When societies perish, they seldom do so with thunder or roar. More often, they collapse silently — their moral, social, cultural, and psychological foundations already hollowed out long before the final fall. The corrosion of creative and critical thought reaches its zenith in such dark ages, leaving behind ruins where vibrant intellect once thrived.
Gone are the days when commitments were sacred and not transactional. Gone are the days when souls and spirits were not auctioned in the marketplace of consumerism — where pleasure and pain are reduced to commodities. This diversion and distortion have pushed cultures, civilizations, and entire societies to the brink of collapse, where meaning itself seems to dissolve into dust.
We now inhabit a world hauntingly reminiscent of the Hobbesian “state of nature,” a war of each against all — where ideas find no refuge, where civilizations fade not by conquest but by corrosion, and where philosophy and discourse wither for lack of fertile ground.
It is this desolation that our Nobel Laureate so seriously reveals. László Krasznahorkai has given language to what many only sense — an apocalypse not merely as a single catastrophic moment, but as a slow, multidimensional unraveling. It stretches from nuclear science to religion, from ethics to sculpture, from art and literature to the climate itself — from the spiritual to the existential.
In our times, lies are not only spoken but also manufactured and sold. Beauty, race, Genes poetry, culture, intellect, even entire geographies — villages, towns, cities — are on sale in the cheapest of markets. Truth itself has become layered and fragmented, sometimes imprisoned, hence stripped of its originality, its relevance, its power to inspire or unite.
When this society was dying, we did bear witness to its last rites. It is not God, Nature, fate, or mere accidents of history that destroyed us — it is we, humans ourselves, who diluted and, in one way or another, killed our own society. When truth came to us, we manipulated it through deceit and mistrust. Our greed, indifference, neutrality, and moral laziness have given birth to hysterical societies filled with selfishness — societies that have stripped away reason and compassion.
Self-interest may be natural and pragmatic, but it is selfishness that has led to our downfall. From small market shops to multinational corporations, we lie, cheat, and remain divided in everything. From humble kitchens to the United Nations General Assembly, we tolerate injustice, dispossession, and disempowerment. From our bodies to our souls, we have learned to dominate and dictate, seeking what John Austin once described as unquestioned, unwarranted, and unconditional obedience.
We like to see ourselves in concave and convex mirrors — distorted, comfortable reflections — but we rarely look at ourselves in the mirror of time, honour, respect, and dignity. This fall of humanity, along with the collapse of civilizations, has never been born in a vacuum. It is a direct result of our ideological blindness and complacency.
We are not bystanders to this collapse — we are its partners. Partners in the crime of the fall of humanity.
🎨 Art as the Final Savior
Indeed, I agree with the Nobel Laureate that art is the last friend, philosopher, and guide in this multidimensional decay. When religion falters, when politics becomes coercive, when technology dehumanizes, it is art that binds us together — as our survivor, our final revelation, our moral force, our awakener, and our last messenger.
It is art that builds creativity out of nothing. It is art that teaches us to redefine ourselves in the light of knowledge, truth, and the power to change and transform the societies in which we live and breathe. Above the core of the Earth and below the exosphere, there is indeed a power of art that can purify our biosphere — humanity’s only living space.
And when art is embraced holistically, not in fragments, its power can help us find our way out of this collective astray. There must be art in science as well as in the social sciences; art in literature, religion, politics, culture, schools, homes, peer groups, states, and the world at large. It is the power of art that teaches us that more than machinery, we need humanity — because deep down, in our undisputed and undiluted nature, we are all lovers of humanity.
It is the power of art that can shatter all chains of slavery, even those forged of gold, diamond, or digital code. It is the power of art — and of the artists who carry its flame — that can purify the Earth, its rivers, its flora and fauna, its morality and its ethics. It is only through art that we can enter a world of liberty, equality, justice, rights, and fraternity — in both letter and spirit.
But this art must not be parochial. It must be universal, not divisive; unifying, not fragmenting; accommodative, not exclusive; decentralized, not controlled. It must rise above dubious constructions — our rigid schools (not schools of thought), our copy-pasted research, colonial measurements like GMT, and even the artificial barriers of tectonic plates, latitudes, longitudes, meridians, and academic compartmentalization.
Sadly, we have long confined “science” to physics, chemistry, biology, or mathematics, and dismissed art as secondary — something “other” (Akin to untouchables or ghettos) But the words of the Norwegian Committee while bestowing the Nobel Prize for Literature 2025 reaffirm the transformative power of art — a ray of hope for all of us.
The fall of humanity is multidimensional; therefore, its solution must also be multidimensional. Let us unite under the cosmopolitan, universal, and all-embracing message of art — to purify ourselves, our societies, and our polities. Let us build a world where science and rationality grow alongside intuition and intellect; where narratives and meta-narratives work together to heal humanity.
Above all, we are humans. And in that shared humanity lies our last hope.
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