New Digital Age
Written by Alfonso Elizondo
In this 21st century a new era has begun in the world in which the main changes have been the replacement of the military might of the great powers by the use of ‘social ethics’, the rapid transformation of global trade and trade routes, artificial intelligence taking over jobs and services all over the world and the reconstruction of economic models, of politics, laws, myths and culture that appeared in the period of the Enlightenment towards the end of the eighteenth century during the great French Empire led by Louis XV.
Despite the impending downfall of the Christian myth of capitalism and its formulas developed under feudalism and monarchies dating back to the High Middle Ages, this mythology still survives in many Western nations and globally. These nations are experiencing a series of problems such as the breakup of the continents and of their regions into different ethnic groups and cultures, as well as the noticeable increase in migration to the more developed nations, the growth of the lower-income social classes, the increase in the cost of food and transportation and the conflicts arising from the host of radical religions that see those who do not share their myths and their gods as their enemies.
It is understandable that all these changes in the current global world work negatively for the majority of underdeveloped countries or those with precarious economies, but there is no doubt that soon they will also cause huge problems for the big nations which for more than two hundred years have exploited weak nations and have caused the death of millions of people in their bloody pre-planned military, trade and economic operations.
Another imminent change in this new era will be the disappearance of the ‘nation state’ or its merging with other nations or cultures, and the creation of a new international political order where the nations and transnational organizations that emerged from the two major World Wars of the twentieth century will no longer be in control. Although it is very difficult at the moment to guess what will be the political direction of the current world, it is very clear that it will no longer be the one taken by human society over the last century, because the consequences have been disastrous. Not only did they lead to the disappearance of the main positive behaviors of the human being, such as generosity, solidarity, the search for freedom, health and love for others regardless of ethnicity, religion and regional mythologies, but they also came at a huge financial cost that left everyone bankrupt.
Despite the fact that science, technology, ecology and agnosticism are taking over most of the world’s major populations, there is no doubt that today’s human society will continue to experience, albeit to a lesser degree, the negative behaviors that are intrinsic to the human being, such as selfishness, megalomania, messianism, narcissism, misogyny, cruelty and xenophobia. But it is a fact that the era of the colonial world has come to an end.
Other great contributions of the current digital era are control of the emotions, the disappearance of the traditional family, direct communication with other human beings, the intensity of love and the transformation of the art of volume and space into a new iconographic formula that has not yet been defined.
As all these changes are happening right now and very quickly, it is very difficult for them to be perceived by the average human being who is trying to cope with the problems of their individual domestic life and is moving further away every day from the life of their dreams, from their fantasies, their personal emotions and even further from their metaphysical experiences.
A major advantage in the idea of a new digital reality is that it has devices that allow us to quickly find out what is happening. This is leading to the disappearance of most of the conflicts and hatred that existed between different ethnic groups, nations and religions, so much so that a new world order is coming into being which is no longer dominated by the Christian myths that emerged during the Roman Empire, but by the social ethics of the most ancient Chinese empire, where there was never hatred or feuding among its inhabitants and the main feature was respect among all its people and the belief that there were deep similarities between all their gods created over thousands of years, with none of them hating or despising their peers.
Addendum: Current geopolitics has caused the new world to be configured in a new terrestrial space that covers three continents, Europe, Asia and Africa. This has led to China, in alliance with Russia, taking total control of the new global world without using its military power, except indirectly through Russia, and to the near future being free of military conflicts, and to a reduction in ecological and religious problems.
At the same time, India, with its masochistic conciliatory politics, controls the world’s largest population of nearly 1.5 billion human beings who are convinced that having more income and property will not make them happier.