What do mothers do?   They invent the species   within their own bio-labs   with a bit of help   *   The mother-child relation   is the moral foundation of human society   the provenance fons et origo of all other moral covenants   whence is the First Social Relation   foundation of all others   natural social moral instinctual all at once   *   All Life is instinctual   we create society spontaneously like ants and bees   a Truth (Euuro)Modernism suppresses   the better to engineer us to fits its requirements   this effort will fail   for commanding nature like Canute did the waves   *   We Return to The Source   as mere matter of course   and as ever come and go   like the chimp and the bonobo   [© R.Kanth 2023]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

  The old EM (EuroModernist)  template is fading.   The world has moved on.   The West* flouted every precept of it, since the last quarter of the 20th century onwards , and it is  now seen as a travesty,  by  the  (newly) enlightened in the  emergent world.   That is , perhaps, another kind of ‘woke’ ?   So , the ‘liberal-capitalist’ paradigm is moribund.   Fukayama(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man) was, straight-up,  and flat out, wrong.   So what can we expect, realistically?   *   The West will turn to , as is already becoming apparent , to some , or other, unstable,  uninspiring, form of “Neo-Fascist/ Neo-Feudal”  (I use the terms very loosely)  melange.: an angry polity ,  in combo with a  torpid economy, and a divided society.   The Rest will gravitate to sort of a ‘China Model’: a  market economy  governed strictly  by  a paternalist state  (a ‘Confucian’ Model?)  pledged to collective welfare – as deemed by their governors.   These latter will thrive.   *   Why?   All the glitz of the West stemmed from Empire (and NOT  merely the hyped-up force of ‘capitalism’, as runs the official  Narrative).   And that empire is on the wane.   * There is only One other, alternate,  possibility.   That the West will end the world , rather than accept decline.    *   So,  that’s what’s on the cards.   As the  old adage goes, time will tell?   *  btw The term ‘West’ , in my usage, always applies to the governors, not the hoi polloi:the ‘people’ , regrettably, have very little to do with Policy , despite the benumbing political rhetoric of ‘democracy’. Also, I am merely reading tea leaves here, in these prognostications – I take no sides.   [© R.Kanth 2023]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

  As we wish for peace , and our Usual Suspects push us, as ever, toward War, I thought I might share this peace anthem I wrote for a peace congress years ago.   Its message remains relevant?     [© R.Kanth 2023]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

  ‘Twas a Garden a Commons of the many not the few   then the few stole the commons bid the denizens adieu   set us all free to work for Simon Legree   *   Took away our lands so we became just ‘hands’   turning into property marshes and sands   ‘Iron Law of Wages’ the saw of their sages   history was theirs they rewrote its pages   *   Serfs became proles all under duress   counting for nothing and working for less   it’s how it got started that was the Plan   The Great Devolution The Great Fall of (wo)Man   *   There’s no need to grow even less to expand   where Commerce is King ill fares the land   We can build without lucre we can thrive without profit   let rats run the rat race it’s time to get right off it?   *   We’ve come a long way have travelled so far   time to have done with both lucre and war   serve Communal Need End the Empire of Greed   when we let go the lucre we might get done with war?   hitching our wagon to a far brighter star   [© R.Kanth 2023]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

  All our civilisation mongers lied   and more than one million died   *   Nor the first mass-murder mind   seek history and you shall find   many many too many more   Empires built on blood and gore   *   Singing arias the sorry while   in sombre stupefacting guile   grave liturgies and solemn rites   of liberty and human rights   *   As snakes slither and vermin creep   as swallows soar and infants leap   as (wo)men work   and (wo)men weep   I wonder how   still wonder now   how how how do they sleep?     [© R.Kanth 2023]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

(For Sonia)   Everly frantic sylphic romantic blighted in a benighted land where babble and revel warp all dreams and mock jewels bestrew the sand   I reach to the stars even venus and mars seeking the hollows of paradise above a margent green where all unseen greed gropes at the gilded prize   meadows all torn the few flowers are lorn lush fields lie fallow in fret the spirit all fey their aspect turns grey seasons blanche in sullen regret   the moon lay awake all night by mistake yet are the fires not lit dawn slows its becoming is not welcoming look the embers lie cold in the spit   the feast is forgotten fortune’s ill-gotten true love is free bartered away hearts half broken can only betoken dread night that yields not to day   the age dissembles in rage reassembles adrift is the conscience divine compact is broken doom is bespoken bad faith is dribbled like wine   the birds don’t feed garden’s to weed all is calamitous still turn of the wheel the currents congeal all’s grist to an ungodly mill   in a darkling bed am I sweet bled nor is recompense anywhere close heart so in dread all feeling is fled repining I wane with the rose   endgame is near all’s fever and fear archangels appear not at hand in horror abstaining nor any remaining the redeemers abandon the land   come let us away dawn’s here not to stay dark night but covenants harm after ages of sin hark reckonings begin Hear the Last Trump blaring Alarm!   [© R.Kanth 2023]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

