13/08/26
What World Do We Live In?
Guillaume P. G. Lamory's fundamental research note on the universal mechanisms of identity construction.
HUMANITY IS CURRENTLY APPROACHING THE END OF ITS FIFTH CUMULATIVE FEEDBACK LOOP, HERALDING THE DAWN OF A SIXTH ERA.
We tend to conceive of history temporally, as a straight line—an inevitable march from the primitive to the civilized, from belief to reason. But what if we observed it ontologically, like any other living entity obeying an immutable identity mechanics, structured by existential cycles?
The fundamental question then arises: “For Humanity, whose or what is the reign?” The answer to this interrogation allows us to diagnose the identity structure of an era. Furthermore, since each era is inscribed in a cumulative feedback loop, they do not vanish entirely: communities from previous cycles persist within them, although their growing identity rupture inevitably renders them less numerous.
I. The Reign of the Sun
The Era of Force (The Law of the Strongest)
Dominant level : The Body (The Corporeal)
At the dawn of humanity, the Sun reigns over the natural world. In this terrestrial kingdom, necessity knows no law, and concretely, the law of the strongest applies. It is the aristocracy of great predators that, through sheer force, dominates the food chain and regulates the ecosystem for itself. Each defends its place until a fragile equilibrium is created. To escape the status of prey, the hominid develops tools and masters fire. It evolves from gatherer to hunter-gatherer, then to farmer-herder. Through this exclusive appropriation of parcels of natural territory, it isolates itself from the natural world to live according to its own rules.
II. The Reign of the Solar Deity
The Era of Interpretation (The Law of Signs)
Dominant level : The Mind (The Intellectual)
For itself, Man adopts a form of dignity other than that of brute domination. He prays to the sky for his crops and survival, making the Sun his God. To the authority of force is added the persuasion of interpretation. The decision-making power of the chief becomes tributary to the aristocracy of priest-astronomers. Only they can read the celestial cycles and appease divine wrath; thus, they hold the key to agricultural survival. Yet, those who bridge the terrestrial and the divine have as their counterpart the strategists. This marks the advent of the great theocracies (Egypt, Mayas), where real power belongs to those who decipher the signs. The population is subjected to an opaque religious order, an interpreter of the Solar Divinity that it is not worthy to understand, only to appease.
III. The Reign of Poly/Monotheism
The Era of Heart-Beauty (The Law of Charity)
Dominant level : The Heart (The Sentimental)
Man aspires to harmony with the divine. From each sociological group emerges a divinity representative of the common form of dignity. This is the advent of Greek polytheism and the charity among the sons of the father of gods and men. Divine power no longer resides in constraint, but in affective consonance. Each sociological group has its hero who distinguishes himself. Everyone speaks with the divinity, which, capable of borrowing any form, bridges the terrestrial and the celestial.
The political and social chaos of the fall of the Roman Empire necessitates a return to monotheism. The Church reunifies Europe through charity among the sons of God. The figure (chrèstos, good, vertuous) who bridges the gap (Pontifex) incarnates the universal form of dignity: Goodness (Chrèstotès, beauty of heart). This speaks volumes about the state of society. It is the return of the aristocracy of priests, whose legitimacy now rests on virtue and the salvation of the soul: the saint replaces the hero. But if, from the High Middle Ages onward, its work is done, the Church’s grip stifles the political and the economic.
IV. The Reign of the "Invisible Hand"
The Era of Financial Force (The Law of the Market)
Dominant level : The Body (The Corporeal)
This is a new eon with a paradoxical return to force, but materialized: Money. Similar to the brute force of the first era, money allows domination and a conditional individual freedom. Its aristocracy is composed of shareholders. The law is no longer divine, moral, or natural: it is profitable. The new territory is the competitive market, where capital managers dominate the economic chain and regulate the financial ecosystem for themselves. Another abstract Sun, the “invisible hand” of the market imposes its cycles of crises and growth. Politics, closely linked to economics, becomes the theater of geopolitical power struggles where financial value prevails over dignity or meaning.
V. The Reign of the Monetary Divinity
The Era of Interpretation (The Law of the Market Signs)
Dominant level : The Mind (The Intellectual)
Rising in dignity above Men, and praying to financial markets for its investments and survival, the great shareholder makes Money a God. To the authority of financial capital is added the persuasion of interpretation. The decision-making power of the great shareholder becomes tributary to the aristocracy of financial analysts. Only they can read market cycles and appease divine wrath; thus, they hold the key to financial survival. Yet, those who bridge the terrestrial and the divine have as their counterpart the strategists. This marks the advent of the great financial hubs, where real power belongs to those who decipher the signs. The population is subjected to an opaque financial order, an interpreter of the Money Divinity that it is not worthy to understand, only to appease.
Conclusion
Understanding to Anticipate the Future
This framework offers crucial clarity: in every epoch, an aristocracy legitimizes itself by invoking the sovereignty of a power it claims alone to serve or interpret. Current crises (inequity, loss of meaning, climate urgency) are the mechanical symptoms of a system tending to mutate. If history is cyclic but cumulative, the question is not when this reign will end, but what function will emerge to replace it. After Force, Interpretation, Goodness, Money, and now Financial Interpretation, does the cycle’s logic suggest a return to a more direct appropriation? A form of relationship with the Money Divinity, freed from intermediaries, where investments directly embrace various ethics or forms of compliance?
However, it must be understood that, at any scale, the “unworthy” of a system, driven by dissatisfaction, collectively push for its collapse. Then, among these unworthy, the strongest imposes their new system, which, in its own way, opposes the previous one. Understanding these mechanisms is not speculative philosophy. It is the sine qua non condition to avoid undergoing the next identity mutation as a fatality, but to prepare it consciously. This is precisely the object of the unified theory exposed in Identity-Building Mechanisms (2026).
