The Borders We Share: Erewhon’s Sands, Sinai’s Edge (Post 39)

 

The Borders We Share: A New Way to Fix a Broken World

Section 7: Deserts and Plains (Posts 37–42)

Post 39: Erewhon’s Sands, Sinai’s Edge: Nowhere to Share

Enigma of the Unclaimed Horizon

The desert is so still it feels like the world is holding its breath.Two arid stretches lie almost within sight of one another beneath the same merciless sun.

One is the Sinai Peninsula, a triangular wedge of rock and sand thrust between Africa and Asia—60,000 square kilometres of jagged wadis, granite mountains, and shifting dunes that have borne witness to every empire from the Pharaohs to the Ottomans to the present day. The other is the great sandy waste of Erewhon, Samuel Butler’s satirical nowhere-land, a desert plateau so remote and featureless that its inhabitants once outlawed machines, then forgot why, then remembered again—only to discover the machines had already won. In recent decades Laputa’s magnetic drift has begun to tug at Erewhon’s sands, stretching the desert unnaturally far until its dunes almost brush the real Sinai, as though the island above is trying to anchor itself by pulling the earth upward. The wind moves in slow, sighing waves across both; the sand whispers secrets it has kept for millennia; the line between myth and map becomes difficult to see through the heat haze.

Both deserts are silent.

Both are contested.

Both are places where “nowhere” has become somebody’s home.

Both are claimed by powers that rarely walk their full length.

I arrive with the companions who have crossed every fractured frontier of this series: Sherlock Holmes, deerstalker traded for a wide-brimmed hat against the blinding glare; Dr. John Watson, notebook curling at the edges from the dry heat; King Arthur, who has swapped mail for a plain Bedouin cloak but still carries Excalibur at his side like a vow that no desert can erase.

With us walk the people who actually belong to these sands.

From Erewhon come the last free citizens of the high plateau—descendants of the people who once banned machines, then unbanned them, then banned them again; a stern magistrate who still believes illness is a crime; a young herder who has never seen a machine but knows the wind patterns better than any map; and an old woman who remembers when the statues of the gods were toppled because they were “too mechanical.”

From the Sinai come a Bedouin elder from the Jebeliya tribe whose family has herded goats among the granite peaks since before the Exodus; an Egyptian administrator from Suez who oversees the peacekeepers and the tourism; an Israeli security liaison who patrols the international border; and a young Palestinian guide from Rafah who says the desert has no memory of borders, only of water.

This is Post 39, the third stride in Section 7: Deserts and Plains. We have left the bleeding grasslands of Cimmeria and the Eurasian steppe. Now the series steps deeper into the arid nowhere, where sovereignty is measured not in hectares or hooves but in the handfuls of water that can still be carried before the dunes swallow everything.

The Two Deserts, One Vanishing Horizon

Erewhon’s sands are the high plateau Butler imagined as a mirror held up to Victorian England—flat, featureless, and mercilessly logical. In recent decades Laputa’s magnetic drift has begun to tug at the desert, stretching its dunes unnaturally far—almost as if the island above is trying to anchor itself by pulling the earth upward. Every year approximately 11,000 hectares of sand are lost to wind erosion accelerated by the island’s low-level downdraughts; the dunes migrate northward, burying ancient trails and clogging the few remaining oases. The citizens who still live here have no voice in the decisions made above them. They are not subjects; they are scenery.

The Sinai Peninsula is brutally real. Since the 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty, the peninsula has been demilitarized under international supervision, yet it remains a contested space: Egyptian sovereignty is recognized, but Israeli security concerns persist; multinational peacekeepers patrol the border; Bedouin tribes hold traditional grazing rights that are increasingly restricted by military zones and tourism developments. Water is the true currency: the peninsula sits atop fragile aquifers that are being depleted by agriculture in the north and desalination plants in the south. Both deserts are places where “nowhere” has become somebody’s home; both are claimed by distant capitals that rarely walk their full length.

Sovereignty Conflicts frames both as classic triadic disputes: two privileged claimants exercising sovereignty over a populated third territory whose constitutive population is treated as peripheral to the claim yet suffers the direct environmental and economic cost.

Territorial Disputes adds the sociological fracture: in Erewhon the high-plateau citizens versus the machine-fearing traditionalists; in Sinai the state authorities versus the Bedouin who actually inhabit the land.

Cosmopolitanism and State Sovereignty asks the moral question: can a claim to land be legitimate if it systematically excludes or exploits the majority who actually inhabit and sustain it?

Territorial Disputes in the Americas provides the practical precedent: guarantor-led shared-land-use zones that have achieved high durability in Latin American cases—models now urgently needed here.

