Abstract

This article traces the trajectory of the Western worldview, arguing that its historical development from a cohesive, integrated cosmos to a more fragmented, post-truth landscape demonstrates the critical need for shared foundational axioms for any society to maintain long-term stability.

By examining key developments in law, theology, philosophy, and science, this writing maps the shared average perception of reality in the “western world” and analyzes its political and social consequences. The argument isn't "ideas are the only thing that matter." The argument is that foundational axioms (ideas about reality) are the primary drivers of a society, which are then accelerated and/or manifested on scale by actions like economics, war, rebellion, science and the creation of arts and technology.

It posits that any societal framework must originate from a set of foundational axioms to exist.

Part I: The Integrated Worldview Foundations & Its History

A society is built upon a foundation of shared beliefs and values; a collective narrative and order of core axioms that provide both a basis for legal structures and for moral and social coherence. However ideology does not exist in a vacuum. To lay out the groundwork, let us first begin with some historical context.

Greek Philosophy & The Birth of Reason

The intellectual bedrock of the West was laid in ancient Greece. It was here that a revolutionary idea took hold: the universe is not a chaotic realm governed by the whims of inscrutable gods, but an ordered cosmos governed by intelligible principles (logos). Philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle pioneered the use of reason as the primary tool for understanding this order.

Plato’s theory of Forms posited a higher, eternal reality of perfect ideals, of which our world is but a shadow, providing a metaphysical anchor for truth and morality.

Aristotle, his student, developed the formal systems of logic that would become the operating system for Western thought, providing the method to systematically analyze everything from biology to ethics. Aristotle would later teach and advise Alexander the Great of Macedonia. Ancient Greek culture is one of the oldest foundational axiom upon which Western science and philosophy are built. It is one of the oldest still thriving concepts on the market place of ideas, at least in the western world.

Origins of Roman Law & The Ideal of Order

While the Greeks provided the intellectual framework, the Romans provided the practical model for a cohesive, large-scale society. The genius of Rome was in law and governance. They developed a sophisticated and pragmatic legal system, distinguishing between ius civile (law for citizens) and ius gentium (law applicable to all peoples), which evolved into a concept of ius naturale (natural law).

This legal architecture would prove to be one of Rome's most enduring legacies, providing the vessel into which later theological and moral principles would be poured to shape society. Greek culture and philosophy as well as language were common in large parts of the Early Roman Empire.

Later Roman Law & Its Legacy

But it is the later Roman History, which truly starts compiling and scaling the works that will further influence the trajectory which western society was put on. The legal structure of the "Eastern" Roman Empire (often called Byzantine, thought they always called themselves simply Romans and most Noble Houses were originally from Rome the city and had migrated to Constantinople) represents a critical, often-overlooked foundation of modern Western law. Its pinnacle was the Corpus Juris Civilis ("Body of Civil Law"), commissioned by Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century. This was roughly 200 years after Emperor Constantine became the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity.

But back to the Corpus Juris Civilis. It was not merely a collection of Roman laws. It was a massive undertaking to codify, rationalize, and Christianize the entire Roman legal tradition. It integrated a whole millennium of Roman legal thought with Christian principles of equity, justice, and natural law into one coherent text. It laid the foundation for the concept of a unified state governed by a single, comprehensive legal code. The Corpus Juris Civilis is arguably the most influential legal text in history. It is the bedrock for the civil law systems used across most of Europe, North and South America, and large parts of Asia and Africa. It transmitted the genius of Roman law to the modern world, but through a distinctly Christian filter. And it established the framework for a society ordered toward a common good, under a law believed to be in harmony with divinity, or more explicit, divine law (symphonia).

Christian Morality & The Genesis of Human Rights

Integrated with this legal tradition was a revolutionary moral framework. Unbeknownst to many, The modern concept of universal human rights is not a product of the Enlightenment phase breaking with religion, but rather a secularized development of ancient Christian core axioms. At the core of this is the Concept of the Church's Internal Constitution.

