Thinking global

Edgar Morin 2015

The human is Trinitarian

I and We, antagonists: Living is a permanent movement where we move from “I” to “We” and from “We” to “I”. Where the “I” is able of sacrificing himself for “We” (defending his country, his close ones, ..) at the other extreme of the profit of the vital or material interest of the “I” (to defend oneself, to protect oneself Man is neither good nor bad. He has every possibility in him. In each, there are the worst and the best, who can express himself according to the conditions (see “Are we all psychologists” where we overestimate the personality and underestimate the circumstances). We tend to self-justify ourselves and to defer to others the evil, the fault, the vice. To have a more humane conception is to have a complex conception, because it teaches us to see multiplicity and diversity. If we do not teach humans what they are, there is a gap, a lack of self-knowledge extremely harmful.

The enemies of understanding are indifference, contempt, hatred. Understanding involves the recognition and feeling of a common humanity with others, as well as respect for one’s difference. Self-deception is the first path: if we understand that we have deficiencies, flaws, we are much more ready to understand than the other too.

We must accept the complexity of the human, always contextualize and not lock ourselves into certainties.

Our life is itself very uncertain. This is why teaching must involve the confrontation of these uncertainties. Order (rules, laws) + disorder (uncertainty, probability, possibility) = Organization (emergence of life)

An evolution is always the destruction of something, and the creation of something. A deviance emerges which, if it has been consolidated and developed, becomes a trend then a historical force, a creative force. 1 overall thinking is possible. It takes into account improbability, new discoveries, thoughts, theories. Create unity in diversity.

In my opinion, the current economic crisis is a component of a crisis with many faces: crisis of civilization, crisis of society, crisis of the planet, of humanity.

Aldous Huxley said, “Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history”

The knowledge of a whole requires the knowledge not only of the elements that make up this whole, but also of the actions and feedbacks that are constantly occurring between the parts and the whole (Emergence)

A text makes sense only in context: even a word in a sentence is always versatile, ambivalent (dynamic come and go)

It is the organization that transforms all the parts into a whole. Complexity is the degree of variety of a system. (Probability and therefore uncertainty).

A negative feedback is the process by which the regulatory organization represses deviances (laws, police, ..). Positive feedback is a deviance that grows and produces a process of instability. Most important ? What we have won or what we have lost.

To choose is to do without the rest.

Who tells us that we have arrived at the fullness of our cerebral, mental, intellectual means? Nothing, except vanity or arrogance.