Open Letter to Humanity

 

Open Letter to Humanity

Communism, along with its procession of crimes, has lived poorly and imploded. Socialism, even in its French form, is moribund. Liberalism—under whatever guise it may take, and many flourish these days, whether it calls itself liberal socialism, social democracy, or the third way, embracing globalization as its battle horse—has failed to rid itself of its maladies: enduring mass unemployment, precariousness, economic, social, and political alienation, the impoverishment of economic sectors, entire regions, cities, and multiple generations within the same family.

The struggle between an economy of profit and an economy of human progress continues. It remains, and will increasingly remain, a pressing issue, as the gap between great wealth and extreme poverty is immense and will only widen. Whether through the new economy, the New Information and Communication Technologies, or Artificial Intelligence replacing the Collective Human Intelligence of our Humanity, we are regressing. Not to mention the developing countries, whose situation is deteriorating at an alarming rate.

Money begets money! In one year, the global GDP is approximately 100 trillion dollars. Meanwhile, the foreign exchange market amounts to 2.5 quadrillion dollars annually. As for the derivatives market, including insurance-based products, it reaches 1.5 quadrillion dollars. These two highly speculative markets amount to 45 times the world’s GDP!

The accumulated wealth of the richest 1% of the world has now surpassed that of the remaining 99%. Is this what we call human progress?

Progress, if seen only through a techno-scientific lens or as a means to get rich quickly, is an adventure that regularly ends in failure and often in catastrophe. The reality is plain to see in our so-called developed countries: in nearly two centuries, apart from this so-called technical progress—ultimately lethal and deleterious—we have not advanced an inch; it feels as though we have returned to the 19th century. If we allow these people—this “plutocratic gentry” of opportunistic business elites, this greedy, self-serving world—to continue, they will drag us back to social Darwinism, so dear to the Nazis, or even to slavery or feudal serfdom!

Never again! The reprieve was short-lived. After the “Thirty Glorious Years,” we have had only three decades of respite, followed by a period of regressive modernity in human terms. We are not living through another thirty years but forty, perhaps even fifty, disgraceful years!

Conceptually, in economics as in politics, and therefore in society at large, we have long since ceased to invent anything new. “Enrich yourselves,” the rallying cry of triumphant 19th-century bourgeois liberalism, was coined by François Guizot, who, in 1843, was leading the government. However, the original phrase was more complete and less polemical than today’s version, as it stated: “Enrich yourselves, but through work, saving, and integrity.”

Nowadays, work no longer carries the social emancipation value we once hoped it would. Instead, opportunism, greed, speculation, and rent-seeking have become dominant values. In the American model, saving is nonexistent; debt—both personal and national—along with speculation, fuels the economy. Other countries unwittingly provide the financial support, unaware that they are handing over the very means to their own subjugation. A simple look at history would suffice, for history repeats itself. As for integrity, it has long ceased to be a virtue; it is now considered a serious handicap. The same goes for Ontology, Deontology, Ethics, and Altruism—metaphysical principles, profoundly human, which undeniably uphold the “Principle of Humanity.”

A century and a half for nothing. We are still at the same point. From a societal and pragmatic perspective, the hyper-productivist and supra-financial liberal economic model currently in place produces both more wealth (partially virtual due to speculation) and more poverty—this one very real. A pseudo-economic model that defies all principles of micro- and macroeconomic balance, despite claiming to stem from general equilibrium theory in market economics.

In France, we waste 30% of the food we produce. In the United States, the figure rises to 38%!

In all so-called “modern,” supposedly “developed” countries, racism and xenophobia are making a troubling resurgence, and we should be cautious. And what can be said about those nations under the religious yoke of archaic Islamism? This neoliberalism, intertwined with financial capitalism, is extremely dangerous—economically and socially unsustainable: explosive! In the event of a major economic crisis—and one is inevitable if we remain passive—the situation may not merely call for compassion toward the excluded and the poor but may have far more serious and far-reaching consequences than we dare imagine.

Let us hope that the fragile economic organization of our societies does not collapse before a new structure can take its place.
Let us hope that our often-formal freedoms become real freedoms rather than disappear altogether.

Humanity—our humanity! What has become of it? What have we done with it? Clearly, it is in a miserable state! As the saying goes: it’s in the weeds! It has become a "technoscientific humanism" and is on the verge of turning into "transhumanism," for humanism is a wide-open gateway to transhumanism!

2025—three decades into the 21st century, revealing the dead ends of our time. The pandemic, far from being an isolated accident, has exposed the systemic fragilities of our societies. The war in Ukraine, too, did not emerge out of nowhere. As for our environmental challenges, it is an illusion to believe they can be met without a profound reevaluation of our ways of life and thinking.

At the dawn of this 21st century and third millennium, who can still believe that we can continue to build our reality on the liberal-libertarian dogmas of the 18th and 19th centuries? Economism, utilitarianism, economic liberalism and its corollary, financial capitalism, or even scientistic positivism—these are all paroxysmal paradigms that reduce human beings to mere resources while ignoring the “Principle of Humanity.” Positivism—this "how without the why"—was once criticized and abandoned, but our regressive modernity has resurrected it for at least forty years: forty disgraceful years, and perhaps more, given our current trajectory.

Who can believe that this modern society, educated under the Republic’s school system and emancipated through its political struggles, will continue indefinitely to accept a system so reckless, so greedy, corrupt, and manipulative? Criticism is easy, but the art of proposing viable solutions is far more demanding.

This open letter to Humanity aims to be both :
• An indictment against an obsolete way of thinking, a worldview that has become intolerable because it is unsustainable.
• A plea for a renewed approach to reality, grounded in knowledge open to the principles of democracy, Humanity, and the Republic.

This is not about a revolution of institutions but an evolution of minds. It is time to apply, with sincerity and consistency, the human values proclaimed in our great declarations and charters. We must place the "Principle of Humanity" at the heart of our reflections and conceive science and technology not as ends in themselves but as means serving a human and temporal purpose.

Another knowledge and another culture—not against Nature but with Nature, not against humans but with our Humanity, embracing our own complex “human nature.” A different knowledge and a different culture—one more open to the “Principle of Humanity” and democracy, which go hand in hand!

What if, instead of cultivating the worst in humanity, we cultivated the best?