Image: Photo by Sara Riaño on Unsplash
I have come to believe that every civilisation is bound together by invisible allegiances. We have seen Empires have risen and fallen throughout the human history, but beneath the armies and treaties lie deeper forces that shape where people find belonging, where they place their loyalty, and how elites claim legitimacy.
Across history, three such forces have defined the “subtle world order”: the State, Religion, and Capital. I do not think these are mere ideologies but enduring modes of belonging.
At different times, each has claimed the deepest allegiance of millions of people, the state promising security and welfare, religion offered meaning, and capital fuels individual prosperity, yet over and over again we have seen that when, left unchecked, these ideas has been bent into domination: states into tyranny, religions into fanaticism, and capital into exploitation.
The question then, is not which should dominate, but how they can be held in balance?
Here, in my opinion ancient Indian philosophy offers a striking guide. Its framework of Dharma (duty), Artha/Kama (prosperity and desire), and Moksha (liberation) mirrors these three forces almost exactly.
This essay traces the three world orders across history, from Ashoka at Kalinga to Baghdad’s golden age to the Gilded Age of industry, before turning to our own era, where all three forces now collide once again.
The challenge of our time is whether we can hold them in balance, or whether one will again overwhelm the rest.
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The Age of States
From the first millennium BCE through late antiquity, the State became the primary container of human life. Persia’s Achaemenids forged a continental system of satraps, royal roads, and standardised coinage that bound diverse peoples into one political fabric.
Qin China in the third century BCE unified warring kingdoms with Legalist rigour, imposing common weights, measures, and script but also harsh laws and collective punishments.
In India, the Maurya Empire built one of the ancient world’s most centralised bureaucracies. After the bloody conquest of Kalinga, Ashoka proclaimed conquest by Dhamma and issued edicts of moral governance across the subcontinent. There is a fight on whether his Buddhist sympathies predated the war or not but his inscriptions indeed mark a turn toward non-violence in both policy and rhetoric.
Meanwhile, Rome expanded from city-state to Mediterranean empire, fusing law, citizenship, and infrastructure into an enduring imperial machine.
The state world order promised security, justice, and belonging. Yet, it quickly became an engine of domination.
Rome’s vaunted Pax Romana rested on slavery, tribute, and endless frontier wars. Qin unity brought standardisation but also terror. Similarly, Persian toleration coexisted with merciless suppression of rebellion.
The State ideally could protect and integrate communities, but it just as often commanded and exploited, delivering glory to the few at the top and hardship to the many below.
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The Age of Faith
As great empires started fracturing, religion became the deepest source of belonging. I suppose people grew weary of fragile mortal kings claiming to be gods, and instead turned to speak with God directly and from late antiquity through the medieval period, Christianity spread across Europe, Islam across the Middle East & North Africa, Buddhism across Asia.
For the first time in human history , loyalty to God eclipsed loyalty to emperor and the religious world order promised moral clarity, spiritual salvation, and a sense of community beyond the fragile bonds of state.
The Abbasid caliphate fostered a golden age of learning in Baghdad. In Europe, monastic communities began preserving knowledge, well knowledge that, ironically, early religious zeal had once destroyed. Institutions influenced by Upanishadic and Buddhist thoughts linked courts, monasteries, and trade routes across Central and East Asia, offering rulers both moral legitimacy and practical networks.
Yet the noble promise was often hijacked and religion which was meant to unite, became a weapon of power.
The Crusades drenched Europe and the Middle East in blood, launched under banners of faith but driven as much by politics. Buddhism, though less associated with violence, became entangled in court politics in the east, where monasteries were drawn into imperial legitimacy and the expansion of the Islamic caliphates too, was shaped by military campaigns that stretched across continents, where unfortunately populations were often subdued with considerable brutality.
Religion if used and channeled properly could elevate conscience, but it just as easily served rulers and priests who claimed divine sanction while pursuing authority. In the name of God, they justified war, suppressed the powerless, and consolidated control.
What began as a search for salvation, peace, and unity often devolved into a means of control, conquest, and division.
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The Age of Capital
Then came the Industrial Revolution, which brought forth a new allegiance: not to crown or religious groups, but to prosperity. I guess, the fatigue of religious conscience left people searching for new meaning, and the authority of the state, though still present, gave ground to the organising power of markets.
Factories, railways, and global trade transformed capitalism from a mere force into the central principle of modern life, moving crown and creed to the periphery, still enduring, but diminished.
In this new world, the measure of success was now capital measured in money, production, and material wealth and capitalism promised an exciting future: new opportunities, mobility, and individual prosperity.
