Artificial life is not life!

Temps de lecture : 10 minutes

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).

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7 vues

Currency, society, and individuation

Temps de lecture : 23 minutes

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.

It is important to understand that money is an entirely social instrument, a true fetish even more so than commodities, in that it embodies society as such and constitutes a way for a society to act on itself while increasing the degree of independence of individuals (but also their inequalities!).

This should encourage the political reappropriation of money, particularly at the local level through local currencies, but it will also be an opportunity to revisit commodity fetishism and value theory as a systemic theory and theory of representation rather than a theory of alienation.

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5 vues

One divides into two

Temps de lecture : 19 minutes

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.

Everything is matter, everything is interconnected, but not everything forms an indistinct unity. There are different dimensions, a plurality of systems and organisms, there are living beings, there is information, there is language, there is mind (in every word, every thought). There is not only the identity of all with all, there is also the difference of each with each. There is not only what brings us together, there is also what divides us, even opposes us, and after wanting to bring everything together, we will have to separate again.

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13 vues

The test of reality (materialism and dialectics)

Temps de lecture : 15 minutes

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.

Instead of getting lost in the sky of ideas, we must take advantage of the crisis and the bursting of the financial bubble to return to reality, to come back down to earth, to the critique of everyday life, and therefore first and foremost of work, which occupies a large part of it. We must not give up on taking our revenge or on continuing the emancipation of humanity, but we will not get out of this by making reckless promises or dreaming of utopias. It is by focusing on what constitutes the very experience of life, in the exploration of possibilities, with all its contradictions and disappointments, its ups and downs, its shadows and lights, its strengths and weaknesses.

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6 vues

Digital civilization and Its Discontents

Temps de lecture : 19 minutes

To digital workers.

Changing eras

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.

Not everything is going well, no, and we have not yet experienced all the adverse effects, but the unease is largely ideological, stemming from our inability to make sense of it, in addition to real difficulties in adapting to this new ecosystem. Admittedly, the feeling of loss is not only that of our bearings and our old models, it is also the very real loss of our social protections, which is painfully exacerbating our precariousness, as well as the failure to take into account new production conditions, but this maladjustment is clearly the result of an insufficient understanding of the transformations underway. It must be said that the changes we are experiencing are so significant that they can be compared to the dawn of the Neolithic era or the invention of writing, but at a considerably faster pace. Old ideologies have become completely obsolete. We know this, but they still dominate, as do the institutions in place, which are proving just as ill-suited to the conditions of the immaterial economy.

Not only do we have to endure this maladjustment, which causes a great deal of suffering and destruction of skills, but we also have to iron out the kinks of a hard learning curve where all the excesses and initial illusions are confronted with reality. It could be said that we are at the worst possible moment, in the midst of a crisis, when a new era is slow to emerge and is populated by monsters (conspiracy theorists, technophobes, and mystics). It could also be said that we are at the most crucial moment, in the eye of the storm, when our voices and actions can have the greatest impact and determine the future.

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8 vues

Guaranteed income, municipal cooperatives, and local currencies

Temps de lecture : 25 minutes

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!

It is not enough to criticize capitalism and its unsustainable productivism; we must have something else to offer. Beyond partial or defensive measures, there is a vital need to build an ecological alternative to market-driven globalization, an alternative that is both realistic and forward-looking, i.e., one that takes full account of material constraints as well as new information technologies, rather than clinging vainly to an industrial past that is over and not as glorious as it is made out to be!

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7 vues