3109 - Mankind and Time IX

N. Lygeros
Translated from the Greek by Evi Charitidou

Faced with oppression, people resist. However, it is not society that has taught them how to resist. So, what is the reason for this resistance and sometimes even sacrifice? In this new reflection framework, the answer is natural. It is exactly their humaneness which resists, because it is capable of conceiving the meaning of loss. Refusing a loss is also a form of contribution. In fact, in a more general context, or rather a thermodynamic one, entropy augmentation is not only a formal loss. Sometimes it is about a real deconstruction. So, Mankind’s cybernetic vision runs necessarily counter to this loss, which is not of space imperatively; it may be of a culture, a language, a tradition or even a religion. Why certain cultures persist existing? Why certain peoples are so attached to their language even though it is rare? Why a tradition can be so important? Why does a religion resist oppression? Because, Mankind is also constructed by negating loss, negating oblivion. Mankind does not limit itself only to remembering, it refuses to forget. It does not work only in the domain of constructing. It also opposes to erasing, to crushing. It is also for this reason that we should not consider world wars uniquely as global confrontations and mainly not as social ones. During these wars many battles were waged underground away from any regular army. It was not about types of small society reproduction. The underground had the meaning of existing for the other. Far from being a confined space, underground took action for Mankind. It was aware of waging a battle against an oppressive system which attempted to dehumanize people. Even without coordination, resistance groups took action also for the others. They had to resist even if they were the only ones to do so. It was a matter of necessity. However, Mankind had to organize itself to fight against a global system. The population could not stand up because it was naturally enticed by another system deemed as invincible at that period. As regards collaboration, it corresponded not only to a subjugation, but also to an attempt to replicate the social system. From the collaboration point of view, social systems’ absorption by one system which seemed more powerful and more global, was merely a simple immersion in the mathematical sense of the term. The formal change had no structural repercussion. It is also for the same reason that we have to pay a double tribute to men like Jean Moulin. On the one hand, he refused to participate to the system and on the other hand, he organized a humanity that he did not want to disappear. Moreover, he did so by sacrificing his own life by accepting that what remains to him and to those alive was his work. So, on the one hand he was useless for the system and on the other hand detrimental to it. Yet, negative characteristics for the system are very frequently linked exactly with the notion of humanity. Comprehending the Jean Moulin phenomenon equals to comprehending a part of what we name Humanity. One single man to grasp the essential, because the essential for Humanity rests in every human being.