0139 Part four of Diesen’s book covers Russia, resurgent in the spring of neomodernism and the autumn of geoeconomics.

Russia, like any vigorous civilisation, is inclined to gemeinschaft.  However, encounters with the West motivates Russian leaders to prioritize gesellschaft, often to the extreme.  Diesen tells some history.

0140 Here is how I see his story.  It is sloppier than Diesen’s account.  But, it may do.

Russia establishes itself as a land-based power without land-based ships.  So, it’s mostly about horses until the Germans roll in with mechanical vehicles in the 1910s and 1940s.

St. Petersburg is constructed as Russia’s window to the West.

After Napoleon’s failed invasion, Russia is looking pretty good until something odd happens.  Russia tries to take Crimea from the decadent Ottoman Empire, only to find the British declaring war.

0141 Why do the British fight to protect to Ottoman Empire?

Well, it turns out that the Ottoman Empire owes the British banks the pound-equivalent of a decade’s worth of British industrial production.  The war is not about the integrity of the British Empire.  This war is about Russia inadvertently giving the Ottomans an excuse not to pay interest on their enormous debt.

Russia gets its military clock cleaned twice in the 1850s because of debt oppression in Turkey.

0142 (Incidentally, the so-called American “civil war” (1860-1864 AD) is another precocious example of unfettered financial capitalism.  The banks of the North (say, New York) loan Southern plantation owners so much money that repayment is not an option.  So, instead of surrendering their property, the Southern elites sign up their fellow citizens in a campaign to resolve the issue by breaking the Southern states away from the Northern states… er, I mean… the so-called “Union”.)

Historical parallels between America and Russia are unnerving in this regard.

In the mid to late 1800s, gesellschaft is in the air.  America frees the slaves of African descent.  Russia frees the serfs.  America sees the rise of corporate monopolies.  Russia sees the appearance of wealthy middle class farmers.  America sees the west as the new frontier.  Dostoyevski sees the east as Russia’s new frontier.

0143 In America, the Federal Reserve is created in 1913, right before America intervenes in the First Battle Among the Enlightenment Gods.  The Russian Revolution starts in 1918, as the Battle ends.

In the 1960s, during the Third Battle of the Enlightenment Gods, Western civilisation enters the winter of sovereignty and the summer of geoeconomics.

One third of the way into the winter of sovereignty, in 1989, the Soviet Union dissolves and America falls under the spell of Big Government (il)Liberalism.

In America, in 1988, George H. Bush, formerly head of the Central Intelligence Agency is elected president of the USA.  He reverses the Reagan revolution and sets a course for further growth of America’s federal government.

0144 What happens next?

Then, Bill Clinton is elected in 1992 (due to a third party candidate, Ross Perot, and the unpopularity of Bush) and um… here, the story gets foggy.  It is as if there is an information blockade on what happens to Russia during the Yeltsin years. What were Western financial capitalists up to?

Diesen is not really clear on this.  But, I bet the story is incredible, because a veritable nobody, Vladimir Putin, appears out of nowhere and foils… whatever the unfettered financial capitalists are doing.

0145 Well, if the British banks saddled the Ottoman Empire with enough debt that the gemeinschaft in Turkey could never repay, and if the New York banks saddled plantation owners with enough debt that the Southern gemeinschaft had to be called to war, then I imagine that the former Republics of the Soviet Union receive similar advice, from Western “money managers”, about how to manage their sovereign properties.  Surely, Russian leaders could borrow… um… enormous sums… to um… keep the economy going.

0146 When the gesellschaft lend money to the gemeinschaft, or when the gesellschaft take out loans in the name of the gemeinschaft, then the gemeinschaft become slaves to those debts.

What is loaning a person or a sovereign so much money that the loan can never be repaid by that person or the people?

The answer is “immoral”.

0147 Well, after the last two blogs, I have a better appreciation how the winter of sovereignty and the summer of geoeconomics coincide for the West.

Plus, I have taken a step closer to understanding Diesen’s concluding proposition.

The deplorables (and the about-to-be debt-ridden migrants) of the West will see a political spring in Russia even as the West experiences an economic autumn in geoeconomics.

0148 Diesen portrays the new spring for sovereignty as Eurasian neomodernism.

Here is how I associate Diesen’s argument with his Greimas square.

0149 Sovereignty (D) continues as a theme into the next civilizational cycle.

Its manifestation (A) is a new style of pluralism, which Diesen calls “Eurasian neomodernism”.

Perhaps, another alternate label is “neo-modern diversity”.

0150 Recall, for the winter of sovereignty in the West, “diversity” replaces pluralism, even as it negates it.  Pluralism is pragmatic.  People have different views, pluralism accepts this fact and strives to reach compromise.  Diversity inverts pluralism.  People appear different, but they all end up… um… the same.  They all end up compromised.

