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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
Changing your mind to change the world is the general principle proposed to educate for responsibility. Using an interdisciplinary scientific approach, this book dissects the functioning of the ego, that is to say the belief in a self, an illusion that causes disharmony. After an original modeling of the notion of responsibility, the author deduces that it is incumbent on all of us to become aware of the relationship between our own minds and the world. Thus, gaining consistency and awareness, everyone would have the potential to free themselves from the illusion of the ego and contribute to a more harmonious world. This book therefore proposes psychospiritual skills, favored in particular by different forms of reflexivity and by meditation (and mindfulness), which can serve as a basis for a curriculum to educate for responsibility. This academic connection between meditation and ethics is a major innovative contribution.
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Seitenzahl: 643
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Table of Contents
Cover
Foreword
You said “responsibility”?
Metaphysics and the strawberry tartlet
Illusions of the ego
Changing: yes, but how?
“Education for”, between emancipation and indoctrination
“Happy is he who resembles Ulysses…”
Introduction
I.1. Education for responsibility in today’s context
I.2. Relationship with money
I.3. Media relations
I.4. The center of the problem
I.5. The “education for” research field
I.6. A constructivist epistemology to think about education for responsibility
1 The World as a Reflection of the Mind
1.1. Definitions of the terms
1.2. The objective world as an epistemological and societal reflection of the collective mind: an example of science
1.3. The subjective world as a psychological and phenomenological reflection of the individual mind
1.4. Integrating the model of the relationship between the relative world and the mind
2 Responsibility and Functioning of the Mind
2.1. Introduction: an overview of the tone of current research on responsibility
2.2. Responsibility as a dialogical relationship between the outer and inner worlds: ethical perspectives
2.3. Responsibility as a consciousness connected to oneself, others and the non-human environment (NHE): psychological and phenomenological points of view
2.4. Assessment: criteria for guiding towards responsibility
3 Education for Responsibility Guidelines
3.1. Reflexivities
3.2. Meditation
3.3. General principle: reflexivities, meditation and responsibility
3.4. Summary of the competences targeted in responsibility education
3.5. Integrating model of psychospiritual competences targeted in education for responsibility
4 Discussion
4.1. Education for responsibility, ethics and spirituality
4.2. Limitations of this approach
4.3. Education for responsibility and happiness
4.4. Building knowledge and practical implementation in education for responsibility
Postface
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 1
Table 1.1. Typology of coping strategies with stressful situations
Table 1.2. Typology of the phenomena considered in correspondence with the under...
Table 1.3. Isomorphism between the objective world and individual relative minds
Chapter 3
Table 3.1. Evolution of isomorphism between the mind and the world
Table 3.2. Five basic emotional competences
Table 3.3. Other emotional competences that promote responsibility
Table 3.4. Epistemic competences that promote responsibility
Table 3.5. Attentional competences that promote responsibility
Table 3.6. Relational competences that promote responsibility
Table 3.7. Axiological competences that promote responsibility
Table 3.8. Model of change enhanced through education for responsibility
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1. Gradient of spiritual qualities
Figure 1.2. Quality of consciousness gradients as a function of the attentional ...
Figure 1.3. Steps in structuring subjective ego trends. For a color version of t...
Figure 1.4. Composition, characteristics of attitudes towards others and the non...
Figure 1.5. Modalities of relationships with thoughts and beliefs
Figure 1.6. Discontinuity of subjective consciousness. For a color version of th...
Figure 1.7. Negative effect of the chain reaction involving appraisal, thoughts ...
Figure 1.8. Attitudes towards the emotions assessed as negative and their effect...
Figure 1.9. Outcome diagram of the functioning of the individual relative mind. ...
Figure 1.10. The outer world as a reflection of the inner world, therefore of th...
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1. Principle of unconscious mental and conscious sensory modes. For a c...
Figure 2.2. Harmonious transformation of the mind through phenomenological refle...
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1. Development of empathy and relatednessthanks to phenomenological ref...
Figure 3.2. Symbolic representation of the intended path in an education for res...
Figure 3.3. Psychospiritual competences for an education in responsibility. For ...
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1. Epistemological particularities of “education for” and positive psyc...
Figure 4.2. Partial graphic summary of the principle of education for responsibi...
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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To all beings,for a harmonious life
Education Set
coordinated by
Angela Barthes and Gérard Boudesseul
Volume 4
Education for Responsibility
Hélène Hagège
First published 2019 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd 27-37 St George’s Road London SW19 4EU UK www.iste.co.uk
John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA www.wiley.com
© ISTE Ltd 2019
The rights of Hélène Hagège to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019935737
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-366-0
Foreword
Why is there such an urgent need for education for responsibility? ‘Because the world is mad,’ answers Hélène Hagège, hence this ambitious as well as modest proposal: we must change the world and, to do so, change our minds. The book takes an old philosophical problem and presents it in a new way, by bringing together cognitive sciences, psychosociology, phenomenology and ethics in order to develop a new modeling approach, a tool that allows us both to organize the field of research and to act in the world. For someone like me, unfamiliar with the advances of the cognitive sciences, the theory is not self-evident. So I have had to rebuild it step by step to understand its coherence.
You said “responsibility”?
