October 17, 2026, will go down in history less for what it was than for what it will make possible. In fact, social unrest never makes sense on its own. 1789, 1830, 1848, 1870, 1968, 2005, 2023: the same anger…
For at least a century, one word has constantly recurred in the rhetoric of all those preparing to become dictators: the word “system,” used to designate their enemies. Before coming to power, Mussolini lambasted and denounced the Italian “sistema politico,”…
We mistakenly reason in terms of the whole and the average, without realizing that what really matters lies in the extremes and their frequency. Yet today, “standard deviations”—which measure the dispersion of data around the mean—are increasing in nearly every…
If we want to avoid stumbling over an obstacle, it’s best to walk with our eyes open. Yet when we suggest adopting the same attitude toward the future, we’re labeled pessimists or Cassandras—and all too often discredited. Today more than…
The terrible wildfires currently ravaging the world—and France in particular—are a manifestation of today’s generation’s lack of respect for the past, the present, and the future. For the past, because these fires are the result of excessive human interference with…
When asked a few days ago on France Culture by journalist Guillaume Erner about the modern resurgence of antisemitism—at the very moment that Marc Bloch, a French Jewish historian executed by the Nazis for his resistance activities, was being laid…
As populist parties are set to come to power everywhere, we must return to the fundamentals: I have often pointed out (particularly in *The Nomadic Man*, published in 2003) the fundamental distinction between two ways of life: nomadic and sedentary….
There are truths that history takes centuries to recognize. This is one of them: health and education are not two separate public policies, nor are they two distinct private commercial activities; they are two sides of the same reality: a…
Most countries only allow hazardous industrial facilities on their territory under three conditions: that extreme safety measures be taken, as has been the case in Europe since 1986 with “Seveso” factories—named after a terrible disaster in Italy six years earlier;…