Compromised?

What if the only acceptable “compromise” coincides with big government providing the appearance of individual autonomy, while maintaining regulatory control?  Then, various proponents of organizational objectives work together in a hydra-headed alliance of gesellschaft factions.  Each institution within the alliance is effectively a religion, because its organizational objective emerges from (and situates) its own righteousness.  Big Government (il)Liberalism is a congregation of secular religions.

0151 Yet, none of these religions are “religious” (meaning, Christian factions).  So, by insisting on a narrow definition of the term, “religion”, the American federal government does not violate the Enlightenment mandate for the separation of church and state.

At the same time, BG(il)L, as a “not religious” religion (B), conspires to repress gemeinschaft (C), whose tradition includes the belief that God creates all things.

America’s current war between gesellschaft and gemeinschaft expresses itself as Judeo-Pagans (B) versus Judeo-Christians (C).

For the USA, one difficulty for the bigilibs (B) is that the Judeo-Christians (C) have guns.

0152 How does Russian neo-modern diversity differ from American bigilib diversity?

Diesen maintains that, given the fact that pluralism is dead and that some people’s “compromise” means “we always win”, an adult is required to supervise.  This adult must be pragmatic.  Plus, this adult must be ruthless in stopping fights before “compromise” is attained.

How can the task of neo-modern gesellschaft (B) be accomplished?

This adult must rely on a philosophical tradition that allows pragmatism.  For Russia, this philosophical tradition is Orthodox Christianity, tempered by the experiences of seven decades of communist rule.   For China, the philosophical tradition is Maoism, now tempered by the experiences of five decades of communist rule and increasingly open to Confucian philosophy.  For Iran, the philosophical tradition belongs to the Shia religion.  In India, the philosophical tradition is Hindu, tempered by decades of independence from British rule, yet celebrating the rule of law that British rule fleetingly imposed.

0153 So, what is the difference between neo-modern diversity (A) and bigilib diversity (A)?

The gesellschaft of bigilib (B) is fundamentally incoherent and inhumane, because the central state implements organizational objectives on the basis of a congregation of “not religious” religious righteousnesses.

The gesellschaft of neomodern diversity (B) is fundamentally custodial, pragmatic and supervising, like a parent that keeps an eye on the children.

0154 The gemeinschaft (C) intuitively sense the difference.

At the end of the summer of American geoeconomics (D), people with careers and migrants (C) are doing fine.  Citizens who work for a living (C) are increasingly slaves to their debts.  The economic system is rigged against them.

In the winter of American sovereignty (D), people who believe in God, Judeo-Christians (C) are under assault by a hydra-headed beast (B), demanding to indoctrinate their children in public schools and to take affirmative action against them according to the labels that the bigilib gesellschaft attach to them.  Bigilibs cannot compromise.  They only “compromise”.

Every word uttered by American Judeo-Pagans rewires vocabulary and cultivates alternate meanings, presences and messages to long-held traditional definitions.  Only the “educated” can keep up with the trends.

0155 Is the difference between bigilib and Diesen’s neomodernist “diversity” (A) subtle?

Regulatory control (B) for BG(il)L diversity (A) aims to eradicate gemeinschaft (C), in order to replace it with novel traditions, concocted by intellectuals.

In contrast, regulatory control (B) for Eurasian neomodernist diversity (A) aims to preserve gemeinschaft (C), not to eradicate the old and replace it with something concocted by intellectuals.  However, Russia, China, Iran and India (and, probably Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Egypt along with southeast Asia and Africa and South and Central America) face a problem.  During the autumn and winter of sovereignty for the West, ideological gesellschaft, in the forms of communism, fascism and ad-hoc brands of (il)liberalism, significantly impact the communities, traditions and sensibilities that premodern gemeinschaft hold dear.  Yet, the flame of tradition is not extinguished.

0156 The first two paragraphs of chapter nine of Diesen’s book sets forth a scenario where an internal proletariat(gemeinschaft) of one civilisation finds common cause with the external rulers (gesellschaft) of a peripheral civilization,because the foreign gesellschaft does not belittle or disempower the gemeinschaft of its own jurisdiction.

0157 Why don’t Americans know what happened in Russia between 1989 and 2000?

Is there a blockade on information?

0158 To an American deplorable in 2023, the fact that Putin has not allowed the hyenas of Western financial capitalism to buy up Russian assets at discount prices and repackage them for sale to institutional investors compares well to the fact that, during the presidencies of George H Bush and Bill Clinton, the jackals of Western financial capitalism bought up factories throughout America and repackaged them to ship the jobs to communist China.  In America, financial speculators left their fellow citizens destitute.  Now, the same deep-pocket speculators purchase time on corporate broadcast media to run ads about their charitable activities.  What hypocrites.

