Gianluca Moldovan 
Fear is the strongest emotion that exists in the Hobbesian state of Nature. Fear has been around since the early ages of Humankind. “Fear” is defined as an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat. The keywords of “dangerous” or “threat” are paramount to understanding the notion of survivability in the world as it is. The critters of our world are thus induced by Fear itself. Fear is an archaic emotion that exists in all living beings. It is by fearing danger or threats around that critters survive, elevating them to a heightened sense of awareness in the Hobbesian state of Nature. The fear of famine, the fear of falling prey to a predator, the fear of sickness, etc. Such are the natural instincts of Homo Sapiens when they came out of Nature. But Fear, being an ancient feeling, never left Homo Sapiens, thus following Humankind’s civilizational progress over time. Ironically, it is because of Fear itself that Civilization managed to flourish across History. People needed to eat to survive, people needed to procreate to continue the Age of Man, people needed to fend off predators and so forth.
Homo Sapiens, with their emancipation from Nature, learned to control this constant bombardment of Fear, through the discovery of various innovative features such as manipulating fire, inventing the wheel, domesticating animals and becoming sedentary through agricultural practices. The First Industrial is what allowed Humankind to escape the constant chase of Fear from the Hobbesian state of Nature. Such level of “Control” was never achieved before by humans and it took them tens of thousands of years to become the apex of our world.
However, this emancipation opened the Pandora’s box of Civilization: Power.
In the early times of Humankind, Homo Sapiens learned about Power and ever since, they never let go. Homo Sapiens passed on Power to their offspring from which they managed to create entire societies and civilizations across the time of History. But every time the cycle repeats itself, generation after generation, the Power element may overwhelm the Fear element, creating an overestimation of the Fear factor. Consequently, History has been the witness of a never-ending cycle of Power versus Fear.
In essence, Fear drives Power. This is how Humankind’s condition allows Civilization to happen. Fear drove Homo Sapiens to seize Power. But when there is too much Power, the reverse takes hold. Power drives Fear. Ergo, the resource conflicts and clashes of civilizations over History; the struggles between ideologies; the fights among societies and individuals and so on. All for the lust of Power because people Fear. This is the never-ending cycle of Fear driving Power, which drives Fear which drives Power, etc.
I call this the Ultimate Struggle of Humankind. This is the key problematic cycle that humanity has yet to solve over time.
There were a few attempts in History at correcting the Ultimate Struggle; the ending of WW2 spanned an array of worldwide institutions such as the United Nations. This could be an example. However, we need to remind ourselves that History does not stop, and as such there is no putting the brakes on the Problematic Cycle of Fear and Power, as long as humans are still part of this Universe.
I use the cancer metaphor that festers inside a body; The Problematic Cycle, if not checked, develops the risk of sabotaging the progress of, even annihilating, a civilization having reached the top of its Foundational Pyramid. The top of the Pyramid tests even the wisest of people as the path to the next stage of Humankind narrows down. Many societies, ideologies, nation states and civilizations have failed to balance the Problematic Cycle. Too often, they failed by focusing too much on Power, or too much on Fear. A civilization abusing of its Power creates reverberations across other civilizations possessing too much Fear. Recall that the Hobbesian state of Nature continues to manifest at the civilizational level just as much as at the animalistic or individual level. It is just a scaled up version at the global level.
When a civilization, a society or a nation state abuses of its current given Power, it automatically creates friction with another which drowns in Fear, thus creating an off-balance, zero-sum outcome. When that occurs, either two elements follow: 1) the entity with the most Power survives and engulfs the other; aka “History is written by the Victor”; or 2) after a clash over control of Power, the entity with the most Fear succeeds in taking over the Power element, thus flipping the relationship; again, aka “History is written by the Victor”.
If such is the never-ending Problematic Cycle, then Humankind is doomed to always reach what I call Civilizational Karma; an inflection point in time.