  What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:9   Yes, our post tribal history is replete, with blood curdling repetition.   Today, we kill in Ukraine. Yesterday, in Iraq. And the Day before, in……..?   Go ahead, fill in the blanks, decade by decade, or century by century.   And yet we cling to the duly Consecrated Myths of ‘Progress’ and “Civilisation”.   Time we broke with that abysmal claptrap.   And get real.   Enlightenment?   That veneer is not even skin deep.   We remain , as ever, bloodthirsty neanderthals.   *   I have said it before: we are inveterate myth-making animals.   We scorn, in supercilious, abject, contempt, the myths of our forebears.   Whilst worshipping our own delusions, in equally breathless adoration.   *   Consider our own EM (EuroModernist) myths.   Liberty, equality, democracy….etc.   These have always been fanciful idylls most of us swear by, than actual endowments.   For few things could be further from the truth.   We have loyally absorbed political slogans self-proclaiming the high virtue of the system.   They are part of what Chomsky once called the ‘manufacture of consent’: today, I would call it machinofacture of the same.   And few care to seriously examine their empirical (and theoretical) validity.   It never occurs to the many that these might be canny tools of mass control, or weapons of mass deception.   The governors can pull back, abrogate , suspend , such ‘rights’, willy nilly.   But rights that can be annulled, at will, are not rights, but privileges.   And the privileged have always had rights, in all systems.   *   Few even know that Habeas Corpus , dating back to the Magna Carta, lies suspended.   Ask yourself: are we a democracy?   Take a look at the Princeton/Northwestern study (https://www.businessinsider.com/major-study-finds-that-the-us-is-an-oligarchy-2014-4 )   We appear to have a govt of the elites, by the elites, and for the elites.   And yet, like hapless turkeys, we still , fervently, vote for Xmas.   Or, do we have equality?   How many more Afro-ams have to be murdered by the state for us to doubt such slogans?   Are we law-governed, in a ‘rules based order‘ ?   How many international laws have the US/UK not broken, continuously, in the past 200 years, to this day?   It is little short of a travesty.   *   As I often say it, we are still , in praxis, little better than chimps.   Chimps who affect high airs.   What a grim parody!   The EM governors have affected higher airs than any other on the planet, while looting, scavenging, and ransacking , the resources of others.   It is all really quite grotty.   *   At any rate, as the world crumbles around us, it behooves us to examine some of the many

  In numerous such pieces, I have held up the template of simple tribal society (STS) against the modus of EuroModernism (EM) , the mire that we are all enveloped in, within the Modern World.   I do not, incidentally, idealise any form of human existence.   Life is a losing game, under any system.   The violence of nature, and (the threat of) male violence, keep us all in a veritable hellscape.   But , there are some societal forms closer to our inner geist, and some not at all close.   So the only (irrefutable) argument I make is that STS is where our human essence is most fully gratified, where family, kindred and community , nurture all its members within a matrix of Affective ties.   It is where male violence is, to some extent, ‘tamed’ – intra-tribe – by affective bonds.   No other social system has ever come even remotely close to achieving that.   Bears thinking.   The contrast drawn is, also, of an organic community vs the formal ‘nation-state‘ dystopia we are trapped in.   STS is the exact antipode to our EM existence: free of its anomie, angst, and alienation.   Think about that.   As a realist, I proffer no panaceas, or utopias.   If there is any hint of a norm here , it is that I am suggesting that living in conformity with our essential human nature may be somewhat more authentic than living in a system that violently, and systematically, inverts, subverts, and thwarts, our innate/inner drives.   The state of simply Being,, under such circs., may well be more benign compared to the endless charades, masquerades, stresses, and strains , of ‘Becoming‘ – as demanded by the system we are subject to.   My point is not to ‘revert’ to a STS, but rather to draw important , indeed vital, lessons from it about who we really are as anthropic beings, worlds apart from who we think we are under misanthropic EM suppositions.   Once we grasp that, we can then reprioritise life and living, and reanimate, revitalise it, against the dreary, sullen , dudgeon that the EM wasteland imposes on us all.   There is no other way to overcome its dreadful alienation than to recapture the Affective Life all over again, rescuing it from the false allures of system-driven cupidity, ambition, and (senseless) achievement.   We may then glean , in metaphor, that we are mammals forced into donning reptilian guises.   Worse, it’s a consummate Death Machine, that kills the spirit long before it atrophies all our capabilities.   *   There could have been many, autonomous, Paths to Modernism, but the European Empire(s) precluded all other options by dint of their imposed version on the non-European world.   Most ‘progressives’ are still sold on EM ,fully immersed in its chimerical , utopian, temptings, to this day (all but unaware of the pulls and pressures of the Paradigm that Rules us).   Like Sysiphus,

