Initiation to Universal Quantum Computation

al-Ghazālī (Existentialist of the Faith), Tolstoy (Existentialist of the Life), and Dostoevsky (Existentialist of the Psyche)

 

Among the greatest books that I have been fortunate enough to encounter—and which had a profound impact on my vision and way of thinking—are three deeply honest confessions, unprecedented in human history.

First: Deliverance from Error (al-Munqidh min al-Ḍalāl) by Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, the Proof of Islam, in which he recounts with deep sincerity his intellectual autobiography and the development of his thought and faith, beginning with kalām, then moving to philosophy, then to esoteric knowledge (ʿilm al-bāṭin), and finally to Sufism and the science of ḥadīth.

Al-Ghazālī was not satisfied with the dryness of kalām, nor with the rationalism and abstract spirituality of Greek philosophy, nor with the methodological and doctrinal ambiguity of esoteric knowledge; and in the end he accepted the Sufi path grounded in Prophetic ḥadīth.

This confession of al-Ghazālī’s was the first confession I came across, and I became passionately attached to it.

Then I read Tolstoy’s confession in his book titled A Confession, and I was even more astonished than I had been by al-Ghazālī.

Tolstoy is a literary, philosophical, and social thinker—one of the three great Russians—and one of the greatest philosopher-writers in history.

Tolstoy was an Orthodox Christian man, not religious in the conventional sense, but spiritual to the highest degree. And this must be compared with al-Ghazālī, who was by nature a scholar and jurist, religious by necessity, yet who shares with Tolstoy the most important quality: a sincere, profound spirituality that penetrates the depths of the soul.

Tolstoy’s spirituality was not absorbed by Christianity, nor by Orthodoxy, nor by atheism. In fact, what drove him toward atheism originally was the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

Tolstoy was also dissatisfied with all the rational proofs for the existence of God, because they are, quite simply, dry rational arguments that lack the essential element that faith must possess: spirituality.

Thus, in A Confession, Tolstoy recounts his search for God—a very arduous journey—and in the end he arrived only at the belief that God is Life, and that Life is God. This is a form of wahdat al-wujūd (Unity of Being) in the manner of Ibn Arabi and Spinoza, a doctrine that must be understood in their terms so that we may not fall short in grasping the true philosophy of these philosopher-gnostics.

Everything in Tolstoy’s confession revolves around fear—indeed, terror—of death. And all tranquility and contentment can be found only in life. Therefore: God is life, and life is God.

Here, “life” means the universe in its entirety, with everything it contains, and with its capacity (that is, the capacity of this universe) to manifest life through its causal, physical, and evolutionary laws.

Tolstoy eventually returned to Christianity, but he never returned to the Trinity, as he states explicitly.

In truth, Tolstoy’s confession is greater than the confession of al-Ghazālī.

Then came Dostoevsky with his confession, which is, in my view, greater than the confessions of both Tolstoy and al-Ghazālī combined.

Dostoevsky is a literary, philosophical, and psychological writer—Russian—and also one of the three great Russians, and one of the greatest philosopher-writers in history.

If al-Ghazālī focuses on divine will, and Tolstoy focuses on the will of society, then Dostoevsky focuses on the will of the human self—and this is far more important for us simple human beings.

Dostoevsky’s confession came in the form of a novel—the first among his great later novels—namely Notes from Underground.

Thus the confession appears on the tongue of the so-called “Underground Man,” the protagonist of the novella, who represents, in my opinion—one way or another—Dostoevsky himself.

Dostoevsky is not a scholar or jurist like al-Ghazālī; nor is he a traditional aristocrat-turned-atheist-turned-believer like Tolstoy. Rather, he is an ordinary man with a conventional kind of faith, with no fundamental problem with religion or religiosity, and not particularly concerned with questions of belief or atheism.

Therefore, he expresses us more than the others do.

The confession of the Underground Man—speaking for Dostoevsky—revolves entirely around consciousness, which both the Underground Man and Dostoevsky consider to be a cosmic mistake, something that should never have existed in this universe.

And this consciousness cannot be complete without things more essential than anything else: freedom, suffering, and evil.

Thus, according to the Underground Man, the most precious thing for the human being is freedom; he wants this freedom because he wants to be able to do anything—good or evil.

And this freedom and this consciousness cannot be fulfilled except through suffering, pain, and evil.

Indeed, the Underground Man wants to commit evil simply in order to feel his humanity, yet he finds himself unconvinced that he is truly evil.

This confession of the Underground Man, speaking through Dostoevsky, is considered the first existential literary confession—as Nietzsche states—and Freud later used it as a model for psychoanalysis and wrote a large book about it.

Thus: if al-Ghazālī is an existentialist of faith, and Tolstoy an existentialist of life, then Dostoevsky is an existentialist of the psyche—and this is more fundamental, because the self or consciousness is the foundation of life and existence (and not the other way around). And consciousness and life are themselves the foundation of faith.

