Mimetic Humanism and Planetary Cohabitation – Toward an Ethics of Inclusive Transmission

Author: Christopher I. L. James

Affiliation: Teesside University International Business School

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Abstract:​

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In an age of planetary interconnection, the ethical challenges we face are no longer only local, deliberative, or individual. They are transmissive. The values we repeat, suppress, or circulate across borders now shape global moral conditions, influencing what becomes visible, imitable, and viable within shared cultural space. This article introduces the concept of mimetic humanism, a transmission-aware ethical orientation rooted in the Networked Mimetic Ethics (NME) framework. Mimetic humanism centres the right to ethical visibility, the dignity of value plurality, and the moral responsibility to curate shared spaces of transmission. Against the backdrop of cultural erasure, digital colonialism, and algorithmic homogenisation, the article argues for a renewed approach to ethical cohabitation, one that treats transmission not as a by-product of culture, but as its central ethical medium. Through critical analysis of global infrastructures, borderless platforms, and the dynamics of mimetic exclusion, the paper outlines a theory of inclusive contagion and proposes principles for designing systems that sustain ethical diversity at scale. It concludes that planetary ethics must be built not only on the capacity to live together, but on the capacity to transmit together, to co-shape the mimetic conditions through which our moral futures unfold.

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Keywords: mimetic ethics, planetary cohabitation, decolonial philosophy, cultural transmission, ethical pluralism

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ISSN 3069-8200