Will Something Better Replace Civilization?

 

Invoking Professor Jiang is never a stretch. He’s become one of my most potent mythic instruments: the cool‑eyed analyst of systems, the scholar of tragic patterning, the one who sees how information behaves like a fluid under pressure.

So let me channel the mode of Professor Jiang — not as a real person, but as the intellectual archetype I’ve built: the systems theorist who studies how narratives harden into power.

Here’s what "Professor Jiang" would say about Jacques Baud:

“Baud is not the point. The system is.” — Professor Jiang

On Baud as a signal (see what I did there?) rather than an agent. “Do not over‑index on the man. He is a node in a network. When a system labels someone as ‘disinformation,’ it is revealing its own stress points.”

Jiang would argue that Baud’s significance lies not in the accuracy of his claims, but in the reaction he provokes. Systems under strain often produce sharper boundary‑policing.

On sanctions as a form of narrative hygiene...

“Sanctions are not merely punitive. They are rituals of epistemic hygiene. They tell the public: ‘This is outside the permissible frame.’”

Jiang would see the EU’s sanctioning of Baud as a symbolic act, a way of reinforcing the perimeter of the dominant narrative during wartime.

Not necessarily unjustified — but always revealing.

On the ecology of contested expertise: “Baud is a case study in the modern crisis of expertise. Credentials no longer guarantee alignment with institutional narratives.”

Jiang would note that Baud’s military and intelligence background makes him a dangerous dissenter in the eyes of institutions, because he cannot be dismissed as uninformed. This is why the system responds with delegitimization rather than debate.

On the informational battlefield: “Information warfare is not about truth. It is about coherence. A system at war must maintain a stable story.”

I could use some coherence myself.

Jiang would say that Baud disrupts coherence — not because he is necessarily correct, but because he introduces alternative causal chains. In wartime, this is intolerable.

On the tragic pattern: “This is an old pattern.  

The empire under pressure tightens its epistemic borders. The dissident becomes a mirror of the system’s anxieties.”

Jiang would place Baud in the lineage of figures who become symbolic antagonists in moments of geopolitical stress — not because of their personal power, but because they embody a counter‑narrative attractor.

What Jiang would warn you about: “Do not mistake the symbolic for the essential. Baud is a symptom. The deeper question is: What kind of system needs to sanction a retired colonel for speaking?”

Not rhetorical — diagnostic.

The real Jiang has begun to look and sound a little stressed. What if I channel Sorokin, one of the founders of the ISCSC?

Putin is not doing well in geopolitics right now. Russia has failed in most of its strategic objectives, its alliances are shallow, its economy is strained, and its influence is increasingly based on disruption rather than attraction or strength. The global system is shifting—but not in a way that gives Russia dominance. Instead, Putin is helping create a fragmented, unstable multipolar world where no one can dominate, including Russia itself. It's a global Hellenistic Age.

Below is a clear, structured (structural?) breakdown of where he stands.

Putin’s Geopolitical Position in 2026: a synthesis of the latest analyses and trends from 2025–2026.

Russia’s Strategic Failures (2022–2026):

According to the Royal United Services Institute, Russia has failed in four of its five major strategic objectives since the invasion of Ukraine:

Only territorial control remains, and even that is tenuous.

Russia Is Entering a “Window of Maximum Danger”: analysts warn that Russia is now a declining power, which paradoxically makes it more dangerous because Putin cannot admit defeat without risking regime collapse; escalation (an important option) becomes a necessity, not a choice; Russia is expected to intensify hybrid warfare in 2026—sabotage, cyberattacks, and political interference across Europe.

This is not the posture of a confident great power.  

It’s the posture of a cornered one.

Putin’s One Success: Reshaping the Global System. A separate analysis argues that Putin has been surprisingly effective at undermining the post–Cold War Western-led order. Not by building a new empire, but by undermining global institutions; fragmenting alliances; normalizing transactional, zero-trust geopolitics; accelerating alternative networks (BRICS+, non-dollar trade, etc.)

