Progressive illusion

The 'Lights' were singularly blind on the limits! The schizoid man believed to be wizard; he was only an apprentice. He deceived himself on the infinite one. Wanting to be 'master and owner' of the whole nature, it came from there not to distinguish any more between including and included, thus losing the necessary difference between the interior and outside. He saw nothing any more but the interior limits to be exceeded. He did not see the external limits. In short, he did not see any limit to the possible prowness of his exponential tool system. Until the moment when the reality reminds this system that it is only included and that it will be wedged into its including ecosystem.

Can a limit with this increasing expansion of progress even be thinkable? Coupled on the exponential growth of the tool and supported by its euphoria, the ideology of Progress was taken for absolutely impossible to circumvent. That lasted three centuries. Today the limits circumvent it.

Naive progressive optimism… Read again the profession of faith of Trostsky, inshakeably sure of the Marxist following days going to sing at the growing rhythm of infinite Progress. “We do not have the least scientific reason to assign by advance limits…” There is thus not thr smallest scientific reason to doubt about it! The Marxist euphoria spreads out in this unlimited possibility. From the propaedeutics of the 'socialist' stage to the achievement of the 'communist' stage, reign a double absolute certainty. That of the infinite progress of abundance. That of the infinite progress of human educability.

There were these following days supposed to sing. They do not sing. We know today why they do not sing. We know today why our progressive euphoria is trapped. We face a radical impossibility. Not for ideological reasons. Not for epistemological reasons. But for scientific reasons.

The reasons, we already know them starting from our systemic approach which gives us the key of reading of this impossibility. The possibilities of entry, of exit and of expansion of the exponential tool system are not infinite but finite. Unrelentingly they come up against a limit. That of a more including system which is itself refractory to exponential possibilities, that is to say of our ecosystem. The exponential tool system functions only within the limits of the ecosystem of 'our' earth. The physic possibility of our universe cannot contain a quantitatively accumulative growth in 'infinite progress'. Somewhere there must be a catastrophic encounter. When the exponential growth runs up against the limit of possibility. It is only for a time that the closed system can thus give itself the illusion to turn nevertheless. Because the impetus is prolonged by kinetic inertia. Because the tanks are not yet empty. Because there remain the prophets and the witnesses of elsewhere. But the entropy plays unrelentingly. Mortal.

The crisis you are too often thinking about hides another much deeper one. Our crisis is less material than spiritual. All occurs like if, at the image of the material world, the spiritual order were spread out in a specific ecosystem of spiritual energy. In the biosphere there are vital elements like water or air which are however quite common. We get really conscience of them only when they are suddenly missing. Thus you get the same with the sense. Until today we did not know its absence could be mortal. We lived unconsciously in his superabundance. We produced it quite naturally more than we consumed it. Our tanks overflowed about it. Let us suppose that our reading is only the expression of a 'reactionary' pessimism. Let us suppose a miracle arrives to save the progressivism and its infrastructural tool system. Let us suppose that indeed the whole of humanity can reach tomorrow the 'progress' which its privileged quarter knows today. Let us suppose realizable and realized all the mediations which these assumptions suppose… Would an exponentially producing tool system of abundance ad infinitum reconcile man with himself and men between men in Brave New World? Nothing is less certain today. And certainly less and less tomorrow. It seems well that our modernity is mortally sick not only of its infrastructural producing system which, despite everything, remains only external, but still sicker still in its interiority. At the source of its desire and of its sense. At the root of its originating Speech by which the modern culture is said while being constituted and constitutes itself while being said.

Inside this ecosystemic super-organization, the material system, tool of our 'progress', functions in parasite. Every thing comes, indeed, out of our ecosystem, and comes only from him. Energy, materials, recycling, the absorption of waste… Not only it functions in parasite but still in prodigal parasite. Its wasting matches its exponential growth. Consider just one example. In a little more than one century a part of humanity wastes, by stupidly burning it in its engines or its boilers, a very invaluable matter, oil, that the ecosystem put tens of thousands of years to produce and to store. With just one question: how much oil per annum would we have the right to extract if we thought about our future generations?

The exponential tool system creates man at its image and its resemblance. An articulated man. A disarticulated man. A re-articulated man. A manipulated man. A conditioned man. A used man. A materialized man. An industrialized man. A mechanized man. A manufactured man. A mercenary man. A man in crumbs...

There are moments of grace where the basic essentials in man protests. May 1968 was one of these moments, so badly understood because irremediable for the reigning ideologies. When the essence of the human project tends to be identified with consumption and production, inevitably the desire is snapped up in the vicious circle which buckles the consumer on the producer and the producer on the consumer. And even exponentially as a 'snowball' growing bigger and bigger. As the 'progress' itself.

Here you get the desire of man trapped into the infernal loop which controls it in the illusion to fill it. To consume more and more. Thus to produce more and more. To consume still more… The consumer society creates a proliferation of artificial desires. At the same time you get an inflation of what is desirable. Inflation: objects of the desire inflated with wind.

What is basically the ultimate mobile of the exponential tool of abundance if not the desire? The dynamics of the gaping of a living being tending towards its fullness. Let us just consider the 'operation' of the desire as a kind of 'open system' turning between a hot source and a cold well, thus on a potential difference. The dynamics of the desire is itself proportional to this potential difference. The 'machine' of the desire turns between the hot source of abundance and the cold well of emptiness.

Without this potential difference the desire would be fulfilled and the 'machine' would stop. If the lack were only a hole to fill once and for all, the machine would turn the time necessary for filling this hole. After that it would stop and it would be 'happy' once and for all. But man is something else than a machine. Man is an infinite living creature. Infinite gaping. Infinite desire. Insatiable ad infinitum. A satisfaction - always relative - on a level starts again a dissatisfaction on another level. The more one has, the more one wants to have. The 'poverty line' grows indefinitely at the same rate as richness grows. The lack is exponentially abyssal, so increases the difference. The desire to consume ad infinitum activates ad infinitum the producing tool. The machine thus tends to race out of control ad infinitum. At the same time the desire grows more exponentially. By which factor would it be necessary to multiply the production-consumption ratio so that man can be happy? Aren't we condemned to produce only within the limits of our needs? Whereas we dream to produce to fill out all our needs…

Where will the prodigal son try to seek his salute? Far from the Father's house, tramp of lost plenitudes, he has to wander from dissatisfaction to dissatisfaction, finding his happiness in the pursuit of mirages. And if the escape ahead covered by the euphemism of 'progress' were only an ashamed flight?

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