The current war in the Middle East, with its brinksmanship, devastation, and effect on the global economy is like two tectonic plates rubbing against each other causing earthquakes and calamities. Behind it all are the motivating forces of history and identity.

On one side are those in the Middle East who assert a kind of indigenous politics free from the Western hegemonies of the 19th and 20th centuries – at least in theory. This current blossomed as the Ottoman Empire weakened and the European colonial powers entered the region. It is natural to wish to pursue one’s own destiny, but this is a bloom with many peculiar flowers.

It has had many shapes from the Muslim Brotherhood, an echo of the principles of Islam renewed for today, to the Nasserist movement of one Arab ‘umma’ or nation, a current driven by radio speeches and Soviet-like institutions that flunked the test between intentions and capacities. Then there was the PLO, the spirit of Palestinian independence against the ultimate manifestation of the Western project, Israel, the bête noire of all these movements. The current reached its ugly apex in Al Qaeda and ISIS, the darkest forces, nihilistic, ready to do anything to establish an ideal Islamic caliphate.

Today, yet another manifestation, the Islamic Republic of Iran and at its core, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC, is in play. It represents one of the ultimate independence drives in the Middle East, the Persian spirit of centuries of self-rule combined with the Wilayat Al Faqih, or the “absolute authority of the jurist”, Khomeini’s theological thrust. An idea that, like many others, brought millennia-old notions into the modern world hoping they would stick.

Ironically, the arch enemy, Israel, is itself a reflection of this new-old amalgam. Zionism mirrors the indigenous movements of the Middle East: Jews returning to a land where they believe they once belonged based on long tradition and scripture, even if the methods used and support were primarily Western.

The opposing trend that these indigenization trends have clashed with is a centuries-old success story: the West, built on another kind of freedom, that of the individual. Born in scientific and entrepreneurial innovation and beneficent geography, the complex and hidden shores of Europe as a launching pad for sailing ships, this trend expanded globally and gave birth to the USA, never mind that America is now morphing into a strange beast, contrary to its original principles. Although the USA’s productivity and military might and its confident, aggressive spirit remain powerful, the ‘Again’ in MAGA implies decline, and a frantic spirit of reassertion that comes with the loss of power and empire, and a longing for halcyon days.

Mimicry and Resentment

But behind it all is centuries of success, at least on the material and political plane, one that bred both imitation and resentment. Since the 18th century, the USA and Europe have created a materialistic wonderland for all to simultaneously hate and prosper in. This is why migrants from all over the world aim for lives in Europe and the USA, not China or Russia.

The West is an economic engine that produces and consumes like no other and it has used a secret ingredient from the beginning, enough space for individual innovation so that systems can correct, modify and adapt quickly and effectively. The resulting wealth generation and military strength combined with political will to create conquest and control. All cultures have done that at some point - it is the West that achieved this in this period of human history at scale. It has inspired many resentful competitors, from early 20th century Japan, to the Soviet Union to today’s China.

Mimicry is a key part of this clash. Japan and China used Western methods and technology to challenge Western dominance. The Soviet Union was based on a deeply Western philosophy; Marx intended his theory as a fix to capitalism in the West not Russia. Iran is challenging the West through missiles and drones and AI generated humour – all technology that originated in the West.

The reactions in the Middle East to the march of Western materialism resulted in the reactive movements mentioned above. Today, this is manifest in the clash between the IRGC and the USA each pursuing a variation on freedom. Tragically, the Middle East is a natural place for such confrontations. Although putatively in Asia, it is a crossroads of three continents, Africa, Asia and Europe – and in some ways belonging to none of them. Its portals include crucial waterways, the Suez Canal, the Bab Al Mandab and the Straits of Hormuz. It was further cursed with oil wealth, the lifeblood of the global economy until today.

