Education, democracy and global solidarity:
learning to understand the other in an age of uncertainty

By Edgar Morin
French Philosopher

In July 2021 leading French philosopher, sociologist and inter-disciplinary thinker Edgar Morin turned 100. Morin, the “father of complexity” is perhaps best known in Education for his prescient 1999 work with UNESCO: Seven Complex Lessons in Education for the Future.

In November 2016, thanks to colleagues from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, France, Edgar Morin honoured GENE by his presence in addressing and giving the keynote closing lecture to the GENE Paris Conference.

To celebrate his 100th birthday, GENE is publishing here in full his keynote speech. Morin reminds us of the crucial centrality of history, memory, our understanding of what it means to be human, and of solidarity. In his address, entitled: Education, democracy and global solidarity: learning to understand the other in an age of uncertainty, Edgar Morin summed it up simply: the current education system is obsolete. The response: recognising the growing complexity, we need to put global solidarity at the heart of education in an age of uncertainty.

I would like to mention how paradoxical teaching or education is. It’s about introducing in young minds a certain number of notions and knowledge. But as the fundamental mission of education was to make sure that education would lead to free, critical minds getting out of the system. It is certain that by teaching we mean to teach students to become self-educated. One always has to combine educational pedagogy with certain didactics. My own message today expresses my feeling deeply. I had a history teacher that passed on some of the ideas that are most fundamental to me.

The education system should allow us to move on and to discover oneself. There are necessary topics for the education system that are often lacking, such as the question ‘What is citizenship?’ This is extremely important, as being a citizen implies that there is democracy where the citizen can assert control and action vis-à-vis the government, and also to have duties and responsibilities. The difference is being a subject, or an active person.

We know that the Athenian army pushed back the Persian army. Persia came back, but again Athens was able to push them back through a very improbably sequence of events. From this stemmed the earliest forms of democracy. It was very fragile and only lasted a short while and it took a very long time before the nations with democratic governance system emerged. French democracy collapsed in 20th century after the attacks of the Nazi army.

So, we have to teach pupils and learners what the system is all about. It is not just about majority rule – it is for a certain period in time and it is about the plurality of antagonistic ideas. This is what vitalises democracy. It also implies that not only some sort of moral pain or suffering, because you have to tolerate ideas that you do not agree with, but also power going to people you don’t agree with. It also entails respecting minorities.

One thing that is not so well known that I want to mention: “Democracy has no truth”. Let me explain. Totalitarian rule claims truth from the gods or a higher power. In democracy, truth is fluid, truth is there, and it is temporary, it is of the citizen. I keep coming back to the term citizen as it implies feeling responsible for the national fate of the own country and feeling solidarity towards a community.

This also applies when we ponder ethics – thinking that what’s good and what’s bad can be defined. The fundamental terms are responsibility and solidarity – society cannot live as a democratic society without these two factors.

Our societies were founded on the feeling of community and on solidarity – feeling that all our children are of one common ancestor. How can we in the modern day achieve this? It has to take a different shape – perhaps through a motherly and a fatherly aspect of the nation? We turn the country into the motherland. We view the father as the governor, the state, the government.

In any society, you have conflicts, interests and selfishness. However, when we face disaster, we show solidarity; we become one, we become a community again. At certain times we are a community, at other times we are a society with our normal issues. However, if you do not have responsibility and solidarity, you do not have a democratic society.

Europe is quite ill at the moment. What does globalisation mean? It means that all humans have become interdependent – we have to face common fundamental issues and dangers. What are they?

• Deterioration of the biosphere and environment threatening our lives as civilized people.

• We have unregulated economies that produce crises – it is not only unregulated; they are driven by financial speculation.

• We have anguish – we used to think that tomorrow would be better than yesterday – is that still the case? Is there still the belief in progress?

• Hate, fanaticism, withdrawal.

This should make us push the notion of solidarity beyond our national borders, but we have a problem here. Instead of a community of faith, a new humanism, a global humanism, we see instead that anguish and crises foster the focus on national identity, on religious identity, on physical identities that focus on specific aspects. Of course, we all have identities, but some of these aspects blur the feeling of having a joint community, a joint fate.

All human beings have a common identity – brain capabilities, affections, feelings of joy, sadness etc. These are common human feelings that enable us to feel empathy and solidarity. On the other hand, we are also very different psychologically and ideologically. We must recognise that we are both identical and different.

Even though we are in the information society, it is incredible the number of misunderstandings that happen in communications between people in society, even within the same society. To teach understanding implies that you should fight against self-deception – to think that you are the one who is right. It also implies the fundamental idea which is implicit in human rights – that we should all be respected for our humanity and that there are no humans who are superior or inferior.

Hegel wrote about our need for recognition, i.e. the fact that we want others to recognise us as fully human. Nothing is worse than the feeling of being humiliated, which is experienced by many. On top of that humiliation, there is indifference. Saying ‘hello’ to a person, recognising that they are a human being can change that feeling. Human recognition is essential.

How can we cope with uncertainty? Life is like cruising an ocean of uncertainty. Right from birth we know that we are going to die. We don’t know when we are young if we are going to be happy, if we will enjoy our work, if we will find a significant other, if we will have good health. We are in a society that is faced with uncertainties and unexpected events. In human history, we have had two world wars, 9/11 and other awful events, but still people are surprised when people like Trump win elections. Are we blind or just looking with one eye? Here, there is something we need to teach: the unexpected will increasingly occur and we have to acknowledge this.

It is important that we look at the past. We think of the 20th century and say ‘how could be people be so stupid?’ but our society today, or neo-liberalism as a phenomenon, is it not a complete illusion? In France, we made numerous mistakes until we were invaded by the enemy in 1940. Did we learn anything? Do our political leaders never make mistakes? What about us? We should equip ourselves with knowledge.

When you convey a message to a recipient, it goes through a lot of noise and there is a risk of misunderstanding and error – this is part of all communication and perception. In “The Witness”, a book describing English and German soldiers during the first world war, the accounts of the same events experienced by both sides are completely different. Hence, the perception could be completely different based on emotion.

We never teach what we are as human beings – this is missing from the education system. We forget about ourselves and what we are. The species is inside ourselves in our genes. We need to be able to continue to breathe. Species, society, culture, individuals, those realities are omni-present and you cannot ignore the individual for society. We are also mammals, vertebrates, we have billions of cells that are the heirs of the first cells, which are atoms, made up of the first particles from billions of years ago. The fact is that the living world and the physical world are part of us. Since 1970, thanks to the rise of environmental awareness, we know this more now.

As homo sapiens, we are supposed to have reasoning, but this is a misconception. Madness, insanity, anger, hubris – people rationalise all kinds of things, even in madness (e.g. concentration camps). The Soviet Union tried to remove religion from society, but as we can see, the Orthodox church is still strong. The human problem is to combine reason with passion. These ideas should be taught; they are issues for our daily lives.

In conclusion, I believe that this is a great, huge mission for the education system that requires a huge reform like the one that took place in the late 18th and early 19th century (when the first university in Berlin in the early 19th century paved the way for the school systems of the western world) as our current system is obsolete. We need to understand what human beings are, we need to introduce data that is unknown to us now, but essential to our understanding.