Which Titan is the European?

Between Titans, we'll have to choose

Two titanic phenomena that everything opposes, yet that everything connects, are colliding at this very moment. Like two atoms hurled at each other at full speed, we could be witnessing a nuclear encounter of the explosive kind - destroying our world forever - or the salvific kind - generating, through its power, a better world, a "sustainable" world. -

These two concomitant phenomena are, on the one hand, the apparently fantastic progress of the technological sector - some speak emphatically of a fourth industrial revolution underway due to the unprecedented development of Artificial Intelligence - and, on the other hand, the no less fantastic progress - albeit in the catastrophic register - of the most diverse and dangerous environmental disturbances.

On the one hand, optimism and fascination, or at least fantasies about technologies that surpass anything man has ever imagined. On the other hand, a profound pessimism, a dismay that replaces the technophile fascination, a sad and worried look at an increasingly dysfunctional ecosystem.

These two phenomena will meet at the final crossroads of Modernity.

And who cares if man ends up crushed by his creations, which in another language might be called his misdeeds? European man is Prometheus, we hear; he has stolen fire from the egoists of Olympus, and in so doing, he has made himself entirely through technology - which would mean, in truth, that he has made himself for it. - Like a simple vector of fire when it's passed on or maintained, we would be nothing more than pitiful vectors of technology, having to go beyond man, nature, the whole Earth if need be, to go ever further, higher, sillier. No, it's man who belongs to the destiny of technology.

Man - and more specifically the European of the species - would thus have begun by taking on the persona of Prometheus, using fire to make tools and soon machines, in order to improve the lot of mortals here on earth and provide them with the means to compete with the gods themselves. How can we not be grateful to this titanic facet of our way of being, the one who, through his genius, offered us the luxury of taking first place in the animal kingdom and extracting us, in many ways, from a nature as marvellous as it is pitiless?

So be it. We thank Prometheus, or rather: we are Prometheus, or at least we were, having begun with him.

For, since then, Prometheus has been unfaithful. Prometheus has regretted to the point of making amends, because man did much more than use his gift, he abused it: here he has become a terrible arsonist (Sloterdijk). We can no longer be that Titan, since he now regrets his generosity. And so, two centuries ago, we metamorphosed into his brother Epimetheus. Into a man who "thinks after the fact"; into a man who makes and tinkers without ever considering the consequences. Whatever Epimethean man can do, he seems to end up doing, and if there's a catch around, he must inevitably put his fingers in it...

Having become Epimetheus, man now thinks only after he has acted. He meditates only after calculating, and often when it's too late. This is the reason for the possible ecological cataclysm we're facing: let's remember that Epimetheus' wife is none other than Pandora. She carries with her a box whose promises are well known.

However, Prometheus still has two other brothers; in other words, two other possibilities of existence before, or after, Epimetheus' thoughtlessness has allowed the worst evils to befall our world (which, incidentally, may already be happening...).

Among the Titans of our most immemorial family, there remain Ménétios and Atlas. The former is "the proud one", "full of audacity and wickedness" (Hesiod). This, I believe, is the attitude of technophile sorcerers' apprentices and transhumanists. Accepting as a fact that the planet, nature and all biology are doomed in any case, the latter contemptuously think that we should turn away from them by abandoning them to their fateful fate (wickedness); they think that man's essential mission is to go to Mars or Keppler-442 (pride), using technology that we have developed without any limits (audacity). Such is the Menoetian future of the European if he chooses this path.

However, another future is possible. European man could choose to take on the face and destiny of the last brother of the great Titans: Atlas, the benevolent one who teaches men to contemplate the mysteries of heaven and earth. Atlas does not discard our planet; on the contrary, he supports it with his power. He accepts this burden because his power is his duty. Through him, the world is supported; through him, it is "sustainable". He also begets, as if by chance, the Hesperides - etymologically, "the daughters of the West" - whose destiny it is to fashion the most beautiful of gardens. Let's understand the meaning of this metaphor: Atlas would be the ecological future of European man.

Whose Titan will we then become? We began as Prometheus, we became Epimetheus and we still are. But Pandora has now opened the box: we are gradually arriving at the final crossroads of Modernity that I mentioned. Menetios or Atlas will emerge; one will turn our civilization into a dump, the other into a garden.

So, between Titans, we'll have to choose.