There are many, but here is a common, Pauline example. St. Paul's declaration in Galatians 3:28 that "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" was, and in many societies still is, a radical social statement. It established an idea of community based not on status, wealth, or ethnicity, but on a shared spiritual identity and absolute equality before God. This theological assertion, that every individual is made in the imago Dei (image of God) and possesses a soul of infinite worth, is the seed from which all subsequent notions of universal human dignity grew.

A relatively recent and potent real-world application of this principle was the abolition of slavery. The movement in the British Empire was driven overwhelmingly by devout Christians like William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect. Their argument was not primarily economic or political; it was a deeply moral and theological one. They contended that slavery was a profound sin that denied the God-given humanity and dignity of fellow human beings. In summary, modern secular concepts like "human rights" and "the dignity of the individual" are not self-evident truths discovered by pure reason. They are inherited moral assumptions built upon a Christian theological foundation. This framework introduced the revolutionary idea of universal moral equality into the world. The West continues to operate on this ethical inheritance, even as many have forgotten it's theological source.

Thomas Aquinas & Scholastic Synthesis

The next necessary step in thinking occured in the High Middle Ages. Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was a Dominican friar and the foremost philosopher of the Scholastic period. His masterwork, the Summa Theologica, is a monumental attempt to create a complete and coherent system of thought that synthesizes Christian theology with the philosophy of Aristotle. (Partly inspired by Byzantine traditions, see greek history). Aquinas argued that faith and reason are not opposed. He saw them as two complementary paths to a single truth: God.

Reason can take us far, proving things like the existence of God through logical arguments, while faith (divine revelation) provides knowledge about things beyond reason's grasp. Aquinas represents the peak of the pre-modern, integrated worldview. His work provided a shared intellectual and spiritual framework for reality that explained the nature of reality from the lowest matter to the highest, without opposing the progress of science or reason. This does not imply the average perception was one of Utopia. (Economic, technological, geographical circumstances,... all play a role as well)

Part II: The Modern Turn

René Descartes & the Vision-Fueled Revolution

René Descartes (1596-1650) is rightly called the father of modern philosophy. His method of radical doubt led him to what he believed was an unshakeable foundation for all knowledge: "Cogito, ergo sum"—"I think, therefore I am." This move established the individual rational mind as the starting point for discovering truth. However, the origin of this rationalist project is profoundly different then one might expect. Descartes was a devout Catholic, and the impetus for his life's work came to him on the night of November 10, 1619, in a series of intense dreams or visions.

He interpreted this experience as a divine revelation from an "angel" or "spirit of truth," which commanded him to establish a new, unified method of science based on mathematics and reason. He was so convinced of the vision's divine origin that he made a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Loreto to give thanks.

A profound historical irony, of course: the modern age of reason, which ultimately led to widespread secularism, was started by a founder who believed he was on a divine mission received from an angel. Set aside the simplistic narrative of "science vs. religion." For Descartes, reason was not an attack on faith; it was a God-given tool to decipher the perfect, logical order of God's creation.

The great unintended consequence of his work is that subsequent generations embraced his rational method while discarding its intended mystical foundation, leading to the very mind-body split and disenchanted world he never intended to create. The Cartesian turn, by prioritizing the individual mind, inadvertently opened the door to skepticism about any shared, objective reality.

As an honourable mention, Martin Luther's doctrine of sola scriptura also placed the individual conscience (guided by scripture) as the ultimate arbiter of truth, partly challenging centralized absolute truths. This, as well was a monumental step.

Over centuries, all this would lead to the dismantling of the very idea of certainty.

It is however important to understand that subsequent thinkers inspired by Descartes (Locke, Voltaire, Kant) of course did not see themselves as destroyers. The great wager of the "Enlightenment" was that society could be re-founded on axioms derived from pure reason alone and that reason would be opposed to faith. A logical fallacy as we will later discover in this article. Their project was, in essence, an attempt to build a stable and just society on this new, purely rationalist foundation.

