An Encounter with Gog: A Debate on Civilization

Gog: You’ve made a snack of me on your pages, writer. A hundred years later, you come along claiming to have unmasked those charlatans I bought with my own money. With the immense fortune I amassed from the ashes of the First World War, I personally bought those Western philosophers, scientists and politicians you’re all so proud of. I lived reality; you’re just watching from the sidelines, taking notes.

The Writer: You did not live reality, Gog — you merely financed it. When you saw that the promise of salvation coming from those “great men” before you was in fact a lust for power, what did you do? Instead of fighting, you fled into madness; madness was your most comfortable and cowardly refuge. Because your money and your mind were the products of a civilization whose soul had already rotted, worshipping matter. I, on the other hand, am not watching from the sidelines — today, facing those algorithm-priests and data-preachers of Silicon Valley, I stand not just with my mind but with a national stance rooted in this soil, in a civilization whose faith runs ancient.

Gog: Not fleeing, are you? Then what are you fighting with — a few fancy traditional words? At least the men I faced were bold enough to change the world. That new generation of “saviors” you’re fighting doesn’t even ask you for money. They reduce you directly to data points and engagement rates and swallow your soul whole. They sell you a “personalized happiness” free of effort, pain or loneliness. How will you survive against such an inviting and soft totalitarianism with that faith, that nature, that nationalist mind you trust so much? You’ll go mad too, writer!

The Writer: Your biggest mistake was believing that everything has a price, and therefore that everything can be bought. My weapon against this new global order that says “I will optimize you” is not billions of dollars; it is humanity’s incalculable, irrational and unpredictable nature. You saw the flaw and went mad; I, instead, am building a civil resistance that says “man is flawed — let him stay that way, that is freedom.” Our resistance is not merely a rejection of digital algorithms; it is an existential struggle against a technological imperialism trying to erase nations’ memory, faith and spirituality. I refuse to become that “last man” bowing to manufactured consent. We fight by quietly rejecting the projects of perfection.

Gog: Fine words… I’ll give you credit — you’re sharp enough to see how Plato’s shadows on the wall have turned into pixels today. But you cannot tear down that illusion of “there is no alternative” in politics merely by clinging to your faith and your roots. Without collapsing the system’s data flow from the inside the way I did, you cannot step outside the cave. Will your moral resistance do what my money could not?

The Writer: Yes. Because our age is not waiting for a rootless billionaire like you to be born. Those who will see the truth are not the ones with money, but the clear-eyed readers who push aside the false paradises dictated by algorithms with the back of their hand, and embrace the real world with all its pain and uncertainty. We plant our feet in our own national soil against your false universal-salvation nonsense. You saw powerlessness and could not bear it; we, instead, will make that very powerlessness the foundation of our stance before the Creator and our right to remain human.

Gog: Maybe you’re right, writer… Maybe madness was too easy a path to escape the iron cage of reason. My money was defeated; your faith and your mind are still standing. But we both know the game isn’t over yet. Don’t forget the line I wrote in my own book: “The world is full of saviors; but whether it is worth saving is another matter.”

The Writer: Not worth saving — worth living true to one’s nature, worth being understood, worth remaining free, Gog. And that is a truth worth fighting for wisely to the very end on this soil, not worth going mad over.

This article was first published on 10 May 2026 in Bursa Hakimiyet.