MMP6-7: Analytic Continuation, Laurent Expansion and Residue Theorem

Orwell’s 1984: Universal Warning — Sansal’s 2084: Failed Self-Reflection

 

0. Introduction and Acknowledgment  

Dystopian literature is usually read as a warning: Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Brave New World, Zamyatin’s We, and a long lineage of others all attempt to expose the hidden mechanisms of power that crush individuality, distort truth, and reshape language. But when Boualem Sansal published 2084: La fin du monde, many readers assumed it was a natural successor to Orwell’s work — a modernized version adapted to the era of religious extremism.

This is the superficial reading.

A deeper look reveals something more paradoxical, almost ironic: 2084 is not a continuation of 1984 at all.
It is a projection, a mirror turned back onto the author and his ideological milieu.

And the strangest twist is this: Orwell was warning us precisely about the kind of elite to which Sansal himself belongs.

Note: I have not read either novel in full. My analysis is based on their core ideas and on how these works function culturally and ideologically. This is not a literary review, but a reflection on the philosophical and political structures they reveal.

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1. Orwell’s 1984: A Secular Totalitarianism

Orwell did not write about religious dictatorship, medieval dogma, or cultural backwardness.
He wrote about:

• hyper-rational technocracies

• secular ideological purity

• bureaucratic surveillance

• modern propaganda

• intellectual absolutism

Big Brother is not a priest — he is an atheist bureaucrat.
He is not a guardian of divine truth but of ideological truth.
The totalitarianism of 1984 is born from modernity, not religion.

This point is crucial. Orwell fears what educated elites become when they believe they are morally superior and ideologically enlightened.

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2. Core Idea and Key Concepts 

Orwell imagines a future where power controls behavior, language, memory, and even thought. The result is a society in which freedom is not just forbidden—it becomes unimaginable.

• Big Brother

Symbol of total surveillance and unconditional obedience. His presence—real or not—keeps citizens in a permanent state of fear and submission.

• Newspeak

A deliberately shrinking language designed to eliminate:

• nuance

• independent thought

• the vocabulary of rebellion

If a word is removed, the idea behind it dies.

• Doublethink

The mental act of believing two contradictory statements at once.
Examples:

• War is Peace

• Freedom is Slavery

• Ignorance is Strength

Doublethink destroys logic and makes the Party infallible.

• Thoughtcrime

Thinking against the Party is itself a crime.
You don’t need to speak or act—mere thought is enough to be punished.

In essence: 1984 is a warning about how totalitarian systems—of any ideology—can dominate truth, rewrite reality, and erase the individual self

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3. Sansal’s 2084: A Transposition, Not an Invention

In 2084: La fin du monde, Sansal reproduces Orwell’s structure with minimal innovation:

• Big Brother becomes Abi

• The Party becomes a clerical order

• Newspeak becomes Abilang

• The Ministry of Truth becomes a religious bureaucracy

• Thoughtcrime becomes heresy

But there is no philosophical expansion, no new theory of oppression. Sansal simply changes the vocabulary while leaving the skeleton intact.

This is why 2084 feels more like a politically motivated allegory than a universal dystopia. It says more about Sansal’s personal fears than about the mechanisms of totalitarianism.

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4. The Blind Spot: Projection Instead of Self-Reflection

Here lies the core of the paradox.

Orwell’s warning applies above all to:

• secular technocrats

• rationalist elites

• Western bureaucratic classes

• intellectuals who want to engineer society

Yet Sansal reads Orwell and concludes:

“This is about them — the Islamists, the Arabs, Algeria and Islam itself.”

It never occurs to him that Orwell’s critique is directed at people like him —Westernized, francophone, convinced of holding absolute reason, eager to reshape society in the image of “Enlightenment.”

Thus 2084 becomes a psychological mechanism:

• a displacement of fear

• a projection of one’s own totalitarian impulses onto an enemy

• a rewriting of Orwell to serve an ideological vendetta

Sansal cannot recognize himself as a potential Big Brother, so he invents Abi.

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5. The Algerian Mirror: Two Camps, Same Structure

The Algerian ideological landscape is often portrayed as a clash between:

• the Francophone secular elites

• the Islamist-Arabist traditionalists

But these two camps, despite their surface opposition, share the same structural tendencies:

• ideological absolutism

• moral superiority

• intolerance of difference

• desire for uniformity

• contempt for the masses

• obsession with “saving” Algeria

In other words, both sides produce the same dystopia — one in French, one in Arabic.

Abi and Big Brother are not opposites.
They are twins.

And this is why Sansal’s dystopia rings hollow:
he attacks only one side of the mirror, forgetting the other — the one in which he stands.

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6. Conclusion: 1984 is Universal; 2084 is Provincial

Orwell wrote a philosophical critique of modernity’s deepest danger:
the belief that reason and righteousness justify absolute control.

Sansal wrote a localized political allegory aimed at an internal cultural adversary.
One book diagnoses the architecture of tyranny; the other weaponizes that diagnosis.

This is the ultimate irony:

Orwell was describing the world Sansal’s own class would build if it had total power — secular, technocratic, purified, “rational.”
Sansal, however, sees only Abi in the mirror and fails to recognize himself.

A true dystopia forces the reader to question his own assumptions.
2084 forces only the enemy to answer for theirs.

It is not an extension of 1984, but a reflection — and a revealing one.