0159 What of the European?

The European yellow-vested deplorable can look to peripheral civilizations like America (the putrid source of BG(il)L and the inspiration of the bureau-sclerotic European Union), Islam (where science was not born, when it could have been) and to Russia (the butt-end of feverish corporate propaganda campaigns paid for by financial speculators who would benefit from acquiring the properties opened by a collapse of Russian sovereignty).

0160 Remember when the old Soviet regime built walls to keep their people (gemeinschaft, C) from escaping to the West?

Now, a reverse migration may take place.

The former Soviet citizen has the option to go back to church and mosque.  Even though Putin appears ruthless to his political enemies, he stopped the Western-colluding oligarchs from plundering Russia (oh, except for the Ukraine, which is another story entirely).  Russia has not suffered a Western oligarch-financed color revolution (oh, once again, except for the Ukraine).

Russia remains a sovereign nation.

Who knows about the Ukraine?

Rumor has it that the largest lifetime donor to the American BG(il)L Clinton Foundation is a Ukrainian oligarch.

0161 So, I wonder.Could Diesen’s proposal (see point 0147) apply to the ends of the winter of sovereignty and the summer of geoeconomics in the West?

0162 The deplorables (and the about-to-be debt-ridden migrants) of the West will see, on their periphery, a political spring in Russia even as they enter an autumn in geoeconomics.

Consequently, only two Diesen Greimas squares can be formulated at this moment.

0163 One is the autumn of geopolitics for the West, which looks fine in you manage to get a certificate from a university for a profession with market restrictions.  Otherwise, you live in the shadows of creditors.  These creditors also (almost by coincidence) own the few remaining supply chains.

Here is a picture for the continuing decay of Western economic statescraft (A).

0164 The other is the spring of sovereignty in Eurasia, where supervising authorities work to preserve gemeinschaft (while keeping a watchful eye on gesellschaft).  Remember the children of Absu and Tiamat?  The supervising authorities do not want to encourage the growth of a gesellschaft that will destroy its gemeinschaft.

Here is a picture of the spring of neo-modern diversity in Eurasia (A).

0165 Although Diesen cannot predict the future, by the time that his book concludes, the author paints in all the elements of the title, The Decay of Western Civilisation and the Resurgence of Russia.

0166 Does Diesen’s Greimas square work allow the inquirer to imagine civilisational cycles preceding the most recent cycle?

What civilisations are around before the civilisational cycle of political pluralism?

Here is a picture of the current cycle.

Note how the time scale has changed from Anno Domini to Ubaid Zero Prime.

0 U0′ roughly corresponds to the consolidation of the Ubaid culture in southern Mesopotamia.

7823 years ago, the Ubaid is the only culture practicing speech-alone talk and all surrounding Neolithic cultures rely on hand-speech talk (the way of talking since the first anatomically modern humans).

According to Razie Mah’s masterwork, An Archaeology of the Fall, the adoption of speech-alone talk potentiates unconstrained social complexity.

What does that imply?

Civilisational cycles commence with the first singularity.

0167 If the recent cycle in Western civilisation is any indication of timing, cycles tend to complete every 400 or 500 years.

Weirdly, such timing corresponds to the progressions of Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions through any three consecutive zodiac signs.  Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions occur roughly every 20 years.  Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions in any given sign occur every 60 years, with each conjunction advancing around 13 degrees.  So, a conjunction at, say 0 degrees Aquarius, in 2020, will occur in Aquarius again in 2080, at 13 degrees, then in 2140, at around 26 degrees, then in Pisces around 10 degrees in 2200, then at 23 degrees Pisces in 2260, then in 6 degrees Aries in 2320, 19 degrees Aries in 2380 and around 1 degree Taurus in 2440.

Say what?

Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions start in Aquarius in 2020 and leave Aries, three signs later, around 2440.  That is 420 years.

Well, the idea is weird for moderns, but for the ancients, the celestial sphere works like a clock.  I may call that clock, “the celestial Earth”.  I may also call it, “the celestial half of Tiamat”.

0168 With this in mind, consider Diesen’s recollection of a written origin story of the ancient Near East (located in chapter 2, see points 0041-0060).

As a thought experiment, let me propose that this story covers the second civilizational cycle of an archaeological period in Mesopotamia, occupying a time frame similar to Western civilisation’s seasons of sovereignty, but shifted back 7400 years.