Friedrich Nietzsche: Prophet of the Void

Perhaps no one understood the coming crisis more acutely than Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). He is famous for his proclamation that "God is dead," but this was not a triumphant cry; it was a lament.

He understood that the collapse of the Christian worldview would create a catastrophic void of meaning in the West, leading to nihilism. While known for his bombastic style, his lesser-known writings and personal letters reveal a man deeply aware of his own psychological torment and the terrifying implications of his philosophy. In works like Ecce Homo, he writes with a desperate, self-analyzing clarity about his own solitude and the burden of his insights, admitting, "I am one thing, my writings are another." Nietzsche was not the architect of nihilism, but its most prescient diagnostician.

He saw that the Christian morality of compassion and universal dignity would not survive without its theological foundation. He predicted that the 20th century would be consumed by titanic political struggles and ideological wars fought to fill the God-shaped hole in the human heart. His personal anguish reflects the collective psychological crisis he foresaw for a society cut off from its core axioms and confronted with the ongoing developments of industrial revolution as enabler for an atomized and alienated mass society.

Millions of people were uprooted and packed into industrial cities, furthering the disconnect from original sources of identity or belonging.

Charles Darwin: A Primary Driver for Unraveling

While Nietzsche diagnosed the philosophical death of God, Charles Darwin (1809-1882) provided the scientific mechanism that, for many, made God unnecessary as an explanation for the creation of life. His 1859 work, On the Origin of Species, did more than just propose the theory of evolution. Like mentioned, the axiom of universal dignity was and is a transcendent anchor for law, human rights, and the very fabric of social trust in the west. It was into this integrated worldview that Charles Darwin's work arrived, not merely as a scientific theory, but as a profound shock to the system's core axioms.

Darwin’s personal loss of faith was a nuanced and painful journey into agnosticism, while the ideological movement of "Darwinism" that followed aggressively promoted a new, competing narrative that struck at the very heart of Western social cohesion. It replaced purpose with chance. His theory of natural selection presented a world driven not by divine reason or a final purpose (telos), but by blind, undirected, and competitive struggle. And it “dethroned” Humanity. The theory of evolution places humanity firmly within the animal kingdom, a product of the same material forces as any other organism.

This was weaponized by thinkers like Herbert Spencer to create "Social Darwinism," a philosophy that rationalized social inequality, imperialism, and ruthless capitalism as the natural outcome of "survival of the fittest."

This new axiom was in direct and violent opposition to the Pauline declaration of absolute equality before God (See above). It offered a scientific-sounding justification for dissolving the bonds of universal dignity and compassion that were essential to the Christian moral framework, thereby eroding the very basis of social trust. The tragedy is that this corrosive conflict was not necessary.

The knowledge and process to integrate Darwin's scientific findings without destroying the metaphysical foundation of social cohesion had existed for centuries. The scholastic tradition of Thomas Aquinas, developed 600 years before Darwin, had already built a robust system for harmonizing faith and reason, viewing the natural world as a valid path to understanding the divine.

Descartes expanded on that, tragically misunderstood after his death. However, the post-Enlightenment West had largely forgotten this heritage. Having elevated radical individual reason and materialism, it lacked the cultural and intellectual framework to perform this synthesis. Instead of integrating Darwin’s "how" with the established "why," a new generation of thinkers used his work to create a totalizing materialist worldview that declared the "why" irrelevant.

Darwin's ideas were quickly applied to human society to justify the brutal realities of the industrial age.

The Secular Ideologies: Communism & Fascism

The 20th century bore out Nietzsche's prophecy. The collapse of a shared transcendent framework created a vacuum that was filled by new, purely secular and materialist ideologies: Communism and Fascism. These ideologies were not mere political theories; they were all-encompassing systems of meaning that promised salvation on earth, enforced by the total power of the state. Both rejected the concept of the divinely-given worth of the individual, instead subordinating the person entirely to the collective; the class (Communism) or the nation-state (Fascism).

