Best Of n°1: The Foundations of Homo Dubitans Thought

Welcome to Homo Dubitans.

For this first curated selection, we have gathered some of the most striking ideas published on the platform. Think of it as our inaugural best of, a collection of essential reflections that form the backbone of Homo Dubitans. These texts examine illusions that structure our societies, dismantle the narratives that comfort us, and invite us to look directly at the forces shaping humanity. Here is our inaugural selection:

One shows that no people is innocent, only powerless until conditions change. What we celebrate as moral differences between civilizations are often nothing more than shifting red lines. When power arrives, domination follows. You can discover this mechanism in The Universal Equation of Peoples.

This theory is frighteningly simple. Yet the moment one begins giving examples that touch on still-existing peoples or current issues (and indeed one particular example comes immediately to mind when thinking about this subject), criticism and insults inevitably follow. So let us remain in the realm of theory, and allow each person to season it with whatever examples they choose. What matters is this: most peoples follow their leaders blindly, driven by sticks and carrots, all wrapped in layers of culture, religious interpretations, or lofty words fabricated out of nothing and rendered sacred through endless repetition, and through the marginalization (and all too often far worse) of those who dare to question them.

Now, let us turn to another truly fascinating essay, which dismantles our trust in courts. What we call justice is in fact a technique of order. It punishes evil but almost never restores the real cost of good. Worse, it rewards luck: condemning those who could act, praising those who simply never had the chance. The critique unfolds in Earthly Justice: A False Moral Compass.

In this regard, States like to speak of justice, even going so far as to name ministries after it. But if justice implies punishing, it must also imply rewarding. We are not speaking here about whether this is realistic or not, but simply about the fact that justice undeniably cannot be reduced only to the regulatory aspect (among honest people) and the punitive aspect (toward the dishonest). A moment’s reflection is enough to see how true this is, and a little more reflection shows that this is in fact the very definition of justice. For there cannot be only two groups targeted by justice: the honest (among whom the beneficent are “unjustly” lumped together) and the wrongdoers.

At the political scale, one text argues that humanity is still living in moral prehistory. States behave like predators endowed with speech, immune to shame and punishment. The United Nations looks like a court but remains an oligarchic ritual. The full diagnosis can be found in The Society of States: Humanity Still in the Stone Age.

For I ask you: how can we call ourselves civilized if the main powers we bring forth (and that claim to organize our lives) act like barbarians, lawless, ruthless, and with total hypocrisy, like criminals who do nothing but deny their own misdeeds while being extremely sensitive every time they are accused, which is the height of dangerousness? States must align with humanity’s will to evolve. States must stop trampling on the most basic principles of ethics for the sake of sheer interests, all while pretending to be saints whenever no interests are at stake, or when playing the saint happens to be more profitable. Otherwise, humankind itself can never truly claim to be civilized.

A further reflection (one of my favorites) tackles the question of bad faith, which we often treat as a minor psychological flaw, but which in fact forms the fundamental matrix of injustice. We like to repeat that everyone is free to have their own opinions, but a minimal effort of rigor shows this freedom is not neutral: to say “this is true” when it is false is to make truth harder to reach for all. In the moral universe, every opinion has consequences. And when opinions are adopted without reflection, they become the first link in the chain of collective injustice. This radical thesis is unfolded in Bad Faith as the Matrix of Universal Injustice.

If the importance of this issue is not immediately obvious to you (since no one has ever dared to see this kind of freedom questioned), I invite you to read this fable to understand the boundless weight of choosing beliefs or ideologies without reflection. It should be clear that the point is not to challenge this right itself, but to encourage people never to defend a position that has not been reached through deep reflection and pure logic.

Another essay is deeply unsettling, for it challenges not only our politics but our very ontology. It argues that humanity never diagnosed itself before inventing laws and institutions, and that every edifice was built on sand. Instead of a rational and unified being, it reveals a moral mosaic where some love good, others evil, and most drift with indifference. From this forgotten truth flows the great masquerade of democracy, where the ambitious, not the just, rise to power. You can explore this vertiginous reflection in The Founding Aberration of Humanity.

In our series Ethical Errors of Faiths, one chapter puts Creation itself on trial. Why would a just God create beings exposed to error and suffering? Three hypotheses are tested under strict conditions: real justice, purification, benevolence. Any breach of proportion, freedom, or reparation collapses the whole edifice. You can explore this reflection in If God Exists, Why Does He Create?.

Another part of the same work identifies the silent forces that destroy clarity while pretending to uphold it: cultural cages, false lights, distorted religions, blind obedience. These “killers of light” convince us we are still faithful to the good while they quietly corrupt everything. The analysis unfolds in The Killers of Light.

Here I want to remind you that this essay was written by one of our collaborators, who happens to be a believer. That is no small thing, to reflect on matters like these… Most people, ordinarily, cannot even bring themselves to question the works of their parents or of their leaders, especially if they seem authoritarian or overly touchy, which God or the gods, if they exist, very much appear to be, at least in the collective imagination of believers.

These readings demand a certain courage. They peel away familiar certainties layer after layer and lead us toward truths that feel both unsettling and unexpectedly self evident.

Thank you for your attention and see you soon.