Article 74: XIVth BRICS Summit Beijing Declaration

The following was a post in the MoA forum about the XIVth BRICS Summit Beijing Declaration of 2022, introduced by the erudite poster karlof1 who is all over the multipolarity initiative and often writes about Russia and China. He kicked the discussion off with the above Declaration link and his own comment:

“Elsewhere, it appears that many were self-deluded into believing BRICS never had an ideology within its makeup, as Fyodor Lukanov revealed today in an RT op/ed. The BRICS Declaration made at the end of its 2022 Summit in Beijing as well as those issued before all contain ideology and the values that undergird BRICS; so, I have no idea where supposedly intelligent people got the idea that BRICS had no ideology or ideological goals/standards. As evidence, here’s point #2 from the 2022 Declaration:

“We recall that in the past 16 years, upholding the BRICS spirit featuring mutual respect and understanding, equality, solidarity, openness, inclusiveness, and consensus, BRICS countries have strengthened mutual trust, deepened intra-BRICS mutually beneficial cooperation, and closer people-to-people exchanges, which has led to a series of significant outcomes. We reiterate the importance of further enhancing BRICS solidarity and cooperation based on our common interests and key priorities, to further strengthen our strategic partnership.”

I didn’t bother emphasizing anything because IMO those values/ideologies are self-evident, and because I doubt Mr. Lukyanov will read this comment.”

I replied with:

Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 1 2023 0:28 utc | 88

Am going to post in quite a few items (redacted with …) to show the range of issues covered in the BRICS Declaration so those not interested in reading through the whole document (actually not all that long) can grok a quick overview.

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[The post continues:]

Thank you for engaging on this issue.

First, re: ‘ideology’:

Have been critical of Multipolarity because never heard organizational or procedural specifics. But regarding this XIV BRICS Summit Beijing Declaration as a Multipolar Order template, then one glaring thing missing – always my main concern – is conflict resolution mechanisms. Also, it lacks operational means for handling this plethora of issues. That said, it is seemingly proposing BRICS as the ultimate UN driver, perhaps after the wicked witch of the West has been shunted aside or finally Reset itself to join in.

Authority involves final decision-making power. This vision assumes a Round Table without any such ultimate authority. Unless again existing UN Committees are the assumed vehicle for such decision-making. Even so, the UN by design is not a true Executive Body; perhaps they plan to remedy that shortcoming.

Along with many feel-good ideal approaches for global growth, harmony and happiness this Declaration sounds like a whole lotta of Centralizing Globalism not just organic globalization; and the frequent references to 2030 Agenda, WTO, IMF, national documents of vaccination, Population Development etc. are alarming.

Am fully on board with dislodging the hegemonic banking cartels [the Eminence Grise behind the West’s Industrial Revolution and much of the Modern World globally]. But creating a WHO-IMF-WTO run New World Order sounds ghastly unless you believe the utopian promises in ideologies like communism and socialism crafted by intellectuals hired by the same banking cartels whose harms they now promise to eradicate via the many 3-letter Globalista, and thus cartel-funded, organizations featured so prominently in this Declaration.

Sorry, but color me cynical!

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Additional Commentary:

This is the first I’ve heard of people complaining about BRICS’s lack of shared ideology and in retrospect I might have asked Karlof1 what he/they exactly meant by that, about which more below.¹ I didn’t see all that much ideology in his excerpt, more like shared values or an agreed-upon way of working with each other. Which sounded excellent. Basically everyone doing everything they can to cooperate with no one member state or group of states taking advantage of any other.

But then after that brief overview of how pleased they are with such cooperation along the lines described, the rest of the Declaration involves specific initiatives involving a long list of different issues, though as I pointed out in my response, there is no statement about how such things are to be implemented unless it is by influencing the existing global institutions frequently referenced such as the UN, WHO, WTO, WHO and so on, because those organizations do have implementation capability, albeit limited out of respect for nation state sovereignty.

I could say more. But my response basically left things with open-ended questions, even doubt. Much is said in the Declaration but even more is left unsaid. That is the problem I have with the entire Multipolarity business. One side is cooperating nicely and being virtuous; they are up against the other side (the wicked West) which is generally quite evil, and, after concerted efforts over many decades via media and the school system, increasing numbers of Westerners feel the same about their own societies and race, that they are evil and so are not reproducing at replacement rates, a type of slow, polite self-genocide.

So we are presented with a very positive, go-forward dynamic on one side filled with good will and mutual cooperation and on the other side a hegemonic Demon, led by rapacious Elites presiding over an irredeemably wicked population. (This is a little exaggerated to make the point.) Which I find interesting because it hearkens back to the contemplations I was offering up here before getting into this latest few Articles about multipolarity, such as Articles 61 and 62 about Good and Evil and meeting the Devil, or Dark Side after which I veered off into the blindness, both literal and metaphorical, created by an over-reliance on the left brain which then segued into considering the importance of values over left brain style mapping, or abstraction. And to my mind this is where red flags should be raised wherever any sort of ideology enters the matrix.

Value-based principles are the sine qua non of a good life or good society. But ideology which sounds like but isn’t actually based in values are wolves in sheep’s clothing for evil, especially in societal or political form, nearly always presents itself as ‘doing what’s best for the people’. Those promoting it are by and large sincere, at least those following the doctrine if not those promulgating it from the leadership levels.

