Exponential
acceleration
In
continuity with the natural ascending evolutionary line, the rise of
specific humanity means a rupture for the exponential irruption of a
different ascending line. Concretely, the two vectors will
practically coincide during hundreds and even thousands of millennia.
They will only diverge very gradually, the specific human one taking
an exponential increasing acceleration very lately.
Why
this so characteristic exponential acceleration of human progress?
There is first an internal need for the articulation in itself. The
structural articulation, indeed, grows according to structural
complexity. Under the terms of the exponential growth of the
combinational possibilities according to the number of elements, plus
the structural elements are available in great number, plus the
structural connections tend to grow in geometric progression
according to an exponential curve.
'Progress'
is identified with a gigantic exponential system. 'Exponential' means a
quantity which goes through duration, affected by an increasing
exponent from moment to moment. A 'snowball' is a speaking example.
The 'spiral' which, with after each revolution embraces a larger
space, is undoubtedly the most relevant symbol.
But
this acceleration is about human reality. It is the infinitely open
man who disposes of the elements and the structural bonds.
Not-finished infinite man, opened on 'utopia', opened in a symbolic
space system, opened on the 'other', opened on history, opened as a
projection into a new world. Then another 'progress' becomes possible
which is not just pushed by articulatory and structural necessity
but is called by the requirement of what is specifically human. A
'progress', a 'going ahead', an education of authentic humanity.
This
progressiveness, however, does not seem to affect the whole of the
human order. it is far from being identified with the very whole
culture. What about 'progress' between the 'Venus' by Milo and the
'Thinker' by Rodin? Between the Notre-Dame cathedral and the Centre
Pompidou? All you can say is that there is a difference, but you
cannot speak about a qualitative increase.
There
seems to be basically
in
human
reality an irreducible duality, something like two paradoxical
orders, a progressive
one and a non-progressive
one. Here is the order of progressiveness:
pro-gredere:
to go on, while not ceasing posing a foot in front of the other. To
articulate a process. To accumulate step after step. Progressiveness
only functions where the things can be articulated and accumulated.
On the other side, you get an order which is refractory
with
progressiveness,
say with accumulating articulation. Values. Significances. Sense.
Beauty. The sense of sense... Science and philosophy, technology and
art, material civilization and religion, methods and values… are
differently concerned with these orders.
Structuring,
structural articulation, carries in itself its immanent sanction
and its pragmatic value, in the
sense that the good articulation succeeds and that the best one
imposes itself. However these 'values' that progress comprises do not
recover the totality of human values and even coincide only partially
with authentic ones. There is a shift felt more tensely today, at the
moment when 'progress' becomes more essential than ever! There can be
accumulative articulation of cultural materiality, possibly even of
'civilization', and at the same time properly cultural loss, even
growth of cruelty!
Science
and technology can certainly grow by themselves, according to the
logic which wants that a discovery involves some other one and is
added to it, the whole, through time, being able only to grow and
develop. But behind the idea of progress
there is much more than a simple accumulative growth. There is a
dynamics.
A dynamics made of requirement of infinite going beyond. A dynamics
of voluntary energy to transform the things and the events. A
dynamics of historical project which breaks the eternal return. A
dynamics of conquest, ceaseless opening innovations… This
non-believing
eighteenth century had an unlimited
'faith' in the 'Lights' of Reason and an absolute certainty that
nothing can resist its triumphing conquest. A great 'faith', a little
naive however, which believes that from now on virtue and science are
embraced for increasing happiness of men.
A tool system. An exponential producing system of progress. It spreads
out in an accelerated way producing increasingly full turns in a
growing spiral. Exponentially.
Since
the Neolithic revolution this tool system functioned in the balance
of homeostasis. It simply became more and more complex. In fact the
industrial revolutions deliver it to a galloping exponential growth.
This growth of the system is imperative. Its stop would not mean
balance but disorganization and dead. This exponential growth induces
the ideology of 'progressivism'.
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