Moral Anticipation

by Ana Bazac

Anticipation is an essential function of the mind/ the consciousness, because it precedes and prepares the reaction of the organism to the stimuli of the environment. By preceding it, anticipation is a rapid review of the possibilities and conditions and, as a result, it is the frame of the best choice/the best model of reaction.

In the methodology of cognition view, anticipation is a pattern of the next perceptions of the world: as such, this pattern / this modelling pattern is a “principle of pure understanding”[1] – in our current “translation”, a mental meta structure of cognition –, while perception is “the consciousness of an appearance (before any concept)”[2], and “The principle, which anticipates all perceptions, as such, runs thus: In all appearances the sensation, and the real, which corresponds to it in the object (realitas phaenomenon), has an intensive magnitude, i.e., a degree”[3]. Simpler, sensations can never be anticipated, because they are determined by the conjunction of physiology with the external stimuli, but perceptions of and within the a priori of space and time can, as magnitudes or degrees of future reality/appearances via the empirical sensations[4]. Here, anticipation is a presentiment organising the degrees of the next sensations.

The neuro-physiological research has substantiated and confirmed the Kantian epistemology of anticipation, demonstrating that “the principle” is a “super-ordering” system in the brain resulted from neuro and bio-chemical vectors and connections[5],  and the ubiquity of anticipative ways and structuring in the deployment of many types of reactions[6].

***

All human reactions and behaviours are moral, because they take place in society and between social beings, morality being – the conscious or not, the intentional or not – general feature of human reactions and behaviours[7].

The oldest model of social reactions and behaviours is the interhuman discursive communication: between the sender subject and the receiver (S→R).  Because the unique peculiarity of both – thus, of the human beings as such – was/ is logos (λόγος): reason articulately expressed, or words/language symbolising the explanations after examination, the accounts, and synthesising the principles of understanding. Accordingly, both the relata and the relatum are social, that is, each depends on the other, and the vector of this interdependence, language, is the means, as for instance the Sophists emphasised.

But this model competes – rather with the ascent of modernity – with the one of methodological individualism: where the social interconnectedness is fragmented, a reaction emerging from a subject/(S) considered either the active origin of reactions/behaviours or the passive receiver of “anonymous” others’ reactions or behaviours. The methodological individualism was the main explicative model in the European thought, but obviously not the single one. And it is useful as long as it is not absolutized: because the whole picture is not 1 fragment + 1 fragment etc./ an individual responds/behaves in such or such way that is thus generalised/generalisable, but the whole explained through relationships/ the whole system of relationships between parts. Otherwise, the explanation of one individual’s behaviour is reduced to a vulgar biological determinism.

And obviously, the methodological individualism, too, refers to the dominant conceptions of international relations: because these relations are also fragmented, and seen from the standpoint of the dominant (individual and collective) subject/(S) that is their real or imagined master.

A result of the methodological individualism is the axiological relativism: the narratives about the reactions, behaviours and attitudes of the many different subjects in the social relations arrives to be similar and similarly evaluated/labelled, thus axiologically equivalent. And a mirror of this methodological individualism is a “static” ontology of the human as a group of concepts logically derived according to a hierarchical pattern that however is only a means of a biased representation of also the moral side of social relations.

***

An example is the topic of the present note, moral anticipation: anticipation not as a general feature in the human relations and processes, but as a psycho-sociological kind manifested as foreseeing others’ sentiments and as prevention of those sentiments which are not suitable to the transmitter/ (S). The moral anticipation is always conscious: the neuro-physiological basis of anticipation is clear, psychologically the mirror neurons allow the mental image of others’/(R) feelings, but the moral anticipation – either alone, related to the conscious intention to grasp others’ sentiments as a result of the subject’s/(S) discourse (or/and facts), or accompanying other kinds of anticipation in scientific, political, cultural etc. discourses – is always present, implied in every social relationship. Accordingly, the moral anticipation issues from the neuro-physiologically based psychological need to prevent the individual’s bad feelings.

Now, the moral anticipation is not a simple neutral methodological principle: because of the social interdependence and mutuality, the moral anticipation concerns especially the bad feelings, the sadness, offense, annoyance felt by other persons. In other words, all types of feelings can be suitable or harmful to the sender/(S) – and he/she fits the discourse/fact to the expectation of having triggered the suitable (bad or good) feelings of others/(R) –, but the bad feelings of the receivers/(R) are the ones which, normally, are avoided. Why? Functionally: because the bad feelings of the receivers/(R) could transform into bad, harmful responses to the sender/(S). Morally: because the humans apply what they can understand, the evil result of the treatment of others/(R) only as means[8].