This doesn’t make Russia strong. It makes the world weaker.

Putin’s strategy is not to dominate the system, but to make dominance impossible for anyone else.

The Global Context of 2026: A System in Flux - 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘪𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘵 identifies five major geopolitical trends shaping 2026:

1.  A new U.S.–China bipolarity

   Russia is not one of the poles.

2. A looming global debt crisis

   Russia is especially vulnerable.

3. Generation Z activism

   Russia’s authoritarian model is out of sync with global youth movements.

4. Fragmentation within Europe  

   Russia hopes to exploit this—but so far, Europe has hardened rather than fractured.

5. Escalation in the Middle East  

   Russia gains some leverage here, but mostly as a spoiler.

So How Is Putin Actually Doing?

Geopolitically: Weak, cornered, and increasingly reliant on sabotage. Russia’s conventional power is diminished, its alliances are shallow, and its economy is strained.

Strategically: Effective only as a disruptor. Putin has succeeded in helping create a fragmented, multipolar world—but not one where Russia is strong.

Domestically: Stable only through repression.

He cannot admit defeat without risking collapse.

Long-term trajectory: Decline masked by short-term chaos. Russia is more dangerous, but less powerful.

🜁 A Mythic Reading: Some things never change. Putin is not the rescuer of a civilization, but the architect of a siege state. His geopolitical stance resembles a Shadow Sovereign, a ruler who maintains power not by expanding order, but by expanding disorder. He is a disruptor of empires, not a builder of one. His influence is centrifugal—pulling the world away from coherence, not toward a new center.

He is a figure of the Threshold of Desperation, not the Symbol of Renewal. Let's encode Putin's geopolitical posture as a Fractured Helm or the Sovereign of the Shattered Axis.

Begod, what's new??

Where the story gets interesting is that Putin’s push for a multipolar world isn’t just a geopolitical preference; it’s a structural gamble. And like all structural gambles, it produces second‑order effects that even the architect can’t fully control.

A multipolar world comes with major unintended consequences. Putin’s stated goal has long been to break the unipolar, U.S.-led order and replace it with a multipolar system where Russia is one of several great powers. But here’s the twist:

Multipolarity doesn’t guarantee Russia a seat at the top. It guarantees instability. And instability has consequences that can easily turn against the instigator.

Below are the biggest unintended outcomes.

Multipolarity creates a world of predators, not partners.

In a unipolar world, even rivals behave predictably.  

In a multipolar world, everyone hedges.

This means: China uses Russia but does not trust it; - India plays both sides; Iran cooperates only when convenient; Central Asia drifts away; Europe re-arms  - The U.S. becomes more erratic but also more dangerous  

Russia wanted freedom of maneuver. What it gets instead is a world where no one owes it loyalty.

Multipolarity empowers regional powers that overshadow Russia. This is the most ironic consequence. 

By weakening the old order, Putin has strengthened:

Turkey in the Caucasus;

China in Central Asia;

Iran in the Middle East;

India in the Global South;

Poland and the Nordics in Europe.

Russia is no longer the gravitational center of its own neighborhood. It becomes one pole among many — and often not the strongest.

Multipolarity accelerates fragmentation, not balance.

Putin imagines a world of stable “civilizational poles.”  

But multipolarity rarely produces stability.

Historically, it produces:

arms races;

proxy wars;

shifting alliances  

- economic blocs  

- contested borders  

- ideological fragmentation  

This is the world of 1910, not the world of 1815.

Russia wanted a world where it could maneuver.  

It may get a world where everyone is maneuvering at once, and chaos becomes the default.

This is the most dangerous unintended consequence.

A multipolar world:

increases the cost of security;

reduces access to capital;

accelerates brain drain;

empowers separatist pressures;

forces constant military spending;

makes economic modernization nearly impossible.

Russia becomes a garrison civilization, not a flourishing one.

