Biomimicry: the true nature of the collaborative economy?

For as long as man has existed, growth, expansion and conquest have been at the physical expense of the other. The survival of one depended on the death of the other, and the domination of one depended on the submission of the other.

In times of war, to "collaborate" is to submit, to betray. In times of peace, military confrontation has become political (Cold War), then economic (globalisation). But the spirit remains the same: to be strong is to dominate, no longer to conquer territory but market share.

And if it's not always about ordering, it's about influencing, a new social form of superiority and 'popularity'. Sharing, collaborating, exchanging and showing solidarity are certainly recognised 'values', but they are often seen as acts of deprivation, renunciation and disinterest, leaving only the sacrosanct spirit of competition and power to increase our well-being.

From then on, collaboration and solidarity seem to us to be unnatural, "extra-human" values that have more to do with spirituality than with human or animal nature. Besides, aren't we taught from our earliest childhood about the "law of the jungle" and the food chain as a succession of predations? So it would be quite "natural" for man to be a predator for man.

The problem is that we are now reaching the limits of the finite world, not the natural world of the biosphere, which has every chance of outliving us, but our own little parallel world, artificial and detached, as if we could live in weightlessness. We are reaching two limits: an economic limit and an ecological limit, and this reduction in inertia is simply bringing us back down to earth.

We are caught up in our own gravity. Growth, long seen as a source of progress, including social progress, is proving to be the mother of all our vices and an ecological morphine. The engine of opulence and recklessness has come to a halt and we are falling backwards. This growth is no longer there because, like the trees, it doesn't reach the sky. So another model has to be invented, and it's not a question of technological innovations for which we seem to have unlimited capacity, but of a new model for organising our human community, based more on collaboration than competition - in other words, a cultural revolution.

This is where the second, ecological, limit can help us, paradoxically. Environmental awareness (even if regularly denied) makes us (re)aware of our 'humanity' in the sense of a human community with a common destiny. I lack what you waste, I die from what you pollute. We are condemned to be interdependent and interconnected, and not just on social networks!

Globalisation is not just economic, it is also geological and cultural, and the only borders that remain, even if they too are crumbling, are those of political states. Our world is increasingly porous, and in a way that's all to the good - long live capillarity!

What would be powerful, symbolic and amusing ... would be for UNESCO to classify ... our planet ... as a World Heritage Site! After all, it is the only one with the keys to saving us. Taking inspiration from it means protecting it, and ourselves. I'm launching this idea and this strange appeal here ... like a bottle in the biosphere 🙂