Are we becoming more servile to power every day? The signs point to yes. Apathy is gaining ground, especially among the youngest. We are witnessing atrocious massacres like the one in Gaza, wars of caprice like the one in Iran, imperialist aggressions like Russia's against Ukraine. The government of the world's leading power, the United States, is in the hands of delirious madmen. Yet we protest less than twenty years ago. And much less than fifty years ago.

The story of Jeffrey Epstein is not just that of a pedophile who ran a prostitution ring catering to wealthy men worldwide. It is also a story of money, politics, and above all, power. Epstein used sex to buy favors and influence, but also to obtain information and increase his fortune. The American magnate, who committed suicide in 2019 in a New York prison, had a network of accomplices who procured young models and minors for him. But he was also the mastermind behind the scheme. What did the wealthy men who came to him want? He provided it and opened the doors of the island to them. Little Saint James: a paradise in the Caribbean where he invited some of the most influential people on the planet and where some of these men assaulted and raped dozens of minors.

Historically, the hard power of the military, the economy, and trade has been linked to and prevailed over the soft power of cultural hegemony. Force has been used as a basis, and persuasion as a means and justification to prolong its effect over time. To establish international hegemony, a position of dominance, economic leadership logically counts, as does military supremacy. These factors, in fact, often go hand in hand. Having the largest and most powerful military helps set the pace of the economy not only in relation to production, but also to trade and, especially, to finance. The strength of capital, combined with a large and well-trained military, is often essential for playing a decisive role in global geopolitics. If the 19th century was Britain's century—the industrial revolution, colonialism, control of the seas, City finances...—after the First World War, the centrality of the world shifted to the United States, which was its true winner—British collapse, industrial hegemony, Wall Street's financial center, Hollywood...—a new era. Certainly, after the Second World War, new global players such as the USSR and China emerged, but despite the firmly established blocs, American leadership remained unchallenged. Despite some military demonstrations, but also failures, until recently, it was a series of intangible cultural traits that made it a country followed, copied, admired, respected, and recognized.

Yesterday, theA survey by the Center for Opinion Studies offered some results which seem entirely probable, because they predicted a significant rise of the far right in Catalonia:

Many people are wondering these days how it's possible for a political leader who lives closely with members of his team to be unaware of the systematic corruption that occurs in some cases. And apparently they're right; it seems impossible to have been at the side of a consummate cheat for years and not have detected any hint of his fraudulent activity. Are these leaders so short-sighted, so insensitive that they don't notice what some outward manifestations must inevitably have?

1. Simplicity. No two humans are alike. This reality is expressed in all types of relationships, including creativity. We humans create from the complexity of our condition: a body that lives in relationship, an intelligence, perceptions, sensations, feelings, a sensitivity that makes each of us a unique relational animal. Affection defines our relationships with one another. Uniqueness is transmitted in all areas of life and in the creation of symbols. For many years now, in The intimate sense (1982) explored the forms of this relationship: love, artistic creation, intuition, the construction of singularities, so to speak. Does AI overflow this world? Will it leave space for the human condition or will it envelop us from its presumed capacity to do creative work for us? Will there still be artists or will they be AI feeders? Artificial intelligence sounds to me like a contradiction in terms. Or, worse, a certain desire to expropriate humans' singularity.