Wednesday, 11 March 2026, 9:34 pm
Article: Independent Media Institute
We are not facing separate crises, but the simultaneous
collapse of multiple historical orders unfolding in the
present.
Not only international relations and
political science scholars but also the broader communities
of social sciences—and increasingly even the natural
sciences—are confronting a profound and widely
acknowledged crisis, which is not merely “theoretical,”
“disciplinary,” or “scientific” in nature. Politics
itself, as well as everyday life, is in crisis. Today,
almost nothing can be clearly understood or analyzed in
terms of cause and effect by specialists of those relevant
fields, nor are experts from different disciplines able to
offer scientific diagnoses or reliable forecasts about what
is unfolding. This is because almost nothing functions as it
once did.
In this short essay, I argue that the
underlying reason for this condition lies in the fact that
we are experiencing a “pan-crisis.” At
the global level, we are confronted with crises unfolding
across so many different layers and dimensions that although
humanity has experienced some of them individually—and in
some cases repeatedly—we are now, for the first time,
facing a crisis in its totality, encompassing nearly every
domain of life.
If we begin with the most accessible
layer and look at what is happening today, we can broadly
observe that the Europe-/West-centric modern(ist) world
system—which began to take shape roughly 500 years ago,
became institutionalized at the turn of the 19th and 20th
centuries, reaching its final form after World War II—is
undergoing a fundamental transformation. What can be
described, in short, as the unfolding of the collapse of the
modern(ist) consensus.
Advertisement – scroll to continue reading
While on the one hand,
industrial capitalist modes of production together with the
systems of production and distribution tied to them are
being reconfigured, on the other hand, a growing crisis of
confidence in party-based political representation is taking
shape in the political sphere. Alongside this, we are
witnessing radical shifts in power relations and voting
behavior—levels of electoral volatility that cannot be
explained by the concept of populism alone.
As most
recently illustrated by the crises in Libya, Ukraine, Syria,
and Israel, Cold War-based arrangements of spheres of
influence are being transformed, while a new scramble for
geopolitical repositioning—shaped by the possibility that
so-called rising powers such as China may replace
“exhausted” centers—is intensifying. At the same time,
as the epicenter and axis of digital neoliberal production
shift, efforts to repair global supply chains that were
infected during the pandemic by diversifying trade systems
and routes worldwide are deepening. With changing
geopolitical power balances and the growing impact of cyber
technologies, the global military-security architecture is
also being reshaped, while the ideological foundations that
rendered global power competition predictable for decades
are giving way to a blunt pragmatism, which is increasingly
open to everyday turbulence and even abrupt
realignments.
Meanwhile, under the combined impact of
climate change, environmental degradation, and related
global crises, national and even global demographic
structures are being transformed, rendering existing regimes
of membership, identity, and belonging the subject of
renewed constituent debate. At the same time, even as
esotericism rises by questioning the scientific mode of
knowing produced by the Enlightenment—an era that once
sought to displace religion from its throne—monotheistic
religions and spiritualist approaches, acting at once as
rivals and seemingly symbiotic counterparts, are also
struggling to adapt themselves to the conditions of the
post-truth age.
In this new age of value(s)lessness,
shaped through relations of mutual determination—resulting
from the transformations unfolding across nearly all
constituent domains of life—the possibility of
understanding and analyzing what is taking place through the
existing modern(ist) reservoir of knowledge, dominant modes
of knowledge production, or entrenched paradigms is steadily
diminishing.
Moreover, besides the fact that these
developments have been tearing apart the modern(ist)
consensus—gradually shaped over the past 500 years—at
almost every seam, the phenomenon of the state, which has
structured human life for roughly 5,000 years, is itself
undergoing a profound transformation. Put simply, the
state—historically characterized by its monopoly over
power and instruments across all constituent domains of
life—is increasingly turning into the coercive executor of
the neoliberal global system. As the state steadily loses
its classical sovereignty in the realms of rulemaking
(legislation), implementation (execution), and enforcement
(adjudication), it is being transformed into an
“organ/agent” that carries out what the neoliberal
global order requires, often automatically, and when
necessary, through support, pressure, or subtle
coercion.
