To Stop the Fall

Has obscenity become the driving force of History?

A careful observer, following the thread of events, might well conclude that it has.

For there is indeed something obscene in the way the contemporary world continues to celebrate its simulacra of order, even as the dikes—all the dikes—are collapsing on every side. True, the logorrhea remains; institutions proliferate. Grand speeches have perhaps never been so abundant. Yet they now drift in a disturbing void, ringing irredeemably hollow—when they are not swallowed by the formless mass of disinformation and the nauseating tropes of populism and identitarianism.

Thus, we continue to speak of law, sovereignty, legitimacy, collective security, as though these were the worn-out vocables of a profane and nihilistic litany… all while almost fatalistically accepting that violence has once again become an acceptable variable of history.

The architectures born from the ruins of the twentieth century—those that sought to contain force, discipline it, inscribe it within a minimum of shared rules—are today being methodically dismantled. This is not so much the result of ignorance as of a Mephistophelean will, a predatory and destructive premeditation. They are deemed too slow, too moral, too constraining for a world that once again claims permanent exception, unbridled power, identity as ultimate justification. The system born of San Francisco and Bretton Woods is deliberately and systematically hollowed out, reduced to a piece of diplomatic stage scenery.

Consequently, freed from all inhibition, calls for empire multiply, in diverse yet convergent forms. Whether draped in the garb of nation, civilization, security, or faith matters little: the logic is the same. That of a world fragmented into spheres of influence, where the rule applies to others; where force becomes political language; where the human being is relegated to collateral damage. All ideological differences fade behind a shared brutality. In such a framework, the rise to extremes becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, justifying each actor’s conduct. The serpent devours its own tail—until nothing remains, neither of the serpent nor of what surrounded it.

In such a landscape, it must be acknowledged that peoples count for very little. Beyond opinion polls, they are invoked, instrumentalized, sacrificed to higher designs that largely escape them. Some more visibly than others. Iran today crystallizes this moral collapse. An entire society—aware, courageous, culturally dense—faces a repression of cold, repetitive, almost industrial violence. And in response, the world watches, expresses intermittent outrage, then accommodates—quietly. The diplomatic prudence of some serves as an alibi; the strategic calculations of others override any ethical imperative. As though freedom could wait. As though certain lives were worth less than regional balances or energy interests.

Yet what is unfolding in Tehran, as in Ukraine or Gaza, transcends a regime, a crisis, a single country. It raises once again the question of the very meaning of international order. What is a system worth if it no longer protects those most in need? What does the rule of law mean when it fades the moment it becomes costly? At what point does universalism cease to be a principle and become a conditional discourse, subject to power relations and the moods of the mighty? How can the order of the human—freedom as constitutive of the human person—be restored without further shattering what is already broken?

These questions are as old as the world. But in a system stripped of all safeguards, they become obsessive.

The reality is that we may have entered that dreaded moment when culture continues to produce forms, images, and discourse, while civilization itself ceases to believe in what it proclaims. A “end of culture,” to borrow George Steiner’s expression, which—though not yet spectacular, for evil often manifests itself through banality—is nonetheless pervasive. Moral fatigue deepens; reference points blur; criteria collapse; language is hollowed out within a continuous flux of images, slogans, and selective indignations. Reason wavers. Has it been defeated, or has it simply withdrawn for lack of defenders? It hardly matters. The outcome is the same.

In this void inhabited by monsters—and how long this long night of emptiness has become—identities harden, violence legitimizes itself, fear becomes the foundation, the matrix of politics. The world rediscovers, with horror—or perhaps with weariness—the old reflexes it believed buried: withdrawal, hatred, fascination with strongmen, contempt for freedoms in the name of security. Globalization has not produced the universality once hoped for; it has often accelerated fragmentation, atomization, the erosion of social bonds. Everywhere, societies struggle to generate shared references, without which there can be neither living culture nor coexistence. If the nuclearization of power relations is once again in vogue, the nuclearization of human relations and minds has already occurred. There has been no balance of deterrence here. From Washington to Moscow, from Tel Aviv to Tehran and Ankara, the race toward the atomization of humanity is unanimous.

Faced with this failure of states—largely rooted in increasingly narcissistic and paranoid collectivities—a new responsibility asserts itself, whether we like it or not: that of a transversal global public opinion. Not an emotional crowd. Certainly not. Nor a trinket morality. But a consciousness capable of crossing borders, rejecting implicit hierarchies of compassion, naming the unacceptable wherever it occurs. A public opinion that does not merely comment, but restores accountability, reality, an ethical framework for international relations. One that reminds us that not everything is equivalent. That not everything is negotiable. That a scale of values still presides over the destiny of this planet—even if it struggles to exist. Or else that humanity has decided it no longer wishes to live together in peace within a shared space, and must therefore destroy the principles that bind it, in the name of petty differences and anxieties.

This may sound like naïveté. Yet it is not utopianism. In any case, what is left to lose, before the entire world becomes, as at the dawn of the twentieth century, a vast field of ruins, a gigantic mass grave?

Inventing a new order does not mean dreaming of a pacified or reconciled world. It means reintroducing limits, restoring a cost to violence, reaffirming that human dignity is not an option but a vital requirement. It calls for a civilizational awakening—fragile, conflictual, imperfect, yet necessary.

Not to promise paradise, but to prevent the banalization of hell.

Otherwise, the moral cost of silence and inaction will be too high—for everyone.

The fall into violence is never a historical inevitability.

It is always a choice.

So is renewal.