Publish at July 03 2024 Updated July 03 2024
Jean-Pierre Goux made a name for himself in 2016 with his popularization of the "overview effect" at a TedX.
The overview effect is a trance-like state, a "cognitive shock", an awareness that some astronauts experience after a stay in Earth orbit. In this 2016 TedX, Jean-Pierre Goux talks about his project to broadcast an image of the planet in motion, as seen from space. For astronauts lucky enough to have traveled in space, this vision provokes a trance-like state: the overview effect.
"The combined effect of weightlessness, fear, silence and wide-open exposure to the earth as seen from space, spinning with a throbbing rhythm, created all the conditions for a mystical, ecstatic experience that marked them for life".
Testimonials from space travellers from all over the world can be found in the book"Clairs de terre".
Until Jean Pierre Goux's intervention, the image of the planet was fixed and known as "blue marble". After many ups and downs, he founded the NGO "One Home", enabling everyone to see the earth in motion, in the hope of creating a collective "overview effect".
After studying engineering and completing a post-graduate degree in mathematics and economic modelling, JP Goux embarked on his planetary and human mission. His intense intellectual activity feeds his intuitions about the living world. He sees the economy as the metabolism of humanity, i.e. the set of chemical reactions that enable humanity to live.
In 1970, the Meadows report to the Club of Rome - based on a mathematical model of the world - asserted that the planetary system would collapse under the pressure of demographic and industrial growth. Unless humanity deliberately decides to stabilize its population and production...(sources)
The problem with optimization is that it doesn't call the system into question, and displaces the problem. Aware of being part of an extremely important period in human history, JP. Goux identifies what he calls "a major narrative problem behind the ecological transition".
Initially, he wanted to tell the story of an ecological transition "that is going well". This is the 2-volume"Blue Century" project.
"a utopia in which heroes try to offer a voice to transform the world".
Following these two steps (a novel and an NGO), the eclectic researcher is looking for "a new concept that would make the ecological transition possible". This search resonates with Saint-Exupéry's phrase in Night Flight: "in life there are no solutions, only forces at work, you just have to create them, and the solutions follow".
In the universe, the most profound force is the force of evolution. JP Goux proposes to take the problem in reverse - don't forget he's a mathematician!
"What if planetary limits weren't an insurmountable wall but, on the contrary, an "activator in the next stage of humanity"?
He uses the working method formulated by mathematician Alexander Grothendieck. This method consists in generalizing problems, looking at them from a distance, in order to deal with them as a whole, thus giving rise to the concept of"homo biospheris".
JPGoux takes an unfolded approach to the problem of the biosphere. He tries to articulate two "ALLs" together: humans & the biosphere. In so doing, he identifies the problem of representing the human in the living world and in the universe. The way in which collectives emerge completely escapes scientific understanding, and forces of destruction and association are at work in the universe.
Let's consider a hypothesis and a concept:
The biosphere is "all living organisms and their living environments, i.e. the totality of ecosystems present in the lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere" ( wikipedia sources).
JP Goux compares humanity (humans as a whole) to multicellular beings that might express a little homo biospheris DNA. Humanity as a whole could metamorphose, a bit like the butterfly's imaginal cells. We could express a little homo biospheris DNA. In a way that activates planetary consciousness.
If we think of humanity as a whole, all its activities represent metabolism. When we look at the transition from the point of view of the whole, we realize that we have a creature (an economy) in overdrive, like some kind of autoimmune disease or cancer. To survive, the economy would have to become circular and regenerative, and permaculture and agroforestry would become a matter of course.
This goes much further than the notion of fraternity: we're all part of the same whole. The other is me, but with a different life. This completely changes our relationship with others, and is a source of enrichment, whatever our level of education or wealth. It completely changes the way we think about the world, with a common belief. Today, this common belief revolves around money.
The cohesive energy identified by the researcher is love. Love in the sense of Agape, universal love. JP Goux proposes making love the force that could unite human beings.
The blue revolution means moving on from 8 billion separate sapiens to a united homo biosphéris composed of 8 billion cells that are united in diversity (and not in uniformity).
This unity (hUmaNITY) leaves no one apart and embraces the limits of the biosphere, having defined its major functions.
Humanity's main functions with regard to the biosphere are, for example, to care for living things rather than destroy them. Other functions could also be formulated. What is the purpose of humanity is a major question that has never been asked! The fact that we have never said what purpose humans serve with respect to living things is problematic, and presupposes that living things belong to humans.
Today, as planetary limits are reached, this whole is going to have to become aware of itself, incorporate planetary limits and build the transition on a different basis by putting our heart and the belonging of the living at the center of the human project.
This concept of homo biospheris can also be applied to businesses. It's a reformulation of the corporate mission, seeing it as an organ of homo biospheris. In other words, defining who the company is in relation to its employees and its bio-region, and thus reformulating its innovation strategy.
We need to rethink ourselves in a different way; to bring out a new, supportive narrative.
A new mental model needs to be shared, based on an archetype that structures the collective unconscious....
The Blue Revolution is the title of Jean-Pierre Goux's new saga. Volume 1, La petite princesse, was published in French on February 1, 24 and recounts the emergence of a new state of collective consciousness. I can't wait for volume 2...
Illustration: A NASA photograph of earth © NASA
Sources
The Blue Revolution, official website https://www.revolutionbleue.fr/
Book
https://www.decitre.fr/livres/revolution-bleue-9782416012068.html#ae85
Biosphere II - https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosph%C3%A8re_II
"Alexandre Grothendieck, the greatest mathematician of the 20th century, has died" November 14, 2014, Le Monde - https://www.lemonde.fr/disparitions/article/2014/11/14/le-mathematicien-alexandre-grothendieck-est-mort_4523482_3382.html
Rivaje (May 30, 2024) "Homo biosphéris, Inscrire l'humanité au service de la biosphère, avec Jean-Pierre Goux" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFu7Gow9OGs
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