Concepts in the Context of Science-Fiction, Cold War History and Contemporary Geo-Politics

ISAAC ASIMOV — FOUNDATION, 1951 — FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE, 1952 — SECOND FOUNDATION, 1953

In many ways as an action science-fiction trilogy, it is very interesting and fascinating. It reads like sweet lemonade though it contains no emotions at all, no feelings, no real love, no nothing humane. It is the most dehumanized science-fiction I know and at this level, it competes with Lafayette Ronald Hubbard who is by far oriented on more warlike situations, machines or robots fostering substitutes, or mechanical soldiers and torturers having no taste or distaste for blood and thus, are able to cut a prisoner into small cubes for aperitifs. Asimov is definitely more human but in no way humanistic or humane. He is a cold frozen vision of a future that will never ever be able to even be born. With this limitation in mind, you can get into it and enjoy the developments, the U-turn dramas, and the Z-slithering-slaloming direct non-straight lines of intrigue and plot. I will give a global comment now on the project of these three novels.

The three novels came out in the USA in the early 1950s. The author is a refugee in the USA who is both Jewish and Russian by origin. He has some education and thus can lure us into some sciences that he gathers and merges under the title of psychohistory. History is following a line that is absolutely unchangeable though we do not know who or what initiated it — except maybe the Big Bang — but any attempt from one individual, one particular group of people, or one specific country to disrupt this line will be countered and defeated to go back to the line itself. He wants us to believe it is the invention of one particular scientist (who was the psychologist who invented psychohistory), specifically Hari Seldon. The general idea — though it is never made explicit, just asserted — is that we consider the masses of people in the world, and only, absolutely only, these people, as one unique and sole mass to be acknowledged (this is becoming circular like Hitler in Munich). If we reduce them all to one mass of people that have the mass psychology that goes along with this massive blended and chipped existence, then there is no choice, no detour, no deviation, no hole in the hedge, not even a rabbit hole, or even a wormhole. We are in one galaxy and that galaxy is entirely self-contained, and we know nothing about the rest of the universe, and we do not even envisage the possibility to shift from one level of reality to another, from one world to another, from one universe to another. No wormholes, I said. So, remain concentrated on the storyline which is as straight as a straight line, which does not exist in space, when psychohistory is speaking but is as straight as my arm when I blow my nose or scratch my backside when we consider the illusions some groups of people may have about the ”real” history of the world, meaning their own experiential, existential, and circumstantial nibbling and snacking on the fruit of the loom of the psychohistorical universe.

But the whole trilogy is based on a fable that is so directly pulled out of the Old Testament if not the reduced version for Jewish adoration, the Thora, “this superstitious fear on the part of the pygmies of the present for the relics of the giants of the past.” (page 569) That was a time when the Biblical kings and prophets lived several and even many hundred years while humanity was considered as having a 29-year life expectancy. A fable I said. No giants in the past. No extraterrestrials in the past. No mythical supermen if not superheroes in the past.

This assertion of some giant force, here community, clandestine and secret, known as the Second Foundation, leads to some pangs of fearful fright among humans who are confronted with this assertion. “When can a man know he is not a puppet? How can a man know he is not a puppet?” (page 601). But this is only a little bit of parsley sprinkled on a steamed potato for breakfast, I guess. That means nothing. These two questions are rhetorical. One never knows he/she/it/they is/are no puppets. And then we have the last sentence of the last book when the Second Foundation has recaptured its full control of the foolish men who pretended they could manage their own history: “Now there was a somber satisfaction on the round and ruddy face of X.Y — the First Speaker” of the Second Foundation. I have anonymized his name for you not to know it before reading. It sounds like Patrician Pelosi traveling to Taiwan and trying to provoke China into a Taiwan Straight war.

But that’s where we meet reality, and the historically positioned ideology — if not religious belief — of this trilogy.

Written and published in the early 50s when the Cold War was expanding its full wings over the world in order to contain the USSR known as the Russian Empire and the Chinese Empire known as Mao Zedong. That was the time when the USA tried to stop the communists in Korea and was bound to fail because there are stronger and deeper forces in humanity that oppose, always and forever, all imperialistic ambitions. This trilogy is the dramatic construction of the total global absolute homogenized victory of the Monroe Doctrine of the Manifest Destiny of the USA. From two competing entities only, the Old Empire and the First Foundation — which is a lie since there are at least the Second Foundation and the entities beyond the periphery of the Empire — there will rise in the future the New Empire when the Second Foundation has eliminated or put under control all hostile or simply critical elements when they have established their absolute control and dictatorship over the whole universe, galaxy, cosmos, or whatever their ambition may agitate their troubled neurons. The belief that there is a group of few or even ten dozen people controlling in total clandestinity and anonymity the whole psychohistorical process that guarantees the eternal existence of this totally unified, merged, homogenized, etc., Second Empire, is the most horrifying imperialistic ideology I, we, you, they can imagine.