The Evidence Gathered in Sand and Silence

Holmes refuses to stay in the shade. He spends four days walking Erewhon’s high plateau with the citizens, measuring wind speed, dune migration rates, and the interval between Laputa’s magnetic pulses and the sudden gusts that strip topsoil. He spends the next four days walking the Sinai wadis with Bedouin guides and peacekeepers, timing the movement of military patrols and the arrival of tourist convoys. The data he returns with are starkly symmetrical.

In Erewhon 11,000 hectares of sand are lost annually to wind erosion accelerated by Laputa’s downdraughts; 1,200 plateau families displaced in the last decade. In Sinai 10,800 hectares of grazing land have been lost to military zones and tourism infrastructure since 2000; 1,900 Bedouin households affected. In Erewhon no magistrate has visited the outer dunes in living memory. In Sinai no high-level Egyptian or Israeli official has spent a full day in a Bedouin camp without a security detail.

Watson’s notebook grows heavy: “Both deserts are being claimed by powers that never walk them. The difference is only in the signature—royal decree or peace treaty.”

Arthur stands on an Erewhon dune watching Laputa drift overhead, then stands in a Sinai wadi watching a distant convoy of white UN vehicles move north to south like ghosts. He says only: “A desert does not care who claims it. It only remembers who rested their flocks upon it.”

A Conclave in the Sands

We meet where the two deserts almost touch: a neutral point on Erewhon’s lowest dune, lowered to within 150 metres of the Sinai surface for the first time in history, with Egyptian, Israeli, and Bedouin representatives brought by helicopter and Erewhon citizens climbing rope ladders from below.

Present: King Laputian, seated on a portable throne of adamant, visibly uncomfortable at being so close to sand; the Erewhon magistrate, stern and mechanical in his bearing; Bêlit’s daughter, sword at her hip, eyes fierce; an Egyptian administrator from Suez; a Bedouin elder from the Jebeliya tribe; a young Palestinian guide from Rafah; Hamed al-Ghabri, the Omani elder whose water-bag has become a symbol of cross-border memory.

The Bedouin elder speaks first, voice carrying the slow cadence of the wadis: “The sand is moving. It does not ask permission. It only asks to be shared.”

The Palestinian guide answers, eyes on the horizon: “Our sand has been moving under foreign boots for decades. We ask only for the right to walk it freely.”

The Egyptian administrator, voice calm but edged: “We have brought roads, wells, tourism. The desert is more alive now than it has ever been.”Arthur lays Excalibur flat across a low dune crest. Every hand—royal, magistrate, herder, administrator—rests on the scabbard at once.I open Sovereignty Conflicts:

“Egalitarian shared sovereignty does not ask who owns the sand. It asks how we keep the desert from swallowing the people who live on it.”The magistrate, stiff as a statue: “Our laws are perfect. Illness is a crime; machines are banned; order is maintained.”

Bêlit’s daughter cuts in, blade half-drawn: “Your perfection leaves children hungry and old women wandering. Order without mercy is just another chain.”

The Bedouin elder nods slowly: “We have no machines, yet we are chained by borders drawn by men who never knew thirst. Let the sand decide who walks it.

”The Egyptian administrator, after a long silence: “If we share the water, the roads, the dunes—perhaps the tourists will come to see peace instead of ruins.”

The young Palestinian guide, voice low: “Peace is not a postcard. It is a path wide enough for my grandmother’s goats and your soldiers’ boots.”

King Laputian, voice cracking from the unaccustomed dryness: “Our crystals keep us aloft, but we have forgotten how to land. Perhaps the sand will teach us.”Arthur’s voice, quiet as a vow: “A sword laid flat is not surrender. It is invitation. Let every hand rest here, and let the desert judge.”

The “Sand Accord” is drafted in sand and ink:

• Joint Erewhon–Egypt–Israel–Sinai Desert Commission with binding water-extraction and grazing caps; surplus funds a cross-desert aquifer recharge programme.
• Erewhon’s outer dunes declared a shared ecological zone; 30 % of any future crystal revenue funds permanent descent corridors and mobile schools for nomads.
• “Sand-to-Sky Residency Pathway”: ten continuous years of contribution (herding, guiding, scholarship) = permanent residency in Egypt or citizenship on Erewhon’s grounded ring.
• Higher Court seated alternately in Suez and on Erewhon’s lowest terrace, with judges from Egyptian, Israeli, Bedouin, Palestinian, and Erewhonian communities; veto power on any project that depletes aquifers or increases dune migration.
• Every new tourism or mining operation must display, in Arabic, Hebrew, English, and Erewhonian dialect, the source of the water and the names of the guides and workers who sustain it.

