Pic­tu­re one of our ances­tors, a Homo erec­tus e.g. which, des­pi­te the Latin and some­what peremp­to­ry name, we like to belie­ve not as intel­li­gent as we are. He would come from Afri­ca of cour­se. He would have for­got­ten to fol­low his com­ra­des more than a mil­li­on years ago in the direc­tion of Euro­pe, among others. Then, in ear­ly 2018, he would take the road to the shores of Nort­hern Afri­ca, assuming he sur­vi­ved his jour­ney out of the depths of the Afri­can con­ti­nent. One would not have taken anything from him sin­ce, from the very start, he had not­hing. Hap­py human being. He might have read my arti­cle “Tomor­row alrea­dy starts today” from Decem­ber 2016 on my blog and he might have beco­me friends with the Litt­le Prince some­whe­re in the desert. Then, back to the har­sh rea­li­ty, he would have taken some­thing loo­king not­hing like a boat – or to be more pre­cise, he would have been thrown on a few pie­ces of wood with some of his Afri­can descen­dants, who­se huma­ni­ty had been taken from them a long time ago, and tog­e­ther they would lea­ve for a cros­sing that was defi­ni­tively not a crui­se. With luck, he would arri­ve to Euro­pe or at least on the end of the bre­ast of this god­dess who did not real­ly have the will (nor the abi­li­ty) to nur­tu­re him. Moreo­ver, Euro­pe would immedia­te­ly make him under­stand that she was not a collec­tion bin for the ent­i­re human mise­ry. No, Euro­pe had alrea­dy innu­me­ra­ble bins that she would expect from him and his fel­lows to empty. Well, the dif­fe­rence bet­ween having and being … He was thus tou­ch­ing the heart of the essen­ti­al pro­blem of our so-cal­led civilization.

Ins­tead of going to Asia as his distant com­ra­des, he would think of going to the USA. Yet, he would be denied a visa: he was fun­da­men­ta­list­ly suspect due to his indis­pu­ta­ble Afri­can descen­dance. The coun­try of liber­ty – he would have read. A trump oeil – he would have thought.

His sup­po­sed­ly evol­ved descen­dants would exp­lain him human evo­lu­ti­on. And the­re, of cour­se, he would have dif­fi­cul­ty to under­stand. One would tell him about Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence with upper­ca­se let­ters. He would ans­wer naï­vely “And how about natu­ral intel­li­gence, has it final­ly been (re)discovered? Will you impro­ve it?”. His inter­lo­cu­tors would gaze at him with incom­pre­hen­si­on. One would affront him with Big Data. And he would ask quiet­ly “What about sweet litt­le words?” Faced with this dia­lo­gue of the deaf, his despe­ra­te descen­dants would have left in their pockets bit­coins, dro­nes, Inter­net of Things, vir­tu­al rea­li­ty (…) and 3D prin­ters they were about to ass­ault him with from their vir­tu­al pedestal.

Hear­ti­ly, he would try to adapt hims­elf to his – howe­ver hos­ti­le — envi­ron­ment and would desper­ate­ly reg­ret not to have read Charles Dar­win. He would not have read neit­her “Per­si­an Let­ters” nor “Gulliver’s Tra­vels”, but he would also have enough sto­ries to tell about his jour­ney. Of cour­se, he would be told – in an all-pur­po­se for­mu­la and trun­ca­ting the rea­li­ty – that man descen­ded from mon­keys. In any case, he would obser­ve that some had even fell down from the trees and, others, to an even lower level sin­ce they wat­ched TV.

A litt­le tired, but always of good will and in good intel­li­gence, he would have sat on the ter­race of a cafe with me to drink a cup of friendship. We would then have agreed immedia­te­ly not to back­track as the defea­tists and uto­pia­nists recom­men­ded but to march ahead towards a more huma­ne huma­ni­ty. Upon depar­tu­re, he would scold me friend­ly for having remo­ved him from his nati­ve Afri­ca. He would have pre­fer­red to remain the­re, under the Afri­can sun, if only he could have … Final­ly, and most import­ant­ly, as a ben­evo­lent ances­tor, he would have told me that we were all pushed to do more, when we should be aiming to do bet­ter. “What if”, he sug­gested, “in 2018 each of you tried to beco­me a Homo huma­nus? Only then, you could real­ly talk about (r)evolution”. Friend­ly winks bet­ween him and me. And he resu­med his jour­ney towards the horizon …