MULTIPOLAR WORLD ORDER AND TRANSNATIONAL DEMOCRACY

 

Keynotes on the Function of Free Societal Worlds for the Future of Civilizations

by J. Michael Heynen*

After the rather unsuccessful attempts by global statehood to establish a sustainable order through the consistent application of rules and laws, the international community of states is effectively returning its mandate to societies. It is now up to societies to renew, transnationalize, and future-proof their social contract. Five determinants, outlined below, appear to be non-conditional for this purpose:

I   The Image of Humanity in Cosmopolitan Democracy

Human beings are born free into a realm of free will and with the capacity of emancipating, developing, autonomous subjects. The individual unites two worlds: an absolutely free, transcendent inner world, and an outer, relative world of responsibility, a communicatively learning potential for development, co-creatively connected with other people. In this way, they integrate and equilibrate absolute and relative worlds. Inner noumenal reflection, cognitive decision-making, and free will enter the outer world of relative phenomena, which offers infinite opportunities for its implementation and further development. This human being—as part of evolution—draws from their own self and inspires their immediate and wider external world. Ideally, potentials and synergies can unfold for the benefit of humanity and bring about progress with free and peaceful intentions. Thus, the ideal, transpersonal human being—integrated, authentic, and responsible—forms both within the family and globally. Whether in a large or small world: The subject shapes the object, is the determinator of social lifeworlds, and participates in democratic decision-making in a constantly equilibrating process.

II   Multipolar World Order: Transpersonal and Transnational

Attempts to create a world order have mostly failed, since the powers ignored the (ideal) human being and disconnected power processes from societies. Administration as an attempt at governance relies on egocentric "objectives" instead of the inherent human potential of its evolutionary capacities, the transpersonal subjects. But a multipolar world order comes closest to these human capacities; the democratic process of free, connected, and thus transpersonal individuals is therefore necessarily unlimitedly transnational.

III   Transnational Democracy and Societal Elites

Analogous to evolution and its dynamics: people and their groups possess different paths, qualities, dynamics, and thus also speeds of development. This diversity is of fundamental importance for every internal/external learning entity/organization, especially with regard to inspiration and creative development. Despite the importance of equality before the law (particularly in the area of public defense rights), the focus here is on the continuous facilitation of societal and developmental dynamics—including scientific ones. This communicative and facilitating dynamic of governance is a central function of societal development.

Here, real elites (not those from the grassroots) come into play, as they can be the driving, elevating forces for transnational-democratic, indeed cosmopolitan, process control. Even knowing the often justifiably negative connotation of the currently experienced "elites," the non-negotiable high quality standards are emphasized all the more: High integrity, transparency, consistency, respect, and indeed transpersonality (see above) are the non-conditional prerequisites. Therefore, democracy is not "credit on possible futures," but rather the guarantee of a future through the currently elevating power of the autonomous subject and its proactive centropic participation, inspiration, and conviction.

IV   Reason in Transnational Democracy

In contrast to state administration and its high degree of formalization, transnational democratic functions in internal and external societal decision-making and leadership processes are not bound / limited by formal criteria. This includes the quantitative determination of majority-based decision-making processes. Societal actors in transnational democracy can additionally incorporate universal laws of thought and principles of reason into their decision-making and position-forming, and reinforce them. The integration prospects for the autonomous subject are significantly better here, but at the same time, the demands on persuasion and balancing processes are correspondingly higher.

V   Interaction of Societal Worlds and Statehood in Transnational Democracy

State power is the administrator and coordinator of form, while societal power lies in the power to persuade through the mastery of noumenal substance and its communication. As history has shown, neither of these powers alone will suffice to guarantee a future worthy of humanity and to establish sustainable world orders. Both sides have an indissoluble synallagmatic connection and are therefore interdependent.

Transnational democracy establishes and promotes the institutionalization of necessary vision-building as well as dialogue and decision-making processes within human lifeworlds and the sciences. In both horizontal and vertical processes of collaboration and association, respective insights and decisions are moderated, syndicated, and communicated to the statehood. The transnational-democratically generated, amending or expanding normativity is then available to the states to adapt, if necessary, a constitution, or at least regulations concerning administration and coordination—also taking into account the existing global public sphere.

All interactions between the societal world and spheres of states must be placed under special scrutiny and appropriate protection in order to guarantee, by people for people, the freedom and development of their futures, as they experience and further develop their societies in the present. These two worlds are not the same, yet they are mutually dependent in their function of leading the maturing, transforming, and, above all, vertically reconnecting human beings in their respective development toward their civilizational fulfillment.

