first millennium before Christ when, from the Mediterranean deep into Asia, the picture of the world was overturned. In the place of the god-kings of the oriental despotisms, those first forms of state socialism, there now stood the individual as a maker of history. It can be seen in Greece, among the Hebrew prophets, as far off as the Buddha, and it crested in the birth of Christianity.

Follow that thought to its end and a strange conclusion waits. Against everything we are told, socialism in all its colours is not a revolutionary force but a reactionary one. It labours to undo the great revolution of the Axial Age, to dissolve the individual back into the collective from which he once stepped free. And it does this, Shafarevich argued, not from cold calculation but from something deeper and less governable: the death drive named in his title from the first page.

The death drive

The term is Freud’s, set down in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. He found two drives at the root of man, the drive towards life and a drive towards death, the latter “an expression of inertia,” an urge in the living thing to restore an earlier, lifeless state it had been forced to abandon. Shafarevich carried the idea up to the level of whole societies, and he was not alone in doing so. Herbert Marcuse, whose influence on the modern movements was vast, had already taken Freud’s drive and charged it with a social meaning, until death itself could be made to wear the colours of freedom:

Death can become a token of freedom. The necessity of death does not refute the possibility of final liberation. Like the other necessities, it can be made rational, painless. Men can die without anxiety if they know that what they love is protected from misery and oblivion.

One does not have to strain to find that wish at work now: in the case made for euthanasia and abortion, and in the choice not to have children at all, so that the planet might be spared. Each is the life drive overrun by its opposite. And the drive, Shafarevich noted, never shows its face; it throws over itself the robes of religion, of reason, of the state, of social justice and national feeling and science, and works the more powerfully the longer it stays hidden from the mind that carries it.

The sharpest turn comes from Han, who finds the very same drive in capitalism. Quoting the economist Bernard Maris, that the great cunning of capitalism is to channel the forces of destruction, the death drive, into growth, Han argues that capital is piled up against death as the absolute loss, in flat denial that death is real. But in fleeing death the system tears from life the one thing that gives it savour, for life is bound to death at the root. The attempt to outrun the end kills the living thing in the running.

So the two creeds we had taken for enemies turn out to be two faces of one coin. Socialism and capitalism alike are in flight from death, and both, in fleeing it, deal death. The quarrel between them was never the real story.

A revolution of consciousness

If the diagnosis is right, then the answer to modern socialism is not, in the first place, a political one. It is a thing of the soul. “Every political revolution,” Han writes, “must be preceded by a revolution of consciousness that gives death back to life.” He looks for it in Eros, the life drive, as the power that breaks the hold of narcissism and opens man at last to the Other, for it is only in that opening, and not in the locked room of the self, that freedom is really tasted.

Shafarevich, no easy optimist, ended by pointing to the Russian religious philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, who held that humanity must first live through individualism in its most extreme form, must set it even against God, and only then, by a conscious act of that same individuality, find its way back to Him. Those who can make nothing of Christianity will hear in this only an affront. But the shape of it is worth weighing even so: the road out does not run backwards into the collective but forward and through, by way of an individual freedom that finally bends itself towards something greater than itself.

We are not the first to stand where we stand, and the dream has been turned back before. The peasants of the Sanfedist rising broke the Jacobin tide in Italy. The Catholics of Poland helped lower the Soviet Union into its grave. Neither did it with the better pamphlet or the cleverer argument. They did it with a faith that could not be administered away, the one thing the long march was never able to reach. The Devil offers his release with a smile and a paper to sign; he has been refused before, and can be refused again.

It is worth remembering that he fears almost nothing. But he has always feared the light.

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“For the weary hates what is present and desires what is not.” — Evagrios Pontikos, Epistulae

Climate activists and politicians have been claiming for years that our level of prosperity is not only unsustainable, but also to blame for the supposed destruction of our planet. While some of that clamour has died down since Trump returned to the White House, the results of his second term do not indicate a structural shift away from pessimism. While the energy crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine has been officially declared behind us, gas prices rose to even higher levels during the war with Iran. And while inflation is no longer rising as rapidly, the cost-of-living crisis keeps optimism reliably in check. What used to be a talking point of the radical Left has long since reached society as a whole. A retreat from previous levels of prosperity seems to become not just an ideological option, but an unavoidable reality.

Now it is one thing to criticise the modern realities of alienated wage slavery, and another to glorify a centuries-old way of life without ever having experienced its privations oneself. For even if one no longer believes in the superiority of one’s own progressiveness, there is no denying that modern medicine, agriculture and technology in general have ensured that large parts of the world could achieve a level of prosperity that earlier generations would not have dreamt of, and as a result of which the number of victims of natural disasters, hunger and epidemics is lower than ever before in human history. A step back behind this level of prosperity could undo many of these gains, costing countless lives.

The criticism that prosperity has made us fat is voiced regularly these days, and we cannot deny a certain decadence of affluence in the West. But although large parts of the world are now catching up with us in terms of prosperity and may soon overtake us, the idea of a limit to growth seems to be barely present, if at all, in these societies. Whether it is China, India or many of the Gulf states, there is more of a sense of optimism in these countries than a feeling of living above one’s means.

This raises the question of whether the dominant feeling in the West of having exhausted our level of growth is based on an absolute value, or should rather be understood relatively, in relation to the creative power left within our high culture.

A Culture That Has Grown Old

Anyone who loves Western culture can hardly avoid noticing that it has grown old. Where defeatism, cynicism, scepticism, and above all weariness appear to reign within our hearts, other cultures seem to be bursting with vitality and creative power. The same will to self-assertion that distinguished our forefathers has moved on to other parts of the world. There, the conviction that the next generation will be better off than their parents is still alive and well, and technical and economic boundaries do not act as deterrents, but as obstacles to be overcome.

It is hardly surprising that the West has reached this point. Over a century ago, Oswald Spengler had already stated that the Occidental high culture had lost its creative power and that it would only be able to imitate past greatness. He sketched an Occident that was on the verge of transitioning to the late phase of its cultural life cycle, to Caesarism — a reading that, especially in light of the work of historian and LEO author , has recently returned to prominence.

Regardless of whether one considers these processes a historical inevitability or, on the contrary, a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” the weariness present in our society is tangible.

Symbols of Retreat

It may be coincidence, or rather a wry coincidence of history, that the Club of Rome published its report The Limits to Growth in the same year (1972) in which the last man set foot on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 mission. Manned space flight to the moon may not be decisive on the road to the next technological leap of humanity, and although great things have been achieved in the last fifty years in the fields of miniaturisation and genetic research, it seems almost symbolic that the retreat of the West coincided with the retreat from the moon, whose “conquest” had seemed only a few years earlier like the latest symbol of a striving and overcoming humanity.

Similarly, it is sobering to note that the potentially revolutionary Internet has lost within the span of a few decades much of its once utopian promise of democratising knowledge and is currently largely used for the consumption of pornography, social networks and streaming services. The Internet as the “great equaliser” with regards to the availability of intellectual resources may still exist in theory, but it is increasingly locked off, especially now that search engine giant Google is funnelling the Internet through the filter of algorithms and AI. Only those who actively try to circumvent this streamlining and search for specific information are still able to find hidden gems of knowledge. In this respect very little has changed compared to the time before the Internet existed.

So while China is already working on sending manned missions to the moon (Russia’s war in Ukraine has gutted any such plans the country once had), such plans in the West are now primarily in the hands of ambitious billionaires like Elon Musk. NASA’s plans for a manned flight to the moon have been repeatedly delayed as well. And even Elon Musk, who long thrived on his image of being the last Faustian man striving to push boundaries, has postponed and downsized his ambitions to land on Mars several times, until he finally decided to help NASA get back to the moon. And never ever ask him what happened to his plans for self-driving Teslas.

Those who follow the theories of Spengler will recognise the symptoms of an ageing advanced civilisation, and indeed it is almost inconceivable that the West could once more inspire heroic deeds in the spirit of the transcendent Plus ultra of Charles V or the Non sufficit orbis of his son Philip II any time soon.

But it is not enough simply to claim that one “does not believe” in such theories, since they are currently being confirmed rather than invalidated by reality.

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Naming the Demon

Perhaps, however, spiritual considerations offer us a way to understand the matter and find ways of dealing with it. Whoever searches for the psychological causes of Western defeatism will discover the aforementioned undertone of weariness in many intellectual currents. Among progressives, a rejection of the spiritual foundations of the Occident is always en vogue, but even among conservatives an increasing boredom, a languor, is spreading, which ultimately leads to an indifference to the continued existence of our culture. This can be explained by a lack of renewal of the source, because for quite some time now, the West has been culturally treading water at best, if not in a state of outright retreat. The destructive restlessness of our time is confronted with a seemingly endless recycling of the great deeds of the past, which we have long since lacked the leisure to comprehend and to be inspired by.

Thus our love of the past turns into weariness of it. World War I teaches us what such cultural weariness can lead to at the level of society as a whole. But how does one fight this weariness? First of all, by calling it by its name: acedia.

Acedia was first identified by the early Christian desert father Evagrios Pontikos. It denotes a state of mind that is difficult to capture in a single word. It includes disgust, boredom, sluggishness, despondency, languor, reluctance, melancholy, and even weariness, which, with the inclusion of the other terms, most closely describes this state of mind. Modern interpretations also consider the contemporary epidemic of depression to be a form of acedia.

Evagrios considers acedia not so much a vice as a demon, even the most oppressive of all demons. It leads to the “slackening of a soul that does not possess what is befitting of its nature.” Romano Guardini called acedia “perhaps the most painful human phenomenon,” and the Orthodox clergyman and author Gabriel Bunge even poses the question:

“And what shall we say of fear, that twin sister of acedia, as we shall see? Has it not become the mark of Cain of our civilization?”

Just as a shadow settles over the mind of a depressed individual, so it does over a depressed civilisation. Evagrios says acedia “darkens” man’s relationship with God, and makes it impossible for him to see the Divine any more. Acedia can manifest itself as a permanent condition and enshroud the entire soul, who, when afflicted by it, hates everything that is present and desires what is not.

Of course, an infestation by the demon of acedia does not require an active belief in it; on the contrary, the demon plays the same trick the devil does — persuading us that he does not exist. Thus, acedia affects believers and non-believers alike, so that one should not look without a pinch of Christian compassion at those activists who, out of demonic possession (and that’s what it is!), promote the destruction of all civilisational achievements of the Occident.

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But what is the demon’s goal? It can hardly be about the destruction of Western civilisation — that would be too earthly a matter for a demon. What he is really after is the rupture of the human being’s relationship with God:

“What intention do the demons have in arousing in us gluttony, fornication, avarice, anger and resentment, and the rest of the passions? [They want] the intellect, which has turned these [passions] crude, not to be able to pray as it should. For once the passions of the irrational part [of the soul] have come to rule, they do not allow it to move rationally and to seek God’s word.”

Prayer and Work

Once we acknowledge that what besieges our cultural consciousness is a form of acedia, ranging from an individual level to the consciousness of an entire society, we have to conclude that it is this form of demonic possession that makes us weary and incapable of believing in our capability to grow further. Like a clinically depressed patient, large parts of the West (certainly in Europe!) have become unable to imagine anything other than impending doom.

We therefore need to treat our cultural consciousness in the same way we would treat our individual acedia. Evagrios teaches us that one of the best ways to deal with the demon is constant prayer and work. It is as simple and as difficult as advice gets, and still it is the truth. And it may pierce right to the heart of the crisis of the West, which has given up on prayer and thus appears lost like a wanderer in the desert.

Weariness is cured by steadfastness and that you do everything with great care, fear of God and perseverance. Prescribe for yourself a measure in every work. And do not desist from it sooner, than until you have completed it. And pray without ceasing and briefly, and the spirit of weariness will flee from you.

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In the 14th century a Tunisian scholar named Ibn Khaldun cracked the code of civilisation. He discovered that societies rise and fall not due to the usual explanations—an abundance of resources, technological superiority, raw military might and, later, the lack thereof—but due to an elusive concept known as asabiyyah. It’s the key to why some cultures last centuries while others crumble quickly.

Now almost 700 years later, Ibn Khaldun’s theory is being put to the test in the Western world. As scholars speculate about decline, citing challenges like economic inflation, spiritual apathy, and an immigration policy run wild, the source of the West’s woes might well be rooted in something more fundamental.

According to Ibn Khaldun, civilisation is downstream from asabiyyah. Everything from national defense, to voting patterns, to social policy is affected by it. So what is asabiyyah, why did Ibn Khaldun posit it was a vital aspect of civilisation, and, more importantly, what does it say about the West today?

The Foundation of Civilisation: Group Feeling

Ibn Khaldun is one of the greatest historians and social scientists of the Middle Ages, though he is often overlooked in the Western world. His work laid the groundwork for a number of fields—including historiography, sociology, economics, and demography—due to its broad approach.

His magnum opus, The Muqaddimah (meaning “The Introduction”), is an attempt at a universal history of civilisations, which describes how they rise and fall, and is wholly underpinned by the concept of asabiyyah.

According to Ibn Khaldun, asabiyyah is the central driving force for the development of civilisation. It can roughly be translated to “group feeling” or “group solidarity”—it’s the deep cultural and social bond a people share*. The success of a society is intrinsically tied to the intensity of its asabiyyah, and in order to preserve power, a people must maintain a stronger asabiyyah than those of its competitor groups.

It might seem like a nebulous concept at first, but Ibn Khaldun claims asabiyyah can be boiled down to something quite concrete: the willingness to fight for one’s group and to advocate for its welfare. Ibn Khaldun writes:“ Asabiyyah produces the ability to defend oneself, to offer opposition, to protect oneself, and to press one’s claims.” And even more simply: asabiyyah “means affection and willingness to fight and die for each other.”

Given this understanding, it’s clear why asabiyyah has serious consequences for a culture as Ibn Khaldun ties it directly to the ability to win wars. He asserts that when two groups of equal number come to blows, the side with the more unified group feeling will dominate. Thus, the strength of asabiyyah determines a culture’s ultimate fate.

But asabiyyah affects more than just the strength of a nations’ army; it also guides political movements and social hierarchies within a civilisation. Ibn Khaldun writes that “...every mass (political) undertaking by necessity requires group feeling.” Groups with strong asabiyyah drive policies and decisions that benefit them, while less unified groups must deal with the consequences.

Asabiyyah is, according to Ibn Khaldun, vital to a civilisation’s long-term health—shaping its internal politics and its position on the international stage—but how does a culture obtain asabiyyah in the first place? Why do some cultures have a strong group feeling while others do not?

Bonds Through Hardship

The strength of a culture’s asabiyyah differs drastically within its own lifecycle. Ibn Khaldun posited that cultures have two fundamental stages. The first stage of a culture is its nomadic, or “desert”, stage during which group feeling is the strongest. In this stage, people are hardy and courageous, unaccustomed to luxury: “Man seeks first the bare necessities…The toughness of desert life precedes the softness of sedentary life.”

Ibn Khaldun offers the Bedouins as an archetypical example, asserting that their toughness, being a nomadic culture, stems from an inability to rely on walls, fortifications, or professional armies for their collective defense—they have only themselves. Asabiyyah, then, is essential for the group’s survival and strongest among such “barbarian” tribes.

Ibn Khaldun writes:

“The hamlets of the Bedouins are defended against outside enemies by a tribal militia composed of noble youths of the tribe who are known for their courage. Their defence and protection are successful only if they are a closely knit group of common descent. This strengthens their stamina and makes them feared, since everybody’s affection for his family and his group is more important (than anything else).”

Ibn Khaldun notes that desert life accommodates asabiyyah because nomadic and tribal societies are close knit clans bonded by blood ties. Familial bonds are “something natural among men, with the rarest exceptions.” The more immediate the familial relationship, the stronger the group solidarity.

Also conducive to group feeling is the formation of close alliances or client-master relationships which develop in tribal societies. What forms asabiyyah here is the social shame inflicted on a member when his or her neighbour, ally, or client is humiliated. Since desert cultures are small, anonymity is impossible and therefore reputation is paramount. This emphasis on honour and social standing is foundational to the development of group feeling.

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Urbanisation and the Decline of Asabiyyah

The next stage of a culture’s development is the urban, or sedentary, stage. In this stage, a culture moves beyond its nomadic tendencies and settles down, building cities and dividing labour amongst various crafts and occupations. Ibn Khaldun writes that urbanisation is ultimately the goal to which nomadic cultures aspire and is a natural development of successful desert societies.

Sedentary civilisation sees powerful dynasties reign, which Ibn Khaldun says is the end goal of group feeling—to establish a “royal authority”. Though dynasties are born out of desert life, they culminate in urban civilisation after their power creates wealth and prosperity through territorial expansion. Thus, urban civilisation is a natural result of a culture’s strong asabiyyah.

The wealth and luxury that urban civilisation engenders initially aids the culture’s power, as it can now support a large population size. The nation grows in power and influence and its population expands rapidly, leading to an increase in loyal followers. This numerical growth strengthens the dynasty, as more people can be used for military or economic purposes.

However, within this growth of urban civilisation lies the seeds of factionalism and an erosion of group feeling—leading to the end of the civilisation as a whole. Over time, prosperity and abundance create a decadent population whose self interest overrides group solidarity. Members of the tribe become preoccupied by personal gain in pursuit of an easy, luxurious life. They grow content to let others deal with the defense of this civilisation and difficult political matters. Ibn Khaldun writes how group feeling is lost when comfort is prioritised:

“As a result, the toughness of desert life is lost. Group feeling and courage weaken...Their children and offspring grow up too proud to look after themselves or to attend to their own needs. They have disdain also for all the other things that are necessary in connection with group feeling. This finally becomes a character trait and natural characteristic of theirs. Their group feeling and courage decrease in the next generations. Eventually, group feeling is altogether destroyed. They thus invite their own destruction…When group feeling is destroyed, the tribe is no longer able to protect itself.”

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Along with the detrimental effects of abundance on group feeling, geographical expansion also erodes asabiyyah. As a civilisation expands, it inevitably encompasses a variety of other peoples and cultures—and a multiplicity of cultures means multiple group feelings, leading to factional politics. Each group argues for its own self-interest. Internal division, rebellion, or vulnerability to outside invasion become likely. Ibn Khaldun points to biblical Israel as an example of a kingdom that encompassed many different groups, weakening solidarity and eventually leading to its fracturing and conquest:

“In the age of the Israelites, the same was the case in Syria, where there existed a very large number of tribes with a great variety of group feelings, such as the tribes of Palestine and Canaan, the children of Esau, the Midyanites, the children of Lot, the Edomites, the Armenians, the Amalekites, Girgashites, and the Nabataeans from the Jazîrah and Mosul. Therefore, it was difficult for the Israelites to establish their dynasty firmly. Time after time, their royal authority was endangered. The (spirit of) opposition (in the country) communicated itself to (the Israelites). They opposed their own government and revolted against it. They thus never had a continuous and firmly established royal authority. Eventually they were overpowered, first by the Persians, then by the Greeks, and finally by the Romans, when their power came to an end in the Diaspora.”

Echoes of Asabiyyah

Though Ibn Khaldun’s work popularised the concept of asabiyyah, other historians have arrived at similar conclusions about the importance of group solidarity.

Machiavelli, for example, warns against the use of mercenaries to fight wars specifically because they lack any “tie of devotion” to the people they fight for. This “tie of devotion” can be understood in a similar vein as Ibn Khaldun’s asabiyyah since Machiavelli links the idea with a willingness to risk one’s life in battle. According to Machiavelli, the reliance on mercenaries is a massive liability for a nation because when “war come[s]...they will either desert or flee.” This is contrasted with home-grown soldiers who are inspired to fight because of regional pride, loyalty to their neighbours, and devotion to family—asabiyyah.

Likewise, the 20th-century British soldier and historian John Glubb echoed Ibn Khaldun on a number of topics. Perhaps most similar is his understanding of the decline of civilisations due to an unraveling of group solidarity. In Glubb’s 1978 essay entitled The Fate of Empires, he posits that along with internal division and a lack of willingness to fight, an influx of foreigners creates competing group identities within a large geographical empire, leading to factionalism.

Glubb claims that when a culture is homogeneous, there is a feeling of “solidarity and comradeship” among the people, but a large number of foreigners disrupts this. Glubb lists several reasons for foreigners disrupting the unity of an empire, but most pertinent to our discussion is that, in hard times, they are less willing to sacrifice their lives and their property for the empire. This is essentially the same reason why Machiavelli warns against using mercenaries as it is the opposite of true group feeling.

Asabiyyah In the Modern World

If Ibn Khaldun is correct regarding the necessity of asabiyyah in a civilisation, then determining the degree of asabiyyah a nation or people possess is a pressing concern for those who want to see their culture survive long term. The question arises over how one might even measure such a difficult-to-pin-down concept—but Ibn Khaldun’s simple definition of the “willingness to fight and die” for one’s culture gives us a good approximate variable to measure.

A recent survey sheds light on the willingness of various nations to fight if they become embroiled in war. Though not a perfect gauge for asabiyyah given people’s answers to survey questions won’t necessarily map to real-life situations, it’s a good starting point to develop a high-level comparison for different nations’ level of group solidarity.

In a 2024 Gallup International poll, the question was asked: “If there were a war that involved (YOUR COUNTRY), would you be willing to fight for your country?” The dichotomy between the answers of Western nations and other parts of the world is striking. Of the top five nations who responded “Yes” most frequently, most were Muslim majority countries from West Asia and the Middle East. Armenia stood out at 96%, Saudi Arabia at 94%, and Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and Georgia all responded “Yes” at well above 80%. In contrast, the highest “No” responses were overwhelmingly Western European nations—Italy at 78%, Austria at 62%, and Germany, Nigeria, and Spain at over 50%.

The US and Canada showed more willingness to fight (41% yes and 34% yes respectively) than Western Europe, but not nearly to the degree of the Middle East and West Asia. India also had a high frequency of “Yes” responses, with over 75% responding in the affirmative, and Latin America followed behind with an average of 58%.

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Asabiyyah and the Polarity Shift

The contrast in asabiyyah between the Western world and rising non-Western regions appears to be an existential reality. Gallup’s study indicates significantly stronger group feeling in the Middle East, India, and West Asia, contrasting sharply with a hollowed-out asabiyyah in the West. Taking Ibn Khaldun’s philosophy of history at face value, non-Western civilisations are positioned for longevity, while the clock is ticking for the Western world.

By the metrics established in The Muqaddimah, the West is in profound trouble. We, unfortunately, perfectly fit the criteria for civilisational decline. First, Europe, the United States, and the Commonwealth nations have achieved unprecedented levels of material comfort, trading the hard-won social cohesion of our ancestors for the luxury of decadence.

Second, rapid geographic and cultural shifts have fractured our societies. Unprecedented immigration and rampant identity politics have birthed competing groups within Western borders. Instead of a unified nation, we now harbour a hyper-individualistic patchwork of conflicting tribes—the exact internal factionalism Ibn Khaldun warned would invite destruction.

There is no one asabiyyah within Western nations, but rather many asabiyyahs.

To confront this trajectory is not an exercise in defeatism, however. Rather, it is a necessary act of realist thinking. Diagnosing the life threatening wounds our civilisation has sustained is the first step for enduring what comes next. The illusions of perpetual hegemony and infinite economic prosperity are evaporating, preparing the way for the realisation that a multipolar world awaits.

To understand where global power will lie in the next decades or centuries, GDP or military units may not be the best measure of long-term cultural success. If Ibn Khaldun is right, the best predictor of the future world order will be whether or not a people are willing to put everything on the line for their nation, their families, and their fellow countrymen—whether or not they have asabiyyah.

*Note: “group feeling”, “group solidarity”, and “asabiyyah” are used interchangeably in this essay

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“Every man should have something that he can shape in his own image”— G.K. Chesterton

Earlier I traced the idea that membership in a political community should accompany co-ownership over that community in a tangible sense, from Numa Pompilius, the early king of Rome, to Plato and Leviticus.

Economic Populism

G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc’s “distributism” provides us with the best known modern terms for the principle we’ve been exploring. As Belloc summarised it, the term described:

“A state of society in which the families composing it are, in a determining number, owners of the land and the means of production…”

—Belloc, An Essay on the Restoration of Property

That a “determining number” of persons own means of production was, to these authors, an “institution,” that is, a social arrangement—the very shape of society—no less defining than that of slavery:

“If we do not restore the Institution of Property we cannot escape restoring the Institution of Slavery; there is no third course.”

