Systems Dynamics And Global Transformation

I’ve been sitting on an Alistair Crooke article for a few days. The basic idea of the article, which is somewhat sprawling, is that the dynamics of the current world’s structures are shifting, due to economic and cultural shifts. I’ll try to give the gist of the article with some judicious excerpts:

Systems Dynamics Follow Their Own Rules – and Not Groupthink

Crooke begins by pointing out that the elites of the collective West are living in a mental world of Groupthink that denies that anything transformative is going on. But the economic and monetary dynamic of the world structures is changing in irreversible ways that will strongly impact the West:

Few in the western Ruling Class even accept that we have reached such a point of inflection. ... U.S. influence already is shrinking back to its Atlanticist core. This shrinkage is not simply a matter of resources vs commitments; that is too simplistic as an explanation.

Metamorphosis is occurring both as the result of the exhaustion of the political and cultural dynamics which powered the previous era, ...

...

... Soltan Poznar has highlighted the framework underlying the proposals made by XI to the Gulf states’ mechanics and implications in his piece, Dusk for the Petrodollar (paywalled):

The old dynamic of oil in dollars in return for American security guarantees gives place to oil for transformative inward Chinese investment, funded in yuan. In some 3–5 years, the petrodollar may be gone, and the non-dollar landscape radically re-worked.

The dominant Élite (Panglossian) view however exudes disdain that the world will change: 2023 maybe be economically difficult for the U.S., due to a mild recession, but this will be nothing more than a run-of-the-mill affair – and that very soon, all the world will return to an U.S.-on-top ‘normal’.

Nonetheless structures – whether psychic, economic or physical (i.e. those related to energy dynamics) are in radical transition. And, consequently, components presently defined as ‘normal’: i.e. two decades of zero interest rates; zero inflation and oodles of newly ‘printed’ credit – turn out rather, to be the abnormal. Why?

Because two twin anomalous structural dynamics were exhausted: Cheap inflation-killing consumer goods coming from China, and cheap inflation-killing Russian energy, both underpinned competitive western production. Consequently, the West lived ‘high on the hog’ of its credit-led expansion, whilst enjoying near zero inflation.

Plainly put, endless cost-free ‘money’ of course is a short-term aberrant condition – one that gives a semblance of prosperity, whilst concealing its distorting pathologies.

That’s the basic idea for the economic dynamics that are pushing the change in world structures. The West is in for inflation in energy costs that will affect the way of life they’ve become accustomed to, and thus will affect their politics. The West—especially Europe—will find itself at a serious competitive disadvantage.

This transformation is happening rapidly. In my belief, this will also affect the ability and, perhaps more importantly, the willingness of the West to follow the Neocons down the path of escalation—if it were even possible. The West has no plan in place to deal with this, beyond wishful groupthink:

Current western groupthink however, insists on an imminent return to a 2% inflation ‘normal’ – “It will just take a little longer than they originally thought”. But for now, the palliatives of tamping down inflation expectations (managing sales from the U.S. strategic oil reserve) and hyping the messaging of Russia being on the brink of failure, the group-thinkers suggest signals that price normality will return soon.

Crooke drives this point home with a quote from the Daily Telegraph:

Put simply, the emperor has no clothes: The Establishment simply has no message for voters in the face of hardship. The only vision for the future it can conjure up is Net Zero – a dystopian agenda that takes the sacrificial politics of austerity and financialisation of the world economy to new heights. But it is a perfectly logical programme for an élite that has become unhinged from the real world”.

As this discussion continues, Crooke gradually shifts to the cultural dynamics that he referred to at the outset. The basic idea here is that much of the world has awakened to the reality of Western “values”. Those “values” are, in effect, the incoherent anti-values of Wokism, manifested in relentless hostility to everything that gives meaning to the lives of most of the world’s societies: religion, family, history, and social institutions. We have seen Putin refer to this cultural dynamic repeatedly in his addresses, both to Russian audiences as well as to people around the world. It’s a call to arms against the imperialist Western ideological groupthink. And it resonates:

What is the operative dynamic at play here? It is that Culture – old ways of managing life – run deeper in the long run than (ideological) economic structures. …

Again, in retrospect, whilst America’s cultural and economic ascendency is portrayed as an End of History ‘normal’, it represents an obvious anomaly – as seems obvious to any outside spectator.

…

Today’s western ideology was fundamentally cast through the radical shift in the relationship between state and traditional society – first promoted during the French revolutionary era. Rousseau is often taken as the icon of ‘liberty’ and ‘individualism’, and remains widely admired. Yet here we already experience that ‘nuancing’ of language that metamorphoses ‘liberty’ into its converse – an anti-political, totalitarian colouring.

Rousseau explicitly refused human participation in non-political, shared life. He saw human associations rather, as groups to be acted upon so that all thinking and daily behaviour could be folded into the like-minded units of a unitary state.

It is that unified state – the absolute state – which Rousseau upholds at the expense of the other forms of cultural tradition, together with the moral ‘narratives’ that provide context to terms – such as good, justice and telos.

The individualism of Rousseau’s thought, therefore, is no libertarian assertion of absolute rights against the all-consuming state. ...

Quite the reverse! Rousseau’s passionate ‘defence of the individual’ arises out of his opposition to ‘the tyranny’ of social convention – the forms and ancient myths that bind society: religion, family, history, and social institutions. His ideal may be proclaimed as that of individual freedom, but it is ‘freedom’, however, not in a sense of immunity from control of the state, but in our withdrawal from the supposed oppressions and corruptions of collective society.

Family relationship is thus transmuted subtly into a political relationship; the molecule of the family is broken into the atoms of its individuals. With these atoms today groomed further to shed their biological gender, their cultural identity and ethnicity, they are coalesced afresh into the single unity of the ubiquitous State.

This is the deceit concealed in the ideologues’ language of freedom and individualism. It portends rather, the politicization of everything into the mould of an authoritarian singularity of perception. The late George Steiner said the Jacobins “abolished the millennial barrier between common life and the enormities of the historical [past]. Past the hedge and gate of even the humblest garden, march the bayonets of political ideology and historic conflict”.

The rest of the world ‘gets it’. They can see the “primitive psychological mechanisms” which need to be present for the western ‘distributed narrative’ to evolve into an insidious ‘mass formation’ that destroys an individual’s ethical self-awareness, robbing them of their ability to think critically – thus conditioning a society to acquiesce to foreign ‘colonial’ hegemony.

Then they look up to observe states standing up for their own culture and values (against any western imposition).

This is fiery symbolism. It has an ecstatic component. It is a long-term structural dynamic that only a major war may – or may not – derail.

If you liked this, there’s more at the link.