Artivism

"Our house is burning and we are looking elsewhere", Jacques Chirac, September 2, 2002.

Observations of loss of biodiversity, climate change, scarcity of natural resources, pollution, accumulation of waste, have existed for decades, as well as the knowledge that these phenomena have the power to irreversibly compromise the habitability of the planet.

However, our society still remains fundamentally blocked on a consumerist, productivist, materialist, individualist, polluting mode of operation, which favors unbridled consumption and waste, short-term interests and ephemeral pleasures. Economic growth remains the priority project of political and economic circles, and increasing purchasing power seems to be the main concern of individuals.

Why ?

- Our representative democracy, through the process of electing its leaders, seems to put in power people intrinsically stimulated by conquest, domination, and encouraged to have a short-term vision. Furthermore, the fact that there is a small number of decision-makers makes them easily influenced by pressure groups with financial and social interests that are different from the general interest. One way to remedy this could be to have each structuring societal decision taken by an assembly of citizens drawn by lot and informed by scientists, as was done with the French citizens' convention for the climate of 2019.

- Currently, the financial aspect is prevalent in entrepreneurial and political decision-making, which encourages productivism, overexploitation, and the destruction of the Living. Other performance indicators should instead be considered: employment rate, health, biodiversity, quality of life, inequalities, education, etc. And projects should now be financed in proportion to the well-being provided to the Living.

- A large part of our desires are strongly suggested to us by advertising and fiction. Regulating advertising, promoting a sober way of life, informing about the seriousness of the ecological situation, reweaving links with the rest of the living, would have the power to shift our desires towards sustainable, fulfilling behaviors, and respectful of our planet.

For a growing part of humanity, consumption plays a central role as a standard of successful living. This consumption, the engine of economic growth and the capitalist system, is nurtured to be insatiable, individualistic, and focused on novelty and pleasure.

The Earth is then perceived as a reserve, a means, and resources which one submits, to obtain individual comfort which takes precedence over the interest of the community and of the rest of the living.

Wouldn't it be rather time to sketch out a just and viable society, which would democratize the satisfaction of basic needs, would offer durable and repairable goods, and would focus success on the quality of the links forged with other living beings?

While access to the futile has never been so easy, the essentials are seriously beginning to be jeopardized: the stability of the climate, the abundance of biodiversity, the availability of resources, the healthiness of the soil, water and air; and with them, peace.

Humans have never stopped transforming their environment over the ages, but since the industrial revolution, this transformation has taken on a turn of massive destruction of living things, with a great acceleration of the phenomenon since the 1950s.

The monopolization of natural spaces for bulimic human needs, a purely utilitarian and short-term societal vision, and the demand for ever-increasing productivity lead to the artificialization of environments, their mechanization, their simplification, their specialization, their standardization, their impoverishment, and their loss of biodiversity.

And now, as a consequence of this excessiveness, climate change adds to this a phenomenon of seasonal instability, the occurrence of extreme meteorological episodes and the aridification of the soil.

Millions of years of evolution of living beings are thus swept away, and the conditions for a decent life on Earth (climate temperance, symbiotic richness of ecosystems) are already compromised for thousands of years to come.

Yet life, like an incandescent brazier, asks only to abound, invent and grow; if only Humans would release the intense pressure of his choking boot.

Some current trends augur a worrying future: overexploitation of living things and finite resources (minerals, fossil fuels, etc.), growing air, water and soil pollution, loss of biodiversity, climate change, worsening of the ecological footprint, rising inequalities, individualism, consumerism, degradation of mental health, blocking of the possibilities of change by entities with colossal powers.

So what ? Damn it ? Will the wild and free world inexorably die suffocated under the boot of Sapiens?

Perhaps.

But whatever the case, that does not prevent us from acting in a direction that seems fair, worthy, resilient, desirable and sustainable.

This does not, in concrete terms, prevent you from entrusting your savings to an ethical bank like La Nef (the money placed in the bank has a major ecological and social impact, determined by the financing and investment choices made by this bank).

This does not prevent eating organic, local, and almost without meat or dairy products (which would free up a large majority of current agricultural land, in favor of biodiversity).

This does not prevent the creation of abundance and areas of free evolution for the Living.

It doesn't prevent you from slowing down, meditating, contemplating and seeing beauty wherever it is.

That does not prevent giving up comforts.

That does not prevent being in resistance against the oppressions made to the Living.

That does not prevent you from getting involved in the city, in politics or in association.

That doesn't prevent you from having a life rich in meaning and connections.

That doesn't prevent you from loving in the purest and most complete way.

It does not prevent to be well, healthy and aligned.

For yourself, but also as the best way to inspire other people to change their life path.

Our model of society based on individualism, competition, patriarchy, outrageous consumption, waste, overexploitation, utilitarianism, materialism, anthropocentrism, speed, hoarding, privatization of profits and socialization of negative externalities, is slowly and inexorably falling, like a dead leaf.

Signs of its impending disappearance are appearing: social protests, citizen movements, depletion of natural resources, climate change, mass extinction of the Living, pollution, deterioration of mental and physical health, reinforcement of police authoritarianism,...

Next to this, the buds of a desirable and sustainable society are already beginning to emerge. A society which, soberly, will take care of the Commons and the Living.

While the failure to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is confirmed year after year, technical solutions for CO2 capture are being built, with the aim of making the current Western societal model last a little longer.

Global warming is however just one of the symptoms of a much larger and systemic problem: that of our way of inhabiting the Earth, that of our relationship to the Living.

Other symptoms are the massive destruction of species, the sterilization of the soil, the acidification of the oceans, the pollution of the waters, the reduction and fragmentation of living spaces, ..., in short, the undermining of the very conditions existence and sustainability of life on Earth.

