BERNARD CHARBONNEAU,
« THE CHANGE », EDITS THE SIDE STEP,
VIERZON, 2013
Unpublished text completed in 1990 and never edited, « The Change » attacks the myth of progress and endless growth. Salutary and prophetic in these times of decline where the ideological vacuum invades, as perhaps never before, the thinking of politicians and media, the purpose of Bernard Charbonneau’s book was to » contribute to a mastery of the unleashed change to save the earth and the freedom of its tenant » .
If » lhange is life ». and that it normally characterizes the existence, the author tries to describe what has now reached its peak in our societies: a perpetual change, continuous, to which we are constantly exhorted but which, and this is the main thesis of the book, is only continuity towards the great destruction. The Progressive conservatism, a term used by Pierre Bourdieu to describe this perpetual dynamic-static, perfectly synthesizes the idea: « Seemingly contradictory combination, progressive conservatism is the fact of a fraction of the dominant class which gives itself for subjective law what constitutes the objective law of its perpetuation, that is to say to change in order to preserve » (« the production of the dominant ideology »). Except that here the torrent of change invades everything, and all thought. We believe that things are changing, but nothing changes except the change that continually pursues us, from the formatted speeches of politicians to the advertising slogans, passing by the company and the conformism of the fashion. Now, « Each time the change disappoints his expectations. For there would be only one true: that for a time there would be none « …
This is what makes us ask questions, real questions. No longer accepting the order that is imposed on us, contemplating the change that distracts us, but choosing. « Toopen our eyes to change, the exact opposite of endorsing it, to recognize it in order to judge it, to question its modalities and its rhythm, such is the condition of a recovery of its future by man in order to make it his destiny ».
A.P.