We are not mistaken if we understand the present tragedy of humanity, incapable of explaining its crisis and of projecting an aura of hope, as a failure of the type of reason that has been predominant for the past five hundred years. We have already analyzed how the break between objective reason (the logic of things) and subjective reason (self interest) has occurred. The latter was imposed on the former, to the point that it was established as the exclusive force for organizing society, and history.
Thus subjective reason was understood as a desire for power, and power as domination over people and things. Today, the power of «I» is central. It is the exclusive carrier of reason and meaning. It spawned what naturally follows: individualism as the supreme affirmation of the «I». It took shape in capitalism, which is powered by individual accumulation, with no social or ecological considerations. Trusting subjective reason alone as the framework for all of reality was a high risk cultural decision. It has implied a true dictatorship of reason that has diminished or destroyed the exercise of other forms of reason, such as sensible, symbolic and others.
The ideal is that the «I» will endlessly seek unlimited progress, in the unquestioned supposition that the resources of the Earth are also limitless. The infinite nature of progress and of resources constitute the ontological a priori and the parti pris.
But, after five hundred years, we have come to see that both infinities are illusory. The Earth is small and finite. Progress has approached the limits of the Earth. Those limits cannot be exceeded. The time of the finite world is here now. Failing to respect this finitude means inhibiting the capacity for reproducing life on Earth, and thus endangering the survival of the species. The historic time of capitalism has passed. To continue with capitalism will cost so much that it will end up destroying sociability and the future. Persisting in that effort will reveal the destructive character of the irrationality of reason.
What is even more serious is that capitalism/individualism has introduced two conflicting forms of logic: the logic of the private interests of the «I», the enterprises, and the logic of the collective interests of the «we», of society. Capitalism, by its nature, is anti-democratic. It is not at all cooperative, but is only competitive.
Will there be a way out? With reforms and regulations designed only to maintain the system, as Neo-Keynesians in the style of Stiglitz, Krugman and others want, no. We must change if we want to save ourselves.
In the first place, it is important to build a new accord between objective and subjective reason. This implies broadening reason, and thus freeing her from the yoke of power-domination. She can be emancipating reason. For the new accord, it is urgent that we rescue sensible and cordial reason, to blend them with instrumental reason. It is based in the limbic brain that appeared more than two hundred million years ago, when, with the mammals, affection, passion, caring, love and the world of values came into being. This allows us to give an emotional and value-filled reading of the scientific data that comes from instrumental reason, that emerged only 5 to 7 million years ago. This sensible reason awakens in us the necessary re-enchantment for life and for Mother Earth, so that we may care for them.
Then a new centrality must arise: instead of the private interest, the common interest, respect for the goods common to life and to the Earth, destined to all. Then, economics needs to return to being that which it naturally is: a guarantee of the conditions needed for the physical, cultural and spiritual life of all persons. After that, politics must be rebuilt, as an endless democracy, always inclusive of all humans, so that they may be the subjects of history and not merely attendants or beneficiaries. Finally, the new world will not have a human face unless it is governed by shared ethical-spiritual values, with contributions from many other cultures, together with the Judeo-Christian tradition.
These steps are all very utopian. But without utopia we would drown in the swamp of private and corporative interests. Happily, essays are appearing everywhere that are forerunners of the new, such as solidarian economy, sustainability and caring, lived as paradigms to perpetuate and to reproduce all that exists and lives. We do not renounce the ancestral longing for fellowship: everyone eating and drinking together, as brothers and sisters, at home.