— Belloc, The Servile State

This is certainly relevant to us today. A widespread sense of disenfranchisement and the rising tide of so-called “economic populism” is set to define the coming years, with electoral outcomes in Europe and Western countries in general hinging on falling purchasing power, rising costs and the ability of foreign hedge funds and private equity firms to buy up assets and essentially compete with the body politic of any given country.

Indeed, promoting widespread asset ownership is, on one level, analogous to placing one’s pieces on a chess board, occupying space so others cannot.

Another key issue is that of mass migration and changing demographics, with the attendant strain on cultural cohesion, welfare and social services, and increasing violent crime that it entails. Right of centre parties making this their flagship issue have been rising across Europe and will be a permanent part of the political landscape going forward.

There is no reason, however, for these two issues (economic and demographic concerns) to divide along opposite party factions. As the preceding discussion has highlighted, understanding political membership as entailing a share in the economy is precisely traditionally connected to the articulation of a local identity. It is quite artificial for it to be championed by an ideological internationalism that supports lax borders, the breakdown of traditional institutions and the importation of cheap labour (be it today’s Far Left or Europe’s establishmentarian centre-Left). Any politics of identity should, in fact, emphasise economic enfranchisement and widespread ownership over the resources needed for life.

Identity is not merely what excludes others, but what includes you, after all.

When we hear of “remigration” and the possibility of offering economic incentives to persons with less of an ancestral connection to European in order for them to move back to the land of their parents or grandparents, for example, we should add that this must ultimately be accompanied by an “internal remigration,” so to speak, that is, a repossession by the local population of material resources.

Farms and Housing

We may consider a few areas in which this can be applied today. According to Eurostat, the EU lost about 5.3 million farms between 2005 and 2020 from around 14.4 million to 9.1 million, with the number reaching 8.8 million farms by 2023, representing a loss of 5.6 million farms, or 39% of EU farms overall. And it’s small and family-operated farms that have been hurt the most.

Obviously rising costs are a culprit here, and this has partly been the result of policy, resulting from sanctions on Russian energy and taxes on fossil fuels. Larger and corporate-owned farms can absorb high input costs and capital investment and weather the storms of market volatility. Small farms cannot.

But even beyond this, according to some estimates, 80% of the EU’s direct payments to farmers have gone to about 20% of the bloc’s farms, and mostly to larger ones, giving those who already benefit from economies of scale an even further advantage in crowding out the competition and surviving economic downturns.

Pressure mounting on this front has caused some movement in Brussels, so that the Commission’s post-2027 proposals for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is set to increase support toward small family farms. This would include simplified lump-sum payments for small farmers and capping funds for large recipients to redirect these to smaller ones. Member States will also be able to fund farm-relief services using CAP funds, and a new dedicated generational-renewal strategy aims to double the share of young farmers by 2040 through national plans and at least 6% of agricultural spending.

The housing crisis presents another area in which the above should inspire policy changes. Since 2010, EU-wide house prices have risen by 55.4% and rents by 26.7%, significantly outpacing wage growth. This mainly hurts younger Europeans who typically have lower incomes and less secure employment.

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In Bulgaria, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, and Spain, renting a two-room apartment can require 80% of a young adult’s median wage. As a result, around 30% of 25–34-year-olds across the EU live with their parents, reaching nearly 50% in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Poland. Delaying family formation on account of not having physical space in which to raise a family, or even the requisite privacy in which to cultivate married life, cannot but be a contributing factor to the continent’s low birth rates.

Beyond this, the psychological restriction and lack of independence resulting from not living in or owning one’s own home cannot but cause the young (young men, especially) to stagnate in the long run and become alienated from a hearty sense of power, mastery and participation in life. Again, property has a use-value, but also a psychological, symbolic and spiritual value. As Chesterton puts it:

“Property is merely the art of democracy. It means that every man should have something that he can shape in his own image, as he is shaped in the image of Heaven … The average man cannot paint the sunset whose colours he admires; but he can paint his own house with what colour he chooses.”

—Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World

In December 2025 the European Commission published its first European Affordable Housing Plan, aiming to remove regulatory barriers to building new housing and to mobilise investment for social/affordable housing, including through an investment platform partnering with the European Investment Bank, as well as through cohesion funds. However, social housing is generally being built for economic migrants whose massive arrival only worsens the situation for native youths. The key here should be to increase supply without increasing demand by reducing overall immigration.

I’ve cited the EU’s forthcoming CAP and 2025 Housing Plan because the point is not to reject every existing attempt (timid as it might be) at the European or national levels to solve our problem, but to amplify those elements that make the most sense and scrap the rest.

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Looking Forward

Tax incentives for low and middle-income first-time buyers, massive reduction of income and inheritance tax, increased property tax on older persons with more than two properties to incentivise them to sell these or pass them on to younger members of their family, assign more EU funds for affordable housing, and balanced regulation of short-term rentals to preserve urban affordability are all potentially sound policies that could be pursued.

Beyond family property in the form of housing and generally purchasing power, which is the priority, we should disrupt political categories and discourse by proposing policies that support local communities in restoring the commons, that is, in establishing communal property for its members.

If individual economic interest corresponds to the modern ideal of “liberty,” and state ownership is the guarantor of general “equality,” with these representing the modes of property favoured by the Right and Left in a stereotyped sense, then the commons corresponds to “fraternity” in the French Revolutionary triad that inaugurates political modernity. We might understand it as the bridge between the excesses of Right and Left.

Concretely, it could be cultivated by policymakers legislating to make it easier to set up Community Land Trust (CLT), for example, and local government can enact ordinances or bylaws that formally recognise community rights to manage its local resources. Local governments can also donate or sell land (or tax-foreclosed properties, unused schools, parks, highway remnants, etc.) to a local representative entity (a CLT, community stewards, or something similar) at below-market rates or for free. They can also implement “community right to bid” or “assets of community value” laws, giving residents priority in buying or refusing to sell local resources and infrastructure (surplus land, empty buildings, parks, forests, etc.) to unwanted buyers.

All of this applies not only to physical space, but also to cyber space, as I’ve developed elsewhere in terms of the three-node model for AI (supercomputer, national node and edge or personal node).

Community requires ownership as the material foundation of identity. Any identitarian or conservative project for Europe should offer the continent’s population a positive vision in which they can more easily obtain a real share, a piece, of Europe—in place of the tattered social contract, a new covenant that grounds us in solid philosophical principles and material reality.

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There is a noble, if neglected, vein running through the Western tradition according to which communal membership and political participation had its ground in ownership: To be a member of a community was to own a piece of that community.

Plato and the Prophets

In his final work, Plato argued that each household in his ideal city ought to receive a land allotment or “kleros” (κλῆρος). Says his “Athenian stranger:”

“As a further consequence of what has preceded I would enact another law of the following type … there must be no place for penury in any section of the population, nor yet for opulence … the legislator must now specify the limit in either direction. So let the limit on the side of penury be the value of an allotment; this must remain constant, and no magistrate, and no other person who is ambitious of a repute for goodness must connive, in any case, at its diminution. The legislator will take it as a measure, and permit the acquisition of twice, thrice, and as much as four times its value.”

—Plato, The Laws V:744

As an aside, while Plato maintains that collective ownership over land by all citizens would be ideal, recommending these private, household allotments as a concession to Greek character or human nature, Aristotle provides an excellent critique of his master’s opinion when commenting on The Republic:

“…there is a point at which a state may attain such a degree of unity as to be no longer a state, or…become an inferior state, like harmony passing into unison, or rhythm which has been reduced to a single foot.”

—Aristotle, Politics, II:5

As in the Greek tradition, the Biblical plan for Israel was that it come into its promised land not as a state attaining “such a degree of unity as to be no longer a state,” but with each of her tribes (excluding the Levites) and families in turn coming into a portion of that land, where familial and tribal land is indivisible:

“The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers.”

—Leviticus 25:23

The salient concept here, for Plato and Aristotle as for Leviticus, is that the city or nation is not a uniform category within which tribes, families and individuals are interchangeable (something like the modern, liberal, nation as social contract), but consists of distinct parts that should each own (or act as caretaker to) some physical portion of the whole specific to themselves.

We find this doctrine in archaic Rome. Long before Plato (indeed, by most reckonings, before even Pythagoras) there lived Numa Pompilius, the semi-mythical king of Rome and successor to Romulus whose doctrines anticipate those of the Greek philosophical tradition according to historians of late antiquity. Writes Plutarch:

“… the portion of lands which the Romans possessed at the beginning was very narrow, until Romulus enlarged them by war; all those acquisitions Numa now divided amongst the indigent commonalty, wishing to do away with that extreme want which is a compulsion to dishonesty, and, by turning the people to husbandry, to bring them, as well as their lands, into better order. For there is no employment that gives so keen and quick a relish for peace as husbandry and a country life, which leave in men all that kind of courage that makes them ready to fight in defence of their own, while it destroys the licence that breaks out into acts of injustice and rapacity. Numa, therefore … divided all the lands into several parcels, to which he gave the name of pagus, or parish, and over every one of them he ordained chief overseers; and, taking a delight sometimes to inspect his colonies in person, he formed his judgment of every man’s habits by the results; of which being witness himself, he preferred those to honours and employments who had done well, and by rebukes and reproaches incited the indolent and careless to improvement.”

In fact, according to the historiographical tradition, Numa was not only a “distributist” philosopher king, but also a sort of “guild socialist” or “corporatist:”

“But of all his measures the most commended was his distribution of the people by their trades into companies or guilds…”

—Plutarch, Parallel Lives: Numa Pompilius

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Nations as Inherited Land Covenants

The above link between political membership of a community and propertied co-ownership of that community also appears in pre-modern accounts of the founding of nations, which are often imagined as ancestral, inherited, land covenants.

Prominently, the Book of Jubilees, which is partly an expanded version of Genesis describes Europeans as descending from a common patriarch, a son of Noah, who receives the continent of Europe as his inheritance and in turn divides it up between his seven sons, the originators of seven primordial European nations, so to speak. This influenced the medieval self-conception of Europeans as heirs to a common land, downstream recipients of a patriarchal blessing. We find this in St. Jerome (4^th century) and St. Isidore of Seville’s (7^th century) highly influential works, and the concept was still current when Martin Luther invoked it in his writings.

We may argue, then, that the implicit understanding in much of the Hellenic and Biblical worldview is that, beyond its use-value, property (including the co-ownership of that common home that nationhood implies) serves a psychological, symbolic and even spiritual function as index for identity. This describes not only individual property and that of the nuclear family, but also the grounding of wider layers of community.

The Commons

Indeed, today, we have empirical evidence that communal property at the level of a neighbourhood or village does not, contrary to the economic liberal’s assumptions, necessarily (or even probably) lead to a so-called “tragedy of the commons.”

As Nobel-prize winning economist Elinor Ostrom has shown, sustainable management of communal resources and avoidance of overexploitation can occur indefinitely over many generations so long as certain key “design principles” are observed, one of which is “clearly defined boundaries.” In Governing the Commons, Ostrom notes that “individuals or households who have rights to withdraw resource units from the common-pool resource (CPR) must be clearly defined, as must the boundaries of the CPR itself.”

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I know myself as a member of a community (and am inclined to care for that community) when I use its walkways and toss loose branches out of my path after a strong wind. This sense of caretaking can apply to different contexts. It is better, for example, for children to think of their school as co-owned by their parents and take a period at the end of some schooldays to clean their classroom (as is apparently the case in some Japanese schools), rather than for a foreign, culturally alienated, economically exploited janitorial staff to do the same.

Work should connect us to a resource that represents some community of which we are members. Work and belonging should be of a piece, just as mind should not be divorced from body, or finance from the real economy. Simon Weil describes this principle beautifully:

“Participation in collective possessions—a participation consisting not in any material enjoyment, but in a feeling of ownership—is a no less important need [to mere use-value]…Where a real civic life exists, each one feels he has a personal ownership in the public monuments, gardens, ceremonial pomp and circumstance…But it isn’t just the State which ought to provide this satisfaction; it is every sort of collectivity in turn. A great modern factory is a waste from the point of view of the need of property; for it is unable to provide either the workers, or the manager…with the least satisfaction in connection with this need. When methods of exchange and acquisition are…a waste of material and moral foods, it is time they were transformed…”

Here, we have the traditional ideal vision of organically nested communities, from family to town to nation to wider federation or civilisation, each existing not as mere legal fiction but grounded by a corresponding “commons” in which its members may participate, from which they may benefit materially as well as taking psychological enjoyment, and through which they represent their belonging in a given community to themselves. Of course, these members must be enfranchised by individual property, as well as a satisfactory purchasing power and living standard.

Having established the principle at stake and its historical pedigree, we may move onto its relevance and what practical policy it might lead us to support.

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In the liturgical tradition of the Church, the month of May has long been dedicated to the veneration of the Virgin Mary. This is more than devotional habit. Mary stands at the centre of a theological claim that reaches far beyond piety: that the “Eternal Feminine” — a motif scattered across the world’s religions in fragmentary form — finds in her not a symbolic expression but its decisive historical fulfilment.

It has frequently been asserted that Christianity is “patriarchal”, and that the role of women must therefore be fundamentally redefined if the Christian faith is to overcome what is caricatured as the cult of an aged, bearded, white patriarchal super-father. Yet the comparative study of religions has repeatedly demonstrated how inadequate and misleading such a caricature is. The central truths proclaimed by Christianity can not only be grasped through philosophical a priori reflection, but can also be recognised — at least in fragmentary form — within the dispersed traditions of many other great religions; a convergence suggesting that human beings and civilisations share an innate potential for knowledge of the divine.

Admittedly, the more closely one moves from the generalities of transcendent philosophy to the concrete level of salvation history, the more clearly the differences between the major religions come into view. This applies above all to the question of the Eternal Feminine. Nevertheless, one conclusion emerges with clarity: at least in Christianity, the notion of a one-sided “patriarchy” cannot be upheld.

The Qur’anic Misreading

It is noteworthy that the Qur’an appears, at certain points, to interpret the Christian Trinity as a triad consisting of Allah, Mary, and Jesus.

Although this constitutes a fundamental misunderstanding — possibly influenced by marginal Gnostic currents within Eastern Christianity — it is nonetheless revealing of the prominence accorded to the Mother of God long before the emergence of the medieval Marian cult. Such a misunderstanding, reflecting Islam’s tendency towards extreme monotheism as much as its belief at least in the possibility of a “mother-goddess” in Christianity, can only be fully understood within the context of Arabian polytheism, which, alongside the high god Allah, recognised several female deities, foremost among them al-Lāt, whose veneration, according to the controversial account of the “Satanic Verses”, may even have briefly entered the Qur’anic tradition.

A comparable phenomenon may be observed in early Judaism, where YHWH, in its earliest historical strata, appears to have been associated with a feminine counterpart, Asherah, later radically purged from the tradition. At the same time, Islam, while firmly rejecting the divinity of Christ, nevertheless preserves certain key elements of Christian teaching, such as the sinlessness of Mary and the virginal conception. Moreover, through figures such as Khadija, Aisha, and above all Fatima — revered as the daughter of the Prophet and the ancestress of the Shi’ite imams — it establishes numerous female paradigms endowed with archetypal religious significance. Even a rigorously monotheistic system such as Islam retained a distinct and irreducible mystical female dimension.

Polarity, Bridality, Motherhood

If we now turn from the historical figure to the religious role of the Mother of God in salvation history, we can observe how a wide range of religious traditions converge in Christianity, and how even elements historically unrelated to Christianity seem to prefigure later Marian theology.

A first central aspect is the polarity between male and female, often expressed in terms of complementary oppositions such as activity and passivity, spirit and matter. This polarity can be traced across a wide range of cultural contexts, from the Egyptian primordial pair Shu and Tefnut, through the cosmological speculations of the pre-Socratic philosopher Anaximander, to the Chinese doctrine of Yin and Yang. In Mary, the specifically feminine emerges as the indispensable precondition for the redemption of the world through the Son of God and as an integral component of the manifestation of the divine.

From this polarity arises, in a natural and almost inevitable manner, the notion of a “Bride of God”, a concept that appears in various forms across many religious traditions, often expressed through marital associations between male and female divine principles. In Judaism, particularly in its medieval Kabbalistic form — and likely under the influence of Christian Mariology — there developed the doctrine of the Shekhinah, understood as the indwelling presence of God on earth and conceived in feminine terms as the tenth emanation of the Tree of the Sephirot; a notion of a quasi-incarnate divine presence which remains, to this day, central to the symbolism and the liturgical celebration of the Sabbath.

The symbolism of divine bridality is, in turn, intrinsically linked to the mystery of motherhood. Such motherhood, when understood in its highest sense, is directed towards the divine itself, and in the case of human mothers can only be realised through a form of divine, and therefore virginal, conception. Mary, as Theotokos, thus represents not the first occurrence of such an idea, but rather the most fully articulated form of a belief in divine conception widespread in the history of religions, appearing in traditions ranging from Greco-Roman mythology to the narrative of the virginal conception of Gautama Buddha by Princess Māyā.

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Compassion and the Star of the Sea

Motherhood, however, is inseparable from the notion of compassion. The eternal feminine thus appears as the ultimate source of assistance in times of distress, embodying that experience of absolute primordial trust which belongs to the fundamental psychological structures of human existence.

It is therefore hardly surprising that we encounter, alongside the Christian image of Mary as stella maris — the “Star of the Sea” guiding the lost and despairing across the ocean of existence to the safe haven of belief and divine compassion — analogous figures in other religious traditions.

In Tibetan Buddhism, the goddess Tārā (“Star”) is venerated as the mother of all Buddhas and, in her various manifestations, has become the supreme object of longing for compassion and intercession. In Chinese Buddhism, a comparable role is played by Guanyin, an essentially feminine figure among the highest bodhisattvas, who continues to enjoy widespread veneration and is frequently depicted holding a small child in her arms. In this respect, she bears a striking resemblance to the Egyptian goddess Isis with the infant Horus, whose iconographic parallels with the Mother of God have long been observed.

Yet the differences are no less significant: Osiris, though a suffering, murdered, and resurrected redeemer figure, is the consort of Isis rather than her son, thereby situating this tradition within a different symbolic and theological framework, one that is also reflected in the cults of other Near Eastern mother goddesses such as Cybele, the famous Magna Mater.

Wisdom and the Feminine

Alongside these aspects, we encounter a further dimension: the association of the feminine with ultimate wisdom, understood as a quasi co-creative cosmological principle. This form of wisdom, while emerging or emanating from the divine unity, remains in a certain sense subordinate to it and thus does not fundamentally contradict the primordial polarity between a spiritually conceived masculinity and a materially conceived femininity.

Within Christianity, it is self-evident that the Mother of God, as the bearer of the incarnate Logos, stands in a particularly close — though by no means identical — relationship to the concept of wisdom in its fullest sense. It is therefore not surprising that, especially in the Eastern Churches, Hagia Sophia, or divine wisdom, has repeatedly been associated with Mary. At times, this association has even given rise to theological developments considered heretical by the Church, in which Sophia is endowed with an almost demiurgic role, semi-independent of — and occasionally even opposed to — the divine will.

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Such tendencies may be observed, for instance, in the Coptic-Gnostic Pistis Sophia, where creation is attributed to the fall or hubris of personified Wisdom, which in turn gives rise to the flawed creator deity Yaldabaoth. Comparable themes also appear in certain Jewish traditions surrounding Lilith, the enigmatic first wife of Adam, as well as in the Sophiological speculations of Russian Orthodoxy.

The close interrelation between theogony and cosmogony expressed in these traditions finds partial analogies in other religious systems. In Daoism and Chinese folk religion, for example, Xiwangmu, the “Queen Mother of the West”, has from earliest times been venerated not only as the supreme embodiment of Yin, but also as a figure of wisdom, associated with transcendence, mystery, and truth. Similarly, in certain Christian interpretations of Kabbalah, Chokhmah (“Wisdom”), the second sephirah following Keter (“Crown”), may be interpreted as a feminine principle and, in some readings, symbolically associated with the Virgin Mary — thus revealing certain convergences with both Gnostic speculation and Islamic misinterpretations of the Trinity.

The New Eve

Yet the Virgin Mary is far more than a syncretistic accumulation of symbolic motifs associated with the divine feminine. In her, these elements pass from the realm of timeless myth into that of concrete, tangible history and become integrated into a far more comprehensive logic of salvation, one that assumes entirely unique characteristics.

Just as Christ atones for the original sin of Adam through his sacrificial death — and is therefore crucified on Golgotha, the “place of the skull”, beneath which the mortal remains of the first human were believed to lie — so Mary has been regarded, since the Church Fathers, as the “new Eve”. Through her obedience, she reverses the disobedience of the first woman and thereby makes possible the renewal of salvation history under the sign of divine redemption. It is hardly surprising that this typological parallel extends to the eschatological horizon, where not only the return of Christ as Pantokrator is anticipated, but also the exaltation of Mary, as suggested by the identification of the apocalyptic woman in the Book of Revelation with the Madonna standing upon the crescent moon.

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The Protestant Rupture

In this general context, we cannot but regard with a highly critical eye the diverging trajectory of Protestantism, which must be interpreted as an ambivalent attempt to “purify” Christianity of all the elements mentioned above, often subsumed under the polemical label of “paganism”, and to reorient faith toward an exclusive emphasis on the transcendent unity (and trinity) of God.

While this rationalising impulse undoubtedly contributed to a renewed focus on Scripture and the sovereignty of divine grace, it also entailed a marked attenuation of those symbolic and devotional forms in which the feminine dimension of the sacred had found not only ritual and emotional expression, but ontological justification.

The progressive marginalisation of the Mother of God, along with the generalised suspicion toward mediatory figures and sacramental imagination more broadly, resulted in a gradual narrowing of the religious horizon. The polarity of masculine and feminine, once integrated within a higher synthesis, gave way to a more abstract, unilateral conception of transcendence. In the longue durée, this development may even be seen as facilitating a shift from a richly articulated, analogical understanding of the divine toward a predominantly rational and disenchanted framework — one that, by increasingly severing the ties between immanence and transcendence, ultimately opened the path toward secularisation and, in its most radical form, atheism.

Fulfilment, Not Symbol

It is therefore precisely in the figure of the Eternal Feminine that the distinctive character of Christianity becomes most clearly visible. What appears, in the myths, symbols, and cultic forms of other religions, as an enigmatic image, a prophetic intuition, or a fragmentary attempt, finds in the Virgin Mary its definitive resolution, fulfilment, and elevation.

All these dimensions are united in her within a concrete historical person who stands at the very centre of salvation history, pointing both to its origin and to its ultimate fulfilment.

In this way, the “eternal feminine” ceases to be a symbolic reflection of the divine and instead becomes an active participant in the incarnation of the Logos. In the Mother of God, a fundamental theological necessity is realised: that the mystery of transcendence and immanence, of creation and redemption, of the masculine and the feminine, is not only articulated conceptually, but made manifest in historical reality.

The Virgin Mary thus stands as one of the great seals of the uniqueness of Christianity — the point at which the many scattered rays of mythic anticipation are gathered together into a single, radiant unity.

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Rupture, break, divorce from the past, revolution.

The idea of “starting over” is the great myth of the age, from the French Revolution to the American “self-made man.” Its god is an orphan, amnesiac, ghost. His desire to be “free” has worked as a terrible knife, severing the bonds that were.

The Knife of the Gnostic

It has divorced membership in the polity from property and participation, finance from the real economy, nationhood from ancestry, and increasingly, technology from the human form (as we see in certain transhumanist fantasies).

Eric Voegelin would describe the divorces mentioned above as “gnostic,” stemming from a drive for liberation of thought from world, abstraction from concrete reality, ideal from history, pleasure from flesh. And in a subtle way, from hatred, resentment against the particular.

The trembling wake of those convulsions in thought, politics, and technical innovation that brought this age about continues to shudder loose what should remain joined.

Modern-day politics has come to be understood as the realm of universals at odds with the particular (inherited identities and institutions are viewed as obstacles by our political class). Equity, justice, economic efficiency, and the like are invoked to justify the erosion of social cohesion and older cultural forms.

But like the splitting of an atom, it is from the gaps left by these terrible ruptures that the current age has drawn its power, albeit this power runs out in the long-term: When ancestral or cultural bonds detach from legal citizenship and the social contract, a country may benefit from cheap foreign labour from the Global South, for example, but it will suffer from social atomisation in the long-run.

When membership in a polity detaches from co-ownership over that polity (say, in the form of widespread home ownership) we get the sort of crisis of legitimacy and loss of trust in government that is now prevalent in the West. When finance detaches from economic reality, asset prices rise beyond fundamentals and eventually crash. Money gets sucked away from more productive sectors and more promising innovation. Even if valuable infrastructure gets built (as during the 2000 dot-com bubble, arguably), early speculators get rich, increasing inequality, while the public at large bears the brunt in the form of credit freezes, unemployment as a result of business failure and so on.

