Productive Economy, Contributory Economy

4The Traces of Our Future Inscribed in Our Past

4.1. Controlling your destiny

4.1.1. The invention of the image

Humans are the only mammal that draws on their own initiative. In drawing, we try to represent reality, but reality is subjective. So we interpret it and in interpreting it, we create new ideas. That is why humans are creative!

On a daily basis, we create images in our heads because this is our way of mapping the information we receive from our five senses¹. We mix this information with our knowledge base from our immediate past, as well as from our deep past. This mixture is tinged with our emotional state and enlightened by our conscience. We like to do this kind of mixing, but we limit this pleasure because all this consumes energy.

So, for the tasks of daily life, we tend to put ourselves on automatic pilot. In order not to remake the world every morning by exhausting our entourage, the weight of habits and ready-made thoughts mark our behavior and restrict our capacity to evolve. With this know-how, we feel superior. But we are fragile. Sometimes, we make mistakes or are careless and like other species, we can disappear.

4.1.2. Smart, but fragile

“Disappear”! This hypothesis has been on our minds ever since we discovered that our planet is a finite world and that we are not ready to migrate to new planets.

We have been massively informed about the fragility of our planet since 1972, when the Club of Rome² started sounding the alarm. But this idea was too ...