Theoretically, the criterion of detecting and separating the good and bad feelings of others/(R) is their universalizability, and the universalizability must be made aware by the subjects/(S) who own/emit the message, first as rejection of bad feelings if they (S) were in the imagined similar situation of the receivers/(R). If the question clearly posed is “which feelings induced to others/(R) are desirable to and assumed by me/the transmitter subject/(S)?”, then we can distinguish between the moral feelings: which are all socially determined, but are not morally equivalent.

Foreseeing others’ moral feelings is not a question of simple mirror neurons mechanism[9], but one of a complex superposition of different aspects of moral evaluation: of values and moral criteria, of interests, of contexts. And since anticipation is the mental trajectory from the other’s/(R) future state (of mind) to the present moment of the sender subject/(S) – and thus it is not tantamount to foreknow and forecast, the mental trajectory from the present moment of the subject/(S) to the others’/(R) future state – the moral anticipation is also the prevention of bad feelings/ situations of the receivers/(R) of the discourse: from the present to the others’/(R) future state.

***

To prevent the others/(R) from feeling bad, sad, offended, humiliated, reduced, turned into bad persons (situation that the subject/(S) abhors when it is related to him/her/(S)): this is the core of moral anticipation, and the proof of moral sensitivity.

Traditionally, moral sensitivity and empathy – two concepts of the ontology of morals, but mainly discussed as psychological – are considered in a static way: they are contemplative attitudes – and many intellectuals consider that their moral sensitivity and empathy are accomplished in the criticism they express in their artistic, scientific, philosophical narratives –, post the facing of others’ /(R) situation. “To feel what[10] the other/(R) feel”: and then, to feel pity towards others/(R), to help them.

Actually, to feel what the others/(R) do feel is possible through language and images[11]. This feeling in mirror becomes part – as a hyphen, an intermediate between contemplation and foreseeing and, on the other hand, prevention – of the moral anticipation. And thus, the moral anticipation – since its starting point is the representation of the others’/(R) feelings – is prevention: of worsening others’/(R) feelings through the sender subject’s/(S) contribution; thus, to annul the bad feelings and situations of others/(R). Only by preventing the deterioration of others’ feelings and our contribution to this embittering of others’ feelings and situations, moral anticipation takes place, sensitivity becomes real, and empathy – active.

However, the ethical discussion of moral anticipation is forbidden in and by the dominant “pensée unique”.  The discourse is “post-truth” and the main takeaway is to ignore what is exterior to the dominant feelings. But in this way, the human faculty to rationally represent the world shrinks, flattens. The model of the human being becomes deprived by the sensitivity towards others/(R) – they being evaluated only from the standpoint of the usefulness to the “happy man” (S): who is pushed to transfer the knowledge and problematizing of existence to inanimate robots[12].

In the general view of human beings as unique persons each of them[13] – and this general view likes to consider itself as the “single respectable tradition” in the thinking about the humans – the discourse that annihilates the moral anticipation seems to be inadvertent: but they coexist without trouble. In fact, this coexistence accepts the distance between the pink personalism and reality, as well as the difference between the accepted persons and the unaccepted, excluded ones: only the first have the real right to discourse transmission and, thus, to praxis standardisation.

But man’s reason is open and always novel. Man can foresee and prevent. And he can fight for the realisation of these capacities, of the free manifestation of the people as “multitude” of unique personalities[14].

***

Someone does not care about the sadness, the moral suffering he causes others/(R): he/she/(S) is a bad person. The evil starts when one/(S) emits messages 1) which are, au fond, false and 2) cause moral suffering to receivers/(R). If the sending subject does not care about the moral suffering of others/(R), he/she/(S) does care neither about the physical suffering he/she causes.

Actually, the bad person/(S) does want to inflict to others/(R) both moral and physical suffering: because he/she knows – he/she easily can anticipate – that the moral suffering expands itself from within, as trauma, long-lasting, recurring trauma[15] resulted on the basis of an anticipating representation of continuous and never-ending suffering (fear, desperation) and its causes. Imagine the children[16].

