Who's sleeping? Who's waking up?
Who's being born? Who is dying?
Who is about to die? Who's coming?
—Aramer's Proverbs
1. What is "WestPhalianism"
The geopolitics of the 21st century is splitting into two opposing systems.
One of them is the traditional Westphalianism system of thought. The system supports geopolitics and nation-state sovereignty, adheres to this vertical political sovereignty, governs the world and establishes international relations, and combines (alliances) according to the different values of democracy or totalitarianism.
Its theoretical roots are "Westphalian sovereignt", and its literary roots are the Treaty of Westphalia, which was concluded in 1648. It is said to be the political cradle of the modern nation-state and its international system.
Between 1618 and 1648, the civil war of the Holy Roman Empire evolved into a large-scale European war, which began with the Bohemian revolt against Habsburg rule and ended with the defeat of the Habsburgs and the signing of the world's first international convention.
The terrible war turned Germany into ruins, and Death took away at least 30% of the population from the ruins.
Neither Catholics nor Protestants won a decisive victory, but the peace treaty established a new order in which nations could not interfere with each other's religious practices. This is the only fruit that has been exchanged for countless undead.
Henry Kissinger sought to elevate the historical significance of the treaty, claiming that it relied on an independent system of states, avoided interference in each other's internal affairs, and curbed each other's ambitions through the overall balance of power... Each state was given the attribute of territorial sovereignty. Each leader will recognize each other's administrative structures and religious practices and avoid challenging their existence.
But Kissinger exaggerated the value of the peace treaty because it itself concerned only religious sovereignty and did not clarify national sovereignty.
It was not until the middle of the 18th century that the Swiss jurist Emer de Vattel proposed the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, thus making a clearer determination of national sovereignty. This is a sign of the maturity of The Sovereign System of WestPhalia.
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant defined sovereignty as an ethnic community that depends on a particular space.
This kind of space is actually a super place with a legal boundary, which cannot be expanded horizontally, otherwise it is aggression, but it can be expanded vertically (in the third dimension), that is, with a tall wall (tangible or intangible) similar to the "Great Wall" as the boundary, a richer layer is erected inside the original place, and more people, machines, officials, banks, armies and materials are stacked.
Sovereign nation-states cooperated with each other to form a matrix of "international relations," which can be described in terms of the concept of "unity and verticality" in China's pre-Qin era. But it is not a flat union between north and south, but a combination between individual three-dimensional sovereign spaces.
The benchmarking idea of Westphalianism was a Christian globalism promoted by and co-existed by the Roman Empire. This vast church sought to rule over all the sovereign states of Europe.
Although the separation of church and state is also a European political tradition, it has always been in danger of theocracy. The struggle between church and secular power has run through the history of war-torn Europe.
The Westphalian Agreement ended this history, and it became the logical cornerstone of the post-war Unintend.
In front of the United Nations Tower in New York, there is a row of tall flagpoles erected vertically, which are a landscape for tourists and a symbol of geopolitical sovereignty for representatives of countries.
2. What is modern "globalism"
The modern internet ignores the walls of such geopolitical places. In the late 20th century, thanks to the birth of Microsoft Windows and the Internet, the new Globalism ideology struggled to climb above the horizon.
It seeks to transcend the tall barriers of values and liberate the desires, rights, and powers of subjects imprisoned by geopolitical sovereignty through an infinitely rich set of information (information), and not only that, but the platform builders also play a new role as global rulers.
A number of tech companies have emerged, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Wall Street, Tesla, PayPal, Taobao and Tik Tok. They cooperate and compete with each other to form a "giant membrane of science and technology" that can envelop the entire earth, just like the "continuous horizontal system" of China's pre-Qin era.
This wave of information globalization was preceded by a variety of pre-modern globalization movements, such as the global Stalinism advocated by Moscow and the global Islamization advocated by mullah theologians.
But the technological utopias created by information capitalism offer more fascinating hope for new humanity. The best-selling book "The World Is Flat", written by the American political commentator Thomas L. Friedman, tries to distinguish the difference between this round of globalization.
In his historical description, the fall of the Berlin Wall was a major marker that overthrew the vertical (vertical) wall of geopolitical sovereignty, moving the world toward democracy, consensus, common standards, and free markets, creating a borderless and flatter arena that opened up boundless prospects for horizontal communication and expansion.