  From a crevice in the crannied wall   springs a blossom sweet and tall   *   The mint of nature ever fresh   renews in healing gravity   excesses of mortal flesh   *   As we tug tussle and vie   as we do and doing die   she never asks us why   being far far too shy   *   Like a nurse on the bloody field   but heaves a doleful sigh   bearing sustenance to all   as we fight flail and fall   whisp’ring so so tremulously   What fools these mortals be!   *   Lets fall a vapid tear   waiting ever patiently   for fogs of ignorance to clear   *   Even though she must know   since far away and long ago   ’twas ever the way with us   and will ever remain so   for that is who we are   but angry chimps at war   [© R.Kanth 2023]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

  Yes, it is a 3D world.   The extant forces are:   De-dollarisation.   De-colonisation   De-polarisation.   *   The Third force, above, is critical to humanity.   Most welcome the emergent , Multi-polar, world.   It is , admittedly, an improvement on the era of unilateral hegemony.   But it is no idyll.   A multi-polar world will still, over time, cumulate power at the poles.   And then , there is trouble.   *   Besides, the idea of a ‘balance of terror’ , a uniquely masculinist notion, which underlies multipolarity, bodes ill.   We need to be done with ‘poles’ altogether.   A heavily armed, self-conscious , ‘super-power’ is like a barracuda, ready to go into heat ,at the slightest provocation.   So, a non-polar, depolarised, world is an important desideratum.   *   Unfortunately, the EM world will not give us that.   EuroModernism was built by the (mis)governing elites, stadially, upon the nation-state dyad (inaugurated, for us all, by the Treaty of Westphalia) .   And that dyad is precisely the ever-standing impetus for conflict.   Unlike the Frostian trope, ‘good fences do NOT make good neighbors‘, but, instead, ensure intermittent boundary disputation(s), especially in context of an economic machine that is ever thirsting for global resources.   *   A certain philosophical depth is needed to grasp the above.   I do not expect it, thereby, to be widely understood.   I do believe that women , qua women , and native peoples, still untouched by the virus of EM, will get the point, easily: as these constituencies were never quite fully absorbed into the EM consensus.   *   Some precepts – verifiable empirically – have to be taken as self-evident, despite the strong counter-weight of tendentious ideologies/interests that support meretricious ideas nurturing their own parochial objectives.   EM seeks homogeneity , and so erases all difference, gender, culture, ethnicity, etc, so it can manage and control us all that much more easily, for commerce, and societal engineering, etc..   But culture is difference.   And humans are, first and foremost, affective, cultural, entities, that seek a finetuned differentiation to preserve a primal, local, identity.   The (specious) universalism of EM – that so deceives the ‘progressive’ imagination – is a sham and a fraud, to achieve but the goals of dominance, manipulation, and empire.   We never were, and never will be, thank goodness!, ‘One World’.   Perish that dispiriting thought!   Instead, we should celebrate – what remains of – our natural/social diversity.   The rousing phrase ‘Vive la difference!’, has never had more relevance , and immediacy.   The WEF Plan to globalise the world into the dire hellscape of an imposed, crass , uniformity needs be questioned now with all due, even imperative, haste.   Dystopia, regrettably, is the ineluctable Endgame of the entire entropic EM saga of myopic , misanthropic, misadventurism.   We are all, sadly, worse off for it.   [© R.Kanth 2023]   Professor

  Some are marked for splendor I revelled in decline   Some feed on fame and fortune I feted on repine   Some waded in ambrosia I reared away from wine   Some leapt to seek Excalibur I lay in swamps supine   Some rushed wanton to Arcady I stood waiting for a sign   Some gorged to their earthly fill I supped on dreams divine   Some hankered for another’s weal I yielded what was mine   *   Some feasted deep on bounty fair I’m still fasting by the shrine   I may never have the golden grail but the crown of thorns is mine   [© R.Kanth 2024]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

