le principle d’humanité (the humanity principle)

Citation

Richardson, J. (2002), "le principle d’humanité (the humanity principle)", Foresight, Vol. 4 No. 4, pp. 43-43. https://doi.org/10.1108/fs.2002.4.4.43.1

What humanity has been experiencing for the past generation may be as a great a revolution as that of 10,000 years ago when agriculture began. But the change today is far more rapid than any revolution occurring since hunting‐gathering became sedentary farming, especially because of this revolution’s threefold nature:

1. 1.

   (1) The first of these aspects is economic, the globalization process that has let a genie out of the bottle. The apparent solutions to this problem (if, indeed, it is the problem that many suspect) is also triple. The solutions could be a riposte against globalization through “sovereignism” or declared national pre‐eminence; but, somehow, the toothpaste will not fit back into its tube. Another solution might be intensified regionalism, such as an enlarged European Union or a more impactful Latin‐American market alliance. This would need two or three generations to take full effect; but what, in the meantime, might happen on the world scale? Still another solution could be to let the markets “regulate the whole world”, with all the problems implicit in such global interaction.  In fact, foresees author Guillebaud, not one of the three solutions is likely to work. In their place only a combination of the three potential outcomes has a chance, realistically, of succeeding.

2. 2.

   (2) The second characteristic of the world revolution is informational: the emergence of the digital domain, whence an entirely new continent has been born. Only decades ago this was unforeseen, indeed unforeseeable – something totally alien to the mind. Today Moore’s “law”, stipulating a doubling of computer capacity every 18 months or so – with the halving of costs at the same time – may now be no longer than a nine‐month cycle. The speed of transfer of information is literally breath‐taking.  All of us, as a consequence, are but colonists populating a brand new world. To what will these conditions lead?

3. 3.

   (3) The third distinguishing factor of the revolution is, of course, genetic in nature, to the extent that we are now at the point of wondering how to define our own species. Cloning could, tomorrow or just after, leave us a happy breed, as it were. Yet we must not deceive ourselves, warns Guillebaud, for whom the new biotechnologies are clearly being oversold. Even scientists and agricultural engineers – rarely consulted otherwise – have been inveigled into the “economic warfare” (p. 113) that genetic engineering ineluctably entails.

So far Guillbaud has told us pretty nearly what one would expect to hear about the economic, information and genetic revolutions. What is this overview’s context, however, given the book’s title? What is the humanity principle? One has to be hardy these days to write an entire volume underlining the principle of humanity – and expecting the book to sell. But Guillebaud, according to his publisher, seems to be succeeding.

Ethical code: without realizing it, we have one

With the endless wars of the twentieth century seemingly ready to repeat their rhythm and intensity in the new century, author/philosopher Guillebaud braves to take the ethical bull by the horns. He fears that war’s postmodern dimensions (the aforementioned economic, informational and genetic advances) could imperil humanity’s defensive capacities.

Humanitarianism, he contends, or just plain being humane, has had a beacon‐like norm for nearly six decades: the Nuremberg Code. This ultimate standard of ethics was the direct result of ruthless aggression by a dictatorial State bent on oppressing its own citizens and pursuing military conquest of its neighbours: behaviour “found out”, and its authors punished. The Code thus defined humanity’s framework and its frontiers. The ultimate ethological reward, in other words, is having others do unto you the same that you would wish them to do (see pp. 264‐6).

A question, then, of setting the limits. Not only how far to go in our deportment regarding others, but the horizons beyond which we cannot take economic exploitation, apply the information and communication technologies, and use the new biotechnologies only for the common good.

“Kindness and compassion” are not the only point, Guillebaud insists. Every one of us “is the same in the end”, and “this is not insignificant because, everything, every last thing” derives from this inevitable sameness. Food for thought, indeed, in the new age of mass terrorism.