This is an ethic of aesthetics in gestation

"Les echos" are partners of the University of the Earth, which will be Saturday and Sunday at the Unesco, in Paris, a series of round tables on the theme: "reinventing progress." Here are two prepropositions preview.

It was agreed on the importance of the unconscious to the individual. But there is still some reluctance to admit that may be a collective unconscious that, over the long term, shapes attitudes and ways of being.

This was analyzed in multiple ways, but it is accepted that what made the specificity of the Judeo-Christian tradition, this injunction was first to cultivate the garden of Eden. And the man must be "in the sweat of his brow." The work is, thus becomes a divine injunction, with the mastery of nature, which will differentiate the humanity of the animality.

This is, in a few words, what is the origin of what became, little by little, the myth of progress. It is on such logic of domination that is going to organize the forth, structural, between production and consumption. Double-face of a same reality leading, without resistance, the devastation of the world, including the looting are just a little unappealing taste.

Devastation of the spirits, inevitable consequence of a deification of the object. Deification that individual one subject among others. And like all objects, manipulated and measurable thank you.

But here, a few decades, to sketch the saturation of this paradigm. And in a premonitory way, while the leftists of any hair competed a few plots of power, Smart minds had written on the walls of the Sorbonne: "cache you object."

Because, with slow and security at the time, the spirits were contaminated with another way to understand and relate to others and the world. This can result in various ways. In particular, this diffuse sense of making his life a work of art. The refusal, not always aware of losing his life to win.

And many other ways to focus on the quality of existence.

It is in this general framework that grasp well the evolution that will be the consumer. In short, rather than quantitative, but qualitative.

For example, nor an unbridled and infinite progress, but something that the word remains to find. I'm trying here to a neologism to replace progress: "ingrès". Namely energy focusing on this world. A hedonism here and now. Repatriation of enjoyment in some way.

How can be expressed as "ingrès" By the resumption of romantic sensitivity resulting in the attachment to the territory, the importance of localism, the attention of local products, organic foods. In short, by the ecological sensitivity.

Romanticism of Earth in that it focuses on the Chthonic feeling. What is - this say otherwise that confused, one feels, belonging, for better or for worse, this land here!

It is this that we can grasp the shift from consumption towards the "value". Two major features can appreciate such slippage. Firstly the importance of the present. This was the case in other historical cycles (in particular during the pre-modernity, is not without resemblance to what is to sketch out our eyes). There is a relationship between presenteeism and hedonism. But from that one tends to believe, this hedonism focuses, as I have indicated, at the same time on the quality and the beauty of things.

It is the other aspect of the value: focus on aesthetics. Suffice it to say what it means, symbolically, the emergence of design in the mid-life of the last century. The daily object, while keeping its functionality, is dressed, paré, meaning that the dark desire that all moments of existence are part of a perpetual "Sunday life".

I recall in pre-modern societies, objects of everyday life had an own sacredness. Pieces of the world, they had the aura of it. They were surrounded by caring, respect, and this was expressed in the intrinsic beauty which was their own.

This is what appears in our Postmodernity, for the sake of the beautiful, that one will find in the household, in the development of space, in the multiplicity of the magazines and stores dedicated to the "welfare" in its various forms.

It is, therefore, in mere consumption, but in an atmosphere of "value". This is an ethic of aesthetics in gestation. In its strict sense, a link is developing from the beauty and sharing the emotions she does not fail to raise.

The ethos is based on a given link us and customs. Territory liked. It is therefore sometimes immoral ethics, expressed in "impulse the effect", the desire, the pleasure by an object, in that it allows sharing of collective emotions and passions.

The aestheticization of the existence, art capillarisant of everyday life, the emphasis on the quality, the refusal of the productivist sacking, the rebellion against the devastation of the minds, this is what comes in the Dionysian "value". There is in it something mondain. That is an attachment to this world. An accordance, as well as evil, this land, it to enjoy without regret nostalgiquement and where, expect another.

Pleasure of life ashtray, this is well what is the collective unconscious of the moment!