Politics, the World and New Beginnings

1. The World is the result of the objects produced and the words pronounced throughout human history. It can be conceived as an artifice or as an excrescence which mediates between us and the biosphere of which we are, in any case, an integral part. Without work and action, the human species would not be biologically viable, which entails that these human faculties cannot be envisaged as gifts or a plus in relation to other species. Therefore, the use of our productive and political capabilities must be aimed at the construction and maintenance of a common world and assessed in terms of such a goal.

2. The common sense assertion that we live in a common world cannot be dissociated from three basic assumptions:

a) The World originally began when the first object was produced and the first word was uttered;

b) The World is like an organism that grows and changes every time a word is pronounced or an object is produced; and

c) No human or association of humans could ever master the World’s process of constant and accelerated growth.

Under these assumptions, the pretense that “another World is possible” is just nonsense since it implies whether the existence of an agent capable of controlling the World from within in its process of change or the possibility of a new beginning, which would require by definition the previous destruction of the existent World. Paradoxically, the destruction of the World is an event that we made technologically possible even though its occurrence will not probably be the consequence of a purposeful action. Regarding the possibility of controlling an eventual process of teleological change of the World, if we discard God, the only agent that could possibly master the World as a whole is a science-fiction entity: a hyper-integrated Humankind where individual human beings have become the constitutive parts of a superior organism with one mind and one will. I have to say does this scenario appears from our historical perspective the most plausible alternative to the prospect of mass destruction, which poses a tragic dilemma.

3. From a political perspective, these gloomy considerations are perfectly negligible precisely because the destiny of the World and Humankind exceeds the limited scope of politics. Politics is not about the World nor about Humankind but about a common world amongst many other possible and feasible common worlds. Politics is about possible new beginnings, about the possibility to start a new common world from scratch by pronouncing a word and producing an object as though for the first time. A new beginning is by definition small and localized and involves a limited number of human beings.