In Britain, industrialisation provided fresh avenues for growth. In the United States, the “rags to riches” narrative became famous, inspiring millions to believe in the possibility of upward mobility. The Meiji Restoration in Japan demonstrated how industrial modernisation could bring forth a nation into the global arena.
Capitalism, at least in its idealised form, promised to lift many from poverty, supposed to reward hard work and innovation, and fuel the growth of knowledge and well-being. And yes, it does all of that, but often at the expense of the very people it claims to help. I guess its just one of life’s many ironies.
And yet again, like a broken record, the promise was seized by a few. Industrialisation created vast fortunes but also deep inequalities, as the Gilded Age (roughly 1870s-1900) in the U.S. saw monopolies and robber barons while workers faced perilous conditions for meagre pay.
Factories that created wealth, also created slums and misery and the exploitation of the global South became the engine of prosperity for the global North.
Multinationals mine minerals essential to modern technology while leaving local communities impoverished and ecosystems degraded.
And Once again Capitalism that ideally could empower and enrich, often created concentrated wealth and commodified human life and turned progress itself into a tool of domination. Sad as it is, thats the reality.
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The Subtle World Orders Today
The State, Religion, and Capital have never been passing trends. They are enduring ways of belonging: the state offers security and identity, religion gives meaning and community, and capital promises individual prosperity.
Each began with noble ideals, yet each has been bent by the so called powerful, turning states into domination, religion into control, and capital into exploitation. None of these forces has disappeared. They remain as present as ever, though in shifting proportions.
We have seen Nationalism reviving across continents, from Asia to Europe, as populations weary of globalisation turn back to the state. Religion, too, is reasserting itself, whether in Turkey’s return to Islamic identity, in Iran’s theocracy, evangelical Christianity in the United States, or in the civilisational vision of India and through it all, capital remains the most global force, with corporations and financial markets shaping lives and policies across borders. In my view, these orders now operate simultaneously, colliding and overlapping more than ever before.
In some places, religion bolsters the state. In others, the state shields capital. Everywhere, individuals pursue prosperity while navigating the pulls of faith and nation.
The Subtle World Orders are always at work and the challenge of our time is to hold them in balance, so that none dominates at the expense of the others.
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The Challenge of Balance: A Society for the Future
In my reading of the History, none of these orders is sufficient on its own. The State without restraint becomes tyranny, religion without humility breeds fanaticism and capital without ethics yields exploitation. We have seen it over and over again and the question is not which should dominate, but how they can be held in balance. Ancient Indian thought offers a profound framework for human flourishing through three key pillars:
Duty (Dharma), Prosperity & Desire(Artha & Kama), and Liberation (Moksha).
I found that these align perfectly with the three Subtle World Orders namely the State, Capital, and Religion, each representing a crucial aspect of life.
Duty corresponds with the state world order: Just as the state governs with responsibility and ethical laws, duty binds individuals to their communities and ensures justice.
Prosperity align with the capitalist world order: These pillars speak to the pursuit of material wealth and the ambitions that drive human progress. I strongly believe Capitalism, when properly directed, provides opportunity and growth.
Liberation connects with the religious world order: This represents the highest goal of human life: spiritual freedom, inner peace, moral depth and transcendence.
A healthy society in my opinion should not elevate any one of these above the others. It should balance them, ensuring security without oppression, prosperity without exploitation, and spirituality without domination.
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Toward a Balanced Future
I do not think that the subtle world orders will ever vanish. They are permanent undercurrents of our society, shaping how power is legitimised and where allegiance flows. Our task is not to deny them, but to balance them.
Ancient Indian thought reminds us that human flourishing rests on three pillars. Aligned, they provide a framework for justice, material well-being, and inner depth.
A balanced order would be one where the state serves its citizens, capital sustains societies, and religion fosters compassion and the true measure of world order is not which empire dominates, but whether these three enduring forces can coexist without overwhelming one another.
If we lose that balance, we will only repeat the cycles of domination.
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Pathways to Balance
What would it take to keep these forces in equilibrium? I do not think any single blueprint exists, but a few principles stand out:
- Checks and Counterweights: States must restrain capital’s excesses and protect freedom of belief, while religion and civil society provide ethical brakes on both.
- Cross-pollination of Values: Markets informed by duty, states guided by conscience, and religions that embrace human flourishing. Balance in my opinion is more about mutual restraint then separation of these ideas.
- The State as Anchor but Bound: As Chanakya said , State is essential, for without it prosperity cannot last. But if they are left unchecked, states harden into tyranny and the examples are all over the history, both ancient and modern. When rulers exploit the very people who give them power, they are setting themselves for failure. Strong laws and shared power can keep the state in check.
Balance does not mean we should erase these forces altogether, it just mean letting them exist in tension, each strong enough to keep the others in check yet flexible so it does not break.