A few weeks before the sudden death of Felix Qatar, he sent the following text to Le Monde Diplomatique. As a result of the extra weight of the tragic disappearance of the author, in a sense, this ambitious and comprehensive series of articles has the character of a philosophical will or last words.
Reshaping Social Practice
"Remaking Social Practices"
Felix Qatar (1930-1992)
The world's mediocre images of daily routines and the media fill us with a reassuring atmosphere in which nothing can be truly meaningful and valuable. We close our eyes; we ban ourselves from thinking about the turbulent past of our time, which quickly casts behind the familiar past, erases what is still fresh in our memory, about the way we live and the way we live, and puts the future on a horizon that is non-transparent, cloudy and poisonous.
We increasingly need that sense of "insecurity". The two "superpowers", which had long supported each other, were now in turmoil because one of them had collapsed; the former Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries had been caught in a seemingly fruitless drama; and the United States itself had not been spared the violent subversion of civilization (the Los Angeles incident). Thirdly, the countries of the world are unable to break out of stagnation; Africa, in particular, is in a terrible impasse. Like many threats, ecological disasters, famine, unemployment, racism and xenophobia are driving the end of this millennium. At the same time, science and technology have developed at an extremely rapid pace, providing humanity with almost all the means needed to solve material problems. But humankind has not seized those opportunities; it remains inert and powerless in the face of challenges. It is passively involved in processes such as water and air pollution, forest destruction, climate disturbance, mass biocide, the impoverishment of the biosphere ' s genetic capital, the destruction of natural landscapes, urban suffocation and the gradual abandonment of cultural values and ethical reference systems (such as human solidarity and fraternity)... It seems to have lost its mind or, more precisely, its mind no longer functions with the body. How can we find a compass to reposition ourselves in a modern, complex and difficult society?
In order to understand this complexity, especially when it is necessary to challenge its bias and short-term interests, to abandon the simplified approach of Scientology: this is the perspective necessary to enter what I call the "postmedia" era. All major contemporary upheavals, both positive and negative, are judged on the basis of information filtered by the mass media industry. The industry retains only the description of events (small events), never explores the issues involved and never presents them in their entirety.
Indeed, it is difficult to free individuals from their own limitations, to pull themselves out of the trivialities before them and to reflect on the world's present and future. They lack the collective incentive to do so. Most of the old modes of communication, reflection and dialogue have disappeared and have been replaced by a sense of individualism and isolation, often synonymous with anxiety and neurosis. Thus, in a new combination of environmental ecology, social ecology and psychological ecology, I have advocated the creation of new collective expression organizations for couples, families, schools, neighbourhoods, etc. The current mode of operation of the mass media*, especially television, contradicts this view. Television viewers remain passive in front of the screen, fall into quasi-hypnotic relationships, isolate others and lose any sense of responsibility.
However, this situation will not continue indefinitely. Technological advances will introduce new possibilities for interaction between media and users, as well as among users. The combination of audio and video screens, remote communication screens and computer screens may lead to a real re-activation of collective sense and intelligence. The current equation (media = passive) may disappear faster than one could imagine. It is clear that we cannot expect miracles from these technologies: ultimately, everything depends on the ability of the community to master them and apply them to the right objectives.
Large economic markets and homogenous political space, as shown by European and Western trends, will also have an impact on our world view. However, these factors are moving in the opposite direction, the results of which depend on the evolution of power relations among social groups, which remain unclear. With the intensification of industrial and economic rivalries between the United States, Japan and Europe, the decline in "market share", lower production costs and increased productivity will become increasingly important, increasing structural unemployment and leading to the "diverseization" of society within the capitalist castle. Not to mention their break-up with the third world, which, as a result of population growth, would take a more conflicting and dramatic turn.