And more: the bad person/(S) knows that the physical suffering – he/she does not even think how would he/she feel if he/she were starving – generates moral suffering: “At some point, hunger stopped being just physical, and started to erode the mind. You would see people wandering aimlessly, not even asking for food anymore. Children stopped playing. Conversations became quieter, slower. People forgot certain tastes… When people talk about starvation, they often think only of empty stomachs. But starvation is not just a bodily affliction. It eats away at the human spirit. It robs people of memory, emotion and clarity. Days pass in a fog, filled with survival tasks: fetching water, searching for something to eat, waiting in endless lines, watching others faint beside you… Parents, especially mothers, carry unbearable guilt – not just for failing to feed their children, but for the mere act of bringing them into this world, and for beginning to lose themselves, forgetting how to provide comfort”[17].

The essence, as total result, of moral suffering is the lack of joie de vivre, the definitive loss of the joy of life. When people become forcedly malnourished, they lose the moral energy to taste the life’s supplies: they lose the “dopamine” stimulus and marker, since life lost the marks fuelling the energy to confront and create[18].

***

The absolute lack of empathy of the perpetrator subject is revealed when he/she denies the ideas he/she conceived of and the facts he/she implemented: as “starvation”[19], substituting this word with “malnutrition” resulted from “some dysfunctions” the victims themselves being guilty of. Actually, there is no essential medical difference between starvation and malnutrition, both being a very severe condition[20], generating eventually only degrees of very bad physical and psychical long-lasting, even permanent and irreversible consequences[21]. And how could a normal, so inherently good person, pretexts the “inaccurate data, inconsistent methodology, potential bias led to false assertions that were utilized by ICC”[22], in front of evidences[23] and when the UN researchers and bodies[24], letting aside the aid bodies[25], including Médecins sans frontière, have warned of “mass starvation” in Gaza, and much before 2025[26]?

Is this illustration of moral and physical suffering not a removing from the theoretical problem of moral anticipation? No, it is not. Because, although every physical suffering generates psychical/moral trauma – and every moral trauma involves harmful physical imbalances – the man-made[27] suffering negates even the reason-to-be of anticipation: the anticipative sensing network has appeared in the living beings precisely to avoid harm and prepare a reaction/the best reaction able to avoid harm and assure the good.

If so, the man-made suffering is a “moral failure”[28]. And an ontological failure, because it   opposes the moral anticipation that explains the genesis of moral reason. In other words, the human reason – moral, since it results from its social cognitive faculties of supervising the empirical logic – deploys with the help of anticipation, more concretely, of moral anticipation: but when it arrives to being used in order to be used to and legitimate the man-made suffering, it shuns this essential help/means. Moral anticipation ceases to be an ontogenetic brick in a coherent human ontology.

Quite the contrary, from the standpoint that induces man-made suffering, the human reason of a coherent ontology is minimised at the level of a crafty means that would anesthetise the moral anticipation. However, even though this standpoint believes that such deformed minimised reason would succeed, for eternity imposing its “Truth” and the ignorance of moral anticipation[29], in fact – but late – the humans can correct this ontological deviation.

But late. While the irreparable wasting of human lives was historically and socially determined, can it still be nowadays an ontological factor of the human reality?

***

Let’s leave aside for a moment the phenomenology discussing the one own’s feelings when he/she is hungry, and the ethics focused on the prevention of others’ suffering. From a liberal standpoint, you should not give to a hungry man fish, but a fishing rod, so he can catch the fish. The liberal logic anticipates the counter-productive action of giving aid to people who have no the means to assure their own living. Then, why does Israel refuse the right of Palestinians to the shore of Gaza Strip and free access to the Mediterranean? And free access to their land?

***

Erasing the moral anticipation is intended to construct a new, un-natural/non-human reality. It occurs with the “manufacturing” of moral feelings and knowledge. The goal of this manufacture is to induce moral exhaustion from which issue the loss of hope, the cancelation of activism and resistance and its substitution with passive and even “joyful” acceptance of the “inevitable”: “You want them to stop being citizens of a homeland and start being bodies trying to stay alive”[30].

In discourse, the “manufacturing” is “manipulation”, as this word is widely known. It prepares the listener/(R) to accept the standpoint of those/(S) inflicting man-made suffering. It is deployed only with words, and the listener becomes confused: he/she no longer distinguishes the value of collective, thus critical, judgements about humans from the absurd narrow individualism, arriving even to align behind this “elite” individualism. Perhaps in his/her deep down, he/she/(R) does not believe the “hard-to-believe”[31], but his/her conscious stratum of immediate reactions/accommodation pushes him to forgetting the search for truth, and to consider the deformation of or lies about reality as accreditable answers to this search.  However, in this way he/she becomes delusional[32]. For this reason, the domination over the human discourse is the fundamental “sin”[33].

