Chaos as a Generator and Rational Control

As it happens, we are the first generations of people simultaneously capable of engineering a genuine apocalypse and of averting it, perhaps at the very last moment. It seems to me that one of the reasons for the current, rather lamentable, state of affairs in the world owes much to humanity’s lack of experience in handling the power that has fallen into its hands.

Historically, cosmogony has, on the whole, been built on the idea that all existence arose out of chaos, together with the ever-present threat that it might revert to chaos once again. So, strictly speaking, the whole of earthly history is a ceaseless attempt to overcome entropy. The second law of thermodynamics is unassailable—in any closed system, entropy, which is simply a measure of uncertainty, of chaos, increases. From a certain point of view, our entire universe is a closed system, and within it entropy must likewise either increase or remain unchanged, until the measure of uniform disorder reaches its maximum—that is, until something resembling the end of the world arrives. That, at least, is the picture in very general terms.

Our earthly civilisation, being part of the universe, unquestionably has to deal with entropy, as does everything else in existence. It is clear that what is happening, say, in the Persian Gulf cannot be described in the simple terms of thermodynamics. At the same time, however, using the concept of entropy and its accompanying terminology does allow one, in a certain sense, to capture what is going on.

Entropy grows when something is destroyed or diminished, and it recedes when we bring order to something. A waiter, for instance, reduces entropy by laying a table, whereas tipsy customers smashing plates on the floor in fits of idiotic merriment unquestionably increase it, wrecking the harmony so carefully maintained by the restaurant’s management. But let us leave these relatively harmless rowdies aside. Far more formidable actors are at work on the international stage, and their capacity to increase entropy is very considerable indeed.

At the time, after the collapse of the USSR, there was no shortage of peculiar dreamers, Francis Fukuyama among them, who foretold the end of history. They believed, incidentally, that a world order would be established in which entropy—in the form of advancing chaos and uncertainty—would be held in check. But setting aside the individual characteristics of this or that Western politician (Western politicians specifically, since it is they who claimed, and continue to claim, political, intellectual, and even moral world leadership), in any case they underestimated the complexity of the new world system taking shape and, consequently, overestimated their own ability to keep it on a stable developmental course.

Controlling entropy, incidentally, has always been one of humanity’s most crucial tasks. At the heart of such control must always lie agreement, a kind of constructive interaction that makes it possible to bring order to every process. Conflicts are, of course, permissible, as are certain elements of uncertainty, without which development would be impossible. Chaos, after all, can also give birth to something new.

Isaac Asimov’s well-known novel The End of Eternity describes a situation that is almost perfectly ordered. People are able to control time and thereby control everything else. But development has been halted: space is not explored, there is no nuclear technology, and so on. Nevertheless, loopholes exist. Exploiting them, the novel’s protagonist destroys the entire system in defence of his own freedom, and not his alone. A new situation emerges—one that is in some ways risky, but full of promise. Space flights begin, science develops, and so forth.

Now, after the collapse of the socialist system, and with conditions apparently created for constructive, controlled development, the elites of the leading and most economically powerful states ought to have found ways of reaching agreement without generating new elements of uncertainty and chaos. Alas, in a sense, precisely the opposite happened. Instead of building an integrated world system commensurate with the complexity of the contemporary world, the leading Western countries set a course towards a kind of value-based, or even civilisational, fencing-off from the surrounding world. They set about erecting their own modern political-economic Hadrian’s (or Trajan’s) Wall, designed to separate the domains in which “first-class” people predominate from the dwelling-places of everyone else. Moreover, this has been, and continues to be, accompanied by attempts to worsen, relatively speaking, the position of those who have not been admitted into the privileged minority of the modern world—naturally, according to the Western version of events. What results is a fortress of the chosen, surrounded by walls and a moat, behind which everyone else somehow gets on with life. Of course, this division of the world cannot be purely physical or territorial in the literal sense, although a degree of geographical definition is undoubtedly present here too. Incidentally, the controversy-ridden issues surrounding refugees are, in large part, generated precisely by this kind of political philosophy and by the contradictions it has provoked within the Western world itself.

What is telling is that many countries not sheltered by Western weaponry and its morbid dreams of its own superiority are proposing a different, yet thoroughly coherent, approach to the development of the world: above all through achieving global agreement and through systematising and ordering the rules by which every country in this world, without exception, can coexist. Such initiatives can be found in China, in India, in Latin America, and in many other places. None of them presuppose any restrictions on any country whatsoever. Under this approach, the world is envisaged as a relatively free archipelago of countries communicating freely with one another. Moreover, the possible diversity of the paths of development chosen by this or that country is not restricted in any way—provided, of course, that the path chosen does not involve aggression against other countries.

As is well known, there are, in world practice, two key ways of exerting influence on others: persuasion and coercion. Neither of these methods, of course, can be ruled out entirely, but the proportion between them matters greatly. And in this respect, the last thirty-five years have not, alas, provided examples of a sensible balance between the two. The Middle East and the Balkans are, I would say, characteristic examples of a long and not especially successful struggle against entropy. Denying the natural diversity found in these civilisationally and culturally variegated regions, Western elites believed that applying a rather linearly conceived European system of values would bring order to life there. This malignant oversimplification, however, produced a dangerous result. No happily flourishing harmony emerged; instead, the political system merely frothed up with additional conflicts, further intensifying the chaos. And, sadly, such examples are becoming ever more numerous. This, it would seem, is the sorry outcome of Western hegemony.

But the matter is not really about the past. It is instructive, certainly, but the question is how humanity can nonetheless set out on a path of stable and more or less rational development. How can this be regulated? Which circumstances of contemporary life need to be taken into account, which obstacles are the most provocative, what needs to be done first, by whom, and how? In short, there are many questions.

