Hyperhumanism and global ethics

Our vision of today’s world is impressionistic, in that it is fragmented, but it is also global according to the opposite poles of our consciousness, and even our cosmogony. We are caught between a fragmented conception of humanity and a global need to progress as humans. We simultaneously fight for the right to be different, deviant even, and for universal ethical consciousness. Are we being completely contradictory? Not at all; paradoxically, it is the same need. The right to diversity is a universal one, whether this diversity is based on language, identity or history, the colour of our hair or skin, or our sexual orientation. And because our burgeoning, individualistic, middle-class humanism has already lost its credibility as a result of the many wars, genocides and cynical human exploitations that have ravaged our so-called modern era, we have no choice but to invent a new humanism. That is how we came to discover the need for a hyperhumanism, where the hyper prefix here means both an increase in our humanism and the need to build human solidarity links. I am obviously using a metaphor that relates to the internet, that Web in which we create meaning and human relationships by activating hyperlinks.


in light of the permanent and intolerable moral scandal that is today’s world, rather than resigning ourselves to a feeling of helplessness, we must imagine and want to create a hyperhumanism. Because the internet is not just a metaphor: it is a powerful technology that can help us to join our solitudes to build networks of solidarity. Respecting one another is respecting ourselves, the sharing of a common humaneness that is indivisible. We must try to imagine a virtual solidarity between every human being, thus asserting the universality of our conscious in the struggle for global ethics. Of course, needs vary according to culture - the glass or the roof may vary -, but every human being has the right to clean drinking water and physical safety on a daily basis. Every person should have the same basic human rights: shelter, food, health, education, freedom of expression and peace; these should not vary according to culture. These rights, while so basic, are so often scoffed at that we need to continually repeat official declarations. Unfortunately, there is no moral sense or justice in nature. Human progress and the global ethical conscious we are fighting for are not natural; they require willingness and are an added value by humanity to the natural law of the jungle. The current anti-globalization movement is a symbol of the global critical consciousness that we are so desperately in need of. We prefer to talk about hyperhumanism rather than humanism and universality, the concepts of which are now discredited by a history that abusively linked them to the perverse effects of imperialism, colonial conquests,in particular here in Latin America, communism, and now the neo-liberal globalization that attempts to impose abusive powers. Cultural variety is supposed to be a good thing, but when basic ethics vary, it is always to the detriment of mankind.

Hervé Fischer