King Laputian signs first, his hand steady because it rests on real sand. The Bedouin elder signs second, pressing the goatskin water-bag into the table as seal. The Egyptian administrator signs third. The Palestinian guide signs fourth. Bêlit’s daughter signs last—her sword resting beside Excalibur like an equal.

Murmurs of the Desert Wind

The wind still carries warnings: aquifers will fall, dunes will migrate, people will thirst. Yet it also carries new notes: the soft hiss of a recharge well pumping water back into the ground, the laughter of Bedouin and Erewhonian children learning dune navigation together on a neutral rise, the quiet thud of a Laputan astronomer choosing to walk rather than float, the rustle of a water-bag being refilled from a tap that no longer runs dry.

Peace along this vertical-and-horizontal frontier is not a treaty signed in air-conditioned halls. It is a handful of sand left undisturbed so a palm grove may breathe again, a path reopened so a herder may walk it freely, a desert whose horizon is wide enough for every nomad and every scholar to stand beneath the same sky.

Why This Resonates in You

You have stood in a desert so quiet you could hear your own heartbeat.

You have looked at a map and wondered why one side of a line is marked in green and the other in brown.

You have, perhaps, never met the guide whose path was closed so a border could stay open, the scholar who learned that the stars are beautiful but the sand is home, or the elder who discovered that even a king can learn to walk.

The Borders We Share asks only one thing: the next time you look at a desert, remember there is always a ground—and that the ground remembers every footprint, every promise kept or broken.

Next Tuesday we move deeper into the sands—new nowhere, new edges.

I remain, as always,

Dr. Jorge

Trails to Wander:

• Sovereignty Conflicts (2017).

• Territorial Disputes (2020).

• Cosmopolitanism and State Sovereignty (2023). 

• Territorial Disputes in the Americas (2025).

NOTE:

New posts every Tuesday.

PREVIOUS POSTS:

Post 38: Cimmeria’s Flats, Steppes’ Stretch: Dust Meets Grass

NEXT POSTS:

Section 7: Deserts and Plains (Posts 37–42)

40, Narnia’s Wastes, Sudan’s Split: Kings of Nothing

41, Oz’s Plains, Outback’s Reach: Emerald to Dust

42, Laputa’s Dunes, Part II: Quantum Sands

AUTHOR’S SAMPLE PEER-REVIEWED ACADEMIC RESEARCH (FREE OPEN ACCESS):

State Sovereignty: Concept and Conceptions (OPEN ACCESS) (IJSL 2024)

AUTHOR’S PUBLISHED WORK AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE VIA:

AMAZON

ROUTLEDGE, TAYLOR & FRANCIS

Tuesday 27th January 2026

Dr Jorge Emilio Núñez

X (formerly, Twitter): https://x.com/DrJorge_World

https://drjorge.world

The Borders We Share: Cimmeria’s Flats, Steppes’ Stretch (Post 38)

 

The Borders We Share: A New Way to Fix a Broken World

Section 7: Deserts and Plains (Posts 37–42)

Post 38: Cimmeria’s Flats, Steppes’ Stretch: Dust Meets Grass

Enigma of the Endless Horizon

The sky is so wide it feels like the earth has forgotten how to curve.

Two immense grasslands lie almost within sight of one another beneath the same pale winter sun.

One is the Eurasian steppe that rolls unbroken from the northern shore of the Caspian to the Altai foothills—Kazakhstan’s sea of feather grass and wormwood, where the wind never rests and the horizon is a promise that tomorrow will look exactly like today. The other is the great brooding plain of Cimmeria, Robert E. Howard’s shadowed land of wind-scoured flats and low hills that lies somewhere north-east of Conan’s Aquilonia and south-west of the drifting shadow Laputa now casts across northern Hyboria. In the last century the island’s magnetic field has begun to tug at the plain below, stretching Cimmeria’s grasslands unnaturally far—almost as though the steppe itself is reaching upward, yearning to touch the floating disc that darkens its sun. Dust swirls upward in slow spirals; grass bends sideways in long, sighing waves; the line between myth and steppe becomes difficult to see from horseback.

Both plains are endless.

Both are sparsely peopled.

Both are bleeding topsoil into the wind.

Both are claimed by distant powers that rarely smell the dust they own.

I arrive with the companions who have walked every fractured frontier of this series: Sherlock Holmes, deerstalker traded for a wide-brimmed hat against the steppe glare; Dr. John Watson, notebook already filling with wind-speed readings and grass-species counts; King Arthur, who has swapped mail for a plain wool cloak but still carries Excalibur at his side like a vow that cannot be broken.

With us walk the people who actually belong to these grasslands.

