Motivational Actors and Motivational Clusters: A New Analytical Framework for Understanding a Disintegrating World

This article introduces two interrelated analytical concepts — the motivational actor and the motivational cluster — as tools for explaining the synchronous crises of the mid-2020s. The author proceeds from the premise that the dominant analytical frameworks — geopolitical, economic, and ideological — describe separate fragments of what is happening but are incapable of explaining their simultaneity. The proposed motivational framework makes it possible to examine social systems through four basic motivational coordinates (E, P, C, X) and to analyse how stable collective actors form long-term configurations — clusters — that persist across generations. The article is situated within a broader theoretical project previously outlined in the work on “meaning machines” and proposes the next analytical level: from the production of meaning to the architecture of collective action.