“Europe is now at the center of a struggle between two types of people, two kinds of anthropologies”: Oleksiy Kushch
In modern society, questions related to European values and alternative views on human development are increasingly being raised. Recent decades have witnessed numerous discussions on the topic of how social and moral norms should be formed in the conditions of globalization. We are currently seeing these issues come to the fore in political and cultural debates on the international stage. One of the most discussed aspects is the clash of conservative and liberal approaches to social development. This is exactly what expert Oleksiy Kush thinks about, analyzing current processes on a global scale.
In his post on Facebook Oleksiy Kush shares his thoughts on the political divide we are witnessing in Europe and the United States. In the modern world, issues related to European values and their alternatives are widely discussed. These are global topics that concern both social and cultural aspects of society’s development. The expert draws attention to the fact that differences between different types of societies are not limited to the issue of democracy or authoritarianism. According to him, the global struggle is not between democratic and totalitarian systems, but between two anthropologies — conservative and liberal-transhumanist.
Kush emphasizes that Europe is currently at the center of a struggle between two types of people, two types of anthropologies. One of them is classical, conservative anthropology, based on traditional moral and family values, and the other is liberal-transhumanist anthropology, which aims at radical changes in society, in particular by changing the very nature of man with the help of technologies that allow changing and modify the human body.
Kush sees current geopolitical processes as part of the struggle between these two anthropologies. He explains that countries like Russia and China are dominated by conservative anthropology. For its part, the West (especially the US and Europe) is currently in a situation of struggle between old traditional values and new ideas that seek changes in human nature, gender and social structures.
According to Kush, one of the main aspects of this struggle is the concept of “biomorphic freedom”, which consists in the possibility of changing the human body through technologies, stem cells, and genetic modifications. These ideas are partly reminiscent of what Stanislav Lem once wrote in his work “The Sum of Technologies”, and also what is associated with the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who conducted horrific experiments on humans. Kusch notes that such ideas often appear in science fiction, such as the blockbuster Hellboy, which he believes is a metaphor for these biotechnological experiments.
Kush continues that the ideas of transhumanism also include new approaches to gender, in particular, the popularization of the concept of gender neutrality. He notes that this is part of a broader trend in which humanity wants to abandon the traditional understanding of human biological nature as the basis of identity, in favor of more flexible and variable models in which everyone can choose who they are.
This opposition of two anthropologies, according to Kush, also unfolds in the domestic politics of the United States. He emphasizes that the struggle in the US elections between Trump and the Democrats is not just a political confrontation between two candidates, but a struggle between two anthropologies. Trump and the Republicans espouse conservative values, particularly Puritanism, and defend traditional notions of family and society, while Democrats seek a liberal transhumanism that emphasizes equality, inclusiveness, and changing traditional roles in society, including gender identity and family relations.
Kush also draws attention to how this struggle is reflected in Europe. European countries such as Hungary, Poland, France, Germany, and Slovakia are also divided between supporting conservative values and more liberal approaches. This is reflected in the domestic politics of these countries and determines their views on social change and global politics.
“Biomorphic freedom, as Stanislav Lem wrote in Sum of Technologies:
- Mengelism – construction of one’s own organism. The phenomenon is named after the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who conducted terrible experiments and experiments with the capabilities of the human body.
Man is like a Lego constructor.
Mengele’s prototype is interestingly presented in the American blockbuster Hellboy. - Neocannibalism – stem cells, growing new human organs, etc.
That is, the confrontation between democracy and totalitarianism is not planned in the world, but a confrontation between two types of people.
You can often hear that the current geopolitical rift is a certain struggle between democratic values and totalitarian principles of building society. In fact, this is not only a very limited dichotomy, but also fundamentally wrong. The axis of opposition really runs along the lines of (Collective West + Westernized Asia) vs Global South. But only democracy and authoritarianism are of no use here.
Over the past decades, the United States has been an ally of many authoritarian regimes around the world.
If you look at the list of countries that have been granted the status of “US ally outside NATO”, you can see a number of countries that are far from democratic.
This year’s Egyptian president, Field Marshal al-Sisi, came to power in a military coup that overthrew the legitimately and democratically elected President Morsi, who came to power in the Cairo Maidan against the dictatorial regime of Hosni Mubarak. Morsi’s “only” flaw was that he belonged to the anti-Western and anti-Israeli Muslim Brotherhood group. That is why the US and Israel actively cooperate with Al-Sisi, despite the fact that it is very difficult to call him a democratic leader.
There are also opposite examples: BRICS includes India, which actively interacts with the Russian Federation, while being the largest democracy in the world. Narendra Modi as the democratically elected Prime Minister of the country is recognized both in Washington and in Brussels. By the way, he was re-elected for the third time as prime minister.
