• 1250: Roger Bacon lays the groundwork for the so-called Renaissance.

• Setsafar views Bacon’s contributions as positive advancements in scientific inquiry, but criticizes the later secularization of knowledge, when the pursuit of knowledge became detached from relational wisdom.

  “All knowledge is relational. When it is sought for its own sake, if it is sought without personal interaction with the Dao [God] and man, it is deception that we seek.” – Brother Zou Delan

• Setsafar calls the Italian Renaissance the “Beginning of the Dark Era”, seeing it as a return to pagan ideals, human-centered glorification, hubris, and absolutist politics.
• The Renaissance, from their perspective, was not a rebirth of wisdom but a reversion to adolescence, glorifying individual achievement over relational responsibility and symbiotic governance.

• “The Renaissance was a rejection of the relational worldview. It glorified man apart from his Creator” and apart from each other.

  “Knowledge does not beckon us to change. It may even tell us that we were better off as adolescents. Wisdom, however, demands that we change, or it will not lend us its aid.” – Lady Tao Ya

• Seen by Setsafar as both a blessing and a curse.

• While it democratized knowledge, it also amplified both wisdom and error, making truth more accessible, but also spreading falsehood more efficiently.

  “Technology is a tool we are graciously granted. It is always more than we deserve. For by it, wisdom is spread more efficiently and is made more accessible. For by it, error is spread more efficiently and is made more accessible. What error cannot account for, is its own destruction in the wake. Wisdom always bears better fruit, so technology is to be striven for, always.” — Brother Samuel Ferris

• Setsafar sees the early Reformation as a response to the Renaissance. Growing superstitions were rampant within the Church, and state absolutism was taking hold. If state power had fully solidified in the Holy Roman Empire by Luther’s day, his stance may never have succeeded.

• But alas, the Reformation lost its way after Calvin. It became engrossed in hyper-materialism, ultimately returning to the same hubris that fueled the Renaissance.

  “The Church is not wood and stone, but the company of believing men, one soul in a thousand bodies.” — Martin Luther

  “Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God. Without knowledge of God, there is no knowledge of self.” — John Calvin

  “It’s natural to believe in the supernatural. It never feels natural to accept only natural things.” — Henri de Lubac

• Petrus Ramus was a towering figure in the reform of logic and education. He sought to simplify Aristotelian logic, making it accessible and practical for real-world application. His influence on Protestant Scholasticism was paramount, shaping educational systems and philosophical thought well into modern times.

• Setsafar praises his efforts to democratize knowledge and reject the elitism of university systems that treated logic as an abstract art, rather than a tool for discernment and wisdom.

  “Knowledge must serve life. It must be a tool for discernment, not a labyrinth of endless abstractions.” — Petrus Ramus

• Setsafar sees Johannes Althusius as the most important thinker of modernity.
• Where other political writings wrestle with the control of everything, Althusius focused on humankind’s hearts. Instead of asking “how should governments rule?”, he asked “how should people live?”. His work shows that polity is the natural outcome of people living rightly.
• His work on federalism and symbiotic governance becomes a foundational text for Setsafar philosophy.

• “Where others sought power, Althusius sought peace.”

  “Ask not ‘how should our rulers behave?’ Ask rather ‘how should we behave?’ The latter determines the former.” — Father Nkosingiphile [name is Zulu for “Given by God”]

• Setsafar sees these events as two sides of the same coin: both were responses to absolutism, but they unfolded in very different ways.
• Westphalia is remembered as the last major triumph of relational governance, a peaceful settlement that recognized local autonomy and religious freedom.

• In contrast, the English Civil War represents the violent consequences of failing to uphold relational governance, leading to chaos, violence, and the temporary collapse of monarchy.