Multipolarity creates a system where escalation is always on the table.

In a bipolar world, escalation is constrained.  

In a unipolar world, it’s discouraged.

In a multipolar world?

miscalculation is common;

deterrence is unclear;

alliances are fluid;

crises multiply.

Russia wanted leverage.  

It may get permanent crisis instead.

A world of:

- splintered sovereignties  

- competing civilizational claims  

- unstable alliances  

- wandering powers  

- contested thresholds  

This is not Multipolar Harmony. It is the Fractured Helm — a symbol of a sovereign who breaks the axis but cannot forge a new one. Multipolarity becomes a centrifugal force, not a stabilizing one. It is a world where every pole pulls outward, and no center holds.

Last year somebody asked me if we would ever get back on track after Trump is deposed. Huh? For the past 46 years I found myself surrounded by kept women, unkept women in search of sugar daddies, cheaters in divorce court who routinely swept their homes for bugs, phony people, phony facades, phony storefronts in pseudo-communitarian shopping malls. All phony. There was a fair sprinkling of adult survivors of child abuse.

I began to really miss classical SF at its best: incisive, historically grounded, structurally minded, allergic to romantic narratives, and always attentive to unintended systemic consequences. Convention-savvy writers rendered their futures in characteristic tones — cool, precise, slightly severe, and always thinking in centuries rather than news cycles.

Imagining a future meant crossing a zone of instability called "the near future." Owing to games theory, Russia would be forced to resemble us (and vice-versa). To get the uncommitted nations on either side required making nice and living up to our fine words (to paraphrase what was supposed to have been the first episode of TOS).

It's pretty telling that the economic model challenging neoliberalism's assumption of equilibrium is turbulence. Not balance but entropy.

I suppose this vision is historically naïve.

Now I would cite: the Warring States period; the European system before WWI; the Three Kingdoms era; the Sengoku period. Russia is not a pole; it's a hinge.

In this view: China is a pole; the U.S. is a pole; the EU is a proto‑pole; India is an emerging pole.

Russia, by contrast, is a swing power — a state whose influence comes from playing larger actors against each other. Multipolarity empowers poles. It exhausts hinges.

The architect of fragmentation is rarely its beneficiary. I wish I loved historical irony. There is some pleased spite in thinking that Putin will be consumed by the forces he has unleashed.

The parallels this invokes: the nobles who weakened the French monarchy paved the way for Napoleon, not themselves; the warlords who shattered the Qing dynasty did not rule the Republic (worth another blog post); the powers that destabilized the Ottoman Empire (in spite of Britain's best efforts to support it against Russia) did not control the Middle East that followed.  

Putin is performing the role of a systemic disruptor, not a founder.

This is where I become almost fatalistic. A multipolar world will increase the cost of sovereignty. Russia’s demographic, economic, and technological base cannot sustain the burden. In addition to the pressures it was born facing (Western tech and Eastern hordes) I'd list:  shrinking population; overextended military; dependence on China; declining industrial capacity; rising centrifugal forces in the regions. I had better add that it has been increasingly difficult to get a clear view of the situation. All I need to recall is how Lenin was reported dead more than once during the Revolution and its immediate aftermath.

Multipolarity demands resilience (wot a watchword, America). Russia is operating on momentum.

Momentum runs out.

The greatest unintended consequence is strategic irrelevance. China uses Russia but does not elevate it.  

Europe fears Russia but does not integrate it. The Global South admires Russia rhetorically but invests in China.

Putin wanted a world where Russia is indispensable.  

He may get a world where Russia is optional.

Sorokin might get a world that vindicates him. He was an odd bird in that he denied that "civilization" was even a category. Personally I believe this was due to the fact that he grew up in Russia, but it’s one of the most important (and least discussed) critiques in contemporary geopolitics. Scholars across history, anthropology, and political theory have long argued that “Russian civilization” is not a neutral descriptive category but a political construction with deep strategic implications.

