That Is Not Dead Which Can Eternal Lie, And With Strange Aeons Even Death May Die

I've always been terribly fascinated with the unfathomable. Anything that can potentially be unfathomable, such as comprehending infinity or something darker, like peering into a pit of endless sorrow, has never failed to captivate me.

This is why H. P. Lovecraft's work, particularly the Cthulhu mythos franchise, continues to grip my mind. From Wikipedia: "Lovecraft's guiding literary principle was what he termed "cosmicism" or "cosmic horror", the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally alien. Those who genuinely reason, like his protagonists, gamble with sanity. ... Lovecraft's protagonists usually achieve the antithesis of traditional gnosis and mysticism by momentarily glimpsing the horror of ultimate reality and the abyss."

I think one aspect of my fixation with the unfathomable is that perhaps unfathomable things are not meant to be clearly understood by humans. So this raises curious questions, like what if a person did catch a glimpse of something unfathomable? Is it rosy, like what some people will consider to be divine, such as Truth? Or will it be that because we are not meant to fathom the unfathomable, its sheer power will destroy those who come within its range? Is the unfathomable the indication of the existence of a realm that we might come to describe as Infinite, Perfect, Ideal, Omnipotent, Pure or Godly?

Absolute power also falls into this train of consideration, as does notions of eternity and infinite regress.

I felt that Inception explored this notion to an extent when it broached the issue of death during a dream. The story asserts that people wake up when they die in a dream because it is a means of escape back to 'reality' (in inverted commas here because the movie deliberately leaves us questioning reality itself). But if the dreamer is unable to wake up and dies in the dream, he will remain in limbo and lose his mind.

To me, that sounds like what it possibly means to experience infinite torment and anguish in a short span of time. Is that what it does - derail the mind?

Is insanity also likenable to a computer hanging up? A computer (or program) can hang because it encounters a programming paradox. In one kind of paradox which is relevant to what I'm talking about, the computer encounters a circular (or catch-22) instruction in which the question and answer loops infinitely. For a silly example, I execute a function which asks the computer to create a list of emails if the executable file A.exe is open. However, what if there is a catch, or programming flaw, such that A.exe can open only if the email list is already created and thus needs to create the list of emails prior to the execution of the function? But, as can be logically seen, the creation of the email list requires file A.exe to be open. It's a silly example and I'm not sure if this is really a programming problem, but it's one I've thought of off the top of my head to illustrate the point.

The computer thus gets trapped in an endless loop of contingent requests that can never be fulfilled within the programming instruction.

What happens when a person's mind gets trapped in a loop like that? Given that there are many important things in life that are inherently paradoxical because humans are unable to reconcile them, does the attempt to genuinely reason and reconcile lead to Lovecraft's belief that sanity will be compromised? Does this suggest that perhaps sanity is a specific human trait that is meant (or simply happens) to keep us from actually perceiving what is absolutely and objectively true? Is God the ultimate paradox, which is why we can only reconcile it via faith and not science and reason?

Also, what happens when an unstoppable force meets an unmovable object? Is the question really moot, as many people often like to dismiss it since it is simply inconceivable? That precisely brings me back to the fact that this is an unfathomable idea, and I'm all the more fascinated by it.

As long as I feel like I'm not compromising on my sanity pursuing these mental obsessions, I guess I'll keep at it for a long while. And maybe only in death will I know the answer.

A Skimpy Caveat To Liberalism

A contemporary thought on the changing landscape of global power is that of the prominent rise of China and the apparent decline of the US as a hegemonic power.

Authors such as Ikenberry have elegantly conceived of the possibly of such an occurrence of China overtaking the US and becoming the new global power as not happening because the structure of global politics defies history - the globalised world today doesn't play by conventional rules of interstate relations.

For one, the decisiveness of nuclear weapons in settling a war has rendered the possibility of a world war - the classical instrument for overthrowing the world order - unlikely. Secondly, the global institution based on the principles of capitalism created by the US after World War II is one that is 'hard to overturn and easy to join'. Thirdly, the many agents within the system ensure that any drastic action by any one is kept in check by a collective governance of states.

The trade regime in place creates a huge incentive for states to cooperate rather than resort to conflict. With more states within the Western order, the more wealth there is to create and gain, and the more likely one will lose out if one doesn't join in the trading playing field.

This economically-dominant system is seen as vastly different from global systems led by hegemons in the past, when the world order was created and run by the state with the greatest physical force. This contemporary and globalised world order appears benign and inclusive, more liberal than imperial, brings democracies and market societies closer together and facilitates the participation and integration of both global powers and newly developed states. This US-led world order also caters to the interests of market societies, creating incentives for states to participate and avoid being left out.

If the US focuses its efforts not in beefing the power of its country up but in ensuring that the Western order is enforced to encourage engagement, integration and restraint, countries that are rising global powers will have no choice but to play by the rules that have been established. China's economic rise is imminent, but remains checked by the system that is highly interdependent among many states. China's policy changes suggest that Chinese leaders do recognize the inevitable advantages of playing by these rules as they have increasingly embraced global trade rules.


However, history always has a sly and enduring way of ensuring that trends never change. It may be argued that the global system now may buck the trend simply because it is different. However, there is the chance that the global trade regime may fail to hold as the declining hegemonic power - The US - does what any declining power will typically do - it will desperately try to secure its own interests. One can observe this happening in its increasingly protectionist measures and socialist policies which signal its lack of commitment to the global world trading order it created and would constrain the growth of other global powers with.

By loosening its position as the foremost supporter of the global system of governance that underpins the world order, there can be (and is) increasing disincentive for countries to open up their doors to trade and resort to protectionist measures, causing liberal trade to collapse (this is especially highlighted by the neverending difficulty in ratifying trade agreements during WTO meetings). The weakening interdependence among countries can allow runaway global powers to attempt to rise up and overthrow the world order which would otherwise have been kept intact by the many countries it serves.

This seems to me to be another possible case of power shifting history occurring again, and it would signal a sense of inevitability when it comes to the tyranny of history's dictates - there can be no system so privileged that it that escapes the trend of the past.


Realists will also love to contend that the cooperation that liberalists like to proclaim as good between countries isn't so much a harmonious feature of interstate relations, but rather one that is chock-full of political conflict. As Keohane points out, harmony occurs when everyone's interests naturally align, but cooperation occurs because conflict or potential conflict arises, and cooperation then entails that patterns of behaviour must be altered.

Game theorists have shown that strategies that involve threats, punishments, promises and rewards are more effective in attaining cooperative outcomes than those that rely on persuasion, often the cornerstone of the capitalist's argument for the free market.

Cooperation hence does not imply an absence of conflict. Without the looming potential of conflict, there is no need for cooperation. The role of realism in focusing on the insecurities between states is still prevalent.


So, it is still early yet to say for sure if the new world order can hold out and that realism is dead in the idealised promise of liberal theory.