00:04:07.580So the individual, it is a metaphysical principle, not identical with human.
00:04:19.180The individual is something that could exist without humanity.
00:04:24.380For example, in dimension and AI in the post-human species.
00:04:29.980So gender politics, it is just preparation for this final advancement of this individualistic liberal society.
00:04:42.620That is the concept of the end of the history.
00:04:47.420And multipolarity concept, multipolarity as a theory, it is a kind of total, total refuse of all the principles embedded in liberalism.
00:05:01.900Not only geopolitically, economically, cultural, council culture, unipolarity, globalism, anything.
00:05:10.860So the idea of multipolarity starts with the affirmation that there is not only one civilization in the world.
00:05:23.420Western one, liberal one, progressive one.
00:05:25.980There are many, not so many, few, let's say, few civilizations, including Eastern Orthodox, Russian, Chinese, Indian, Islamic, African, Latin American.
00:05:40.780Closer or further from the Western one.
00:05:45.340But this civilization, they have all the rights to follow other paths, other way in the history.
00:05:55.580To create their own political, cultural, social, spiritual, philosophical systems, basing on their traditional values.
00:06:05.100So the Western modernity and liberalism is just one of the options.
00:09:22.700So from the very beginning liberalism was wrong in identifying the human nature as the individual.
00:09:30.780So that was the conceptual error. And when this conceptual error was in the center of the philosophical
00:09:41.260tradition, that started to pervert step by step all the social and cultural and political systems.
00:09:50.140So liberalism worked through the centuries, not being so horrible as today, but if we follow
00:10:01.500the development of these very principles of individualism, starting from Protestant Reformation,
00:10:09.180starting from anti-Catholic theology of the Reformation, we could identify this nominalist, individualistic approach
00:10:24.140already in the roots of the liberalism. But obviously old liberalism was not so radical, because it was
00:10:33.740it was just a stage, just a phase, historical phase. In the first time, in the first era of all liberalism,
00:10:43.580the liberals could tolerate the existence of national states. More than that, national states were created
00:10:49.900by bourgeois instead of traditional states, spiritual states, empire, the pope's rule over traditional
00:10:59.820political order in pre-modern Europe. So liberals were in favor of the creation of bourgeois national state
00:11:08.220as preparation for the civil society, for the future globalization. So that is a very important thing.
00:11:16.300For us, it is obvious, it is easy to accept. I think for many, for many Westerners who are very censored
00:11:24.700and who refuse this totally perverted system of globalism, of neoliberalism, of liberalism that you have
00:11:34.220now extremists, terrorists, absolutely insane, it is difficult to accept that because American history
00:11:43.900started with some kind of religious or liberalism. And if we compare that or the beginning and the end,
00:11:53.340so there is still a huge gap between them. So that is an address between them. But if we take a step outside
00:12:03.020of the Western history, of the Western modernity, we could identify that with the eyes of Russian,
00:12:10.860Muslim or India, on traditionalists, Chinese, Confucianists. We could see that the problem was
00:12:19.900within Western modernity already. So that was, and the evil was there. So just, we have arrived at the
00:12:28.940final station, the terminal station. So now, but that was planned and the tickets were about to get
00:12:37.500where we are now for centuries ago, centuries ago.