  We are living through the Last Crisis of Late (European) Modernity (EM).   A system constructed on Two self-subverting scaffolds, Asocial Individualism (AI) and Avaricious Adversarialism(AA) is simply bound to implode.   A human society simply cannot be sustained on that basis.   This was the egregious error of the European Enlightentment.   It had a grossly flawed understanding of human nature.   *   All our latter-day crises stem from those false, initial premises.   These cannot be mended by deploying any item in the (E)Modernist tool-kit, be it liberal, conservative, or, socialist.   As Einstein pointed out, issues can never be resolved using the same means as those that created the problem(s).   *   But, who dares to think outside the box?   No happy emoluments await one in that perilous enterprise. EM teaches us to question everything – except EM.   So we continue , within the system, to chase our own tails, all but merrily.   *   Against the fallacies of EM, I have suggested the following postulates, for serious reflection.   1. We are NOT Asocial Individualists, nor are we Avaricious Adversarials , except when forced onto that Procrustean bed by force and fraud.   2. We flourish best in Gemeinschaft formations, rather than in Modernist<emGessellschaft corrals.   Human integrity loses its pith and meaning when we depart from face-to-face relations.   3. We are affective, communal, cooperative, convivial beings rather than competitive, covetous, rationalist calculators of personal worth and well-being, as EM decrees us to be (A Buddhist qua Buddhist cannot pass a Micro-Econ Exam without having to concede that ‘more is better‘).   4. Nation and State are imposed entities ( The Treaty of Westphalia institutionalised that dual for all of us), by ruling elites, corresponding to their need for tribute, taxation, and territory.   5. Human societies are built from below on the basis of family, kinship, and community: only (some ) native peoples still live within that healing matrix. Most of us live in the engineered alienation of the modern nation state, which is amongst the endemic causes of all modern conflicts.   6. Human societies evolve spontaneously requiring no plan, no agenda, no manifests. We build societies much like ants and bees, instinctually.   7.Instincts are the fabled dog that does not bark in EM discourse, advisedly: to accept that is to admit we are organic beings with organic needs: so we may not be ‘engineered’ to conform to this or that political fantasy   8. The meretricious EM idylls of liberty, democracy, equality, et al are all modes of decoys and detours , diverting us from the brute facts of EM oppression (tying most of us to the Wheel of Permanent Drudgery) , so we safely expend our lives in a fine frenzy, seeking chimera that are ever denied and/or delayed.   9. Like Sysiphus we still carry those burdens, up the hill, in vain hopes of an imminent good (EM utopias, like heaven – which

  Reflections On The Planet’s Day of Birth   (For Guy McPherson)   Evening mists at morn gloaming dusk at dawn   Sun keeps burning low the moon just lost its glow   Nature’s weary of time as I work this wayward rhyme   *   An era is passing on ere long will all be gone   Who left to witness bear to wake wonder or care?   *   What price that grail of gold? what left neither bought nor sold?   Seas restless churn forests silent burn   The stars do fade away nothing surreal can stay?   *   End of the world is nigh? forlorn both earth and sky   Save the heart in endless quest beyond requital or rest   Though wan and woebegone still softly sojourns on   [© R.Kanth 2023]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

  The crux of my critique is simplicity itself.   The ontological/epistemic basis of ALL EM theorising is patently false.   As such, ALL of EM social theory is wrong.   They read nature, mostly (subject to correction by latter-day quantum ideas) right, but ‘human nature’ (noting the oxymoron) wrong.   Why?   Because they ‘deduced’ so called ‘human nature’ by simply examining themselves (and extrapolating) , in context, of the adversarial, avaricious, dog-eat-dog, world they lived in (similar to Hobbes assuming a ‘state of nature’ that actually reflected English societal life, and Smith , looking into his heart, and seeing a Glasgovian ‘propensity to truck and barter’ sealed within it: ditto with Freud taking the traits of his effete, Viennese, clientele , to be universal, etc.).   Their economics, politics, and social theory was, thereby, at once, particularistic and perverse; not even vaguely general, and far, far , from being universal.   In just the same way that an adequate physics is a sine qua non of getting chemistry and biology right, a true anthropology is needed to theorise economy and society, accurately   Whence the Himalayan blunders of EM ‘economics’, Freudian ‘psychology’, and so forth.   *   So what is the truth?   We are , instinctually, affective, heat-seeking, convivial, communal, co-operative, mammals, content with home , hearth , family, and kinship , before rogue ‘animal spirits’ of men – yes, men– extend and expend themselves in corralling power and wealth, leading to the subversion of our primal, tribal, gemeinschaft, social forms into the familiar class-ridden, exploitative, gesellschaft formations of empire-state-and nation (or, ESN, roughly in that historical order).   The simple, tribal form is eminently the domain where the ‘paradigm of femininity’ POF (nurturance) thrives, whereas ESN formations are where the ‘paradigm of masculinity’, or POM (domination, exploitation, expropriation) reigns.   Slavery, feudalism, and capitalism, in European history, are all in the latter mold: in the non-European world they had mirror counterparts in various tributary, imperial, formations.   So EM , or European Modernism, within which the non-tribal world lives today , is in the latter POM cast, ever restless, ever chafing, ever crusading for more, recklessly expansionist, and predatory; and , ultimately, destructive of ALL forms of life.   Those of us trapped within its nihilist ideology suffer the EM languishments of angst, anomie, and alienation, doomed to struggle, suffer, and perish , unrequited.   What a waste of (the abundant potential of )human life!   *   If you think I exaggerate, consider who, or rather what, gave us WW1 and WW2 , and now are, in giddy madness, rushing us all into WW3.   Neither Non-European (non EM) societies, nor their ideologies, are capable of even thinking in such exterminist terms.   The (so-called) barbarians, of yore, Mongols, Huns, et al. were structurally incapable of such dire, rank , overweening , misanthropy.   For all their stupendous ravages, they still left the world – ecological and societal – mostly intact.   That is

  https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110455311/html   The Work ( Writ in 1992/Published in 2015, by De Gruyter ), in belles-lettristic form, constitutes the set of my initial, affective , preliminary, reactions to the cultural logos of the Lead Hegemon of EuroModernism.   I have since refined these first impressions, developing a Transcendent Critique of Eurocentrism, but this work was an important first step.   It is free to download, for the interested, as per the link provided, above.   Ps readers can judge for themselves how much of what I say there remains applicable to this day.   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