The following verges on heresy: “Russian civilization” is a 19th‑century invention, not an ancient fact. This brings me close to a point where I agree with George Will. Arghh no. There is no denying the existence of a school in which the idea that Russia is a distinct “civilization” separate from Europe and Asia was largely constructed by:

- Slavophiles  

- Imperial ideologues  

- Orthodox clerics  

- Later, Soviet theorists  

- And now, Putin’s administration  

It’s not that Russia lacks cultural depth — it has immense depth — but the civilizational framing is a political technology, not a historical inevitability.

It was designed to:

- justify imperial expansion  

- differentiate Russia from the West  

- create a sense of destiny  

- unify diverse peoples under a single myth  

In other words: “civilization” is a propaganda tool, not a description. The framing hides the empire inside the civilization. This is the critique that hits hardest.

Russia is not a nation-state with a civilizational halo.  

Russia is a multiethnic empire that has repeatedly rebranded itself as a “civilization” to obscure that fact.

The “civilization” narrative:

- masks the imperial nature of the state  

- erases non-Russian identities  

- naturalizes territorial expansion  

- treats borders as spiritually negotiable  

- frames dissent as civilizational betrayal  

It’s a myth that turns geopolitics into metaphysics. (Spengler's skull grins in.)

The framing collapses diversity into a single axis.

Russia contains:

- Turkic peoples  

- Finno‑Ugric peoples  

- Caucasian peoples  

- Siberian peoples  

- Slavic peoples  

- Muslim, Buddhist, animist, and Orthodox traditions  

Calling all of this “Russian civilization” is like calling the entire Mediterranean “Italian civilization.”

It’s a flattening device.

This framing is strategically convenient for Putin.

This is where the critique becomes geopolitical.

The “civilization” narrative allows Putin to:

- claim Ukraine is not foreign  

- claim borders are historically illegitimate  

- claim Russia has a civilizational mission  

- claim Western resistance is “anti‑Russian civilization”  

- claim domestic dissent is treason  

It’s a narrative that sacralizes power.

The framing is structurally unstable.

A “civilizational state” (like China) must:

- maintain coherence  

- maintain hierarchy  

- maintain a sense of destiny  

But Russia’s internal structure is:

- demographically shrinking  

- economically uneven  

- ethnically diverse  

- geographically overextended  

The civilizational frame demands unity.  

The empire beneath it produces fragmentation.

This contradiction is the core instability - a lineage that claims to be eternal but is stitched from many threads. The danger is not that the myth is false.  

The danger is that the myth is too powerful, binding the state to a destiny it cannot sustain. This is why the critique matters.

Will laid it out like this:

Empires = multiethnic, expansionary, hierarchical, held together by force or patronage. Civilizations = long-lived cultural ecologies that may span many states (e.g., Latin Christendom, Sinic, Islamic).

Russia, in Sorokin's view, has:

- expanded over steppe, forest, mountain, and tundra  

- incorporated dozens of languages and religions  

- ruled as center over periphery, not as equal among equals  

To call this “Russian civilization” is, he’d say, like calling the British Empire “Anglo civilization” and treating India, Africa, and the Caribbean as mere decorative annexes. It confuses imperial reach with civilizational coherence. Slavophile intellectuals describe this geography as a natural historical unit. A civilizational theology emerges. The empire’s current form is declared the vessel of a timeless soul. Dissent becomes sacrilege. Separatism = betrayal of civilization. Critique = blasphemy.

What was contingent becomes sacred. What was imperial becomes “organic.” Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia — they are then reclassified not as conquered or adjacent spaces, but as eternally belonging to the same civilizational body, irrespective of their own histories.

This is not analysis; it is liturgy.

Here he presses on the fracture.

A civilizational state must persuade its peripheries that they are organs of the same body. Russia’s peripheries have never entirely believed this.