As it is known from history, from time to time, philosophy was expelled from polis, because it was considered a danger for the power circles. And still as it is known, a way to defend itself was philosophy’s will to suggest that its development as schools and branches, mutually isolated from each other, would avoid its inherent criticism concerning the power relations.  An incessant abstract technique of many “isms” is not dangerous, isn’t it? A branch of philosophy apparently very neutral was/is phenomenology.  But here it is, even though its viewpoint is how the world does appear to the human consciousness – therefore, in a pattern of solipsistic relation of the subject with the vague and impersonal world which acquires colours only as a result of this relation – actually, the phenomenological question forces the enlargement of the pattern: the world in front of me is, first of all, the world of my fellow humans; and the world of my fellow humans gives my configuration as the subject of logos.

***

Is it possible to surpass the thought and facts which annihilate the moral anticipation?

First, and with a leap we already are in this moment[34], people must take clear note of them, must acknowledge them. In this respect, a fundamental struggle is that of the power circles endeavouring to keep their domination over information.

But, after a too long interval, things are known and thus, a clear public recognition of the historical neglect and disdain of moral anticipation is necessary. However, the present already out-of-date hierarchical relations of domination-submission generate not only the annihilation of moral anticipation, but also the rejection of its recognition.

The moral suffering of the ruler subject/(S) and the ruled (R) is different: the former/(S) fears his/her legal answerability; but also, his/her moral accountability:  generally – and laws were systematically constructed so as, with all the institutional counter-powers and examples of punishment, the rulers’ structural decisions to enjoy impunity – the leadership was and is exempted from the democratic obligations to respond legally and morally for the results of their decisions which remain untouchable[35].

The public recognition of the moral and, thus, “metaphysical” guilt of accountability which are not separated[36], and are universal even though the concrete guilt varies, is very difficult. However, not from a lack of cognitive ability, but because of the traditional asymmetric and hierarchical social relations and, thus education. And although we might surmise that every member of society who had another human in a lower social position than him transferred the guilt to this one, depriving himself of moral judgements about his own moral tasks, in fact this supposition itself is a culturally/socially exaggeration: because it isolates the moral conscience – that involves indestructibly the spirit of responsibility of the self – from moral motifs which generate moral energy, as love, care, friendship, compassion, mutual aid, human solidarity.

The difficulty is related to the moral shame: to recognise in front of others and also in front of one own’s conscience not only the concrete guilt but also the “metaphysical” guilt to having be fallen under the power of evil motifs which generate moral exhaustion, indifference, disdain, arrogance, lack of restraint and moral judgements. This is the evil – already banal, as Hannah Arendt pointed out –, and the clever psychology of religions urged the sinners to confess, because confession helps: to explain to oneself the causes and ways of the sin to having be fallen, to arrive, with the support of confessors as representatives of all humans, to alternative moral fuels, and to decide the paths of moral transformation. But, since we see that Hannah Arendt was right, religions’ urge and the conclusions of common people’s experience were to no end.

Anyway, the public recognition of the forgetting of moral anticipation implies the mastering of one’s shame, somehow transforming it into decisions to annul the basis of the concrete shame. The public recognition of the forgetting of moral anticipation implies to (know how to) admit one’s mistake: not to ask for forgiveness in a pharisaic way – although it is difficult even to ask – but to admit one’s mistake. Science intrinsically implies criticism/self-criticism, the recognition of errors, because the cognitive process itself implies the evaluation of reactions, actions, solutions, therefore their criticism. On a social (political) level, is it difficult to admit moral mistakes: because of the pattern of asymmetrical relationships of power (domination-submission, superior-inferior hierarchy). Of course, asymmetrical relationships can also be socially neutral (the teacher-student model). But 1) the teacher must anticipate the best explanation and not make mistakes, 2) and if he is wrong, he must openly admit and explain where he went wrong, etc.: imposing the wrong point of view is the most counterproductive for both the teacher and the student.