On the other hand, the strengthening of those powerful parties will undoubtedly lead to the re-establishment of a geopolitical and ecological order - if not a "global order", a geopolitical or ecological order. By supporting the pooling of resources on research objectives or eco-humanitarian plans, and by promoting the presence of these camps, they may play a crucial role in the future of humankind. At the same time, however, it is immoral and unrealistic to accept that the current quasi-Monith doctrine will increase irreducibly between the rich and the weak. Unfortunately, the signatories of the so-called Heidelberg appeal, presented at the Rio Conference, were undoubtedly involved in this view in the ecological sphere, as well as in the proposal that the basic choices of humanity are dominated by a group of scientific elites. It's based on incredible technological nearsightedness. In fact, how can one see an important part of the planet ' s ecological problems come from a collective and dominant fracture between the rich and the poor? Scientists must find their place and promote their development within a new international democracy. And it's not to push them along this path that mythically thinks they know everything!
How can we reconnect the head and body and how can science and technology be combined with human values? How can we reach agreement on common items while respecting the uniqueness of individual positions? In the current negative climate, how can we trigger a massive awakening and a new Renaissance? Is the fear of disaster enough to inspire people to act? Ecological accidents (such as Chernobyl) have indeed attracted the attention of public opinion. But this is not just a question of threats; there is also a need to move towards tangible results. There is also a need to remind people that danger itself can be attractive. A sense of disaster may unleash an unwitting desire for destruction, for vanity, and for abolition. It was thus that, in the Nazi era, the German people were mired in the end-of-world fantasy and linked to the mythical saving of humanity.
First, emphasis should be placed on re-establishing a collective dialogue capable of generating innovative practices. There can be no lasting control over the environment without a change in mindset and a post-media era. However, the mindset will not change until the social and physical environment changes. Here, we are faced with a recurring problem, which prompts me to propose the need for an "ecological philosophy" linking environmental ecology to socio-ecological and psycho-ecological ecology.
From this "ecological philosophy" point of view, there is no question of re-establishing hegemonic ideology, like the dominant religion or Marxism. For example, it was absurd for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to advocate a single model of growth for universal access in the third world. Africa, Latin America and Asia must be able to embark on a specific socio-cultural development path.
The world market need not lead the production of each people in the name of the concept of universal growth. Capitalist growth is only quantitative, while complex development essentially focuses on quality. The future of human activities and their underlying objectives is dominated by both non-State (e.g., bureaucratic socialism) and world markets (under neo-liberal ideologies). It was therefore necessary to establish a global dialogue and promote a new ethic of difference that would replace current capitalist power and develop policies based on the aspirations of the people. But does that lead to confusion? As the current crisis has demonstrated, democratic chaos is generally better than the chaos caused by authoritarianism!
Individuals and groups cannot avoid falling into some sort of existential confusion. This is already what we do every night when we give up ourselves in a dream world. The most important question is to know what we have learned from this dive: a sense of disaster or a new contours of possibility? Who controls the capitalist chaos today? Stock markets, transnational corporations and, to a lesser extent, State authority! Most of them are non-thinking organizations! The existence of world markets is indeed crucial to the construction of international economic relations. But we cannot hope that the market will magically regulate human exchanges on this planet. The real estate market has led to urban chaos and the art market has distorted aesthetic creation. Thus, outside the capitalist market, the emergence of a territorialized market that relied on a large amount of support and confirmed its value added. My so-called "attractive" values: the values of diversity, heterogeneity and dissent (dissensuelle) must emerge from the chaos of capitalism.
The Marxists have based their historical movement on the inevitability of class struggle. Free markets resolve tensions and differences, and trust in the best of the world is the trust that free economists blindly place in them. However, the events confirm that, if necessary, progress is neither mechanically nor conclusively linked to class struggles, scientific and technological development, economic growth or free-market games... Growth is not equivalent to progress, because the brutal revival of social and urban confrontations, inter-ethnic conflicts and global economic tensions are cruelly revealing this.
Social moral progress is inextricably linked to the promotion of its collective and individual practices. Nazism and fascism did not disappear as a result of a brief illness or a historical accident. They constitute an ever-present potential; they continue to exist in our virtual world; Stalinism, the LDS dictatorship under the Soviet system of labour camps, can continue to emerge tomorrow in the new environment. In various forms, racism, xenophobia, the rise of religious fundamentalism, militarism and oppression of women, mini-fascism is spreading in our societies. History does not guarantee the irreversibility of the threshold of progress. Only human practice and collective voluntarism can prevent us from falling into worse barbarism. In this regard, we will all dream of leaving it behind to defend "rights of man" or "rights of people". Rights are not guaranteed by sacred authority; they depend on the vitality of the institutions and forces that underpin their existence.