As Hans Jonas and others have clearly shown, modern humanity holds the future of the planet in its hands. For the first time in history, the threat of degradation of life on Earth comes not only from natural disasters, but from human action and the reactions it causes in turn to natural processes. The coupling of humanity and its environment has never been stronger, to the point that the dualism of nature and culture seems to be fading in favor of hybrid objects: is the hole in the ozone layer natural or “cultural”? The survival of humanity implies a change in the functional norms of Western societies. In other words, we must transform the way we live, produce, consume, circulate, etc. And we must probably also redirect our values more towards being rather than towards having and still much more than that. We must somehow re-educate ourselves and our children accordingly. The School is a stakeholder in this case, as evidenced in recent years by the proliferation of “education for” (the environment, health, etc.) that challenge the traditional dualisms of education and training, knowledge and values, science and ethics or politics. Education for responsibility comes into play here, not as a new “education for”, but rather as a transversal dimension.
This education has two dimensions: first of all, the internal congruence in the subject, or rather the “coherence” to use the author’s lexicon: it refers to a subject who is lucid about themselves, their desires and thoughts, and who acts in accordance with the values faithfully chosen. Second, responsibility implies the choice of certain moral objectives: caring about others, taking care of them and the environment, although there is no consensus in moral psychology research on the spectrum of values implied by this second element (Hagège 2014). In reality, one may wonder whether the idea of coherence is not, in itself, a carrier of these positive values, as some pragmatists, such as John Dewey, believe, or close to this current, such as Jean-Marie Guyau. For this philosophical optimism, evil is first and foremost a disease of the self or the ego.
Metaphysics and the strawberry tartlet
Such ethics requires an epistemological and even metaphysical detour. Hélène Hagège is not afraid of this term that professional philosophers nowadays use with caution, even if she mitigates the intimidating potential of this term by pleasantly proposing this expression of “metaphysics of the strawberry tartlet” (section 1.4.1).
We must change the world or change our world, we said. But what does the world mean? The history of philosophy here offers a whole range of theories of knowledge.
For Kant, who accepts the realistic hypothesis, there is a world independent of the subject, which is the same for all, supports phenomena, but is unknowable. We do not have access to this world in itself (to the noumena), but only to an interpretation of it, to what appears to us: phenomena. Our intellectual equipment structures our experience: we perceive things in time and space and according to the categories of our understanding. Hegel challenges this distinction of phenomena and noumenon by assimilating reality to the collective experience of humanity (the Mind) and the ultimate reality to absolute knowledge, which today tends to be interpreted as the horizon of experience. It is in this perspective that the phenomenological (Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre) or pragmatist (Peirce, Dewey, James) currents are situated. In relation to all these currents, Hélène Hagège claims to have a “gnoseological” hypothesis, which attempts to reconcile the ontological hypothesis (the belief in a more or less knowable outer world) with the phenomenological hypothesis (the world is our representation or experience, whether individual or collective).
However, the author offers a warning. Individual or collective subjects are often tempted to believe that their worldview reaches the ultimate reality while even scientific research is always carried out within a given economic and social cultural context and therefore presents, in this sense, a certain relativity; hence the phenomenological theory that the world is a reflection of the mind. This logically implies that it would be “futile to change the world without seeking to change the mind” and therefore without changing oneself (section 1.2.3). Thus, to say that ecological threats force us to live differently is to say that we must change our relationship with the world, our vision of the world and select new values-in-action. The necessary political, economic and ecological changes will only be made if we are aware of the relativity of our vision of the world and the possible alternatives to this vision.
Illusions of the ego
If the world is mad, it is because we are mad, or almost all of us are. But where does our madness come from? From the ego, this illusion takes itself for reality, this tendency of the self that forces us to seek our own interests before anything else, to the point of confusing its relative reality with the ultimate reality. Let us successfully distinguish the individual, the subject and the ego. The individual is our biological entity, which both links us to a species and makes us unique. The subject is not a fixed entity; it is, according to Gilbert Simondon, a psychobiological and sociocultural process of individuation (Hagège 2014). In short, it is society that provides this primitive “soup” of sensations, emotions and volitions, the unity of a permanent self in time and the ability to say “I”. As for ego, it is a way of being for the subject, an attitude which is lived as separate and absolute: both as a social atom and as the center of the world. By separating from the world, projecting preferences and closing off from others, the ego takes its perspective on the world as the ultimate reality.
But how can we evaluate the gap between the perception of the ego and the ultimate reality? Let us say that the ego is an illusion machine. This produces a number of discrepancies between saying and doing, such as when a smoker or heavy drinker makes moral speeches about the importance of health. Being convinced that it is right, the ego can freeze in its prejudices, even in dogmatism. Escaping the madness means above all becoming aware of the relativity of one’s point of view, striving to be coherent in regards to oneself, engaging in dialogue with others and learning from experience. Education for responsibility is only possible if the ego accepts a dialectic of emancipation and limitation by which self-realization renounces the desire of all power, which implies recognition of the point of view of others and social norms. But Hélène Hagège goes further: some subjects would be able to approach the ultimate reality which, on the one hand, would allow us to measure the gap produced by the crazy perspectives and, on the other hand, recall the Bergsonian or Nietzschean notions of intuition or the Schopenhauerian will, capable of tearing the veil of Maya, of representation, in order to achieve something of becoming or being.
Our hypothesis is confirmed. What Hélène Hagège is looking for are the psychological, or rather ethical, conditions of an education for responsibility. Furthermore, we are of course reminded of Spinoza’s or Dewey’s ethics (Fabre 2015): to eliminate sad passions, those that diminish the power to act, to be in harmony with oneself, to harmonize one’s self, to open oneself to others and to connect with the universe. There is no radical evil, or rather, evil is a disease of the self that must be healed rather than punished. In short, education for responsibility would involve bringing about “awareness that relative reality is not the ultimate reality, to train the mind to perceive this, to function in an increasingly coherent way, to promote empathy and affiliation” (Box 2.2). All this supports the critical and especially self-critical mind.