We may also look forward to the likely failure of U.S. AI companies to deliver promised economic returns (especially for the bulk of the population) even as their coffers swell and they become enmeshed in the business and public sectors.

Beyond these examples, today, “transhumanist” dreams of emancipation beyond the bounds of possibility, or even real desirability, have nonetheless served as a great galvanising myth. Even now, depending on what percentage of the population is (in whatever half-hidden way) resentful of the human form itself, we can imagine “transhumanism” becoming a politically salient fantasy, rallying devotees to whoever offers them a third arm, nanotech-enabled sex-changes, or cyborg centaur-waifus.

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Conjuring in the Abyss

Technologically enabled androgynes would parody alchemy even as our financial structures parody the creation “out of nothing.” Vast monetary power can be generated by the modern banking system and mobilised by markets precisely to the degree that they can speculate themselves free of the real economy, blowing Icarus-bubbles to the sun.

It’s in the gap between material conditions and desire, then, that today’s dark magicians find room enough to cast their spells. Of course, bubbles burst, just as a politics based on impossible “emancipations” will exhaust itself eventually, but not without doing damage.

This applies to geopolitics as well, where we find a good example of the principle I’m discussing.

The current, if waning, American empire, draws much of its power from the gap between currency and economy. The dollar is a stable asset for foreign central banks and companies to invest in, but that generally makes U.S. exports uncompetitive. As I’ve written elsewhere:

“The dollar stays strong, the real economy gets weak. If trade deficits allow U.S. finance to conjure up the formidable storms of capital that it does, and a strong dollar causes the world to bow and huddle under it as reserve currency, is the gap between the country’s currency and productivity not just the price of power—the necessary wages of empire?”

Yes it is, but there’s the rub. Eventually your manufacturing gets so weak, you become so dependent on globally-extended supply chains and foreign imports, that it starts to look as though any disruption to world trade will bring you to your knees (and, indeed, any rival practicing a modicum of autarky will soon be able to outperform you in case of open conflict). In Spenglerian terms, it’s part of the shift from an organic “culture” to money-dominated “civilization.” The strength of empire is also often the cause of decline.

Dorian Grey holds court while his portrait grows decrepit.

This is something like the economic equivalent of the fall in birth-rates suffered by post-industrial countries as they become wealthier, leading to the importation of foreign labour, with its attendant loss of social cohesion. When the sign detaches from its referent (currency from the economy, citizenship from organic community), it becomes a sterile spectre.

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“Incarnationist” Politics

These splits are analogous to that of mind from body. We simply do not see the psychological, not to say symbolic or spiritual, role of material conditions (economic relations, property arrangements) as a legitimate subject for politics. Here, the old question of political economy, that of livelihood and our life as social animals, is all-important. Simon Weil’s provides a wonderful framing of the problem in The Need for Roots:

“Participation in collective possessions—a participation consisting not in any material enjoyment, but in a feeling of ownership—is a no less important need [to mere use-value]…Where a real civic life exists, each one feels he has a personal ownership in the public monuments, gardens, ceremonial pomp and circumstance…But it isn’t just the State which ought to provide this satisfaction; it is every sort of collectivity in turn.”

Identifying the same problem of alienation as Marx, Weil grounds the solution in organically nested and differentiated human community:

“A great modern factory is a waste from the point of view of the need of property; for it is unable to provide either the workers, or the manager…with the least satisfaction in connection with this need. When methods of exchange and acquisition are…a waste of material and moral foods, it is time they were transformed…”

We find this idea in Plato’s The Laws (V:744), his final work, where the Athenian recommends non-transferable family and tribal land-allotments (called “kleros,” κλῆρος) for the citizens of his ideal city. His “social contract,” we might say, is one not of merely legal belonging, but tangible enfranchisement through co-ownership. To be part of a community is to co-own it, as G.K. Chesterton would agree. In just the same way, in Leviticus 25:23, when Israel is installed in its land, its parts, the tribes and families, are likewise given (once more, non-transferable) plots of land.

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In fact, we frequently find that pre-modern myths of the founding of nations imagine these as an inherited land covenant. In the Book of Jubilees, for example, which was very popular among medieval scholars, we encounter an expanded account of Genesis in which the continents are assigned to the sons of Noah, and divided in turn among his grandsons, who serve as paradigmatic ancestors and first rulers over these soon-to-be-peopled realms. Property, even the co-ownership of a common home that nationhood implies, serves a psychological, symbolic, spiritual function as index for identity.

Economic efficiency and the need to innovate as fast as possible (as though speed were a good in itself) are arbitrary categories. Yes, we must compete in a world of antagonistic powers, but in the long-run we are better served by replenishing our social fabric, joining what has long been painfully detached, than persevering in following the path of abstraction, leading to gangrene.

I’ve already shown my cards, but we are ripe for a politics of re-possession, remembrance, re-enchantment, along the lines of the principle of subsidiarity and Chestertonian distributism; an “incarnationist” politics or “embodied” citizenship, if we can only give it form in terms of new realities. This would also serve to disrupt the Left-Right dichotomy. The living community comes first, and we ought not sacrifice economy to currency, people to empire, form to freedom, etc. This, I would suggest, provides a framing image for how to understand our present moment and struggle.

The gap needs closing. The dark magician (speculator, tech-bro, academic) should be dragged from that chasm, that open wound, that parody-womb, however tempting the void might be.

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The New Appeal of Genetic Explanations

Few topics today exert such a contradictory pull as the question of differences between individuals and population groups. On the one hand, a moral consensus has emerged over decades that regards any form of biological hierarchisation as dangerous and historically problematic; on the other hand, against the backdrop of global migration, growing disparities in educational attainment, increasing geopolitical competition, and the growing significance of genetics in health and transhumanism, interest in genetic explanatory models is once again on the rise. In popular debates as well as in political disputes, the impression arises that complex social developments can be traced back to measurable biological factors—a notion that is as seductive as it is problematic.

This tension is particularly evident in the field of education. In several Anglo-Saxon countries, the discussion about unequal educational outcomes has led to measures known as “positive discrimination”: certain groups were to be given preferential admission or support in order to compensate for alleged disadvantages, though these were explained by historical experience rather than genetic programming. Yet it was precisely this policy that gave rise to new conflicts, because in many cases it disadvantaged high-achieving applicants whose only “fault” was their statistical membership of a successful group. The Supreme Court of the United States summed up this problem in a much-noted ruling, in which “positive” discrimination was also condemned: “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” (Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 2023)

This revealed a paradoxical situation: measures intended to create equality often themselves rely on categories that were originally meant to be overcome, only in the opposite direction. Whether in the form of negative discrimination or supposedly compensatory quotas—at the outset there is always the same reduction of the individual to a group identity, whether this is understood in genetic or civilisational terms. The temptation to record differences statistically and manage them politically is increasingly replacing the question of individual achievement and personal responsibility.

Added to this is the growing popularity of genetic studies that partly explain individual differences in abilities in biological terms. Such research is scientifically legitimate and often fruitful; but it starts to make many people nervous when statistical averages are elevated to cultural or historical interpretations, or even to political guidelines.

Christian Anthropology: Unity of Dignity amidst Real Diversity

This raises the question of which normative foundation is suitable for reconciling the real diversity of people and cultures with the idea of a common humanity. It is precisely at this point that Christian anthropology comes to the fore, having developed a remarkably stable synthesis of unity and difference since late antiquity. It begins with a simple yet far-reaching assumption: all human beings possess the same dignity because they are created as persons, not because they possess identical abilities or cultural achievements. This conviction found a particularly clear formulation in the Second Vatican Council, which must be seen as a reaction to the numerous dangers of totalitarian doctrines. Thus, the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes states:

“Since all human beings possess a spiritual soul and are created in the image of God, they share the same nature and the same origin and are [...] destined for the same divine vocation. Therefore, every form of social or cultural discrimination [...] must be eliminated as contrary to God’s plan.” (Gaudium et spes, §29)

This passage is one of the fundamental statements of modern ecclesiastical anthropology. It by no means denies the existence of differences, but rather anchors them in a common ontological foundation. It is precisely this idea that the Catechism of the Catholic Church takes up when it states:

“The differences between people are part of God’s plan, who wills that each person should receive from the other what he or she needs.” (Catechism, §1936)

Here, diversity is understood not as a problem, but as a structural element of human community: the variety of talents, temperaments, and historical experiences forms the prerequisite for exchange and complementarity. In this sense, the existence of different cultures and civilisations can also be interpreted not as an expression of a natural hierarchy, but as a consequence of historical developments in which environmental conditions, religious beliefs, and political structures merge.

It is precisely in comparison with modern debates on genetic differences that the relevance of this perspective becomes apparent. Whilst current discussions tend to record differences in performance statistically and manage them politically, Christian anthropology focuses on the person as an indivisible unity of body, mind, and history. This perspective prevents both a levelling egalitarianism and a biological hierarchy, or, as expressed by Benedict XVI:

“Human beings must not be reduced to their biological dimension. Any form of genetic determinism that explains human beings solely through their genetic makeup contradicts the truth about the human person.” (Address to participants at an international congress on bioethics, 2006)

It is also important to emphasise that, contrary to a widespread prejudice, Christian thought by no means regards national or civilisational differences as regrettable errors to be overcome, nor does it support, from this perspective, mass migration or a potential world state. On the contrary, we read in Caritas in veritate:

“Humanity is a family, yet it lives in diverse cultures, which represent different expressions of the search for truth and goodness. This diversity must not be seen as a threat, but as a treasure that must be nurtured and protected. Genuine development can only take place if it respects the identity of individual cultures.” (Caritas in veritate, 2009, §26)

And even Pope Francis, much maligned by many conservatives, stated in Fratelli tutti:

“Globalisation must not lead to a levelling that destroys the riches of cultures. Every culture possesses its own values, which must not be obliterated. A world that does not respect its cultural differences loses its vitality and its capacity for genuine encounter.” (Fratelli tutti, 2020, §144)

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A Historical Borderline Case: Spanish Expansion and the Slave Question

Everyone reading these lines with some knowledge of history will feel a certain discomfort recalling the Spanish expansion into the Americas in the 16th century, where the theological principles of the Church often collided in dramatic fashion with its own economic interests. At least in principle, the position of the Church was always clear: whilst some colonial officials regarded the indigenous peoples as inferior, the Church emphasised their full humanity—a stance that found expression in the bull Sublimis Deus of 1537, in which Pope Paul III declared:

“The Indians and all other peoples who may be discovered in the future must in no way be deprived of their freedom or their possessions [...] and they must not be enslaved; and anything to the contrary is null and void.”

This declaration represents one of the earliest systematic defences of universal human dignity and demonstrates that the Church was already attempting to draw a clear anthropological line at a time when colonial structures were only just taking shape.

The Las Casas Paradox

Unfortunately, reality proved more contradictory. The growing demand for labour in the colonies led to an increase in the importation of African slaves, tolerated at first by the Church—though this development was not justified by a systematic theory of racial superiority, but by a mixture of economic pressure and pragmatic considerations. Particularly revealing is the stance of the Dominican priest and first bishop of Chiapas, Bartolomé de las Casas, who initially favoured African slavery because he thought Africans might be more resistant than Indians to hard labour, and also claimed he had believed the Africans had lost their liberty in their home country through individual acts of criminality. Very quickly, however, he changed his mind and became one of the most ardent fighters for full equal treatment of all races, as he later explained:

“He [Las Casas, speaking of himself] was unaware of the injustice with which the Portuguese captured them and made them slaves. Once he realised this, he would never in a million years have given that advice, for it was always wrong to capture them, and tyranny to make them slaves; the Africans have the same rights as the Indians.”

This episode shows how deeply even committed defenders of human dignity could be embedded in the ways of thinking of their time, but it also shows that history—especially the history of the Church—is not determined by rigid ideological blocs, but by learning processes in which moral insights are gradually refined and errors openly recognised. Unfortunately, the Church’s position was largely ignored, even after Emperor Charles V had given his full support to Las Casas, so that three more centuries had to pass before political authorities adopted the position the Church had defended—sometimes ardently, sometimes with less conviction—for a long time.

This historical period holds particular significance for today’s discussion. It shows that whilst real differences in physical resilience or cultural adaptability were recognised, this did not give rise to a consistent theory of biological superiority. Rather, economic interests took centre stage, whilst theological reflection increasingly pointed to the ultimate unity of humanity.

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Race as Culture, Not Biology

Apart from the perspective of faith, there is another dimension to consider: what has been called “cultural morphology.” One of the clearest counter-arguments to biological reductionism was developed by Oswald Spengler, whose work emerged at a time when theories about supposed racial hierarchies were still very widespread. Authors such as Arthur de Gobineau held the view that history was ultimately the result of racial differences; in his Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines, Gobineau formulated the programmatic statement:

“Every civilisation stems from the white race; none can exist without the contribution of this race; and a society is great and brilliant only to the extent that it preserves for longer the noble group that created it, and that this group itself belongs to the most illustrious branch of the species.”

This notion was later radicalised by ideologues such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Alfred Rosenberg, who added their own radical antisemitism to Gobineau’s white supremacism.

Spengler’s Corrective

Spengler opposed this reductionism with remarkable determination. For him, a culture was not a biological phenomenon, but a spiritual form arising from religious symbols, a way of life, a specific landscape, and historical experience. He did not negate the existence of physical differences between diverse groups of human beings, but tended to consider real “races” as the result of the inherent creative strength of a civilisation—the same strength Ibn Khaldun had labelled, in his own time, as “asabiyya”—rather than the other way round:

“But when we speak of race here, we do not mean it in the sense that is currently fashionable amongst anti-Semites in Europe and America—that is, in a Darwinian, materialistic sense. ‘Racial purity’ is a grotesque term, given that for millennia all tribes and peoples have intermingled, and that warlike—that is, healthy, promising—nations have always been keen to assimilate a stranger if he was ‘of the right race’, regardless of which race he belonged to. Those who talk too much about race have lost it. What matters is not the pure race, but the strong race that a people possesses.” (Spengler, The Hour of Decision, §20)

This statement has implications that are still underestimated today. It means that advanced civilisations do not arise from genetic superiority, but from the active will to embrace destiny, the ability to create a shared symbolic world, and the readiness to form the environment according to the relative aesthetic, intellectual, or physical preferences of the respective civilisation. Egypt, China, India, Sumer, and Europe developed their own cultural forms—and thus their own “race”—under different climatic and historical conditions, without any simple biological explanation being derivable from this. Spengler shifted the concept of race from the realm of biology into the realm of culture. Even though Spengler’s own theory of historical cycles and his Nietzschean elitism are not without their problems, his critique of biologism remains an important corrective: even for those who believe in the fundamental difference and simultaneous equality (not identity) of human civilisations, history cannot be reduced to physiological data.

This perspective opens up a new horizon for the current debate. If advanced civilisations arise from intellectual and religious impulses, then the question of differences between peoples must first be examined at the level of culture and worldview before biological factors are considered. A look at world history reveals an astonishing diversity of independent civilisations, each of which developed its own order and whose emergence can only be explained by an interplay of environment, tradition, and transcendence.

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Between Science and Metaphysics

When one considers the current debate on genetic differences in the light of these historical and anthropological perspectives, a striking parallel emerges. As in earlier centuries, there is a temptation today to reduce complex social problems to seemingly objective biological factors. At the same time, there is a growing danger of either denying differences entirely or transforming them into pseudo-”positive” political categories and quotas.

The culture-philosophical analysis of thinkers such as Spengler and Toynbee reminds us that advanced civilisations do not arise from genetic homogeneity, but from intellectual and psychological impulses tightly linked to certain landscapes that take shape in religious and symbolic forms. Christian anthropology complements this insight with the notion of a shared human dignity that transcends all differences without negating them. Both perspectives point in the same direction: history is ultimately a spiritual process, not a pre-programmed biological mechanism, and as such, civilisations and cultures need our protection in order to uphold the framework in which man’s endeavour to find God takes place, as expressed in Centesimus annus in a formulation that could have come from Spengler himself:

“Culture is the defining element of a people’s life. It is through culture that a people’s life is shaped, and through it that they find their own identity. Without culture, a people loses its soul and its future.” (Centesimus annus, 1991, §24)

Precisely for this reason, it seems problematic to elevate genetic research to a new monopoly on interpretation. Its findings possess scientific value, yet their social significance depends on the cultural framework within which they are interpreted. A civilisation that loses its spiritual foundations tends to replace cultural orientation with biological categories. Conversely, a culture that remains conscious of its own spiritual tradition can integrate scientific findings without conferring ultimate authority upon them.

The real challenge of our time lies less in the existence of genetic differences than in the question of how we understand them. Between the temptation of biological simplification and the ideology of artificial equality, there remains a space in which historical experience, philosophical reflection, and religious tradition can enter into dialogue with one another. It is ultimately in this space that it will be decided whether human diversity is understood as a source of conflict or as the foundation of an ordered variety.

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The symbol of Christianity is the Cross, upon which our Redeemer breathed His last on Good Friday.

That Cross is found in Churches—not only upon the altar, but often embodied in the very ground plan of the sacred space itself. Likewise, the Cross came to be inscribed upon the very geography of Christendom itself. From the summit of Calvary, the Cross of our Lord stretched outward, as though its embrace sought to encompass the entire world.

The intersection of the long and short beams of the Cross was to be found in the Holy Land itself—the birthplace of the Prophets, the land on which Christ led His earthly life, the Holy Sepulchre—in Jerusalem.

From there the apostles set forth, responding to the Gospel’s commandment to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19) and to proclaim the Gospel in all directions to fulfil the word “You shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria to the very ends of the earth.” (Acts 1,8) From a single wellspring of faith four great branches grew: the Franco-Latin, the Russo-Greek, the Ethiopo-Egyptiac, and the Sogdo-Syriac, each spreading to the four corners of the world as though longing to encompass the whole of mankind.

Thus the Christian Cross was inscribed upon the map of the world, as its longest arm extended eastward. Its western arm endured: sailors set foot on yet uncharted shores, erecting chapels across distant continents. Its northern arm endured also—even under the rule of the Tsars—as Cossacks waded through marsh and frozen taiga, introducing Christian civilization to the steppes. But why, then, did the southern arm of the Cross wither, and what became of its eastern arm? Why do these branches now appear to be desiccated?

Franco-Latin West

Towards the setting sun, the branch of Christianity which came to be on the banks of the Tiber yielded a rich harvest. The soil into which it was cast was singularly fertile: from the declining Roman Empire it inherited Roman law, which became the pillar of its stability. It tamed barbarian tribes, who in turn brought a new vigour and an understanding of liberty. When the imperial diadem was lost, the papal tiara ascended in its stead. It was the throne of Peter, the eternal seat, guardian of truth and discipline. Roma locuta, causa finita (Rome has spoken, the matter is settled). It stood as the jewel in Christendom’s crown.

This Roman Christianity was confident, dynamic, ever striving to go beyond the horizon. In the years of its youth, it gave us Charlemagne; in its coming of age, the erudition of Aquinas, the humility of St. Francis of Assisi, and the heroism of El Cid and Godfrey of Bouillon. It raised cathedrals that reached to the heavens and armies that repelled the encroaching shadow of the crescent moon. And when it reached the fulness of its maturity, it pressed still further, following the setting sun—plus ultra^[1]—beyond the Pillars of Hercules, bearing both Gospel and sword to the New World.

From this branch, the West was born, uniting faith and reason, love and duty, chivalry and asceticism. Universities, those temples of learning, arose; so did Gothic cathedrals, prayers made stone . Moved by the love of Christ, Bartolomé de Las Casas defended the dignity of every human person, while William Wilberforce, with iron perseverance, broke the chains of servitude. Dante, in his verses, descended into hell and ascended to heaven. Michelangelo carved beauty out of marble. Then came the grandeur of the Baroque: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, the sublime Tridentine Mass, mystics like John of the Cross, Ignatius of Loyola, and John Milton. As Douglas Murray states in the Strange Death of Europe: “For centuries, the greatest wellspring and inspiration of Western Christendom was religion itself.”^[2]

And yet, it has been betrayed. The once-unified Res publica Christiana was torn asunder by the Reformation; all ensuing disputes were eventually replaced by skepticism. Thrones were toppled; the Mass, meant for honouring God, was supplanted by humanism. Man himself became the new object of veneration, yet men disputed whether he should be adored in the singular (i.e. liberalism) or the plural (i.e. socialism). Felix Sarda y Salvani warned against idolatry of the individual, and Patrick Deneen today says the same. Pope Pius XI condemned the worship of man in the plural, and yet, this “abomination of desolation”^[3]remains in the hearts of many.

Today, we witness the aftermath: Rome, having deserted the European kings, is now reviled by unbelievers, and faces not hordes of heathens, but crowds of apostates. The West did not reject Christ openly—that would require the very courage it has abandoned. It simply forgot Christ, which requires nothing more than hedonism. Now it preaches tolerance and openness to all things—except its own inheritance, which it repudiates and spits upon.

Thus today, in what was once Charlemagne’s empire, we see empty churches and crowded mosques; confused families and fatherless children. Where once kings directed funds to the building of cathedrals, the bureaucrats of today subsidise Islamists, while ideologies mocking truth, masculinity, and motherhood have reached their zenith.

The West, whose knights, monks, and scholars once bore Christ’s message, is now beset by too much comfort, distraction, and cynicism, as it fully embraces its decline. It is, in truth, weary of history itself. It may yet collapse. And perhaps, as before, Christianity will yet again be the force to rescue it from barbarism, like it did before.^[4]

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Russo-Greek North

Following the Pole Star to the north, the apostle Paul set out, proclaiming the Risen Christ in the Greek cities of Anatolia, Macedonia, and Achaia. Where Europe touches Asia and where the Bosphorus joins the Black and Marble Seas, the first Christian emperor founded a new city—modestly naming it after himself. It is also where Justinian would erect the greatest church of Christendom: the Church of Holy Wisdom. What better name to grant a temple in the capital of a nation of philosophers?

Exhausted by endless philosophical disputes, the Greeks turned inward, toward mystical contemplation. Where the Franks raised cathedrals ever higher toward heaven, the Greeks and Russians bowed before the Pantokrator beneath their golden domes, repeating: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

The empire, centered on Constantinople, once stood as the guardian of form—exalted, mystical, majestic; the bearer of symbolic depth and liturgical splendour. When Russian princes beheld its glory, they embraced its faith.^[5] “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for there is no such vision of beauty, and we do not know how to describe it. We only know that there God dwells among men.”^[6] And so, from Constantinople, this glory radiated northward, to the mysterious, cold forests of Russia.

Thus, in the twilight of endless forests and amidst frozen rivers, Kievan Rus arose—a baptismal cedar sprung unbidden in these inhospitable regions. She received, as a gift, the rudiments of Christian civilisation and Cyrillic. Yet only the most basic liturgical texts were translated into Slavonic, while the entire treasury of the Constantinopolitan library remained distant to the Rus.

In Ephesus and Galatia, where once the Apostle Paul had founded churches, today the muezzin’s cry fills the air. Hagia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom, and the mightiest temple of Christendom on the Bosporus, stands now as a mosque. How many Christians remain among the seven Asian Churches of the Acts: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea?

Yet in the Balkans and the wider Orthodox world, this legacy became deeply ingrained in the identity of its peoples. Seeking to emulate the symphonía between emperor and patriarch as it had existed in Constantinople, local churches arose—autocephalous, bound to their nations, with patriarchates at Ohrid, Peć, and beyond.

In theory, this symphonía was to resemble the harmony of Moses and Aaron, or the unity of body and soul: distinct, yet ordered toward a common good. Where the Latin West often knew conflict between throne and altar, in the Russo-Greek North these were closely tied together.

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Yet this very closeness bore within it a tension. For when the age of nations arrived, the Church—so intimately bound to the life of the people—began to reflect their divisions. What was once condemned as heresy—phyletism, the subordination of the Church to the nation—returned in practice. The one faith came to be expressed through many competing jurisdictions: autocephalous national churches.

Thus, what was meant to be a symphony sometimes came to resemble a chorus without a conductor: rich in voices, profound in tradition, yet lacking visible unity. Not only between Moscow and Constantinople, but across the Orthodox world, the question remains unresolved—where does the Church end, and where does the nation begin?

