Primitive societies, though tethered by blood ties, remained simplistic in their structure and marginal in their collectivism. In the long dusk of prehistory, man wandered in fragile bands, compelled into unity by hunger and danger. Yet within this necessity lay the seed of destiny: the realization that survival—and meaning itself—was magnified by togetherness.
“To be human,” as one might say, “was never to be alone, but to be in communion.”
It was not the spear or the wheel that first drew mankind into higher forms of unity, but belief. Between twenty-five and fifteen millennia ago, religion provided the first great architecture of collectivism. In the name of unseen gods, strangers ceased to be strangers; they became tribes, peoples, nations. Religion was mankind’s earliest empire of the spirit, welding millions into a rhythm of ritual, sacrifice, and duty. From its altars arose cities, philosophies, and empires.
History’s verdict is clear: those who collectivised most completely endured and expanded. The Islamic movements of the Middle Ages conquered and converted vast territories not merely through the sword, but through unity—one monarch, one law, one faith.
Western imperialists, too, marched across continents with the same formula: one king, one church, one creed. Their solidarity was not merely political; it was metaphysical, an existential bond that allowed them to impose their will upon the disunited.
Hindu civilization, by contrast, though spiritually profound, was fractured into many gods and many kings. The absence of a single unifying banner meant that its extraordinary depth of spiritual wisdom and economic strength could not shield it from conquest. Political and cultural fragmentation became vulnerability; diversity without cohesion invited domination. The disunited were destined to be ruled by the united.
In our own age of secularism, the pattern continues in new attire. The Western powers—led above all by the United States—no longer rally beneath throne and altar, but beneath the banners of capitalism and socialism, those twin ideologies of modern collectivism.
Capitalism binds through consumption, socialism through redistribution, and both through the mythology of progress. They wear the mask of freedom even as they function as instruments of political and cultural unification. Markets and material equality are the new creeds; credit cards and ballots the new sacraments.
These are not merely economic theories or philosophical fashions. They are the West’s chosen methods of sustaining unity within and projecting power abroad. By gathering their populations under these secular banners, they preserve the architecture of domination and extend influence over the wider world.
The empires of faith have given way to the empires of capital, but the principle remains unchanged: civilization is the triumph of the collective over the solitary, and the fate of nations is written not by their isolated geniuses but by their capacity to march together beneath a common banner.
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