00:12:43.180So Samuel Huntington and his battle with Francis Fukuyama, with the end of history and the clash of
00:12:50.780civilizations, is very much at the heart of your work. You're in the dialogue with these guys. And Huntington
00:12:58.220comes to the realization that after the ideological bifurcation of the global order under communism and
00:13:08.060liberalism, that we were going to have these much more organic identities. We're going to return to a
00:13:12.700more traditional understanding of peoples, of language and religion and heritage, and many of the things
00:13:17.660that had made up identities previously. One of the things that he points out is that you're going to
00:13:23.820probably not see nation states be enough to push back against a more global order. Instead,
00:13:30.380he sees civilizational blocks where a core state more or less runs the zone. And then the other
00:13:37.100states that share in that civilization, he tends to define them by religion. They will be part of that
00:13:42.540civilizational block with that kind of one or two core states leading this. You have a similar
00:13:47.740recognition of the need for there to be larger identities than nations, but smaller than
00:13:53.660global understandings. You have the empire understanding. It's similar, but not exactly
00:13:59.180the same. Now, I would wonder what you think are the differences between your and Huntington's
00:14:04.860solution? Why yours is more robust? Because I think to many people looking at the geopolitical
00:14:10.220goals that you might have, they're saying, okay, well, yes, some of this makes sense. But the practical
00:14:15.980application of this is basically the United States needs to roll back its empire and Russia needs to be
00:14:21.500allowed to expand and control its empire. And so just practically, this looks like someone who's
00:14:26.780selling a philosophy to me that is going to hurt my nation and help his nation. And so I was just
00:14:32.060wondering if you could speak to the differences between you and Huntington in this area, and if
00:14:35.980there's a true reason for why this needs to be organized, or if this is ultimately just in service of a
00:14:41.580geopolitical project. So first of all, I think that Huntington was absolutely right. So he was prophetic.
00:14:49.980He was deeper than everybody believed during his life, because he has given the more correct
00:14:57.980description of the world and of the future. So everything we see starting from 2000,
00:15:10.1409-11, from all this period starting with 2000, that was absolute confirmation that Huntington was
00:15:19.340right and Fukuyama was totally wrong. Fukuyama himself, I have spoken
00:15:25.100several times with him, he recognized that. So his claim that there is only one humanity, only one state
00:15:35.420is over. That was too early, it was not timely. So and he affirmed Fukuyama that in order to arrive to the
00:15:47.580end of the end of history, we need more time, some maybe new phases to prepare this end of history. So he was
00:15:56.860in hurry too much. And Huntington has described a very correct and perfect picture of what will follow,
00:16:08.940what we will have in the near future and what we have already now. So Huntington is correct. So it is not just
00:16:17.260to position, maybe Huntington was not against the globalism, but he just described the reality that
00:16:26.620globalization will fail. That globalization is based on the abstract principle that everybody in the world
00:16:36.860is already prepared. Everybody, every society in the world is ready to change the agenda,
00:16:46.780to be transformed into modern Western liberal individuals. But that was not the reason. And
00:16:53.100I could judge on my own society, we were ready for that, absolutely. And when we discovered,
00:17:01.340when we have discovered what the modernization, globalism and liberalism mean in reality, we have refused
00:17:09.340that. That was not just the decision of Putin as an individual, that was the common reaction against the
00:17:20.540Western liberal globalist project. When we have discovered what is its meaning, we have rejected that.
00:17:28.220The same with China, Chinese, the same with India, the same with Islam, Muslim people, the same for
00:17:36.860the African. But that is not just a theory of clash of civilization. There is a consultation of the bitter, for the
00:17:47.180globalist reality of the status quo. The things are like that. So nobody except the West, and maybe the West
00:17:56.540itself, but outside is absolutely certain, nobody is ready to become the citizen of the world in the concept of
00:18:07.100liberal globalism. So globalism is rejected everywhere, and in the West as well. But, for example, what we see now in
00:18:17.100this crisis of immigration, of illegal immigration, all these talks about grooming gangs of Pakistan and
00:18:26.060in England, all this problem of immigration and American politics, we see that the society remembers,
00:18:36.220is recalling that there is something more than just individual. There are cultural collective identities,
00:18:43.500to be American, Native American or not, to be integrated culturally or not, to have some religious ties
00:18:53.500with society or not. That is not about biology. It is not about the color of skin. That is about
00:19:01.740collective identity. It is much more important principle. And this collective identity could be
00:19:11.100national, ideological or civilizational. So the second point that Huntington has pointed out very, very
00:19:19.500clearly, that the problem will be not between national states, because national states are more or less
00:19:28.300dissolved by now, in the West at least. So national states don't represent any more the deep identity.