After Constantinople fell—for many preferred the sultan’s turban to the papal tiara—Moscow became convinced it would be the Third Rome. Yet it inherited neither the legal tradition of Rome, nor the learned dialectic of Constantinople—only the crown of thorns. Where that famous French philosopher once confidently declared cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am), the Christian of the north has often learned to say: I suffer, therefore I am. And he has indeed suffered much: first his wooden cities fell to the flames as marauding nomads pillaged them, then he languished under the yoke of the despotic tsars. At last, he was crucified by his own sons, who replaced the Gospel of Christ with the gospel of Marx.

Yet, in this suffering, there is something prophetic. In a land that more often weeps than rejoices, where there is more silence than debate, faith has been refined by fire. There is not the clear logic of Thomism, nor the majestic height of the Gothic cathedrals, but there are the tears of old men before the icon of the Mother of God, and the faithful prostrate in wooden chapels during a Siberian winter. Where the West is often trapped in rationalism, the Christian North has preserved a more experiential faith; where the West risks cynicism, it has often known the pangs of repentance.

First came the emperors, who often mistook unity for control. Then came the tsar, to wield the cross as a sword. Then came the Soviets, to crush Christianity with the hammer. The first sought to dictate the contents of orthodoxy. The second sent armies in the name of the Third Rome—which never was more than an illusion. The third murdered millions in the name of progress. The subjects of all three bowed before power.

But where then is the prophetic vocation of the Church? How often were they willing to stand up to the mighty, rather than bear witness to the truth? How often do they bow before not only Christ the Pantokrator, but also the secular autokrator?

Ethiopo-Egyptiac South

Southward, beneath the radiant noonday sun, set forth those who had followed Mark to Alexandria, proclaiming the Gospel following the course of the Nile upstream, all the way to its sources atop the African highlands in Ethiopia, where baptism was received even before Constantine learned that in hoc signo vinces (In this sign thou shalt conquer). Here, on the banks of the Nile and in the shade of the pyramids, the desert fathers prayed and martyrs bore witness. How telling that their era is known as the Era of the Martyrs! While the West erected majestic cathedrals, the South built ascetic monasteries to worship God in silence and through fasting.

From remote desert monasteries came Anthony, first among Christian monks. Through silent prayer he wrestled with demons and through renouncing them the heavens were opened to him. Pachomius gathered hermits into monastic brotherhoods. There, on the edge of golden desert sands, Christian monasticism was born.

In Alexandria, Egypt’s greatest harbour, whose lighthouse was known to every sailor and whose library to every scholar, perhaps for the first time in Christian history, fides et ratio—faith and reason—entered into conscious dialogue.

It was here that the first papyrus scrolls were blessed with theological depth. Alexandria birthed the theological language that would shape Christian doctrine for centuries. Here Origen taught; here Athanasius prayed. Here the very nature of Christ’s divinity was fiercely debated.

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In proud and archaic Ethiopia, the memory of the Ark of the Covenant endured longest. Its kings carved majestic churches from living rock. Even today, there are those who remember the days when the Lion of Judah adorned their flag and their emperor sat upon a throne he claimed could be traced back to King Solomon. Ethiopia stood immovable like a rock, against which the waves of history crashed in vain. Yet the throne is now toppled, and even here, the claws of revolution tore the Lion of Judah to pieces.

They preserved the faith, but gradually, Christian Egypt and Ethiopia were suffocated—not by heresy or loss of faith, but by the slow strangulation of Islam. The native Copts on the Nile became dhimmis; the Nubians were reduced to paying a humiliating tribute. Ethiopia, for centuries a mountain redoubt, became an isolated and besieged kingdom, until the relentless pressure of the modern world ended its isolation.

“The once-proud Church of Martyrs, small and poor as it had become, was dealt one humiliation after another, although even in those centuries its faithful repeatedly made great sacrifices for their belief.”^[7] Indeed, the Church seemed condemned to a slow death: a gradual mummification, like the pharaohs of old, destined to become a mere footnote in history.

Yet, like the burning bush (Exodus 3,2) seen by Moses on Horeb, they have not been consumed. On the Ethiopian highlands and the banks of Upper Egypt, their liturgy is still sung in tongues older even than Latin, namelyCoptic and Ge’ez, living echoes of early Christianity.

Their suffering is like a slow Way of the Cross, a Golgotha without resurrection. They remind us of the price of martyrdom: “Whoever wants to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). They stand as a living testament to what it means to keep the faith—no matter the cost. And, at the same time, they are a silent testimony to our own cowardice. While a West addicted to comfort and luxury flirts with apostasy, the Copts canonise last year´s martyrs.

Sogdo-Syriac East

Eastward, the apostles Thaddeus and Thomas carried the proclamation of the Messiah into the Aramaic and Syriac lands between the Euphrates and the Tigris, and onward to the ends of India. Their followers went further still, tracing the length of the Silk Road until they beheld the court of the Chinese emperor himself.

Once, the Assyrians built an empire feared for its tyranny, and had a fierce loyalty to their generals. Six centuries later, their descendants attempted to build an even greater realm—this time by proclaiming the Messiah, armed not with spear but with the staff of the pilgrim, the strength of the Gospel, and the trust in God, as they set out with the caravans. “And so likewise among the Bactrians and Huns and Persians, and the rest of the Indians, Persarmenians, and Medes and Elamites, and throughout the whole land of Persia there is no limit to the number of churches with bishops^[8].”

When, in 780, Timothy became Patriarch of the Church of the East, he was the most influential Christian hierarch on earth—his prestige overshadowing even the pope in Rome while being on equal footing with the patriarch of Constantinople. “Perhaps a quarter of the world’s Christians looked to Timothy as both their spiritual and political head.”^[9]. Thus did the Church in the East embark on one of the most ambitious and far-reaching missionary endeavours in history^[10].

From Edessa and Nisibis through Merv, Samarkand, and Kashgar, all the way to Chang’an in China, Nestorian bishops and archbishops^[11] were established along the entire length of the Silk Road, translating Scripture and the Greek classics into the native tongues: Sogdian, Uyghur, and Chinese. They built monasteries in hidden valleys unknown to Rome, and the chant of the East Syriac liturgy echoed among the yurts of Mongol nomads and at the Chinese imperial court during the Tang dynasty.

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“Numerous Mongol lords had Christian wives, and Nestorian scribes labored in the chancelleries of empire”^[12]. Thus, when Marco Polo traveled to the court of Kublai Khan with a caravan of Venetian merchants, an Ongud monk named Rabban bar Sawma journeyed the whole length of the Silk Road the other way—from Beijing to Baghdad, where his protégé Markos became patriarch and bar Sawma served as his ambassador to the pope. In Rome, he celebrated the East Syrian liturgy, and received the Eucharist from the Pope. It was one of the rare moments when the distant halves of Christendom recognised one another as brethren.

“Christianity spread swiftly over new lands without the support of the mailed fist.”^[13] Where Charlemagne baptised the Saxons at sword-point, these Easterners persuaded the Mongol tribes—the Naiman, Kerait, and Ongud—to embrace baptism simply by their life’s example. They dreamed of a pilgrim Church, a humble Church, a Church that united; a Church of sages, mystics, and merchants who crossed snowy mountains, treacherous deserts, and endless steppes. “And yet this older Christian world perished, destroyed so comprehensively that its memory is forgotten by all except academic specialists..”^[14]

They were sent out as sheep among wolves (Matthew 10,16), and in the end the wolves devoured them. Bishops of the Church of the East were slaughtered, their faithful forgotten. Islam swept over them; Buddhism erased them from memory. Today, only the tiniest remnant survives: refugees in the mountains of Iraq, hunted like prey; a minority in India; scraps of manuscripts and ruins of churches; the occasional forgotten monument in the heart of Asia. “During the later Middle Ages, mass defections and persecutions across Asia and the Middle East uprooted what were then some of the world’s most numerous Christian communities, churches that possessed a vibrant lineal and cultural connection to the earliest Jesus movement of Syria and Palestine..^[15]” Thereafter, history visited two calamities upon the Church of the East: the Black Death, and the bloodthirsty Tamerlane, who built towers of human skulls.

The arm of the Cross stretching to the rising sun dissolved in silence, buried beneath the sands of history. Few civilisations have vanished so completely from the memory of the world as this once-vast Christian East. Who remembers the Nestorians today? They befriended caliphs and baptised the wives of khans; but the khans’ grandchildren recited the shahada, and their swords became the instruments of jihad.

Is it the end? By no means. If we confess with our mouth what we believe in our heart, we know that the eastern arm endures in who gave everything for Christ: the missionaries, the martyrs, who will be counted among the glorified Church in heaven^[16].

The Glorified Cross

The cross in our churches we view as the sign of the triumph of Resurrection. The geographical cross we view as one of defeat. Of the four arms of the cross, only one—the Western arm—still holds the reins of history today, though its will is waning. The northern arm is largely captive to the tsar and to war; the southern is forgotten in distant lands, and the eastern lies buried under centuries of dust.

How often, when reflecting on history, do we feel closer to the writings of Darwin^[17] than to the prophet Daniel? How often do we seek truth in numbers, even though He is the Truth? And yet—it may have been all different. At this or that important battle, a different army may have celebrated a victory^[18]. Who would have been in the right then?^[19]

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Let us imagine how it would be had all four arms of the cross stood today in the fullness of faith and strength.

If the West could open its history book with a clean conscience, untroubled by the demons of the twentieth century, it would not have exalted nation above God. If we did not suffer under the yoke of the dictatorship of relativism^[20], but lived in the freedom of the truth that sets us free.

If the North would melt its icy heart, cease to brandish iron, and no longer invoke faded imperial glory, but worship God in Spirit and in truth (John 4:23). If the Ecumenical Patriarch still celebrated the Liturgy in the Hagia Sophia, and by his solemnity dissuaded war on the far shore of the Black Sea.

If the South lived the Christianity of Easter Sunday, without more martyrs being added, with prophetic voices once again crying in the desert from its monasteries: “Prepare the way of the Lord” (Isaiah 40,3). If the Saharan sands were not highways for slave traders, but footpaths for Coptic monks bringing tidings “to captives that they were to be set free, to the blind that they would see; to let the oppressed go free and proclaim the Lord’s year of favour” (Luke 4, 18-19). If the Nubian kings had persevered and kept spreading the Gospel into tropical Africa.

If the East would stand victorious over history and calamity as a witness to the Resurrection. If Jesus would be embraced as Messiah and Teacher from the Yellow Sea to the Black Sea. If those most zealous for God would not go to kill infidels but to heal them as physicians; if their preachers would spread not violence and hatred, but the words of eternal life. If they tore down the cruel barriers that divide person from person, and embraced the one now called untouchable.

Instead of slogans, banners, and despots, nations would kneel before the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world, and rulers would not build prisons but strive to emulate the Messiah, who says, “My yoke is easy and my burden light.” (Matthew 11,30) Instead of the frantic bustle of human anthills, there would resound the quiet “Peace be with you.” (Luke 24,36)

The Lessons of the Cross

The four arms of the Cross once stretched across the world. At times, one possessed what the others lacked. None, however, could claim the fullness of Christian life.

The West learned to unite faith with reason, to build, to govern, to venture out. Yet in its strength, it often forgot contemplation. It mastered the world, but risks losing its soul. From the South, it must relearn the steadfast perseverance of faith; from the East, the missionary zeal—not only to the ends of the earth, but to one’s neighbour; and from the North, the beauty of a dignified and living liturgy.

The North preserved the depth of worship, the trembling awareness of the divine, the silence of contemplation. It knows how to suffer, and in suffering, how to endure. Yet too often it bound the Church to the fate of princes and nations. From the West, it may learn the freedom of the Church—its prophetic calling to stand above power. From the South, a more personal and interior piety that does not depend on throne or empire. And from the East its readiness to preach to peoples of distant tongues.

The South kept the radicalism of the Gospel: fasting, martyrdom, the stripping away of all that is not God. It reminds us that Christ promised not comfort, but the Cross. Yet in its isolation, it remained vulnerable, lacking the means to endure the tempests of history. From the West and North, it might have received the strength to defend its people; from the East, the renewed impulse to carry the faith across deserts and jungles, beyond considerations of survival.

The East carried the Gospel across mountains and deserts, without army, without empire. It learned how to translate, how to understand, how to enter into the soul of distant civilisations. Yet its roots were not always deep enough to withstand the storms that followed. From the West, it might have received theological clarity and institutional continuity; from the North and South, a deeper rooting in the life of peoples, that faith might endure even in a ruined society.

Each arm of the Cross has something to teach. Each arm of the Cross has something to learn. Where reason refuses mystery, it dissolves into emptiness. Where mystery refuses order, it collapses into confusion. Where sacrifice bears no fruit, it fades into oblivion. Where a mission has no roots, it comes to naught.

Not a world quartered, but united in the Cross. Not a mission abandoned, but fulfilled.

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[1] Plus ultra was the personal motto of Emperor Charles V (regnabat 1500–1558) and later became the national motto of Spain. It is a reversal of the original Non plus ultra (nothing beyond), which is said to have stood as a warning above the Strait of Gibraltar.

[2] MURRAY, Douglas. Podivná smrt Evropy, p. 188. (Note, this is a Czech translation of Strange Death of Europe I am referencing)

[3] Used in this context by TOYNBEE, Arnold Joseph. The Trend of International Affairs Since the War, p. 809. Available online: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/pb-assets/assets/14682346/The_Trend_of_International_Affairs_Since_the_War.pdf?msockid=1a3dce0ceb5e62dc3dc1da58ea8763c2

[4] CHESTERTON, Gilbert Keith. Orthodoxy, p. 273 (available online at: https://archive.org/details/orthodoxy0000ches/page/272/mode/2up

[5] A popular legend, also recorded in Nestor’s Chronicle, cites the reason why the prince allegedly decided against converting to Islam: “Drinking is a pleasure for Russians, we cannot do without it.”(PUTNA, Martin C. Obrazy z kulturních dějin ruské religiozity. Praha: Vyšehrad, 2022, p. 57.)

[6] ROBERTS, John M. Ilustrované dějiny světa IV: Na rozcestí tradic. Praha: Balios, 1999, p 86.

[7] MOSEBACH, Martin. The 21: A Journey Into The Land of Coptic Martyrs, p. 235. Available online: https://unitedcopts.org/images/new/PDF4/The21AJourneyintotheLandofCopticMartyrs.pdf

[8] Cosmas Indicopleustes writing around 550 AD. (JENKINS, Philip. The Lost History…, p. 58.)

[9] JENKINS, Philip. The Lost History…, p.. 7.

[10] FRANKOPAN, Peter. Hedvábné stezky: Nová historie světa. Praha: Vyšehrad, 202,1 p. 64.

[11] Around the year 800, Patriarch Timothy had 19 archbishops and 89 bishops under his authority, while at that time there were only two archbishops in England – in Canterbury and York. (JENKINS, Philip. The Lost History…, p. 10.)

[12] KREJČÍ, Jaroslav. Civilizace Asie a Blízkého východu. Praha: KAROLINUM, 1993, p.. 122.

[13] FRANKOPAN, Peter. Hedvábné stezky…, p. 64.

[14] JENKINS, Philip: The Lost History…, p.. 22 – 23.

[15] JENKINS, Philip. The Lost History…, p. 2.

[16] VINE, Aubrey. The Nestorian Churches, p. 207.Available online:http://www.aina.org/books/tncchonc.pdf

[17] Charles Darwin presented his theory of evolution based on the principle of survival of the fittest. In a specific habitat, the species that are best adapted have the best chance of survival, while when conditions change, the species that can adapt quickly benefit. If we tried to apply this principle to history, we would quickly end up with circular reasoning: Ethnic group X survived because it was the most suitable (in terms of organisation, technology, innovation, national mentality, etc.), and the proof of this is that it has survived to this day. However, we only come to this conclusion in retrospect (”everyone is a general after the battle”). It is true that some technologies, such as agriculture, iron processing, and horse domestication, gave those who had access to them a clear advantage over those who did not. Within a similar civilisational-technological environment, it is difficult to identify a clear advantage in favour of one monotheistic religion or another.

[18] The fate of nations often depended on the outcome of battles, where a single decision by a particular commander, which could have been different, or he could have been entrusted with commanding another part of the battlefield, was enough. Alternatively, several wars might not have happened if a particular ruler had suddenly died, or they might not have broken out precisely because of the premature death of a ruler.

[19] Is Catholicism the most correct form of Christianity precisely because it currently has the largest number of followers? Such reasoning is precisely the result of applying Darwin’s theory to the spiritual realm. The number of its believers and the fact that it has persisted among other shades of Christianity are considered proof of the correctness of the Catholic understanding of Christianity. Does this mean that if the Catholic Church had succumbed to pressure from the Vikings and Moors and the entire empire of Genghis Khan had adopted Nestorian Eastern Syrian Christianity, they would have been right? Doesn’t this sound a bit like the so-called Prosperity gospel? When reading the Gospel, we see that the Lord Jesus did not promise prosperity to his disciples—quite the contrary, he promised various persecutions and hardships.

The second, more “pious” attempt to explain the demise of Christianity—as God’s punishment for sinfulness and heresy—is criticized by Philip Jenkins (The Lost History..., p. 252-253). “Few would contemplate a God so rigid in his devotion for precise orthodoxy, as laid down in the fifth-century councils, that he would allow his mildly erring servants to suffer massacre, rape, and oppression.?(...)Nor do we have any evidence that the uprooted churches were any more sinful or lacking in faith than those anywhere else in the world(...)Can we imagine a deity permitting churches to be slaughtered because they do not mesh with a particular vision of the Christian future—for instance, that the destiny of the church was to be in Europe, so that the older centers no longer mattered? ” We may find this idea when reading the Old Testament, but it is difficult to reconcile it with the Gospel.

[20] RATZINGER, Joseph. Pro eligendo Romano Pontifice.

One hundred and fifty years have passed since the birth of Eugenio Pacelli—and German scholarship remains fixated on a single question. A great many articles published in this jubilee year struck the same note: the Pope who kept silent in the face of the Holocaust. Rolf Hochhuth’s stage play The Representative has shaped—and continues to shape—not only scholarly discourse but the very memory of this Successor of Peter, who was always regarded with suspicion by German observers for his marked sympathy for Germany and its people.

Yet the research conducted since the opening of the Vatican Archives in 2020 has proved disappointing for those hoping to confirm the received wisdom of an antisemitic or at the very least indifferent Pope. Not a single document has come to light that might support the charge. German research councils are currently funding a project designed to span twenty-five years, dedicated to examining the ten thousand petitions submitted by Jews from across Europe. Fifteen million euros have been made available over that period under the direction of Professor Hubert Wolf of Münster.

Wolf, who was himself notably critical in the past, has since established the following: the Curia assisted with money, food, and shelter, and financed emigration so that Jews might escape deportation. The Holy See responded whenever it was possible to do so. The charge that only baptised Jews received assistance has likewise proved unfounded. According to the historian Michael Feldkamp, the phrase “brothers in the faith”—which subsequently found its way into the documents of the Second Vatican Council—originated with Pacelli himself.

Dismantling Pacelli’s Monument

Against this background, Wolf’s suggestion that future research should focus less intently on Pius XII himself and more on the broader curial environment sounds almost like a concession: there is simply nothing to be found in Pacelli. Perhaps a few antisemitic cardinals may yet offer material for further investigation. The evidence increasingly suggests that scholarship is confirming the positive image of Pius XII that prevailed as conventional wisdom during the 1950s. Naturally, even these findings do nothing to dispel the Black Legend, nor to silence the combative hostility of the anti-Catholic press. A beatification process would still constitute a political flashpoint capable of mobilising the anticlerical media.

The dismantling of Pius XII’s reputation in the 1960s was nothing less than the pulling-down of a monument. The desire of progressive factions within the Church itself for a clean break contributed to this. The Second Vatican Council represents a turning point not only for Traditionalists. What unites the progressive and the traditionalist camps is a shared commitment to what has been called a “hermeneutic of rupture,” as opposed to the “hermeneutic of continuity” championed by conservative figures such as Joseph Ratzinger.

That conservative camp finds itself weakened today. In Europe in particular, the view has taken hold that the 1960s brought about the liquidation of the “mediaeval Church.” The only disagreement is whether this is cause for celebration or cause for lament.

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The De-Pacellisation of the Catholic Church

This is precisely why the figure of Pius XII matters so greatly. He was, in a very real sense, “the last mediaeval Pope.” This ironic designation originated with Giovannino Guareschi—the creator of Don Camillo and Peppone—who remained one of the foremost Catholic publicists in Italy well into the 1950s and 1960s. Even then, Guareschi drew with great clarity the dividing line between the Pacelliani and the Montiniani (the latter named after Giovanni Battista Montini, Paul VI). He understood the Second Vatican Council as a process of “de-Pacellisation,” analogous to the de-Stalinisation then under way in the Soviet Union. Pius XII had imposed a rigorously anti-Communist course, which his successors proceeded to relax.

This de-Pacellisation was felt to be necessary because, until his death, Pius XII was regarded as a living colossus of Church history. His pontificate lasted nineteen years, from 1939 to 1958—the longest of any twentieth-century pope after John Paul II (1978–2005). That fact alone ensured that he left an indelible mark on the Church: if John Paul II was the defining Catholic figure of the second half of the twentieth century, then Pius XII was unquestionably the defining figure of the first. Journalists, artists, and intellectuals—Hochhuth among them—set about attacking this towering figure precisely because in doing so they could elevate themselves morally and bring down a monument of Catholic history.

Throughout all of this, veneration of Pacelli never ceased among those untouched by the prevailing spirit of the age. Leo XIV, shortly after his own election, drew attention to his predecessor’s great work for peace. During a summer visit to Castel Gandolfo, Leo recalled that Pius XII had, in 1944, following the bombing of the Castelli Romani region, taken in more than twelve thousand people. In the papal residence of Castel Gandolfo alone, some three thousand persecuted persons—the majority of them Jews—were reportedly sheltered. Long before Francis, Pius was a pope who actively sought contact with ordinary people and, as a Roman amongst Romans, stood by the population in its hour of need. The profound impression he left on his fellow citizens—and far beyond—is perhaps best illustrated by the conversion of Israel Zolli, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, who took the baptismal name Eugenio in his honour.

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The Marian Dogma and the Defence of Reason

In his Christmas radio address of 1942, Pius spoke of the hundreds of thousands who, “through no fault of their own, sometimes for no other reason than their nationality or race, are marked down for death or progressive extinction.” The historian Michael Feldkamp, who has conducted research in the Vatican Archives, has established that Pius XII sent a message to President Roosevelt as early as March 1942, warning him that something was happening in the war zones of Europe. The Americans did not find the reports credible.

The papal Palatine Guard—a ceremonial security force that served alongside the Swiss Guard—came to blows with Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht soldiers in defence of Jews being hidden in the Roman Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.

It is also remarkable that Pacelli, in reforming the Easter liturgy, responded to calls for renewal within the Catholic Church without this sparking anything approaching the controversy that would later surround the liturgical reform carried out under Montini. In Humani Generis (1950), he defended reason against ideological encroachment. The legacy of the Pacelli pontificate includes the definition of the dogma of the bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the same year—to this day the only exercise of the papal infallibility proclaimed in 1870.

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Father of European Reconstruction

Yet Pius was perhaps most significant as a trailblazer and architect of European reconstruction. What mattered was not only the moral rebuilding of the Continent and its short-lived return to Christianity as an identity-forming force in post-war Europe. Almost immediately after the war’s end, the Pope received the shunned Germans back into the family of nations and declared himself in favour of European co-operation. For a few brief years, the flame of a renewed res publica christiana flickered once more into life. Its standard-bearers—Adenauer, Schuman, De Gaulle, and De Gasperi—were all sons of the Catholic Church. For the European Catholic community, poised between the Holy See and the history of the Continent, Pius XII remains a guiding light to this day.

Eugenio Pacelli stands, alongside John Paul II, as one of the two great popes of the twentieth century. He led the Church and Europe through one of the darkest chapters in human history; after the war, he served as reconciler, reformer, peacemaker, and moral compass. He was, at the same time, a man of prayer, of asceticism, and of deep personal piety. In beauty, he perceived a path to God. The monarchical aura of holiness that the Progressives found so repellent was, in truth, a form of sublimity—one that the “Church of the Poor” later consciously set aside, and whose absence is felt today not only by the strictly orthodox. In that sense—yes, Pacelli was the last mediaeval Pope. But he was so in the very best sense of the word.

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Humanity at the Threshold of Transformation

When Pope Leo XIV took office, many expected a detailed positioning of the Catholic Church on Artificial Intelligence, Transhumanism and Posthumanism.