The American sociologist Benjamin H. Bratton supports Friedman's position, arguing that the WestWard spirit based on geopolitical thinking is becoming a history to be recalled because of the rise of Globalism.
Bratton, who teaches architecture, media and design courses at several American universities and chairs an American think tank that provides geopolitical strategy for Moscow, has visited China to promote utopian philosophies about the world stack to The Eastern faithful of Westphalianism, but they don't seem to understand his voice.
Bratton supports globalization and supranational sovereignty through his writings and global lecture tours. He argues that power should be achieved through horizontal platforms (also metaphorically called "stacks," or multi-layered network architectures made up of modules that can be moved, transformed, and replaced), rather than traditional geopolitical states.
He claimed that nationality is giving way to a global network of citizens, and that Google embodies the dominance of cyber information sovereignty. He also analyzes in detail the shape and structure of global organizations, and refers to elements such as cities, networks, architecture, languages, media, and cyberspaces.
Blockchain is an outstanding example of this stack structure. This distributed shared ledger and database has the technical characteristics of decentralization, full traceability, inability to tamper with, openness and transparency, and group maintenance. It not only completely deconstructs Westphalian thought, but even deconstructs the digital hegemony of the Internet giants.
3. What kind of impetus does globalization need?
But Bratton's theory ignores the most critical variable, which is desire as the central driver of globalization. Globalization liberates the desires of individuals, and the desires that are liberated, in turn, promote globalization, thus forming a virtuous circle of energy (productivity), which is the working background of the "Machines desirantes" referred to by Gilles Louis Rene Deleuze.
India is an example of this. The Internet freed its people from the ancient and closed Hindu system of desires and plunged them into a wider space of desire. In the future process of globalization, India will undoubtedly play an extremely important role.
In contrast, China's desire to liberate achievements is even more jaw-dropping.
The results of a desire analysis software's calculation of consumer big data show that the Desire Index of Chinese in Chinese was 3.5K in the 19th century, and in the process of reform, opening up/globalization in the late 20th century, it actually soared to 58K, achieving an incredible dramatic leap.
Without this vast machine powered by 1.4 billion subjects of desire, China's economic miracle would not have been possible.
Bitcoin, because of its eccentric properties, can also be used to describe the changing curve of global desire for wealth. Over the past year, its value has soared from $4,800 to $40,000, a nearly 10-fold increase. It is this "Bitcoin index" that reveals the great secret of the liberation of desire.
4. What does "Trumpism" mean?
As the number one nation-state, the United States is the birthplace of modern globalism. Almost all global technology platforms are built on the North American continent.
Democrats are committed to protecting the system's growth and escorting it through immigration policy. Migration, equality, freedom and subcultural preferences (such as cannabis use and homosexuality), all of which coexist in diversity of mainstream and marginal sexual desires, fit the basic definition of globalization.
But Trump is the archetypal Westphalian strongman, whose claims were a hallmark of modern civilization in the 17th century and a representative of "conservatism" or "isolationism" in the "post-Westphalian" era.
The so-called "Trumpism" is nothing more than the American expression of Westphalianism.
Based on the need for U.S. sovereignty, Trump followed the "syndication" grammar of Zbigniew Brzezinski's idea of geo-sovereignty, but replaced the main word — replacing the number one enemy from the Soviet Union/Russia to China, and replacing the object word in it — and replacing the co-optation of China with co-opting Russia or India.
This is Brzezinskiism version 2.0. Instead of dissolving the struggle for geopolitical sovereignty between the East and the West, it has escalated it more comprehensively and deeply.
In order to defend U.S. sovereignty, Trump triggered a more intense geopolitical/trade conflict.
In terms of manufacturing, trade deficits and tariffs, Trumpism has not only trade frictions with the European Union, Canada and Central and South America, but also with China. Relations between the two geopolitical sovereign states are deteriorating, creating a tense confrontation between eagles and dragons.
With the goal of "making America great again," Trump re-inventoryed sovereignty in manufacturing, trade, and finance, shifted, shortened, or cut off the globalized (Sinicized) industrial chain, recalled them to its homeland as much as possible, and forced China to buy U.S. agricultural products to narrow the trade deficit.
This protectionism has won the cheers of American red-necked farmers, but it has caused pain in American manufacturing because they have become accustomed to the cheap advantage of third-world OEM. It also provokes displeasure among mass consumers, as imposing high tariffs on "Made in China" would raise americans' daily expenses.