As a movement, Romanticism which was originally opposed to the Enlightenment philosophy, as well was crucial for the effective formation of Communism and Fascism because the 20th-century ideologies, particularly Fascism, were not merely products of a nihilistic void. They were also fueled by a mix of Romantic nationalism and a distorted desire to "re-enchant" the world through the myth of the nation, the race, and the leader to fill the void created by the slow disconnect from the original metaphysical core axioms of western society. To clarify the scale of the impact, the death toll of the 20th century's secular ideologies is staggering.

Communist regimes are estimated to have killed between 85 and 100 million people through executions, forced famines, and labor camps, representing over 3% of the world's mid-century population. In addition to that, Fascist aggression, culminating in World War II, resulted in 70 to 85 million deaths, or about 3.5% of the world's population in 1940. By comparison, the total death toll for all Crusades combined, spanning multiple centuries, is estimated to be between 1 and 3 million people. This represented roughly 2% of Europe's much smaller population at the time. The violence of the 20th century was of a completely different order of magnitude. This stands in stark contrast to the political traditions of civilian rights and federalism, which long predate modern ideologies like the above. (The basis of modern law, as seen in the Byzantine tradition, etc...) Communism and Fascism are the political consequences of a purely secular worldview taken to its most extreme form.

By fully removing a transcendent source of value and rights, they made the state the ultimate arbiter of meaning and morality, leading to unprecedented tyranny and mass murder. They demonstrate that when humanity tries to build an Utopia or "Paradise on earth" with only material core axioms, it invariably ends in failure so far.

Kurt Gödel & the Limits of Logic

Kurt Gödel (1906-1978), an Austrian-American logician, with his Incompleteness Theorems (1931) fundamentally changed the understanding of mathematics and logic.

In essence, the theorems demonstrate that for any sufficiently powerful formal system (like arithmetic): The system will always contain true statements that cannot be proven from within its own axioms. The system cannot prove its own consistency.

This was a devastating blow to the project of pure rationalism. Gödel mathematically proved that no logical system can be both complete and consistent. There is no "view from nowhere"; every system has built-in limitations and depends on something outside of itself for its foundation. Importantly, for Gödel himself, his work didn't mean everything was relative; it meant that human intuition and reason could grasp truths that a given axiomatic system could not formally prove.

For many thinkers, the Incompleteness Theorems point toward chaos or relativism. For Gödel, they pointed in the exact opposite direction. For him, the theorems proved that mathematical truth is an infinite reality that is far richer and more complex than any finite system of human axioms could ever capture.This meant that human reason, through intuition, could connect with a realm of truth that transcends formal proof. To him, the human mind was not just a computer running on axioms; it had a window into this higher, Platonic realm. (see Greek foundation and Aquinas above).

For Gödel, this wasn't a flaw in the universe; it was a feature. It suggested that the universe's logical structure was so profound that it couldn't be fully "canned" by our limited systems. This is consistent with the idea of a divine, infinite mind as the ultimate source of that structure. Later, Gödel developed his own version of the ontological proof for the existence of God. This is an argument that attempts to prove God's existence through pure logical reasoning, rather than empirical evidence.

In short, Gödel's proof uses complex modal logic to define God as a being that possesses all "positive properties" (like omnipotence, omniscience, perfect goodness, etc.).The proof then argues, through a series of logical axioms and theorems, that if such a being is even possible, then it must necessarily exist. In his lifetime, he only showed this to close friends, fearing his colleagues would think he had gone insane. It was only published years after his death. The entire proof hinges on the given concept of "positive properties." which are imperfectly defined. This may come across as ironic and One might think, these works contradict each other. But one (his ontological proof) is an example of what a system can do (prove a specific statement). The other is a discovery about a fundamental limitation of what systems cannot do (prove all true given statements in itself).

