In several previous articles, I have explored the idea that many of what we call geopolitical conflicts may have much deeper cultural roots.
We tend to understand the world through political positions: left and right, progressive and conservative, democracy and authoritarianism, capitalism and socialism. We explain international events through governments, military alliances, economic interests and struggles for power.
But political positions may sometimes be only the visible expression of something deeper.
Beneath the political surface, there may be different ways of relating to history itself.
One cultural direction looks toward the future. It accepts that the world changes and that human beings and societies must transform with it. It is willing to experiment, learn, exchange, integrate new knowledge and imagine forms of life that do not yet exist.
The other looks toward the past. It seeks security in what is already known, often constructing an idealized version of what once was. It can turn memory into mythology and identity into something fixed that must be protected from change.
These directions do not correspond neatly to political parties or ideologies.
A future-oriented impulse can exist inside a conservative society. A reactionary impulse can exist inside a progressive movement. The same person can embrace technological innovation while defending a rigid cultural identity, or demand social equality while rejecting other forms of transformation.
The deeper question is therefore not simply what political position do we hold?
It may be: What direction are we moving in?
Identity and the Fabrication of the Past
Identity itself is not the problem.
Human beings need memory, history and a sense of belonging. Cultures need continuity. A civilization without memory loses part of itself.
The problem begins when identity becomes frozen.
When a complex and contradictory history is reduced to a simple story of “who we really are,” identity can become a political instrument. A nation is imagined as purer than it ever was. A culture is presented as homogeneous when it was always changing. A religious tradition becomes absolute. A racial or ethnic identity becomes something that must be defended.
The past is no longer remembered.
It is reconstructed.
And sometimes it is fabricated.
A fabricated identity almost inevitably needs an enemy. Someone must be responsible for the loss of the imagined past: the foreigner, the migrant, another religion, another race, another culture, another political group—or simply anyone who represents change.
Fear then becomes the energy that holds the identity together.
This is why the cultural conflict of our time cannot be reduced to conventional political categories.
At its deepest level, it may be a conflict between two questions:
“What can we become?” and “How can we return to what we were?”
When a Culture Chooses the Future
China offers an extraordinary example of the first direction.
The transformation of China over the past fifty years should not be understood only through government decisions or geopolitical calculations. Beneath these visible changes lies a deeper cultural aspiration among hundreds of millions of people: to overcome poverty, develop their country, acquire knowledge and technology, and create better conditions for future generations.
That aspiration has had enormous consequences.
It has contributed to profound scientific, technological, economic and political transformations. China’s growing geopolitical influence can therefore be understood not simply as the cause of its transformation, but as one of its consequences.
The cultural direction came first. The consequences followed.
Power does not emerge from nowhere. It can be the accumulated result of millions of people sharing, consciously or unconsciously, a long-term aspiration.
China’s experience is therefore more than a story of economic growth or geopolitical competition. It is the story of a civilization with thousands of years of history looking intensely toward what it could become.
The past remained part of its identity, but the aspiration was directed toward the future. Science, technology, education, infrastructure and economic development became instruments of that aspiration.
The question is not whether China has reached the future. The question is whether it has chosen to move toward it.
Bangladesh: A Generation Changes Direction
Bangladesh offers a very different example.
Only a decade ago, Bangladesh was largely peripheral to the imagination of the major geopolitical powers. It was generally perceived as a poor, densely populated developing country.
That perception has changed dramatically.
In 2024, a youth-led movement challenged and ultimately rejected the country’s established political order. After weeks of mass demonstrations and a brutal crackdown, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee to India. An interim government was subsequently established under Muhammad Yunus.
What is remarkable, is not simply the fall of a government. It is the speed with which the society changed its historical position.
Bangladesh suddenly became far more important in the strategic calculations of India, China and the United States. Its geography, growing economy and position between major regional powers made it increasingly difficult to ignore.
But this is precisely what conventional geopolitics can fail to see. The initial force was not a foreign power or a military alliance. It was a generation of young people deciding that the political reality they had inherited was no longer acceptable. The world began looking at Bangladesh differently because Bangladeshis began looking at their own future differently.
The significance of Bangladesh may extend beyond its borders.
When a young generation sees that an established political structure can be challenged and transformed, the experience itself can become an inspiration for others. In India, the youth-led “Cockroach” movement may be another expression of this emerging dynamic, particularly in its challenge to institutional injustice. It is still too early to know where such a movement will lead, or whether it can produce changes comparable to those seen in Bangladesh.
But perhaps that is not the most important question.
What matters is that young people in different societies may be discovering that the political reality they inherited is not necessarily the reality they have to accept. One generation’s breakthrough can open the imagination of another.
When the Future Itself Becomes the Problem
The opposite cultural direction can be seen in a very different arena: artificial intelligence.
AI may become one of the most transformative technologies humanity has ever created, reshaping science, medicine, education, communication, industry and even our understanding of intelligence itself.
Yet, in parts of the West, the response to this transformation is increasingly one of suspicion and rejection. Data centers are opposed because of concerns about electricity, water and environmental impact. AI is associated with ecological damage, job destruction, surveillance, misinformation and the loss of human autonomy.
Many of these concerns are legitimate. Technological development must be questioned, regulated and made accountable. But there is another question behind the debate. Are we asking how to shape the future, or are we increasingly asking how to prevent the future from changing the world we know?
This distinction is fundamental.
A future-oriented culture does not blindly embrace every new technology. It asks how technology can serve humanity and how its risks can be controlled. A culture increasingly oriented toward the past may instead experience transformation itself as a threat.
And this reaction is not necessarily political in the traditional sense. It can come from the left, the right, environmental movements, communities, corporations or governments.
The deeper issue is cultural:
How do we respond when the future arrives?
The Deeper Geocultural Conflict
Perhaps this is why so many of today’s geopolitical conflicts are difficult to understand through geopolitics alone. Behind struggles for territory, resources, markets and influence may lie something deeper: a geocultural conflict over the meaning of change itself.
Humanity has entered a period in which technological, ecological, demographic and cultural transformations are accelerating simultaneously. We cannot stop history. But we can influence the direction it takes.
The future is uncertain. That uncertainty may frighten us back toward an imagined past, or it may become the space in which something new becomes possible.
Perhaps, then, the deepest choice facing humanity today is not between political parties, nations or geopolitical blocs, but between two directions of consciousness: the courage to create a future that does not yet exist, or the fear that drives us to defend a fabricated past.