Not only that, but Trump has also expressed a tough immigration stance: first, to oppose the impact of low-end and illegal immigration on the U.S. job market and traditional Christian virtues, and second, to raise the immigration threshold to welcome only those who are well-educated, creative, and able to bring well-being to the United States.
In the eyes of many critics, Trump's populism is white populism. According to the New York Times, the unspoken meaning of "America First" is "white first." Trump family portrait photos circulating on social media show the beauty, upbringing and demeanor of an elite white family.
Trump built an anti-smuggling wall on the Mexican border, which is Trump's Great Wall and the latest symbol of WestPhalia's sovereignty.
It is the elitist immigration policy that destroys the desires and dreams of lower-class immigrants, and in practice, hurts overseas students and non-immigrant white-collar workers working in high-tech companies. They meet the criteria set by the Trump administration, but are driven out of the United States by a low-probability lottery law.
5. What is the political legacy of the 2020 US election?
Trumpism is supported by more than 74 million American voters, especially by Christian believers represented by evangelicals (this position is known as "Christian Trumpism"). Trump is their square idol.
But Trump has also offended 81 million voters and angered corporate predators who enjoy the high profits of globalization. They form a strong coalition that, with the help of Democrats and Republican establishments, adhere to "political correctness" positions, end Trump's Westphalianism through questionable vote counts and two impeachments, and open the way for a "restart" (escalation) of globalization.
It is certain that the 2020 US election is a cross-century decisive battle between geopoliticism and globalism, with the subtle intervention of some hostile countries, and it is also wrapped in the gloomy energy of geopolitical sovereignty confrontation.
The clash of desires, interests, and power is so intense that it paints a devastating picture for us, like a combined masterpiece of hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and floods.
The biggest legacy of the presidential election is the contradictory voices of the mainstream media, the self-media, politicians, lawyers and anonymous people, which have triggered an unprecedented information/value confusion and constituted the biggest scandal in the era of information capitalism.
They erase the cognitive boundaries of truth and lies, truth and rumors, good and evil, law and morality, faith and reason, democracy and despotism, protest and riot, citizenship and thugs, and so on, leading to the worst community hatred and division in history.
How to regain the mountains and rivers of "chicken feathers in one place" and repair serious soul wounds will become a huge challenge facing the Biden administration.
The political realities during the election have deepened suspicions about "deep government" or the "Washington swamp."
Some "conspiracy theorists" insist that we find ourselves in a world where there are global secret organizations such as the Illuminati, Freemasons, or Brotherhoods.
It is made up of a group of Big brothers with mysterious faces, a long history, and incomparably powerful manipulative powers, and uses the wave of desire to liberate, steal, transform and control people's souls, forging the world into a single plate. Others claim that the so-called "deep government" is the American branch of this type of organization.
Internet platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google have formed an anti-Sichuan alliance to block and delete the social accounts of Sichuan's supporters, and even join forces to block Parler, a platform with "right-wing" tendencies.
"Google Translate" even uses "micro power" to tamper with and reverse the semantics of some "keywords", and does not hesitate to implement "ideological manipulation" at the level of machine translation.
These moves have raised widespread concern among European leaders, with critics calling the practice "Internet hegemony" and "digital totalitarianism."
One of the legacies of the Enlightenment era is Voltaire's famous motto: "I do not agree with your views, but I swear to defend to the death your right to speak", which has since become the basic norm of rational dialogue in civil society.
Massive censorship, banning, and tampering tarnished this virtue. It not only adds division, hatred and confrontation to the detriment of free and open markets of ideas, but also shatters the utopian illusion of the global Internet.
The fear is that the high-tech stack is not only the cradle of democracy and peace, but also the potential to "unify thought" through "moral censorship" and "social control," destroying the great traditions of free speech, becoming a cold swamp that breeds totalitarian monsters, and in great danger of becoming a "Dystopia."
In the novel Brave New World, the British writer Aldous Leonard Huxley, the grandson of evolutionary figure Huxley, describes a biotechnology nightmare that took place in the 26th century.
Through this dark fable published in 1931, he warns us that we must remain wary of the seemingly beautiful "new high-tech world." Today, his literary testament will resonate among us again.
6) Does the world need a "big restart"?
On the other hand, given Trump's failure and the spread of vaccines, the globalist system will accelerate the pace of globalization. The World Economic Forum (also known as Davos) began to advocate for the Great Reset program. The plan was described by "conspiracy theorists" as a major attempt by big brothers.