He’d note: religious plurality - Orthodox, Muslim, Buddhist, animist, secular; ethnic plurality - Slavic, Turkic, Finno‑Ugric, Caucasian, Siberian peoples; historical plurality - regions annexed at different times, with different memories of the center.

The civilizational story demands one destiny, one spiritual axis, one historical vocation. But the empire is polycentric in memory, uneven in development,  unstable in loyalty.

So the “Russian civilization” frame is not a mirror; it is a pressure device. It pushes divergent histories into a single mold. The more pressure you apply, the more hairline fractures appear.

How Putin weaponizes the frame. Let's now move from structure to use. He would highlight some core functions of the narrative:  “We are not invading; we are reuniting our civilizational space.”  “Ukraine is not a separate nation; it is a wayward fragment of our civilization.”  “Opposition is not politics; it is civilizational treason.” “We are not aggressors; we are defenders of a unique civilization against homogenizing Western nihilism.”

This framing does not protect something delicate and ancient. It enables permanent exceptionalism — a claim that ordinary rules and borders do not apply.

The unintended trap is that the civilizational rhetoric demands grand victories (to prove destiny); perpetual mobilization (to defend the sacred whole); suppression of internal differences (to maintain the myth of unity). In other words, Russia was born totalitarian.

But Russia’s actual capacities are demographically fragile; economically uneven; technologically dependent;  strategically overextended. If it compromises, it appears to betray its civilization. If it escalates, it risks collapse. If it stands still, decay eats from within.

The civilizational frame becomes a self-binding spell.

In Grotian terms, a modest nation-state can retreat, revise, recalibrate. A self-declared civilization cannot easily admit error without metaphysical humiliation.   

The very narrative Putin uses to justify his project narrows his exits and sharpens his risks.

Sorokin would say: "I do not deny the depth of Russian culture. I deny the usefulness of the term ‘Russian civilization’ as a guiding category for policy. It obscures empire, inflates destiny, and constrains adaptation. It is not a foundation; it is a mask — and masks are dangerous when the face beneath is changing shape."

Where Jiang and I Diverge. Label the contrast as "civilizations" v. "cultural supersystems." Include me, Spengler, Toynbee, Hord, etc. in the first school, Sorokin, Jiang, and Wallerstein in the second.

The civilizational theory is built on a few core assumptions:

- Civilizations are real, durable structures.  

- They have instrumental organizations that eventually become institutions.

- They follow a life cycle: synthesis → expansion → crisis → universal empire → decay → invasion.

- They are macro‑historical organisms, not political fictions.

Macrohistory treats “civilization” as an analytic category with explanatory power.

Supersystems, by contrast, treats “civilization” as a political category with performative power.

This is the crux.

One assumes civilizations are real. Jiang assumes they are constructed.

> Civilizations are coherent cultural systems that persist across centuries.

> Civilizations are stories states tell to justify their structure.

Toynbee is a macro‑historian.  

Sorokin is a structural anthropologist.

They are not answering the same question.

One discipline sees Russia as a civilization. The  other sees Russia as an empire claiming to be one.

Toynbee et al would say:

- Russia is part of the Orthodox civilization, distinct from Western Christendom  

- It has its own cultural matrix, instruments, and institutions  

- Its historical trajectory fits the civilizational pattern  

Sorokin would counter:

- “Orthodox civilization” is a thin cultural layer stretched over a multiethnic empire  

- The coherence is political, not civilizational  

- The narrative is retrofitted to justify imperial continuity  

For Sorokin, Russia is not a civilizational organism.  

It is a state formation with a civilizational costume.

Toynbeeans focus on long cycles. Sorokinists focus on structural contradictions.

Macrohistory’s lens is:

- centuries  

- phases  

- transformations  

- institutional sclerosis  

Supersystem’s lens is:

- legitimacy  

- narrative  

- power  

- internal diversity  

- imperial overextension  

Macrohistory asks:  

What phase of the civilizational cycle is Russia in?

Supersystems asks:  

Is “civilization” even the right unit of analysis for Russia?