This is a rewriting of the Messianic Jerusalem phantasm that at the end of time, after the Apocalypse, when all the hostile forces and the unworthy individuals or groups or even nations — one genocide or two are not out of the mind of these authors of apocalyptic predictions — will have been eliminated, there will be a Jerusalem in the sky that will receive and host all the free and true believers. And remember it is neglectable to have a few million people killed if it saves the rest of the few, and too many by the way, billion people of humanity. Genocide is a basic concept in this trilogy, and it is accepted, when necessary as if this necessity made it pure and divine. And it is all in mathematics, and the implementation of absolutely true and truthful mathematics, to the mass psychology of psychohistory that can determine exactly the targeted final destination of humanity, as if such a homogenized and blended humanity could be the objective and could survive its final blending. That’s a pure follow-up expansion, that rewrite at the same time, the Marxist myth of the final communism to be reached sometime when all bourgeoisies and profiteering pirates will have been eliminated from this earth.

Welcome to Ukraine, where Thora and Marxism confront each other with the weapons coming from the imperialistic Monroe Doctrine animating the Manifest Destiny of a totally standardized world. Scorpions are crawling on my backbone.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Concepts in the Context of Geopolitics and Science-Fiction

In a Medium story written by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU, the universal aspects of geopolitics and science-fiction are revealed in what he calls the Conspirational Cold War. He’s introducing and reviewing (subtlety) a trilogy compiled by a Jewish-Russian refugee living in the United States in the 1950s: Isaac Asimov.

In Asimov’s trilogy, the universe is defined by its History:

History is following a line that is absolutely unchangeable though we do not know who or what initiated it — except maybe the Big Bang — but any attempt from one individual, one particular group of people, or one specific country to disrupt this line will be countered and defeated to go back to the line itself.

The Old Empire and the First Foundation — a metaphor for the USSR and Mao Zedong — will inevitably come into conflict with what’s happening on the periphery of this false sense of perception and security toward the universe.

The Second Foundation — a community, clandestine and secret — is making people feel like they are puppets to a big show, which he compares with Pelosi’s latest visit to Taiwan — “It sounds like Patrician Pelosi traveling to Taiwan and trying to provoke China into a Taiwan Straight war.”

This evolution of history inevitably leads to an Apocalypse. The Apocalypse in this science-fiction trilogy could not be understood without the concept of Genocide, which is awful, but also foreboding in today’s world:

“Welcome to Ukraine, where Thora and Marxism confront each other with the weapons coming from the imperialistic Monroe Doctrine animating the Manifest Destiny of a totally standardized world. Scorpions are crawling on my backbone.”

Oh, by the way, did you know a war is being fought over grain?

On 29 October 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy addressed the public and media with some statements about Russia’s latest move to suspend its cooperation for the Grain Export Corridor (Black Sea Grain Deal). Both the United States and the European Union strongly criticized Russia’s decision, which is in the lead-up to this year’s G-20 Summit.

Conspirational Cold War

ISAAC ASIMOV — FOUNDATION, 1951 — FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE, 1952 — SECOND FOUNDATION, 1953, acquescoulardeau.medium.com, https://jacquescoulardeau.medium.com/conspirational-cold-war-cbd13a7712f5

It was also reported on 13 September 2022 that the United Nations (UN) is seeking to arrange a deal whereby Russia and Ukraine would allow ammonia exported from Russia through Ukraine to global markets.

Welcome To Fertilizer Diplomacy 2.0

As anyone following the Russia-Ukraine conflict knows, the Black Sea has been one of the highest-risk and volatile areas on the international marketplace ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. This proposed deal does try to shape the narrative that the Black Sea is getting back to business as usual, but the actual circumstances there could tell a completely different story if this deal is finalized. Russia has already proven time and time again that UN-sponsored deals do not decrease the likelihood of military action against Ukraine. In fact, the pipeline in question had its operations completely shut down on February 24, 2022.

This proposed deal is seen by many international companies and organizations as a necessity for combatting the global food crisis.

This concept has reshaped the whole narrative of the global fertilizer industry. It implies that the fertilizer markets have become susceptible to geopolitical forces. Perhaps because the world is facing an unprecedented food crisis, but mainly because of renewed conflict over geopolitics and military strategy, as evidenced by Russia and Belarus — Belarus is one of the world’s largest potash producers — and how the countries have used their influence over fertilizer supply to increase political leverage.

The truth is that this Fertilizer Diplomacy seems to be unraveling during the worst times of this century — global pandemic, food crisis, inflation — while also the Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused severe changes to commodities and other aspects of the global economy.

I put these two stories together, for the sake of seeking truth and understanding, to outline how concepts change the world; and how the world is changed by concepts. That’s all I want you to take from this.

But it would also be cool if you followed the publication Areas & Producers. And please let me know if you would like to join the publication as a writer. I’m currently looking for people who would like to write about Science-Fiction, in particular, like the content I’ve shared in this story. Come on!