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 Liberal normativity and orders were quite successfully used and thus countered as camouflage for the outdated and overstretched Anglo-Saxon concept of property and its dialectical “twin”, crude Marxist egalitarianism.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
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