  (for KZ)   Oft did I travel in the haunts of old memories glowing like burnished gold . by Stygian charnels b’neath leafy groves beside seething beaches sultry coves . reminisced deep recalling such forms shadows departed dead antic norms   * Pleated of travails latticed of spite impassable glooms split by tendrils of light . O dim worlds entered all unprepared guilty innocent where no one is spared . beseeched high heavens found heavens all bare as dystopic disorder reigned everywhere *   What penances expiate our sordid sins? what love absolves afore prayer begins? , what fair deeds of charity still remain to repeal forever our birthmarks of Cain? . upon the planet’s long wrenched breast there be no redemption nor any sweet rest   * She ready casts off worn mortal coils curtailing our trespass in moribund toils   * Touch her once more prostrate at her feet in Homeric despair are we made obsolete . Forfeit all mercy she doles us our due O in unsanguine dolor she bids us adieu . in fealty to Others as Mother to All She lets go the Lapsarian Children of Baal .   [©R.Kanth 2024]   . Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

  In 1789 , in Philadelphia, the aged icon, Ben Franklin , made an ominous prediction. It’s not quoted too often, understandably. He said that the – newly drafted – Constitution would assure a modicum of good government , until such time that the corruption of the people brought about its end, producing the only government really suiting it: despotism. My thought(s): are we there yet?   *   In 1986, I published a book (Political Economy and Laissez-Faire) in which I showed that the key idylls of western capitalism – laissez-faire, free trade, etc., – were no more than topically relevant ploys to secure the contextual interests of the emergent (wannabe) rulers. In fact, political economists played a key role in assuring the victory of the manufacturing middle classes, the emergent rulers of the new world: a role they still play, in our time, in dead earnest. Since then, in later works (such as Breaking With the Enlightenment) I showed that the high-toned sloganeering of the Modernist Revolutions (French, and American : with the litany of liberte, egalite, et. al) was also deceptive , serving only to endow the industrial-commercial elites, with the power that lay, at the time, with the landed aristocracy: against whom they were pitted, in keen struggle. The liberte idyll was deployed to break the ideological fetters of the ancien regime (such as Canon Law: the Just Price, the Laws against Usury, etc.) that inhibited untrammeled (i.e. , ruthless ) capital accumulation. The egalite idea was used to establish/justify their own claims to power alongside/against the ruling nobility. But both notions also served a dual purpose, being double-edged instruments. These ideas were offered, disingenuously, to the laboring classes and the peasantry: enticing them to believe that they too were to be beneficiaries of such ‘freedoms’ – so they could serve, willingly, as cannon-fodder in the ensuing political struggles. As they did, unfortunately.   *   Of course, it was all pure eyewash. As it was with the US Constitution , preaching that ‘all men are created equal’, which really meant white men (and only men ). The (Con)founding Fathers might well turn in their graves to see how a later epoch would try to extend this to Other men, and women ( no part of their plan). And today, where rights – when available at all – are become privileges, we see how easily all such liberties can be suspended , willy-nilly , as/when it suits the same orders. No mystery, that: unless you live in Shangri-La – that much is simply the nature of the propaganda of power. To untangle fact from fantasy requires insight into the mechanics of societal domination. Official ‘social science’ is not designed to teach that.   *   All this leads to an obvious conclusion, and one that I have made repeatedly, in all my Works. That all the grandiloquent ‘declarations’ of these revolutions, were tendentious – being context-driven dissimulations only. One believes it at one’s peril. And there

  (for Asha & Michael)   The heart can speak yet it sings a bird can walk but it wings   Lightness soars but everywhere even in this woestruck world of care   The Modern World wreaks gravitas more than spirit can bear   Let the lilting heart yearn it to sing let the chirruping bird learn it to wing   Whilst we on the shore worry work and weep look in the seas dolphins love – and leap!   [© R.Kanth 2023]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