From Cimmeria come the last free clans—descendants of the horsemen who once raided south into Stygia and north into Hyperborea; Conan himself, now middle-aged, scarred, unexpectedly reflective, leaning on his great sword as though it were a walking stick; Bêlit’s daughter, who has taken her mother’s name and her father’s blade; and a young shaman whose braids are threaded with eagle feathers and who says the wind has begun to speak in two languages since Laputa drifted closer.

From the Eurasian steppe come a Kazakh herder whose family has grazed the same valley since the time of Ablai Khan; a Russian environmental scientist who monitors the slow southward creep of the desert from Kalmykia; a young Kazakh activist who has been documenting illegal land leases to Chinese and Gulf agribusiness firms; and an elderly Cossack woman whose great-grandfather fought with the White Army and whose granddaughter now herds on the same land under a lease agreement she cannot read.

This is Post 38, the second stride in Section 7: Deserts and Plains. We have left the shifting sands of Laputa and the Sahara. Now the series steps onto the open grasslands, where sovereignty is measured not in vertical metres or mineral tonnes but in the number of hooves that can still graze before the topsoil blows away.

The Two Plains, One Slow Erosion

Cimmeria’s flats are the brooding expanse Howard described as “a land of brooding hills and wind-scoured flats.” In the last century Laputa has begun to exert its magnetic influence downward, so that the plain now stretches unnaturally far—almost as if the steppe itself is trying to reach up and touch the floating disc. Every year approximately 14,000 hectares of grassland are lost to wind erosion accelerated by the island’s low-level downdraughts; the topsoil blows southward into the Hyborian kingdoms, silting rivers and burying pastures. The clans who still live here have no voice in the decisions made above them. They are not subjects; they are scenery.

The Eurasian steppe is brutally real. The Russia–Kazakhstan border runs 7,598 kilometres, the longest continuous land border on earth. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, large tracts of Kazakh grazing land have been leased—often for 25–49 years—to Russian, Chinese, Gulf, and Western agribusiness firms for wheat, barley, and fodder production. In the last decade alone, Kazakhstan has lost an estimated 1.8 million hectares of pasture to desertification and conversion. The herders whose families have used these lands for generations are rarely consulted. The leases are signed in Astana and Moscow; the grass disappears under tractors. Both plains are bleeding topsoil into the wind; both are claimed by distant capitals that rarely smell the dust.

Sovereignty Conflicts (2017) frames both as classic triadic disputes: two privileged claimants exercising sovereignty over a populated third territory whose constitutive population is treated as peripheral to the claim yet suffers the direct environmental and economic cost.

Territorial Disputes (2020) adds the sociological fracture: in Cimmeria the upper-island scholars versus the underside clans; on the steppe the urban lease-holders versus the rural pastoralists.

Cosmopolitanism and State Sovereignty (2023) asks the moral question: can a claim to land be legitimate if it systematically excludes or exploits the majority who actually inhabit and sustain it?

Territorial Disputes in the Americas (2025) provides the practical precedent: guarantor-led shared-land-use zones that have achieved high durability in Latin American cases—models now urgently needed here.

The Evidence Gathered in Grass and Dust

Holmes refuses to stay on horseback. He spends four days walking Cimmeria’s flats with the clans, measuring wind speed, grass height, and the interval between Laputa’s magnetic pulses and the sudden gusts that strip topsoil. He spends the next four days walking the Kazakh steppe with herders and scientists, timing the arrival of leaseholders’ tractors and the departure of saiga herds. The data he returns with are grimly symmetrical.

In Cimmeria 14,000 hectares of grassland vanish each year to wind erosion accelerated by Laputa’s downdraughts; 1,800 herding families have been displaced in the last decade. On the Eurasian steppe 1.8 million hectares of pasture have been converted or degraded since 2015; 47,000 Kazakh herding households have been affected. In Cimmeria no scholar has visited the flats in living memory. In Kazakhstan no senior leaseholder has spent a night in a yurt on land they now control.

Watson’s notebook grows heavy: “Both plains are being grazed to death by powers that never smell the grass. The difference is only in the signature—royal decree or lease contract.”

Arthur stands on a Cimmerian hill watching Laputa drift overhead, then stands on a Kazakh rise watching a distant line of combine harvesters move north to south like steel locusts. He says only: “A plain does not care who rides across it. It only remembers who rested their herds upon it.”

A Conclave on the Grass

We meet where the two plains almost touch: a neutral stretch of shortgrass prairie on Laputa’s lowest dune, lowered to within 150 metres of the Kazakh steppe for the first time in history, with Russian and Kazakh officials brought by helicopter and Cimmerian riders arriving on horseback.