00:19:38.060Liberalism has destroyed this identity, but in spite of advancement of the totally individualistic
00:19:46.460civil society, civil society, global society, there appeared this new kind of deeper identity,
00:19:56.140civilizational one. And that is the fact that you could not win with ideology, with propaganda,
00:20:03.900with some artificial means, because civilization is something deeper, that is deep inside. And I think
00:20:13.980that crisis that the West passed through now is about that. So the West discovers as well the West, who is and was the main
00:20:25.900driver of this globalization, liberalism, globalism. Now it discovers something wrong inside itself. The West is
00:20:36.300discovering its own civilizational identity. And finds that there is something wrong with that. So there is identity, and there are the enemies of this deep identity.
00:20:49.820And these enemies are not external, as Russia or China or Muslim country. There is internal globalist, globalist elites,
00:21:00.700who still continue to implement this globalist agenda, this end of the history project, in spite of a growing pressure from the bottom to recover, to restitute this civilizational identity of the West.
00:21:22.700Concerning geopolitics. So I don't see any problem, how we could unify, combine, recombine this civilizational approach with geopolitics.
00:21:36.700Because geopolitical boundaries, geopolitical borders coincide with the civilizational one.
00:21:44.700They are not just the borders, but frontiers, the zones between civilizations. So they correspond to the existence of the greater great empires in the past, before the advent of the modernity.
00:22:02.700So that is not the case. Civilization is much deeper and much stronger civilizational identity than just politics, national state, ideology.
00:22:16.700Civilization is common ground for different people living in different states, but sharing the same worldview by the culture, by the roots, by the identity.
00:22:28.700And that coincides with the shape of the empires. So we could call this new multipolar world as the global power, global powers, world order, or civilizational world order, or the kind of return of the empires.
00:22:54.700So we see Chinese empire, Russian empire, Indian great states, Islamic empire, African continent as the project of empire of the future, and two vice regency of Spanish empire.
00:23:10.700So Latin American empire, and Brazil was for some short time independent Latin American empire as the possible image of the future.
00:23:23.700So we could call it empires, we could call it global powers, we could call it civilization.
00:23:29.700So it is not just justification of imperialism or expansion. It is about something much deeper and the Ukrainian war, it is not just the war between West and Russian civilization.
00:23:46.700It is about the civilization. It is about the very principle of sovereignty and the freedom to impose to one of the civilizations its own rule in the zone of its responsibility.
00:24:05.700Because it is not about Ukraine because it is about Ukraine because it is not about to add Ukraine to some Western civilization state.
00:24:12.700It is the idea that in Ukraine there is battle, the fight between globalists, between liberals, between those who are for the end of the history and with those who defend multipolar vision.
00:24:32.700And that multipolarity could be applied not only to the Russian empire, but to the West, to Western Europe, to America.
00:24:40.700And when we saw how MAGA started to grow in the United States, we had the impression that that is something like acceptance of multipolarity in reaffirmation of the American civilization is going on.
00:24:58.700So we interpreted, maybe it was wrong, I could not say, but we have seen in the MAGA movement, in Trumpism in general, precisely this return from the globalism to the idea, not of the national state, not so much of a national state, but to the idea of American empire.
00:25:22.700And all these talks about Canada and Greenland were not just the jokes, we considered that as the plan, as American plan to create great space, to establish North American civilization as the pole of this multipolar world.
00:25:40.700Maybe strongest, maybe leading pole, but just the pole among the other.
00:25:49.700So that, how we read Trumpism and MAGA, maybe we were wrong.
00:25:59.700And that is the very interesting subject of discussion, I hope.
00:26:04.700So one of the ideas that has come to fascinate me has been the development of peoples as a metaphysical entity, something that has a spiritual reality and a destiny that is its own.
00:26:18.700And I encountered this in other thinkers before running into your work, like Spangler and later on read into Heidegger and others.
00:26:25.980And so this is an idea that I think is represented across many different thinkers and traditions at this point, and I think has a lot of truth to it.
