Heritage, a lesson in giving and receiving Charles Carrère, Senegalese poet and painter, vice president of the International Poetry House in Brussels (Belgium). One of his most recent works is Hivernage published by L’Harmattan (Paris, 1999). Heritage is a timely theme in a world shaken by an intense and violent crisis, one which calls into question an entire system of values while eroding the relationship between people and the environment. The effects of industrial and technological evolution testify to this: the sacred pact between people, nature and the universe has been severed. The planet is poisoned. And life seems threatened in all its different forms. This crisis not only beckons us to rethink our approaches to development but the very notion itself. For too long, development has solely been seen through the materialist lens of production and consumption. Today, intellectuals, artists and writers are increasingly convinced that this concept, which sacrifices culture to economic growth, the qualitative to the quantitative, can only bear catastrophic consequences. Today, we renew our longstanding call to place culture ahead of all else. The great landmarks in humanity’s history have always been in the domain of culture. It is not a question of creating cultural, ethnic and geographical ghettoes. On the contrary. Putting culture first means appreciating the specificity and richness of our respective identities, building on the heritage of the past and enriching that which we bequeath to future generations. It is a heritage to which all peoples, nations, continents, in short, all civilizations could contribute their own irreplaceable values. This would lead us towards a humanism of “giving and receiving” that the Martinique poet Aimé Césaire has so fervently called for. This humanism offers a new way of conceiving the terms of exchange. The outcome is a symbiosis of cultures so that they don’t become alike or fuse, but are enriched through encounters with each other. This “culture of the universal,” cherished by the Senegalese poet Léopold Sédar Senghor, is not a universal culture but a meeting of civilizations. It is in this meeting that humanity’s world heritage lies. Human beings distinguish themselves from animals by their creative spirit, with which they transcend the horizons of the visible. Fire, once mastered, is transformed into rustlings of life, colours and shapes. The first staff our ancestors leaned upon, the first stones they chose to rest upon, the first cave in which they sought shelter, were all tinged with the colours of light. Human beings were born in beauty from the outset: for the beautiful they were born. Created by stardust, peoples crossed the world, sprinkling it with stones as guideposts, just as in the tale of Hansel and Gretel. As time passed, they built monuments carrying the stamp of their genius and the permanence of their species. For coherent action, we need an image of the past and a vision of the future. For if science cannot answer questions regarding their earliest origins, nor those of the afterlife, human beings will climb many mountains to proclaim their faith in life. Their spirit of resistance and their hope springs from this faith. It is a faith that is proclaimed, like a vital need, on the front of their buildings. From the cabins of their childhood to the columns of temples, on each stone, behind every door, this hope will be forever engraved.