  We live in a self-aware, and spontaneous, universe, both social and natural.   The Great Error of Modernist Europe (I term it Eurocentric Modernism, or EM ) was to believe that somehow we can engineer ourselves into this or that ideal, be it left-wing or right wing in inspiration.   So, they compelled the rest of the world, and they still do it to this day: to follow this or that plan.   Of course , naturally, they preferred a plan that suited their own interests, of the time, as might be expected.   *   But the real problem is much deeper.   Like all living beings , we are instinctual in nature.   So we simply cannot be ‘programmed’ to achieve some, or other ideal: except very briefly , either by sheer force, or by dint of propaganda.   Men are far easier to program, mainly because they are the programmers, – they follow leaders, owing to a varying mix of male bonding and totemic fealty – but women simply cannot be easily, or effectively, programmed.   Because their instinctual awareness is much deeper, and they bear heavy responsibility for new life , which is a far more vital concern than the more trivial issue of subscribing to this or that form of idealism , that comes and goes like fashions in couture.   *   A human society is always built instinctually , and spontaneously, on family, kinship, and community (all tribal formations arise in this fashion) , NOT on democracy, equality, and/or liberty which are but concocted political ideals.   I do not take up the issue here of whether they are good or bad, right or wrong: though I could, and in much detail.   That really does not matter; they are, stated simply idylls.   Once this point is grasped, the sources of the crisis of the EM world become transparently obvious.   Of course, one has to step well outside the EM matrix to glean this, which may be difficult, if not impossible, for many ( I can sympathise with that: for few of us could be expected to endure the exile that would ensue).   *   As I have said before, one needs an adequate physics to understand Nature, and , similarly, an accurate anthropology to understand society.   Unfortunately, EM constructed its social (including economics, politics, philosophy, et. al.) theory out of thin air.   As if all one has to so is to manufacture a fanciful manifesto, plim with meretricious ideals :and, presto!, it can be realized (if at frightful cost, one might add) , just like that!   Stated simply , it has no idea of who we are as human beings, and therefore, what real human needs are. *   Time to rectify that error?   I actually believe it’s past time.   All we need to do is to step out of the iron cage of EM to see what human life is all about:

  Swear no more of ties that bind we’re long succumbed to blight   Make me no sundry promises we are riven by grudge and spite   No fealty or sacrament we’re shorn of sacral truth   Art given to artifice we rue the sparsity of ruth   Love weaves no beechen plot anon the grape wilts upon the vine   No ambrosia that will not cloy no veritas wakes in wine   All’s awry twixt earth and sky forfeit all benefice divine   [© R.Kanth 2023]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

  There is no Kingdom of the Heart there ’tis the Plebes who Reign   It has no bound to largesse be it of joy or pain   It dares only to remember it cares but not to forget   What’s too graven to embrace it laves in legerdemain   Never seeking to calculate audits both loss and gain   And never needing to cogitate ever showers The Truth like rain   Beyond passions of love and hate showers The Truth like rain   [© R.Kanth 2024]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

  It is possible to burrow through the multiple, disparate, Crises that afflict the world today, – incl. Covid, Climate Change (and consequent Ecocide) , and the threat of possible Nuclear annihilation – to arrive at the core of what might be envisaged as a compelling ‘root cause’.   I mean that term in a very broad sense, well beyond causal factors, to also include factors that support , augment, and exacerbate the Crises: directly or indirectly, by acts of either commission or omission.   I place it below, in verse form.   It constitutes a small part of my study of EuroModernism – the European Model of Modernism that has dominated the world for well over Two Centuries – and derives from my explorations therein.   It would seem to follow, I might add, that none of the Crises we face can be at all ameliorated until that ‘root cause’ is first firmly extirpated from our modes of thought and practices ; a daunting task, since the powers that be lean so heavily on it to achieve their unseemly ends (despite protestations, to the contrary).   It may appear to be trite, trivial , and truistic , on the face of it: but it is as real as the Crises it has provoked.   It also marks the Great European Innovation – where Europe separated itself from the mains currents of human history – that now threatens to destroy all life on this planet.   ***   The Provenance   Private Gain, OR Common Good?   Answer, was always Understood –   Till Europe, in Everlasting Bane   saw the Common Good, in Private Gain   [© R.Kanth 2020]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract). [© R.Kanth 2020]

  First, they derogated (the very idea) of civilisation. Next, they debunked culture. Then,they debauched society. Next, they deracinated science. They, they deprecated civility. Then, they destroyed habitats. Next. they debased morality. Then. they disparaged ethics. Next, they discouraged truth. Then, they disdained values.   * They told us we are Post Human. They told us we are Post Truth They told us we are Post Modern.   *   They also guaranteed us the 3 Inalienable Freedoms of the Neo-Con/Neo-Lib world.   To function: fact-free, value-free, and conscience-free.   Yes, and, finally, they told us, with high aplomb: Anything Goes!.   *   They were so right!   Not Anything, but rather, Everything Goes: IF/when one accepts this degenerate , dystopian , Credo(s) of Late Modernism, as listed above.   *   And so, as we watch now, helpless.   Ecology goes. Humanity goes. Social Empathy goes . Any and all norms of mutual civility, and peaceable co-existence go.   And, at the last remove, lo and behold, The Planet Goes!.   Bravo!   *   The Nobel Committee – canny as they always are – should consider a Nobel Memorial Prize for Misanthropy, which they should award themselves first (for giving a Peace Prize to Kissinger: just to balance it out , they should have given a War Prize to Gandhi) , before bestowing it on the likes identified above?   It would be a fair start?   *   As a grand finale, our Masters should press those buttons that they have been itching to press ever since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so we can watch them play god (or is it that other guy?), one last time.   I have titled their regime one of HYPOCRACY: or, rule by abject , craven, hypocrisy.   No elites in world history have more blood on their hands.   How do they sleep?   © R.Kanth 2023   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