00:26:33.260One of the things that you outline, I think pretty eloquently, and I think it's the fourth political theory, is the way in which when societies scale,
00:26:42.300they have to abstract their way of being into something that is more analytical so others can follow it.
00:26:48.580You have to turn it into an ideology instead of a lived experience so that it can be spread to other peoples who might not necessarily naturally encounter it or apply it in their own way.
00:27:00.700And so one of the things that I do think about when we're talking about these empire-level civilizational geopolitical arrangements is you have a situation where you're necessarily going to have to artificially abstract some level of the way of being of the people in order to operate this state.
00:27:20.700And I think scale is one of the greatest enemies of human civilization right now.
00:27:25.060We have abstracted so much of what we do.
00:27:27.560We have created such a high level of complexity that we are no longer rooted in our natural ways of being.
00:27:33.860And I worry that the civilizational model, while I think it's better than global, still scales too high, that the imperial model is going to open itself repeatedly up to this problem.
00:27:45.940It's not that the liberal model is the first one to run into it.
00:27:49.760In fact, most civilizations, when they feel like they're at their height, tend to want to force their will onto their neighbors in the world.
00:27:57.560It seems like a natural cycle of civilizations and not something that is just particular to liberalism.
00:28:02.700So does the fall of liberalism actually solve this problem?
00:28:05.740And is empire actually the right place to stop this scaling?
00:28:09.600Because I'm not sure that that won't eventually still destroy the characters of individual peoples.
00:28:15.040So first of all, the difference between national state and empire, that empire tolerates the differences, political, ethnic differences and collective identity inside.
00:28:29.020So national state is dealing only with individual citizens.
00:28:34.860So citizenship, nationality, it is the fact, juridical, legal fact to belong to this state with the idiom, the main language and so on.
00:28:47.360That is formality, that is abstraction.
00:28:51.100And when we are dealing with national state, we are absolutely dealing with these juridical abstractions.
00:28:58.900Empire deals with collective entities of different scales.
00:29:04.700So inside of empire could exist the kingdoms.
00:29:09.040Inside of empire could exist states or different kinds of tribes or religious communities.
00:29:17.000So empire, that is, in my opinion, it is the greatest possible scale that still has the relation to plurality.
00:29:32.520So if we come from the empire to the humanity, so that is precisely the problem.
00:29:39.760So if we, because empire, it is a kind of relative, relative absolute, that is a kind of universality with the, with the limits, inside of the limits, not outside of the limits.
00:29:54.500That, and empires, they always rescale.
00:30:00.500So they, they grow, they, they shrink, but that is natural process.
00:30:08.300So they, they try to, to save and to, to transmit its core.
00:30:17.360So the empires, they, they prevent, they, they, they defend their heart, but expansion or reduction of the territory is, it is a sort of working heart in the organism.
00:30:34.760So it is expansion that is, it is an opposite process.
00:30:39.540So the process of rescaling is not abstract.
00:30:43.980It is put in the reality of the, of the being, and the main power of empire is attraction.
00:30:51.760It is not so much expansion, but attraction, cultural attraction, metaphysical attraction.
00:31:00.240And that mission is the last argument to unite the people and different political and social and cultural entities, including religious entity, around this, this axis.
00:31:13.000So the empire has something platonic inside of it.
00:31:18.060It is vertical organization or vertical around vertical axis.
00:31:39.600It serves some truth, some transcendental spiritual mission.
00:31:44.220So we could not imagine that British empire was not such a kind that was just liberal expansionist colonial entity, but traditional Roman empire, Greek empire, Assyrian empire, Russian empire, Byzantine empire, including Chinese empire.
00:32:02.440So Indian civilization as well, so Indian civilization as well, circle of influence.
00:32:09.940So all these traditional empires, Ottoman empire as well, Abbasid empire, they united many different political entities.
00:32:20.040So they preserved rather than destroyed the differences inside of them.
00:32:27.420And national state, it is totally, totally opposite.
