We know very well today, we feel it deep within ourselves, that we can no longer continue to live in a world like ours. Our conscience alerts us. The climate crisis and the energy crisis are tipping1 a long-ill system that experienced the first acute symptoms of its illness in 2008 during the global financial crisis. These symptoms, although they were serious, were quickly neutralized by massive financial intervention by the States. The patient’s life could thus be put in danger.
Since March 2020, everything has accelerated. We discover that the crises we are experiencing are the result of profound imbalances that we, humans of this world, will no longer be able to bear. The expression of the symptoms reveals today the causes of the evil and a peripheral therapy will do nothing there. The patient’s way of life is now at stake if he wants to preserve his existence. These are the two pillars of the current economic model that should be changed drastically, namely a globalized capitalist and an all-powerful neoliberalism, which subordinates humans, nature and the State to the functioning of financial and digital markets. It is clear that the current system leads to the depletion of human and natural resources to generate the most profit without ensuring their regeneration. The consequences are dramatic. Environmental and social costs are externalized and it is the poorest and most vulnerable who pay the heavy price. We become aware of the inequalities that are revealed on the occasion of climate change. Of course, they have been around for a long time. But today we can no longer ignore them.
The countries, mainly in the South, which have faced the most severe weather in recent years are those whose activity has not or only very little contributed to climate change. These countries are also the least inclined to be able to cope with it due to a lack of means and development. They are also those who have the least control over their income. One example among many others. The cocoa market. Planters in tropical countries receive only 6% of the 100 billion dollars a year represented by the world cocoa and chocolate market, which is locked in by the big industrialists. Is it legitimate? Why not remunerate these local producers at the right price? How can we still justify this speculative system?
This economic model, embodied by GAFAM and multinationals, has forced us for several decades to collective impoverishment. Even in times of growth, health, cultural, educational and collective mobility services have been disinvested. The quest for lucre has supplanted everything.
Some silver lining. The health, climate and energy crises have triggered a surge of consciousness in the populations of the world over the past two years, expressed in the streets and on globalized social networks. Perhaps a bit of what Father Teilhard de Chardin called the Noosphere is emerging, this communion of planetary spirit that grows into a convergent state of unity and spiritualization of matter.2. We are in any case at a point of major evolution, which by its suddenness, its scale and the multiplicity of the issues it reveals, gives it the characteristics of these moments of changeover in our History.
Three ways will be crucial to overcome this shift. (1) Individually, it will be necessary to move ever more towards more sober and respectful ways of life and production in all areas and to include this approach in a common sense that we miss so much. (2) Collectively, we must continue to defend and consolidate nations and supranational institutions that are strong, democratic, united, autonomous and capable of resisting the liberticidal, illiberal and imperialist regimes that are emerging in the world. And at the same time, closer to local realities, we must encourage alliances of general interest carried by partnerships in which civil society, citizens and businesses must become full players in the general interest.3 on the model of the social and sustainable economy and become a credible alternative to the hyper-individualistic capitalist and neoliberal system4. (3) The State must once again become a guarantor and a strategist of the general interest to massively finance new ways of producing, to help our economy to convert, to better distribute wealth and to improve collective behavior5. Individualistic consumerism must give way to economic sobriety guided by a sustainable and united vision of our society.
Charles Peguy, in 1914, in a highly premonitory vision said this of the modern world: “For the first time in the history of the world, money rules without limitation or measure. By who knows what frightening adventure, by who knows what aberration of mechanism, by a discrepancy, by a disturbance, by a monstrous panic of the mechanics, what should only be used for exchange has completely invaded the value to be exchanged. . The instrument has become the matter and the object and the world. From there came this immense prostitution of the modern world.”
In the modern world, the scale of values has been turned upside down. To tell the truth, she was devastated. And the fight that begins today, that of reversing this scale, will be long, arduous, painful, but we can predict that it will restore to Man all his dignity and put money back in its rightful place, the one that he should never have left, namely a measuring instrument and not the measure of anything.
1 The time has come for the big shiftopinion of Pascal Warnier, La libre Belgique of February 19, 2019.
2 For a spirituality of the cosmos. Discover Teilhard de ChardinFrançois Euvé, Editions Salvator, 2015.
3 Be radical. Dialogue between two generations to transform the economyB. and H. Sibille, Les petits matins edition, 2022.
4 Sobriety is our greatest wealthinterview with Eloi Laurent, French economist in the Obs of September 8, 2022.
5 On the need for a strong State to energize the transformation of our societyopinion of Pascal Warnier, La libre Belgique of December 29, 2020.