LET’S PUSH OPTIMISM TO THE LIMIT

The fact is there; most of those who make the observation, including some of those who belong to the orthodox current of the so-called economic thing, the contemptuous of the same so-called thing, the great majority of climatologists and friends of the bees, some of the journalists who are not stipendiaries of the business world and their political affiliates, all agree: things are going badly, very badly, more and more badly.

The « crisis », with its procession of aberrations in the endless recipes that we persist in applying everywhere with the consequences that we know, the crisis, therefore, does not end up spreading its grimacing and terrorizing face in the strict sense of the word and we see nowhere the slightest trace of a minimum of a tiny little spyglass that could give even the slightest hope of getting out of it soon. On the contrary, the fine minds in charge of managing the immense problems that need to be tackled are prophesying, one day, that it could still take a long time, and the next day, announcing with great publicity that the end of the tunnel is in sight and that the hardest part is over: we are beginning to know the sad and distressing song. The solutions put forward by those who are completely at odds with the dominant ideas and recipes fall on the ears of the deaf who govern us and are seen as pleasant distractions for the use of those who prevent us from prospering in circles, i.e. the proponents of all varieties of leftism, alter-globalists and other degrowthists who advocate a total and radical break with the existing disorder.

Now, it must be seen that, while a number of people are experiencing great difficulties as a result of the outrageous measures taken everywhere against them, they represent only a relatively small proportion of the population. It is clear that, for the great the « crisis » is part of a decor that is completely foreign to him, as he is soaked in the and the lies that the press-pravda asserts to him daily. There are still people who can afford to go on vacation in the sun and abroad several times a year, buy big, shiny cars and put their good money to work in safe places. One cannot ignore that many others, who, without being part of the top of the basket, are or, at least, they convince themselves of it, sheltered from the avanities which hit some of their unlucky neighbors or vague acquaintances passed brutally from the status of honest worker to the one, not very enviable, of unemployed-teacher-professor-assisted. This mass, relatively homogeneous in terms of purchasing power, constitutes the battalions in order of battle of these shock consumers, that we saw recently in Paris and in province, taken of a properly disgusting madness, to take by storm stores⁽¹⁾ about to close their doors and literally loot the shelves overflowing with these discounted electronic things and other trinkets and, in passing, insult the staff who will soon swell the queues in front of the employment centers of France and Navarre. All this and much more — would risk, alas, to alter the faith or the hope that some of us, of which I am one, continue to place in the possible and sudden irruption of the always so hoped and so loved Revolution.

But let’s not despair about Billancourt. We know that history is fond of situations and moments that are disconcerting and surprising and that arise when we least expect it and when everything seems to be frozen in the monotony of the days. The general despondency could, sometimes and in perfectly ordinary circumstances, be followed by those moments of collective fever which escape any rational explanation. Let us remember the vegetable seller in Tunisia who, after being humiliated by a policeman, killed himself by immolation. What could have been a trivial event in comparison with what is widely presented as being of primary importance has been transformed, in just a few days, into a vast insurrectional movement that led to the ousting of the head of state and his regime. That this first manifestation of the « Arab Spring » should end up today in upheavals, struggles of tendencies and the riots they entail, should not be surprising. From one moment to another, at any given time, the expression of discontent takes on varied and never identical forms and, always, the outcome of the setting in motion of antagonistic forces in presence remains uncertain.

Now, if the ideas, proposals and alternatives of all kinds that are emerging everywhere remain, for the most part, a dead letter for many, it is no less true that they will necessarily and gradually have the echoes that one has the right to expect. It will take time but, surely, they will end up entering the consciences still closed to their coming just as the ideas and reflections of the philosophers of the Enlightenment only materialized long after, when the moment, the opportunity and the circumstances presented themselves. The convocation of the Estates General by Louis XVI, the meeting of the three orders in the Salle du Jeu de Paume and the oath taken there, the proclamation of the National Constituent Assembly, the storming of the Bastille and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, are the result of a long and subterranean maturation in the minds of the time. But a word, a gesture, an insignificant incident, an inopportune decision, the absence of this one or the presence of that other one at such and such a place, at such and such an hour, and nothing would have happened in the same way and history could have taken other paths. This is to say how hazardous and vain any form of prospective can be in the vast debate in which we participate in these pages as well as in so many others, elsewhere and in a thousand ways.

We are at the crossroads of paths that we don’t know where they lead; we only know that the ones we take by force of circumstance and against our will lead to a monumental wall that seems impassable. Others, before us, in other times and in the same way, asked themselves the great question of what to do and the answers came by force of circumstances and because it could not be otherwise. Keep saying we can, we must. To say and denounce and, through words, to advance and advance again and to confront reality, to show the extent of the farce and the disaster that is coming, yes, we must continue on this path because, for the moment, it is the only one that is accessible to us. And so much the worse if sometimes we have the impression to howl in the desert, so much the worse if, with others, the discouragement gains us and if, in front of the apparent general apathy we wonder if we should not rather take care of our piece of garden and simply admire what can still be. The seed that bursts and reveals the fragile shoot, the flower that will bear fruit, the blackbird that sings at the top of its voice when evening comes, the beautiful, wonderful clouds; and the smell of bread and the first coffee in the morning.

Jean-Pierre L. Collignon