Changing: yes, but how?
“Change yourself and the world changes with you” (section 1.5). The maxim is Stoic in appearance and seems to refer to voluntarism. Certainly, a researcher who comes from a molecular biology background probably knows how to appreciate what depends on us and what does not (heredity, social determinisms). But as the neurosciences show, this dualist division does not resist analysis for long if we consider the subject as a process of psychobiological individuation. This is in other ways in line with the Sartrean intuition that a human is how they react to situations that condition them without determining them. Humanity is therefore responsible for itself and others as well (especially as educators). The maxim is not Stoic, for another reason that is due to the impotence of the will in the change of self. The classic representation of the voluntary act, as the result of a rational deliberation, has already been challenged by Bergson and pragmatism: free will is probably only an illusion, even if, paradoxically, it is better to believe in free will, because this belief has performative values. In reality, everything seems more or less decided in advance, before consciousness, in an unconscious state, which, in order not to be representative of Freud’s, is no less effective. If this is the case, there is no point in fighting head-on against the trends from which we would like to free ourselves, which would only reinforce them. Rather, we are invited to participate in self-knowledge, to have a non-judgmental awareness of our entire subjective life: “being present to what is, without seeking to fight against” (Hagège 2014, author's translation). Hence the call to meditation in a secular spirituality associated with reflexivity.
“Education for”, between emancipation and indoctrination
The education for responsibility defended here therefore relies on “the values of harmonious coherence”. On several occasions, Hélène Hagège insists on the ethical imperative of giving subjects the freedom to choose their own values. In addition, she mentions the performative effect of explaining to subjects the possibility of choosing the values they can have (otherwise they risk acting unconsciously according to the values of their environment without ever questioning them). Admittedly, she emphasizes the educator’s “committed impartiality”, and the educator must not repress their own values (which would amount to letting them influence it unconsciously), but must endeavor to present them as choices, among others. We understand the educator’s concern – a concern I fully share – not to embrace it. One of the dangers of “educating for” would be to update the ideal of the education plans belonging to Robespierre’s friends: to regenerate a population through education; this is what frightened Condorcet. Hannah Arendt and John Dewey, each in their own way, also denounced the danger of making youth education the lever of a revolution whose goals would have been thought of in advance by the adult generation. On the contrary, the authentic meaning of education is undoubtedly to equip young people intellectually, emotionally and morally so that they are able to change the world according to their own objectives.
However, it must be recognized that “education for” puts the educator, and especially the teacher, in an uncomfortable position and makes them subject to all kinds of excess. Indeed, teachers must encourage their students to become more reflective and critical of the madness existing in our world (in terms of development, health, etc.). They must be encouraged to change their outlook, but to change it in a certain direction, one that democratically decided public policies indicate: sustainable development rather than productivism, for example. We are probably over analyzing when we consider that taking responsibility is more in line with Nicolas Hulot’s proposals than with Donald Trump’s denial of reality. Plato called education as such, a “conversion” to designate turning away from the shadows of the cave towards the true reality. In addition, Durkheim, analyzing the beginnings of the modern school of thought, used the term to designate the educational goals of Carolingian Christianity, goals which, once secularized, he believed should support school education to this day (Durkheim 1990). The question posed to an ethics of responsibility that emphasizes the coherence of the subject is how to solve tensions between metamorphosis (change that allows the subject to determine his or her own values) and conversion (pre-directed change in a given direction) (Moreau 2014). It is not easy, indeed, to reconcile the vital need to change the world in a given sense if we want to survive, with the educational imperative to equip the freedom of young people who will have to invent their own world. Perhaps the articulation is to be sought in an ethics of prudence, as I propose (Fabre 2014). Certainly “education for” is driven by predetermined goals. But it is in the case studies (should we or should we not have an airport or a dam here or there? Should we or should we not ban a particular drug, such as weedkiller?) that we exercise caution. To problematize these cases is to carefully go around the problem, to elucidate the multiple stakes, to analyze the unavoidable opposition of values and interests that inevitably overdetermine it and finally to prioritize the decision-making criteria for a solution. In the absence of such an education for responsibility, practised concretely in the analysis of cases, as the author suggests, “educating for” risks either being brought back into the fold of academic disciplines, at the risk of being reduced to their scientific aspect, which is considered in a positivist way, or of giving rise, with the best intentions of the world, to a pedagogy of inculcation, by indoctrination or conditioning.
To guide learners and education professionals in an ethical direction, Hélène Hagège uses five psychospiritual competencies (emotional, epistemic, relational, attentional and axiological), which could serve as a curriculum reference for education for responsibility. Thus, these professionals would be equipped to support learners in moving between two forms of ethos (“dialogism between ηθοξ and εθοξ” in the book), that is, to invite them to emancipate themselves in a certain direction, without indoctrinating them, strictly speaking.
“Happy is he who resembles Ulysses…”
We must not be discouraged by the scientific erudition of this work. The gathered literature, with the rigor required in the exercise of the right to supervise research, is always at the service of meaning. Regardless of their original discipline or scientific, ethical or political interests, the reader will find his or her way around, as he or she will easily recognize many of the contemporary concerns of any citizen with any degree of insight.