A basic condition for the promotion of a new global consciousness lies in our collective rebuilding of the value system beyond the social stratification of moral, psychological and capitalist stabilization of capitalist added value, which focuses only on economic profits. Fun in life, solidarity and compassion for others are feelings that are about to disappear and must be protected, inspired and led in a new direction. Ethical aesthetic values are not derived from orders and transcendent rules, but involve presence based on the intrinsic nature (immanence), which must be continuously reoccupied. How can we create or expand such a value universe? Of course, moral education cannot be abandoned.
The inspirational power of informatics obscures the importance of communication dimensions. It reminds us that a message must be received, not just transmitted, in order to be meaningful. Information cannot simply be summarized as an objective expression; in fact, it is the creation of the dominant -- the intangible universe of uniformity. The latter cannot in any way be reduced to binary-based selection calculations and an analysis of impossibility. The truth of the information refers to the existence of events on the part of those receiving it, the record of which is not the accuracy of the facts but the meaning of the problem and the consistency of the values of the universe. The current crisis in the media and the beginning of the post-media era are more profound symptoms of the crisis.
I would like to emphasize the fundamental plural, multicentrism and heterogeneity of contemporary subjectivity, although it is influenced by the assimilation of mass media. In this respect, an individual is already a "pool" of heterogeneity elements. Subjectivity concerns the individual sphere - body, self - but also the collective sphere - family, community, ethnic group. It is also important to add all the mainisation programs contained in speech, writing, computing and technical machines.
In the former capitalist society, life and the beginning of the world's mystery were transmitted through family relations, peer relations, clan relations, rituals, etc. This direct communication is becoming increasingly rare. Primacy is shaped by multiple interventions, while relationships between individuals are diminishing. For example, the role of grandparents in supporting children as intergenerational memory often disappears. Children grow up under the shadow of television, computer games, communication equipment and comic books... A new type of mechanical isolation is emerging, not without value, but it should constantly be reformulated to meet social needs in the form of renewal. It is even more important to establish a multi-sounding relationship between individuals and society. So a major music still needs to be created.
The new global consciousness will have to rethink mechanism. We often set the machine against the human spirit. Some philosophy believes that modern technology impedes our proximity to our very foundation, our original existence. If, in turn, can the revival of spirituality and human values be accompanied by a new alliance with machines?
Biologists now link life to new mechanistic methods involving cells and living organs; linguists, mathematicians and sociologists explore other mechanistic forms. By expanding the concept of machinery, we have been guided to highlight some aspects that have not been fully explored so far. Machines are not confined to their own integrity, and they maintain a definite relationship with the outer space and space, as well as with the symbol world and virtual realms. The relationship between the internal and external parts of a mechanical system is not only energy consumption, but also the result of the production of goods: it is also reflected in gene spectra. A machine, like the finished product of the past gene spectra, is now floating, it is a point of restarting or breaking, from where an evolutionary spectroscopy will extend to the future. The emergence of these genealogical and mutation segments is complex. All scientific, artistic creativity and social innovation are constantly driving their development and constituting an abstract and mechanical "technology circle" around our biosphere - not as a outer armor to bind human beings, but as an abstract, institutionally prosperous state to explore the future of humankind.
For example, human life is competing in the fight against HIV retrovirals. Biosciences and medical technologies will prevail over the disease or eventually lead to human extinction. Similarly, as new computer technologies become more and more sensitive to sensory, behavioural and intellectual dynamics, intellectual and sensory changes have taken place. We are now witnessing a major variation that may outweigh the importance of the invention of writing or printing.
