5.2.4. The value of the human person
With the emergence of biotechnology, underpinned by
techno-scientific rationality, we are witnessing today a real crisis of values.
The techno-scientific rationality, because it absolutises money or profit as a
value, represents a real devaluation of humanity. If, as Gilbert Hottois noted,
the credo of technosciences is that "everything possible must be
tried"1, then man is also reduced to a mere subject of study
and experimentation.
From the foregoing, the question arises to know whether we
should set the absolute value of the human person on his ability to generate a
profit on behalf of the consolidation of a global mercantile rationality and
techno-scientific progress, or set it solely on the indivisibility of his
being, his uniqueness, and his intrinsic dignity. So we must first reflect on
the current crisis of values and its impact on the devaluation of humanity.
5.2.4.1. The current crisis of values
The current crisis of values seems to be linked to the
emergence of an economic logic which develops its own morality: the search for
maximum profit and the pursuit of personal interests. The desire to succeed by
all means overrides a humanistic desire to lead a life that is morally
acceptable. Indeed, the main characteristic of technical rationality is not to
question ends, but only means, the end being already determined by the
techno-scientific enterprise, which aims at optimizing efficiency and results.
This leads to "attacks against the humanity of man" in the form of genetic
manipulations, experimentations on the human person, use of human organs for
drug design, modern day slavery to the benefit of industrial gains, just to
mention that.
Today as yesterday, whenever a problem occurs between nations,
the desire for power seems to be more important than the moral law. In
addition, the pressure of the
I Cf. Gilbert Hottois, technoscience et
sagesse, Paris, 2002.
economy on the society introduces the reign of competition
among individual persons, a competition that necessarily leads to the
normalization of differences between rich and poor. To the benefit of the
valorisation of wealth, pleasure takes priority over effort, emotion over
reason, the virtual and the artificial over the natural, the short-term over
the long term, the ego over the collective, uncertainties, and the relativity
of morals over certitudes.
In contemporary society, the value of a man now seems to
reside on his assets and not on his being. The ideal man is the man full of
money, able to produce and amass wealth, even at the expense of others. The
excessive materialism is in full swing and moral values are declared obsolete.
The downfall of moral values is evident at the global level with the increase
of conflicts, the emergence of deviances of any kind: homosexuality,
bestiality, paedophilia, incest, facilitated by the establishment of a genuine
pleasure industry. At the individual level, there is an identity crisis
especially in younger populations, with the emergence of the schizophrenic
behaviours, cultural alienation, the split of personality and the inferiority
complex in poor countries, victims of the powerful Western media.
For example, there are often people who change the tone of
their voices to imitate the white man in his manner of speaking. Also, the
inferiority complex is often expressed when a young negro is facing a white
man, considering the latter as superior to him by the mere fact that he is
white. In addition, this complex is often peculiar to those who believe that
travelling to Europe gives them more dignity and then feel superior to others
who have never crossed the threshold of their villages. It is this state of
affairs that Ebenezer Njoh - Mouelle shows when he states inter
alia:
K Si a Yaoundé ou a Douala le commercant se sent
obligé, pour vendre ses ceufs camerounais ou ses poulets camerounais,
d'y coller des étiquettes indiquant : K ceufs de France », K
poulets de Normandie », c'est précisément parce que son
compatriote de retour de France lui a inoculé la honte voire mieux le
dé!o[t de ce qui est local au profit des K merveilles »
d'Europe. 0I
Yet it is urgent to reflect on human nature, a nature
grappling with the technoscientific development. Man, as an actor in history,
seems to have lost his absolute value and to have replaced it with money or
profit, an attitude that often leads him to become not an author of scientific
progress, but a victim of the latter; not an end in itself but a means. If man
is an absolute value, then what is the foundation of this value?
| 
