Abstract
The following summary has been provided by a TruCheck™ trusted moderator. The full document is deemed in violation of democratic truth and access is therefore limited. This link provides privileged access to Herman Gorter’s collected academic blog posts containing their last writings on topics including history, the social sciences and political theory. Building on thinkers of the barbarian past, Gorter expounds a theory of Socio-Cultural Entropy, resting on a cyclical view of history. They argue that the Global Conference that put an end to the Great Upheaval of the twenty-first century did not mark the end of human strife but merely a momentary respite from unending cycles of civilisational pride coming before the fall. Comparing the global peace of the 2120s to the pre-crisis prosperity of the late-liberal age, Gorter posits that hegemonic cultures always develop into a decadent version of their once-revolutionary selves, blinding their subjects to the developments that produce their violent downfall. The suggestion is that the current era of prosperity will soon also be thrown into disarray by some impending challenge, its shape as yet unknown.
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Notes
- 1.
Jacques Barzun (2001). From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life. Harper Perennial.
- 2.
G.W.F. Hegel (1807). Phenomenology of Spirit. Private collection.
- 3.
G.W.F. Hegel (1807). Phenomenology of Spirit. Private collection.
- 4.
Ibn Khaldun (date unknown, fourteenth century). Muqaddimah. Found in Southern Rhine Academy Digital Library.
- 5.
Barzun (2001). From Dawn to Decadence, p. xvi.
- 6.
Barzun (2001). From Dawn to Decadence, p. xvi.
- 7.
Francis Fukuyama (1992). The End of History and the Last Man. Free Press.
- 8.
Terra Dolomiti ⟨Ψ 32 SC/2095⟩. Mystics and Mad-hatters: An Overview of Pre-Conference Esoteric Literature. Caribbean Federation of Academic Publishers.
- 9.
Mahatma Polley et al. ⟨Ψ 23 SC/2086⟩. The Fulfilment of Humanity: Our Treacherous Journey to Salvation. SpringerWeb.
- 10.
General Secretariat for Academic Affairs ⟨Ψ 31 SC/2094⟩. The Foundations of Democratic Truth. The Conference Press.
- 11.
Al-Ruhawi (Date unknown, 9th Century). Ethics of the Physician. Found in Library of Medical Ethics, Athens (discontinued).
- 12.
Rochelle Gupta ⟨Ψ 47 SC/2110⟩. The Human Project: From the Cave to the Conference. Association of World-Historians Press.
- 13.
Herodotus (Date unknown, 5th Century BC). Histories. Found in The Progress Institute’s Archive of World History.
- 14.
Slavoj Žižek (n.d.). “Ideology II: Competition is a Sin”, https://www.lacan.com/zizdesolationroad.html.
- 15.
Barzun (2001). From Dawn to Decadence, p. xvi.
- 16.
Slavoj Žižek (1994). Mapping Ideology. London: Verso, p. 21.
- 17.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2004). Multitude: Krieg und Demokratie im Empire. Frankfurt: Campus, p. 123. Hardt and Negri were naively optimistic at the time, believing that “the multitude” could bring about positive change.
- 18.
Paul Ashworth ⟨Ψ 2031⟩. Blood and Borders. The Great British Press.
- 19.
For a good discussion of the role of religion in the collapse of twenty-first century liberalism, I would recommend Marc Keru’s The Death of Reason in the 21st Century and Rohan Pleasant’s Insipid Fundamentalism: Religion’s Re-conquest of Liberal Politics.
- 20.
St. Augustine (Date unknown, 5th Century). The Confessions. Private collection.
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Freyberg-Inan, A., van Eijk, A. (2023). Herman Gorter: An Introduction to the End of a World. In: Horn, L., Mert, A., Müller, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Global Politics in the 22nd Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13722-8_5
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