ABSTRACT
Chapter 8 presents an account of key features that would favour an alternative to the serially failed magnitudes and which are responsible for the disruptions of the present. These features include the psychological notion of an ontological insecurity, by its nature a rejection of subjection to any constructed absolutism that veils existential angst. Free will, as a means to exit such subjection, is then considered. Rejecting any grand strategy as the means to such an exit, various defensive and assertive responses to the existential risks are considered. Reference points that would favour an attempt to embrace existential angst are also considered, regarding the rule of law, a new ethical frame and the elaboration of fiduciary principles. These reveal the new ethics as the principles of respectful responsibility to and for oneself, which is the socio-political complement to ontological insecurity. The ontological re-imagining of algorithms is exemplified as an application of such principles. The chapter finishes with a summary of the two broad themes of this work: the nature of the core dynamic and the derivative dynamics which have been the principal generators of both the ideological and institutional failures of the West; and thereby of the present disruptions across the social and political landscape.