Human beings must be associated with the various branches of mechanism in terms of reason and emotion, or face the risk of confusion. The renewal of democracy could be aimed at diversifying the management of its mechanical components. In this way, justice and legislation will be brought to the technical and research fields to establish new links (this is already the case with ethics committees investigating biological and modern medicine; but we must also quickly create media, urban planning, educational ethics committees). In short, it is necessary to recharacterize the real entities of our time, which no longer correspond to those that existed decades ago. Individuals, societies and machines overlap - like justice, ethics, aesthetics and politics. There has been a major shift in purpose: these values, such as the existence of "renewalization", ecological responsibility and machine creativity, can be at the centre of the replacement of the old world dualism as a new pole of progress.
The production machinery that constitutes the global economic infrastructure coincides only with the so-called leading industries. They did not consider that other sectors were lagging behind because they were unable to generate capital profits. Mechanical democracy will have to rebalance the value of the current system. The production of a clean, liveable, dynamic and highly socialized city; the development of humanized and effective health care and a rich education have the same value as automobile production lines or high performance electronics.
Current machines - technological, scientific, social - are potentially capable of providing food, clothing, transportation and education for all: the means are already there to support the lives of 10 billion people on this planet. Shortcomings are merely the incentive systems for the manufacture of goods and their equitable distribution. Efforts to develop a sense of material and moral well-being should be seen as equally valuable in terms of social and psychological ecology, as in the case of leadership or financial speculation.
The nature of the work has changed because of the growing non-material aspects of its composition: knowledge, desire, aesthetic taste and ecological concerns. Human physical and mental activity is increasingly adjacent to technology, computers and communication equipment. In that regard, the old Fordism or Taylorism concepts of industrial site organization and human engineering had been replaced. In the future, there will be a growing need to call for individual and collective creativity to produce, distribute (and even consume) at all stages. The new labour pool landscape - especially robotics - would challenge the old hierarchical structure and therefore require a revision of the current pay scale.
Given the agricultural crisis in developed countries, opening agricultural markets has brought legitimacy to third world countries, where climatic conditions and productivity are often more favourable than in the northern regions. But does this mean that farmers in the United States, Europe and Japan must abandon their villages and migrate to cities? Instead, agriculture and livestock needed to be redefined in those countries to fully exploit their ecological values and protect the environment. Forests, mountains, rivers, coastlines all constitute a non-capitalist capital, a quality investment that should be rewarded and must be continuously re-evaluated, which means a thorough rethinking of the status of farmers and fishers.
The same applies to domestic work: women and men who are responsible for raising their children (the task is becoming more and more complex) need to be adequately remunerated. Overall, many "private" activities are thus called upon to take their place in new economic value-added systems, taking into account the diversity and heterogeneity of social, aesthetic or ethically useful human activities.
This view of social and cultural restructuring of labour, in order to expand the labour class, naturally leads to the promotion of production pools and new transversalities in other communities. It is important to begin, including those social activities that deserve attention, and economists may need to imagine a way to update the existing monetary and wage systems. For example, the coexistence of a strong currency with a protected, non-convertible and locally managed currency within a given social space will alleviate extreme poverty and facilitate the development of social activities (and thus lose their superficial marginality) through the distribution of goods originating only in the internal market.
This amendment of the division of labour and value assessment does not necessarily imply an indefinite reduction of the weekly working hours or the early retirement age. Of course, mechanization tends to release more "free time". But for what? For pre-produced entertainment? A fan of TV? How many retirees have fallen into despair and depression months after the new situation? Paradoxically, the redefinition of labour by eco-philosophies may at the same time increase the amount of time it takes to get paid. This would mean a fine area divided into the working hours required for the economic market and the time involved in the social and spiritual value economy. For example, it is conceivable to regulate the retirement system to allow the participation of workers, employees and managers who wish not to be isolated from company activities, especially those of social and cultural significance. Isn't it absurd that they have the best knowledge in their own field and are suddenly excluded when they can provide the best services in training and research? Such a reorganization of labour social and cultural perspectives would naturally lead to the promotion of production pools and new transversalities in other communities.
Certain trade union experiments have evolved in this direction. In Chile, for example, there are new trade union practices that are organically integrated with the social environment. The radicals of the "territory union" are concerned not only with preserving workers protected by trade unions, but also with the difficulties faced by the unemployed, women and children in the communities in which the companies operate. They are involved in organizing educational and cultural projects and are involved in issues of health, health, ecology and urban planning. (This expansion of workers' capacities and mobility is far from well received by the level of power in the trade union system.) In the country, the "ecologic of retirement" group works to organize cultural and interpersonal interactions among older persons.
