Analyze/What do we base our value judgments on? Human subjectivity which is the result of a set of learnings, past experiences and acquired knowledge which allowing him to develop a critical attitude which is a manifestation of a point of view contrary or not to that of others, always denotes a desire not to accept just anything, and review one or more ways of doing or thinking, so that they respond more favourably to a set of moral requirements biased by a set of societies that have chosen to adjust social norms to their measurements.

When the United States of America chose to bomb the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan on August 6 and 9, 1945, resulting in hundreds of thousands of human losses, they had the specific objective of force Japan to abdicate. The objective was not only to cause great harm, but also to emerge victorious from a global shame, by showing that they had a weapon or technology that the other did not. Indeed, in a context of war or not, inter-State relations are always characterized by maneuvers or acts of intimidation which encourage to always seek to show that we are more stronger than those who are as guilty as us because it must be said, if they had the same means as us, they would not hesitate to produce the same effects thanks to the same causes, because respect for the cultural values ​​of honesty, equality, and solidarity which are not the most widely shared things, do not imply renouncing principles of sovereignty which sometimes imply taking evil for good, and good for evil, in order to achieve not only particular objectives to be ahead of others on several levels, but also to maintain this supremacy in the very long term.

The objective was not only to cause great harm, but also to emerge victorious from a global shame, by showing that they had a weapon or technology that the other did not. Image: cc Skimel (translation)/ File Atomic_bomb_1945_Mission_Map.svg/Wikimedia.org – September 2017

We should therefore not apply the notions of good and evil without nuance in geopolitical contexts where intimidation strategies are recurring. Even if, thanks to basic knowledge in moral education, everyone knows how to distinguish between good and evil, the reality of everyday life and particularly the shameful episodes of 1914-1918, 1938-1945, the conflicts, wars and military and institutional coups in Africa, and without however omitting to mention the shameful episode initiated by Russia in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, that of Israel against an extremist movement which has its share of responsibility in the death of thousands of Palestinians in particular since the attack of October 7, 2023 in Israel, and more recently the trade war initiated by the new strongman of the United States since January 20, 2025, teaches us that what may be called bad by some for specific reasons, may be called good by other people for equally specific reasons. Showing common sense therefore does not only mean resorting to force or violence in the most extreme cases, or be content with sincere diplomacy and peaceful approaches.

The value of equality obeys principles of sovereignty that always obey a dominant-dominated logic. Image: pixabay-March 2017

Those who control technology have power. The logic of the dominant order imposes itself on the dominated, who remain at a lower level that does not guarantee them true independence. Image: ichef.bbci.co.uk

Those who have the means always aim to increase their power, while maintaining their domination over others. This is why even some individuals do not tolerate the fact that certain people emerge. Development is not seen through others, but only through oneself. We can only be proud of the growth of others when it does not supplant our own. Those who control technology have power. The logic of the dominant order imposes itself on the dominated, who remain at a lower level that does not guarantee them true independence because they only inherit a succession of strategic legacies aimed at influencing the world's populations both negatively and positively, while contributing greatly to the spread of a superpower logic eager to impose its trademarks on the world.

Anyone who is an economic, military, and technological power has the means to manipulate others. He have the ability to spread good or evil that corresponds to his own perception based on the search for the satisfaction of its particular interests. These are the actions that demonstrate that in international relations, as in all social or interhuman relations, being too good can sometimes be likened to being too stupid. This popular adage, which is generally used in everyday language, is actually a legacy that contradicts, in some way, a basic recommendation to do good for the happiness of others, and avoid causing their unhappiness by harming them. The true meaning of these expressions has been watered down by societies that face a set of realities that sometimes require us to be very nuanced in our words and actions because the reality of espionage on the international stage in particular is an open secret. Depending on the means at their disposal, States spy on each other for very specific reasons, sometimes unknown to States that are not technological powers.

The most astute manage to go unnoticed by implementing a set of legacies that sometimes lead to adopting the opposite of the norm as the norm. And those who do not copy the same tendency on a daily basis will be in denial, because what we have inherited and which is morally acceptable in our opinion, does not always make sense in a society governed by sometimes disproportionate interests, and where nothing is done for nothing. We do not give anything to someone to get nothing in return. We do not maintain diplomatic and fraternal relations solely for the sake of fraternity. Beyond and below fraternity, there are influences and means of pressure. The one who is dependent is under the influence of the most powerful. We certainly advocate values ​​of fraternity and secular solidarity, but these values ​​are peppered by forms of hypocrisy that many have chosen to copy in order to have a jovial daily life based on a perpetual quest for pathological over-dominance.

"Political intelligence and military intelligence are two sides of the same coin. The prudent and wise prince, concerned with the common good, the administration and the preservation of his possessions, cannot do without active diplomacy. By the nature of their function, Ambassadors are well placed to gather information. Philippe de Mézières in the dream of the old pilgrim (1389) makes the distinction between "secret spies" and "public spies". The secret spy is the man in the shadows par excellence. The public spy is the ambassador, whom some consider a legalized spy.”^[2]This clearly reflects the fact that while one must be good in the eyes of others, one must also have means of pressure or influence over the other, in order to maintain a certain supremacy. This is precisely what led some Pan-Africanists to put forward the notion of neo-colonialism to translate independences that were not independences in reality, because the influence of the old dominant order was still visible in all areas of political and administrative life. Indeed, when the other is present everywhere or when political leaders are puppets, we can't really say that we are independent. Hence the need to clarify, particularly for African populations, that the successive declarations of independence, particularly from 1960, were the beginning of a long process of total reappropriation of sovereignty, which involved playing the strategic double game of fraternity and mistrust, while prioritising the option of diversity of partners, to be better able to defend one's sovereignty.

Humanity's amazement at the incessant technological progress will take a long time to reach its end. The progressive development of artificial intelligence continues to shorten the distances between humans and facilitate exchanges in all areas. Humanity's dependence on new technologies leads us to wonder if the ultimate goal of modernization is not to encourage us to gradually break away from what makes up our identity to become totally extroverted societies that evolve at the pace of those who have a strong capacity for innovation that has conquered the world.

Also read : African Cultural Heritage : between preservation and responsabilities of an extrovert generation

Abandoning common-sense cultural values ​​in the name of modernization means choosing to live in a lie promoted by the adoption of counterfeit cultural values, which are only the consequence of a strategic pettiness of over-domination orchestrated by great powers. The weakest have the duty to do everything possible not to remain in the logic of a set of disabling development strategies that require being astute while remaining oneself; that is to say, a modified version that is the result of self-censorship that reflects a desire to break with countervalues, in a set of geographical contexts where the influence of extremes or excessive acts of the dominant orders on the rest of the world no longer need to be demonstrated.

English|French

References

[1] Chapitre 15. Dynamiques des valeurs communautaires traditionnelles

[2] Les espions du Moyen Âge

Cameroon and other french colonies in Africa in the first and second world wars

The dangerousness of a communitarianism modelled under the prism of an identity withdrawal in the era of modernization in Africa

Cameroon: October 1st, commemoration of the beginning of a march towards the Nation-State

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