This means he likely was aware of the imperfect and incomplete definitions of certain "positive properties" in his later works.

Thomas Kuhn & Paradigm Shifts

And now it gets really interesting. Let us talk about Kuhn. Thomas Kuhn (1922-1996) was a physicist and historian of science whose 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, introduced the concept of the paradigm shift. Kuhn argued that science does not progress in a simple, linear accumulation of facts. Instead, it undergoes periodic revolutions.

A field operates for long periods under a dominant "paradigm" a set of shared assumptions, theories, and methods. As anomalies accumulate that the paradigm cannot explain, a crisis ensues, eventually leading to a revolution where the old paradigm is overthrown and replaced by a new, incompatible one (for example the shift from Newtonian physics to Einsteinian relativity).

However Einsteins physics can solve all the problems Newtons could, plus others it could not. Even if Gödels Theorem still holds true and it is not perfect (Incompleteness Theorems). Kuhns point was about how the process of science works not a claim that there is no objective reality.

So Kuhn revealed that science is not a purely objective or rational process. It is a human and sociological activity, subject to the biases and assumptions of the reigning paradigms. This means that scientific "truth" is, to a significant extent, relative to the framework one is working within. It underscores that even our most rigorous methods for understanding reality are grounded in at least partly subjective, historically-contingent frameworks.

Part III: The Social Cohesion & Political Consequences

The ongoing loss of a shared metaphysical and epistemological framework had profound, and often catastrophic, consequences for the social and political fabric of the West.

Social Cohesion & The Social Fabric

Social cohesion refers to the set of forces that bind the members of a society together, creating stability, solidarity, and a shared identity. It's the "glue" that prevents society from devolving into a collection of self-interested individuals. Pioneering sociologists like Émile Durkheim identified that this cohesion stems from a "collective conscience"—a set of shared beliefs, morals, rituals, and attitudes that operate as a unifying force. In traditional societies, this was strong and based on similarity ("mechanical solidarity"). In modern, more complex societies, it is based on interdependence ("organic solidarity"), but it is also far more fragile.

The most important takeaway here is that societies cannot survive on laws and economic contracts alone.

They require a shared narrative, a common faith, or a transcendent purpose to thrive. When this shared story erodes—a condition Durkheim called "anomie" or normlessness social trust collapses, and society begins to fragment. Much of the political and cultural instability in the West today can be analyzed as a crisis of social cohesion stemming from the loss of a unifying worldview.

In short: The collapse of certainty and the horrors of the 20th century have led to our current moment; a low trust environment where the very nature of reality is contested, and political discourse becomes a battle over narrative itself.

Joseph Overton & The Window of Discourse

This finally leads us to Joseph P. Overton (1960-2003). He was a policy analyst who developed a model to explain how the range of politically acceptable ideas can shift over time. The "Overton Window" describes a spectrum of public opinion from "Unthinkable" to "Policy."

The core idea is that for a policy to be enacted, it must first be seen as acceptable within this window. The window can be moved, making previously unthinkable ideas seem mainstream over time through deliberate and sustained effort in the battle of ideas.

Derridas work further feeds into that, argueing that language is inherently unstable, a chain of signifiers with no ultimate fixed meaning, further complicating the creation of sustainable core drivers for a society. And enabling more manipulative options to shift the Overton Window.

The Overton Window is a crucial tool for understanding our current political and cultural landscape. In a society without a shared metaphysical foundation, the "truth" of an idea becomes less important than its position within the window. The window is no longer just shifting; it is being actively and aggressively manipulated. This creates a perception of reality where public discourse is not a search for truth, but a battle for narrative control.

Material Forces

Like mentioned, the abstract unraveling of axioms is not to blame simply on material forces, but they can inform, materialise and accelerate the process. Economic pressures often weaken bonds of social trust and that can create public discontent.