Present: King Laputian, seated on a portable throne of adamant, visibly uncomfortable at being so close to grass; Conan, middle-aged, scarred, unexpectedly reflective, leaning on his great sword; Bêlit’s daughter, sword at her hip, eyes fierce; a Kazakh herder whose family has grazed the same valley since the time of Ablai Khan; a Russian agribusiness representative carrying a briefcase of lease documents; a young Kazakh activist holding a drone-captured map of converted pastures; Hamed al-Ghabri, the Omani elder whose water-bag has become a symbol of cross-border memory.

Conan speaks first, voice like gravel under hooves: “The grass is moving. It does not ask permission. It only asks to be shared.”

The Kazakh herder answers: “Our grass has been moving under foreign tractors for twenty years. We ask only for the right to follow our herds freely.”

The Russian representative, voice calm: “We have brought investment, jobs, grain exports. The steppe is more productive now than it has ever been.”

Arthur lays Excalibur flat across a low rise. Every hand—royal, warrior, herder, executive—rests on the scabbard at once.

I open:

“Egalitarian shared sovereignty does not ask who owns the grass. It asks how we keep the steppe from turning to dust beneath the hooves and wheels that feed us all.”

The “Steppe Accord” is drafted in dust and ink:

• Joint Laputa–Russia–Kazakhstan Grassland Commission with binding stocking-rate and conversion caps; surplus funds a cross-border soil regeneration programme.
• Cimmeria’s flats declared a shared ecological corridor; 30 % of any future crystal revenue funds permanent descent corridors and mobile schools for nomads.
• “Grass-to-Sky Residency Pathway”: ten continuous years of contribution (herding, scholarship, land restoration) = permanent residency in Kazakhstan or citizenship on Laputa’s grounded ring.
• Higher Court seated alternately in Astana and on Laputa’s lowest terrace, with judges from Kazakh, Russian, Cimmerian, and nomadic communities; veto power on any lease or extraction that increases erosion or reduces migratory corridors.
• Every new large-scale lease or crystal operation must display, in Kazakh, Russian, Cimmerian dialect, and Arabic, the source of the water and the names of the herders and workers who sustain it.

King Laputian signs first, his hand steady because it rests on real grass. Conan signs second. The Kazakh herder signs third. The Russian representative signs fourth. Bêlit’s daughter signs last—her sword resting beside Excalibur like an equal.

Murmurs of the Steppe Wind

The wind still carries warnings: topsoil will blow away, aquifers will fall, herds will thin. Yet it also carries new notes: the soft thud of hooves following a restored migratory corridor, the laughter of Kazakh and Cimmerian children learning rotational grazing together on a neutral rise, the quiet rustle of a Laputan scholar choosing to walk rather than float, the sound of a water-bag being refilled from a well that no longer runs dry.

Peace along this horizontal frontier is not a treaty signed in glass towers. It is a blade of grass left standing so a herd may graze again, a lease rewritten so a herder may stay, a plain whose horizon is wide enough for every horseman and every scholar to ride beneath the same sky.

Why This Resonates in You

You have stood on a plain so flat you could see tomorrow coming.

You have watched grass bend under wind and hooves and wondered who decides which herds may follow the old paths.

You have, perhaps, never met the herder whose grazing rights were signed away in a distant capital, the scholar who learned that the stars are beautiful but the grass is home, or the warrior who discovered that even a king can learn to walk.

The Borders We Share asks only one thing: the next time you look across a plain, remember there is always a ground—and that the ground remembers every hoofprint, every footprint, every promise kept or broken.

Next Tuesday we move deeper into the steppes—new dust, new horizons.

I remain, as always, Dr. Jorge (https://x.com/DrJorge_World) and at https://drjorge.world

Trails to Wander:

• Sovereignty Conflicts (2017).

• Territorial Disputes (2020).

• Cosmopolitanism and State Sovereignty (2023). 

• Territorial Disputes in the Americas (2025).

NOTE:

New posts every Tuesday.

PREVIOUS POSTS:

Post 37: Laputa’s Dunes, Sahara’s Split: Sand for All

NEXT POSTS:

Section 7: Deserts and Plains (Posts 37–42)

39, Erewhon’s Sands, Sinai’s Edge: Nowhere to Share

40, Narnia’s Wastes, Sudan’s Split: Kings of Nothing

41, Oz’s Plains, Outback’s Reach: Emerald to Dust

42, Laputa’s Dunes, Part II: Quantum Sands

AUTHOR’S SAMPLE PEER-REVIEWED ACADEMIC RESEARCH (FREE OPEN ACCESS):

State Sovereignty: Concept and Conceptions (OPEN ACCESS) (IJSL 2024)

AUTHOR’S PUBLISHED WORK AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE VIA:

AMAZON

ROUTLEDGE, TAYLOR & FRANCIS

Tuesday 20th January 2026

Dr Jorge Emilio Núñez

X (formerly, Twitter): https://x.com/DrJorge_World

https://drjorge.world

Christ Consciousness. Bonus: Pausing to Integrate

 

Pausing to Integrate: The Path So Far and the Journey Ahead

It began in the thick of uncertainty. In March 2021, as the pandemic forced the world to pause and confront what had long been ignored, I started this series under the banner of Christ Consciousness. Not as a narrow religious doctrine, but as an archetype of awakened awareness accessible across traditions: the inner knowing that we are luminous beings capable of rising beyond ego, fear, and division.

