Eurasian dialectic
One of the most persistent themes in my writing has been what I would call Eurasian dialectic. Here is what that means:
I start from the historical moment when Europe broke apart from Eurasia, leaving behind the Asian continent, separated from Europe by a mysterious border that, as I pointed out in my first book, existed much more in time than in space. Europe became a technological civilization, Asia was left behind. The causes for this break, the “great divergence”, have been repeatedly studied. Personally I incline towards the thesis that it was a fully contingent development. A modern technological civilization could have taken root anywhere.
Because Europe’s hold over modern technology was purely contingent, it was bound to spread everywhere else in due time. We are now going through that process, although it can easily be traced back one hundred years.
Most global histories end here, but that is to miss the dialectic. It is not that European technological societies have become universal. Rather, Europe has become Eurasia.
Now, what does that mean? It means that a universal modernity, as opposed to a European modernity, comes in many flavors. By becoming universal, technological societies cease being universal. The dialectic is paradoxical. There will now be a Western modernity, a Chinese modernity, an Indian modernity... The world is no longer governed by universal principles. We have returned to the old world of rival empires, the world of the great Asian empires “before European hegemony.” Only the dialectic applies here as well: those Asian empires are now technological, that is, they are Eurasian rather than Asian.
In graphic form:
Asia —> Europe —> Eurasia
Where Europe emerges from Asia to lead a worldwide technological revolution but the old Asian empires finally catch up in a symbiosis of value conflict and worldwide technology.
The European dialectic was one of universal expansion of homogeneous principles. Economics and civil society ruled. The Eurasian dialectic is one of world building: rival models or plans compete to transform the world in their image.