Of course, nothing is black and white, all is intermingled. The woke ideology of the West, a kind of fundamentalist and puritanical liberalism, is a Trojan horse within Western civilization. Western countries are in a way cannibalizing themselves by their own means and mores. Anything taken to extremes loops back on to itself towards self-destruction. Meanwhile, many in the Middle East, from countries such as the UAE to citizens everywhere, lead lives heavily influenced by Western habits and technology. They seek Western style consumerism and prosperity not the straightjackets of the ideologues aiming to cleanse the region from colonial infections. In reality, lines blur; however politics are driven by the clash of systems and each, east and west, pursues its own logic and vested interests even as reality pushes back.  

The battle is on but it may be for naught. Neither can really triumph because each side’s ideology is shot full of holes – and both are ageing. They do not deliver properly where it really matters, helping human beings develop and fulfil themselves to their maximum capacity, materially and emotionally. Both are dwarves in this regard. Both are concerned with freedom, one individual the other national, but the results are poor. The West provides more by giving space to individuals to find out what they can do and achieve. But in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI), even this can become a moot and secondary consideration as machines, not humans, become the prevailing reference.

The ideologies of the indigenizing drives of the Middle East are stifling affairs. No matter what abstracted academics proclaim, the driving anti-Western ideology may be strong in its commitment to fight, but it comes up short on delivery as a baseline for daily life. Indeed, it may be a backwards step for the people of the Middle East, sourcing heritage in a simplistic and formulaic manner, chaining the mind and soul when the opposite is needed.

Once Upon a Time…

The forgotten irony is that this clash has happened before. Once upon a time, the Roman Empire and Persia fought a civilizational war where neither prevailed. Their progeny, the Byzantines and Sassanids continued the fight driving each other to exhaustion in the Middle East, creating a space for a new dispensation, Islam, to rise out of nowhere to take over both empires in one swift vector of conquest.

Are we at a similar moment today and should we expect a new dispensation to arise? In Iran, there is an organization called Khatm el Anbia that is the central headquarters of the IRGC and also, somehow unsurprisingly, the name of a construction firm. The name means the ‘Finality of Prophethood’ signifying that the prophetic age ended with Mohammad. From that point on, we are no longer in need of a special individual to provide divine guidance, we become responsible to find our own way and develop as individuals – to seek a wider and deeper freedom - which of course needs a propitious environment, including a healthy political context.

Today, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, we see an attempt to recapture that glorious age of Islam, to renew that dispensation. In that regard it is no different than the MAGA movement reviving American achievement. However, there is little of political Islam today that has any echo of the original faith that produced the architectural excellence of the Ibn Tulun Mosque in Cairo, the Mosque of Cordoba or the Al Hambra Palace, or some of the greatest philosophers of history such as Mohammad Al Ghazali, Ibn Arabi or Ibn Khaldun. Civilizations rarely get to have a repeat performance. The resurgence is often stale, performative and driven by simpler minded men and women with a laser like focus on worldly victory rather than new contributions to humanity. Their ideologies furnish the containers for resistance, but not the multi-dimensional, jewelled prisms of civilizational creation.

A New Dispensation?

If civilizational clashes are not enough, we insist on creating new problems for ourselves. The information technologies we have devised, that make our lives alluringly easy, leave us prone to fall further into the simple ideologically crazed mind. East and West, the pervasive ‘screen watch’ simplifies our cognition and flattens our perceptions. All becomes black and white, good and bad as we are secretly satisfied by and deeply attached to new convictions.

I have friends living comfortable lives in prosperous, Western countries, an existence that past generations of humanity would have envied, who are in deep emotional distress due to the state of the world. However, the gap between their comfort and their mental state verges on the tragi-comic. Their perceptions and emotions are driven by images on the screen and their phone not reality. Images of explosions and suffering penetrate their brain causing holy panic.

Human beings once faced the worst horrors with resilience, now they respond from their comfortable lives with childlike cries and tears. The world is indubitably upside down. There is suffering in the world, as there always has been, and greater awareness of it may not be a bad thing. However this new response, disguised as care and virtue, is fickle, hyper-emotional and self-centered aimed at satisfying its carrier rather than the victim thousands of miles away. For it disappears with the appearance of a new virtual cause. The evidence is that none of this global groupthink stops wars or mitigates their consequences. It is resilience and clarity of mind that is needed to address these challenges. Instead, in a loop, the 'screen watch' treats suffering as a digital salve for what is missing from lives on the screen: stimulation and meaning.