The accelerating authoritarian turn observed
across much of the world, and its legitimation through
narratives of being “local and national”—slogans that
have effectively become a global mantra of
neoliberalism—is partly a result of this process. It is
widely known that neoliberalism’s continued hold on power
also depends on the perception that it is outside the state,
or more precisely, that it has been pushed outside by a
so-called strong state. As the hollowing out of the state
produces growing security gaps, an expanding cult of the
state is required to fill this void and must be repeatedly
sanctified at every opportunity.
The entire system is
entrusted to strong leaders who form an informal network of
people who get things done among themselves, bound together
by mutual accommodation and solidarity. The alternative, in
a world constantly portrayed as saturated with danger at
every moment, is presented as being plagued by hunger and
abandonment. Fortunately, individuals who are increasingly
detached from production and compelled to find happiness,
contentment, or consolation in consumption become more
inclined, under conditions of growing insecurity, to seek
refuge in the power symbolized by the state or its
representatives—a power that is now largely
symbolic.
What is certain, in any case, is that this
situation leaves the social sciences—themselves products
of the modern(ist) consensus—helpless and unequipped. The
dominant paradigm has largely lost its ability to analyze
human and social behaviors, trapped between nostalgic
invocations of an all-powerful past and
performative/symbolic opposition in the present. As a
result, this paradigm functions only to either call the old
order back for rescue or to consign it to burial.
From
the standpoint of the very possibility and capacity for
scientific analysis, the situation is even more troubling.
In these interesting times we are passing through, it is not
only 500 years of modernism or 5,000 years of state-centered
organization that is being shaken. At least 50,000 years of
human (Homo sapiens) existence is also confronting
serious challenges. While technological pursuits render
reproduction—one of the most fundamental (micro-level)
problems of human history—possible beyond anything we have
known, and thus carry the potential to destabilize the
social order from the most micro to the most macro levels.
Artificial intelligence and robotic technologies are
simultaneously introducing a nonhuman agent into social
life.
Beyond their potential impacts on employment or
everyday social life, this development represents a
transformation that will fundamentally reshape legal
systems, making the continuation of the existing order in
its current form impossible.
Apart from the wide range
of legal questions raised by the use of autonomous vehicles
and weapons—from the exercise of rights, authority, and
criminal liability in cases of accidents or ordinary
homicide—it is certain that these developments will
further dehumanize warfare, stripping it of its human
meaning, impact, and limits. It is equally clear that such
transformations cannot be addressed or explained within
existing paradigms. Since the moment warfare entered human
life roughly 5,000 years ago, the appetite for war has
historically grown as risk and cost decreased while profit
and plunder increased. Today, the conditions are maturing
for this appetite to become fully normalized and thoroughly
amoral.
As capital becomes increasingly
centralized—at local, national, regional, and global
levels—plunder grows geometrically. At the same time, the
deepening asymmetry produced by artificial intelligence and
autonomous weapons further reduces risk. In this context,
the hands of those seeking to reconstruct the global
parcelization required by the collapsing modernist consensus
and entrenched state order are being
strengthened.
Yet, as long as nuclear power balances
persist, it is evident that no genuinely constituent war can
take place. Instead, what emerges is the normalization of
perpetual proxy wars, which are incapable of bringing the
existing order—or disorder—to an end. Rather than being
eliminated, populations that cannot be destroyed are instead
condemned to prolonged suffering.
Likewise, the
intensification of space activities will profoundly affect a
world order that has, until now, been driven almost
exclusively by terrestrial resources. There are widespread
speculations that even a small metallic asteroid may contain
trillions of dollars’ worth of industrial raw materials,
and that some asteroids could potentially meet the world’s
resource needs for millions of years. Although asteroid
mining is not yet considered feasible due to current
operational and transportation costs, numerous projects are
closely following the data expected from studies on the
sample brought to Earth from the asteroid Ryugu by Japan in
2020, while simultaneously focusing on reducing the
logistical and operational costs of space mining.