  European Modernism (EM)   It might be helpful to know the state religion that most of us subscribe to , without being aware of its import?   We deploy it to analyse/criticise everything: yet itself escaping any such scrutiny   It is second nature now to us, in the EM world, and we assume its (im)proprieties to be self evident.   Even those loyal to EM ideas, in daily praxis, are unaware of its complex of assumptions.   It informs our education, our politics, and our culture: it even affects our most personal, intimate, hopes and aspirations.   To our everlasting discomfort.   It is, in fact, the very locus of our manifold alienation(s).   So, to ‘Know Thyself’, one needs to be explicitly aware of its epistemics.   Recall that EM was never, anywhere, ‘voted in’, as welcome anodyne: it was, everywhere, including within Europe itself , imposed by dint of force and fraud.   It constitutes the panoply of the chains that bind us.   *   So , what constitutes EM?   It has several components.   Firstly , it is a philosophy of crass materialism (everything is matter: and all objects are material) , aping classical Newtonian Physics. Latter-day Quantum Physics debunks this notion.   Secondly , it adopts a triumphalist, self-serving view of Progress (expressed again in vulgar material terms: GDP, etc.). Worse, it takes it for granted that Progress is wherever Europe happens to find itself, because Europe is the gold standard.   Thirdly, it claims official science (scientism) as defined by it elites , as its foundation, rejecting any and all other epistemologies (e.g. acupuncture, homeopathy herbal treatments, et. al. , were all rejected as ‘non-science”).   Even worse, it marries science to the state, thereby risking despotism, substituting it for religion as in pre-Modern Europe.   Fourthly , it enables the Statist use of Force, as needed, to ‘force people to be free’ (JS Mill): another dangerous license for unlimited aggression, in favor of any ,and all, statist objectives.   Fifthly , it has a formal/mechanical /contractual /instrumentalist view of society , rejecting its organic features.   It’s Asocial Individualism – the most toxic notion in human history – actually sees society as but an instrument to be used to achieve individualist ends. The individual is sovereign, society is but a means.   Sixthly, it sees ‘nature’ as external to us as ‘humans’ who stand ‘above’ it. Women, children, and native peoples, were, on the other hand, all assimilated to being ‘naturvolk‘, to be raised/disciplined/ and tamed (Recall Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew trope). Nature exists only to serve us: in fact, the economist Solow once implied, we can do without nature.   Seventhly, it privileges reason (in economics , this morphs into ‘rationality’ , where it is rational to be materialistic!), presumed to be free of anthropic bias, over other forms of knowing (intuition, ‘common sense’ , revelation, et. al). It is also privileged above emotions (again women, children, and

  (for Tony Lawson)   It is neither this nor that Neither round neither flat Neither thin neither fat Neither left neither right Neither fight neither flight Neither dark neither bright neither friend neither foe neither now nor long ago * Nor science nor philosophy Magic religiosity Neither is it east nor west It is neither cursed nor blest Neither is it good nor bad Nor is it blithe nor sad It is both rich and bare Neither here and neither there And yet is found just everywhere And greets us all but everyday Strewn around in every way In every night and every day * In body mind spirit and soul End to end pole to pole In pain and joy in grief and smiles In proximity or distal miles It is not far It is not near Nor in courage nor in fear In surging seas nor sandy lees Nor in war and nor in peace Nor in bits and nor in parts Nor in guile and nor in arts nor in black and nor in white Nor in gender nor in caste Nor in present nor in past Nor in nor out Pandora’s Box Beyond the pale of paradox * Nor in darkness nor in light Nor in culture nor in race nor in doting cringe nor grace Nor too soon and none too late Nor in prophecy nor in fate * Eschew Elaborate Fineries All intricate refineries Temptings of such binaries * Ever hid in plainest sight In mild transcendence burning bright Bathed in dusk ethereal light In body mind spirit and soul End to end pole to pole The Truth beyond such human bounds The Truth beyond such sights and sounds The Truth above anthropic pounds The Truth is the Whole   Not a means Nor a goal It is just The Whole   * Stanzas for a Post-Truth World   © R.Kanth 2022   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

