The ambiguity of the market

Why progress is not always visible

There is something that prevents us from clearly perceiving the progress of humanity towards the good. It is the sensation of moral, social, human and spiritual decline that many of us have felt over the past thirty years. This decline is real — but it is partial and temporary. It concerns only certain fields of evolution. Humanity in its global nature continues its progress.

The necessary opposition

Just as most individuals seek, through confrontation, the limits of their own expansion, human societies need the presence of a significant opposition to avoid the problems generated by unlimited power. When any movement considers itself all-powerful, its pride increases — and with it, the risks of absolute domination.

By gradually corrupting certain principles and imposing dominant values — egoism, aggressiveness, the hoarding of money, narcissism — neo-liberalism has contributed to the decline of democratic values. Democracy, by its very nature, requires placing human values at the centre — mutual aid, humility, equality, sharing, inner peace.

In a political doctrine that favours the dominant, living conditions gradually decline towards those of our earlier history — those of natural primates. We can observe this in the neo-liberalism of recent decades. That is why precariousness, aggressiveness, violence, sexuality without feeling, fear and unconsciousness have been spreading for approximately thirty years — much like an unchecked return to certain animal drives.

The necessary decline — a stage, not a destination

If this decline of spiritual values towards more primitive drives seems obvious, it is nonetheless occasional and partial. According to our analysis, it is the price of a more important evolution: globalisation.

Globalisation is an obligatory step for humanity — it marks the rise from the national towards the universal. The decline of certain human values is the direct consequence of the fact that the globalisation process is currently controlled by the market system rather than by humanist values. This is completely explainable — it fits within the great evolution of humanity towards its unification.

Indeed, if an American, a Chinese, a Russian, a Japanese, an African, a European, can find common ground, that common ground must be neutral and transnational. No religion, no political ideology, could gather the diversity of the world around universal values acceptable to all — at least not yet.

Only objects, fashion, music, cinema, tourism and industry — in other words, what the market offers — can bring together the majority of humanity today. Only the market can open the path to a global and universal functioning, gradually shifting national and community practices towards new universal frameworks. The universalisation by the market is thus one of the mechanisms of the long-awaited world peace — even if it comes at a cultural and spiritual cost. As a matter of fact, globalisation is preparing the eventual fusion of ideologies and spiritualities into a common and universal essence.

When the market must regulate itself

The market, left entirely to itself, risks becoming a force of regression rather than progress — amplifying the most primitive instincts of domination and accumulation. The great challenge of our time is to ensure that the globalisation process does not remain solely in the hands of economic logic, but gradually comes under the influence of deeper human values.

History shows that every dominant system eventually carries within it the seeds of its own transformation. The market, by connecting humanity and creating shared spaces, is — despite itself — building the conditions for a future world that goes beyond it. This is the paradox of our era: the very mechanism that seems to weaken human values may be preparing the ground for their greatest flourishing.

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