Its core proposition is that, based on the severe crisis of the virus pandemic, global warming and food shortages, the globalization movement that has been blocked by Trump doctrine must be restarted and upgraded to version 3.0 to promote revolutionary progress in three areas: eliminating the virus, reducing carbon emissions (clean energy) and high technology.
The forum, on the homepage of its website, explains its motivation for advocating for this movement —
The Covid-19 virus crisis and the political, economic and social disruption it has caused has fundamentally changed the traditional decision-making environment, exposing structural deficiencies in a wide range of systems, from health and finance to energy and education.
In the face of the viral deaths of 2 million people, the Forum sought to remind leaders of countries and platforms that they are at a crossroads in human history and that they need to make the right choices about it.
Australia's prime minister was the first to shout out opposition, declaring that the country was in good shape and did not need to be restarted at all. This shows that the Western world still has doubts and differences about the "great restart plan".
In addition to the above two systems, there is a third form, that is, the combined vertical/continuous horizontal system represented by the Chinese dragon, which is a hybrid of the two.
As an upgraded version of the Belt and Road Initiative, its "double cycle" model refines the principles of national interaction: WestPhalianism (internal circulation) in the fields of politics, information, education and digital currency, and globalism (external circulation) in the fields of manufacturing, high technology, international trade and RMB settlement.
These two parallel circular circles form the Ouroboros, so this system can be called the "Ouroboros system". Theoretically, this desire machine has a perfect structure that is fully self-sufficient. Yes, it doesn't need to be restarted, or rather, it's always on the way to restarting.
7. What are the five versions of capitalism
To date, the process of globalization, built on the cornerstone of the capitalist system, can be divided into three progressive forms, which are systematically related according to the superposition pattern:
Version 1.0, also known as artifact capitalism, was formed by the British as a platform marked by semi-automated machines and metal pipes powered by mining, metallurgy, and steam engines;
Version 2.0, also known as energy capitalism, was formed by the United States as a platform with oil, electricity and atomic energy as technical symbols;
Version 3.0, also known as information capitalism, is still a platform formed by the United States, marked by computers, windows, Internet cloud computing, AI and digital currencies.
By the 2030s, given that the virus will accompany humans for a long time, the population mortality rate will rise sharply, and it is expected to give birth to version 4.0, that is, biochemical capitalism, which is marked by antiviral drugs, human genetic modification, artificial food and bioelectric energy.
Version 5.0 after version 4.0 is undoubtedly the turn of interstellar capitalism, which is marked by super AI, space mining, large space stations and even planetary colonies, and its appearance may be in the first half of the 22nd century.
As a result of this election, an unprecedented political split broke out in the United States. An independent Republic of Texas is on the horizon. And this pattern of geopolitical fission will get more responses from conservative states.
Whatever the most serious consequences of the split, it will weaken the United States and trigger an irreversible recession in the North American super-sovereign.
But multinational technology companies with the US platform will not fail because of this, on the contrary, they will take advantage of the "big restart" of global networks, expand their volume and energy with THE support of AI, and eventually evolve into super desire machines.
People will one day find that the future of the United States does not belong to the national strongman Trump, nor to the national weakman Biden, but to the Internet giant spiders such as Bill Gates and Zuckerberg.
The question to be asked is, once the United States is in decline, who will be able to replace it? Is it a Leviathan-style sovereign state monster, or a tech monster that is keen on global networking?
China's future depends on the viability and efficiency of the Ouroboros system, on whether it can get the necessary energy from the system, and more importantly, on whether it can set up platforms for versions 4.0 and 5.0.
Whoever controls the new technology platform of globalization is the leader of the future world.
Until then, there will inevitably be more violent confrontations between Westphalianism and globalism, geo-sovereignty and high-tech platforms, nation-state leaders and Internet information oligarchs, and between ambitious geo-sovereign states.
There is no doubt that we will be witnesses to the next big war.
Note: This article commemorates the 92nd anniversary of martin luther king jr. The Chinese part of this outline has been abridged for understandable reasons, and the reader is grateful for the logical lack of link that arises.
Diary of January 15, 2021 in New York, USA
The pictures in this article are from the Internet
Upload & Manage: Jeff
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The first novella collection "Character Creation", "Divine Mirror", "Kirin"
The first collection of short stories, "Six Different Records"
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