Deulofeu and peace.

Opinion. Tribune.

Deulofeu and peace.

Brauli Tamarit Tamarit. The Mathematics of History Team.

Translation: Loto Perrella.

During the presentation in Girona of the praiseworthy documentary Alexandre Deulofeu, l’historiador del futur (Alexandre Deulofeu, a historian of the future), David de Montserrat contributed the information that, perhaps, Alexandre Deulofeu had been a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 from Venezuela, at the same time that Lluís Maria Xirinacs was from Catalonia. The mystery will be revealed in 2025, after 50 years will have elapsed. His grandson, historian Juli Gutièrrez Deulofeu, has preserved the valuable model created by his grandfather and keeps developing it.

Alexandre Deulofeu created The Mathematics of History, a model to explain the vital cycles which feature civilizations and empires. On the one hand, he points out that all civilizations have up to three cycles of about 1700 years. Each of them has a first creative phase of demographic fragmentation of about 650 years, and a second one of great unification of about 1050 years, which eventually produces empires lasting about 550 years. On the other hand, he points out that empires have two aggressive phases, a federal one followed by an absolutist phase. In both cases the empire pursues world domination. After the empire has been defeated in the second aggressive phase, it understands that it cannot rule the world. But Deulofeu remarks that an empire will never be able to submit peoples which are in the phase of demographic fragmentation¹ and that, when there is a confrontation between two empires, it is the youngest who wins². Grandfather Deulofeu says that, after the third civilization cycle, that culture disappears together with its distinctive traits. But his grandson has discovered, after studying the area of south-western Asia and North Africa, that a fourth cycle of a new culture appears, with its successive phases of fragmentation and great unification. And even a fifth one.

Keeping in mind the great extension of our planet, and the variety of peoples inhabiting it, we know that there will always be territories in the fragmentation phase. This detail is sufficient to deduct that no empire will ever be able to attain world domination. Besides, should an empire be determined to try, furiously, the planet’s conquest, it will be difficult for it to reach this goal, because probably there will appear in another remote place on Earth a younger empire against which it will be impossible to contend for hegemony. This as a result makes us remember Alexandre Deulofeu’s suggestion, already stated in his first book, Catalunya i l’Europa futura (Catalonia and Europe in the future) where he calls for the best solution to reach world peace. Now we know that it is not only the best solution, but probably the only one: a world confederation of free peoples, with their respective continental confederations.

Link to the original Catalan article:

http://www.elpuntavui.cat/opinio/article/8-articles/1034127-deulofeu-i-la-pau.html

Notes:

¹It is the case of the Persian empire with Darius I against the Greek free cities, of Charles I of Habsburg against the German protestant princes, or that of Philip II of Spain against the Netherlands.

²An example is the French empire of Napoleon I, which could defeat the Austrian empire, but was in turn defeated by the British empire.