Can We Still Share Dreams ?

How to recover collective hope? How can we rekindle enthusiasm for politics while restoring the credibility of political discourse? Against nihilism, we must give meaning to history (and not a meaning). We must postpone the spirit of the times, which sees on the horizon the decline and even the collapse that a considerable fraction of the population anticipates. We understand the fears related to crises, wars, climate, depletion of resources, epidemics..., but shouldn’t we put them into perspective by thinking about past eras? How to neglect the positive aspects of progress, including to counter its negative consequences?

We must not allow a self-fulfilling declinism to flourish, but find hope in a general progress, that of the Enlightenment: progress in knowledge and technology, but also in emancipation, social conditions, justice, and morals. The men of the Enlightenment believed them to be connected. Isn’t that the case in the long term? Social regressions and the loss of a sense of justice make technological advances the ruin of the soul of our societies. The dream must not turn into a nightmare! This was the case with communist utopias. It is also the risk of "Faustian" technological advances, that of AI, hence the danger of the transhumanist ideology carried by many contemporary tycoons.