* The author is the founding president of the International Senate of Cultures (ISC) http://internationalsenate.org. The foregoing thoughts also form part of the programmatic background of the ISC's organizational policy. - Curaçao, February 17, 2026

“THE WORLD ORDER IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE WORLD ORDER!”

 

Civilizations in Transition: Societal Worlds as Transforming Determinator
A Clarifying Reflection by J. Michael Heynen *

I   Freedom in the International System
Human beings are born free into a universal space of free will—too often not into external freedom, but certainly into the evolutionary process of liberation. Thus, individual and societal development is always first and foremost emancipation toward freely knowing consciousness. The more this succeeds, the more the understanding of order as the immanence of freedom matures. Order thus becomes, above all, the external condition of freedom, and its determination comes from mind as the principle-founder of all normativity. And this applies to every subject of international relations, first and foremost to human beings.
Shaped by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, as well as horrific empirical evidence, the long-lasting Westphalian system of peace and order in international relations (between states) emerged. According to regional self-perception, this system of order was thus transferred "to the world". This artifactual universalism has now become obsolete and laments its self-inflicted paralysis. – A selection of reasons, presented from an anamnestic perspective:

II   On the Decline of the “Old and New World Order”
- The illegitimate “globalization” of the Westphalian system has been systematically undermined by double standards and a lack of self-regulation of real, especially purely material and technological, globalization. As a consequence, political attempts ended in pure geopolitics and projected internal and external “culture wars”, often resembling the still-unresolved “Mein Kampf”. Liberal normativity and orders were quite successfully used and thus countered as camouflage for the outdated and overstretched Anglo-Saxon concept of property and its dialectical “twin”, crude Marxist egalitarianism. A current “transitional” shift to technoid-material feudalism and plutocracy is likely both just consequent and intentional. International law of a liberal order – dependent on the highest degree of voluntariness – is only “followed” insofar as it serves neo-colonialist and -imperialist goals and, due to minimal transparency, helps to maintain the form of “compliance” and “integrity”.
- The overcoming of absolute monarchy (with the exception of the Vatican in the West) was ultimately a purely formal exchange of official representation. The paradigm "by the grace of God" simply changed its projector; an egocentric auto-/plutocracy—embedded in fantasies of equality and projections of participation—with a self-righteous claim to global dominance, even has the potential for worldwide systems’ harmonization, which could be useful for peacemaking in the UN context. What remains unresolved, however, is the persistent and ultimately civilization-threatening disconnect between state and society. This is vividly illustrated by numerous foreign policies: the representation of petty-bourgeois provincialism and diplomatic incompetence, as well as illegitimate actions, fantasies of omnipotence, hegemonic centripetalism, imperial chauvinism, short-sighted escalation of violence, and warmongering. The social contract mandate placed on the state and world of states has been rendered absurd, making human and civilizational visions, and thus futures, unattainable. Necessary minimal approaches to transnational governance are systematically evaporated.
- The remaining “small format” of ego-centripetal foreign policies is measured in a messianic, global sense, thus becoming purely quantitative, paternalistic statehood. The corresponding internal decoupling of state and society, with the consequence of illegitimate governance (regardless of incompetence, lack of integrity, and transparency), has destroyed the West's own (Westphalian) order of freedom and peace modality: Constitutions are hollowed out, impersonal forms of governing and soulless governance artifacts replace the foundations and substance of freedom and are directly reflected in the absence od diplomacy as well as in the feudalistic-imperialist “foreign policies”. The resulting post-national, and especially increasing, post-state irreversibility leads to the systematic and systemic emptiness of societies and abandons them to their historically ingrained fate.

Governing as an expression of timeless, classical statecraft has thus been supereded by both factual and, in particular, intellectual "insolvency". Consequently, statehood as the foundation of international order, as a necessary continuum of transnational creative development and peacemaking, is no longer viable. This is especially true for the current attempts at domination by technocratic, materialistic, and militaristic so-called new elites. But messianic self-perception—from religious wars to regional universalism to today's egocentric capital accumulation, etc.—teaches that origin is not necessarily future, and external absolutism does not exist, because the universal world is relative. And this applies first and foremost to a free policy of international relations, specifically in the sense of transnational order policies in the spirit of shaping the future of civilization.