With
concrete steps toward establishing colonies on planets such
as Mars likely to take shape before the middle of this
century, it can be argued that asteroid mining holds an
exceptionally high potential to generate an asymmetric
economic leap comparable to the one witnessed beginning in
1492, which emerged in Europe’s favor, ushering in the
modern(ist) era. Finally, the newly opening maritime trade
routes, rare elements, or even previously unknown bacteria
released by the melting of polar ice sheets—formed over
tens of thousands of years and now dissolving due to climate
change—will produce radical socioeconomic, demographic,
and political consequences. What were initially dismissed as
objects of ridicule, such as Donald Trump’s statements
regarding Greenland and Canada or Elon Musk’s fascination
with Mars, may therefore not be “simple,” “absurd,”
or “innocent” fantasies after all.
What we are
witnessing is a transformation that such actors do not know
as abstract information, but as a lived reality—one they
understand through the mentality it embodies and seek to
steer as much as possible. The last time we encountered the
consequences of a “new age of (re)discoveries,” in which
global production turned toward new raw materials and became
intertwined with new supply routes and, consequently, new
supply chains, was 500 years ago, in the 15th century.
Besides the 2020 mini-pandemic, the last time humanity
confronted what a mass-threatening epidemic truly meant was
just before that in the 14th century. Climate change—the
underlying driver of all these processes—was last
experienced at a comparable scale roughly 11,650 years
ago.
A world centered on humans has existed for
approximately 50,000 years. Tools have been produced for
around 3.3 million years, and they have always been made by
living beings. Even the mere possibility that tools—long
understood as objects made by and for living beings—might
become “tools for themselves” is sufficient to overturn
the entire order. Every major technological leap since the
Stone Age has transformed the existing order along with its
values and norms, while simultaneously establishing new
ones. Those unable to adapt—that is, those who failed to
redirect the process in their own favor—were
eliminated.
In short, we are living through a
pan-crisis that affects all layers and institutions
generated by the roughly 500-year cycle of Western-centrism,
the 5,000-year cycle of state-centrism, and the 50,000-year
cycle of human-centrism in human history. We are not merely
facing a situation in which each of these cycles is
individually in crisis; rather, we are experiencing a moment
in which the crisis points of all these cycles intersect in
the present. At a time when the modern(ist) consensus—and
all the entrenched value judgments—is dissolving, and the
definition, meaning, and function of knowing/knowledge are
transforming under the impact of artificial intelligence,
understanding a world in such a deep and complex state of
crisis is becoming increasingly difficult.
There is no
future in attempting to understand or explain what is
happening while remaining within the epistemological
framework and methodological repertoire of the modern(ist)
paradigm. This paradigm was constructed around the modes of
production and needs of industrial capitalism and was
therefore shaped in accordance with its objectives. From the
outset, selective, biased, and incomplete, the dominant
paradigm has now also lost its sustainability.
To
confront a pan-crisis, a pan-science is
required.
The original
version of this article was published in Turkish
on the Global Panorama portal on 3 November 3, 2025. This
article was produced by Human
Bridges.
Author Bio: Erdem Denk is a
professor of international law and international relations
at Ankara University and the founder of the
transdisciplinary research initiative Arkeopolitics, which
integrates archaeology, history, political theory, and legal
history to reinterpret the long-term dynamics of human
societies. His research focuses on the evolution of law and
social order since the Paleolithic. He is the author of The
50,000-Year World Order: Societies and Their Laws (2021, in
Turkish) and is currently working on three books, in Turkish
and English, titled When There Was No State, The Invention
of the State, and The Story of the
State.
Using Scoop for work?
Scoop is free for personal use, but you”ll need a licence for work use. This is part of our Ethical Paywall and how we fund Scoop. Join today with plans starting from less than $3 per week, plus gain access to exclusive Pro features.
Join Pro Individual
Find out more