Power, or superpower, has been asserting itself since the dawn of time. It is rooted in all civilizations. From the Dogons of Mali to the Tukanos of the Amazon, and the Australian Aborigines, people believe in creators, gods, mythical figures of superpower whose extraordinary powers far exceed those of human beings. This advent of superpower is affirmed with monotheism and the idea that there exists one single creator. God reigns without rival, and His power is absolute over the entire universe.
With the emergence of states, around the third millennium BCE, and of god-kings, superpower entered the human world. Modernity took shape in Europe from the eighteenth century onwards. Although democratic in essence, it nevertheless remained archaic in many ways, and the centralized, militarized, and organized state constituted the core element of modern superpower.
For the author, this state-centered superpower is no longer ours. The hypertrophy of law, supranational institutions, external constraints, financial markets, and hyper-individualism have reduced the room for manoeuver of nation-states. Politics is receding in favor of polycentric systems organized around technology and economy. Technoscience and hyper-capitalism have become the driving forces of a technical superpower that seems to go hand in hand with political impotence. Liberal democracies are weakened by excessive media coverage and fake news; new technologies are taking over and posing unprecedented challenges to political leaders. Social media is shaping a citizen into consumers of immediate, fragmented information.The hypermodern uniformity of a Western civilization sharing the same values was a myth. Europe, deemed too “woke,” too regulated, too bureaucratic, too liberal in terms of values, is no longer considered a partner by D. Trump. We are living in a time of the West against the West, of the “de-Europeanization” of the world; economically, it is the opposition between market capitalism and state capitalism. Democracies are retreating while authoritarian regimes are on the rise.Today’s superpower, with its ts capabilities, speed, and intensity, has nothing in common with anything humanity has ever known before. It is an anthropotechnical metamorphosis whose limits we do not know. And this absence of limits generates fear and insecurity. This is the paradox of boundless superpower: the feeling of insecurity extends to all spheres of daily life — the air we breathe, GMOs, 5G, the erosion of biodiversity, climate change, gluten, pesticides. Everything is perceived as threatening. This heightened sensitivity to risk intensifies a demand for protection that becomes obsessive. And yet, never before has humanity possessed so many means to transform the world; never before have measurable indicators of living standards, life expectancy, access to healthcare, and human rights been so high.We undeniably live better today than we did yesterday. However, what about our quality of life? Is happiness faltering, or have we lost the ability to appreciate moments of intense joy? Much is still to be expected from advances in technoscience; but it would be an illusiory to believe that these could domesticate happiness into scientific laws or algorithms. Perhaps therein lies the limit of the superpowered society: this anthropological, faceless and unmasterable limit — the inappropriable happiness of each individual.
Gilles Lipovetsky is a philosopher and essayist.
Ph Alezard