First and foremost, there is the problem of reconciling the world’s growing interdependence and interconnectedness—growing, whatever else may be happening—with our capacity to regulate this complex web of connections. In all likelihood, security ought to be regulated first of all. Modern security, of course, is not merely military; it also encompasses medicine, climate, and a great deal else besides.

Communications, too, are subject to regulation—particularly the new information and communications environment, which knows no borders and whose potential for dangerous impact is comparable only to that of a nuclear bomb.

Indeed, modern technologies as a whole, owing to their extraordinary power and effectiveness, ought to be subject to regulation, since it is technology that has made human beings so powerful that they could quite easily destroy themselves—and do so in the blink of an eye.

It is clear that the path from today’s confrontational, mutually suspicious, and mutually distrustful situation to any kind of regulation is far from short. It is not at all obvious who, exactly, is meant to be the subject of this ordering process. States? That, too, is an open question. On the one hand, states are comprehensible mechanisms: other things being equal, amid chaos and uncertainty, a multitude of anarchic groups, and uncontrolled violence, it is precisely states that may prove to be the guarantors of human beings’ rights to life, freedom, and so forth. On the other hand, states lay claim to a right to regulate matters that cannot, in fact, be regulated within the confines of a single country. New forms of communication have considerably expanded people’s freedom, yet it is extremely difficult for a modern state to manage this domain without encroaching on individual rights and freedoms. This problem is, in fact, bound up with the very question of what a person actually is, and what his or her rights, freedoms, and boundaries are in the conditions of today’s multidimensional digital world. How do these relate to the existence of society as a whole? Which system of values, and which social order, is best suited to today’s complex world? This, however, is something we shall still need to discuss in earnest in the near future. But for such discussions to be productive, we need to understand the intellectual atmosphere of this contemporary world itself—and how well it is suited to resolving the extraordinarily dramatic problems in which we find ourselves living.

Unfortunately, the current world situation is characterised, on the one hand, by a rather bizarre interweaving of the interests and fears of a great variety of actors, and, on the other, by the risk that events may develop in the most undesirable manner. To put it simply, political darkness is thickening, and within it the most dangerous scenarios may well become likely. Although, as noted above, positive courses of events can also ripen and come to fruition amid chaos.

But for positive outcomes to be realised, there needs to be a consciousness within which they can take shape; a certain energy is required for this.

For the time being, alas, it would seem that the negative versions of events are outpacing all the others.

The trouble is that we need a model of the world within which it is possible to actually do something. And on this point, there is no unity whatsoever.

As I have already said, constructive ideas are being put forward by countries outside the Western world—Latin America, Africa, China, India, and many others. They are considering thoroughly rational options in which every person on earth is offered a comfortable future, one in which they will be able to realise their own plans. These are, admittedly, hypotheses, theories. But at least they exist. Although nothing, of course, is a panacea.

History shows that no one has ever managed to achieve paradise on Earth. Not a single world religion. Not a single political theory. Not a single thinker. No one at all. Yet all of them offered solutions for humanity as such, without any exceptions. Everyone can strive for paradise, whether on Earth or in the hereafter. Buddhism. Christianity. Islam. Communist ideology. And many other teachings and religions offered, in the past, and continue to offer today, a solution for everyone. Everyone has a chance. Oddly enough, until fairly recently, capitalism defended the very same values as communism, while rejecting, of course, communist methods. I would go so far as to say that, as recently as forty or fifty years ago, for all its difficulties and disagreements, humanity was building—as best it could, however clumsily and at great cost—a future for everyone. There were many models, but every human being on the planet had a place within them. There was no fundamental discrimination as such. There were, of course, exceptions—appalling ones. Fascism, for instance. But even at the moment of its emergence, that doctrine was plainly marginal, however extremely dangerous.

But now, it seems, a dangerous metamorphosis is under way. 

What is more, if one listens closely to the pronouncements of many contemporary figures, primarily Western ones (alas), of both a political and a technological stripe, it turns out that the world of the future is not meant for everyone. The future, as it appears, is one in which relatively small groups—well equipped technologically, well protected, and capable of isolating themselves—live on within a world full of chaos and uncontrolled forces. Anarchy becomes a catalyst for the growth of the entropy already mentioned. Incidentally, world cinema is saturated with scenarios of precisely this kind.

What is more, this metamorphosis—this shift from a world for everyone to a world for the chosen few—is intensifying, or even entering its next stage of development, with the emergence of AI.

I have read that the sages of Silicon Valley have coined the expression a “permanent underclass”. In other words, what is being discussed is a form of eternal segregation, a world in the spirit of H. G. Wells and his Morlocks. There are even bold authors writing about a kind of “fascism of the last days”, ripening on the soil of technology’s reckless development and the new opportunities for segregation that it brings.

Some ten years ago, Sam Altman remarked that AI would most probably bring about the end of the world after all—but before that happens, great companies built with the help of machine learning would emerge. It is a rather striking phrase, and a dangerous prediction.

All in all, we are living in a world of ever-increasing complexity, and the threats we face are becoming more complex too. And the more complex a system is, the more sensitive it becomes to external influences, and the more dangerous an uncontrolled rise in entropy is for it. One can only hope that, out of the swirling chaos of threats, rays of positive solutions will begin to break through.

All of the above, and a great deal more besides, will be discussed at the forthcoming annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club—“Responsibility for the Future: Limits of the Possible, or Limitless Possibilities?”—to be held from 28 September to 1 October 2026.