The moral suffering of the ruled (R), as well as their recognition of their responsibility generate and manifest in different ways. As we see today, (S) doesn’t experience moral shame and doesn’t feel accountable. But (R), even though he/she is not the direct decision-maker, knows that he/she is an indirect cause of the evil, because he/she doesn’t oppose the use of his/her taxes to wage war, becoming unwitting participants in another’s conflict. Accordingly, (R) may transform his/her moral suffering into a general physical and social condition and illness: the Japanese hikikomori phenomenon[37], withdrawal of adolescents from society/active life, spread to Italy[38], France[39] and other countries, and, although its name appeared in the 1990s, was experienced in Japan as social- and anthropo- phobia already in the 70s[40]. What can they do in front of the normalisation of war[41] and the institutional surveillance that equates critique with foes of the state and “international community” and forbids peaceful protests, imposing with all means the capitalist “rule of game”[42]?

It’s not the direct poverty that determines either apathy and retreat, or unrest[43], but the structural injustice

***

Can it be reconciliation between (S) and (R), that is between the masters of exclusion of moral anticipation and the victims? Well, it may occur only by radically correcting the facts of annihilating moral anticipation. By cancelling/changing the deep causes of the phenomena that led to the annihilation of moral anticipation.

Only in this way reconciliation substitutes the endless series of revenge. Actually, (S) does not want the end of revenge series, because only the logic of this series allows it to justify that it exists precisely by ignoring/excluding the moral anticipation. It develops the finer means of anticipation in military, but not in moral.

***

The goal of this note was to show that from any philosophical view[44] moral maximalism is, far from being an exception and a Kantian utopia, the deep structure of the human reasoning and the frame-criterion of moral judgements of the everyday life that, although sometimes challenges moral compromises and even questions without answers, develops only by leaning against the maximal moral criteria. These criteria are not abstract philosophical fruits – do not forget that Kant stressed that the transcendental principle of the categorical imperative is, indeed, a principle of reason that can be understood by everyone – and the proof is moral anticipation.

References

 

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[1] Immanuel Kant. 1998. Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), Translated and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, Cambridge University Press, A161, p. 285.

[2] Ibidem, B 201, p. 285.

[3] Ibidem, A166, p. 290.

[4] Ibidem, B209-A169, p. 291.

[5] Florian Waszak, Pedro Cardoso-Leite, Gethin Hughes. 2012. “Action effect anticipation: Neurophysiological basis and functional consequences”, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 36: 943–959; Tianye Jia et al. 2016. “Neural basis of reward anticipation and its genetic determinants”, PNAS, Vol. 113, No 14: 3879-3884; Linda Fiorini et al. 2021. “Neural Basis of Anticipatory Multisensory Integration”, Brain Sciences, 11, 843: 1-12.

[6] Ana Bazac. 2018. “Review of Anticipation: Learning from the Past. The Russian/Soviet Contributions to the Science of Anticipation”, International Journal of General Systems, Volume 47, Issue 04: 374-393. The book, edited by Mihai Nadin, was published in 2015.

[7] See Aristotle’s relation between moral and habit, (ᾗδος/ethic – ἒδος/habit), Nicomachean Ethics, in Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 19, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1934. Book 2, 1., 1103a.

[8] Ana Bazac. 2024. “Our Most Important Everyday Use of Kant: The Categorical Imperative,” Analele Universității din Craiova, Seria Filosofie, N. 54 (2): 47-99.

[9] Marco Iacoboni, Mirela Dapretto. 2006. “The mirror neuron system and the consequences of its dysfunction”, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 7: 942–951.

[10] To feel what…, not how, because neuro-physiologically each feeling is unique. At the same time, the “how” and the “what” are mixed in the dominant ideology, till the neglecting of the what as if it would be tantamount to the how and, thus, impossible to be felt and compared.

[11] Every individual’s feelings are unique because every individual is unique and unrepeatable. They are qualia. But their structure and essence are universal, and expressible.

[12] Alexandre Kojève did not write in the time of AI, but he depicted the possible model of “happy man” exterior to the focus on knowledge and creation, Alexandre Kojève. 1997. Introduction à la lecture de Hegel. Leçons sur la Phénoménologie de l’esprit, professées de 1933 à 1939 à l’Ecole des Hautes Études, réunies et publiées par Raymond Queneau. Paris, Gallimard, (1947), Gallimard: 434-435.

[13] Ana Bazac. 2015.“Person – for Me, and Object – for the Other? How Does Humanism Occur?”, Dialogue and Universalism, Vol. XXV, No. 2: 104-115.

