Self-restraint and border humanity

Riechmann's proposal against excessive consumption and a humanity in fugue

Abstract

The ecological saturation of the planet has rendered humanity's current way of life unsustainable, needing drastic measures to reinsert our practices within the biophysical limits it imposes on us. To do so, we must confront two societal trends identified by Jorge Riechmann as excessive consumption and humanity in fugue. In response, the author proposes self-restraint –an ethic of sufficiency– and the development of a frontier humanity. The dialogue between this theory and other authors of the critical current allows us to unravel the characteristics of today's society that cause these self-destructive tendencies, as well as the philosophical principles that support the author's proposal. We believe that the frontier humanity proposed by Riechmann can be found on the margins of Western civilization, where ways of life have historically developed within the biophysical limits imposed by their environment. We are referring to countries in the global south, ancestral and peasant cultures that are reviled by the dominant thinking of late modernity, often dubbed as barbaric, but which fulfill the ethical principles developed in this work.