00:32:31.680So national state is something that reduces all kind of identity to the individual one, to the citizen.
00:32:41.200And that is preparation step to globalism, to civil society.
00:32:47.240When you destroy the organic cultural, spiritual entity by individuals,
00:32:55.280you may be in the first time in the borders of the national state,
00:33:01.420and after that, they are ready to integrate in something more, as in the European Union.
00:33:07.920There was a nationalist stage of globalization, after that came this super-national mixture, confusion of the individuals.
00:33:21.920But mixture between French and Germans was not enough, so they have brought the other individuals.
00:33:31.220Individuals with no roots in European society, in order to destroy this deep identity.
00:33:39.720So liberalism is the conscious destruction of civilizational identity, and multipolarity is a kind of opposite strategy.
00:33:51.720And I think that, as well, that is important, that abstraction, you have mentioned the words abstraction.
00:34:00.220I agree that sometimes abstraction is a bad thing, but bad abstraction is bad.
00:34:10.220So if we correctly can abstract the meaning, the spirit from the phenomenon we observe, or the thing we are dealing with, that is good abstraction.
00:34:21.220The problem is not in abstraction or artificial creation.
00:34:27.220So when this abstraction is based on error, when artificial creation is counter-natural, that is the problem.
00:34:39.720So we are obliged to deal with some abstractions, with some artificial steps, so we need to create something, restore something, preserve something.
00:34:50.220And always there is the choice of free will.
00:34:55.220We Christian Orthodox, we believe in the existence of free will.
00:35:00.720It is one of the main important points of our belief.
00:35:05.720That is the difference between Calvinists.
00:35:07.720So we are absolutely certain that there is free will.
00:35:12.220So we could choose, we could make the wrong decision, we could repent, we could revise, criticize ourselves.
00:35:26.220And globalist, modern globalist situation, you have no right to speak what you think.
00:35:34.220So you should say exactly what CNN or Soros Network or Starmer has set you to say.
00:35:41.720So there is totalitarianism, liberal totalitarianism, based on this mechanical understanding of the progress, of the individualism and so on.
00:35:52.720So I think that empire, it is not about imperialism, not about expansion, it is about the principle.
00:36:03.220So the state with the mission, the state that accepts the differences inside and bases these differences on the principle of collective identity.
00:36:16.220Yes, Spengler's prediction is far more fatalistic as it tends to, you know, have the, the civilizational phase, which ossifies these different ways of being into something that no longer has, you know, is no longer animated by the spiritual.
00:36:31.220He saw that as kind of the end of civilization rather than its ability to readjust, I suppose, in those moments.
00:36:39.920But one of the other things I wanted to ask you about, because you're, you're one of the few people besides Nick Land that I've ever seen touch on the issue of accelerationism, which is very important to me because neo-reactionary theory is kind of how I got into this.
00:36:55.540And in Land, it's the, you know, it's the lack of negative feedback in the circuit, you know, the cybernetic feedback loop for you, it's the monotonic process.
00:37:06.480But in either instance, it's the recognition that we seem to be heading through this postmodern moment into something else.
00:37:13.880And what we're going to end up with is going to be perhaps post-human in a way.
00:37:19.380Now, when I spoke to Nick Land about this, he said, comparing with kind of what he had seen of your work, that the difference is while you were both recognizing a similar phenomenon, actually, he interestingly brought it back to the ethnic difference.
00:37:33.900So he said, for him, being, you know, an Anglo, the end of accelerationism was actually the jettisoning of the human and created a different scenario where, you know, capital escapes that which is human and finds its own destiny in the stars.
00:37:50.060As where your version of this ends with humanity transcending the need to be bound by rationality and science and otherwise finding a way back to spirituality.
00:38:01.560Can you speak a little bit about those differences?
00:38:03.960Do you think they're grounded, as he points out, perhaps in an ethnic approach to the way that you see this issue?
00:38:10.720Maybe so, but interesting. I have asked Artificial Intelligence, Grok, to write an article about comparison between my ideas and ideas of Nick Land.