Personally, by reading this text, dense through erudition, but with a fluid and humorous writing style, I experienced “intellectual hygiene”, something that Bachelard recommended when he advised their reader to know how to leave their world to expose themself to other scientific or cultural worlds. However, by taking me on a trip to unknown countries, Hélène Hagège allowed me to approach islands of knowledge, familiar lands that I was able to revisit with a different perspective, to finally return to Ithaca, to my own questions, especially on “education for”, which have thus been enriched by this reading journey.
I wish the same experience unto the readers of this book.
Michel FABRE
Professor emeritus, University of Nantes
Centre de recherche de l’université de Nantes (CREN)
President of the Société francophone de philosophie de l’éducation (Sofphied)
Introduction
I.1. Education for responsibility in today’s context
“The world is mad!” This is the overused phrase that came to my mind when I tried to describe the context in which we live. How can we present the supporters of this madness in a few words at most? Let’s see… Let’s take a few examples on the go.
I will start with the last one I learned about, not bad in its kind and quite characteristic. It has been known for 40 years – as published in the most prestigious scientific journal Science – that flame retardants pass from clothing or fabrics into the blood and then urine (Blum et al. 1978) and that they are mutagenic (Gold et al. 1978), and therefore potentially carcinogenic (Blum and Ames 1977). Moreover, it seems clear that these compounds are neurotoxic (Hendriks and Westerink 2015) and cause developmental problems – in particular intellectual disabilities (Roze et al. 2009). These volatile products added to certain fabrics, foams or other materials to prevent the spread of a possible fire (particularly domestic) are therefore absorbed into the body by simple contact or physical proximity (a vector would be dust) and are dangerous for children’s development and health. The worst part is that they do not even seem to be effective in reducing flames (Lyon et al. 2007), so even firefighters are fighting against their use (Cordner et al. 2015). Despite all this, one must be careful, as they are still widely available today in a variety of products, including baby supplies (Stapleton et al. 2011), for example, nursing clothes or pillows). In other words, our society tolerates that we harm babies without our knowledge, so that chemical industries can become richer – whereas a decrease of one point of IQ per individual would cost the society a decline in productivity of around 1 million euros. In other words, even according to the financial logic of economic growth, this choice is probably absurd. Anyway, this is only the beginning.
Primary forests are destroyed by napalm in Tasmania and the paper trade is then enriched by the planting of eucalyptus trees, or for example, in Brazil, bulldozers extract aluminum from the soil to make individual coffee capsules. It is estimated that every hour in Borneo, the equivalent of 200 soccer fields of primary forests are sold or burned. Thus, more than 80% of the island’s primary forest has disappeared, mainly for the production of palm oil (Bryan et al. 2013). A continent of waste floats in the ocean. The water is contaminated by radioactivity, heavy metals, pesticides and so on. Animals are poisoned by waste produced several thousand kilometers away. The seed trade, based on the patenting of genes, leads to the servitude of farmers, their poisoning and the reduction of biodiversity. Let’s not even talk about the hole in the ozone layer; it is so much a part of the landscape now that we almost forget about it. There have never been so many rich people, and never before have there been so many inequalities on Earth in the material possessions of human beings. That is to say, 1% of individuals hold half of the material wealth. Louis 14th, beside this, had an extremely ridiculous fortune compared to the poorest French people at the time. Our garbage cans are full of waste that we have a hard time handling. I remember that during my studies I attended a conference given by an engineer who was proud to show the latest system for burying the most permanent radioactive waste: it was predicted to last about 10,000 years… while the half-life of this waste exceeded a hundred million years! Thus, he predicted that this storage would only be effective for a second compared to the life of this waste – and he seemed proud of it. I was shocked.
In short, consumption and waste seem to be the law. Our “economy of hyperextraction” leads to an irreversible depletion of the planet’s natural resources1. Many thinkers have already made observations and short-term forecasts that should logically prompt us to change our lifestyles and economic systems immediately2. On a global scale, we have the material means to feed and care for all of humanity, yet the logic of being an individual and looking out for ourselves and the now globalized market economy seems to take precedence over everything else, which leaves behind millions of human beings3. A symptom of this logic has just been elected President of the United States. Why is the world mad? The answer seems simple: because we are mad. Yes, including you and me, dear reader. The purpose of this book is to analyze the supporters of this madness, and to suggest ways to become more sane. Or even, for the bravest, more saintly. We could go so far as to talk about “wisdom”.
Certainly, critics who experienced post-war misery could contradict this notion of a mad world: “Yes, but today, on the whole, there is still a sense of comfort, there is health, to which the middle class did not have access to before: there is still progress! Drat, we’re not going back to the Stone Age anyway! And then Man has always known how to find solutions to problems… we are so scientifically and technically developed that we will find a way out”. And they could even go so far as to say: “At worse, we’ll ruin another planet”. I would reply: “Indeed, as Morin explains, destruction goes hand in hand with construction; opposites are inseparable. Technosciences create at least as many problems as they solve. But scientism4 is philosophically and historically untenable. Of course, the world is not black or white, it is gray. Nevertheless, its color is becoming increasingly black, since it is nevertheless increasingly deteriorated and polluted, by processes that are largely irreversible and probably much faster than our scientific-technical progress! There is every reason to believe that drastic changes are hanging over our heads and that, without preparing our minds for them, we risk undergoing them with great violence”. So why do we persevere in our madness, even those of us who feel alert to these questions? And why do the majority of us seem to be burying our heads in the sand?