  “Rahnami is mercy. Before confronting the evil outside, confront the evil inside. Fix the lack of Rahnami in yourself, and then, and only then can you confront the evil outside. If you want a second chance, give it freely. If you want third, fourth, fifth chance, give it freely. You cannot understand the poverty out there, without first confronting the poverty in here.” — The Rahnami

• Important to note that Setsafar has accepted the scholarship of A.P. Martinich’s The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics
• Hobbes’ Leviathan is interpreted by Setsafar as a disastrous return to absolutism.
• Hobbes, a supporter of Cromwell initially, switches back to favor Charles II after Cromwell’s failure to produce a successor. Hobbes claims to have never left Calvinism, but instead has tried to remain true to it. His hyper-materialism was Tertullian-like, not secular at all.

• “Where Althusius preached mutual responsibility, Hobbes writes a tome defending the Divine Rights of Kings.”

  “A man who makes fear the foundation of governance has already abandoned mercy. What he rules is not a commonwealth, but a prison.” — Father Nkosingiphile

• Setsafar scholars critique this as a superficial revolution that replaced one absolutist system with another.

• They see John Locke’s ideas as fundamentally flawed, promoting individualism over relationalism.

  “A man alone is a shadow. A man in a family is a tree. A man in a community is a forest.” — Brother Tupaq Amaru

• Setsafar interprets the American War of Independence as a war against freedom rather than for it.
• “The American colonies were freer under England than they ever were under their own government.”
• The mass exodus to Canada is seen as a rejection of the American experiment.

• As predicted by Patrick Henry, the newly established government became centralized and controlling. A Republic only on paper.

  “The colonists did not fight for liberty. They fought to create their own Leviathan.” — Brother Chigu

  “Rebelling against a parliamentary monarchy, the Americans created their own parliament (Congress = Supreme Court) and monarch (President).” — Doctor Luvsan

  “Government is a mirror of its culture. Cut off the head, and it grows an almost identical replacement. Only more vigilant to prevent decapitation — even at the expense of the culture it mirrors. Polity can only change when culture changes.” — Mother Bethania [Bethania Noab Azim]

• Viewed as the beginning of the true Anthropocene decline.

• The war to end all wars only brought more.

  “Europe is to be drenched in blood… because, in an obscure town, a madman kills a prince” – The Manchester Guardian

  “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime” – Earnest Hemingway

• Setsafar chronicles emphasize the moral failings of both Axis and Allied powers, refusing to glorify the victors.
• There were no righteous nations in this war. Only tragedies.
• Cold War was the result of U.S. banks funding totalitarianism.

“By 1919 Krupp was already giving financial aid to one of the reactionary political groups which sowed the seed of the present Nazi ideology. Hugo Stinnes was an early contributor to the Nazi Party (National Socialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei). By 1924 other prominent industrialists and financiers, among them Fritz Thyssen, Albert Voegler, Adolph [sic] Kirdorf, and Kurt von Schröder, were secretly giving substantial sums to the Nazis. In 1931 members of the coalowners association which Kirdorf headed pledged themselves to pay 50 pfennigs for each ton of coal sold, the money to go to the organization which Hitler was building.” – U.S. Kilgore Comitte in their “Elimination of German Resouces”

“Robert Stinnett’s work Day of Deceit presents compelling evidence that Roosevelt’s administration was fully aware that economic sanctions would provoke Japan into war. Rather than preventing conflict, these actions ensured it. One cannot read Stinnett’s account without grappling with the moral implications of such political maneuvering.” — Brother Amos Kwan

• Setsafar labels this period as the American empire’s campaign to maintain global hegemony.

• The wars of this era were not about peace, justice, or freedom. They were about control.

  “In other words, war has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.” – George F. Kennan

  “From a strategic point of view, it has to be seen as a complete failure, and yet it went on for 20 years, why did it go on for 20 years? Because the defense industry companies that make the bombs, that make the planes, that make the vehicles, and also the private military contractors that now are fighting the wars in lieu of public military personnel, they made trillions of dollars as long as the war continued. So they didn’t care if the war was ever won, the goal was for the war to simply continue forever… the point is not to win the war, but to make sure it never ends because you’re going to keep making profits.” – Daniel Kovalik