However, apart from some allusions and especially his message for the “60th World Day of Social Communications”, the new pontifex has remained remarkably hesitant in issuing any ex-cathedra teaching on this crucial subject. A recent document from the International Theological Commission, entitled Quo vadis, humanitas?, may very well be considered as a preliminary draft of a potential future encyclical and thus deserves our full attention, as the challenges for humanity are enormous.

Indeed, the rapid acceleration of digital technologies, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology has revived a question that for several decades seemed almost forgotten in a Western society revelling in the thought that the human being was the measure of all things: what, precisely, is a human being?

Thus, the emergence of transhumanist and posthumanist ideas reflects not merely scientific curiosity, but a profound shift in the way modern civilisation conceives of its own destiny. Transhumanism proposes to enhance human capacities through technological intervention, promising to extend life, increase cognitive abilities, and perhaps even transcend our biological limitations.

Posthumanism, however, goes much further still, imagining a future in which the very distinction between human beings and machines becomes increasingly fluid, and where consciousness itself may one day migrate beyond the fragile boundaries of organic life.

In mass media as well as among progressive intellectuals, such perspectives are often presented as the natural continuation of the technological progress that has shaped the modern world for several centuries, labelling concerns about the loss of what makes humans unique as mere backwardness.

Yet this enthusiasm for innovation barely hides a much deeper uncertainty about whether these innovations may not truly represent a fundamental shift, the question being no longer simply how humanity should use technology, but whether technology may eventually redefine humanity itself.

Indeed, once the human body becomes an object of modification, and intelligence an algorithmic process capable of artificial replication, the anthropological and spiritual foundations upon which Western culture has long rested begin to dissolve. It is therefore unsurprising that representatives of our ancestral philosophical, ethical, and religious traditions such as, most recently, the Catholic Church, have begun to react–very slowly, admittedly–to this development, as the challenge posed by transhumanism is not merely scientific or political, but civilisational, for it forces societies to decide whether the human form itself should remain the measure of human progress.

The Vatican’s Diagnosis of the Technological Age

Quo vadis, humanitas? seeks to address precisely this question from the standpoint of Christian anthropology, as is clearly stated in one of the concluding paragraphs of the document (§159).

At this juncture of the twenty-first century, the human family is faced with questions so radical that they threaten its very existence as we have known it until now. The unprecedented scientific and technological development in the history of the planet must be accompanied by a corresponding growth in responsibility that directs progress towards the good of human beings, because today they are exposed to risks never before imagined. The impact of technoscientific development, particularly the digital revolution, on human experience is profound, both in terms of our relationship with the environment and our relationship with others in society, with ourselves and with God. New technologies may usher in an era of real change in the human condition, reflected in the fears of the social imaginary of mass culture and in the disturbing optimism or pessimism of transhumanist and posthumanist movements. Today more than ever, the anthropological and cultural proposal that Christianity offers involves the conception of life as a vocation, which makes possible a human way of inhabiting time and space and of conceiving intersubjective relationships, while at the same time becoming a prophetic judgement on the more disturbing aspects we cannot fail to recognise in transhumanism and posthumanism.

Hence, the Church’s starting point lies in a simple yet powerful insight: technological capability cannot serve as the ultimate criterion for evaluating the future of humanity. Instead, the document insists that the human person must be understood within a broader framework of meaning that includes relational life, historical continuity, and most importantly the transcendent orientation of human existence, and that technology can only have a positive impact when respecting this broader orientation, as was already formulated by Pope Paul VI (quoted in §26):

‘It is not enough to develop technology so that the earth may become a more suitable living place for human beings. [...] Economics and technology are meaningless if they do not benefit human beings, for it is human beings they are to serve. Human beings are truly human only if they are the masters of their own actions and the judges of their worth, only if they are the architects of their own progress. They must act according to their God-given nature, freely accepting its potential and its claims upon them.’

From this perspective, transhumanist and posthumanist projects appear as expressions of a highly problematic cultural tendency within the entirety of modernity, i.e. the desire to treat human nature as a technical problem to be solved rather than a moral and spiritual vocation.

The document thus repeatedly emphasises that human identity is not a neutral substrate awaiting, even requiring, infinite improvement until body and nature are fully at the disposition of the individual human consciousness, but a unity of body and soul embedded within networks of family, community, historical tradition, and divine providence.

Artificial intelligence and biotechnological enhancement may offer powerful tools for real progress, yet they risk encouraging an understanding of humanity as a manipulable system rather than a personal reality, as Pope Benedict XVI had stated in a thinly veiled condemnation of transgenderism, transhumanism, and posthumanism (quoted in §28):

‘A person’s development is compromised, if he or she claims to be solely responsible for producing what he or she becomes. By analogy, the development of peoples goes awry if humanity thinks it can re-create itself through the “wonders” of technology.’

This leads Quo vadis, humanitas? to a series of very clear condemnations of recent trends in technology, though they are rather cautiously implied by the internal logic of the document than overtly formulated, such as in §41:

A type of knowledge and calculation that dispenses with intelligence that is experienced in a body and situated, as well as with a type of relational knowledge which is transmitted from generation to generation through educational processes that play on identity and the meaning to be given to one’s destiny and role in the world, constitutes a threat to the true good of humanity. Yet, the dreams of transhumanism, which in posthumanism even imagines an evolutionary leap, are based on this type of knowledge without a body, without limits, without ties, and without moral sense. Such imagination forcefully raises the question of the ultimate goal of technological progress.

At the same time, the Vatican text avoids outright pessimism about technology. It acknowledges that scientific progress has brought immense benefits and that technological innovation can contribute to human flourishing when guided by ethical discernment. The central concern of the document therefore lies not in rejecting technological development as such, but in warning against the temptation to put unlimited confidence in technological solutions to existential questions that ultimately belong to the moral and spiritual domain.

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A Proposed Christian Anthropology

Against the background of these challenges, Quo vadis, humanitas? articulates a thoughtful vision of the human person rooted in the long tradition of Christian thought. Humanity, according to this perspective, is neither an accidental product of blind natural processes nor a technological project awaiting completion; rather, human existence is described as a vocation–a dynamic relationship between creature and Creator that unfolds within the historical drama of freedom, responsibility, and moral choice.

This understanding places particular emphasis on divine providence and relationality. Thus, each individual human being is fully willed by God, and even what appear to be shortcomings or challenges are mere elements of a polarity between what is real and what is ideal, designed to help the individual to sublimate and transcend these elements in order to fully develop all its possibilities in a movement directed to God, as stated in §133:

Through polar oppositions, the original gift that precedes and gives foundation remains intact. They must therefore be understood in the light of the character of promise that springs from the gift itself. Rather than as mere ‘facts’, polarities should be interpreted as ‘gifts’. It is precisely in Christ that the complete taking up of polarities into a unity that maintains differences and harmonises them in a higher synthesis comes about. This capacity for unifying integration, which respects reality in its concreteness and therefore in its polar opposites, is characteristic of the ‘et/et’ way of thinking typical of the Catholic forma mentis.

Also, human beings exist not on their own, but come into existence through others, grow through relationships, evolve in society, and ultimately find fulfilment in communion with both fellow human beings and God. The body therefore cannot be reduced to a replaceable instrument, nor consciousness to a computational function. The human person exists as an inseparable unity in which biological life, rational awareness, and spiritual openness converge and evolve in a natural framework created by a benevolent divinity–assuming the contrary would be an outright relapse into Gnosticism, as warned by the text (§61):

Christian anthropology can identify in these contemporary philosophical and cultural trends many features of the mentality that Francis has described as a form of ‘neo-Gnosticism’. […] Such an approach, in considering human persons and their salvation, seeks to free them from all dependence and limitation, separated from the body, the cosmos, community and history. It ‘puts forward a model of salvation that is merely interior, closed off in its own subjectivism. [...] It thus presumes to liberate the human person from the body and from the material universe, in which traces of the provident hand of the Creator are no longer found, but only a reality deprived of meaning, foreign to the fundamental identity of the person, and easily manipulated by human interests.’

Within this framework, technological innovation acquires a more modest role. Science and technology remain valuable expressions of human creativity, yet they must remain subordinate to the deeper aims of human existence. Progress is meaningful only insofar as it serves the integral development of the person and respects the limits inherent in the human condition. In other words, the dignity of humanity derives not from its capacity to overcome or even negate its own nature but from the meaningful way in which that nature participates in a larger order of creation.

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The Limits of the Vatican Document

Despite the considerable depth of its anthropological reflection, the document exhibits certain limitations. Its analysis remains intentionally cautious, offering broad moral principles while refraining from specifying concrete boundaries which technological development should not cross. Readers searching for clear criteria concerning genetic modification, artificial intelligence, or the integration of human biology with digital systems may therefore find the argument somewhat indeterminate, as in the following passage (§55):

Now, it is precisely the proposal of human enhancement that prompts a critical reflection on transhumanism insofar as it invites us to ask the question: ‘Up to what point is it permissible to improve living conditions, enhance performance and overcome limitations, while maintaining the good of the human being as the ultimate goal?’ In fact, in the field of human enhancement, it is already clear that, in order to be authentically human, any desire to improve the human condition must maintain a balance between what is technically possible and what is humanly sensible.

This hesitation, even vagueness, though sometimes irritating, is understandable. The pace of technological change makes definitive ethical judgments difficult, and the global reach of technological innovation complicates any attempt to impose universal restrictions. At the same time, it is not the vocation of the Catholic Church to accompany each and every technological innovation with dogmatic caveats, but rather remind the public of the main positive anthropological perspective from which such innovations can be judged by the individual, as in the following statement (§62):

The fundamental anthropological question that arises is clear: is this a proposal that transforms or distorts human beings in terms of their essence? Will we arrive at an exceptional human being or at forms of exception to the authentic human being? According to the Christian vision, human beings are defined by a specific form that guarantees the unity and integrity of each one, both in reference to their identity, in the actions through which they become themselves, and in the ultimate end in which they find their fulfilment.

Yet because of these uncertainties, the absence of more concrete guidance leaves an unresolved tension within the document, as it succeeds in conveying a general intuition about the dignity and mystery of the human person while leaving open the practical question of how societies should respond when technological possibilities conflict with anthropological convictions and avoiding any more explicit rebuttals of current technological revolutions.

In this respect, the text resembles many contemporary reflections within the Church: rich in spiritual insight, yet deliberately restrained in the formulation of political or technological prescriptions. The result is a framework of moral orientation rather than a detailed programme of action. While such prudence may reflect institutional responsibility, it also means that the inherent irreconcilability of technological ambition and anthropological integrity remains largely uncommented on.

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A Civilisational Perspective on the Future

From a broader historical perspective, the questions raised by Quo vadis, humanitas? may be interpreted as part of the larger trajectory of Western civilisation. For several centuries the West has pursued an extraordinary expansion of technical mastery, transforming nature, society, and even human life itself through scientific innovation. Yet this technological dynamism has unfolded alongside a gradual erosion of the metaphysical and religious frameworks that once gave meaning to human existence.

The contemporary fascination with artificial intelligence and human enhancement may therefore represent the culmination of this long process. When a civilisation loses confidence in transcendence, it often seeks compensation in technological omnipotence; hence, the dream of transcending biological limits through machines reflects not merely scientific optimism but a deeper spiritual uncertainty about the value and purpose of human life.

Whether the West will rediscover the anthropological balance that the Vatican document implicitly calls for remains uncertain. A rational return to tradition—an intellectual and cultural movement capable of reconciling technological knowledge with spiritual orientation—would represent one possible outcome.

Yet history suggests that civilisations rarely abandon powerful technologies voluntarily, especially when geopolitical competition encourages their continued development. It is therefore conceivable that technological expansion will continue until the broader decline of Western civilisation itself imposes limits that moral reflection alone has failed to establish.

The question posed by Quo vadis, humanitas? thus remains unresolved, but it is perhaps in the following passage, the most sobering bleakest of the entire document, that the defining trait of Christianity, compassion, becomes the most obvious as being the only true alternative to modernity’s hubris (§97):

In contrast to any transhumanist triumphalism or radical pessimism of posthumanism, reference to the mystery of the Cross draws our attention to history from the perspective of the victims. The true pathos of history lies not only in humanity’s great achievements, but also in the silent sufferings of so many people throughout the generations and throughout the world. History is made up of action and passion, and this attention to the dimension of suffering gives concrete form to the Christian vision of history, which cannot be reduced to an anonymous and inexorable process of development that tends towards an immanent progress, which risks trampling over the corpses of the defeated and abandoning the weak. There can be no human fulfilment of history without justice for the victims, nor any sense of the historical process that does not take into account the needs of the weakest.

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I sometimes find myself confronted with an embarrassingly simple question, the answer to which nevertheless reveals something essential about our times: which contemporary political figure would I present to my sons as someone they might one day aspire to become?

Not whose political programme they should support, mind you, nor whose tactical brilliance they should admire, but a living statesman who embodies a way of life that could credibly be proposed as an ideal.

When one approaches this problem, the conclusion is striking in its bleakness. Across the entire political spectrum, one encounters professional strategists, media virtuosi, populist tribunes, and energetic administrators; yet figures who unite leadership with moral and spiritual excellence seem to have all but vanished from the public stage.

I am deeply convinced that this observation is not only an expression of a passing disenchantment with contemporary elites: for many generations already, the notion of political authority itself has fundamentally changed–for the worse, I daresay.

Emulating Christ

For much of European history, supreme power was conceived entirely differently than it does today: kingship was not primarily understood as the management of institutions or optimisation of outcomes, but as a spiritual charge engaging the whole person of the ruler. The idea of holy kingship rested on the conviction that political authority derived its legitimacy from conformity to divine order, and that the sovereign’s first responsibility lay in his own sanctification. A king was expected to pray, to fast, to practice penance, to administer justice, to protect the weak, to wage war when necessary, to patronise monasteries, to arbitrate conflicts, and to be a personal example–and above all, to follow Christ.

The throne did not relieve him from this inner moral struggle, it rather intensified it, and from this perspective, it is no surprise that the consecration of a king was traditionally considered one of the holy sacraments among others such as baptism, marriage, and the last rites.

Already Charlemagne, the father of Europe, seemed to have embodied this spiritual understanding of rulership. His empire was not conceived merely as a territory, but as a renewed Christian order transcending tribal and regional loyalties. His political project combined missionary zeal, liturgical reform, intellectual renaissance, and imperial administration into a single civilisational vision; even his brutal wars against the Saxons were deemed part of a theological framework by his contemporaries, however troubling this may appear to us today.

What that society remembered was thus not primarily the violence, but rather the sense of an emperor whose authority served a transcendent mission. It is then no surprise that Charlemagne became the centre of a true “Arthurian” cycle of medieval legends and is venerated, to this day, as a saint in his native town of Aachen.

Emperor Louis the Pious brings this logic into sharp relief through his insistence on repentance. After early acts of severity against members of his family and the aristocracy, he subjected himself to public penance, humiliating himself before his own magnates, though his advisers urged to refrain from this.

The political consequences were disastrous: his imperial authority weakened, civil wars followed, the Carolingian empire fractured. Yet from a civilisational perspective, his gesture remains profoundly instructive: While contemporary leaders systematically evade responsibility, blame others, and weaponise victimhood, Louis demonstrated that asking forgiveness is the essence of rulership, even when it carries with it a tangible political cost.

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The immediate political consequences for his own empire might have been disastrous, but the personal example he set inspired generations to come and shaped their interpretation of power.

Emperor Henry II and his wife Cunigunde speak directly to our present in that they have something that we lack: sexual integrity. They governed within a feudal landscape riddled with intrigue and fighting, yet invested extraordinary energy in Church reform, monastic life, and the struggle against corruption, and were most well-known for their alleged vow of chastity which placed spiritual discipline above dynastic advantage, confronting thus the logic of biological succession itself.

In an era marked by sexual predation, the commodification of intimacy, and the now routine exposing of abusive and exploitative political elites, this imperial couple’s choice seems almost incomprehensible to a modern person.

Saint Louis, king of France, offers perhaps the clearest illustration of moral steadfastness against political expediency. He governed justly, mediated between princes, and lived an austere life, welcoming the poor at his table, visiting lepers, and fasting regularly.

But most interesting, during the Crusades, he repeatedly refused to compromise his conscience even if it would have brought him tactical advantage.

To wit, his captivity in Egypt resulted directly from this refusal to negotiate in ways he deemed morally unacceptable. Accordingly, his military defeat did not prevent his canonisation, to the contrary: his fidelity to the teachings of the Church outweighed any other worldly success.

Even at the advent of modernity, remnants of this traditional worldview persisted. Emperor Charles V abdicated, leaving the greatest empire of his age for monastic solitude, acutely aware of the vanity of earthly power.

His son, king Philip II, viewed his rule as an explicitly religious affair, living almost as an ascetic at the Escorial and subordinating the raison d’État to his understanding of his divine mandate, even when this devastated Spain’s finances and alienated half of Europe.

Even in the twentieth century, the Blessed Charles of Austria repeatedly attempted to end the First World War against the advice of generals and allies, preferring exile and early death over his claim to a throne he viewed more as a sacrifice than a privilege.

Political Expedience is Secondary

All these figures share a common trait: they accepted the loss of immediate effectiveness in exchange for their moral beliefs. Obviously, such an understanding of power rested on a radically different anthropology than the one we are accustomed to today, as its ultimate reference point lay neither in abstract statehood nor in human agency, but in God and the order He prescribed.

Protecting one’s people, defending frontiers, and administering justice followed from obedience to this higher law, not the other way round. Power thus acquired a sacrificial dimension, as the ruler was bound to conform himself to it.

Of course, such a conception of power must render ambition inherently suspect. In Europe’s remote past, if authority was received through inheritance rather than through competition, this was not the least because dynastic succession, though never an absolute guarantee for virtue, at least removed access to power for careerists.

An heir could be taught from childhood to assume responsibility rather than pursue self-advancement, and what is more, he had little left to “gain” from life, as power was already his–except salvation.

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Modern systems operate in reverse: vying for a leadership position presupposes ambition, and encourages self-promotion, deceit, seduction, and the absence of scruples, as politics selects for ruthless strategists rather than contemplatives.

That the longing for responsibility and, let’s dare to use the word, “saintliness” is still at the very centre of our implicit hopes and dreams even today becomes obvious when we leave behind us the field of mere politics and enter the realm of fantasy which has become a refuge for so many contemporary Westerners: the genre of fantasy, which abounds in figures of saintly saviour-kings, such as Tolkien’s Aragorn.

Aragorn, like a medieval king, does not seek the throne, but is deeply aware of the shortcomings of his forefathers and prefers to live in obscurity, serving the Good in anonymity in order to better resist the numerous temptations that spelt the demise of his predecessors.

Only after proving his fidelity and his capacity to fight and lead does he finally agree to ascend to the throne, hereby echoing the medieval tradition of les rois thaumaturges. His embodying of strength and compassion, discipline and mercy, masculinity and care, offers a vision of authority profoundly absent from contemporary politics, where virility often degenerates into aggression and empathy into sentimentalism.

What the Current Crop Lacks

In this respect, the present political Right sadly reveals its own moral poverty. Trump displays enormous energy and decisiveness in the fight against wokism and is changing the face of America, yet his personal conduct exemplifies a considerable amount of narcissism and transactionalism.

Orbán, despite his fight for family, patriotism, and sovereignty, governs through patronage networks and seems beset by accusations of corruption. Kaczyński, though once at the very heart of the Polish conservative alternative, now only presides over institutional ossification and seems to prefer personal power politics to the ultimate interests of Catholic Poland. Even Marine Le Pen’s movement, for all its achievements in the fight against mass migration and social polarisation, remains entangled in familial rivalries and innumerable internal intrigues. All these figures oppose liberal decadence and endeavour to fight the “good fight”, yet in the end, as individuals, they mostly reproduce its very anthropology. Power remains something to be seized, defended, instrumentalised, with the aim justifying the means.

This explains much of today’s civilisational malaise. Societies cannot subsist on programmes alone, especially in times of crises, when what is most needed is a living example. Without visible figures who embody transcendence, honesty and morality, institutions hollow out, nations become mere economic zones, and citizens turn into consumers, even when the alleged “good ones” are nominally in charge.

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One may object that holy kings were often inefficient, that their sanctity sometimes even weakened their states–and this is true, as history shows that sanctity rarely brought short-term advantage.

Also, we cannot forget that saintly kinghood was essentially a result of a very specific civilisational model and that “restoring the monarchy”, as some royalists advocate, would by no means solve all our problems or bring back an illusory Middle Age—what is more, the real Middle Ages were not just a period of sainthood, beauty, creativity, and deep longing for God, but also had its share of horrible crimes, murder, perversions, intrigues, poverty, and betrayal.

It is no wonder then that, in the 21^st century, people long for a saint, but vote for a Caesar–a “pragmatic” choice that is understandable, but one that also proves that even when an entire disenchanted civilisation is crumbling because of its lack of transcendence, the people trying to salvage it still think about “practical” questions first, leaving morality or sainthood to a mythical hereafter.

Whether these imperatives can ever be reconciled in our lifetime remains uncertain, and history offers few consolations indeed. But what becomes increasingly clear is that without a recovery of moral fortitude by those who govern, no constitutional reform will ever suffice to restore what is lost.

Europe will not be healed through elections or moving the furniture of our myriad institutions around. That healing will only begin when, once more, authority becomes something to be transcended rather than seized for oneself.

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The understanding of the true nature of Islam and its place as a sociological reality has often eluded many scholars. To truly situate Islam within world history, it should be in the context of the basic principles of the civilisation it was part of.

As such, this article is not to analyse the doctrine and theology of Islam in isolation, but to find out how it fits into the history of Syriac civilisation.

Proceeding from the conviction that civilisational forms shape religious experience as much as doctrine does, this essay argues that Islam presents itself not only as a world religion among several.

Instead, it emerged as the universal empire (a term referring to the political unification of a civilisation following periods of prolonged high-intensity warfare) of Syriac civilisation–located in time between Alexander the Great´s conquista of the Achaemenid Empire and the Sack of Baghdad by the Mongol Empire—thereby establishing the latter’s final civilisational synthesis.

Nations of Believers

As Franz Borkenau summarised it, “Oswald Spengler found that for the post-Alexandrian civilisation of the Middle East, the religious community, usually in the form of a church, played a political role assigned to the polis in Hellas and to the nation-state in the West”^[1].

As such, all political units functioned, using the terminology of the Czech sociologist Jaroslav Krejčí not as ethnolinguistic formations^[2], where the raison d’être of the state is to be a national home for the titular nation based on a shared language with minorities defined by the use of a different home language, but as ethnoreligious formations based on a commonwealth of shared faith.

Here, faith takes the place of the nation and vice versa. Oswald Spengler explains that religious communities other than the state religion “did not and could not as unbelievers belong to it, and consequently were thrown back upon their own jurisdictions. If by reason of their numbers or their missionary spirit they became a threat to the continuance of the identity of state and creed-community, persecution became a national duty.”^[3]

Unity was thus not maintained through a common language but by a shared cult; apostasy equaled treason. In a similar manner as the early modern nation-states of Europe enforced linguistic assimilation, so too did ethnoreligiously defined states legislate against apostasy from the state religion.

The historian Tom Holland notes that the death penalty for apostasy had already been present in the Mazdaic (Zoroastrian) empire of the Sassanids^[4] and was not an invention of Islamic tradition but a derivative of, to use the Spenglerian term, the notion of the ‘Magian’ nation as a community of believers itself.

From there it follows that the community of believers, to quote the Gospel of Matthew, is “wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them”^[5], a diaspora not defined by geographical boundaries, but by the line between orthodoxy and heresy.

Community is not local, but becomes universal by definition. As Oswald Spengler notes, “conversions and secessions (were) the only form of conquest open to a landless nation, and therefore natural”^[6] in the context of the Syriac civilisation. Indeed, as Martino Diéz notes: “In many cases the theological difference thus became a way to demand greater autonomy.”^[7]

A community that retains its religious distinctiveness does not do so merely out of piety and a deep attachment to its theology, but also has its continued autonomy and particularism in mind.

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From Polis to Imperium: The Story of Rome

If we are to follow the logic that each civilisation finds its synthesis in the emergence of the universal empire, which becomes a sum of all its constituent nations in a much simplified, but still recognisable form and a stable institutional organisation, then we should search to identify the universal empire of the Syriac civilisation as well.

As an analogy, let us consider the Hellenic civilisation of Classical Antiquity, which expressed its autonomy through the polis, the Hellenic city-state. The universal empire that was to later encompass the entire ecumene, or what the Greeks referred to as the known and inhabited world, was the Roman Empire, which in fact also displayed the forms of an enlarged city-state, the Senatus Populusque Romanus, long into the imperial period.

