Whoever wants to do something big, Goethe said, must be able to limit himself. Not just because we can’t get it all at once, but because anything important involves some kind of waiver. This is so at the individual level and also at the collective level. The case of the ecological transition is the most illustrative: we will not do it without changes in our behavior or technology transfer to the least advantaged countries, and this implies changes in consumption or mobility that limit our desires and comfort. , as well as economic efforts of solidarity. Perhaps this explains why we go so slow: we would like to have it all at once, the pros without the cons. This is the case in many other areas of society where there is no progress that does not involve any limitation: the fight against climate change forces us to change the way we consume; the recognition of linguistic plurality entails certain inconveniences for those who only speak the dominant language; women’s equality diminishes men’s opportunities; any redistribution policy implies, at least initially, that someone loses …
We could say it in a more disturbing way: there will be no positive social changes and we will not overcome the crises that threaten us without any kind of self-limitation, either in the form of renunciation or acceptance of certain prohibitions. Sacrifice and obedience are not very attractive concepts, but that is what they are, always under certain conditions. It is very difficult for these changes in behavior to take place voluntarily, so we have to resort to various acts of authority, which involve some kind of constraint on freedom. Behavior modification can take the form of an express ban, a price increase, or an incentive to encourage desirable behavior. In any case, this is something that goes against our spontaneous or habitual tendency.
Much of the activity of governments in favor of sustainability is in the form of a ban: through fines or rising prices, speed is limited or attempts are made to reduce meat consumption, plastic packaging or air travel. The act of governing thus acquires a negative connotation that triggers suspicion against authority and makes libertarian discourse attractive. Terms such as eco-dictatorship are echoed in a large part of society that has an individual model that enthrones the maximization of particular and immediate benefits.
Of course, in a democratic state governed by the rule of law, restrictions on freedom must be legitimate and democratic, which means that they cannot be arbitrary, they must be explained and, as far as possible, the incitement to imposition. Democracy is not a political system in which there is no authority, but a form of government in which authority must always be justified and open to criticism. And the ultimate justification for these regulations is based on the kind of common good or evil that is at stake today. If modern democracies were constituted as institutions against the absolute sovereign, contemporary democracies can only improve by fighting the individual tyrant who is unaware of the effects his sovereign behavior has on nature or future generations. If the classical theory of the social contract involved an acceptance of authority to prevent the chaos and war of all against all, the current social contract calls for a self-limitation of personal freedom to ensure the survival of humanity on the planet.
Decisive in the history of the construction of modern democracy was that Enlightenment which forged the ideal of autonomy; we should now push for the Enlightenment of Interdependence. To modernity we owe our critical subjectivity, the principle of using one’s own thought, freedom of conscience and individual rights. None of these conquests are guaranteed forever and we must continue to defend them against old and new forms of taxation. But to this struggle is now added another more subtle and complex one in which we must move from autonomy to responsibility, where it is no longer so much a matter of defending a sphere of autarky as of setting up a subjectivity. to take charge of what we have in common.
The calculation concerned is nothing unworthy; what happens is that everything is often done wrong. The immediacy of interests and the tyranny of the short term tend to produce fatal chains, undesirable aggregations, and side effects. When decisions are made with a short-term view, regardless of negative externalities and long-term implications, when decision cycles are too short, the rationality of the agents is necessarily short-sighted. Self-interest, of course, is a very sophisticated construction, which often has little to do with the first impulsive identification of one’s own. Ultimately, cooperative rationality matures when it is able to make a finding on its own from which we can say that the truly common has emerged from what perhaps began as just an interested negotiation process. This is the transition from “mutual benefit” to “mutual benefit”, as Benjamin Barber put it.
The great promises to which we are called – under the negative way of dealing with crises or as an expectation of building more prosperous and just societies – require, above all, an effort to understand what is at stake, a conceptual change. We are no longer in the typical liberal struggle that defends a private space where to do what one wants, but in the discovery of the extent to which our destinies are committed to something common that expands and limits our freedom.