Persistent inflation acts as a stealth tax, a debasement of the nation's unit of account. This can weaken the populations believe in the state of its countries elites implicit contract with its citizens. Unsustainable public debt is another factor. The West also is experiencing wealth concentration that mirrors the dangerous economic preconditions of the early 20th century. Global inequality has nearly returned to those historic levels, with the top 10% of the population holding 76% of all wealth, while the bottom 50% holds a mere 2%.

A huge difference if we compare current times to the 20th century , is the nearly universal increase in living standards and access to technology, education and entertainment in the last 70 years. The discontent is not existential in nature for most in the west. Therefore, despite increasingly worrying signs in terms of economy, it is not the primary driving force for the modern fragmentation in perception.

The invention of the printing press precipitated a healthy doubt of authority by decentralizing the distribution of information, yes, but it was a war fought within a shared reality. The press, invented around 1450, was the primary vector for the Renaissance and Reformation, and accelerated many human processes and enabled more widespread education and cultural exchange. Cultural exchange historically accelerates innovation, quality of arts and more. All this was accompanied by conflict over who held the authority to interpret a shared cosmos indeed, but not a conflict over the existence of that cosmos.

So what enables the acceleration of current day fluctuations of opinion and the fragmentation of the average individual worldview?

The digital age has many amazing and astonishing attributes and further improved the distribution of education, opportunity, arts, communication and world wide awareness. It is in no way, to be condemned as inherently negative for social cohesion. But the hypercapitalist self interest focused base ideology of the west that arose from the 80s to the 2000s, combined with social media, has allowed for the construction of algorithmically-reinforced realities, micro-targeted to affinity groups and sealed off from countervailing information, without common shared moral and cultural axioms uniting the western civilisation as a whole.

The business models of the platforms built on this architecture often exacerbate this crisis by optimizing not for truth, but for engagement, which is best driven by moral outrage. Disagreements are no longer about differing opinions within a shared worldview. They are about subjective, perceived existential threats emerging from fundamentally different and irreconcilable worldviews. The internet in theory provides technical means to fulfill the trajectory of fragmentation: it takes the Cartesian turn toward the individual mind as the arbiter of truth and gives every mind its own universe.

This is not to blame on the technology however, a technology has no intent. Details matter. Applications matter. Standards matter. There are many examples for high technology societies, that have high social cohesion. But few in the west.

Examples of Deviations and Chasms in Trajectory

-The American Deviation from the classical Enlightenment

While the intellectual and political trajectory described thus far accurately maps the course of mainland Europe, a significant deviation must be noted: the United States of America.

Despite largely overlapping historical and cultural development and inheritance modern American society, while relatively young and now deeply embroiled in the "war for the window," was founded and developed on a different way, which allowed it to retain a stronger connection to the original Western axioms and suffer less from the corrosive effects of the European Enlightenment.

The American Enlightenment, unlike its French counterpart, was not characterized by a radical break with religion. Instead, it ran parallel to a powerful religious revival known as the Great Awakening. This movement embedded a deep sense of moral accountability and individual worth into the colonial consciousness, framing the later quest for political liberty as a fulfillment of, rather than a rebellion against, divine principles. Consequently, the American founding was a unique synthesis. While thinkers like Jefferson and Franklin engaged with Enlightenment ideals of liberty and reason, the nation's social fabric was woven from overwhelmingly Christian, and specifically Protestant, moral threads.

The famous observer Alexis de Tocqueville noted in the 1830s that the key to American democracy was its fusion of the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom. Christian Morality Remained the Basis of Law: The concept of God-given, inalienable rights, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, is a direct inheritance of the Christian axiom that human dignity is endowed by a creator, not granted by the state. This provided a transcendent anchor for law that was being discarded in Europe.

