Skip to main content

Civilization as Liturgy: Jordan Hall & Pavel Shchelin on Hierarchy, Empire, and Post-Neoliberal Futures

Date: June 2, 2025
Participants: Jordan Hall & Pavel Shchelin
Source: YouTube Interview

Summary​

A profound intellectual dialogue exploring the collapse of neoliberalism, the nature of proper versus improper hierarchies, and the spiritual dimensions of political organization. Hall presents his framework of overlapping crises (neoliberalism's collapse, American hegemony's end, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and AI dominance) while engaging with Shchelin's Eastern Orthodox perspective on empire and hierarchy.

Key Frameworks & Concepts​

The Four Overlapping Crises​

1. Collapse of Neoliberalism:

"Liberalism is an effort to address the problem of the loss of faith in the west by means of producing a secular religion that could enable coordination between groups of people that were perhaps operating under different religious worldviews."

2. End of American Hegemony:

"The United States is no longer actually able to have fully asymmetric power projection and either will be hubistically getting itself involved in conflicts that it can't win or we'll be noticing that it needs to not engage in conflicts that it can't win."

3. Fourth Industrial Revolution:

"We're nearing the end of the last industrial revolution and nearing very much in the acceleration phase of the next industrial revolution... We're talking about a whole new category of industry that's completely different in how it operates."

4. AI as Checkmate:

"A sizable number of global elites have identified the race to AI dominance as the only thing that matters... Whoever achieves AI supremacy has such an asymmetric advantage over everybody else that it's a singleton. It's a onetime win."

The Nature of Hierarchy​

Three Types of Spirits:

"I think that I'd say three kinds of spirit. The first is would be is in fact a proper spirit of a nation as assigned by the Lord after Babel... The second... These are particular spirits that maybe never even properly had languages, people's nations, but have as their basic characteristic this vast breadth of ways of getting people to worship them [Mammon, Ashtoreth]... And then you have the third... proper spirits that on the one hand do not seek to bring under them that which is not properly under them. And on the other hand always seek to be brought in their proper hierarchical relationship under the triune God."

Proper vs. Improper Hierarchy:

"Improper hierarchy will always collapse... As that happens we will begin to see the aliveness of proper hierarchy is beautiful because it's like the flame the light that cannot be put out by the darkness."

Nation vs. Civilization Distinction​

Nation Defined:

"Nation is on the one hand something like family or kin or lineage which is to say that it is a group that is held together on the basis of deep kinship and relationality... And then the other way of saying it is that it is a group that shares a common spirit."

Civilization as Babylon:

"Civilization, what I mean, and here we could maybe even just say Babylon is a group that are brought together on the basis of a combination of coercion and incentive."

The Sand vs. Snow Metaphor:

"If I have a bunch of sand and let's say I wet it, I can squeeze it into something like a ball, but it is still at the end of the day an aggregate and if and when the water dries out, the sand falls again back to dust. This is a civilization. If I have snow when I squeeze it the heat melts the snow into water but the water freezes back into ice and so now it has a crystalline matrix that holds it together."

Digital Media as Meta-Medium​

The Revolutionary Nature of Digital:

"Prior to the digital all media were bound to their form and this produced a lot of their signature characteristics... Digital is anything... Digital is the ultimate of all possible media it contains all of the possibility of media within it but under the constraint the very specific constraint of digitization."

Digital as Spiritual Environment (Shchelin's insight):

"Digital you can call it it's the most natural environmental for these spirits we've been talking about to exist to communicate and to commune people with... Instagram no matter whether you put it in video text form photo AI adapted photo translated the spirit of the communication stays the same."

The Trinitarian Pattern​

Movement and Unity:

"There is a constant movement of love within the trinity and there is still keeping this individuality element... not individuality but personality."

The Church as Proper Integration:

"The church is the embodiment whereby diversity of lineage can be brought into a whole integration that is more beautiful and contains no tyranny."

Empire Redefined​

Shchelin's Defense of Empire:

"Even proper spirits need hierarchy I think that's my biggest comment... The only antidote for improper hierarchy is a proper hierarchy and not the absence of hierarchy per se."

King of Kings Model:

"When I speak about empire is something positive. It's exactly about the king of kings model like it's not the one tyrannical... it's not a Nebuchadnezzar oppressive everybody worships this idol."

Sacred Language at the Heart:

"The heart of a proper empire is a common sacred language. Vernacular languages can be very different but within the heart of every empire sync lies the same sacred language."

Life vs. Survival Dichotomy​

The False Bargain:

"On the left hand side you have life. On the right hand side you have survival... You sacrifice life to achieve survival, which means you don't become alive, you become undead. You're a zombie or a vampire."

The Singleton vs. Trinity:

"The thing that will be offered that is not the triune god... will actually also be a singleton. It will be single. Singleness will be one of the signs of the antichrist... It is only truly under that which is intrinsically unity and multiplicity simultaneously that any proper hierarchical subordination makes any sense at all."

Three Responses to Collapse​

Hall's Three States:

"One state is a state of denial right where you try to avoid thinking about the fact that it's going to be collapsing. The second state is the state of addiction where you're trying to move from one collapsing improper hierarchy to another improper hierarchy in this case typically up towards the AI overlord... The third is healing. The third is where you are allowing the collapse to reawaken your connection to the proper hierarchy."

Shchelin's Fourth Category:

"There is this fourth category of people who are not truly in denial... they simply lost there is a fourth category of lost seeking and lost and seeking something like this... We all are agents of the first three will be trying to figure out how to track people from the fourth."

Most Powerful Insights​

On False Peace and Security​

"The key argument to bring this improper even either to distort a proper hierarchy or to bring a proper hierarchy together will always be what you call coercion and incentive well yeah like peace and security ultimately false... It's false peace and false security when you have to sacrifice to them the most important."

On the Wages of Improper Worship​

"If you're worshiping something proper, if you're uniting your multiplicities against something proper, you will get more life. If you're worshiping something improper, you will get more death... Any improper worship or any proper goal is the goal which devours you by getting closer to it."

On Historical Violence as Teacher​

"History is a very violent teacher like you always kind of pay the blood price."

On Stewardship vs. Ownership​

"A simple diagnosis would be the degree to which you say no this is mine as opposed to no this is God's and right now God has placed it under my stewardship. And if God chooses to place it elsewhere that's where it should be."

On Modernity's Weakness​

"One of the biggest prices of modernity and conscious effort of modernity and neoliberalism in particular it's precisely make it made us very defenseless against this sort of spiritual struggle."

Conclusion​

This conversation represents a sophisticated attempt to understand our current civilizational moment through the lens of proper and improper hierarchies, spiritual warfare, and the collapse of secular organizing principles. Both Hall and Shchelin agree that we stand at a critical juncture where the 400-year experiment of secular liberalism is ending, and the question is not whether hierarchies will emerge, but whether they will be proper (oriented toward God and life) or improper (self-referential and oriented toward control). The digital revolution amplifies both the dangers and opportunities, creating an environment where spirits can operate with unprecedented freedom while also potentially enabling new forms of proper communion and hierarchy.