In artificial biology, a distinction must be made between 1) genetically modified organisms, which are indeed living organisms, even if they are enslaved, 2) synthetic biology, which is limited to synthetically reconstructing a given genome, which has succeeded in effectively recreating a living bacterium (perhaps a mammoth one day), 3) finally, the project of artificial life, i.e., the creation of a living cell from scratch using a minimal genome, or even bases other than DNA or RNA (such as APN).
We are nowhere near this yet, but what is interesting is that it raises the question of the creation of a new form of life, because we can be fairly sure that this artificial life will have nothing to do with real life. Indeed, life is evolution, whereas artificial life must not evolve, or only marginally, in order to meet our technical requirements. Rather than living organisms, what we would end up producing would be biological machines, possibly programmable. Nothing truly alive, because life cannot be reduced to reproduction or metabolism; it is plasticity, a process of transformation through interaction with its environment. Life without evolution is like intelligence incapable of learning: a contradiction in terms. There is no life cut off from its origins, without a history that it continues (genetic heritage) or without a world that it inhabits and which constitutes it (diachrony and synchrony).
Between a simple reform of financial capitalism following its collapse and the revival of metaphysical utopias brought about by the apocalyptic nature of the combination of crises, there is only one viable path: that of global regulation and local alternatives. This is perfectly illustrated by local currencies, even though money is so mysterious and difficult to comprehend in its two social and individualizing aspects, testifying to our cognitive limitations but also to a reality that is richer and more contradictory than all our theories.
When triumphant liberalism imposed unbridled individualism on us, with a conception of man reduced to his worst aspects, the urgent need was to affirm our original community and rebuild our social solidarity. But when social movements awaken and we witness the return of the state, the urgent need becomes the affirmation of individual freedom and the avoidance of destructive idealism, while preserving the duality, even the duplicity, of our human reality. Just because there is something universal does not mean that there is nothing particular. There is the collective, but there is also the individual. Of course, there are not only bodies, there are also relationships between bodies, but there is still the part that belongs to the body. There is no dignity outside of belonging to the human community, but this dignity nevertheless resides in our individual freedom and responsibility; freedom constituting the very essence of love and its contradictions, a thousand miles away from the idealized freedom of liberalism.
The veil is torn, the empire is crumbling, fortunes are being lost, powers are being overthrown! The beautiful stories we were told are revealed for what they were: pure ideology justifying the unjustifiable domination of the powerful. This is no reason to believe in nothing anymore, or to believe that ideas rule the world, and to fall back into the same rut by simply switching from one ideology to another, just as blind and barbaric.
We know much less than we think we do. Thought is slow and our rationality is limited. It is difficult for us to be our own contemporaries and understand our current situation. Yet we need only look up from our keyboards to see all the upheavals we are experiencing. There have been others, no doubt, and every era has its malaise, but it is not quite the same every time. For example, we have moved from guilt neurosis to the depression of heightened individualism, which nevertheless indicates progress in our autonomy, in which digital technology has played a role, but we must admit that dematerialization, constant connectivity, and the speed of communication have a disorienting effect, plunging us into a completely different world, which can be quite unsettling.
Since the fall of communism, the lack of alternatives has paralyzed any social movement of any significance, such as the struggle against the CPE, which found no political outlet other than an illusory defense of permanent employment contracts, with no effect on the growth of precariousness. The causes of our failure do not lie in the supposed strength of our opponents, but in the weakness of our proposals and our archaic attitudes toward ecological issues and the considerable upheavals we have experienced since entering the information age!