How many countries in the world today can claim to produce happiness? How many people say they are happy? Even though the concept of happiness is subjective, humanity universally seeks happiness for the sense of fulfillment, peace, freedom, harmony, and stability it provides. What if happiness began with kindness toward oneself and toward others?
What we do to Nature, we do to ourselves.
In a degraded environment and natural world, can humanity experience happiness? Certainly not, because happiness goes hand in hand with beauty, abundance, health, and a sense of well-being. Yet human activity has literally set the house on fire; the planet is burning on all sides (as seen most recently in the massive wildfires in the United States, the Amazon, Africa, and Siberia…). Chemicals are poisoning people, the air, the land, the rivers, and the seas—with lasting effects—causing disease, population decline, degeneration, and birth defects. Not to mention the wars that tear peoples apart and the dictatorships that trample on all struggles for freedom. All of this in the name of money and profit—two very human factors that have contributed to the dehumanization of the planet.
Kindness: a favorable, positive attitude toward someone!
In a caring society, We would put Artificial Intelligence—AI—at the service of humanity, to spare people the loss of precious time spent on work and exhausting efforts. But here again, we’re doing exactly the opposite. Our society wants to impose AI on us before we’re ready, leaving behind a whole segment of the population that is still ill-equipped to navigate the internet and computer technology. As a result, older adults can no longer handle their own administrative tasks, as the entire French government is shifting to an ultra-aggressive and time-consuming paperless system. A 73-year-old woman with a heart condition who requires medical care had her CMU coverage suspended because Social Security needed a document to renew it and notified her by email—even though she has neither a computer nor a smartphone and does not understand how email works. Someone had set up a Gmail account for her so she could open an online social security account, without explaining how it worked…
In a caring society, With the technology we have available, we wouldn’t be catching drivers with speed cameras for speeding violations—no, we would simply have installed an on-board device that limits speed in speed-restricted zones. But once again, the financial windfall generated by traffic tickets—which benefits private companies and the government—takes precedence over human well-being.
In a caring society, small-scale farmers would not commit suicide, overwhelmed by the financial monsters that burden their entire descendants with debt and force them to poison the population through their industrial agricultural practices.
In a caring society, We wouldn't put the financial well-being of Big Pharma and pharmaceutical companies ahead of people's health. We would remember the wisdom of the ancients and the inexhaustible pharmacy that nature holds within it…A happy humanity would be healthier!
And the same is true in all areas of social and private life. Michel Serres, a philosopher and specialist in the history of science, focuses particularly on education and the urgent need to rethink a system that has become outdated and cumbersome in the face of students who have access to all the knowledge available on earth via the internet! In his book *Petite Poucette*, he speaks of a «presumption of competence» for this rising generation—swift and intelligent—which has already outpaced the institutions that govern us, institutions that are nevertheless inexorably dying of obsolescence…. «…These great institutions, as I like to repeat, resemble stars whose light we receive, but which astrophysicists calculate died long ago. For the first time in history, no doubt, the public, individuals, people—even the passerby once called »vulgar«— in short, Little Thumbelina, will be able—and are able—to possess at least as much wisdom, knowledge, information, and decision-making capacity as the dinosaurs in question, whose insatiable appetite for energy and avarice in production we still serve as submissive slaves.»
Michel Serres, who passed away recently, is among those who have shown that human society cannot survive without a radical paradigm shift. And he demonstrates that younger generations have already shifted toward this new paradigm, of which kindness is one of the cornerstones.
In fact, alternative initiatives to the destructive capitalist model are springing up everywhere; without looking back and by blazing a new trail, they prove that another world is possible. These innovative initiatives take into account the human being in their capacity as an inhabitant of Earth and a natural being, far removed from the violence inherent in the functioning of today’s society. We recall the ancient wisdom that is now frequently corroborated by scientific discoveries. This innate wisdom, stemming from the forces of nature and humanity, was fought against by the Inquisition and, throughout history, by all forms of power.
Humanity no longer has a choice between its two great tendencies—the best or the worst… Humanity is compelled to strive toward the best within itself, or face extinction.
Nathalie Laulé
References: «Petite Poucette» and «C’était mieux avant» by Michel Serres. «The world has changed so much that young people must reinvent everything: a way of living together, institutions, a way of being and of knowing…»
