We grow heated arguing over political and social models that ultimately make no sense.
They’re meaningless for two essential reasons.
First, we have yet to (re)construct a political model suited to the era of rapid, sweeping transformations in which we live.
Second, all existing models in our evolving societies are outdated and increasingly degenerative.
As a result, those who blind themselves with the illusion of change without effort can only cling to utopian fantasies—exotic, ready-made models that promise escape but offer no real solution.
On decline
In his Politeia (The Republic), Plato warned that monarchy degenerates into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into demagogy.
All of this has come to pass. And as Plato also noted, demagogy inevitably paves the way for tyranny.
Today, we find ourselves faced with clownish, crude autocrats — Trump, Putin, Maduro, Kim Jong-un, Khamenei — tyrants in all but name.
Aristocracy is a forgotten concept.
Democracy, which always harbored a latent tendency toward tyranny (mitigated only by its liberal character), is increasingly dominated by demagogic forces — both at the top and, even more worryingly, at the bottom.
Today’s so-called opposition — from sovereigntist-populists to movements like the Five Star — represents raw demagogy, tinged with a fascination for tyranny, clumsily disguised as admiration for the myth of the “strongman.” Who, incidentally, doesn’t exist.
Aristotle, in his Politics, argued that the best system is a mixed one, combining the authority of a leader, the wisdom of an elite, and the participation of the people.
All historically successful systems that operated beyond a city or small regional scale were built on exactly this foundation.
That’s why the only real solution is to design and implement a new mixed system, one fit for a technologically advanced and demographically challenged world — a system that functions across large geopolitical spaces.
Rather than opposing poorly imitated foreign models to the one in which we live, we should take ownership of our lives — and stop whining.
As for the supposed “alternatives” to the West — a term far too broad and complex to be casually dismissed — it’s high time we stopped praising the “virtues” of regressive, embarrassing systems that are, by any standard, far worse.
The foolish psychology of the masses never changes
So-called opposition to the system — often convenient and verbose — meant there were more communists in the West than in the communist countries themselves, where people were forced to endure the consequences firsthand.
Consider that in Berlin, it was the communists who had to build a wall to stop the exodus: over two million people fled to the West in fifteen years, while fewer than ten thousand went the other way — and only while the Eastern system was still being built.
We, lost in philosophical abstraction, concluded that the Western, liberal, American system — or whatever name you choose — was worse, because it was more insidious, more subtly oppressive.
But that’s just sophistry.
The language of common sense is always more intelligent than our cerebral acrobatics.
And the plain truth is that people only fled westward, and that communism collapsed — from within. Let’s never forget that: it imploded.
Still, the masses remain gullible and proud of their illusions.
In 1967, in West Berlin, student protesters marched against the so-called “police state” of West Germany — parading under the amused gaze of armed communist border guards, watching from the other side of the wall, standing ready 24/24 to shoot anyone who tried to escape to west.
Not much has changed
Today, the naïve praise the brutal, failed models of a supposed “multipolar front” as an alternative to our current system — rather than trying to build something new, and doing so without betraying their own nations by aiding or appeasing their enemies.
We must aim to improve, not degrade; to build, not sabotage.
That the Western system is rightly seen as better than the angry utopias doesn’t automatically make it a good system.
We are acutely aware of its existential distortions, its mechanisms of hypnosis and conditioning, its oligarchic foundations, its hypocrisies, selfishness, censorship, legal impositions, and its relentless drive to dismantle individual identity and rewrite human nature.
We know perfectly well that, at its core, it is built upon the same horrors as the so-called “multipolar” systems — yet it remains more livable, if only because, in terms of intelligence and culture, it is vastly superior.
As we said, we must learn from simplicity
In the 1930s, a kind of proto-Erasmus project promoted summer exchanges between British and German youth.
The British had to cancel it — because their young people came back admiring the German model, while German youth returned unimpressed.
And so, instead of chasing after the monstrous failures of crumbling capitalists and authoritarian jailers across the globe, let’s create, envision, or at the very least dream of a model that actually surpasses the one we have.