WW1, for example, led to a societal and economic gap between the victors and the losers. The allied forces imposed a series of economic and social sanctions to the defeated Axis powers, namely Germany. The victors utilized their newly achieved levels of Power to exert a totality of control over the German industry through edits such as demilitarization. Because of the increased Fear of a return to German militarization, the victors imposed ruthless measures to avoid any return of such Fear. However, the opposite had the effect. Because of such overextension of Power, defeated nation states like Germany allowed their society to fester into extremist behaviors due to the off-balance between Fear and Power. Some wanted revenge from the way they were treated after the end of the war, others wanted justice for the survivability of their own nation state; the “German people”.
Populism is a byproduct of the Problematic Cycle, which can spiral out of control very easily because societies become disillusioned over what constitutes Fear in their existence and what Power can bring. Propaganda begins to take hold in such moments, giving way to corrupt ideologies such as Nazism. And then History shows us again how the balance of Fear and Power tilts once more, leading us to WW2; zero-sum outcome.
Ergo, Civilizational Karma. The way a civilization, a society or a nation state exercises its Power in an abusive way adds pressure to the Fear factor, thus collapsing the cycle of Power and Fear to such a level whereby the cycle is required to autocorrect its balance. Too much Power adds more Fear, which creates even more Power and so forth. At some point in time, a bubble forms which eventually tends to implode on itself; ceteris paribus. Civilizational Karma is when that bubble implodes and the problematic cycle completes a full rotation to the secondary implosion phase. In our example above, WW1 was the first implosion of the cycle, which led to WW2, the secondary implosion. The way the victors of WW1 managed the outcome of the war through abuse of Power led to the Axis seeking higher levels of Power. What goes around, comes around; thus karma. Religious texts and scripts always tell of values of personal conduct and the way you must treat people. The same principle applies at the scaled version globally across civilizations.
Humankind has a natural tendency of being overly overreactive and hypersensitive to the Problematic Cycle. Individuals and citizens are usually more reactive rather than proactive; I worry more about paying my due bills today, not the ones coming in the next year; I am hungry today, not tomorrow. As such, Civilization Karma is contingent on the behavior of a civilization, a society or a nation state, when in possession of Power.
More current examples such as the Israel-Gaza or the Ukraine-Russia conflicts are proof that we are currently going through a secondary implosion phase of the Problematic Cycle. For the Israel-Gaza conflict, the end of WW2 is the primary implosion phase in our contemporary time, when the level of Jewish emigration to Palestine created the nation state of Israel. Having gone through the horrors of the Holocaust, Jewish populations told themselves: “Never again”. Fear is prevalent and at its peak for the Jewish population. As a consequence, they create a nation state whereby other nations and ethnic populations also possess an element of Fear for losing their way of lives, their culture and lands. Thus, leading to the Israeli-Arab conflicts during the Cold War. However, the Jewish mindset remained particularly axed on the Fear factor due to Civilizational Trauma; i.e. the Holocaust. Civilizational Trauma leads to Civilizational Karma. Today, Israel is led by a group of extremist far-right entities because they decided “never again”. Fear about antisemitism in terrorist ideologies such as Hamas or Hezbollah reminds the Israeli mindset of the Holocaust; the Trauma. As such, perception of Fear and Power is off-balanced since the primary implosion of post-WW2. Extremist populism that is Nazism, through their extremely high abuse of Power, created the Jewish Trauma, which eventually spanned extremist populism in Israel. And now, they conduct Power abuse themselves against the Palestinian population. The Gaza conflict was a ticking time-bomb, just waiting to happen, and Humankind failed once more, to correct the off-balance before secondary implosion. Now, I am afraid that a new cycle will begin, with the outcome of this conflict resulting in a Palestinian Trauma, which would eventually lead new levels of Power abuse for future generations, and the creation of more extremism and populistic behaviors among Arabic nations. Once more, Civilization Karma. Israel by hoping to eliminate the Fear of “never again”, ironically creates even more Fear. It is easy for civilizations to fall into artificial Fear.
On Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Problematic Cycle is illustrated by the Ukrainian Civilizational Trauma experienced in the 20th Century; i.e. the Holodomor and Soviet conquest during WW2 following Ukrainian subjugation under Stalin. In fact, Russia, taking the form of an Empire, then the form of Sovietism, led centuries of oppression against the people currently forming the ethnic nation of Ukraine. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian emancipation led to artificial Fear because of Russian loss of Power. By fearing NATO expansionism, an old Cold War era mentality, extremism and populism began to resurface inside Russia under the image of Putin. Putin created a propaganda machine, akin to Hitler’s mindset, whereby he artificially inflated the element of Fear into his own population to create an excuse for the invasion of Ukraine, seemingly taken over by supposed “Nazis” and Western entities. Civilizational Karma is currently undergoing in Russia as well, as Putin’s misperception of reality about the Russian-Ukrainian relationship led to an all-out war. Civilizational Karma in Russia is a slow-paced mechanism, as it will take years of correction before the Problematic Cycle restarts.
Civilizational Trauma and Karma normally takes place between generations and so changing demographics are an essential component to the rate and frequency of occurrence of the Problematic Cycle. In the case of the Israel-Gaza and Ukraine-Russia conflicts, it took roughly two generations (circa 75 years) to reach secondary implosion.
The China-Taiwan question has yet to reach secondary implosion of the Problematic Cycle. Experts are estimating an invasion of Taiwan could happen as soon as in the next 5 years; others say that China has already lost its window of opportunity, mainly due to a rapidly aging population, a failing economy that keeps getting worse over time and a reliance on energy and food imports through global maritime channels. The Chinese socio-economic structure is on the brink of collapse after a hyper industrialization era that has put too much pressure on its own system. Chinese Civilization is your go-to basket case for Civilizational Trauma. China has a highly sensitive History of Trauma, following the Century of Humiliation (19th century), and similar to Israel, they said “never again”, which led to numerous socio-economic disasters and cultural revolution, civil wars and oppression during the 20th century. By hyper industrializing itself, China artificially grew its Power factor to counter the great amount of Fear cumulated over almost two entire centuries. Evidently, Chinese History having been here for a while in Humankind, has gone through centuries of similar cycles. The secondary implosion of China’s problematic cycle, abusing its Power in areas such as the South China Seas, will lead to a significant Civilization Karma to the country. And indeed, because of this increase in Power, it has led neighboring countries’ Fear factor to increase in their turn, which creates more militarization friction in the region. It should come as no surprise to notice how tense the situation is in the Taiwan strait and nearby regions. Civilizational Karma for China will resemble the collapse of its current demographic might and sectors such as its consumption and export industries. The question remains whether the Chinese Communist Party will survive once the Problematic Cycle completes its current rotation.
Mechanism of the problematic cycle:
The framework presented above illustrates the Problematic Cycle’s mechanism, which can be applied in all areas of historical studies. The framework remains valid at all levels of civilizational changes and societal shifts within individuals.
For instance, let us assess the Soviet Union/Russia and U.S. foreign policies in the last 75 years with relation to the Problematic Cycle.
The transition from Cold War status quo to post-Cold War status quo is littered with cases of civilizational traumas and karmas. Due to an abuse of Power over Fear from the Soviet Union, the soviet system eventually collapsed after poor socio-economic integration and sustainability, thus failing to maintain universal responsibilities. Having subjugated countries, nations, societies, ethnicities and religions, the Soviet Union became disillusioned into the frenzy competition against the U.S. and its capitalist model. Soviet Union’s history post-WW2 ignited a Civilizational Trauma, which inevitably led to secondary implosion of Civilizational Karma during its collapse in 1991. Generational changes forced this acceleration of secondary implosion due to pre-conditions of subjugations inside the Soviet Union’s societies. The Soviet Union’s Civilizational Karma of 1991 therefrom created a new primary implosion in Russia’s 1990s society. And this stage is due to a combination of very bad U.S. foreign policy and weak institutions and corruption in Russian society at the beginning of the 1990s.