Moreover, the recognition of the reality of confrontation along the lines of “democracy – authoritarianism” cannot explain the presence of political forces and entire countries of the West, which in one way or another interact with the opposite camp – with the Russian Federation or China. How can you explain the presence of Marine Le Pen’s National Union (Front) in France, ADH in Germany, Orban in Hungary, Fico in Slovakia, the right-wing in Poland, Trump in the USA?
Many of them are called “pro-Russian” in our country. But are they supporters of authoritarianism? Obviously not. So what is the essence of this confrontation?
In fact, there is no global opposition along the lines of “democracy – authoritarianism”.
US presidents calmly meet with the monarchs of Arab countries, where Sharia law still applies, and an opposition journalist can be cut into pieces and thrown down the drain.
The main confrontation in the world takes place between two “anthropos”, two types of people: the conservative model of anthropology and the liberal-transhumanist one.
Because only Man, his essence, energy, perception of himself and the world, his evolution, his participation in the Earth’s biosphere are the core of the flow of Life on our planet. Man determines the essence of human civilization and the course of world history. What will this person be like on an individual level and the society that will form his multitude?
It will be a society from which God, the old morality, and history have been banished. Is it a society in which God will be reborn, conservative morality will return and an “old new” history will be found? This is the classic family, religion/ideology as the basis of social association, biomorphic integrity of the organism, prohibition of invasion into the world of birth of life, gender dual membership. Or gender neutrality, a new anthropology in terms of same-sex marriage, biomorphic freedom from human modeling as a lego designer, the world of the origin of life as a resource for self-realized life (cloning, development of experiments with stem cells, etc.).
It is this confrontation that forms the nerve of modern history and civilization. Countries are grouped into conservative and liberal-transhumanist. It is not difficult to guess that the Global South is basically a world of conservatism. At the same time, within the framework of the Global West and Westernized Asia, there is still no such clarity. It can be said that the struggle between the two Anthropos is alive within the still intact fabric of the above-mentioned global clusters.
The US election is not a fight between “good” Biden and “pro-Russian” Trump.
This is a fight between two Anthropos: the conservative Anthropos of Puritan, evangelical America, the country of the conquerors of the Wild West, moral stoicism and rigorism with the new America of the liberal transhumanism of the Democrats. Approximately the same internal rift is taking place in the EU, where there is conservatism in Hungary, Slovakia, parts of the German and French politicians.
Before the elections to the European Parliament, it seemed that, unlike the USA, liberal transhumanism in the EU had already become a political mainstream, ruling ideology. The horror of Trump’s coming to power in the USA for the EU was explained precisely by this: liberal transhumanist Europe can survive only in alliance with the same liberal transhumanist America. The horror of Trump is the horror of the loneliness of the European Anthropos, surrounded by a conservative world. The horror will find itself in anthroposophical solitude, face to face with the threat of an internal conservative revolution (yes, that is the word revolution), especially among Muslims and/or with the aggression of its surrounding conservative global clusters from Asia and Africa.
The reluctance of Europeans to accept Turkey into the EU is explained by the risk of a conservative revolution.
For the same reason, the rule of PiS and Kaczyński in Poland was called almost a threat to European unity, and Tusk’s victory in the recent elections was called almost a salvation from a conservative revenge.
And when Macron appoints a 34-year-old openly gay as prime minister, this is not an ordinary event, but the positioning of France in this historic confrontation.
In the same way, the ECB head Christine Lagarde’s statement that Trump’s coming to power will mean the “withdrawal” of the US from Europe is also a statement of the fact of the anthroposophical threat: conservative America will not become as active an ally of liberal-transhumanist Europe as before, since the models of anthropos are already will not match each other. Moreover, if the EU ever disintegrates, it will not happen because of the economy, but as a result of the crystallization in its structure of a conservative core of countries that want to create an alternative European conservative project.
Approximately the same processes are taking place in Westernized Asia, where Japan still maintains a relatively conservative system, and South Korea is already larger than a liberal-transhumanist society. The dynamics of the confrontation between the two antproposophical worlds will be determined by their capacity for aggression/defense. So far, the conservative world is more dynamic in this regard, since the mobilization of society is better limited to the classical system of values, with a foundation in the family, with steel hoops in the form of ideology and/or religion. But the liberal transhumanist world is also beginning to cultivate its own masculinity, especially since the war in Ukraine provides such opportunities. That is why some deputies of the “Voice” party are actively promoting the idea of same-sex “civil unions”, including for the military.
All this is a strategy for the formation of transgender masculinity and an attempt to launch the age of masculinity of liberal transhumanism”, – the expert believes.
Ultimately, Kush points out that today’s world is not faced with a choice between democracy and authoritarianism. The main struggle is between two types of man – the conservative model of anthropology, which emphasizes the importance of tradition, family and morality, and the liberal-transhumanist model, which seeks to change the very nature of man through technology, new social structures and gender ideas. This division shapes the current political and cultural situation and, according to Kusch, it will determine the future of civilization.