The core message from the very first post has not changed: no one will come to save you. Not a distant figure, not a system, not even the most enlightened teacher. Salvation, true evolution, wholeness, is an inside job. The pandemic was never just a physical illness; it was, and remains, a mirror amplifying greed, disconnection, corruption, and spiritual neglect at every level: individual, communal, global.

We are still in those troubled waters. In 2026, the noise is louder: algorithmic echo chambers, performative spirituality, deepening polarization, leadership that serves self over service, and distractions that pull us further from our inner compass. The shadows we glimpsed in 2021 have not vanished; they have evolved. Yet so has the opportunity. The call to inner work, discernment, and co-creation is more urgent than ever.

Where We’ve Been: The Path So Far (Parts 1–10)

The series unfolded organically over two years (2021–2023), building in three natural phases that mirror the three realms we inhabit: the empirical (physical senses), the ideal (mind and logic), and the metaphysical (soul and direct knowing).

Phase 1: Foundation and Awakening (Parts 1–5)

This phase sounded the alarm and laid the groundwork.

• Part 1: No-one will come to save you (March 2021) — The wake-up call: the pandemic magnifies pre-existing imbalances; judgment is internal; this time, we must rise ourselves.
• Part 2: We are not all born equal (March 2021) — Souls are equal in the Source, but incarnation brings unique purposes, bodies, minds, and journeys. Equality is an ideal we create through norms such as law and morality to navigate differences safely.
• Part 3: Threats and defences, reaction, response and proaction (March 2021) — External threats (false prophets, gossip, noise) met with the armour of God (justice, faith, truth); internal threats (ego, negativity) met with living water (deep transformation). Response neutralizes; reaction feeds darkness. Proaction: honour the soul proactively.
• Part 4: A time for everything — Cycles and divine timing in the journey.
• Part 5: Showing your light (March 2021) — Do not hide your gift; shine as a beacon for others. The bigger the light, the greater the responsibility and tests. No comparisons: honour your unique knowing.

Phase 2: Practice, Discernment and Challenges (Parts 6–10)

Here we moved from recognition to application: tools for navigating chaos.

• Part 6: Vision, leadership and peace (April 2021) — True leaders serve; seek positive peace (wholeness) within. Discern company, inputs, and contexts intentionally.
• Part 7: The solitary hero and the false prophets (June 2021) — Solitude is not the same as loneliness. True love starts with self; beware conditional help from false guides. Sometimes the hero walks alone.
• Part 8: Self-mastery: the battle towards God and inner peace (July/August 2021) — Chaos without reflects chaos within. Discipline body and mind like an athlete for an eternal prize; motivation fades, consistency endures.
• Part 9: On watchfulness: becoming the observer (March 2023) — Watch thoughts and emotions without attachment. An ancient practice, re-spiritualized mindfulness: catch reactivity, transmute energy, anchor in stillness.
• Part 10: Going back to source (March 2023) — When scattered, return inward. Leave the crowd of mental noise; find refuge in the heart where the Source never leaves.

These ten posts form a cohesive arc: from stark responsibility to practical defences, embodied mastery, and contemplative return.

Why It Still Matters – and Why Now

The world in 2026 is not calmer; it is more fragmented. False prophets multiply online, inner peace feels elusive amid constant stimulation, and collective wounds mirror unhealed individual ones. As within, so without remains the unbreakable law.Yet the good news endures: we already have everything needed — the inner compass, the armour, the living water, the light. The series never offered recipes or quick fixes because there are none. It points to direct knowing: surrender to the soul, choose response over reaction, shine selflessly, return to source daily.

In these times, this path is not a luxury; it is a necessity. Inner alignment is the foundation for any outer change worth having.

What’s Ahead: Toward Completion and Beyond (Parts 11–12 and Possibly Further)

The intention is to bring the series to a natural completion with twelve core parts. The number twelve carries deep resonance: the twelve apostles, the twelve tribes, the twelve months of the year — a symbol of wholeness, cycles, and divine order. Part 12 will serve as the foundational capstone.

