Determinants of Social Reality

Toxicity is in many cases accompanied by lies, and one instance where the lies are quite palpable is the mainstream propaganda against Russia. As a matter of fact, the core issue which we are dealing with is lying and the results of such lying. Embedded in the mainstream propaganda against Russia are a number of lies. The image of Russia which mainstream propaganda seeks to create can be dispelled if one were to take one trip to a place like Morocco or Turkey. One will find that the most attractive, fancy, happy, and wealthy tourists are in fact Russians. Many Russians are well-educated and well-off, and they now enjoy the advantage of having the global balance of power in their favor, while Washington and Kyiv continue lying to one another and continue putting one another in a pickle by feeding one another’s delusions and illusions. 

Washington’s experience at the moment is a lot like the Soviet experience soon after Afghanistan in the 1990’s, whereby a political and social crisis emerging from decades of a policy of global hegemony means that there is a now a vacuum or void which has left a state of dysfunction and uncertainty in the system. And there is nothing reliable or stable to fill the vacuum and void at the moment. Add to this dysfunction and uncertainty the fact that at the outset of the current debt crisis there were only three options for the system – namely, socialism, decline, and chaos – and the roots of the current crisis can be further elucidated when we take this fact into account.  

Hence, the current crisis is occurring with a backdrop of “post-capitalism” and within a “post-capitalism” context and situation. As we have highlighted before, capitalism is essentially an organism with a lifespan, and the lifespan consists of three stages – namely, the competitive stage, the imperialistic stage, and the hegemonic stage. After the hegemonic stage, one is left with three options – namely, socialism, decline, or chaos. But given that decline reinforces chaos, the likeliest outcome of our current crisis which is occurring with a backdrop of “post-capitalism” is chaos. Also, June is not the date to watch out for as Janet Yellen has insisted. Rather, if the crisis is to exacerbate, the time in which it will exacerbate is September, which is when the current budget expires.

In general, there is flawed logic on one hand, and there is valid logic on the other hand. And what makes one set of logic flawed and another set of logic valid are the invisible assumptions of reality which underpin each set of logic. In many cases, people are not cognizant or transparent about their assumptions. One reason for why many people are not cognizant and transparent about their assumptions is because many of us make assumptions about reality without even knowing that we are making assumptions, hence the invisibility aspect of assumptions. In turn, if one were to be cognizant and transparent about the assumptions which underpin their logic and if one can understand their assumptions for what they are, it can perhaps make the difference between flawed logic on one hand and valid logic on the other hand. Ultimately, flawed logic leads to error and falsehood, and valid logic leads to facts and truth. 

There is also the question of whether today’s crisis in Washington can be narrowed down to just capitalism as its root cause, given that we are in a post-capitalist context and situation at the moment. The answer is that one can in fact narrow down the roots of the crisis to capitalism if we assume that economics is the main determinant of social reality. But in reality, capitalism tells us only part of the story. In general, we have a whole set of determinants of social reality to account for, and accounting for all the various factors of social reality in order to describe and explain our social reality is something which we have sought to do through the course of this writing endeavor. Whether we have done it successfully and thoroughly is something for the reader to decide, not the author.