All living beings kill to survive and run away from death, struggling zealously for their survival. All living beings defend their interests and the interests of their relatives, many times against the interests of other more general interests.
Our daily life – and mainly our economic life – reflects the biological life and its laws. The market laws – linked to competition and to daily struggle - are, in their own way, a reproduction of the laws of biology (or the law of the jungle, if we prefer).
And yet our societies are not jungles, though sometimes it seems so. Our rationality (though limited), our intelligence, and our collective and cooperative side, give to our societies a very complex nature.
Our societies wouldn’t work just based on competition and private interests. Without the corrections introduced by the State, without interventions favouring the poor, the forests or the animal life, without rules of ethics and principles inspired in love and reason, we wouldn’t arrive at where we are. Our societies couldn’t exist. As Sponville says:
Our daily life – and mainly our economic life – reflects the biological life and its laws. The market laws – linked to competition and to daily struggle - are, in their own way, a reproduction of the laws of biology (or the law of the jungle, if we prefer).
And yet our societies are not jungles, though sometimes it seems so. Our rationality (though limited), our intelligence, and our collective and cooperative side, give to our societies a very complex nature.
Our societies wouldn’t work just based on competition and private interests. Without the corrections introduced by the State, without interventions favouring the poor, the forests or the animal life, without rules of ethics and principles inspired in love and reason, we wouldn’t arrive at where we are. Our societies couldn’t exist. As Sponville says:
Who could possible believe that profit alone is sufficient to ensure a humane society? The economy produces wealth; we need wealth, we can never have too much of it. But we also need justice, freedom, security, peace, fraternity, hopes, ideals. No market can provide these things.
André Comte-Sponville, The Little Book of Philosophy
In fact, market laws and human egoisms are extremely dangerous for our planet and our societies. The instability and dangerous imbalances of our world are mostly a result of the work of the spontaneous mechanisms of market forces, human egoism and short sighted views. And without the reinforcement of collective love forms – solidarity, cooperation, generosity, donation… - our future existence is largely uncertain.
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