The unprecedented crisis that we are experiencing is not simply economic but also and essentially metaphysical. The very foundations of our finite civilization are disintegrating. Institutions such as family, work, education, finance, national state and individual identity are collapsing in order to create a place for the first stage of the new emerging civilization of infinity.

The infinitization of our finite economy accelerates. For the first time humanity has the opportunity to survive spontaneously in an effortless or cost-free manner defying thereby the second law of thermodynamics-the law of cost and external constraint. Already the actual telecommunication system functions according to the principle of infinity which is both a greatest and a least-action principle. Indeed, it enables each individual to have an unlimited communication with a finite cost (or payment) or, to put it another way, a limited communication with a zero cost (or payment). This system must be generalized to all the material and immaterial goods that constitute society’s entire wealth. Thus, at this first stage toward infinity each individual will have an unlimited consumption of material and immaterial goods with a finite cost or, a limited consumption of material and immaterial goods with a zero cost. 1

To uniformly distribute this maximum and free power of survival on the spherical surface of Earth, humankind needs to federate and unite on the planetary level in order to form the United States of the World. The time and energy liberated from the constraining urgency of survival must in turn be invested in higher levels of activity such as disinterested science and art, in which each human being will find complete fulfillment.

Although humanity has the necessary imagination and scientific know-how to access this first stage of civilization, our strictly individualistic society has no political or ethical will to effectively realize this passage. As a matter of fact, conditioned by linear time, our finite individualistic society generates a sequence of increasing contradictions that render the movement to this superior stage increasingly difficult, and the end of continuous and spontaneous survival increasingly inaccessible. It follows that the end of continuous and free survival is possible if, and only if humanity recognizes that our individual body and society are alive and continue to be alive because ultimately they function not according to the finite-analytic principles of the individual and lifeless piece of matter but instead according to the infinite-synthetic principles of matter taken as a living whole.

Once humanity recognizes that the founding principles of continuous life and motion are infinite-synthetic and not finite-analytic, that the forces of life are peripheral or universal integrating the isolated individuals into a living, complex whole and not centric or individual breaking down the living complex whole into lifeless individuals uniquely centered on themselves, then and only then can globalization as the inductive movement from the individual to the universal, be seen as a life process that counteracts the decomposing effects of linear time on the individual. Globalization is a genuine life process when isolated individuals mutually shed their private independence in order to form a living unified whole-a community endowed with a superior life power and freedom. However, if the isolated individuals mutually cast off their private independence without forming a unified living community, then globalization degenerates into a chaotic aggregate of conflicting and isolated individuals uniquely centered on themselves that renders life impossible.


1. By cost we mean here the necessary resources such as time, work, matter-energy, capital for producing material and immaterial goods.

THE AUTHOR

Ion Soteropoulos

Ion Soteropoulos is an independent research philosopher and scientific metaphysician who is passionately devoted to creative and transdisciplinary work. In 2002 she founded Apeiron Centre, the first philosophical organization in the world that studies the idea of infinity in dynamic connection with the finite as presented in our physical universe, society and physical body.

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