We plan to go further with this tech dependency and voluntarily inhibit our freedoms further. Our new dispensation may not be moral, philosophical, or spiritual, but something much simpler: AI. When we once looked to paragons and developed human beings to guide us, we now look to a technological tool to generate answers. As Islam once displaced the Byzantine and Persian empires, AI may be the winner of the clash between USA and Iran.

AI represents the possibility for systems of control over every part of our lives. Its capacity to collate and synthesize information and form conclusions that we cannot understand the provenance of, suggests a new, titillating totalitarianism. Given the apparent power of its so-called intelligence, we will bow down to it as we once did to new faiths and their founders. The fact that there is a rivalry between Chinese and American AI may be a silver lining. The two may cancel each other out, although the damage done in the process could be apocalyptic.

Our Core

Beyond AI, human beings have, and have always had, a core. It is the centre in which we develop strength of character, feel awe and deep love and intuit higher things, i.e. the things that make life truly worth living. There is a quiet yet powerful link between strength of character, gaining knowledge and the freedom to create and garner deeper insights. However, this core does not come ready made, it needs development through an effective response to the trials and tribulations of life. This requires that we continually test our intelligence and character, fail, and reframe new answers. The use of AI short cuts this process and this may also mean that our cores will never develop.

In theory, the judicious use of AI could mean that people are liberated from the mundane chores of life to focus on this development of our core and character. However, most people prefer ease to pain and challenge, and AI provides ease aplenty and answers at the push of a few buttons. Life’s tests and uncertain outcomes are the crucible we need, but we are building a world to avoid them as much as possible.

As many have said, we seem to be, in haste and in a kind of oblivion, committing a form of suicide. It is not only Iran that is doing so through marriage to an unfit ideology, or the USA through grandiose and materialistic dreams, but all of us through the technological world we are plugged into.

The Forgotten Question

We are at a crossroads. People feel it. Neither the West nor the East has the answers – we can observe the rise and fall of both. The current eastern drive for independence from Western might and success begs the question what will be the replacement? The current Eastern offering is thin. The West offers more space for the individual and freedoms, but its materialism and superficiality – and attachment to technological answers – means a distinct limit and danger to human growth.

The real question is whether we will bother with the only question that matters, for Iranian and American, rich or poor: what is my purpose here, why am I even alive? This is the question previous dispensations tried to answer, or at least provide us with frameworks within which to pursue that discovery.

No one denies the importance of history and heritage, whether Iranian, Syrian, or Egyptian and the sense of pride that comes with that. No one denies the pleasures that come with the Western model, from travel to the ability to shop and consume at will. But neither satisfies the core search of our lives, what it means to be here and what needs to be done in the very fleeting time available.

The question has been answered many times over by many civilizations – one only has to look at all the great literature, scriptures, art, music and theatre of all time and all places. It is however incumbent on us to provide our own, not through AI but through blood, sweat and tears, even of the figurative variety. It will take effort and this is where it all breaks down. We have cultivated a life of ease residing in a teetering global façade, a fragile framework of value chains and interconnectivity. It is almost as if the whole thing will come crashing down at the slightest brush with a cosmic wind.

This is a long way to come from the battle of east and west, of the USA and Iran, but it is what matters. Maybe a new dispensation will only arise when we finally realize that we don’t need one provided to us - and yet we still work every day in every way to build one of our own.

Maybe there is only one thing that matters as empires clash and new technologies tempt and torment us. Its expression is in words with an unappealing weight that yet we cannot do without, and without which no dispensation, past or present, matters: it is from individual responsibility that personal freedom derives.

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John Bell is Director of The Conciliators Guild a network of excellence in diplomacy across the world.

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