It is difficult, but absolutely necessary, to transform old reference systems based on right-and-right rivalry, socialist-capitalism, market economy-planned economy etc. This is not to create an "intermediate" reference point, as far as the other two are concerned, but rather to move away from this type of system, based on full support, the so-called scientific basis or transcendence of legal and ethical principles. Public opinion more than the political class excludes programmatic discourse and dogmaticism that does not tolerate pluralism. However, as long as public debates and discussions do not receive an updated form of expression, there is a great risk of moving away from the democratic movement and away from voting rights or from action towards reactionary activists. This means that in political campaigns it is important not to win broad popular support for an idea, but to see public opinion structured into diverse and vibrant social groups. The reality is no longer single and indivisible. It is multifaceted and marks a clue to the possibility that human practice can grasp. In addition to energy, information and new materials, "choice" and "risk taking" are at the core of new mechanization attempts in technical, social, theoretical or aesthetic terms.
The ecological philosophy map that must be created will have its own specificity, taking into account not only its current dimensions but also its future. They will pay as much attention to human life on Earth as to public transport within three years. They imply responsibility for future generations, as the philosopher Hans Jonas calls it "the ethics of responsibility". There is an inherent conflict between long-term options and short-term interests. Social groups affected by such problems must reflect on and change their habits and mental coordinates, adopt new values and provide human meaning for future technological transformations. In short, consultations are being held in the name of the future.
This is not, however, a return to the historical dogmatism of totalitarianism and authoritarianism, and the dogmatism of ruling every human life in the name of "the heavens" or ecological balance. Each "map" represents a particular view of the world and, if accepted by a large number of people, always contains uncertainties. Indeed, this is the most precious capital; it is the basis for a genuine mechanism of listening to others: listening to differences, uniqueness, marginalization and even madness, not only because of the need for tolerance and brotherhood. It also constitutes a necessary preparation, a permanent call to an order of uncertainty, to disengage from the forces of chaos that always haunt the dominant structures, self-sufficiency and confidence in their superiority. Such a hearing mechanism could reverse or repair the direction of these structures and give them a new potential by refilling or deploying them with new creative streams.
Under these circumstances, a light of meaning must be found, penetrating the impatience of my eagerness to allow others to accept my views and the unkind desire to try to bend others to meet my wishes. I must not only accept this adversity, but also love it for its own sake: I must look for it, communicate with it, explore it in depth and increase it. This will free me from my narcissistic, bureaucratic blindness and the limited sense that I have tried to hide for the sake of all the centralization of the baby.
Eco-democracy does not give up the convenience of reaching consensus agreements: rather, it invests in discriminatory meta-moderation. Through ecological democracy, responsibility begins to pass on to others.
Without the promotion of this individualism of difference, atypical and utopianism, our time could be plunged into a conflict of terrible identities, like those of the peoples of the former Yugoslavia. Calls for ethics and respect for rights are futile. Individualism disappears in profit and power. Rejection of the current status of the media and the search for new social interaction, institutional creativity and enrichment of values are already major steps on the road to reshaping social practices.
Sophie Thomas.
He Fa Turning English
Thirty years later, reread the final writing of Qatar - " Reshaping Social Practice ", I was born in 90 years, and have we changed? How are we preparing for the future as described in the article? Has the desire for capital added decreased? What changes have been made in human relations between these crises and opportunities?
Since 15 years ago, P4 Theater has been in existence for eight years, and it continues to speak out and try to change something. We have always been convinced that theatre is the first step in re-establishing human relations, and we are also convinced that our lost truth can be regained in fiction, that love between human beings can pierce narcissistic narcissism and false disguises, that one can hear, see, see and see each other and connect with one another with a new resonance. Therefore, reshaping social practice should not be a slogan, but a real one, so let us work together to fight for our future.
Click a picture above to welcome you to the personal identity PHA project