  A ( hasty) Primer*   If you can feel that staying human is worthwhile, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them. George Orwell Know then thyself, presume not God to scan… Alexander Pope   My critique of Eurocentrism (EuroModernism, or EM) is simplicity itself. I maintain that ALL of EM thinking is plain Wrong, not just bits of it. Why? It rests on an ontology/epistemology of humans (and society) that is flat out incorrect. On Manifest Error, EM built an architecture of socio-human theory and praxis that has doomed us all and is now rushing us headlong into perdition. . If so many of us live in depravity ,emotive deprivation, and/or depression ,it is solely owing for imbibing the false nostrums of EM. It, perforce, converted a band of convivials into a company of strangers. Unlike any social formation in history, it dehumanized our species by penalizing altruistic behavior and rewarding anti-social activities. Worse, it compounded injury with insult by self-styling this obvious devolution as ‘progress’. * EM drew its premises from the then state of European society in transition from medieval values to modernist values : rampant domination and mutual distrust, coupled with egregious avarice and supernal greed. The former produces its social and political theory, the latter its political economy. Both served to ratify aggressive cupidity, and avarice , at one remove, and mutual distrust and (permanent ), domination, and incurable dissension/disaffection, at the other. Contra it’s absurd reductionisms, we are neither economic nor political entities, in the main, but natural-cultural beings.: bringing creativity and imagination to the rituals of communal life. In fact, it would be correct to say that we are quite consummate mythmaking animals. At any rate, given its imperial reach and clout , EM was able to impose this iron cage on most of the planet (save a few native peoples). But as its empire shrinks, its ideational hegemony is now also dwindling. That is where we are today. * This is not to imply that there was no tangible content-gain at all in the transition effected by EM, as , per exemple, in the obvious abatement of extreme, medieval cruelty and rank injustice of the more egregious kind. But such benefits were purchased at prohibitive, life-threatening , even exterminist, costs that life on the planet simply cannot afford. It doomed us all to loneliness, anomie, desperation, and loss of meaning: the signature hallmarks of the dreadful alienations of E-Modernism. * Our real, collective, human nature is an open book: and plain to see for anyone who indulges in but a little self-examination. Yes, self-examination. Our very lived experience confirms the Theses I am advancing. Its basis is instinctual, not environmental. As animals, we are possessed of instincts that may be suppressed but not excised. Care, consideration, and conviviality are our principal , nay primal , urges contrary to the misanthropic myths perpetuated by Modernist ideologues. They are first expressed within the biological family, quite naturally, and then extended

  It’s a tale of Two Cousinages.   Both alike in dignity.   And taste. And temperament.   And their conjoint, star-crossed, sway.   *   One, the House of Pox Britannica.   Here, a minor sampler of their derring-do.     The other, the House of Pox Americana.   Here, a pocket sketch. On Exceptionalism?   *   How will history judge them?   We must take care, lest they write their own histories , as they have writ of Others.   What will history say?   A pox on both their Houses – that have made worm’s meat of millions, and still, to this day, none abashed, continue to do so?   *   Yes , this is what a true History might say:   Let it come as no surprise a fame flaunted on brazen lies   By frothing seas on desert sands raining havoc on subaltern lands   On a zillion native peoples slain was built their vaunted legerdemain   © R.Kanth 2023   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

  It’s over.   Categorically.   Who knew it would end this way? No pundit I know of.   But the savants will surface, now, post-factum.   20/20 hindsight?   You can depend on it.   *   What am I talking about?   It is the End of Western Hegemony.   In fact, it is the end of Hegemony itself, of any kind.   For ever. For good. For keeps.   This is the way Their world ends. Eliot was right. Not with a bang, but a whimper.   And we are ALL better off for it.   *   Most of all, the hoi polloi of the west, who have carried their vampire oligarchies on their back, for a long while.   Not dissimilar to how the rest of the world carried the west , on their backs, for 400 years.   *   Oddly, this was all , wholly, self-subversion.   No hostile power threatened them.   They did it, with gleeful, consummate, efficiency, to themselves.   They were the clear aggressors, for centuries.   Only 10 countries (barely) escaped the looting and rapine.   *   A multi-polar world is being restored. It is only natural. It is our received state of being.   Along with their hatchets, They now need to learn to bury their hubris, vanity, and egos.   *   The East has returned to its hoary placement in medieval times. It will never be retracted, again.   Peace will prevail.   Even if the west still wishes to lash out, wildly, in more war.   Why?   Because they will discover they are only using boomerangs for weapons.   *   They that turned ploughshares into swords, now have to turn it all around.   It’s a steep learning curve, admittedly.   Let’s wish them luck.   *   Let’s hope it will augur a New Era, on the lines of RL Stevenson’s Requiem, where:   Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.   *   Humanity stands, I feel, on the brink of a glorious age.   Feel it?   It is in the air!   It is time for the ‘wretched of the earth’ to rejoice!   The Great Wheel of History has completed yet another revolution.   Huzzah!   Postscript: As and when our species climbs the next rung of evolution, we might yet transcend the antique victor/victim binary, in keeping with these sibylline lines from Emerson: If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again.   Until then, I regret, ‘ignorant armies ‘ will still continue to ‘clash by night’.   © R.Kanth 2023   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).