I.2. Relationship with money
Touiavii5, a Polynesian tribal leader who had visited Europe at the beginning of the 20th Century, that is, before the globalization of information and the economy, had, in his probably very wise ways, provided to my opinion a relevant answer to these questions, raising points that I consider essential. I share with you here his ethnological and very poetic views. In addressing his peers, he wrote:
“Sensible brothers, heed my words and be happy that you don’t know the misery and terror of the white man. […]
Because the round metal and the heavy paper, which they call ‘money’, that is the true god of the white man.
Talk to a European of the God of love: he will think and then a smile comes over his face – he is smiling about the simplicity of your thought. But hand him a blank round piece of metal or a large heavy paper and immediately his eyes will light up and his lips will moisten. […]
There are many who have sacrificed their friends for money, their laughter, their honor, their conscience, their happiness, their woman and their children.
Almost everyone loses their health to it, to the round metal and the heavy paper. […]
However, it is not possible in these countries of the white man to be without money only once, from sunrise to sunset. Without any money you could not satisfy your hunger or still your thirst, nor could you find a sleeping mat at night. […]
When you have money, you can get tobacco, rings or beautiful cloth for it. You can have as much tobacco, as many rings or as many cloths as you can pay for. […]
Where does the money come from? How do you get much money? Oh, in many ways, some easy and some difficult. […] You need to do a thing which the Europeans call ‘work’. ‘Work and you have money,’ is a rule of behaviour in Europe. Yet there is a great injustice with all this, about which the Papalagi [the European] doesn’t think and doesn’t want to think, because then he would have to admit this injustice. Not everyone who has a lot of money also works a lot. Actually everyone wants to have a lot of money without working much.
This is how this comes about: when a white man earns so much money that he has food, a hut and a sleeping mat and beyond that a bit more, he immediately uses the money he has to spare to make his brother work. For himself! He gives him the work which before made his own hands dirty and hard. He lets him carry away the dirt, which he made. […]
Then the people say: ‘He is rich’. They envy him, flatter him and say beautiful words to him. For the worth of a man in the white world lies not in his honor or in his courage or in the splendour of this reasoning, but in the amount of his money, how much money he can make each day and how much he keeps in his thick iron trunk, which not even an earthquake can destroy.
There are many whites who save up money made for them by others, then bring it to a place which is well guarded. They keep bringing it more until one day they will no longer need workers for themselves, because now the money works for them all by itself. How this is possible without magic I have never learned: but it is the truth that money constantly grows, like leaves on a tree and that the man who has it gets richer, even as he sleeps.
Now, if a person has a lot of money, much more than other people, so much that a hundred, even a thousand others could make their work lighter for themselves – he still gives them nothing. He lays his hands on the round metal and sits on top of his heavy paper with greed and self-satisfaction gleaming in his eyes. And if you ask him: ‘What do you want to do with your money? What more can you do on earth than to clothe yourself, eat and still your thirst?’ he knows not what to say or he replies:
‘I want to make even more money. Always more. And more again’. And you soon realize that the money made him so sick, that all his senses are possessed by money. He cannot reason like this: ‘I want to leave this world without complaint or injustice, just as I came here, because the Great Spirit sent me to earth without the round metal and the heavy paper’. Only very few consider this. Most stay with their sickness, and never regain the health of their heart. They rejoice in the power which gives them all their money.
They swell in their conceit like rotten fruits in the rain. They feel gratified to leave their brothers to their raw, hard work, so that they can grow far in their body and prosper. They don’t think of giving others a part of their money or to make their work easier for them.
From this teaching he takes the right to be cruel, for the sake of money. His heart is bitter and his blood is cold; he is insincere, he lies and he is always dishonest and dangerous when his hand grasps for money. How often a Papalagi slays another for the sake of money. Or he murders him with the venom of his words; he uses his words to intoxicate him, in order to rob him. That is why no one trusts the next person, because all know of each others’ weakness. That is why you can never tell whether or not a man who has a lot of money is good in his heart; what is certain is that he can be very evil. You never know how and from where he has taken his treasures.
But then, the rich man never knows whether the honors, which are offered to him, are because of him or his money. Mostly, they are because of his money. […]
My enlightened brothers, we are all poor. […] We don’t have enough round metal and heavy paper to fill but one trunk. We are impoverished beggars in the thoughts of the Papalagi. And yet! When I look at your eyes and compare them with those of the alii, I find theirs pale, wilted and tired, but yours are alive like the great light, gleaming with joy, strength, life and health! Only with the children of the Papalagi did I see eyes like yours, before they could speak, when they still knew nothing of money […] Let us praise our custom which does not tolerate that one man has a lot more than the other, or that one man has a lot and another nothing. This way our hearts will not become like that of the Papalagi, who can be happy and cheerful, even when his brother next to him is saddened and despondent” (Scheurmann, 1997, pp. 70–83, emphasis added).
In his great wisdom, Chief Touiavii clearly perceived that the problem lay in our minds. We will come back to this later in the book. We can already note in brackets that there is a problem of blindness to our madness, which will be thematized in terms of the unconscious. That is to say, we, the Papalagi, do not always realize that we are “sick of thinking”, even if we are alerted to the contemporary problems inherent in the globalization of the market economy.