III   Transnational Order Policy
Every order, especially as a free order, is minimally rule-based and—analogous to a feedback loop—dynamic in order to anticipate developments and changes early on. Beyond its immanence, an order can also dissolve and—in the case of an order of freedom—vegetate without replacement. Human beings, born into a universal space of free will, are then at the mercy of a raw, reptilian existence when living under unfree conditions, thus completely contradicting their civilizational evolution. Lawlessness, anarchy, and chaos, or rigid order, are then simultaneously the triggers of a potential civilizational collapse. ‘Having’ instead of ‘being’ and consciousness have thus conjured up a fundamental global crisis, ultimately a foreseeable consequence that messianic transhumanism further catalyzes.
If the power-political egocentrism of the last few centuries has betrayed the European Renaissance and Enlightenment—humanism—then it has been definitively proven that only societies and their transpersonal elites, especially within the transnational, peaceful, co-creative coexistence of people, can guarantee political and intellectual leadership based on consciousness, and thus shape the future. For international order policy must therefore first and foremost be derived from and legitimized by a transnational-universal, individually and societally grounded and legitimized intellectual order of freedom. Every other method of establishing international order will, as before, fail again and again, because it ignores the evolutionary core of humanity. Thus, the great post-war order of the United Nations and its fundamental crisis—a tragic failure—leads quite precisely to the potential for change within a global transformation, especially in the politics of international relations: Transnationally associative societal formats are therefore the only legitimizing driving force for the civilizational determination of human futures.

IV   Society – Market – Administration
It is clear that statehood is necessary – as a counter-model to anarchy: professional, transparent, and ethical – for the organization, coordination, and derived regulation/order of free spheres of action. This includes precisely legitimized monopolies of force and formal sovereignty, also in foreign policies: the state as a minimal administrator between societies and markets – both domestically and internationally. The power factors of such a transnational order policy lie exclusively within the sphere of societies that determine free will. While markets organize the "foundation", the emancipated bearers of societal will establish the qualitative and intellectual power of their political will. Not fear and paternalism, but rather balancing consciousness and free will guide civilizational development and the normativity of the immanence of constantly transforming dynamics of order – both internally and externally.

V   Evolutionary World Orders: The Civilizational Primacy of free Societal Worlds
As mentioned above, the international system - measured against the conditions of human evolution - has failed in recent centuries: the generation of fear, regulatory dominance and violence, illegitimate control, and above all, the associated limitation of human developmental dynamics—often camouflaged by religious and ideological justifications—have led civilizations to their decline and potential armageddon. Lacking any humanly adequate legitimacy and accountability, they have abused their administrative and coordinating mandate and caused the structural entropy of the international system. This global disorder can only be remedied by a Copernican change or a kind of quantum leap into centropy, an emancipating, peaceful, co-creative societal world order dynamic, in order to shape futures firstly in accordance to human dignity.
These civilizational futures, and thus also orders, depend more than ever on humanitiy’s individual Self and its societal capacity to reconnect with its transcendent evolutionary laws. This determination—likely never the task of the state—can only be defined by societies: A world worth living in for humans is only a world of free societies. Within this individual  transpersonal and transnational societal self-awareness, an adequate world order policy, a humane policy of international relations, can be shaped and implemented as a real universal order of freedom. The alpha and omega of any global governance therefore lie under the unconditional primacy of a free societal world and their peaceful transnational collaboration.
Thus empowered governing is far more than mere state administration: It is Self-based governing with universal responsibility and, above all, with appropriately dynamic normativity, deducted from intellectual insight, cognition, and free will—albeit within societal relativity and equilibration processing. Reflective leadership from within the individual creates a sustainable, future-oriented world order with continuous progressing and the highest possible finding of justice and truthfulness: for "man's will is his/her heaven"! Such a world order, based on the primacy of societal world determination, transforms the future into a dynamic, co-creative present and the planet into a universal analogue as an unconditional space of free will.
https://worldpowerself.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-world-order-is-dead-long-live-world.html
* The author is the founding president of the International Senate of Cultures (ISC) http://internationalsenate.org. The preceding reflections also form the programmatic background of the ISC's organizational policy. - Curacao, Februray 14, 2026

ANASTASIS: THE QUANTUM LEAP INTO THE ‚NOUS‘

 

Reflections about the central societal challenge for the

second quarter of the 21st century: the Human Anastasis

by J Michael Heynen

I. What was it?

The international Societies entered the uncertainties of the 21st century based on the certainty of their 20th-century experiences, yet the insights gained from empirical evidence were largely ignored. And right from the start—in a strategically consistent and post-imperial manner—the old fatal game of artificially dramatized antagonisms was resumed, this time largely internationalized and militarized. The purely speculative narrative of the "clash of civilizations" became the paradigm of simple people and their leaders, ultimately becoming the normative framework for state action based on globalizing, egomaniacal projections.