00:38:26.100And interesting, the result was very, very satisfying. The Artificial Intelligence responded that there are some similarities and there are some differences.
00:38:35.880Similarity is, similarity consists in the rejection of liberal globalist world vision. So, radically in both cases.
00:38:47.220So, in my case and in the case of Nick Land, Dark Enlightenment, Aneryxist and Right Accelerationism.
00:39:00.660So, we use almost the same term in our criticism of liberalism. So, we despise it, we hate it, we criticize that in all its different forms.
00:39:15.920So, this radical rejection of status quo, of liberal liberal globalism is common.
00:39:23.760But Artificial Intelligence, I continue, has said that there is a kind of difference.
00:39:31.880So, myself criticize that from the pre-modern position or considering post-modernity as the chance to return to eternal paradigm, not just to the past, but to eternity.
00:39:50.020Because the God doesn't belong to past. The past. The God, it is eternity. And eternity is now.
00:40:00.480Eternity is not just the way of thinking in the pre-modern time. Eternity, if we believe in it, it is now.
00:40:10.240Christ is now. Christ is now. Church is now. The mystery of functioning now.
00:40:19.840And I use, according to AI, the post-modern moment of general dissatisfaction of the contemporary state of things, of liberalism, as a kind of occasion to return to eternity.
00:40:40.720And Nick Land wants to do completely opposite, opposite move. So, he tries to accelerate, he tries to get the modernity to its own logical end.
00:40:56.060So, total destruction of humanity and of the life itself. So, his idea and Negerestani, Reza Negerestani idea, they proceed from the objective-oriented ontology, speculative realism.
00:41:20.840That is his idea to end, to finish with the human, human philosophy, and start to deal with the things, to the things, to do something that is in the matter, or maybe, maybe on the other side of the matter, as a kind of Lovecraftian entities, the old ones.
00:41:41.840So, and weird realism of Graham, Graham Harmon, and the Mea Suu, as well, they use this term of something that is on other side, grandio,
00:42:08.840totally outside, totally outside, as the personalities described by Lockerbie.
00:42:16.240So, that is satanic parody on my understanding, metaphysical understanding of conservative revolution.
00:42:29.060So, maybe, at the end of the day, the boss versions are much more radically opposed than our criticism of liberalism.
00:42:42.340So, we reject liberalism totally different, different semantic course.
00:42:52.440So, and according, but Nick Land, why I am so interested, I am so interested in his work, because he does two things at the same time, very important for our intellectual strategy.
00:43:10.860First, he makes very, very, very important, very deep and essential criticism of globalism and liberalism, that is as critical as in case of Marx, for example.
00:43:22.460He is new Marx, but at the same time, he serves as example of the clearly openly satanic, satanic essence and nature of the progressism, of the technical development, of the speculative realism.
00:43:40.940So, that is, that is, that is about antichrist, so, and the concepts of Nick Land and his fanged phenomenon in his book, very impressive.
00:43:54.740So, he approves, at least it seems as if he approves, that this, the end of humanity, the life and the liberation of the core of the earth on its final travel to the sun.
00:44:18.240So, that is a kind of satanic, but presented naked, presented openly, without any humanistic wails on it.
00:44:36.160So, in both senses, that is interesting, he is much more responsible as thinkers than the absolute majority of the globalists.
00:44:45.180They don't dare, who don't dare, who don't dare, who don't dare to accept what they're doing, reality.
00:44:50.940They are killing the humanity, and Nick Land affirms, very well, you are killing the humanity, you are going to destroy the life, very well, say what you're doing.
00:45:04.560That will be much more honest, and so, let's say that, don't hide.
00:45:11.020So, let us destroy the life, let us destroy the humanity, that's a good idea, that was planned in the initial stage of capitalism, and so on.
00:45:23.100So, he is a bit like punk, metaphysical punk, no future, there is no positive solution to the problem we are dealing with.