Now, let us try to model rationally, and simplify, the role of money in our world. Let us first consider the three sectors of the economy and what we call “material reality6” which refers to the raw materials (organic, mineral, etc. used in trade), and the terrain where they are found (Figure I.1). The primary sector of the economy is therefore concerned by the exploitation of this material reality (e.g. agriculture, material extraction, etc.). However, this reality also has an energy dimension. For example, food corresponds to kilojoules, and this is rather the affairs of the economy’s secondary sector, which developed with industrialization: it consists of the transformation of matter into energy (transport, production, etc., for example the use of coal or uranium to produce heat or electricity) and the transformation of energy into matter (e.g. electricity consumption by production machines). Here, we include in this energy dimension any human labor that causes economic gain (whatever the sector). The tertiary sector corresponds to services and the management of intangible assets, which we refer to here as “informational”: their value is more in the information they mean than in their correspondence with a defined matter. It should be noted that there is always a material support for the information (examples include paper, computers, computer servers, etc.). Money has an informational dimension. Previously, it was directly coupled with material reality, via a gold equivalent stored in banks: the banknotes were the avatars of portions of gold (or goods). So there was a link with the primary sector of the economy (gold mining in particular). However, since this coupling has been broken, that is, since the autonomy of the banknote printing plate, the quantitative value of money has become virtually disconnected from the raw material. That is to say, today’s banknote production essentially depends on the willingness of governments to use inflation to buy back their public debt: the physical anchoring of money corresponds only to banknotes and information stored in servers (those of financial transactions). The economy is thus moving away from interaction, i.e. dialogism between money and raw material (Figure I.1A). It is as if the energy of human thought was somehow delocalized in money (and therefore in information), instead of being oriented towards and connected to matter. Thus, money in financial terms evolves according to its own logic, almost disconnected from material reality. The 2007–2008 American subprime mortgage crisis is a good example: on the basis of no change in the matter, financiers made wagers, speculated, etc., which led to people losing their homes and ending up on the street.
Figure I.1.An attempt to explain the “magic” that is the disconnection of money from material and energetic realities. For a color version of this figure, seewww.iste.co.uk/hagege/education.zip
COMMENT ON FIGURE I.1.- A) Progressive distance from the economy in regards to the material reality (rising arrow), from the first to the third sector of the economy. B) Environmental consequences of the delocalization of human thought energy at the financial level (arrows 1 to 6): what is economically valued (downward curved arrows) is exploited, which leads to collateral ecological deterioration and a decrease in the initial intrinsic value of the raw material or its depletion (downward straight arrows). C)Financial information (economic value of money) is no longer regulated in a reciprocal way with material information. D) The intrinsic value only provides a little information about economic value, which follows its own logic, depending in particular on inflation and speculation.
This is a fundamental problem of our society, not just a one-off problem. Economic crises are only the tip of the iceberg… the underwater part is much more worrying and consequential. So let’s talk about it: icebergs, yes, they melt and here we are, in their immerged part!
I will indeed specify here some elements concerning the environmental consequences of this financialization of the economy. According to some psycho-sociological theories, we could consider that nature, of which raw materials are a part, has an intrinsic value, independent of the human being. It would then be a so-called ecocentric vision (versus anthropocentric or utilitarian7; see references in Hagège, Bogner and Caussidier 2009). For example, 1 kg of gold, 1 kg of salt or 1 kg of tomatoes would have an intrinsic value for what they are (value independent of their economic value, linked in part to inflation for example). This value would therefore be independent of the socio-historical context. However, there are two important points that gives nuance to this assertion.
Firstly, the collateral effects of firms of the first sector of economy imply a scarcity or even a disappearance of certain nutritious raw materials (certain varieties of cultivated plants for example). Also, probably because of the abundant use of insecticides and herbicides in intensive agriculture (and particularly GMOs), the total biomass of flying insects has fallen by nearly 80% in Germany over the past 27 years (Hallmann et al. 2017). Beekeepers have been sounding the alarm for a number of years now. However, about half of all edible plant species apparently reproduce only through bees. This suggests that the intrinsic value of some commodities may be destroyed as a result of their human-induced disappearance.
Secondly, by dint of exploiting raw materials through energy (and also by producing this energy or providing transport), and speculating on these commodities, the search at all costs for productivity and yields has led, for example via the use of chemicals, to soil depletion and pollution (Bourguignon and Bourguignon 2015)8, for vegetables to grow faster and out of season. Today, 1 kg of standard vegetables therefore has a lower nutritional value and complexity on average than 1 kg of vegetables grown in the last century (Halweil 2007). Because of the same type of process, 1 kg of sea salt no longer has the same nutritional quality as before, because it is contaminated by pollutants, particularly heavy metals (Figure I.1B). Of course, the secondary sector of the economy, particularly the chemical industry, benefits from this. And we know that these industries, which are also sometimes seed producers (such as the Monsanto Company, a spin-off of the chemical industry, which now produces GMOs), are lobbying governments to influence economic policies in their favor. Their profits seem to be their only motivation9. Thus, what might be called “the intrinsic value of raw materials” varies due to human activity.