After that, Parts 13 to 15 (and possibly beyond, should divine inspiration continue to flow) will form an integration and realization phase, weaving awakening and practice into lived embodiment. Tentative themes include:

• Part 11: Faith — The leap beyond senses and mind; trust in the metaphysical amid uncertainty.
• Part 12: The capstone of wholeness — A synthesis of the journey, reflecting the symbolic completion of twelve.
• Part 13: Love in action — Selfless love; loving neighbour as self begins with radical self-acceptance; transmuting fear to love in relationships and service.
• Part 14: Co-creation and the collective — From individual ascension to communal; how inner borders dissolve to allow shared unity.
• Part 15: Surrender, grace, and the eternal now — After discipline comes letting go; grace flows when effort aligns with non-effort; living Christ Consciousness daily in the present moment.

No fixed timeline exists — only intention, consistency, and openness to guidance. If the inner pull continues, the series will reach twelve as its core structure, with additional parts unfolding as inspired. If the energy shifts elsewhere, what already exists stands as a complete foundation.

Invitation Forward

This is not my series alone; it is ours. Revisit the posts if called. Voice your intention — aloud, in writing, in silence — to access your knowing. Think of Christ as intermediary if it helps bridge realms; no belief is required, only openness.

If any piece resonates, share it. If questions arise, reflections surface, or you sense a next step, trust that whisper. We co-create by showing up authentically.

As Rumi reminds us: Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.

Keep shining. The light is already within.

Previous post:

Christ Consciousness. 10: Going back to source

Saturday 18th March 2023

Dr Jorge Emilio Núñez

Twitter: @DrJorge_World

https://drjorge.world

 

What would happen if Trump took over Greenland?

Donald Trump’s renewed push to acquire Greenland—first floated in 2019 and aggressively revived in early 2025—has escalated from a provocative real-estate metaphor into a serious geopolitical challenge. As of mid-January 2026, the White House has openly discussed “all options,” including economic coercion, direct payments to Greenlanders, and even military force. Vice President JD Vance hosted Danish and Greenlandic officials for talks on January 14, 2026, while Trump has called anything less than U.S. control “unacceptable,” threatened tariffs on Denmark, and refused to rule out “the hard way” if Denmark and Greenland resist (Reuters, January 12, 2026; Guardian, January 13, 2026). Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen have responded firmly: “Greenland is not for sale” and “no more fantasies of annexation” (BBC, January 5, 2026; CNBC, January 13, 2026). A January 2026 poll showed 85% of Greenlanders oppose joining the U.S. (Berlingske, 2026).

My trilogy provides a structured way to think through this scenario. In Sovereignty Conflicts and International Law and Relations: A Distributive Justice Issue (2017), I argue that territorial claims are fundamentally distributive justice problems—who gets what, and on what basis of fairness? Greenland is not an empty landmass; it is home to 57,000 people, mostly Inuit, with their own history, culture, language, and aspirations for greater autonomy or independence. Any U.S. takeover—whether by purchase, coercion, or military pressure—would immediately raise the question of distributive justice for the Greenlandic people, not just for Denmark or the United States. The 2009 Self-Government Act already grants Greenland significant autonomy over internal affairs, resources, and courts, while Denmark retains foreign policy and defense.

A forced change of sovereignty would violate that legal framework and the principle of self-determination enshrined in international law (UN Charter, Article 1(2); International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 1).From the perspective of Territorial Disputes and State Sovereignty: International Law and Politics (2020), any takeover scenario would involve multiple layers—normative (legal titles and self-determination), factual (control on the ground, resources, population), and axiological (values, identity, prestige).

Legally, Greenland is not for sale: the 2009 Act and Greenland’s draft constitution (still pending referendum) make clear that independence or any change in status requires the consent of the Greenlandic people.

Factually, the United States already maintains a significant military presence through Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule Air Base), established during the Cold War under a 1951 defense agreement with Denmark. Trump could attempt to expand that presence through economic leverage—tariffs on Danish exports, threats to NATO funding—or even direct pressure, but the physical takeover of a populated territory would require occupation, which would immediately trigger international condemnation and likely armed resistance from Greenlanders and possibly Danish forces.

Axiologically, Greenlanders’ identity as Inuit, not Danish or American, is central. Polls consistently show strong majorities favoring independence or continued autonomy (64% in 2016; 78% opposed to independence if living standards drop), and Nielsen’s “Greenland is for Greenlanders” statement encapsulates a deep cultural resistance to being treated as a bargaining chip.

