L'éthique du futur. Pourquoi faut-il retrouver le temps perdu ?

The Ethic of the Future. Why is it Important to Recover the Past?
“When it’s urgent, it is already too late”, Talleyrand used to say, thereby drawing our attention to the fact that without foresight we would be driven to handle emergencies without room to manoeuvre, utterly constrained by events.
Jérôme Bindé goes even further. He denounces “the tyranny of the emergency” which makes all of us its infortunate victims. Even worse is the cult of the just in time, by which he means the snare (or is the lure?) of the instantaneous in contrast to the long term perspective. Only the latter can give direction to our actions, conforming them to the purpose of an enterprise, which consists in the shared vision of a desirable and possible future. Such a vision contributes a reliability factor, as much between the act and the desire as between me and the others.
According to Bindé, we must rehabilitate the long term, and include the future along with the past. A perspective on the future must include both anticipation and planning, to discourage the use of uncertainty as a pretext for not acting and also to avoid acting without consideration of future generations. J. Bindé gives us a unique message on the “precautionary principle” and on specific dangers to be avoided. With respect to responsibility for dynamic management of our patrimony (the ecosystem primarily), he warns us against a double trap: denial and turning inward, utopic idealism and realistic catastrophism.
As his final point, he emphasizes the role of solidarity between generations and between peoples in showing that the two dimensions are more complementary than opposed and that analogies can be drawn between our relationships to time and to others.