won. And if the moment has come to wonder much more seriously than in the past and with greater urgency, ‘Where are we rushing to?’, the question should be asked not in a spirit of contrition or denigration, nor with an implication that we are going too fast, departing from the path or losing our bearings, but as a genuine question.
This century resounds with the most backward-looking rhetoric. It could mark the moment of revenge for all those who have always hated man’s liberation and even more so that of woman; for those who distrust science, art, literature and philosophy; for those who would like to return the mass of humanity like docile sheep to the reassuring fold of age-old moral tyrannies. But if we have strayed from the path, it is not from the path our fathers beat, but from the one we should be beating for our children, a path which no generation before us has had the chance to glimpse and which no other has so vitally needed.
I want to underline this here as I did in the book’s opening pages, because reactions to the turbulence of our times may take very different forms. I shall distinguish three, which, to remain with the mountaineering metaphor, I shall call the temptations of the precipice, the rock face and the summit.
The ‘temptation of the precipice’ is characteristic of our age. Every day, men leap into the void hoping to take the whole climbing party with them. This is a phenomenon without any real precedent in history. These people, however numerous they may be, represent only the burning fuse of a giant powder keg of despair. Hundreds of millions of their fellow human beings in the Muslim world and elsewhere feel the same temptation, which the overwhelming majority fortunately resist.
It is not so much the sting of poverty which causes their distress as that of humiliation and insignificance, the feeling of not belonging in the world they live in, of being only losers, downtrodden and excluded. And so they dream of ruining the feast to which they have not been invited.
The ‘temptation of the rock face’ is much less characteristic of our age, but it has taken on a new meaning. What I have in mind here is the attitude which consists of bracing oneself, taking shelter and protecting oneself while waiting for the storm to pass. In other circumstances it would be the wisest option. But the tragedy for our and future generations is that this storm is not going to pass. The wind of history will continue to blow more and more strongly, and at ever greater speed, and nothing and no one will be able to calm or slow it.
I shall not speak of those who hold this attitude as a section of humanity, since the temptation exists in all of us. It is hard for us to accept that the world has to be entirely reconceived, that the road to the future needs to be sketched by our own hands, that our ordinary, peaceful, insignificant behaviour could trigger a major climate disaster and turn out to be just as suicidal as hurling ourselves into the void. And it is hard to accept that our age- old attachments based on identity could compromise the advance of the human species. And so we try to persuade ourselves that there is nothing fundamentally new under the sun and continue to cling to our familiar footholds, our inherited allegiances, recurrent quarrels and flimsy certainties.
The ‘temptation of the summit’ is based on the opposite idea, namely that humanity has reached a dramatically new phase of its evolution in which the old formulas no longer work. It is not the end of history, as was prematurely declared when Communism fell, but it is probably the twilight of a certain
What has had its day and now must end is the tribal phase of human history, the history of struggles between nations, states, ethnic and religious communities and civilisations. What we are witnessing coming to an end is the prehistory of mankind. It has been too long a prehistory, made up of all our identity-based tensions, all our blinding ethnocentricity, and a selfishness which is held to be sacred, whether based on country, community, culture, ideology or something else.
It is not my intention here to pass ethical judgement on the time-worn mechanisms of history as we know it, but to note that new realities mean we must leave them behind as soon as possible in order to embark on a completely new phase of the human adventure, a phase in which we shall not fight against the Other — the enemy nation, civilisation, religion or community — but against much more considerable, redoubtable enemies that threaten the whole of humanity.
When we set aside the debilitating habits we have acquired during our prehistory, it is abundantly clear that the only battles truly worth fighting for our species in the centuries ahead are scientific and ethical. Overcoming all illness; slowing the ageing process; making natural death retreat by several decades and perhaps one day by several centuries; freeing people from need as well as ignorance; giving them through art, knowledge and culture the inner richness which might furnish their ever-longer lives; conquering the vast universe, and all the while not damaging the ground on which we stand — those are the only conquests which should mobilise the energies of our children and theirs. I for one find those much more inspiring than any patriotic war, and as mentally stimulating as any mystical experience. It is towards such ambitions that we should now turn.
A pious wish, you may say. No, a necessity for survival and consequently the only realistic option. Having reached this advanced stage of its evolution, characterised by such a high degree of global integration, the only options for humanity are to collapse or change.
Chapter 3
The phase of evolution I have just referred to is not an abstract concept. Never has humanity had such a need for effective solidarity and collective action to face the many dangers which assail it. They are huge dangers born of advances in science, technology and demographics, as well as the economy, and they threaten to destroy within a century everything that has been built over millennia. I am thinking of the proliferation of atomic weapons and other instruments of death. I am thinking of the exhaustion of natural resources and the return of great pandemics. Nor am I forgetting climate change, of course, which is perhaps the gravest danger humanity has had to face since the birth of the earliest civilisations.
But all these threats could also constitute an opportunity, if they allow us finally to open our eyes, to understand the scale of the challenges we have to face and the mortal risk we run if we do not change our behaviour, and do not rise — mentally and especially morally — to the level which our current stage of evolution demands.
I would be lying if I said that I have complete faith in our collective survival instinct. If such an instinct exists in individuals, it remains hypothetical for the species as a whole. At any rate, as a result of the various crises affecting us directly, it is now time to make up our minds. Either this century will be the one in which humanity goes into decline, or else it will be the century of a step change and beneficial transformation. If we needed a state of emergency to shake us up and mobilise what is best in us, we’ve got one.
I remain in a state of worried anticipation, but I also see some good reasons for hope. They are not all of the same sort and they do not all respond to the same levers, but, taken as a whole, they make it possible to imagine a different future.
The first reason for hope is that, in spite of the tensions, crises, conflicts and shocks, scientific progress continues at an increasing pace. It may seem out of place to mention among the positive signs today a tendency which has been going on for several generations. If I mention it nonetheless it is because the consistency of science may help us overcome the turbulence of this century. I shall not go so far as to say that scientific progress is the antidote to decline, but it is certainly one of its ingredients — on condition that we use it wisely, of course.
We can reasonably imagine, for example, that scientists will give us a whole range of clean technologies in the decades ahead,which will enable us to limit carbon emissions in the atmosphere so that we can escape the vicious circle of global warming. We must not imagine, however, that we can simply hand this problem over to them and continue in our current ways with a clear conscience. Our scientists probably do not have enough time to enable us to avoid the climate disturbances which could affect the planet in the first half of this century. We shall have to navigate round that difficult cape with the equipment we have on board; only afterwards will science be able to offer us long-term solutions.
My confidence in science is simultaneously limitless and cautious. To questions which are within its purview, I think it is capable in time of bringing complete answers and thereby giving us the means to realise our wildest
