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many-tentacled megalopolises as to interplanetary travel, and thus armed
against any regression to chauvinism. This multinational citizen, ideally
above the fray and able to integrate a wide spectrum of perspectives,
would eliminate the recourse to arms with his universal understanding.
This proposition does not lack grandeur and recalls the most elevated
principles of the eighteenth century. Humanity is but one family, tempo–
rarily divided by ignorance and absurd prejudices. If all are properly
instructed, peace will reign. Furthermore, this
all
conforms to the pream–
ble of the convention which created UNESCO on November 16, 1945.
"Wars are created in man's spirit. It is in man's spirit that the defenses of
peace must be forged."
Here we see the reconciliation of two formerly hostile families: the
"third-worlder" left and the anti-authoritarian left. In the name of anti–
colonialism, the "third-worlders" deny the West the right to elevate itself
as the dominant culture. They recall the West to modesty, reminding it
that its achievements are relative, and they force it to open itself up to
those worlds it so unjustly oppressed. In the name of Europe and the end
of East-West divisions, and in the name of the ecological solidarity that
transcends all the continents, the anti-totalitarian left pleads for the dis–
mantling of all barriers and for uniting
all
nations in a vast conglomerate.
"In Europe today," writes Edgar Morin, for example, "the processes of
dissociation and disintegration have joined in a race with those of associa–
tion and integration." The attitude Morin adopts, again, is not a new one.
It
recalls "the moralizing pacifism of certain Romantics. "Nation! A pom–
pous word for saying barbarity," Lamartine had written as early as 1841.
"Egoism and hatred have only one fatherland; fraternity has none...
Every man is bred in the climate of his own intelligence; I am a citizen of
any soul that thinks." All secession is, therefore,
a priori
negative because it
disrupts the chain of events that is to bind all countries and prevent any
risk of conflict. Furthermore, our century, unlike the preceding one, has
experienced the horror of nationalism to the point of nausea. In short,
after having been free because of nations, now we must be free in spite of
them. "Be my brother, or I will kill you," said Rivarol in a variation on a
formula in the spirit of the Terror. You must all be brothers, or you will
be disqualified, proclaims the new doctrine of cosmopolitanism. Only
those peoples anxious to join in a greater union would be worthy of hu–
manity. The others, anxious to assert their uniqueness, to cut themselves
off, would merit only the label of savages, of tribes. The future takes on
the aspect of a terrible ultimatum: "Association or barbarity!" declares
Morin. This very reasoning has enabled us to remain insensitive for so
long to the suffering of the Croats and Bosnians in the Yugoslavian crisis.
Of course, they were victims of aggression, but fundamentally, they were
