Souveraineté. Authenticité. Communauté.

people want forms of belonging that do not require self-erasure.

May 22, 2026

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A small number of mammals experience menopause.

Humans. Orcas. Short-finned pilot whales. False killer whales. Belugas and narwhals, according to recent research.

In each case, females live long past their reproductive years. And in each case, older females appear to play an outsized social role: carrying memory, stabilizing relationships, guiding collective movement through changing conditions.

The grandmother who remembers where food can still be found in a famine year can determine whether the family survives.

The elephant matriarch who remembers distant water sources can carry a herd through drought.

These are not utopias. But these species do teach us something important:

Intelligence is not only individual. It is also relational.

Survival, in complex social mammals, often depends on distributed care, accumulated memory, and durable bonds between generations.

Modern political culture in the West has been profoundly shaped by the liberal-democratic ideals crystallized during the French Revolution: liberté, egalité, fraternité.

Liberty. Equality. Fraternity.

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Those ideas were profound achievements. They challenged monarchy, aristocracy, inherited hierarchy, and forms of domination that had governed many of our societies for centuries.

But they also reflected a particular image of the human person: the autonomous individual standing in formal relation to the state and to other individuals.

That model remains powerful. It protects rights. It creates legal universality. It limits arbitrary power.

And, it also leaves certain human needs underdeveloped.

The need to belong without conformity.

The need to be known as a particular person rather than treated as an interchangeable unit.

The need for forms of responsibility that emerge from relationship rather than contract alone.

The need for wisdom that is local, embodied, and carried across generations.

In the coming centuries, I feel we are going to need another layer of social intelligence:

Souveraineté. Authenticité. Communauté.

Sovereignty as grounded selfhood: the capacity for judgment that does not depend on external permission or institutional validation.

Authenticity as the ability for difference to exist without becoming alienation.

Community as mutual obligation among people who remain distinct from one another.

Healthy social systems require both autonomy and attachment.

Both rights and responsibilities.

Both individuality and interdependence.

Modern societies have become extraordinarily capable at protecting individuals and individualism in the abstract.

They have been less successful at protecting individuals in the concrete: helping people remain meaningfully connected to one another, supporting people’s wellbeing, autonomy, and health.

The pressures now arriving, (for example: ecological instability, technological acceleration, institutional distrust) are problems of coordination, trust, judgment, and social cohesion.

They require people who can act as individuals without becoming isolated from one another.

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité remain essential ideals.

But the century ahead may also demand another vocabulary:

Souveraineté. Authenticité. Communauté.

FYI: I’ve started a weekly newsletter called For People and Planet. It’s a place where I highlight what’s working in the fight for a more balanced future. You can read it here: forpeopleandpla.net