The image of Saturn belongs to the ancient world, but perhaps it has never described the destiny of modernity more accurately. The god devours not out of hatred or necessity, but because his own nature cannot tolerate the existence of that which might one day replace him. Time brings things into existence and, at the same time, destroys them. Every birth already contains the possibility of disappearance. Every child is born beneath the shadow of its father. Modern Reason seems to have followed a similar trajectory.
For centuries, rationality presented itself as humanity's great emancipatory force. Its promise was to liberate mankind from nature, superstition, arbitrariness, and necessity. Wherever tradition imposed limits, Reason asked why. Wherever a civilization found a sacred order, Reason discovered a structure that could be analysed. Wherever there was mystery, the possibility of calculation emerged. But Reason does not stop at the boundaries it establishes.
The fall of civilizations is approaching. The end of the spirit of peoples becomes the only horizon; and with it, the powerful gods will be lost, and everything that gives meaning and identity to communities will disappear. The diversity of cultures will ultimately be subordinated to Reason, because those who fall behind will not be allowed to remain behind; the irrational will not be able to survive in universal history. This is how Yuk Hui expresses one of the central ideas of Hegel's Philosophy of History.
Hegel argued that the rationalist impulse would become the instrument within the dialectic between peoples, the most powerful weapon of the engine of history. The world as a struggle between civilizations and cultures. And those who are more rationalist will defeat those who are not. They will devour them and turn them into museum pieces, leaving them behind as ornamental objects to be admired, as remnants of a world that once existed and then disappeared.
In this way, the multipolar world will gradually move toward the singular and the universal. This will mean the subordination of planetary diversity to a hyper-rational concrete universal: a unified universal culture. It is a process of synchronization between peoples, a synchronization that will take place either through acculturation or through direct conquest and destruction.
This process of synchronization is made possible by technology and guaranteed by Reason. Reason is the necessary measure of progress. Consequently, a civilization that seeks to resist Reason will be conquered and subsequently dismantled. Those places that have nothing to contribute to the Spirit will be eliminated.
The same will happen to individuals. Those most deeply surrendered to the internal dynamics of the system, to the belly of the great machine, will be the ones who endure. This does not mean that the most rational will survive, but rather that those most capable of adapting themselves to the circuit of systemic utilitarianism will prevail. Whatever is useful to the organism is used; whatever is not is discarded.
And the system has generated sufficient tools to keep us constantly producing. The driving force of History is Reason, and for that reason, the peoples who resist History are conquered by it. The question that must be asked at this point is the following: How long will it be before humanity itself becomes that which resists History?