0169 Here is a list of seasons for A, the civilisational manifestation.

0170 Why the second cycle?

0171 Absu (B), the father and order, is already separated, as gesellschaft, from Tiamat (D), the mother and chaos, who is the theme of the cycle.  To me, this implies that the story tells of a second cycle, occurring in a hand-speech talking culture outside of the Ubaid, after it adopts speech-alone talk in imitation of the Ubaids.

0172 The Ubaid forms on the edges of the newly-filled Persian Gulf.  The Ubaid practices a speech-alone talking creole.  They speak (what we will later call) the Sumerian language, which is not related to any family of languages.  Adjacent hand-speech talking cultures are influenced by the increasing wealth (labor specialization) and power (social specialization) of their speech-alone talking neighbor.

0173 In order to imitate the Ubaid culture, neighboring Neolithic folk drop the hand-talk component of their hand-speech talk.  The timeless shamans resist.  Yet, certain factions insist on not using their hands anymore while talking.  These factions are able to identify, in speech, certain terms that cannot be performed in hand talk.  They identify Absu, the father, who compares favorably with the increasingly underperforming shamans.  Well, the shamans underperform only when compared to the Ubaid, who trade mats, woven from reeds, for permission to chop down the trees in the area.

By the end of the first cycle, the culture living in the shadow of the Ubaid differentiates Absu (B) as gesellschaft and Tiamat (D), not as gemeinschaft, but as the theme, chaos.  What happened?  Well, the timeless shamans, who try to warn the folk and impede the adoption of speech-alone talk, are gone.  Everyone now practices speech-alone talk, in the family of (what we now call) the Semitic languages.

0174 In the spring of the second cycle, the manifestation of chaos (A) makes no impression.  Absu (the gesellschaft that destroyed the shamans, B) and Tiamat (the chaos once represented by the shamans, D) produce offspring (specialized groups within the folk, gemeinschaft (C) arising from gesellschaft (B)).  All this is made possible by the semiotics of speech-alone talk.

0175 In the summer of the second cycle, the offspring (various gemeinschafts (C) that increasingly fail to recognize Absu (B) as legitimate) murder Absu (B) and build a party-house on his grave (A).  I call it a “party house” because every chamber of the house has its own special attractions, its own special way of gossiping about everyone else, and its own exclusivity.  The chaos (D), attributed to the deceased shamans, slumbers as the different echo-chambers (C) talk about how they are going to do this or that (B).  All the gemeinschafts (C) conspire to promote their own gesellschafts (B) above the one who can never return to life, the murdered Absu.

0176 In the autumn of the second cycle, the echo-chambers (B and C) are increasingly at odds with one another.  The squabbling and politicking stirs Tiamat from her slumber (D).  Politics with hand-speech talk was never as loud or as noisy as the jabbering and the posturing in speech-alone talk.  The folk are disordered, disunited and dismayed.

From within the gemeinschaft (C), a movement is afoot, saying, “Let us return to the ways of the timeless shamans.”  But, there is a problem.  There is no way to return to the ways before speech-alone talk because all the timeless shamans are dead.  They have been dead for many conjunctions of the slowest of the wandering stars.  How can we, the gemeinschaft, call them back from the…

Oh! What about Kino?  Kino can channel the chaos of Tiamat.  Kino can create a new world powered by the newly awakened Tiamat!

Who will respond to that monster, Kino, the one that all the echo-chambers are worried about?

All the little gods of the already shaken party palace search for a hero, a gesellschaft, capable of re-establishing their prerogatives. 

0177 In the winter of the second cycle, a hero for diverse gesellschaft steps forward and does battle with Kino.  In the year of 823 U0′, no one knows who will win.

0178 Today, while reading a handful of cuneiform tablets recovered from the ruins of an ancient library, we know.

Marduk wins.  Marduk establishes the pantheon, the gesellschaft (B) that conquers chaos (D).

Plus, Kino’s defeat is significant to us.  From the blood of the ruined Kino (C), Marduk (B) makes humans.  Marduk fashions us from the blood of a gemeinschaft trying to return to the original justice of the timeless shamans.

Plus, Tiamat’s final fate is significant to all creation.  From the corpse of the conquered Tiamat (D), Marduk fashions the sky-bearing face of the celestial Earth and the earth-bearing face of the mundane Earth.  The heavens and the earth, the celestial Earth and mundane Earth, look upon one another through the realm in which Marduk rules.  Marduk rules between heaven and earth.

0179 Here are the four seasons of the imagined second cycle, for a semitic-language-speaking culture neighboring the Ubaid, which is absorbed into the Uruk, before the Sumerian Dynastic.

The story that Diesen recounts remembers what cannot be remembered, that is, the tempestuous story of how we came to be.

Here is a list for gemeinschaft (C).