00:45:34.860But, this despair is a kind of sin, so, we shouldn't, as Nietzsche, for example, Nietzsche has said, the God is dead, but that was not Nietzsche who has killed him.
00:45:50.060That was all the rest around him who made it, so, when Nick Land invites the people to kill themselves as soon as possible, so, it is not his will.
00:46:07.520He, a bit mocks on them, he, that is a kind of deep metaphysical bitterness and irony in his work, and I like that also, that we should have some special reading of Nick Land and Reza Inegaristani.
00:46:28.720So, they are very prophetic in something. That is not the casual event that Peter Thiel is going, Peter Thiel is going to make, to dedicate to four seminars in September, to Antichrist.
00:46:48.660So, that is very, and in tune with Lent, Lent souls. So, let's start, call the things by their correct names, and I think Nick Land does precisely that, and that is why I respect his writings, his ideas very much.
00:47:11.240Yeah, it's definitely a situation, I mean, it's certainly a Faustian project, it's certainly a Nietzschean project, and I think that, you know, you can disagree with his objectives deeply, but he is a very clear thinker, as you say, he's got the courage to follow these ideas to their conclusions, and when they're laid bare, then we can actually assess whether this is the place that we want to go.
00:47:33.940But on the subject of actually making decisions about where we want to go, one of the better illustrations in your work about this issue is the metaphysics of the washing machine, and how this, you know, technological revolution draws us and has a natural gradient on which we're going to approach.
00:47:52.580And the question is, can we protect our own humanity? Can we reject the washing machine? Is there an ability to reject technology and maintain what is human by not sacrificing it?
00:48:03.300Now, one of the things that Land points out in his version of accelerationism, which I think is unfortunately very true, is that accelerationism collapses decision space.
00:48:13.300The more that technology advances, the less time we have to react to it collectively, and it robs us of our ability and agency in those moments.
00:48:22.780And so I can see smaller individual communities, you know, an Amish community or other, you know, very tightly knit, very strict religious communities, perhaps rejecting the metaphysics of the washing machine.
00:48:36.980But I am doubtful that civilizations seem to be able to do this, because as I said, the technology keeps accelerating the pace at which decisions must be made.
00:48:45.780And we have less and less time to deliberate on these issues, and things just happen automatically, because we don't know how to approach the technological revolutions that are happening under us.
00:48:56.260In many ways, our politics feel like an attempt to blame other people for the consequences of our technological advancement, rather than actually tackling any issue as a civilization that we need to.
00:49:07.620So do you believe that ultimately we can, as civilizations, get a hold of the technological problem and arrest this acceleration?
00:49:16.880Or is this ultimately something that will be taken out of our hands?
00:49:21.040So, first of all, I would like to clarify a bit the concept of civilization, because you have mentioned Spengler.
00:49:31.700He used civilization in a very special way.
00:49:34.040So, as the end phase of the culture, of the cycle of the culture, the cycle of the life of the culture, I use that in a totally different way.
00:49:45.460I include in the concept of civilization, as French do, and Italian do, and American do, mostly, without direct allusion on Spengler, as the cycle of culture.
00:50:01.880So, in general, not just the final stage, the technological stage of the development of the culture.
00:50:12.180So, I'm using civilization, the word, the same, the very word of civilization, in that sense.
00:50:19.020It's something global, inclusive, where there are different stages, rise, fall, and so on.
00:50:27.140So, second point, very important, about technology.
00:50:31.580I think that technology, it is a metaphysical problem.
00:50:35.600So, that is why metaphysical of the washing machine.
00:50:39.280So, we need to consider and to conceive the techniques, the technology from the metaphysical point of view.
00:50:50.280What is technology and why it is so important in our life, in our society, in our history.
00:50:58.520Heidegger has developed the great, great line, the context, how we need to think that.
00:51:07.840And, according to him, technology is a kind of alienation, alienation of mind.
00:51:17.140So, Heidegger is dealing with two very important core concepts.
00:51:23.900Dasein, being here, Dasein, and Dasman.