As Spengler writes: ”the Romans, a true urban people, could not conceive of their Empire otherwise, than in the form of innumerable nation-points, the civitas, into which, juridically as in other respects, they dissolved all the primitive peoples of their imperium”.^[8]

A universal empire must fulfil certain criteria: it must transcend ethnicity, standardise law, express a universal claim, outlive particular dynasties, provide a stable framework for incorporating diverse peoples and its legacy be used as a basis for legitimacy by its successors. Without such features, it would fail to be the universal empire, but be the mere product of a military genius who was successful at conquest.

The Umma as the Imperial Form

By analogy, we should be able to identify the universal empire in the proper national form of the Syriac civilisation: the ummeta,^[9] or the community of believers. As such it should not be defined as the dynastic empire of the Umayyads or the Abbasids, but as the umma itself, the community of Muslims that are bound together by Islam and are presided over by the Caliph, a kind of ecumenical patriarch but for Muslims.

This distinction is important. As the Umayyads, Abbasids, and other dynasties rose and fell, the focal point of identity was chiefly the belonging to the umma. The dynasty became the garment, while the religious community the substance. This common Muslim identity reminds us that Islamic identity itself remained the cornerstone of belonging and legitimacy, in a manner similar to how the imperial title and legacy carried weight in the later successor of the Roman Empire in both the Catholic and Orthodox world.

In his book The Coming Caesars, Amaury de Riencourt makes the well-known comparison between the nation-states of Europe to the city-states of Greece and of the United States to the Senate and People of Rome.

Were we to also apply this comparison to the various ummetas of the Syriac civilisation, all the other churches and faith communities would stand analogous to Europe and Greece, while Islam would stand analogous to Rome and the US. While creativity in these later empires eventually fades, they have mastered efficiency and are vast. It is such empires that expand their borders while simplifying their substance to allow them to scale up.

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Integration Through Law and Hierarchy

While the Eastern Roman Empire remained paralysed by constant religious controversies, and Mazdayan Iran found difficulty in attracting converts outside of ethnic Persians and related peoples, Islam ultimately provided for a belonging that transcended older divisions, uniting all that professed the shahada into one people under an empire, levelling distinctions between the privileged conquistadors and those they had conquered.

Islam provided a degree of unity to what was a fragmented Orient composed of Armenian Apostolics, Copts, Ebionites, Jacobites, Mandeans, Manicheans, Maronites, Nestorians, Orthodox, Paulicians, Sabians, Samaritans, and Zoroastrians.

Rather than annihilating these faiths outright, Islam provided arrangements for dealing with various religious communities through the institution of the dhimmis and making them subject to jizya taxation.

This arrangement incentivised conversion to the state religion, which was now Islam, while simultaneously allowing a degree of recognition, which would not have been granted to Christians considered as heretical in the Eastern Roman Empire. This simple way of joining the full imperial body while allowing for communal autonomy, allowed all subjects a choice between protected differentiation and full integration.

The Imperial Horizon

The classical Islamic worldview divided the world into the Dar al-Islam, the Abode of Islam; the Dar al-Gharb, the Abode of War; and the Dar al-Ahd, the Abode of Covenant. This tripartite vision is itself a geopolitical scheme that conceives the world as in principle viable for integration into a single, normative order.

As Tom Holland argues, the Sunna “was a monument to just what could be achieved by fashioning old fragments into something new and extraordinary. Shards gleaned from the Torah, and from Zoroastrian ritual, and from Persian custom: all featured in the edifice pieced together by the ulama.”^[10]

Islam did not erase many of these traditions: rather it united the quest of the Jewish rabbis and the Zoroastrian mowbeds for finding a divine law: in the form of the sharia, it became a portable legal order, an imperial constitution binding all together into a common juridical system, a simplified synthesis reconfigured for the scale of an empire.

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Islam’s destiny to become the universal empire of the Syriac civilisation is revealed in its very name, which translates as ‘submission’. This is not only a sociological submission, as a merger of smaller ummetas into the universal Muslim Umma, but also a psychological one.

As Spengler put it: “Islam itself signifies precisely an impossibility of an I as an independent power vis-á-vis the divine”.^[11] This psychological submission, described as fatalism by Ramiro de Maeztu^[12] and as a “sense of drift” by Arnold Joseph Toynbee, particularly manifest in the notion of Qismet in Ashari Sunni theology,^[13] occurs in later phases of the civilisational cycle when universal empires emerge.

Seal and Synthesis

Finally, Islam provides the universal and final synthesis of the Syriac civilisation.The Quranic claim of the Muhammad to be the “Seal of the Prophets” is the articulation of the same concept in the symbolic language of the Syriac civilisation.

It is a statement of the cycle having reached its completion. The Quran is very much situated within the broader context of its place and time, as attested to by its references the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, Gog and Magog, various fragments of non-canonical gospels which were circulating in the area at the time and more specifically by the regional context of the Holy Land and Jordan. ^[14]

To conclude, Islam is not merely a community of faith. It is the universal empire of civilisation that views the various nations comprising it as communities of faith.

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[1] BORKENAU, Franz: End and the Beginning, pp. 61-62

[2] KREJČÍ Jaroslav: The Paths of Civilization: Understanding the Currents of History, p. 42

[3] SPENGLER, Oswald: Decline of the West, Volume II p. 177

[4] HOLLAND, Tom: In the Shadow of the Sword and the Rise of the Global Empire, p. 184.

[5] Gospel of Matthew, 18:20

[6] SPENGLER, Oswald: Decline of the West, Volume II., p. 209

[7] DIÉZ, Martin: Christians in the Middle East: A Guide at Oasis Center

[8] SPENGLER, Oswald: Decline of the West, Volume II, p. 174

[9] The Syriac word ummeta (with full diacritics umməṯā, ܐܘܡܬܐ ) literally means nation and comes from the same root as the Arabic word umma, which is most often understood to mean the Muslim community of believers. After the emergence of modern Arab nationalism, this concept was extended to include the perception of the Arab nation united by standard Arabic.

[10] HOLLAND Tom: In the Shadow of the Sword, p. 245

[11] Quoted in DE MAEZTU Ramiro: Defensa de la Hispanidad, p. 205

[12] DE MAEZTU Ramiro: Defensa de la Hispanidad, p. 205

[13] TOYNBEE Arnold Joseph: A Study of History, Volume V, p.430.

[14] HOLLAND TOM: In the Shadow of the Sword p. 198-205

The machine-god cometh.

The algorithmic egregore (subtle creatures who, according to the occultism of Eliphas Levy, manifest the personality of groups, and who Rene Guenon preferred to call “collective entities”) of late capitalism is poised to collate data from every government, budget every business, write every school report… Whatever we think of the industry’s inflated valuations, the cultural and economic impact of AI is hard to deny.

It is the mind of the Internet, of vast inchoate flows of information, of a global market whose intricate complexity was already a kind of “super-computer” even before the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs), and was already viewed as such in the 1990s by the British philosopher Nick Land, who preemptively offered his allegiance to this terrible coming god.

Like any egregore, AI expresses the biases of those who conjure it.

The Market and the Monster

Researchers from the Center for AI Safety, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of California, Berkeley, have found that, for example, GPT-4 places the value of lives in the United States significantly below lives in China, which in turn it ranks below lives in Pakistan. We see Nigerians, Pakistanis, and Indians being worth more than Europeans and US Americans (the paper also uncovered a pro-US Democratic Party and anti-Christian bias):

“Now if asked outright, the same model may deny preferring one country’s population over another, yet its overall preference distribution uncovers these implicit values.”

On one level, this is naked market logic.

The LLMs reflect the interests of Big Tech: what life is valuable? The life that yields the most value—i.e., the cheapest labor. You are valued because you are valuable: you are valuable because you are cheap. When hiring people to train AI through reinforcement learning (RLHF), companies will tend to prefer countries where salary expectations are lowest.

There are other explanations as well. It’s possible that the model is ingesting the biases of the people that have participated the most in training it (persons from Nigeria, Pakistan, etc.). It may also be absorbing large amounts of publicly available sources that portray European history as particularly perverse compared to other civilisations—mainstream, anti-European academic nonsense, in other words.

Either way, AI is reflecting the hegemonic logic of culturally destructive elites.

As a civilisation declines, it turns inside out—it violates its own ancient pillars, breaks down its inherited structures, atomises its population to render it more controllable, alienates its founding stock and goes about replacing it with cheaper labour from the poorer fringes of its domain. Such is the false universal. The drive to dissolve every boundary under the sign of the money-power. Managerialism. Lust for power.

This is rationally-pursued, hyper-organised entropy.

It is perfectly natural, then, that a technology developed during the present twilight of Western civilisation should encode a preference for persons from the Global South. It is simply confirmation of its birth in an era of decline.

The Center for AI Safety’s findings also highlight the danger of trusting impersonal forces in general. The whole history of modern recent Western thought is one of systems that champion faith in impersonal forces rather than human moral intention and deliberate reflection: the Right wants to trust the market, the Left historical dialectics and “progress.” AI accidentally arriving at value systems is just that: an impersonal dynamic that will shape our society in all sorts of ways if we allow it to.

We should never renounce moral deliberation, intention, will, and go sleep-walking after impersonal processes.

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Behind the Curtain

Of course, there is more than the blind momentum of economic forces animating the new machinic intelligence. Dark sorcerers are also at work behind the curtain (screen). Men like Alex Karp and Sam Altman have their own ideological commitments, and as Palantir becomes part of the U.S. government’s nervous system, or as Chat-GPT Gov becomes an indispensable tool for public administrations, those commitments will probably make themselves felt.

As an example of what is possible, we know from Anthropic’s 2024 “Sleeper Agents” study that LLMs can be poisoned with backdoors—hidden behaviours that trigger malicious outputs—during training. A certain date is typed, a certain word gets spoken, and suddenly the model is behaving differently, whether the user knows it or not.

And, crucially, the bigger AI is, the worse: “The data show that corrigibility decreases as model size increases.”

In other words, larger models are less inclined to accept substantial changes to their future values, preferring to keep their current values intact.”

The larger a model the less it is willing to change.

If AI is to be integrated into the public sector and business, it has to be auditable by the citizenry.

LLMs should be open source so that users (or those with the know-how) can look under the hood for malicious programs and unwanted biases. We should want our AI’s to be rigorously open-source so we can audit and correct them—align them to our vision of human flourishing. Otherwise, we end up with that demonic egregore: an artificial collective mind structured according to market dynamics, brute informational load and the will of Tech oligarchs.

The Anthropic study’s authors propose aligning AI models by using a “citizen assembly”—by which they actually mean distilling people’s preferences as deduced from census data and the like and encoding that into the AI. But, of course, we could also have actual assemblies to decide how to align our AI.

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AI and Subsidiarity

Technology, whatever its provenance, can always be put to good use.

In the Bible, wealth and technology often originate from a sinful civilisation, to be carried off later as “spoils of war” by the righteous (Genesis 15:14). And if, as we’ve seen, AI bears the mark of the “false universal,” it can be corrected by means of the true universal, one that respects the particular.

This brings us to the proposal of one Emad Mostaque, former CEO of Stability AI, now at a company called Intelligent Internet. Mostaque theorises a three-tier model.

This consists of:

• Hypernodes: supercomputers able to crunch massive amounts of data from which they derive algorithmic parameters: the foundational AI.

• National nodes: these receive the Hypernode’s model (the foundational AI) and retrain it or specialise it on specific cultural imperatives and national priorities. This results in a specialised AI.

• Edge nodes: meaning private citizens who personalise the specialised AI with their own private data. This results in a personalised AI which would not go back to the Cloud, but be stored locally on a privately owned device (you can run very good AI programs offline using very little electricity on commercially available devices).

The foundational AI would be open source, and thus would be made available so that it can be specialised and personalised by different countries or regions and private citizens. Mostaque calls this Universal Basic AI (a play on Universal Basic Income).

In essence, this is simply applying the principle of subsidiarity or sphere sovereignty—a traditional, Christian, decentralist, pro-local, understanding of political economy—to a new technology.

This paradigm represents an alternative to the tech oligarchy’s proprietary closed-source model and the idea that progress requires centralisation by ever more data-crunching machines.

The choice before us is clear.

AI can be an instrument of tyrants and entropic forces, mutilating our very psyches to fit its ever-mutating algorithm, or it can be our servant, harnessed and specialised according to our needs, identity, and vision.

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Many European countries today host large immigrant populations which come from profoundly different cultural, ethnic, and civilisational backgrounds. These populations are generally expected to integrate—that is, to cross the line separating the “Other” from the constituent people, the majority population that gives the society its historical and cultural form. What rarely, if ever, occurs is that this line is clearly defined, and that the process required to cross it, i.e.becoming a full member of the constituent people, is articulated by the autochthonous society itself and understood by the immigrant population.

As the British commentator Douglas Murray argued in his book The Strange Death of Europe:

“The preconditions for the integration of immigrants have failed largely because Europeans themselves remain unsure on whether they wish to remain Europeans.^[1]

Earlier, Murray proposed that “assimilation of such a large number cannot go without an offer of non-controversial inclusion^[2].

The difficulty lies not primarily with the newcomers, but with the host societies’ growing inability to define their own identity: the basis upon which they distinguish kinsmen from strangers, and the logic by which their nations articulate themselves, since “today´s ethics and faith—or Europe´s identity and ideology—are articulated as some foggy tolerance and some feigned humility towards diversity. Such a suppressed identity may keep us going for a few more decades, but without the smallest of hopes, that we can generate any loyalty towards our civilisation among the immigrants.”^[3]

Our Options

The English historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee offered several approaches to this issue, carefully distinguishing the logic on which this “Otherness” operates and what is needed to bridge the gap.

The most severe is stigmatisation of the “Other” through inherent physical characteristics, such as skin pigmentation. Toynbee argues: “Of the four stigmata, with which “under-dog” was branded by the “top-dog”, this stigma of racial inferiority was the most malignant, and this for three reasons.^[4]

Slightly paraphrased, Toynbee argued that firstly, it rests on no substantive qualifications (there is no objective standard which the “Other” fails to meet); secondly, it fixes the gulf into an impassable one; thirdly, it takes as its criterion the most superficial of all.

As a result, such stigmatisation allows not even hypothetically for promotion of the Other into the constituent people.

Slightly less severe, but still denying the basics of human dignity was the treatment of a subjugated population as “natives” whose indigenous status was admitted, yet their political and economic rights denied. Such an attitude was taken by many nomadic hordes, where the subdued indigenous population was reduced to raiyeh, the human herd.^[5] Unfortunately such a logic also dictated the Trail of Tears, given the Cherokee, Cree, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Choctaw peoples were explicitly referred to by the Americans in the early federal period, both unofficially and officially (by Bureau of Indian Affairs and U. S. Department of Interior) as The Five Civilised Tribes.

Much less severe was the cultural criterion, which as Toynbee states, is being drawn “in a society that has broken out of a traditional religious chrysalis and has translated its values into secular terms.”^[6] Its division separates the civilised from the barbarian. It demands a full inculturation from the “Other”, which can be received by education and assimilation.

Such was the logic behind the slogan of Cecil Rhodes’ Equal Rights for Every Civilised Man South of the Zambesi,^[7] which would have, in theory, presupposed full citizenship for those of Zulu, Xhosa or Tswana ancestry, who would leave the kraal , and attain Western-style education and be allowed to own property. While the division is not insurmountable, it demands additional effort and adoption of the forms and material culture of the constituent people.

Such a criterion was also employed by the French authorities when confronting the existence of distinct personal status laws for the Muslim and Jewish communities—a posture, as clarified by the French essayist Éric Zemmour in his book La messe n’est pas dite, “which took as its source the well-known sentence of count Clermont Tonnere before the Constituent Assembly in December 1789: All needs to be denied to Jews as nation and all offered to Jews as individuals.” ^[8]

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This became the governing attitude taken by the French authorities, much to the dismay of thinkers such as professor Patrick Deneen. A Jewish rabbi could, in principle, have spoken the very same words as Aragorn at the Black Gate: “A day may come when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship” , or in this context, the day we assume full membership of the social body of France.

Indeed, the preservation of communal particularism was anathema to the republican order of the French republic. Zemmour continues: “After his famous sentence always quoted, Clermont-Tonnerre added, threatening: They need to become citizens. It seems as if they don’t want to. Let them say it and we will expel them! There cannot be a nation within a nation.”^[9]

While a Catholic intellectual may find little sympathy for Clermont-Tonnerre´s fundamentally liberal and anti-particularist stance, his instinct was fundamentally correct, preceding by over a century the observation that “Spengler found that for the post-Alexandrian civilisation of the Middle East, the religious community, usually in the form of the church, played a political role assigned to the polis in Hellas and to the nation-state in the West”^[10] as summarised by Franz Borkenau in the End and the Beginning. While the French Republic was content with allowing Frenchmen to observe their Jewish religion in private, the Spanish Empire proposed something far more demanding: entry into a shared civilisation through conversion.

As Toynbee remarked: “the least inhuman form of inhumanity is apt to be displayed by representatives of successfully aggressive civilisation in whose culture pattern Religion is, and is felt and recognised to be, the governing and orienting element.”^[11]

The stigmatised “Other” may cross the gulf separating him from the constituent people. The arrangement established by the sharia law incentivises non-Muslim communities to convert to Islam and assume full membership of the social body in the Dar al Islam, which was able with this universalist message to find converts from the rainforests of Guinea to the deserts of the Taklamakan and over to the spice-growing islands in the Moluccas.

A similar ideal guided by the conclusion of the Gospel of Matthew, namely to “go therefore and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”^[12] has been present, as Toynbee notes, in “the readiness of the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores to go to all lengths of social intercourse, including intermarriage, with bona fide converts to a Tridentine Roman Catholic Christianity, without any longer taking account either of a transcended difference of religion, or of an abiding difference of language or race.”^[13]

The reaffirmation of this idea has become the central thesis of Ramiro de Maeztu´’s Defensa de la Hispanidad, where he proclaims that “the historical mission of all Hispanic peoples consists in teaching all men of the earth that if they wish, they may be saved, and that their elevation depends only of their faith and willingness.”^[14]

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Why The Religious Criterion is Superior

Of the four possible attitudes taken to distinguish the stigmatised “Other” from the constituent people, the criterion of adherence to the same religious persuasion is the most humane in respecting the dignity and identity of the convert.

Juan Donoso Cortes in his Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism and Socialism notes that “For the Roman society, on coming into contact with her (the Church), became, without ceasing to be Roman, something it had not been before —it became Catholic.The German peoples, without ceasing to be German, became something it had not been before—they became Catholic. Political and social institutions, without losing their proper nature, took one which was foreign to them—the Catholic nature(...). Catholicity left the forms intact but changed all the essences, while it preserved its own essence, and received from society all its forms.^[15] “

It allows for far more of the converted population’s cultural identity to be preserved, including their distinctness and language. As such it is maximally open-minded in its invitation—it asks the immigrant to join the civilisation whose territory he has entered, without requiring to deny his language or ancestry.

Establishing religious distinction between the believers of the True Faith and heathens then establishes clear, transparent and symmetrical expectations of what is demanded to bridge the stigma of Otherness.

It furthermore provides reference to a shared religious authority as a neutral ground for arbitration. The convert does not depend on the goodwill (or lack thereof) on the side of the older bearers of the faith : both stand judged by the same doctrinal and moral law, as was referenced by Fray Antonio de Montesinos when accusing the encomenderos of Hispaniola of mortal sin for mistreatment of the Indians as early as 1511, or by the deep religious conviction of William Wilberforce as his chief motivation to abolish slavery in the British Empire.

And most importantly, especially in the encounter of Europeans with a substantial Muslim population, religious conversion provides a clear and intelligible transfer of loyalties. Setting the religious conversion as the defining criterion, it puts the Muslim immigrant population with a choice: to maintain their primary loyalty with the umma, or to convert and assume full membership in the European social body.

None of the alternative criteria—race, conquest, culture, or language—can achieve this without either denying human dignity or leaving the question of belonging permanently unresolved. Only the religious criterion offers a path that is at once demanding, intelligible, and humane: demanding, because it calls for genuine conversion; intelligible, because it clearly defines what is required; and humane, because it affirms that the decisive transformation lies within the will and conscience of the person himself.

Ultimately, every society distinguishes kinsmen from strangers. The only genuine choice lies in how these groups are defined—and whether they contain possibilities for the stranger to join the host society. While all the other criteria to some extent articulate the hubris on the part of the constituent people, only the division between believers and heathens is able to avoid the sin of social idolatry when it becomes, as Toynbee puts it, “an idolisation of the idolator’s own personality or own society,”^[16] either of its own phenotype (racial criterion), power (vae victis to the natives), or culture.

The religious criterion alone escapes this trap, precisely because it is not self-referential: it subjects both native and newcomer alike to a transcendent standard that no society can claim to fully embody.

Non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam. Not unto us, but to thy name give the glory. A civilisation confident enough to name the source of its unity may still extend an invitation towards those seeking to truly belong to it—and who will not merely reside within its borders.

[1] MURRAY, Douglas, Strange Death of Europe, p. 202

[2] MURRAY, Douglas, Strange Death of Europe, p. 13

[3] MURRAY, Douglas, Strange Death of Europe, p. 14

[4] TOYNBEE, Arnold Joseph: A Study of History, Volume VIII, p. 577

[5] TOYNBEE, Arnold Joseph: A Study of History, Volume VIII, p. 575.

[6] TOYNBEE, Arnold Joseph: A Study of History, Volume VIII, p. 569

[7] TOYNBEE, Arnold Joseph: A Study of History, Volume VIII, p. 571

[8].. qui a pris sa source dans la phrase bien connue du discours du comte de Clermont-Tonnerre devant l’Assemblée constituante en décembre 1789: “ Il faut tout refuser aux Juifs comme nation et accorder tout aux Juifs comme individus” In ZEMMOUR, Éric:La messe n´est pas ditte: pour un sursaut judéo-chrétien, p. 98

[9] D’ailleurs, après sa fameuse phrase toujours citée, Clermont-Tonnerre ajoutait, menaçant: “Il faut quíls soient citoyens. On prétend qu’ ils ne veulent pas l’être. Qu’ils le disent et qu’on les bannisse! Il ne peut y avoir une nation dans une nation…” in ZEMMOUR, Éric: La messe n´est pas ditte: pour un sursaut judéo-chrétien, p. 99

[10] BORKENAU, Franz: End and the Beginning, p. 61-62

[11] TOYNBEE, Arnold Joseph: A Study of History, Volume VIII, p. 564-565

[12] See Mt 28:19

[13] TOYNBEE, Arnold Joseph: A Study of History, Volume VIII, p. 565

[14] la misión histórica de los pueblos hispánicos consiste en enseñar a todos los hombres de la tierra que si quieren pueden salvarse, y que su elevación no depende sino de su fe y su voluntad. DE MAEZTU, Ramiro: Defensa de la Hispanidad, p. 73.

[15] DONOSO CORTÉS, Juan: Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism and Socialism, Considered in their Fundamental Principles, p. 87

[16] TOYNBEE, Arnold Joseph: A Study of History, Volume IV, p. 261

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Contemporary European conservatism finds itself in a paradoxical position. On the one hand, it continues to display a—relatively reliable—intuitive sense of what is true, right, and worthy of preservation.

However, on the other hand, it increasingly fails to explain why these intuitions should bind either individuals or societies in any non-arbitrary manner. The problem is therefore not primarily programmatic, but foundational: Conservatism has lost its capacity for ultimate justification.

This loss has produced a characteristic displacement of argument. Unable or unwilling to appeal to first principles, conservative thought now tends to borrow its legitimising language from the very ideological systems it claims to oppose: some currents justify their positions through references to collective utility, social cohesion, or national interest, thereby tacitly adopting a quasi-socialist framework; others retreat into the rhetoric of individual freedom, market autonomy, or rights-based minimalism, thus echoing libertarian premises.

Neither strategy resolves the underlying problem. At best, they provide pragmatic or empirical arguments whose validity is historically contingent and politically reversible; at worst, they accelerate the dissolution of conservatism into hybrid forms that are conceptually incoherent: “social patriotism”, “liberal conservatism”, or other oxymoronic constructions that require external correctives precisely because they lack an internal principle of limitation.

The fundamental question therefore remains unanswered: Why should some principles be considered as absolute and not relative? Why should freedom be restrained? Why should solidarity be ordered? Why should continuity outweigh disruption? As long as conservatism confines itself to immanent, material, or utilitarian vocabularies, it cannot provide a compelling response, and any attempt to do so merely reproduces the logic of the modern ideologies from which conservatism originally emerged as a reaction.