[14] Paolo Virno. 2004. A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life (2002), trans. I. Bertoletti, J. Cascaito, A. Casson [Los Angeles, New York: Semiotext(e)/ Foreign Agents]; Sergueï Mirkine, 2025. Pourquoi il est important de libérer toute la République populaire de Donetsk, 15 août, https://histoireetsociete.com/2025/08/15/pourquoi-il-est-important-de-liberer-toute-la-republique-populaire-de-donetsk-par-serguei-mirkine/: “First and foremost, it’s about people” (they all voted in 2014).

[15] It is the well-known “post-traumatic stress disorder”.

[16] Imagine the children: Maha Hussaini. 2023. Gaza children’s mental health goes from bad to worse, June 13, https://www.dci.plo.ps/en/article/22188/June-13,-2023—Middle-East-Eye-Gaza-children.

[17] Maha Hussaini. 2025. Gaza genocide: After months of deprivation, sugar reminds me why I’m fighting to be here, 8 August, https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-genocide-after-months-deprivation-sugar-reminds-me-why-im-fighting-be-here.

[18] Ibidem: “Now I understand. This is what they are fighting us with: dopamine. This is the energy they are rapidly draining from the bodies of an entire population. You cannot push a people determined to resist your attempts at forced expulsion unless you first strip them of life, hope and energy”.

[19] Israeli prime minister denies Gaza hunger as malnourished children flood hospitals daily, Aug. 14, 2025, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-08-14/malnourished-kids-arrive-daily-at-a-gaza-hospital-as-netanyahu-denies-hunger; Nigel Spier. 2025. In the Name of Love (Jewish Pride), August 14, https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/in-the-name-of-love-jewish-pride/.

[20] Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, Gaza Strip: Acute Malnutrition for 1 July – 15 August 2025 and Projection for 16 August – 30 September 2025, https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/c/1159698/?iso3=PSE.

[21] Amanda Ruggeri. 2024. How Starvation Causes Lasting Damage to the Body, March 6, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-starvation-causes-lasting-damage-to-the-body/; Gaza hospitals overwhelmed by malnutrition-linked complications as hunger crisis deepens under blockade: MSF, 22.07.2025, https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/gaza-hospitals-overwhelmed-by-malnutrition-linked-complications-as-hunger-crisis-deepens-under-blockade-msf/3638737.

[22] New study: There was no famine in Gaza… according to famine review groups’ own data, 24 February 2025, https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-study-there-was-no-famine-in-gaza-according-to-famine-review-groups-own-data/.

[23] Maha Hussaini. 2025. ‘You can see his bones’: In Gaza, parents struggle against child starvation and Israeli war crimes denial, 1 August, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gaza-parents-struggle-against-child-starvation-and-israel-war-crimes-denial.

[24] Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, Famine Review Committee: Gaza Strip, August 2025, https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_Famine_Review_Committee_Report_Gaza_Aug2025.pdf: famine is currently occurring in Gaza Governorate, and  Famine (IPC Phase 5) thresholds to be crossed in Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis Governorates in the coming weeks. See also, Famine in Gaza: ‘A failure of humanity itself’, says UN chief, 22 August 2025, https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/08/1165702.

[25] UN body says Israeli forces have killed over 1,000 aid-seekers in Gaza since May, as hunger worsens, July 23, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-war-palestinians-07-22-2025-8eb90d73c1b7499d3dbc8b8d95da65cc.

[26] More than 100 aid groups warn of ‘mass starvation’ in Gaza amid Israel’s war with Hamas, July 23, 2025, https://abcnews.go.com/International/100-aid-groups-warn-mass-starvation-gaza-blaming/story?id=123989368 (“Their statement warned of ‘record rates of acute malnutrition’”; and according to World Health Organization, “90% of Gaza’s population face difficulty accessing water”); but see Melvin Goodman. 2023. Israeli State Terrorism Over the Years, October 27, https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/10/27/israeli-state-terrorism-over-the-years/: “A 2012 UN report predicted the Palestinian enclave would be “unlivable” by 2020 if nothing was done to ease the blockade, and in June 2017 a UN report on living conditions in Gaza stated that all the indicators are going in the wrong direction and that deadline was actually approaching even faster than earlier predicted”; UN. The Question of Palestine- Timeline of Events, https://www.un.org/unispal/timeline/.