In addition, because of speculative bubbles (see numbers 3 to 6 at the money level in Figure I.1B), the monetary value of a financial entity may change without this change being in direct reference to material or energy (see the subprime crisis). As a result, by ricochet effect, even for 1 kg of tomatoes of a given nutritional value, the price can vary, without any variation in intrinsic nutritional value. It is the feedback effect of evaluation by money, which generates a vicious circle of hyperextraction: that which is valued by money (see the utilitarian economic value in Figure I.1D) is more exploited, and therefore linked to more deterioration. Money is a bit like the wind (autonomous information) compared to food (material that has an equivalent in material information). In other words, it is like injecting air into liquid cream to make whipped cream: at the end, there is more volume, and you may be under the impression that there is more material. But no, there is just more air, and the initial material no longer has the same texture or the same properties. If humanity evaluates a production energy or raw material positively with money, especially if there are financial and shareholder stakes involved, if people who do not leave an office earn money from there, then ecological deterioration is almost assured. This is an almost mechanical feedback effect, due to the relocation of human energy to the financial level.
“When the last tree is cut down, the last river poisoned, the last fish caught, so only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten.” (Quote attributed to Alanis Obomsawin 1972)
In my opinion, this happens in a way that is quite similar to the tumorization of tissue, that is, the formation of cancer. Initially, before forming a tumor, the cells contribute to the proper functioning of the tissue, adhere to their environment and the environment regulates their growth. The latter also feeds them and the information contained in the cell is thus consistent with the information present in the tissue. Problems occur when the cell's information becomes autonomous from that of its environment: it acquires the ability to move and reproduce independently of the environment’s needs. In other words, it only serves its own logic of growth, to the detriment of the entire organization. This leads to the counterproductive effect of exhausting, sometimes to the point of killing, the environment that allows life (in this case the human body in which it evolves)… as we are doing with our habitat, the Earth. Initially, money was at the service of humanity; it was a very practical communication and transaction tool. However, monetary information has become largely disconnected from the physical environment from which it originated, and from the corresponding physical information (crossed out arrow in Figure I.1C). Thus, it functions as information in a group of cancer cells that lose informational contact with its tissue environment. With the financialization of the economy, we are collectively becoming like a group of cells that become gangrenous, that metastasizes and will kill our environment and thus our own possibilities for life.
Thus, economic value is no longer linked to intrinsic values, for example ecological values (crossed out arrow in Figure I.1D); it leads to their deterioration (Figure I.1B). Even human values have little influence on global economic functioning10.
I find in this pathological economic logic many parallels with the functioning of totalitarianism according to Arendt (1951): an autonomous logic where the human being has no place, a process fed by the desolation of a mass society, like a “mad” machine that leads to the destruction of politics, Man, and the world with… the same causes that produce the same effects!
“Time for outrage”, Stéphane Hessel said… “Time to wake ourselves up”, I want to write!
At this point, we have identified the center of the problem. But that’s not all. Our societies have undergone significant changes since the beginning of the last century. Some people refer to a problematic world marked by the decline of absolutes (Fabre 2016). Legitimate authorities have been partially replaced by abstract and impersonal dominations (Éraly 2015). These dominances are exercised, moreover, through the instruments and institutions of a globalized liberal economy – here it is again! They are exercised to the detriment of the authority of traditional institutions, such as the nation, the family or the school, and even to the detriment of the structure or sustainability of these institutions. This results in a dissolution of cultural specificities in global values. Thus, for example, our dependence on the central European power leads to the standardization of cultural or traditional practices (cheese making, university curricula, etc.).
I.3. Media relations
Above all, the omnipresence of mass media and screens contributes to general “sleepiness”, by diverting subjects from spiritual and relational values, and maintaining them in the illusion that happiness is synonymous with consumption and immediate satisfaction of pleasure (Favre 2007). Indeed, the psychosociology of happiness and materialism has shown that beyond the satisfaction of vital or elementary needs, material possessions do not bring happiness (Myers 2009). Their search, like that for other extrinsic goals (popularity, beauty, etc.), can generate more stress and other negative conditions than the search for intrinsic goals (contributing to the community, personal development, etc.; ibid.). While materialism does not increase a person’s quality of life, these numerous studies show that, on the contrary, close and caring relationships, community ties and positive thinking habits contribute to it (ibid.). In other words, “the best things in life are not things” (ibid. p. 603). Decades of scientific research have therefore been necessary to formulate an idea that has been formulated over thousands of years by most spiritual traditions: happiness does not come from the outside or from possessions; it comes from the inside or from relationships! Yet values seem to have reversed in the population in recent decades, newly favoring extrinsic goals.
With regard to the problem of the mass media, I will focus here mainly on the example of television. I will not go into detail on the impact of social networks, Internet sales platforms and other virtual systems, which are economically dependent on market hegemony, advertising sales or consumer databases, and which are nevertheless becoming more and more important in our society.
The French watch television on average 3 hours and 40 minutes a day, almost two months a year on a full-time basis (Desmurget 2013). And this is only on average! Programs are made to prepare brains to be conditioned by advertising, as a famous French television boss once said. Indeed, our Cro-Magnon human cognitive system is pre-wired to detect movement in an immobile group, movement that could indicate, initially, predator or prey. This attentional orientation is therefore linked to a primitive survival system. Compare the television shots of the 1960s to those of today: from American shots stable for several minutes, we are faced today with shots lasting only a few seconds at most. In addition, the effect of television on the brain is also specific, in that the light comes from the device, which increases the sense of reality (this is not the case with reflected light from the cinema for example). Thus, this screen that emits light and movement – in our living room, or now anywhere, thanks to our “smart” phone – maintains our attention, captivates it and puts our consciousness to sleep, diverting it from immediate reality11. When we are connected to the television, we are less present to what is around us (ourselves or others for example). So advertisements, which play on symbolic systems, insidiously condition us with often misleading ideas, and thus guide our consumer behavior in a way that is not necessarily compatible with our own good, that of others or the planet. Whether on the Internet, on the streets, in magazines, on television… advertising is omnipresent. It is a vehicle for the venal use of our cognitive functions, without our knowledge, hence the importance for us to understand this functioning, as this book intends to contribute to it. Let us get back to the power of television. The film Le Jeu de la mort (2009) presents the hypothesis and results of an extraordinary experiment carried out by a team of researchers led by Professor Beauvois. They wanted to replicate Milgram’s experiences in relation to the television system.
