Series PrefaceThis article is the first in a planned series of studies examining the deep structural logic ofcontemporary geopolitics. The central proposition guiding this work is that empires do notend with territorial collapse. They persist, across centuries and civilizational divides, throughreligion and writing systems—vehicles of what we term ideological residue.The theoretical foundation is laid across four volumes. The present article, Volume I, developsthe core framework—the Empire-Religion Symbiont—and demonstrates its operation acrossclassical and contemporary cases. Volume II, Writing Systems as Symbolic Conflict, exam-ines how scripts function as boundaries of imperial legitimacy, and how peripheral inheritorssever these symbolic ties in acts of symbolic regicide. Volume III, Intergenerational Decay andSacred Governance, addresses the temporal dimension: why all large-scale polities, given suf-ficient time, tend toward religiously inflected modes of rule. Volume IV, Eurasia as ExclusiveIncubator, explains why the symbiosis of empire and religion emerged uniquely on the Eurasianlandmass, and nowhere else.
Jiacheng Yang (Mon,) studied this question.