In a previous article published here on December 18, 2020 at the end of the first phase of the pandemic, I expressed the pious wish that the paradigm would change and that democracy would play in full.
More than a year later, and even though I still and always express this pious wish, it must be admitted that the current situation is not brilliant.
After two years of a pandemic and now on the edge of a world war, it must be sadly noted that withdrawal into oneself dominates instead of openness, which seems quite normal, since everyone faces shitty issues, one way or another. People are exhausted by political decisions and speeches they hardly understand, such decisions or speeches contradicting each other a few weeks or even days apart.
It is now impossible to form a valid opinion about the pandemic or the war in Ukraine since cacophony and fake news reign everywhere.
The questionable political speech, the suspicions of conflicts of interest, the monumental financial interests at stake, the lack of irreproachability of our leaders and the lack of consistency of public policies (all of the above applying to the management of the health crisis and the relations with Russia, Putin and oligarchs) only encourage dissent.
However, it is necessary to fight against the desire for division and find lasting solutions for the public interest.
We would like nothing more than exemplary leaders, irreproachable, armed with common sense, close to their constituents and working for the common good, but the political game is such that elitism dominates and the same political concepts are evoked ad nauseam, even though they are horribly dated.
This deleterious climate obviously offers fertile ground for division and the rise of extremism – which is never a good sign on the eve of a presidential election. We will be honest, the options offered by the upcoming presidential election in France are not very inspiring and I suspect that the whole paradigm has to be changed: how validly envisage a full and complete democracy when the absenteeism of deputies and senators is so strong, when members of the government are condemned or indicted or when voting is not compulsory?
Politics has become a business like any other, even though politics should never, ever be businesslike.
Voting for a program, trying to understand current issues in depth is the only way to give full meaning to the word “democracy” because the more the people get involved, the more democracy there is.
But it remains that personal education is necessary to build a strong democraty. We may complain that our leaders are neither exemplary nor irreproachable, we may complain that meaningless actions are repeated over and over again – but many of us do nothing other than perpetuating equally harmful patterns of thought and behavior at their level.
So much so – and this is just one example among many, a thousand women on Instagram still inflict on us their “unboxing” videos of the ten Zara or Shein outfits that they were offered at a lower price thanks to the poorly paid work of adults or children who had not had the chance to be born in a developed country. No conclusion has been drawn from what we are going through right now and such behavior screams the lack of personal education, the lack of human evolution.
In 2022, it is time to understand that our overactivity is damaging both the planet and humanity and that daily choices – certainly less comfortable but more sustainable – must be made. Who needs untraced meat every day? No one. Who needs a new Zara or Shein outfit a week? No one.
Agreeing to give up a share of personal comfort in order to make our opinions and values triumph is an effort that we can all make. As the saying goes, failure often arises from preserving one’s current comfort at the expense of one’s future goals.
Of course, everything is done to keep us in this material comfort: access to products that our parents would never have dreamed of having does not help (I am thinking in particular of the 408 collections per year offered by “fast fashion”, I am thinking in particular of salmon available throughout the year when our parents had to sell their kidneys in the 1950s or 1960s in order to have some on the Christmas table because they were luxury products at that time).
I have a moved thought for Karl Marx who half failed: the opium of peoples is not only religion but also ego, via mass overconsumption.
And here comes ego, again and again: the resisting ego which blocks human evolution. The one that prevents you from moving forward.
But it’s a fact: life is like riding: if you don’t move, you die. So let’s move in the right direction: let’s educate ourselves, let’s question ourselves.
Because this is exactly what makes democracy fully live.
March 11, 2022
Christian Lacroix dress – Vintage jacket and gloves – Max Mara coat – Christian Louboutin heels – Vuitton tote bag