EXPERIENCE.– In an attempt to understand the submission of the German people to Nazi authority, Milgram studied how subjects submit to an authority that was supposed to be legitimate but gave unjust orders. In his experiment, this authority was the scientific authority, embodied by a man in a lab coat. Under the watchful eye and non-violent incitement of the latter, the studied subject had to torture a student, by administering increasing electric shocks, so that the scientist could supposedly study the student’s learning. The final shocks could be potentially lethal. This torture was not real (the student was an actor who was complicit with the scientists), but the subject believed it was. It was not the learning that was studied, but the submission of the subject to authority. The scientist’s only instrument to force the subject to obey and administer electric shocks was the order (“do it”, “we’ll take responsibility”, etc.). The subject was considered disobedient when he persisted in refusing after five injunctions to continue. About 37% of the subjects disobeyed: all the others went so far as to (virtually) administer lethal shocks to the student. This allowed Milgram and his collaborators to understand how an entire population could obey unjust orders while being psychologically healthy. It was easier for the subjects to take responsibility for themselves and place themselves in a psychological state of servership, than to face their inner conflicts and the authority embodied by the scientist.
In the experiment led by Professor Beauvois, the authority was embodied by a publicly known TV presenter and the context of the science lab was replaced by a TV board game. The principle of electric shock was similar. Their results showed only an 18% disobedience level. In other words, this experience tends to prove that 4 out of 5 people are able to kill another person in public who has done nothing to them, just because a host – legitimized by the media system they are a part of – asks them to do so. This led Beauvois to assimilate the mass media to a totalitarian system, having the same attributes of formatting minds and behaviors, and submission to an authority. It has also been analyzed how mass media annihilate democracy (Stiegler 2008), fabricate opinion (Chomsky et al. 2008), and entertain us in order to enslave us more successfully (Offensive 2010). We find here exactly the same parallels with the functioning of totalitarianism according to Arendt (1951), as those mentioned earlier about money.
We could also mention here reality TV, series, blogs or Internet channels, some of which play on a human being’s most vile aspects (lies, judgment, betrayal, vulgarity, the reduction of a human being to appear as plastic or as a figure, competition, comparison, slander, etc.) and insidiously feed these tendencies into the minds of the people who watch them. Whether we like it or not, we are in fact in tune with what we let our attention be drawn to. These mass media are, of course, also a great source of information – for a reflective subject. However, studies on the new generations of students (“generation Y”) show the birth and dissemination of a new relationship with information: what is the point of memorizing, since I can find all the information I need on the Internet? What is the point of thinking or criticizing, since if I do not have an opinion, and I will find several readymade ones on the Internet?
Finally, to conclude on television, studies have shown the disastrous effects of television and tablets on children’s psycho-affective and cognitive development and health (Desmurget 2013; Lurçat 2004). This loss of vitality seems to me to be perceptible in their eyes, all the more dull as these children are stupefied in front of screens. There are now even TV shows made for (lobotomizing) babies! Unfortunately, I have a feeling that Chief Touiavii would not see as much vitality today in the eyes of our children as he did at the beginning of the last century.
In line with the illusions created by this attentional capitalism12, the number of single people in France seems to be constantly increasing in recent years (INSEE 2016), and yet, they have never had so many means of communication to meet a partner (for example, dating sites). The consumer society feeds the illusion that happiness is synonymous with the immediate satisfaction of pleasure, which has the effect of reducing tolerance to frustration: more than ever before, a partner is thrown away as a single-use product, families are reconstituted according to the wishes of parents and some of our elders die isolated from their families, as objects deemed useless in regards to pleasure or to the consumer society. Society tends to make people less responsible for the acceleration of ecological deterioration, a “collateral” damage of the liberal economy (Figure I.1b). It is in fact in society’s interest to keep the subjects in a psychological state similar to that of a child or adolescent.
I.4. The center of the problem
French schools, which are supposed to transmit the values of the Republic (freedom, equality, fraternity, solidarity and secularism), are a champion of discrimination and social inequality among all the countries of the OECD! (Ministère de l’Education nationale 2013; Hagège 2017d). Without its knowledge, it reproduces the norms and values of the market economy: individualism, competition, exclusion of the weakest, etc. (Favre 2007). It thus contributes to the ambient incoherence of “do as I say, and not as I do” (Hagège 2017c). And we will keep silent here about politicians’ contributions to such inconsistencies, as the press is so full of examples.
In this plural, multicultural, multireligious society, where values and families tend to be fragmented, where values are vague, contradictory and disseminated, where the collective is no longer a community (Éraly 2015), some young people seek their bearings in dematerialized communities, those of virtual social networks or in groups offering clear and solid roots. When the community (“us” or “ingroup”) contradicts the rest of the collective (“them” or “outgroup”), this can lead to radicalization, which can become violent under certain conditions, as we have seen with the recruitment of young French people into jihadist groups, a theme we will return to in this book (section 1.4.3).