One theory sees civilizations as internally coherent. The other sees Russia as internally plural.

The civilization model requires:

- a shared cultural core  

- a unifying worldview  

- a common historical memory  

The supersystems model points out:

- Russia contains dozens of cultural cores  

- Its worldview is not unified but imposed  

- Its historical memories diverge sharply by region  

Thus, the “civilization” frame obscures more than it reveals.

Civ theory sees civilizational destiny. Systems sees imperial contingency.

The civ framework implies:

- Russia’s trajectory is civilizationally determined  

- Its conflicts with the West are structural  

- Its expansion is part of a long civilizational arc  

The systems framework implies:

- Russia’s trajectory is the result of imperial choices  

- Its conflicts are political, not civilizational  

- Its expansion is contingent, not fated  

One sees destiny.  

The other sees strategy.

Civ’s Russia is a civilizational organism.  

System’s Russia is a ceremonial construction.

Both can be true — but they operate on different planes.

At the level of ontology, these contradict each other.

They disagree about what a “civilization” IS.

At the level of historical observation, both agree Russia is a vast, complex, historically unique formation.

The disagreement is about what to call it and what that naming does. One names to explain. The other names to expose.

How would macrohistory classify Russia’s current phase?

The Russian Revolution looked like a near miss. Instead of continuing its decline into a Universal Empire, it adopted a new ideology and a new instrumental engine of economic development. Unlike a universal empire, the regime successfully repelled invaders. The Soviet era resembled a reconstitution phase like the West's transition from feudalism to commercial capitalism, or from commerce to industry. Since this stage did not occur in isolation from the rest of the world and its political currents, the pattern is distorted. But Gorbachev displayed the confidence of a reconstituted civilization. On one Maslovian level or Toynbeean plane, perhaps he was right. Or he misread the signs and, instead, invited the West prematurely, which was tantamount to inviting the invaders back in. Not all reconstitutions are guaranteed success. Sorokin would reinterpret it as a cultural oscillation 

Alexander Solzhenitsyn  predicted a return to a smaller, Orthodox‑centered Russia. Vladimir Bukovsky predicted a nationalist authoritarian successor. Andrei Sinyavsky predicted a cultural and moral vacuum. Emmanuel Todd (not a dissident, but influential)  predicted demographic collapse and dissolution.

Andrei Amalrik predicted collapse and fragmentation.

Amalrik (1938–1980) was one of the most original, provocative, and fearless Soviet dissidents — best known for his 1970 essay  𝘞𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘵 𝘜𝘯𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘚𝘶𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘜𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘭 1984?, which argued that the USSR would collapse under the weight of its contradictions. His life was a sequence of expulsions, arrests, exiles, and intellectual defiance. His book was a big influence on me.

His father had been arrested for criticizing Stalin’s military leadership, then released and sent back to the front — a trauma that shaped Amalrik’s worldview. His mother died young; Amalrik cared for his father until his own arrest prevented it. This early exposure to repression gave him a lifelong suspicion of state narratives.

At Moscow State University, Amalrik wrote a thesis arguing that Scandinavian Varangians and Greeks, not Slavs, played the primary role in forming the early Russian state. This academic rebellion contradicted the official nationalist line.

He refused to recant — and was expelled in 1963.

This was his first major act of intellectual defiance.

In 1965, he was arrested and exiled to Siberia for the charge of “parasitism” — a common accusation used against dissidents who did not hold state‑approved jobs. He later wrote about this in 𝘐𝘯𝘷𝘰𝘭𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘚𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘢. 𝘞𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘵 𝘜𝘯𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘚𝘶𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘜𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘭 1984?, published abroad in 1970, made him internationally famous — and infuriated the Soviet authorities.

His core predictions:

The USSR would collapse within 15 years.

The cause would be internal contradictions, not Western pressure.

Nationalities would break away.

The state would face a crisis of legitimacy.

He was off by only seven years.

