So long live the Crisis!
Take advantage of the crisis to rebuild society, by Gérard Mermet
THE WORLD | 13.10.08 | 13h34 • Updated the 13.10.08 | 13h34
The financial bubble is exploding, poverty, hunger and inequality are gaining ground in the world, at the very moment when the world is aware that the planet is degraded, resources are limited and survival of living species is more assured. Including ours. This unprecedented concomitance of difficulties, constraints and threats is a historic opportunity to transform the world and live better. France could, if she wanted to, be at the forefront of this fight.
If the crisis is worrying, even obsessive in most developed countries (surveys are lacking on the others), it is even more so in our country. Morale is lower than elsewhere, anxiety more badly lived, mistrust stronger, cynicism more apparent, cohabitation more difficult. Certain national exceptions are handicaps to adaptation (not even to mention innovation): unrealism; uniformity; amoralism; "petism"; culture of confrontation ... Our "discontemporary" society thus cultivates pessimism and fear. The economy suffers from anemia and society from anomie (disappearance of collective benchmarks and values to guide individual behavior).
How, under these conditions, help the French to keep (or rather to regain) morale? We can make three suggestions. The first, in the form of a wink, would be to move further away from reality. In addition to the recourse (already massive) antidepressants, we could comply with the Chinese precept of the three monkeys: to see nothing (throw the television, no longer read the newspapers); not hear anything (turn off the radio, do not listen to conversations); do not talk (except to comment on the good news, if you still find it!). But this voluntary unconsciousness would not bring back recklessness. It is better for democracy and for future generations to promote the debate between mutants and mutineers than to see the number of sheep (or ostriches) increase.
The second suggestion, a priori easier to implement, would be to relativize national misery. The pauperism, the miserabilism, the dolorism and the ambient victimism are not indeed factors of dynamisation but of dissatisfaction and tension. This can not prevent us from recognizing and deploring the recent upsurge of income inequalities or, especially, wealth.
Growth has not benefited everyone equally, and national solidarity will have to do its job of redistribution better. To achieve this, the significant reduction or elimination of certain unacceptable differences is a prerequisite: stock options; golden parachutes; tax loopholes; "hat trick" retreats; Situation annuities and other "high-end" privileges.
Before asking the middle classes to make efforts, it will be necessary to ask (or impose) on the upper bracket greater participation in solidarity, a little more decency and virtue. Regardless of whether the macroeconomic impact is small, the symbolic dimension will be considerable, as is its impact on the domestic climate. In the current situation, exemplarity is the prerequisite for social peace, adaptation through reform and innovation.
The third suggestion is of a different nature. The moment has never been more opportune to reinvent the model of consumer society with which we have lived for fifty years, and which satisfies less and less those who have benefited from it. There is indeed a rather weak correlation between the level of expenditure and that of contentment.
Consumption is similar to a search consolation, a way to fill a growing existential void. With, the key, a lot of frustration and a little guilt, increasing the environmental awareness. To which is added, among many French people, the feeling of being manipulated by a market system which appears to be more "enhancer" than fulfillment of desire.
The collective regulation of the markets today desired could thus be accompanied by an individual regulation of desires. It is already apparent in certain strategies of adaptation to the crisis or resistance to the consumer society, put in place by individuals, families or communities. We can quote pell-mell the followers of the low cost or the hard discount (which are not recruited only among the households for the ends of difficult months), the purchasers of organic products, the partisans of the fair trade or solidarity, those which favor in contrary the local producers, or the apostles of frugality.
Among the alterconsumers, some fundamentalists find their pleasure in abstinence rather than in abundance. But, for the greatest number, the quest is above all that of harmony. In any case, the "eco" trend promises to be sustainable. It mixes the economic and the ecological, so that the future is in "econology". Unless it is in the "ecolonomy".
The challenge for the coming years is not so much to reform the offer (implied of regulating capitalism or global liberalism) as to accompany a transformation of demand that is underway. Those who imagine that the crisis is temporary are deceiving themselves. But those who predict disaster for developed societies are doing a bad analysis. The moment is, on the contrary, particularly favorable to refound the system, with the aim of making individual lives richer because they are more autonomous and responsible, the planet is healthier and more sustainable, and social relations are more relaxed.
The new possible consumer society would no longer respond as it does today as a priority to "defensive" motivations, which consist in repairing the damage caused by its functioning: stress; discomfort; tired ; need to be entertained ... It would refuse to be the plaything of the various pressures exerted on individuals so that they endow themselves with the constantly renewed attributes of modernity. It would not rest solely on mimetic desire, comparison and competition with others. The new consumption would thus be more a mirror reflecting the deep identity of the individuals than a showcase exposing their social status, their different roles and avatars. It would not only serve to satisfy the senses, but also to give meaning to life and longevity to the planet. It should be emphasized that the only possible horizon of this questioning is not "deconsumption", a factor of a decrease which would have painful, even disastrous consequences for many individuals.
In a context of proven difficulties, announced catastrophes, a collective reflection on values and lifestyles is necessary. Especially since it is less a luxury of the well-to-do than a survival reflex. It can lead to a "realistic utopia", founding a new model of civilization, with more satisfactory lifestyles in a more sustainable world. If we succeed, we can say in retrospect: long live the crisis!
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