9/11 then shaped the further course of the first quarter in the same bitter patterns and escalations of violence: the fragmentation of the fragile international system and the obviously intended entropy of "democracy" through the definitive abandonment of transparency and integrity in the processes of finding truth and justice. The apparent irreversibility of this development was further reinforced years later by civilizational measures such as epidemics on a global scale. The dissolution of any order as the basis and condition of freedom led directly back through the 20th century to the 18th/19th century: a backwardly time lapsed, dystopian process leaving a reptilian labyrinth as so-called world order.

II. The Omnipotent Ego of the substructure

This systematically initiated and expanded process—deliberate conflict escalation, the complete dissolution of order coupled with a politicized explosion of bureaucracy, state-sanctioned overconfidence in "governing," generally incompetent leadership, individual freedoms existing only as a "diaspora," etc.—results in the widespread evaporation of societies and states and their constitutive connection to the legitimacy of statehood.

Above all, formerly democratic societies have been quantitatively conditioned by collectivist, materializing ideologies instead of being qualitatively determined, deepened, and dynamized on the basis of the subject's autonomy. Consequently, the so-called democratic orders of international relations have also become entangled in endless antagonisms and double standards as pure interest-driven politics and have thus been eliminated. The so-called “democratic universalism” thus revealed itself as an imperial and feudalizing strategy and ended in a dead end: “The West and the Rest”!

The Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Peace of Westphalia fell victim to egomaniacal projections of power—underpinned by technological and economic considerations, nihilistic materialism, and camouflaged by transhumanism. Instead of governing the present and future in a meaningful and peace-creating way from the superstructure, the substructure, derived from reality and its "normativity of the factual," becomes the sole modality of governing, thus illegitimate and necessarily escalating violence. Societies thus founded the state only at least to ultimately serve as an egomaniacal projection screen for decoupled statehood and soon to be abandoned to themselves through complete depletion of substance: The new beginning!

III. A Way Out?

The first quarter of the 21st century, with its multi-causal and multilateral crises and conflicts, definitively proves the inadequacy of governing factual reality from within its immanence. Human life means choosing, but choosing does not mean egocentrically selecting the conditions of reality that suit one's needs. Furthermore, it does not mean egomaniacally bending the constants of cosmic law, but rather, on the contrary: shaping and ordering the conditions of reality based on the determination of universal (cognitive) lawfulness. Only in this way can the individual freedom and creativity of the subject arise. And therein lies perhaps the only way out of the civilizational crisis, enabling us to reach the future and shape it in a way that is worthy of human dignity.

Those who recognize this crisis and its causes automatically open themselves to transition and transformation: to emancipation in the sense of finally becoming adults, to the reconnection of inner and outer worlds (consciousness first and as the driving force), and to the return of human development to the evolutionary grid of universal creation (Teilhard de Chardin) – from full self-empowerment and self-determination, initiated and legitimized by individual universality.

The ultimate end of civilizational development becomes a new beginning through reopen up to the true power of creation: from the reconnection with the inner world/self as the foundation of an emancipatory self-awareness, the civilizational world is reshaped, from the real world of the individual's inner self-determination as a responsible agent of human development.

This kind of Copernican revolution, the quantum leap into and out of the self, describes freedom and order arising from creative humanity. Such a fundamental shift from the material to the immaterial, from matter to guidance from spirit and consciousness, is the leading principle of human development in the second quarter of the 21st century. With this finally begins the true evolution of humanity: from adolescent to adult. The associated return to guidance from spiritual substance is simultaneously the definitive re-entry into the evolutionary process in accordance with creation as the central civilizational achievement of humankind: from object to subject, the co-creator of creation!

The ongoing Anthropocene is the historical nexus of transition and transformation into the self-dynamized nousphere, the space for shaping and resonating with humanity's dignified life—individually and (inter-) societally self-determined and balanced: a kind of anastasis from the soulless person to the human being of spirit and consciousness - the "Phoenix rising from the ashes!"

J Michael Heynen

Montana, Curacao

November 22, 2025