2023-07-16 04:02:05
Each era has its anthropological dimensions. In today’s world, a new anthropological order appears that contains different profiles: the computerized homo, the ecological homo, the economic homo, the socialist homo, the LGTB+ homo, the multicultural homo. And as a background, a vast proletariat of more than a billion people pushed into exclusion, poverty or emigration: what I call “the fourth world”.
The World Social Forum since 2001 tried to synthesize the objectives of social movements in the world, bringing together more than 30 thousand participants. But despite the convergences, the demands of each organization have led to an impasse.
It is problematic to present a synthesis of current anthropological visions, since the diversity of social trends, together with global, economic, technological and ecological mutations, have given rise to a complex worldview.
One conclusion is that we can no longer think in univocal terms. This calls into question the curriculum of most of the humanities and social sciences. Reductionist or monodisciplinary views are by definition incorrect, as recent studies have observed.
Every time we stop to analyze different current changes, we are impressed by the explanatory force that emerges from any one of them. For ecologists, everything is explained by forgetting nature, while for many feminists, social failures are explained by forgetting women. The left thinks that the exploitation of the proletariat continues and the liberals fervently affirm that the market economy is not respected.
If we follow the discourse of the indigenistas of America, we would have to go back in history to pre-Columbian times to fix things. And if we follow the experts in information systems, we are already in the era of the computer scientist and whoever does not understand it is left out of the world. Let us add, among other perspectives, that in the Islamic world, fundamentalism has led us to think that the variants of Western civilization, the origin of all evils, must be destroyed.
Looking at the mutations under way, Alvin Toffler predicted in The Shift of Power (1990) that computing was going to occupy a dominant place. Organizational theorists (such as Peter Drucker) pointed out that we entered the “knowledge society” and that the new workers were to be identified as the “cognitariat”. Pierre Levy, in Collective Intelligence: An Anthropology of Cyberspace (2000), traces the itinerary by which we arrived at Homo Informatica. Nicholas Negroponte maintained for his part that everything had become digital (Ser digital, 1995). Homo informatics undoubtedly constitutes a dimension of current individuals. The entire planet is crossed by more than 7 billion cell phones and millions of computers. We are part of a “universal neuroelectronic system”.
Other phenomena such as globalization, post-capitalism, the feminization of society, the breakdown of families, the crisis of social values and norms, and social exclusion have given rise to new visions. Sometimes one claim opaque the other: when it seemed that female emancipation was consolidating, the LGBT+ movement grew, which put the issue of gender diversity at the forefront. The European Parliament recommends the recognition of at least five gender identities. This demolishes the binary conceptions in force for thousands of years.
Undoubtedly, we cannot omit that we live in the “era of biotechnologies”, that is, in an era where it is possible to produce and reproduce life according to infobiotechnologies. “Bionic” beings already walk among us and intelligent robots too. The advent of artificial intelligence raises several unknowns for social life.
On the other hand, ecological research shows to what extent human operations on nature have modified the environment. If humanity does not assume itself as an ecological homo, there is little future for civilization. This lapidary conclusion arises from the latest meetings of scientists concerned about climate change and related issues.
In the midst of these and other mutations, more than a billion people are trying to survive who, for various reasons, are excluded from access to minimum social welfare. Who are the excluded? Unemployed (of any category), poor, politically persecuted, homeless, poor peasants, indigenous people, women with children but without work, drug addicts, marginalized youth, victims of ongoing wars…
The fate of humanity also depends on the fate of the “fourth world” of the excluded. Every day thousands of migrants try to cross the borders of rich countries or in better conditions. This divides the waters between those who want to take charge and those who don’t.
Are we aware of what is happening? Most evade the question. Because we live in the midst of analysis of the immediate with shortened visions of events. It’s understandable: very few can see beyond the conditions that plague them. Everyone seeks to overcome the situation and few can think about the future.
In the world no one is saved alone. That is why we cannot stop thinking about the challenges that we must face as we are part of the planet. Building an adequate anthropological vision may allow us to project democratic societies with a human face. Everywhere, even for rich countries, the great risk consists in ignoring the bioecosocial mutations that threaten us.
We need to build a complex vision of current human evolution, taking all the factors into play, even if they are contradictory. That is why it would be correct to elaborate updated and interdisciplinary anthropological visions, as part of a project to organize a developed, democratic, sustainable society.
The United Nations had 51 member states in 1945 and now they have 193. In the midst of this plurality of actors, interests, different worldviews, how to arrive at a universal collective intelligence? This is what the United Nations and other organizations have tried.
This is the deepest challenge today. There is talk of the “new world economic order” and also of the “new ecological order”. But what one might think is the “new anthropological order” since what is at stake is the survival of humanity in a supportive and ecologically sustainable world.
*Phd. in Philosophy.
Postgraduate professor at Untref and the National University of Mar del Plata.
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