The essay led to a three‑year labor camp sentence in 1970.

His rap sheet is impressive.

1973: Sentenced again, commuted to Siberian exile.

1975: Released and returned to Moscow, but constantly harassed.

1976: Accepted an exit visa and left the USSR for the Netherlands.

He never returned.

While in exile Amalrik continued to:

write

speak at human rights conferences

support the Helsinki movement

warn Western audiences not to romanticize the Soviet system

He became a bridge between Soviet dissidents and Western intellectuals.

He died in a car crash in Spain on November 12, 1980, while traveling to meetings connected to the Helsinki Accords review conference.

He jocularly predicted a successor state where Marx would be intoned or chanted at Orthodox-type services. I used to imagine a if the old Viatka (Vyatka) region were to re‑emerge as a successor state, the name it chose would depend on what kind of identity it wanted to project. And this is where it gets fascinating, because the region sits at a crossroads of Slavic, Finno‑Ugric, and frontier‑imperial histories. Only fully indoctrinated Slavs would want to recite Marx or Lenin. Forget it!

Sorokin is the right person to bring into this conversation. He didn’t just deny the existence of “civilizations” as coherent, bounded units; he dismantled the entire concept with the same cold precision that Jiang uses on imperial narratives.

According to Sorokin, civilizations don’t exist — only cultural mentalities do. Sorokin’s critique is radical because he doesn’t argue that civilizations are misnamed or misunderstood. He argues they are not real things at all.

For Sorokin:

- There is no such thing as “Russian civilization”  

- There is no such thing as “Western civilization”  

- There is no such thing as “Islamic civilization”  

These are macro‑labels that obscure the real dynamics.

What does exist?

Cultural Mentalities (Super‑Systems). Sorokin believed societies oscillate between:

- Ideational (spiritual, ascetic, transcendent)  

- Idealistic (balanced, harmonizing)  

- Sensate (materialist, empirical, hedonistic)  

These are not civilizations. They are modes of consciousness that can appear anywhere. A sensate Paris and a sensate Moscow have more in common with each other than with their own pasts. This alone destroys the civilizational frame.

Sorokin argued that what we call “civilizations” are just temporary clusters of integrated cultural traits.

They are:

- porous  

- unstable  

- overlapping  

- constantly shifting  

There is no “civilizational essence.”  There are only patterns of cultural integration that rise and fall.

Civilizational narratives are political, not analytical.

This is where Sorokin and Jiang shake hands.

Sorokin would say:

> “Civilizations are invented by elites to justify power, identity, and expansion.”

He saw civilizational language as:

- mythic  

- ideological  

- mobilizing  

- imprecise  

- dangerous  

It’s a story states tell themselves — not a real unit of analysis.

So what would Sorokin say about “Russian civilization”?

He would reject it outright.

He’d argue:

- Russia has hosted ideational, idealistic, and sensate phases (which would please Spengler)

- Its cultural patterns have shifted dramatically  

- Its diversity makes a single civilizational label absurd  

- The “civilization” narrative is a political fiction used to unify an empire  

In Sorokin’s view, Russia is not a civilization.  

It is a cultural zone undergoing oscillations, like every other society.

- ascetic (what Spengler perceived)

- balanced  

- materialist  

𝙎𝙤𝙧𝙤𝙠𝙞𝙣’𝙨 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙡𝙙 𝙞𝙨 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙙𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙙 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙤 𝙘𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙯𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨.  

𝙄𝙩 𝙞𝙨 𝙙𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙙 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙤 𝙧𝙝𝙮𝙩𝙝𝙢𝙨.

After this crisis is over, Sorokin may be vindicated when civilizations are dismissed as illusions. The global condition may best be described this way:

> “𝙏𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙣𝙤 𝙘𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙯𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙗𝙖𝙣𝙣𝙚𝙧𝙨.  

>  𝙊𝙣𝙡𝙮 𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙛𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙬𝙞𝙣𝙙𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙛𝙞𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙢.”