But our technical and reductive way of thinking, and our inability to renounce addictive and anesthetic material comfort, will quickly make us believe in a technical problem that could be solved by a technical solution.

Recreational hunting with the entertaining objective of killing, in often appalling conditions, should no longer be legal in our society.

• Unearthing, for example, consists of bringing to bay a family of animals (foxes, badgers) into their burrows, terrorizing them for hours by the introduction of dogs, digging the earth to tear the animals one by one from their shelter with a large metal pliers, and complete their torture with blows of a shovel or a bullet. Is it really possible to tolerate this practice for a long time?

• Hunting is the noisy release of a pack of hungry dogs in pursuit of a wild animal for hours, until it is exhausted. It is then shredded alive by the dogs and then finished off with a dagger. Is this spectacle still really of our time? And no, this hunt is not the most natural: wolves and lynxes practice a rapid chase and kill; and they choose a weak animal, which strengthens the population, unlike hunters who often choose the most beautiful "trophy".

• The beat consists in having all the animals in a forest cut down by a large number of men, placed in a line, shouting, clapping their hands, blowing in hunting horns, raking everything in their path, using their dogs bred to hate running any animal. While other men wait in line to shoot the fleeing animals. Is this colossal and indiscernible pressure still tolerable?

Writing these words weighs on me, imagining the suffering inflicted on these animals makes me nauseous, not seeing an end in this makes me angry.

It is all the more appalling that these practices are maintained only by the collusion between the political world and that of hunting, public opinion being overwhelmingly opposed to these practices. This is a symptom of a major dysfunction in our representative democracy. Indeed, a citizens' convention on these issues would suffice for intelligent and consensual solutions to emerge:

• Creation of a professional hunting office, and ban on recreational hunting? This would make it possible to have professionals, trained in shooting and knowledge of wildlife, and dedicated to reestablishing a natural balance, undermined by decades of practice of pyromaniac firemen who "have nothing to give a fuck to regulate ", by the admission of their representative Willy Schraen.

• Sterilization of wild boars (which, as a reminder, were made prodigiously fertile by hunters, by crossing with pigs, by agrainage in the forest, by the release of farmed wild boars in the 1970s)?

• Isolation of agricultural areas?

• Installation of ultrasonic whistles on cars, to avoid collisions?

• Modification of forestry practices, to make forests more nourishing than the outskirts of cities?

• Education in the magical encounter with wild animals, to know the behaviors to adopt in the event of an encounter?

It is recognizing that there is nothing more precious than life in all its forms.

It's taking care of it. It is to favor its creation.

It is letting its complexity flourish.

It is to respect its slow rhythm.

It is to take advantage of its resources in moderation.

It is nurturing and giving, more than taking.

It's being connected.

There are currently several major reasons for indignation: the loss of biodiversity, climate change, air, water and soil pollution, increasing inequalities (at the global level but also within same country).

And at the same time, there are also good reasons not to be indignant: our lack of time, our credit to repay, our material comfort, our habits, our fatalism, our resignation, ...

However, if we want to continue to enjoy a healthy environment, it becomes essential to curb the hegemony of the dominant capitalist system. It has certainly been the engine of considerable scientific, technical and human progress, but it is reaching its limits in terms of ecological sustainability. There are areas that its lucrative and private logic should not govern: common goods that are vital, ecological (arable land, forests, water, energy sources ...) but also social (social protection, ...), as well. than money and credit.

It is only by putting pressure on our policies that we will be able to bring about the emergence of a society in which capitalism is no more than one of the pillars, regulated according to social and environmental standards, alongside other pillars (public, associative , cooperative, liberal, ...), all financed by socialized banks according to the well-being provided to living beings.

Life on Earth relies entirely on the atmosphere-ocean-soil system. These elements are unfortunately extremely fragile:

The atmosphere is about 600 km thick at its thickest part. If we represented the Earth as a peach, the atmosphere would be skin-thick.

The oceans, meanwhile, go to a depth of only 11 kilometers. And the thickness of the humus is barely a few tens of centimeters.

Preserving their healthiness is one of the greatest challenges of our time.

In the 16th century, realizing that the Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around, overturned the vision of the world and allowed for tremendous advances.

Today, while we believe that the Living slavishly revolves around our Society, we are, with a little luck and militancy, at the dawn of a new Copernican revolution, consisting in placing the well-being of the Living at the center of gravity, and our social structures around.

Each of our choices of Society could then be taken in the light of the answer to the question "does it harm, or not, the well-being of the Living Being as a whole, considered as a whole?"

Employee and employer are not in an equal relationship, due to the bond of subordination that links them. The role of the labor code and trade unions is in particular to limit this imbalance.

Liberal reforms, designed to the detriment of employees in the name of competitiveness, are sources of social, environmental, psychological and political unrest.

Nature does not exist. This concept of Human-Nature duality was invented by our company. He lets Man believe that he can abstract himself from Nature and exploit it until exhaustion. In reality, we are included in Nature.

It is therefore rather preferable to speak of "Environment", because this word indicates the relation which exists between Nature and the society which inhabits it. But this term also suffers from anthropocentrism, in the sense that it designates what surrounds us, thought from us, and outside us; not of a reality to which we belong entirely.

The term "Creation", even if tinged with religiosity, allows him to decenter Man, by placing him as a creature among other creatures; it abolishes the artificial separation between humans and other living beings, without implying equality or indistinction between beings, unlike ecocentrism. In fact, in Creation, Man is the highest bodily being because of his consciousness, but also the lowest spiritual being, because he is inferior to the Creator. This concept invites wisdom and humility.

But ultimately, using the term "Living" seems the most appropriate. In addition to the advantages of the concept of "Creation", it suggests a certain fragility, an interdependence, a miraculous side, a preciousness and a rarity on the scale of the universe.