Individuo-Globalism — 2013 CICNS Interview with Raphaël Liogier (4/4)

Raphaël Liogier is a French political scientist and sociologist of religion — at the time of this interview, director of the Observatoire du religieux and professor at the Institut d’études politiques d’Aix-en-Provence. In this fourth and final part of the 2013 CICNS interview, he lays out the central thesis of his book « Souci de soi, conscience du monde »: every age rests on a mythic ground of narration, secularization does not mean less religion, and the new religious movements draw directly on the emerging individual-global mythic soil he names individuo-globalism.

CICNS video interview, part 4 of 4. (English translation of the interview transcript, machine-transcribed from the CICNS YouTube channel, where the video was published on 1 July 2013, and cleaned before translation.)

[Interviewer]: Raphaël Liogier is a political scientist and a sociologist of religions. Since 2006 he has been director of the Observatoire du religieux and a university professor at the Institut d’études politiques in Aix-en-Provence. We met him at the release of his book « Souci de soi, conscience du monde ». He explains that our contemporaries are more and more individualistic — and that is no doubt true: obsession with physical appearance, with personal development, the quest for well-being. But at the same time, they have never been so concerned with the world as a whole, beyond all borders: ecological consciousness, sustainable development, humanitarian action. The individual on one side, the global on the other. This paradoxical mixture Raphaël Liogier names individuo-globalism, and it comes with new practices, even if they sometimes have ancient origins.

[Liogier]: It is to show that this narrating structure is always present, whatever the epoch. That is to say: even when we say the world is secularized, that we are in a laïc world, it is always present. That is, we always need a narrative continuity — to tell a story that is beyond what is material. Even atheists tell a story — the story of what it is to be an atheist, to have atheist principles; in the end, that is not material. Even people who are materialists construct a narration that consists in explaining in what way they are materialists. So that is a first thing to understand. And it means that what we consider to be knowledge, which we would distinguish from belief — knowledge, too, needs its narration. The sciences too, as sciences, need to tell how great they are, to narrate their legitimacy — apart from their effects, which can be magnificent, and their progress, which can be real. It is impossible to function otherwise.

That, I would like to have laid down, because from there — this process we call secularization… We are told that there is supposedly a sort of opposition, like communicating vessels, between, on one side, more rationality, more reason, more laïcité, more of I know not what — using words that are sometimes different but mean more or less the same thing: more reason —, which would be equivalent to less religion. Well, that is false. That is to say, at a given moment, yes, indeed, the very word religion was rendered pejorative, because a certain type of religiosity was called into question — because the mythic ground on which that religiosity rested no longer allowed people to narrate themselves coherently. When a given mythic ground is fragilized by the evolution of knowledge, of the sciences, it becomes less and less plausible — that is, it becomes less and less easy to narrate oneself on that mythic ground. It cracks, as it were. And that is the difficulty in which the Catholic Church in particular found itself — even Christianity in general, and even monotheism more generally still. That is to say: human nature abhorring a mythic vacuum, always needing to narrate itself, while those religions were struggling to go on being plausible, well, there was a mythic ground in the process of transforming itself — a new mythic ground in the process of constituting itself. And it is that mythic ground that I call individuo-globalism. And it is that mythic ground which today nourishes not only the classical religions that want to go on surviving — because they must absorb a little of it in order to survive —, but at the same time, that is where a researcher like me, who takes an interest in the new religious movements — that is, in the movements that have arisen recently, outside of, or only partially with, references to traditional religions — well, they are directly connected to this new mythic ground — being, obviously, closer to it.

[Interviewer]: In fact, they are at the heart of the transfigurations, of the transformations that touch us all. The new becomings of humanity thus draw on this mythic ground, and new practices are at the heart of the transformations. This inevitably has consequences for the functioning of society.

[Liogier]: Today, the notion of the individual, which is completely singularized, attaches directly to the global, without there being, in between, the nation, the tribe, etc. Which means that, indeed, individuo-globalism, apart from being a mythic ground — beyond, rather, being a mythic ground —, also has political consequences: the calling into question of the legitimacy of the nation-State, of the legitimacy of all the intermediate structures. And indeed, most of the new religious movements are all religious movements that intend to exist planetarily — and not in a space that would be reduced, even national, or in a space that would even be continental — not even planetary: in a space in the sense of without limit on that plane. The whole of society is beginning to think in this way. Let me give you an example. Today we speak of sustainable development — that is the global side —, because “sustainable” means you cannot do it in your own corner, since we are all interrelated. That is what I call the dogma of connectivity: everyone is energetically connected, so what I do here has an effect elsewhere. The point is not to say this is untrue — because it may well be true, and then it becomes necessary to do it. But myth is not what is false; it is: how can I give a meaning to what becomes necessary, precisely. It is not in contradiction; it is not saying it is false, if you will. Well then, in this new language there is sustainable development, which becomes a sort of moral demand, and alongside it, personal development. That is — not personal in the Greek sense, not the person: it means individual development. And that is why one will say: what I am — I want to become what I am. With this little three-theme music, which I evoke in the book: knowledge of self, creativity — personal development, rather — and higher well-being, which comes back all the time, like a little music. It is a social ambiance, it is a mythic ground, on which we all draw, whoever we may be.