[27] Maha Hussaini and Mohammed al-Hajjar. 2025. Starvation in Gaza: Dizziness, fatigue and people collapsing in the streets, 24 July, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/starvation-gaza-dizziness-fatigue-and-people-collapsing-streets; Ahmed Dremly. 2025. In Gaza, bread is now a treasure and hunger a daily killer, 2 August, https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/gaza-bread-now-treasure-and-hunger-daily-killer.

[28] Saskia Osendarp et al. 2025. “The famines in Gaza and other conflict areas are a moral failure”, The Lancet, Volume 406, Issue 10503, August: 572-573.

[29] MEE staff. 2023. Israel-Palestine war: ‘We are fighting human animals’, Israeli defence minister says, 9 October, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-war-fighting-human-animals-defence-minister.

[30] Maha Hussaini. 2025. Gaza genocide: After months of deprivation, sugar reminds me why I’m fighting to be here, ibidem.

[31] Israeli army database suggests at least 83% of Gaza dead were civilians, https://www.972mag.com/israeli-intelligence-database-83-percent-civilians-militants/.

[32] And delusion – as self-delusion – is a very powerful state: it wants to persist, for this reason pushing to rejection of any information that would jolt it. And it surrounds itself with institutions that support it. (As the present Western elites coalition that has imposed silence about the facts of Israel and about its own facts surrounding Russia with military bases and NATO in order to conquer the Euro-Asian space for the survival of imperialist structural relations).

[33] Ana Bazac. 2022. “The Biggest Sin”, Agathos, Volume 13, Issue 2 (25):7-25.

[34] Roberto de Vogli et al. 2025. “Break the selective silence on the genocide in Gaza”, The Lancet, Volume 406, Issue 10504, August 16: 688-689.

[35] European Parliament sues Council over €150 billion defence loan scheme, Aug. 20, 2025, https://www.euractiv.com/section/defence/news/european-parliament-sues-council-over-e150-billion-defence-loan-scheme/.

[36] Karl Jaspers. 2000. The Question of German Guilt (1947), Translated by E.B. Ashton (1948), With a new Introduction by Joseph. W. Koterski (2000), New York: Fordham University Press, 68-69.

[37] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori#References.

[38] Hikikomori Italia – Associazione Nazionale Ritiro Sociale Volontario, https://www.hikikomoriitalia.it/2025/07/Panathlon-Hikikomori-Italia-protocollo.html.

[39] C’est quoi le syndrome d’hikikomori, qui touche 1,4 million de jeunes en France ?, https://www.femina.fr/article/le-syndrome-d-hikikomori-touche-1-4-millions-de-jeunes-en-france.

[40] John G. Russell. 1989. “Anxiety Disorders in Japan; A Review of the Japanese Literature on Shinkeishitsu and Taijinkyōfushō”, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 13: 391-403.

[41] John G. Russell. 2010. “War Games: Popular Culture and the Normalization and Valorization of War in the Information Society”, Bulletin of the Faculty of Regional Studies, Gifu University, 26(26): 113-132.

[42] John G. Russell. 2017. “Persons of Interest/Citizens 4 Change: Mass Movements, Focused Distraction, and

Elusive Accountability in the Panopticonic State,” New World Law and Order: Profile, Protest and Social Justice, Lecture Series, Beasley School of Law, Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies, Temple University Japan Campus, Apr 5;

See Jean Renoir’s La règle du jeu, 1939.

[43] Alexis de Tocqueville. 1952. L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (1856), Paris : Les Éditions Gallimard, édition électronique, pp. 92, 98, passim, 129-136, showed that not the poverty as such has generated the revolution, but inequality.

   As Robert K. Merton. 1938. “Social Structure and Anomie”, American Sociological Review, Vol. 3, No. 5 (Oct.): 672-682; see Stephen F. Eisenman. 2025. Addicted to The Times, August 22, https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/08/22/addicted-to-the-times/: “The lesson Merton’s essay offers… is that it’s not anomie or even poverty that causes spikes in crime; it’s inequality. The post-Covid spike in crime occurred when the division between haves and have-nots was especially stark; the former stayed home and had groceries delivered, while the latter did the delivering. The former retreated to the isolation of the countryside, while the latter suffered among the throngs in the city. The one got through the pandemic just fine while the other got sick and died at much higher rates”.

[44] Phenomenology, ethics, ontology, epistemology, social and political philosophy.