"To open a door, a handle is enough." in The time of chameleons
From thought to action there is often only a step, but it is decisive.
Then comes up the problem of the diffusion of the generating idea. To take
up the terms from Philippe Aries, must it
be attributed to the collective unconscious or to clear ideas? In the first
case, the elaboration of the idea results from a process, mysterious by
nature because spontaneous: the idea is
dis-localised in the set of peoples and finally manages by its reduction to
progressively shape the society. In the second case, the process of
mentalities transformation is caused by the
individual or by specific works, for whose it is theoretically possible to
measure diffusion. The first approach would be diffusionist, while the
second one is mostly built in an
individualistic way since its source is the set of the great thinkers. In
our articles "Structure, Relations and Singularities" and "Anarchism, Thoughts
and Discoverers", we have shown the
importance of the sources and of the diffusion medium. So the diffusionist
and individualistic approaches, far from excluding each other, would rather
be complementary, as was
noticed by Henri Couteau-Begarie in the strategic world. A thought without
diffusion is useless, a diffusion without thought is nothing. And we find
again the intellectual-informant
duality, as in thought and language.
Andre Martel proposed an outline of the passage from thought to action in
the form of a strategical triptyque: research (ideal ennemy), didactic
(desired ennemy), action (real ennemy).
although this outline may look scant, it is nevertheless a diffusion model.
This has for origin an individual effort, local so to speak, on a strictly
intellectual level, that rests on general
ideas serving, once taught, to the elaboration of instructions whose
realizations are acts. Through these ideas we can perceive another one,
that is the political-military duality, that had
a relatively clear and equilibrated meaning, before the advent of the
nuclear weapon. Then, afterwards the link between political dimension and
military fight was reinforced to the
benefit of big-scale strategy. In sum, in this more reserved frame, we find
the same complexity of an assembled duality. It is then natural to link
that to the conclusion of our article on
"Les répercussions d'un impact local sur une structure hiérarchisée".
From those considerations, we deduct the importance of not only the impact
of a thought but of the choice of the medium of this impact, if we want to
generate an irreversible
transformation, differenciating the past from the future by way of the act.
It is useless to hit a door to open it since there is just a handle to
turn. The whole door, even if massive, is only
held by structural details: hinges and lock. The whole problem is the
understanding of the structure. Because the importance of the thought is
not only measured by its originality, but
also by its ability to travel through the diffusion medium it wants to
transform by its contribution. A gift has value only if it is accepted,
otherwise it loses its meaning. In the same way
that a favourable terrain is necessary to the blooming of ideas, the
diffusion medium has to be thought; not as an adversary to annihilate, but
as an individual having to be convinced of
the well-foundedness of our thought. Daring is essential. Some may label
this intervention reckless, others will discern in it the characteristics
of a promethean mind, holistically thinking
the world in a cybernetic sight creating through these realizations the
memory of the future. Indeed, the choice of the conceptual objective in an
eschatological frame coming from the
perception of the border effect is of a considerable importance when we
realize it is possible.