Streaming media align pieces of information, one after another, without seeking to establish, most of the time, any relations between them all. And as a matter of fact, at first sight, there is no relation between the spectacular blockchain development, the sovereignty dispute over Catalonia, the Weinstein gate, Austrian and Czech elections, the Korea crisis, the Kurdish attempt to be independent, the renewal of Xi Jinping presidency, and all the other topics which dominated headlines of newspapers all over the world this week, at least of those which are not totally focused on their own national issues or which are not controlled by an overly finicky censorship.
And though, all the media, the least free of them included, do obey to the same logic and can be understood according to a same frame of reference, which gives a meaning to the world and which should deserve, at least, to be tested permanently.
All these pieces of information indeed take part in a unique heavy tendency, and in a reaction, that has been caused by itself: on the one hand, a growing individual empowerment, and a growing respect that comes with it, leading to the weakening of states, in an individualizing globalization where each person becomes responsible for his own destiny.
On the other hand, and conversely, with a reaction as powerful as the movement which builds it, an identity tension is observed: authoritarian populism stands up everywhere to oppose to the anarchist uniformization: the market authoritarian form of government is only the other side of libertarian liberalism.
Among numerous others, two topics that dominated the headlines this week, and at first sight without any link between them, illustrate quite well this idea:
The blockchain, a securing transactions technology, is so powerful that it allows to create currencies without central bank, including the bitcoin, which broke all the price records this week; bitcoin takes part more than any other currency in the state power destruction, and also its protective function for the weakest; it designs a world of freedom and autonomy, where anyone deserve as much respect and consideration than another. Also a world of loneliness and of rupture of all solidarities, including those, elementary, that are organised by a shared currency on a territory. With the bitcoin and the other blockchain avatars, the nomadism in its most extreme form seems thus to triumph.
In reaction to this evolution, territories defend themselves: there is no way for them to lose control of their fate. On the contrary, it is the right time to take it back, to simply take it; that is what is at stake in Catalonia, and in Kurdistan; that is what is promised in Austria, in Czech Republic, and also in Italy where referendums are prepared. Notably, the Catalonian fight fit in this movement, which will accompany, almost inevitably, an authoritarian tension. Technologies could serve such evolutions: thus, the next Chinese project that is to set up a credit bureau, to prevent consumers from over-indebtedness, could serve to many other purposes than watch the borrowers’ behaviour, and reinforce many more the president Xi Jinping powers.
If the historical precedents can help to discern the future, we are going, with high-speed, towards a brutal confrontation between individuals’ freedom, more or less mixed with anarchy, and the dictators of the market, more or less tainted with nationalism. First, an authoritarian form of economy will prevail, then they will fight, before the wisdom of a worldwide governance comes back, reconciliating the rights of the peoples and those of the individuals. We still have the means to avoid this shock and to tnk about a harmonious and liberating governance, which would associate, peacefully, the best of both worlds.