The U.S. following WW2 had the opposite effect of Civilizational Trauma in that it managed to balance its universal responsibilities. Indeed, emerging as the grand victor of WW2 and sole hegemony, it could have easily, militarily and in an imperialistic fashion, taken over the entire World. There were no more significant adversaries from that point of view, expect perhaps the Soviet Union. But the U.S. had nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union did not after 1945. It is only in 1949 that the Soviets first acquired the nuclear bomb. Because of the consciousness of universal responsibilities, it is a valid point to estimate that the U.S. would have wanted at all costs to avoid eradicating an entire civilization such as the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons; following the witnessing of the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is universal responsibilities manifestation. As such, the U.S. tried not to abuse of its superior Power over Fear of Soviet expansionism. Such an act, among others like the creation of international institutions to preserve World security and cooperation, allowed the U.S. foreign policy structure to remain a constant and beacon of light for other civilizations desiring to escape the Fear factor. Considering the overall macro-sense of the Cold War, it is safe to assume that U.S. foreign policy had an adequate balance of Power over Fear, unlike its eastern adversary. Thus, the U.S. avoided Grand Civilizational Trauma and Karma during the Cold War. I use Grand because I am only referring to the overall historical macro-chronology of the Cold War of 1945 through 1991. I do not delve deeper into smaller, shorter-term historical accounts; such as the Vietnam and Korea wars, the Chilean or Nicaraguan coups, etc.; whereby U.S. foreign policy did indeed create numerous controversies. Such events merit their own problematic cycles that the U.S. is still paying to this day; however not such a big problematic cycle in that it definitely terminates the U.S. Civilization. It is important to notice that a combination of smaller Civilizational Traumas and Karmas can have significant impact over the longer run and can lead to an eventual civilizational collapse; such cases we have seen across history; e.g. the Roman Empire or the Russian Empire.
Now back to the 1990s. Russian Civilizational Trauma was left unchecked by U.S. foreign policy. Because of the sensation of victory over the Soviet Union, the U.S. became the sole hegemony of the World, which consequently relaxed its balance of Power over Fear. Due to this relaxation, U.S. foreign policy began to neglect the grander scheme of geopolitics and their longer run consequences. It shifted its laser-focused Power against Soviet Union by artificially downgrading the Fear factor. The unbalancing of the Problematic Cycle can happen either on the Power side or the Fear side, or both at the same time. It failed to detect how Russian society started to decay into poverty, while Russian oligarchs started to take control over the country just as corruption was beginning to flourish in the entire former eastern bloc. Because of this neglect, by-products of domestic abuse of Power over Fear within Russian society led to extremism and nationalistic behaviors we have similarly come to experience during the post-WW1 and pre-WW2 period. Thus the emergence of individuals such as Vladimir Putin. He himself in 2005 said the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” That is a clear manifestation of Civilizational Trauma of the fallout in the 1990s in the Russian mindset. With a leader like Putin exerting ironclad control over the Russian system in the next 30 years, generational changes influenced by Putin’s propaganda machine and disinformation campaign have led the World to a moment of secondary implosion in the Problematic Cycle. The result of Russia’s Crimea annexation of 2014, followed by its invasion of Ukraine, is a testament of Civilizational Karma, but this time Karma falls on the Western Civilization and U.S. foreign policy; over its failure to swiftly correct the balance of Power over Fear during the 1990s. With U.S. foreign policy being distracted by consequential events in the 1990s and 2000s in the Middle East, following the wars in Iraq, 9/11 and the overall War on Terror, those events constituted in themselves numerous problematic cycles due to U.S. foreign policy abuse of Power over Fear; in this case Fear of terrorism. U.S. foreign policy misperception of its own Power in the Middle East has created a domino effect over the last 30 years. Coupled with the neglect of post-Soviet Russia, today U.S. foreign policy (and the rest of Western Civilization) is paying the price through Civilizational Karma. Weak U.S. foreign policy in the last 30 years allowed other entities such as China to quickly assert a whole different level of socio-economic competition in the 21st century. Civilizational Karma for the West becomes more accentuated.
The Problematic Cycle can have grand repercussions over the longer run across any civilization, country, nation state or any society. It is thus fundamental to achieve as much balance as possible over this cycle on the grander scheme of things. How do we, as Humankind, achieve this?