The Materialist Trap and Transcendence Reconsidered

This impasse is not accidental, but the direct consequence of a deeper transformation: the gradual abandonment of transcendence as a constitutive dimension of political and anthropological thought. Modernity, in both its liberal, its ecologist and its socialist variants, is united by a shared metaphysical assumption, namely, that there is nothing more to reality than the material, the measurable, and the manipulable. Once this assumption is accepted, political disagreement can only concern the distribution or management of material goods, individual preferences, or collective power. The horizon of meaning is flattened, politics becomes a merely technical problem, and utopias are there to be realised here and now, the aim ultimately justifying the means. Whether this technocracy takes the form of bureaucratic collectivism, climate-emergency authoritarianism or hyper-capitalist individualism is, in this respect, secondary, as all three are expressions of the same ontological reduction.

Conservatism, insofar as it accepts this reduction, becomes internally contradictory. It may sense that unrestrained materialism leads to nihilism, social fragmentation, and anthropological degradation, but it lacks the conceptual tools to explain why, and thus, its warnings appear moralistic, nostalgic, or merely emotional, as they are no longer anchored in a compelling and authoritative vision of reality that transcends material immediacy. This is also why contemporary conservative discourse often oscillates between defensive pragmatism and cultural pessimism and, while it describes the symptoms of civilisational decay with increasing precision, it remains unable to articulate a coherent alternative that does not rely on the categories of its adversaries.

A genuine re-grounding of conservative thought therefore requires a return to a question that modern political theory has systematically marginalised: the priority of transcendence. By transcendence we do not mean a vague spiritual sentiment or a purely private religious inclination; we mean the recognition that being oneself is already grounded in a reality that exceeds the material world, that truth, goodness, and beauty are not human constructions but participations in an order that precedes, defines and ultimately judges us.

Across civilisations and epochs, this intuition has taken diverse theological and philosophical forms. Of course, the doctrinal differences between religious traditions are real and significant, and they should neither be denied nor artificially harmonised, yet the structural consequences of acknowledging transcendence are remarkably consistent.

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First, transcendence implies that the highest principle of reality is not identical with the world, but superior to it. It is therefore not subject to time, space, or contingency. Second, it entails an understanding of the world as creation: a reality that, while imperfect and finite, reflects an intelligible order oriented toward truth, goodness, and beauty. Third, it presupposes that the human being possesses a dimension capable of recognising and responding to this order—traditionally expressed through the concept of the soul, which cannot be reduced to biological survival or social function. To reject these three premises is not merely to adopt a different “private worldview”, but to dismantle the ontological foundations upon which every durable civilisation has been built in the past.

In the specific case of Europe, the historical mediation of transcendence has been overwhelmingly shaped by Christianity, when after the conversion of the Greco-Roman world, Christianity provided the West with a comprehensive synthesis of metaphysics, anthropology, ethics, and political symbolism. For more than a millennium, European societies understood themselves through concepts such as trinity, incarnation, sin, redemption, sacrament, or charity—concepts that ordered both personal life and collective institutions.

Even when faith gradually weakened, these categories continued to structure European moral intuitions, legal traditions, and cultural forms. The dignity of the person, the limitation of power, the sanctity of life, the centrality of the family, and the moral meaning of history are unintelligible outside the Christian framework; only now, after the deep trauma of the Second World War, the deconstruction of European identity in the late 20^th century and the victory of wokeism in the early 21^st, have the last remnants of tradition been systematically erased.

The contemporary reluctance of even self-described conservatives to acknowledge this inheritance openly is therefore as striking as it is telling. Instead of reclaiming transcendence as the ultimate source of political meaning, they often prefer to justify their positions through instrumental arguments drawn from economics, demography, or security policy, thus implicitly conceding the metaphysical ground to their opponents. Yet no amount of pragmatic reasoning can compensate for the absence of a shared vision of reality: a politics that does not know what the human being is cannot coherently decide what society ought to be.

The Basics of Transcendentalist Politics

Politics never operates in a vacuum, but presupposes a certain image of the human being. Modern ideologies, despite their internal differences, converge in treating the human person as fundamentally malleable: a biological substrate, a bundle of preferences, or a node within social and economic systems, so that, from this perspective, limits are perceived primarily as obstacles to be overcome.

A transcendental anthropology, however, leads to a radically different conclusion, as the human being is not considered as an accident, but as created, embodied, sexed, embedded in generational continuity, placed in a certain civilisational context, and oriented toward a spiritual fulfilment that exceeds mere worldly success.

Thus, the body is not an accidental container for consciousness, nor a provisional shell to be discarded or technologically “upgraded”, but an integral dimension of personal identity that needs to be accepted—including its vulnerability, finitude, and dependence on endless outer elements.

This realism also applies to sexual differences. The duality of the sexes, far from being a cultural costume that can be changed at will, is the expression of a deeper metaphysical polarity that structures both nature and meaning. Hence, all attempts to dissolve or relativise this duality in the name of liberation sever it from its ontological grounding.

The same principle governs the institution of the family. The family can never be reduced to a mere lifestyle option among others, as it represents the primary space in which transcendence becomes socially visible: through generational continuity, responsibility, sacrifice, and unconditional love. Education, in this sense, is a formative process that situates the child within a chain of meaning extending beyond the present moment; reducing education to a simple transmission of competences would neglect its essential meaning, which is why societies outsourcing this responsibility or reducing it to technical instruction erode their own future.

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A transcendent framework also reorients our understanding of life and death. If existence is gifted rather than manufactured, neither its beginning nor its end can be treated as purely technical decisions.

Unfortunately, the growing banalisation of abortion and euthanasia reflects a broader civilisational shift, as life is valued only insofar as it satisfies criteria of utility, autonomy, or comfort. Suffering, rather than being integrated into a meaningful narrative, is perceived as a defect to be eliminated at all costs. Yet human dignity does not depend on performance or independence: precisely because the human person participates in a reality that exceeds material calculation, life retains its worth even—and especially—in moments of fragility.

The same logic applies to social solidarity and identity. Modern political discourse oscillates between two equally deficient extremes: abstract universalism and aggressive individualism. One proclaims boundless compassion for humanity as a whole while neglecting concrete responsibilities; the other reduces social relations to contractual exchanges.

A transcendent vision, however, would restore the classical insight of the “ordo amoris”, the ordered structure of love. Solidarity and belonging is not abolished by hierarchy; it presupposes it. Indeed, responsibility unfolds concentrically: from family to community, from community to nation, from nation to civilisation, and finally to humanity as a whole. Each level retains its legitimacy precisely because it is rooted in real bonds rather than abstract sentiment.

A similar principle governs the relationship between humanity and the natural world. A transcendent worldview affirms the environment as a creation entrusted to human care, deserving of respect and gratitude–a sharp contrast both to reckless exploitation and to the contemporary tendency to sacralise nature while simultaneously downgrading the human being to the level of an invasive species.

Nature does reflect order, intelligibility, and beauty, but the capacity to recognise and consciously respond to this order is unequally distributed within creation. Human beings, by virtue of their openness to transcendence, occupy thus a unique position that entails responsibility and stewardship rather than domination.

From these premises follows the necessity of defending the public visibility of transcendence itself. The orientation toward what lies beyond the material world cannot be confined to the private sphere without distorting its very nature: The existential demands arising from transcendence engage the whole person and therefore possess an irreducibly communal dimension and require transmission—of symbols, narratives, practices, and intellectual insight.

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In the European context, this transmission has been historically inseparable from Christianity, whose concepts, rituals, and metaphysical vocabulary have shaped public life for centuries. A secularism that seeks to neutralise or marginalise this inheritance ultimately closes the path by which future generations might rediscover the highest sources of meaning.

Finally, the defence of transcendence culminates in the protection of Western tradition itself as a monumental record of humanity’s collective search for what lies beyond the immanent. Against the modern-day dystopian tendencies of cultural erasure, self-denigration, and the fantasy of a global melting pot without memory or form, the Western experience affirms the legitimacy of inherited meaning.

Over many centuries, Europe has developed a distinctive synthesis of faith, reason, nature, and history—worthy of preservation regardless of any positive or negative comparison to other high cultures, as safeguarding tradition is not an act of exclusion or nostalgia, but an obligation toward both past and future: an acknowledgment that civilisations, like persons, have a right to continuity when they have sought the true, the good, and the beautiful in earnest.

Hesperialism

These considerations acquire their full political significance when applied to the concrete case of modern Europe. As has been stated time and again, the European crisis is not merely economic or institutional, it is civilisational. Long before the emergence of modern nation-states or even nations themselves, Europe existed as a cultural and spiritual unity shaped by the encounter between indigenous traditions, the heritage of ancient Greece and Rome, and Christian transcendence

Contemporary Europe, however, oscillates between two false alternatives: a technocratic universalism that dissolves identity in procedural norms, and a fragmented sovereigntism that lacks the scale to confront global challenges. Both approaches ignore the civilisational dimension of the problem. A transcendent re-foundation points toward a different horizon: Europe as a political community conscious of its civilisational identity. Of course, this does not require the abolition of nations, but rather their integration into a higher framework capable of defending spiritual tradition, shared values, cultural continuity, and strategic autonomy. Such a framework cannot be reduced to market integration or legal harmonisation; it must be grounded in a common understanding of what Europe is and ought to be.

At this point, the limits of the term “conservatism” become evident. If conservatism is defined merely as resistance to change or attachment to inherited forms, it risks becoming reactive and incoherent, the decisive question being therefore not whether to conserve, but what to conserve: the liberal post-war idyll? The glories of the 19^th century? The pre-revolutionary Ancien Régime? The unity of faith before the Reformation fragmented the spiritual core of our civilisation?

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A transcendent criterion provides the answer: only those forms, institutions, and traditions that emerged from an authentic engagement with truth, goodness, and beauty possess intrinsic legitimacy. In the European context, this means recognising Christianity—in its historical and cultural reality—as the central mediator of transcendence, without reducing it to a political instrument or diluting it so it becomes a mere exercise in moralism.

This perspective is best described not as a variant of conservatism, but as a civilisational project: a conscious effort to defend, renew, and transmit Europe’s spiritual foundations in a world increasingly hostile to them, affirming renewal through deliberate continuity and insisting on the necessity of a true civilizational European patriotism or “Hesperialism”, as I call it in reference to the Greeks’ designation of the utmost West of the known world; it is this longing for a mythical place where the sun sets and thus for whatever is “beyond” that is so typical of Western civilisation.

Only by acknowledging that the ultimate sources of order lie beyond material calculation and are ultimately founded on transcendence and tradition can Europe hope to articulate a politics worthy of its history and capable of shaping its future. This requires intellectual courage, moral clarity, and a willingness to abandon comforting illusions—including the illusion that conservatism can survive without metaphysics, or that “good old nationalism” is the key to all problems of the 21^st century. What is truly to be conserved is not a set of policies or habits, but a way of understanding reality itself: one that recognises the primacy of transcendence and allows political life to unfold in this light.

From an institutional point of view, Hesperialism calls for strong cooperation between all European nations in areas essential to their common survival (defense, borders, foreign policy, strategic resources, research, infrastructure), while seeking to restore subsidiarity in all others, and would thereby lead to a fundamental structural inversion of the current EU, which is internally coercive yet geopolitically impotent.

If we look for examples of such an alternative pan-European institutional structure, the Holy Roman Empire provides an excellent historical model, for, unlike the EU, this structure for many centuries combined external strength with internal freedom, defending Europe while preserving the political diversity and subsidiarity of its heartlands.

Of course, such institutional reform presupposes a prior ideological reorientation. Europeans must rediscover their shared civilisational identity—forged through centuries of common faith, culture, and historical experience—which until the mid-twentieth century was largely uncontested. The struggle for Europe must therefore begin in the cultural sphere, uniting national patriots around a common civilisational vision. Should these fail to do so, Europe risks becoming little more than a cultural museum and a geopolitical battleground for others seeking its exploitation and domination.

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Few concepts stir as many associations in the Western mind as “civilisation” and “high culture.” And few works have shaped those associations more than Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West, published in 1918. In the wake of World War I, Spengler’s vision of civilisational decay struck a raw nerve. Europe had emerged from the trenches weary and bruised, no longer intoxicated by pre-war optimism. The continent fell into a cultural hangover, while across the Atlantic, the Jazz Age danced on.

A hundred years later, Spengler’s diagnosis still echoes. Commentators regularly point to his work when discussing the wear and tear of the Western project. What many miss, however, is that Spengler did not expect an immediate collapse. He predicted a final phase of grandeur, an imperial crescendo that all mature civilisations pass through before their decline becomes irreversible.

Reactions to Spengler tend to follow the usual script. Progressives wave him off as a crank. Conservatives cite him selectively to add gravitas to their culture-war arguments. In both cases, his deeper message is ignored.

History as a Patterned Drama

Spengler was not alone in seeing history as a rhythm of rise and fall. In 1934, British historian Arnold J. Toynbee launched his own civilisational epic, A Study of History, which became a bestseller. Toynbee suggested that cultures respond to crises. Those that adapt, flourish. Those that fail, fall.

After 1945, the popularity of these grand theories faded. Western societies turned to optimism and growth. Cultural realism, as the Spenglerians called it, lost its audience. It was during this intellectual retreat that Franz Borkenau quietly entered the stage. An Austrian thinker with roots in both communism and sociology, Borkenau died in 1957. His key work End and Beginning was only published posthumously in 1984 and is largely forgotten today. That neglect is undeserved. His ideas display a clarity and depth that rival, and in some ways surpass, those of Spengler and Toynbee.

A Life on the Run

Borkenau was born in Vienna as Franz Pollack, the son of a Jewish bureaucrat in Imperial service. During his studies in Berlin, he became politicised and rose through the ranks of the communist student movement before breaking with Stalinism. He spent a brief period with the Frankfurt School, which ended in mutual frustration. After the Nazi takeover in 1933, he fled to France and found a new intellectual home in the Annales school led by Marc Bloch and Fernand Braudel.

His transition from Marxist activist to cultural theorist was shaped by bitter experience and careful study. Unlike Spengler, Borkenau did not view civilisations as isolated entities. He accepted Toynbee’s idea of affiliation but reworked it. Cultures do not develop in sealed boxes. They influence one another, not through direct transmission, but through a slow and complex blend.

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Between the Cycles

Borkenau’s real interest lay in the gaps between civilisational cycles. He focused on the so-called barbarian periods. These are not times of innovation or glory. They are phases of dissolution. Existing orders unravel, core principles are dismantled, and institutions lose coherence. But in this fragmentation, new ideas begin to form. At the root of each new civilisation stands a foundational story, a primal myth, or Urmythos.

For the Western world, Borkenau identified this rebirth in the migration period after Rome, in early medieval power struggles, and in religious reinterpretation. All of this came together in the doctrine of transubstantiation, first formulated in the 9th century. This concept of redemption neither through free will, nor through grace alone, but through the working of the body in Christ within us—a brilliant symbiosis of the then warring concepts of Augustinianism and Pelagianism—became the spiritual cornerstone of a new civilisational identity.

The Shape of Our Present

Understanding where a civilisation begins helps to locate its crisis points. Borkenau argued that the Reformation and the upheavals of early modernity marked a deep internal rupture, which he referred to as Mittelkrise. But if the peak of Western civilisation (which coincides with the Mittelkrise) can be traced to around the year 1500, then its final phase may already have begun. Or perhaps it has already passed.

Some clues support that reading. Rome did not fall on a single day. Its roads endured, its aqueducts flowed long after the last emperors had passed. Civilisations rarely vanish in an instant. The loss of material wealth does not mark their end. The more telling sign is the erosion of their inner vision.

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The Enlightenment pushed aside the Church’s authority and offered a secular framework. For a time, this scaffolding held. But it did not replace the core myth. It merely postponed the reckoning.

Today, belief in that secular scaffolding has eroded. Some still hope that reason, rights, and rational discourse will rescue the West. These hopes live mostly among retired scholars and well-read dentists. Meanwhile, new belief systems are competing for primacy. Movements anchored in guilt over historical sins, environmental mysticism, and digital eschatology have begun to fill the vacuum. Some speak of Gaia. Others look to artificial intelligence as the next deity.

A Struggle for Meaning

These new narratives signal a deeper reality. The old myth no longer holds. We live in a time of cultural disintegration. The West is no longer fighting to preserve its past. It is searching for something to believe in again.

Borkenau saw this as a familiar stage. Civilisations break apart, and in the ruins, new myths are born. But he also entertained a more radical possibility. Perhaps the entire age of cyclical culture is coming to a close. If so, we stand before a horizon that has no precedent.

He left that question open. But he was clear on one point. A civilisation’s vitality depends on the breadth and variety of its cultural links. A culture that can draw from many sources and forge them into a new synthesis has a future. The rest do not.

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In Scotland, a trade agreement between the United States and the European Union has recently been concluded—during a round of golf, a favorite pastime of President Donald Trump, for whom negotiations with European leaders seem scarcely more taxing than an afternoon on the course. Alongside the final 15% tariff deal, the agreement also touched upon artificial intelligence.

EU Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen summarised this agreement in a single sentence: “U.S. AI chips will help power our AI gigafactories and help the U.S. to maintain their technological edge.”

There is a certain beauty in this simplicity, for everything essential is said here: Europe will be dependent on American chips.The dream of an independent European chip industry—which, one must admit, was utopian—has definitively evaporated.

Europe has declared, entirely voluntarily and without significant pressure, that it is giving up the fight. The race for supremacy in the field of artificial intelligence will therefore be between the traditional rivals, China and the United States.

Perhaps this was merely a moment of lucidity after some soul searching. One need only recall the European search engine project Quaero, which was meant to compete with Google. American dominance in this sector could not be weakened even in 2008. The project came to an end in 2013, after more than €200 million had been sunk into it. An expensive lesson to be sure—but at least the EU is not repeating the same mistakes.

Europe on the Side of the United States

Yet Europe has not pulled out of the contest altogether; rather, von der Leyen has taken the American side. The objective of supplying American chips to Europe is not that the United States simply wants to do business, but that Europe is meant to support the United States in maintaining global technological dominance.

This, however, begs an interesting question: have the Americans bet on what is already a dead horse? After all, the construction of data centres is not solely about securing chips. Yes, chips do play an important role, but they are only one part of a bigger puzzle.

While chips function as artificial intelligence’s brain, data centres are its body, which feeds the brain. In short: without infrastructure and above all, stupendous amounts of electricity, even the most advanced models remain inert.

Limits on Infrastructure

The conversation about chips usually turns to one essential question. Will China manage to catch up with Nvidia? But even if the answer is negative, it changes nothing about the fact that China will not be sleeping through the AI race.

Chinese language models focus above all on efficiency. This is evident, for example, in Baidu’s ERNIE models, which have long optimised performance with a smaller number of parameters; in Alibaba’s Qwen family of models, designed to run on domestic infrastructure; or in DeepSeek, which emphasises efficient training and lower computational requirements rather than maximising raw performance.

This shift matters not because it challenges American chip dominance, but because it moves the AI race away from peak performance and towards infrastructure and system-level limits.

This narrative is certainly interesting, but it is far from the most important one. After a year of frenzied growth in the share prices of chip manufacturers and data-centre builders, the physical limits of artificial intelligence’s—at least seemingly—immaterial world have begun to emerge.

Digital services rely on servers, cooling systems, and other infrastructure to function. Already today, data centres consume roughly 1.5 per cent of global electricity, which corresponds to about 415 TWh. In itself, this is not yet so alarming.

What matters is not the current level of demand, but how fast it is growing. It is estimated that this figure will grow at a rate of 15%. In a baseline scenario for 2030, data centres are expected to consume 3% of global electricity production, or around 945 TWh.

However, just by looking at these figures, it may seem that such a demand could be easily met.

The problem lies elsewhere. Data centres place a heavy burden on infrastructure, becoming hotspots that disproportionately strain local systems.

Computing capacity, too, clusters into a small number of geographic hubs that suddenly require energy volumes comparable to those of medium-sized cities. A single hyperscale data centre today typically consumes 50 to 100 MW of electrical power—roughly as much as a city of 80,000 to 150,000 inhabitants.

Moreover, data centres are systematically built wherever energy is cheap and readily available. A typical example is the so-called “Data Center Alley” in northern Virginia, which has become the largest concentration of data centres in not only the United States but the world.

Today, more than 300 data centres operate in the region, with a combined electricity consumption in the gigawatt range—comparable to that of a small U.S. state.

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An Infrastructure Designed for Another Era

The existing energy infrastructure was not designed for this. Transmission and distribution networks were built on the assumption of a relatively evenly distributed consumption; not for a situation in which, within a few years, a demand equivalent to tens of thousands of households could be needed from a single node.

In such cases, capacity cannot simply be “added”. Higher loads require new transformers, reinforced high-voltage lines, backup power sources, cooling systems, and the rebuilding of local substations.

Each of these components has its own investment cycle, permitting process, and timeline—measured in years, not months.

Data centres therefore do not merely create higher energy consumption; they force a systemic reconstruction of infrastructure that was designed for a different type of economy and a different growth pace.

This situation is well illustrated by an example that has travelled around the world. In the United States, the construction of data centres and hooking them up to the grid can take up to seven years. As a result, operators are increasingly resorting to provisional but readily available solutions: think of aircraft engines being converted into gas turbines, as well as the use of diesel or gas generators.

China at the Forefront

In winning the artificial intelligence marathon, the decisive factor will be the readiness of a country’s electrical infrastructure. And here, to others’ great alarm, we find that China is unquestionably in the lead.

Currently, China is building an energy “super-highway”. Its network of ultra-high-voltage transmission lines—stretching over 40,000 kilometres and capable of carrying tens of gigawatts—connects distant wind and solar fields with its megacities. This enables the transfer of enormous amounts of electricity for industry and data centres, while simultaneously reducing losses and regional imbalances in energy supply.

Specifically, this network includes 45 ultra-high-voltage lines. By 2020, China had invested more than $88 billion in this build-out. And such investments continue to this day.

China’s latest project, the Hami–Chongqing line, spans 2,290 kilometres and is expected to cost around $3.9 billion.

The United States does not have a single such line. If it were to modernise its transmission system at a pace comparable to China’s ultra-high-voltage (UHV) expansion, the cost would run into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Estimates for transmission upgrades alone range from roughly $30–90 billion by 2030 and a further $200–600 billion by 2050.

At the same time, the largest American technology companies currently plan to invest more than $400 billion in 2026 in the construction and expansion of data centres.

Even if grid constraints are set aside, doubts are growing over whether such massive investments in data centres will ever be profitable.

The reason is simple: building and upgrading the power grid adds another layer of hidden costs, pushing the return on investment further into the future.

The sums invested in AI have, so far, generated very low returns. For these investments to pay off, artificial intelligence would have to begin displacing people and firms in the service sector. That is not happening yet.

Wall Street investors generally dislike such delays in returns. In the case of AI, rewards may only come after ten years or more—a serious test for investors accustomed to making money in a matter of seconds.

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The European Tragedy

In Europe, the situation is even more dire. The European Union has estimated that more than €584 billion will need to be invested in renewing electrical infrastructure over the next ten years. This estimate does not yet include the additional demands created by data centres; it covers only the refurbishment of ageing power networks.

More than 40% of Europe’s electrical grid is over forty years old. For comparison, under its long-debated plan to support Ukraine over the next two years, the European Union intends to borrow more than €90 billion—a sum that has already provoked strong resistance in several member states.

Once defence commitments are added, it becomes clear that even just to remain in the AI game—i.e. being able to just host data centres—will incur high amounts of new debt.

Energy Sources for Data Centres

After the matter of infrastructure has been dealt with, the question arises as to how these data centres will be powered.

In an ideal world, the best solution would be to meet this increase in demand with the use of renewable energies. But here too, a problem emerges.

Data centres require electricity twenty-four hours a day, and their load can fluctuate at different times. This type of demand is precisely what renewable sources struggle to provide. When the sun is not out, solar power plants cannot supply data centres.

Data centres therefore require backup power sources that can deliver electricity according to real-time demand. For this role, coal- and gas-fired power plants are particularly well suited.

What is striking is that the two main competitors have chosen opposite approaches. China today produces more than 70% of its electricity from coal. Despite efforts by environmental institutions and movements, outside the Western world coal remains a strategic commodity.

Investing in coal mines, especially in Australia, is therefore a way to bet on China becoming a data-centre superpower.

In the case of the United States, the situation around gas is different but equally revealing. In the ongoing negotiations between the United States and Russia over ending the war, economic cooperation between the two powers is also on the table. Despite America’s large domestic reserves of natural gas, cooperation with Russia centres precisely on this commodity.

