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Introduction to Part 1

Global warming, the spread of poverty, the appropriation of our data, etc. These signs that worry us mobilize the most militant and anger the most conservative. The power of their fear stimulates reflection and encourages innovation. A long journey of struggles and victories, which will last at least three generations, is beginning. For, as we shall see, even if more and more of the world’s citizens understand that we have reached the end of the civilization model, we do not have the tools, nor the institutions, to govern the world to come and prepare the generations to come.

In a world that wants to be connected, we do not have any more effective means of cohesion than those of our elders when they felt the need to change their model of society. And yet, it is by bringing together ideas and the will to change that we will be able to move forward.

Indeed, in order to equip ourselves with the institutions we will need, it is necessary to understand the causes of the change that is imposed on us. This change requires us to accept a more complex organization for people who are more mature, more demanding as well as more responsible and accountable.

The 20th century began with the unraveling of European monarchies and the rise of a new form of governance, certainly inspired by ancient Rome, but which had yet to be discovered. The 21st century began with the realization that another form of governance must take over from the current one. It is not the one in place that will do the job, but the one that the rising generations will design with the help of the outgoing generations. Ideally, they will have to do this without exploding the current system and before it launches into multiform fratricidal wars (economic, cybernetic, military, etc.).

In particular, the most important measures are not spectacular, but they affect our way of seeing the world in depth. They concern our living together, locally and in synergy with our neighbors… the opposite of globalization, so to speak!

As Valerie Bugault points out, globalization is a Dutch and English idea, promoted by an insular or quasi-insular culture. Europe is continental and so are most other countries. This has never stopped us from trading with the rest of the world, but not obsessively.

Here and there, initiatives are taking shape, ideas are circulating, values are being established and, at the same time, the dangers of centralization and its daughter, dictatorship, are threatening. It is this duality that interests us in the following pages.