Therefore Social Cohesion became more sustainable: For much of its history, a broadly shared Judeo-Christian moral consensus served as the "collective conscience" in America. This provided a common narrative and a basis for high social trust that weathered the storms of industrialization and ideological conflict more effectively than many European nations. However, this "exception" is now being tested.

As we all know. The same forces of unraveling that transformed Europe are now fully at play in the United States. The current cultural and political fragmentation in America can be seen as the later stage of this process. The nation's historically resilient Christian-based axioms are being tested and potentially eroded by the same radical individualism and post-truth narratives that arose from the European trajectory. Or they will be reaffirmed.

The American experience serves as a powerful modern case study. It suggests that a society can indeed maintain stability and liberty by grounding itself in a shared set of transcendent moral axioms. It also demonstrates that no society is immune to the consequences when those foundational beliefs are lost.

-The Chasm between Russia and the Western World

Historically, Russia was an integral, if distinct, power within the broader Western world. Its civilizational path began to diverge from Western Europe's with the Great Schism (1054 AD) between the Orthodox East and Catholic West, yet for centuries, a degree of unity was maintained through the deep-rooted hereditary and political ties among Europe's aristocracy. The underlying religious rift was violently widened when Western crusaders sacked Constantinople (1204), the original capital of Christendom and the East Roman Empire (which had an influantial position towards Russia).

While Western Europe consolidated under a Papacy that asserted its own authority calling upon Rome the city, Russia increasingly saw itself as the heir to the Byzantine Roman tradition. These ancient original deviations, however, did not become a definitive chasm until after World War II. Communism fully severed the remaining connections, creating the true split.

In this framework, modern America and Western Europe can be seen as the heir to the maritime tradition of the British Empire and Spanish Empire and the legal-republican framework of Western Rome. Conversely, Russia and much of Eastern Europe remain the heirs to the land-based, imperial, and Orthodox tradition of Eastern Rome. The two are the estranged halves of a single civilization, adding another tragic layer to history.

Conclusion and Summary

When viewed in this historical sequence, these concepts map the trajectory of the Western collective mind and its perception on reality. They tell the story of a shift from a highly unified cosmos to a more fragmented, low-trust multiverse of perspectives. To summarize this Trajectory:

The Integrated World (Foundations)

The world of Roman derived law, Christian morality, and ancient greek inspired reason and logic.

The Enlightenment Project

Descartes represents a pivotal turn. Motivated by a divine vision, he sought to rebuild this world on what he believed was a more certain foundation: individual reason. He did not intend to destroy the "integrated world", but his method, once separated from his personal faith, became the operating system for modern individualism and relativism.

The Great Unraveling

Darwins Theory was used to create a supposed contradiction between reason and metaphysical core axioms. Nietzsche was the “prophet” of the consequences, diagnosing with terrifying clarity that this shift would “kill” God in the mind of the West and unleash a crisis of nihilism. The 20th century saw his prophecy fulfilled as the secular ideologies of Communism and Fascism rose to fill the vacuum, demonstrating the horrific endpoint of a society untethered from a transcendent moral framework.

The War for the Window

Finally, Gödel and Kuhn demonstrated that even pure reason and science depend upon unprovable axioms (faith) and human consensus (paradigms). This created the perfect environment for agressive weaponization of the Overton Window. In a world with no absolute agreed-upon "true north," the only thing that matters is controlling the narrative.

We are living deep within this fourth act. there is no longer a shared story, a shared faith, or even a shared trust in reason. We have inherited the legal and ethical expectations of a Christian world (human rights, rule of law) but are operating with the psychological software of radical individualism in a post-truth environment where the very definition of reality is up for grabs.

Will there be a permanent state of "post-truth"? Or procedural Liberalism (society that is deliberately axiom-neutral)? Unlikely.

So if not, where to then, dear West? New axioms or old? Neo-traditional or a fresh synthetic myth? But remember, ideology does not exist in a vacuum. It's development will be amplified by technology and economic change.