At the dawn of the third Millenarium: Agony or metamorphosis?

Henceforth, all mankind that has been hereto dispersed over the past tens of thousands of years are now linked. However, the common link formed by these groups do not constitute a unified population which we can justly call humanity. Thus, producing the key contradiction: humanity is emerging into a chaos that risks its destruction.
Although we stand together, we remain enemies, and the surge of racial hates, religions, ideologies result always in war, massacres, torture, hate and scorn. Mankind is in fact not able to generate humanity and it is unknown whether or not this is due to the end of an old world giving birth to a new one, or simply death throes.
The situation is further aggravated by the fact that awareness of the situation is dispersed, marginal, and that academics, scientists, and technicians live in an isolated environment of intellectual thought, while politicians live in a pragmatic day to day existence; they reduce politics to economic management instead of allowing politics to guide the economy and carrying out a policy of safety.
Safety will come in part from the effects of the unconscious forces, embedded deep within our species which are at work, and that in a certain manner create a new genesis, that nevertheless require the virtues of the human consciousness.
We suffer from an absence of global thought at the moment at which we need it most, that is to say at the moment we are faced with regression, destruction, and death.
What is our society becoming conscious of in a manner that is yet restricted to a dispersed group, to a minority?

  1. The awareness of our terrestrial condition and our relation with the biosphere. The earth is not merely a physical body with a biosphere and humanity. The earth is a complex physical biological-anthropological totality where life has emerged from the earth's history and where man is an emergence of terrestrial life. The relation of man to nature cannot be understood in a simplified or unrelated manner. Humanity is a planetary and biospheric entity. A human is at once natural and supernatural, needing to be rooted in material and biological nature, however he emerges and distinguishes himself through culture, thought, and consciousness.
  2. The awareness of a common human identity while simultaneously considering the diversity of individuals, cultures and languages.
  3. The awareness of a common destiny that links each individual's fate to that of the earth's.
  4. The awareness of the precarious existence of mankind in the cosmos, that will allow us to abandon our faith in the power of technology, that will allow us to relinquish our attempted control of nature, which will permit us to work with the earth without destroying it.
  5. 5. The awareness that human relations are destroyed by incomprehension, that is to say our inability to understand each other, and that we need to learn to understand and respect not only those that are foreign to us, but also our those within our own culture.
Often in history, counter-trends created in reaction to dominant trends develop and change the course of events. Of note at the end of this millennium:
- The ecological counter-trend can only increase due to the rise in the number of technical/industrial catastrophes and continuing degradation of our environment.
- The qualitative counter-trend that has come about due to the quantitative invasion and standardization has affected all domains, starting with the quality of life.
- The counter -trend against a utilitarian existence is manifested by the search for a poetic lifestyle, that is to say a life devoted to love, excitement, passion and amusement.
- The counter-trend against the importance of consumer goods that is manifested in two different ways, one being the quest for a life full of excitement, the other a search for a frugal and temperate life.
- The emerging counter-trend of emancipation from the omnipresent tyranny of money that tries to put human relations and solidarity in place of profit.
- Another recently emerging counter-trend, that in reaction to the explosion of violence, fosters morals and pacifies souls and spirits.
We can equally hope that the need for roots, which today dominates the thoughts of dispersed populations and which provokes one to assume an ethic of national identity, can increase without losing sight of their purpose, creating a common human identity that can be shared equally by the citizens of our world-homeland.
In conclusion:
Humanity is no longer an abstract notion: it is a reality of great importance to recognize, because humankind is now for the first time faced with extinction.
Humanity is so longer only an ideal notion: humankind now shares a common destiny and only the awareness of this community of destiny can bring us to a community of life.
Humanity is no longer only a biological notion; while this is recognizable in its indissociable solidarity with the biosphere, humanity is now and forevermore an ethic notion.
Humanity is no longer a notion without roots; humankind is rooted in a homeland, an Earth-homeland, and the Earth-homeland is a Homeland in danger.

Edgar Morin

Emeritus Research Director, National Center for Scientific Research
(France, sociologist, thinker)


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