In any case, I think we all need to consider very carefully what is being proposed. Both how evil the West is and how virtuous the Multipolarists are. There is definitely – at least IMO – some validity to this characterization but as some sort of absolute given, I cannot go that far. As the recent ‘viral’ popularity of the two songs ‘Rich Men from Richmond’ and ‘I wanna go Home’ vividly attest, there is a yearning, a hunger, for a return to ordinary decency and fairness in the West. If it is true that the Western elites, primus inter pares being the infamous banking / credit cartels, are incorrigibly evil, it follows that they have to a certain extent been exploiting their own populations as much as those overseas. I say ‘to a certain extent’ because clearly Western populations have enjoyed a higher standard of living than those in undeveloped nations and part of the BRICS credo is to end the overly exploitative Hegemonic practices which prevent development on the part of those they are exploiting, something which sounds entirely worthy to me. And yet.

And yet it seems that the past few decades that improvement in living standards has stalled and indeed the quality of life – family life, spiritual life, civic life – has been steadily deteriorating and much of this is due to deliberate engineering on the part of those paid by and given status within society to lead its nature and progress – teachers, administrators, scientists, government officials on all levels and so forth – the so-called managerial and leadership classes.

And since the message from those classes is that the people in the West are undeserving somehow, and since the message from the Multipolarists is somewhat similar, this gives me pause. Are the two sides working together? Or am I jumping to conclusions? Do the multipolarists want nothing more than for We the People in the West to rise up and cast out their wicked Saruman-like elites? I cannot answer all that, though I do think it good to raise the question or in the immortal words of Gollum, the quasi-demon who saved the world for the rest of us in Middle Earth:

“We wonders, aye, we wonders Precious!”

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Well, later on I offered two other (shorter) comments in a related thread:

Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 1 2023 3:50 utc | 146

Thxs for kind words.

Well I most certainly do not have all the answers either (obviously!) but I do raise questions, and actually believe that more of us should do so more often. Propaganda unquestioned soon becomes established truth.

I think it almost impossible to define what works and what doesn’t except in very profound philosophical-poetical terms that only the most realized among us can express; such utterances become classics over time. Meanwhile, the world changes rapidly so recognizing elements from those classics unfolding within the chaotically arising unfamiliar present is no easy thing, even rarer to find any who can communicate it.

That said, there is a difference between good and evil, even though one of the principal characteristics of evil is that it is deceptively seductive and nearly always dressed up as the good – at least at first. For people not to buy into its seductive makeup they have to be well grounded in actually following the Good as Path, so to speak, rather than observing it judgmentally as external random happenstance.

So here we are. The rhetoric coming from the multipolarist anti-hegemonic BRICS is unrelentingly positive, reasonable, uplifting, inspiring. It seems clearly in contrast to the increasingly revealed evil of the West peopled by a race grown fat and entitled from the proceeds of wicked plunder and ugly racism. For that is the narrative the good side is telling, no? Is it really that simple and Manichean? We shall soon learn…

Posted by: Scorpion | Sep 1 2023 4:11 utc | 147

Well, we shall see. The world is changing. A new one is emerging. The older I get the better the Lord of the Rings story becomes. Tolkein was a master of old European lore, material reaching back beyond pagan or Christian, though he was a dedicated Christian himself like most of the finest of his generation, many of whom were sacrificed in French mud.

It seems that every time contains the beginning, middle and end of his tale. Every time contains evil deep within going back to the Elder days from a Darkness beyond telling. every time contains lineage and potential of blessed sacredness, some of which dwells among us always, hidden like Lothlorien Elves. Lineages of kings and queens walk among us, recognized or not. That too which is twisted and broken, evil tribes, uncouth cultures, lost souls, original natures distorted by ambition, envy, bitterness or mistreatment. It’s all there; it always is.

And too there is a good way forward – always; and bad ways forward too – always. The way to Victory of the Good always involves finding ordinary, humble good-heartedness, like that of two small hobbits, wandering in the wild, bearing a precious burden, the burden of the destiny of us all, though presently hemmed in by darkness and despair. And it is always a close-run thing, always on a knife-edge!

May we individually and collectively be worthy of such a burden, which each of us always carries. There are no guaranteed outcomes.

1Afterthought about Ideology:

An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which “practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones.” Formerly applied primarily to economic, political, or religious theories and policies, in a tradition going back to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, more recent use treats the term as mainly condemnatory.

I personally have a slightly different definition of ideology, namely that it is belief based on abstract concept versus bedrock values. As discussed earlier, values are active in that they are something personally put into practice from intent, training and habit. Ideological beliefs can motivate all one’s actions but can also end up tending towards fanaticism in the face of inevitable obstacles, with the believer blaming Other for the problem and then feeling obliged to overcome such Other, never questioning the Ideologically-driven Belief itself which often feels compelled to strive for some Idealized (usually utopian) goal, which unrelenting earnestnes often ends up creating Hell in order to achieve the desired Heavenly end. Whereas actions rooted in virtuous bedrock values do not go astray that way; obstacles lead to self-reflection, course correction, softening, deepening, more determination, courage, generosity and humbleness. Subtle differences at the starting gate, perhaps, but with broad ramifications as the race is run over time.