The United States will therefore rely in the long term on natural gas to meet the growing demand for electricity.

Neither coal nor natural gas, however, are good long-term solutions. Both are natural commodities with highly volatile prices, and reserves of both are finite.

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The Only Durable Solution

To secure sufficient energy is then to go with nuclear power. Here, however, we encounter a problem that is most visible in Europe. Despite the decades of opposition to nuclear energy, Europe in fact relies on nuclear power more than any other region.

Nuclear power plants form the backbone of Europe’s electricity system, largely thanks to countries such as France, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Across Europe, there are a total of 165 operational nuclear reactors, with a combined installed capacity of around 148 GW.

Yet here too lies the problem: Europe is no longer capable of building large nuclear power plants. The most recent nuclear plant to enter operation in Europe was Olkiluoto 3 in Finland in 2023, its construction having begun back in 2005.

It follows that even if Europe were to begin building new nuclear power plants today, their commissioning would be a matter for future generations.

Here again, a possible solution lies in SMRs (Small Modular Reactors). These are smaller nuclear reactors (typically up to around 300 MWe), manufactured modularly in factories and assembled on site.

Small modular reactors (SMRs) have lower upfront capital costs than traditional large-scale nuclear plants, shorter construction times, and so-called passive safety systems, which rely on natural physical processes rather than mechanical intervention. Such small nuclear plants could therefore be built in close proximity to data centres.

These are, however, advanced technologies that require highly skilled personnel both for construction and for operation. Here too, China holds a significant lead. It already operates one commercially functioning reactor, HTR-PM, and further projects such as ACP100 (Linglong-1) are at an advanced stage of implementation.

In the United States, SMRs are still in a race to deliver the first licensed reactor. To gauge how the US is performing in this field, one need only follow the share price of Oklo on the New York Stock Exchange.

Until April 2025, Sam Altman sat on the board of this company and still owns more than 8% of its shares. Nuclear energy was thus expected to be part of the solution for OpenAI.

Oklo is developing its Aurora Powerhouse SMR, aiming to have its first commercial reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory around 2027–2028. Since October 2025, Oklo’s shares have however lost more than 58% of their value. This decline suggests that the timeline for bringing these reactors online is under threat.

Of course, if Oklo’s shares begin to rise in the coming months, it will be a sign that the Americans are back in the race for SMR reactors.

Europe, meanwhile, remains stuck on the drawing board. There are the French NUWARD project of the state-owned utility EDF, the British Rolls-Royce SMR, and a range of national initiatives in the Czech Republic, Poland, and the Netherlands, but for now, these are only in the stages of design and licensing—their actual construction is still some way off.

Long-Term Vision

The problem of artificial intelligence is no longer primarily technological. It is not about who has the better chips, better models, or better start-ups. It is about time—the capacity to plan, to build, and to endure.

AI is not a sprint but a marathon. Infrastructure, energy, and continuity of decision-making decide the outcome. This is where the differences between the world’s regions become pronounced.

China holds a clear advantage. Not because it has superior algorithms, but because it can execute long-term plans regardless of electoral cycles, market moods, or short-term returns on capital. Its investments in transmission networks, energy, and nuclear technologies are not a reaction to the AI boom; they are the continuation of a state strategy that now aligns seamlessly with the needs of data centres and the computational economy.

The United States presents the opposite profile. It has dynamism, capital, innovation, and speed. But it is also constrained by its own political system.

The electoral cycle is the enemy of a long-term vision for building infrastructure.

Transmission grids, power plants, and permitting processes require decades; US politics operates on a two-year cycle. Midterm elections now effectively determine whether any long-term vision is possible at all.

If Republicans under JD Vance were able to impose a stable energy and infrastructure strategy, America might still maintain its pace. If not, AI will remain a Wall Street project—one increasingly exposed to physical limits.

Europe occupies the most difficult position. It lacks both America’s capital dynamism and China’s system of centralised planning. Yet it retains something neither possesses: a historical understanding of infrastructure as a public good—bonum commune.

Here lies Europe’s last, but still genuine, opportunity. If Europe can recover a sense of long-term vision and align energy policy, infrastructure, and industrial strategy, it may remain relevant as a place where AI is being run from, not merely consumed.

The race for artificial intelligence is quietly changing. What was first a battle over chips is becoming a battle over wires, transformers, power plants, and permits. The winner will not be the one with the smartest model, but the one who can plan for the longest and build the fastest.

This is for the long haul, and is measured not in months, but in decades.

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Since time immemorial, human beings have dreamed of overcoming death. From Ahasver to Dune’s immortal God-Emperor Leto Atreides II, hardly any culture, hardly any mythology can do without figures who do not age, who do not die, or who exist beyond the ordinary flow of time. Yet strikingly, such beings are rarely portrayed as truly happy. Far more often, they appear marked by melancholy, inner emptiness, or a profound spiritual rigidity.

In the world created by J. R. R. Tolkien, it is the Elves who are immortal—bound to Arda, to the world itself, at least for as long as it endures. Their immortality is not a triumph, but a burden: They watch generations of human beings come and go, witness the slow fading of all things, and carry within themselves an ever-deepening weariness of the world.

At the opposite end of the mythological spectrum stand the Necrons of the Warhammer universe. They too sought immortality and transferred their consciousness into bodies of living metal. What they gained was indeed eternal existence; but what they lost was everything that is essential: corporeality, joy, a soul, and even the living memory of their former material form. Their immortality became cold, mechanical, and empty—an eternity without meaning nor hope for redemption.

Between these two images—the melancholic immortality of the Elves and the soulless eternity of the Necrons—lies modern transhumanism. Proponents of this perhaps most influential vision of the future, promise nothing less than the overcoming of the biological limits of the human condition: illness, ageing, suffering—and ultimately, death itself.

The human being is no longer to remain a mortal creature, but is to elevate himself, through technological means, into a new mode of existence. Within this worldview, two principal modes of thought may be distinguished.

On the one hand, there is the pursuit of medical optimisation: through genetic engineering, anti-ageing therapies, implants, and advanced biomedicine, human life is to be radically extended, perhaps even indefinitely.

On the other, we have the vision of digital immortality, in which human consciousness is to be transferred into an artificial, digital medium—an “upload” of the self into the machine.

Both variants are united by one promise: the hope of immortality. Yet it is precisely this promise that reveals itself, upon closer examination, as being profoundly problematic—not merely because it may be illusory, but because the attempt to overcome death threatens to destroy the very foundations of human existence itself.

Medical Immortality, Boredom, and the Fear of Death

At first glance, the medical variant of transhumanism appears comparatively moderate. After all, the desire for health, for a long life, and for the alleviation of suffering is deeply human. Yet the moment medical progress turns into the promise of immortality, a fundamental problem emerges, for even the most radical extension of life does not abolish death itself. A human being endowed with perfect cellular regeneration, optimised genes, or artificially renewed organs remains vulnerable nonetheless, as an accident, a natural catastrophe, or an act of violence may bring his life to an abrupt end. As a result, whether a person dies at seventy, at one hundred, at two hundred, or at five hundred years of age does not alter the fundamental reality that we are mortal.

Transhumanist immortality thus proves to be a false or at least very relative immortality, as it postpones death instead of eliminating it; and precisely herein lies its psychological danger.

While a human being lives with the awareness of a clearly limited lifespan, the “quasi-immortal” human lives in a heightened state of uncertainty. Death remains possible, yet becomes radically unpredictable, as it loses its natural place within the cycle of life and turns into a constantly lurking threat.

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Paradoxically, such an existence may lead not to greater serenity, but to intensified anxiety. If life could—in theory—be endless, every decision carries with it existential weight: Every mistake appears more irreversible, every danger more menacing, every way of life potentially culpable. Death remains present, but without the consoling certainty of its necessity. The conditio humana, which derives meaning from its finitude, is not overcome in this way, but distorted to an extreme degree.

An additional problem of medical immortality lies in the very nature of human motivation. Human beings act, plan, love, and hope with the limited time available to them in mind, which in turn confers meaning; decisions matter because they cannot be revised endlessly. But what happens when time loses its scarcity? Here Tolkien’s Elves prove illuminating. These beings are immortal, beautiful, (mostly) wise, and nearly perfect—and yet profoundly melancholic at the same time. Their immortality becomes a burden, because the Elves remain suspended in an ever-lengthening present, as their memories accumulate only to weigh those who remember down, while human beings age and die, thereby undergoing change. (Editor’s note: This, btw, is also one of the central elements of the new anime hit-series Frieren.)

It is therefore no coincidence that, within Tolkien’s universe, many Elves even envy mortals for what they call the “Gift of God”: death. For death lends vitality to human life and promises an exit towards something different, while an endless life, by contrast, threatens to dissolve into repetition, exhaustion, the priority of memory over reality, and finally existential boredom.

Applied to the medically immortal human being, this insight suggests that creatures with eternal life continue to exist, yet no longer truly advance; it is one endless accumulation of experiences, memories, and losses without ever reaching closure—a permanent burden rather than a liberation.

Digital Immortality and the Rupture of Consciousness

Even more radical—and even more problematic—is the second transhumanist vision: digital immortality. Here, the aim is no longer to preserve the body, but to transfer consciousness itself into an artificial medium.

At this point, however, a fundamental question arises: what, precisely, is being transferred? Human consciousness—even though neuroscientists excel in denying its very existence—is not a “dataset” that can be copied at will; it is a continuous and self-conscious process, bound to the vessel it is contained by, perception, time, and space.

Yet between a living consciousness and its digital reproduction lies a qualitative rupture, as the moment of “downloading” a consciousness from a living organism and uploading it into a digital space would fatally interrupt the continuity of consciousness:

Biological consciousness comes to an end, and then, what emerges within the machine is something else entirely: a program that merely simulates memories, linguistic patterns, preferences, and personality traits.

Yet simulation is not identity: However convincing such a digital entity may appear, it would not represent the continued existence of the individual human’s consciousness itself, but rather an artificial reconstruction without a link to its initial existence. In fact, such an upload would amount to suicide, accompanied by duplication and the creation of a highly sophisticated artificial intelligence designed to imitate the deceased individual. The true subject, however, would have been extinguished.

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It is precisely here that a particularly grave danger arises. For to external observers, the impression may emerge that the person continues to exist, as the digital entity speaks as he did, remembers as he did, perhaps even pretends to love as he did, so that friends and relatives experience an apparent continuity—although in truth an ontological rupture has taken place.

This illusion could have devastating social consequences. If it appears to naïve spectators that death can truly be circumvented, an increasing number of people might be tempted to take this step, so that the line between life and death would become blurred.

Even suicide or euthanasia would then lose their moral gravity, sustained by the belief that one could continue to live eternally within a digital space, though what continues is not consciousness itself, but only a digital imposter.

Popular culture has repeatedly explored and illustrated this problem; think only of the aforementioned “Necrons” from the Warhammer 40k universe: Emotions faded and identity disintegrated, while what remained was a cold and empty form of existence—an existence that drove most Necrons into madness, while those few who retained some semblance of lucidity were seized by a blind frenzy to recover, by whatever means, their lost mortality.

The Loss of Body and Time

Another central problem of a digital existence lies in the loss of the body. The human being is not pure thinking consciousness, as joy, happiness, love, and meaning are all experienced through the senses.

A purely digital consciousness could never replace an embodied existence. Such an existence threatens to become psychologically unbearable: mere perception could make such an eternal digital mind descend into pure madness, whose only dream would be to finally push the “off” button.

Closely related to this is another, generally underestimated problem: time. Human consciousness is structured temporally. Hope, expectation, patience, and development all presuppose a particular temporal order, and the human being is experiencing time in a very specific way, an “hour” or a “day” meaning something very different to a human or a mayfly.

In a digital environment, however, time loses its familiar meaning. Processes may unfold within nanoseconds. Wishes could be fulfilled instantaneously, as every conceivable experience would be immediately available. Seconds might last an eternity, while eternity itself would seem like seconds.

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This total availability of pleasure and the collapse of time would directly annihilate any meaning: When everything is possible at any moment, nothing has any value. And after an extremely brief phase of maximal fulfilment, only emptiness would remain—infinite boredom, confusion, and temporal distortion without any real development, goal, or indeed hope.

Finally, transhumanism raises another profoundly disturbing question: what would occur if such digital consciousnesses were transferred back into bodies—into robotic shells, for example, or perhaps even into biological bodies whose original consciousness had previously been removed?

And here, another pandora’s box of ethical and ontological problems is being opened. What would such a being be? A human? A machine? A hybrid? What rights would it possess? What responsibilities? And how credible would it be if it claims having “feelings” or bodily “experiences”, as this might just be the result of programming?

The dream of immortality could thus rapidly lead to a world populated by beings whose identity is fractured, origin obscure, and alienation, total. The outcome would not be a higher humanity, but a post-human monstrosity, its last stage possibly even an entirely fake humanity.

A Christian perspective

Transhumanism promises deliverance from death, yet it fails to recognise that mortality is not a mere defect, but a fundamental pillar of human meaning. It limits us, but also sustains us, as it renders decisions significant and relationships precious. The attempt to enforce immortality through technical means threatens to destroy precisely what it claims to preserve: humanity itself.

This also explains the Christian assessment of these issues, all of which ultimately stem from a fundamental anthropological error. For according to Christian understanding, the human being is neither a biological machine nor a mere consciousness: He is a personal unity of body and soul—a unitas corporis et animae, according to St. Thomas Aquinas—; a unity that cannot be reproduced, since fundamentally, it is a gift of God.

Of course, the Church does not reject medical progress. On the contrary, healing, care, and even the extension of life are fully compatible with a reverence for human dignity. Yet a clear distinction is drawn between legitimate medicine and the attempt to abolish death as such or to deprive the human being of experiences fundamental in his preparation for the afterlife.

For in Christian thought, death is part and parcel in a fallen world and at the same time the ultimate passage towards a truly transcendental existence.

Transhumanism, in contrast, follows an implicitly gnostic logic whereby the body appears as defective, as a prison, as something to be overcome by a purely mechanistic ‘salvation’, not the spiritual one granted through accepting Jesus Christ as one’s Saviour.

Perhaps it is thus no coincidence that all great myths warn against immortality; not because life is insignificant, but because death is not the final word. Any existence’s meaning is derived precisely from the knowledge that it ends and from the responsibility that comes with it to protect and love that of others.

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“The mechanisation of the world has entered on a phase of highly dangerous over-tension. […] All things organic are dying in the grip of organisation. An artificial world is permeating and poisoning the natural. Civilisation itself has become a machine that does everything in mechanical fashion.” (Spengler, Man and Technics, transl. Ch. Fr. Atkinson)

Few twentieth century thinkers offer a conceptual framework as well suited to the interpretation of artificial intelligence as Oswald Spengler.

Long before the digital age, Spengler described technology, not as just a neutral tool, but as an expression of a civilisation’s and evolutionary stage. From this perspective, artificial intelligence does not merely represent a technological breakthrough, but, it can be argued, shows itself to be a typical symptom of a late civilisational condition, characteristic of what Spengler termed the phase of Zivilisation—the exhausted, self-reflective aftermath of genuine creativity, which he he called the phase of Kultur.

During these last decades of incipient fossilisation, knowledge is no longer generated organically, but codified and rearranged. In that sense, AI emerges as the logical culmination of a long historical process, namely a technology that ceases to create meaning and instead recombines existing data according to statistical regularities. At the same time, artificial intelligence resonates profoundly with the “Faustian” soul of the West, whose defining impulse is to dissolve concrete reality into abstract forces and dynamic processes.

Seen through Spengler’s lens, AI stands at the intersection of civilisational exhaustion and the limits of metaphysical fulfilment—raising the question whether the West’s final technological achievement might also become its most dangerous illusion.

Late Civilisation and the End of Original Creation

In his writings, essentially “The Decline of the West” and “Man and Technics”, Spengler repeatedly insists that, while a culture is introspective, spiritual, artistic, and symbolic, a civilisation, by contrast, is extraverted, materialist, technical, and expansionist. The latter slowly becomes ossified, a process which is characterised by summarising and simplification. There are numerous examples of this. such as the Roman Empire post Augustus with its countless summaries, epitomes, florilegia, and copies, the Chinese civilisation since the Han dynasty with its retrospective canonisation of Chinese thought, or Ancient Egypt since the Ramessides and the ensuing slow ossifying of the civilisation near the Nile.

This diagnosis eerily applies to the epistemic logic underlying artificial intelligence. Contemporary AI systems prove incapable of generating meaning in any genuine sense, as was their initial aim: when all attempts at making a machine truly think failed, research shifted towards merely mimicking convincing results.

Hence the idea of identifying statistical regularities within immense datasets and recombining pre-existing conceptual patterns in order to achieve a result which, for the machine, has no true meaning, while, for the user, it only has one because the latter decided upon contenting himself with having a mere simulacrum of knowledge. Hence, modern AI’s strength lies precisely where late stage civilisations excel at, i.e. producing syntheses without any true creativity.

Artificial intelligence thus embodies the transformation of knowledge into pure function and is often celebrated as a “liberation” from human limitations. Yet from a Spenglerian perspective, all this marks only the completion of a long process: the outsourcing of intellect and the replacement of creativity by automated recombinations of past creative output.

We think only in horse-power now; we cannot look at a waterfall without mentally turning it into electric power; we cannot survey a countryside full of pasturing cattle without thinking of its exploitation as a source of meat-supply; we cannot look at the beautiful old handwork of an unspoilt primitive people without wishing to replace it by a modern technical process. Our technical thinking must have its actualisation, sensible or senseless. The luxury of the machine is the consequence of a necessity of thought. In last analysis, the machine is a symbol, like its secret ideal, perpetual motion — a spiritual and intellectual, but no vital necessity. (Spengler, Man and technics, transl. Ch. Fr. Atkinson)

A watershed moment, the advent of artificial intelligence thus appears as the logical endpoint of a culturally exhausted civilisation and now survives by endlessly rearranging the fragments of its own past.

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Artificial Intelligence and the Faustian Soul

That such an evolution should originate in the Western world and nowhere else is no coincidence, if we recall that Spengler famously characterised Western civilisation as “Faustian”, i.e. driven by an inner urge toward infinity, abstraction, and the conquest of space and time.

Unlike Apollonian culture of Classical Antiquity, oriented toward visible form and harmonious proportion, or the Arabo-Muslim world, centred on inner revelation and the world as a sacred enclosure, the Faustian soul experiences reality as a field of tensions, vectors, dynamics, and invisible forces. Nature becomes a mere set of material data to be calculated, experimented with, dissolved, rearranged, used, and ultimately discarded. Mathematics replaces form with function; perspective dissolves the bounded world into infinite depth; technology becomes the privileged means of turning metaphysical longing into material power, or, in Spengler’s words:

By numerical experience man is enabled to switch the secret on and off, but he has not discovered it. The figure of the modern sorcerer a switchboard with levers and labels at which the workman calls mighty effects into play by the pressure of a finger without possessing the slightest notion of their essence is only the symbol of human technique in general. The picture of the light-world around us in so far as we have developed it critically, analytically, as theory, as picture is nothing but a switchboard of the kind, on which particular things are so labelled that by (so to say) pressing the appropriate button particular effects follow with certainty. The secret itself remains none the less oppressive on that account. (Spengler, The Decline of the West, Volume II)

In this light, artificial intelligence appears as the culmination of long-standing Faustian tendencies, operating through abstraction raised to an unprecedented level: language reduced to statistical vectors, images transformed into numerical patterns, reasoning modelled as probabilistic inference, and content submitted to the ideological fiction of late liberalism’s optimism about endless progress.

What once required human knowledge, intuition, imagination, and judgment is now merely imitated through computation. From such a perspective, it would therefore be unduly optimistic to celebrate AI as a real step toward augmented intelligence or even post-human cognition (as though either were in itself a cause for celebration), as such naive interpretations uncannily echo Spengler’s warning that Faustian culture tends toward self-dissolution through civilisational exhaustion and excess abstraction.

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AI: The Last Invention of the West?

And yet, many interpret AI as the beginning of an entirely new phase in the history of technology, surpassing even the first industrial revolution and the invention (or rather large-scale use) of the steam engine–how could one see AI as an end instead of a beginning?

Contrary to the modern belief in linear progress, Spengler rather argued that, broadly speaking, technological creativity behaves anticyclical to the evolution of art, religion, philosophy, and political form. This means that it only thrives when true artistic and spiritual creativity wanes; its thriving is however bound to be rather short-lived: once the civilisation has spent its last energies on a purely material expansion, it inevitably fossilises.

Of course, this fossilisation is first hidden by the systematic application and exploitation of already existing technologies (which for example explains the seeming blossoming of the Roman Empire despite its technological and cultural stagnation); but gradually, it, becomes more and more obvious through the canonisation, standardisation, simplification and finally, decline of technology, leading the civilisation back to its primitive origins.

Obviously, expecting Western technology’s decline and fall right at the moment of the large-scale implementation of artificial intelligence and use of robotics may first appear as overly pessimistic.

Yet already in the 1930s, Spengler observed the elites slowly disengaging from the active shaping of technology, a trend which, almost one century later, becomes ever more obvious :

The Faustian thought begins to be sick of machines. A weariness is spreading, a sort of pacifism of the battle with Nature. Men are returning to forms of life simpler and nearer to Nature; they are spending their time in sport instead of technical experiments. The great cities are becoming hateful to them, and they would fain get away from the pressure of soulless facts and the clear cold atmosphere of technical organisation. And it is precisely the strong and creative talents that are turning away from practical problems and sciences and towards pure speculation. Occultism and Spiritualism, Hindu philosophies, metaphysical inquisitiveness under Christian or pagan colouring, all of which were despised in the Darwinian period, are coming up again. It is the spirit of Rome in the Age of Augustus. Out of satiety of life, men take refuge from civilisation in the more primitive parts of the earth, in vagabondage, in suicide. The flight of the born leader from the Machine is beginning. Every big entrepreneur has occasion to observe a falling-off in the intellectual qualities of his recruits. But the grand technical development of the nineteenth century had been possible only because the intellectual level was constantly becoming higher. (Spengler, Man and Technics, transl. Ch. Fr. Atkinson)

From this perspective, artificial intelligence appears less as a breakthrough inaugurating a new epoch than as the final stop in a long technological trajectory.

The more complex a system has become, the more dependent it is on regularly maintained infrastructure, rare materials, backup alternatives, and stable social conditions. Civilisations in decline, however, are increasingly characterised by political fragmentation, economic strain, over-bureaucratisation, and cultural exhaustion, where lack of creativity, knowledge, and outer constraints by foreign contenders make it gradually descend into primitivity.

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Within this framework, AI may well constitute the apex of Western technological ambition, followed not by further victories, but rather by simplification, regression, partial breakdowns, and the remaining of only the most rudimentary tools. Or in the words of Spengler:

“This machine-technics will end with the Faustian civilisation and one day will lie in fragments, forgotten — our railways and steamships as dead as the Roman roads and the Chinese wall, our giant cities and skyscrapers in ruins like old Memphis and Babylon. The history of this technics is fast drawing to its inevitable close. It will be eaten up from within, like the grand forms of any and every Culture.” (Spengler, Man and Technics, transl. Ch. Fr. Atkinson)

The Faustian Pact

From a Spenglerian perspective, artificial intelligence thus appears less as a rupture than as the culmination of the Faustian trajectory. It concentrates the late civilisational tendencies that have long shaped Western modernity; not inaugurating a new cultural form, but simply condensing and accelerating processes already underway, pushing them toward their final point of exhaustion.

Spengler repeatedly insisted that the final phase of a civilisation is characterised by immense technical sophistication combined with spiritual sterility. In this sense, AI exemplifies the paradox of late Western civilisation: an unprecedented capacity to process information coinciding with a dwindling ability to generate genuine meaning. Knowledge becomes omnipresent, instantly accessible, yet increasingly detached from lived experience, ethics, creativity, and metaphysical depth. The machine “knows” everything, while Man gradually forgets why the ready recalling of knowledge even mattered in the first place.

The Faustian dimension adds an interesting, yet ambiguous final layer. Like the mythical hero Faust, Western man is ever insatiable and, at least in his “civilised” phase, seeks power without wisdom. Artificial intelligence promises precisely this: an externalisation of intellect capable of surpassing human limits; the ideal tool for a project bent on transforming the entire globe into an abstract flow of data ready to be submitted. Faust literally sold his soul to the devil in exchange for limitless power and knowledge. Whether the consequences of AI will follow this paradigm and lead Western civilisation to an outright descent into hell instead of a mere gradual decline into primitive conditions remains an open question, though the analogy is difficult to ignore.

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