In Cosmopolitanism, State Sovereignty and International Law and Politics: A Theory (2023), I argue that sovereignty in the 21st century is increasingly shared, limited, and plural rather than absolute. A realistic U.S. strategy might involve:

• Economic pressure on Denmark (tariffs, threats to NATO contributions) to force a renegotiation of the 1951 agreement, expanding Pituffik into a larger strategic hub.
• A “free association” deal with Greenland similar to the U.S. relationship with the Marshall Islands or Palau—significant autonomy, U.S. defense responsibility, and economic subsidies in exchange for basing rights and resource access.
• Direct investment in mining (rare earths, uranium, zinc) to create economic dependence, bypassing Copenhagen.

This would not be formal annexation but de facto control, a form of neo-colonial shared sovereignty that looks voluntary but is structurally unequal. The 2023 book warns that such arrangements can appear cosmopolitan (linking voices across borders) while remaining deeply unjust if the weaker party (Greenlanders) has no real veto power.Public international law provides clear barriers to any forcible takeover.

The UN Charter (Article 2(4)) prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, including Denmark. The principle of self-determination (UN Charter Article 1(2); ICCPR Article 1) requires the free and genuine expression of the will of the Greenlandic people, as reaffirmed in the ICJ’s 2019 Chagos Islands advisory opinion (para. 180): a state cannot transfer territory without the consent of the people concerned. Coerced treaties are invalid under the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (Article 52).

Historical precedents—U.S. purchases of Louisiana (1803), Alaska (1867), and the Danish West Indies (1917)—succeeded only with mutual consent. A military invasion or forced cession would constitute illegal annexation, non-recognizable by other states under international law, and likely trigger UN Security Council condemnation (absent U.S. veto) and possible NATO Article 4 consultations (though NATO lacks mechanisms to act against a member state aggressor).

What would happen next? Several paths are plausible, updated with January 2026 developments:

1. Greenlandic resistance and independence push
   Greenlanders have already shown they will not be sold. A January 2026 poll (Ilisimatusarfik University) showed 68% would reject any deal that reduced autonomy, and 55% would support immediate independence if living standards could be maintained. If Trump applied heavy pressure—e.g., targeted tariffs on Danish exports or threats to NATO funding—the April 2025 election could become a referendum on sovereignty. Independence would be economically painful—Denmark’s annual block grant is about $600 million (25% of GDP)—but it would also open doors to new partners (China has already expressed interest in minerals). Russia would likely welcome the chaos, seeing a weakened NATO position in the Arctic. The outcome would be a more unstable Arctic, with Greenland as a contested prize rather than a stable autonomous entity.
2. Danish capitulation under economic pressure
   Denmark, as a small NATO ally, is vulnerable to U.S. economic coercion. Trump has already threatened tariffs on European goods, and Denmark’s exports to the U.S. ($8 billion in 2024) could be targeted. Frederiksen might seek a face-saving compromise—expanded U.S. basing rights in exchange for guarantees of Greenlandic autonomy—but this would likely trigger a domestic backlash in both Denmark and Greenland, fueling nationalist movements. The EU would protest, but its ability to counter U.S. economic pressure is limited. The result would be a de facto U.S. protectorate in the Arctic, with Greenlanders as second-class citizens in their own land.
3. Stalemate and status quo with increased tension
   The most probable short-term outcome is continued tension without formal change. Greenland’s government would reject any deal, Denmark would refuse to sell, and Trump would escalate rhetoric but stop short of military action (politically toxic even for him). Pituffik would remain, mining companies (Australian, Canadian, Chinese) would continue exploration, and the Arctic would become more militarized. Russia would increase its own Arctic presence (new bases, icebreakers), China would offer infrastructure loans, and NATO would struggle to maintain unity. The long-term risk is that Greenlanders, frustrated by economic stagnation and external pressure, eventually vote for independence, creating a new contested micro-state in a warming Arctic.

In Cosmopolitanism (2023), I argue that sovereignty in the 21st century should be understood as limited, shared, and plural rather than absolute. Greenland offers a test case. A just arrangement would involve Greenlanders having the decisive voice on their future, with Denmark retaining symbolic ties, the United States gaining legitimate strategic access through transparent agreements, and benefits from mineral wealth shared equitably with the local population. Anything less—coercion, purchase without consent, or de facto occupation—would be another chapter in the long history of powerful states treating small peoples as bargaining chips.

The lesson is clear: territorial questions are never just about land. They are about people, justice, identity, and fairness. Greenlanders remind us that sovereignty is not a blank canvas for great powers to redraw. It is a living relationship between a people and their place. Any solution that ignores that relationship is doomed to create more conflict, not less.

What do you think? Could Greenland become the Arctic’s first truly shared-sovereignty territory, or will it be the next victim of great-power competition? The answer will shape the future of the High North—and perhaps the way we think about sovereignty itself.

Previous post pertaining to Greenland (2025)

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Wednesday 14th January 2026

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