It has been a while that I haven’t written anything and I feel bad about it, as usual. Too often, when coming home from a day of work, I cannot find the motivation and the drive to do it. Fascinating, the human condition. We spend the major part of our day spending intellectual and physical resources for someone or something we essentially are unrelated to. Despite being more or less fulfilling based on the nature of the position, it is essentially counter-intuitive to invest so much intellectual capital into a commercial infrastructure that aims to remain profitable.

Oblivion, painting by Humberto Barajas

Going against the flow

In the end it seems that a majority of those who truly feel self-fulfilled gathers such a feel from their ability to refuse such “routine condition” by going against the imposed flow of “métro boulot dodo”. While this argument can often be interpreted as rather superficial because of its repetition in popular culture, it nonetheless deserves acrued attention. “Going against the flow” is not simply what certain people (interestingly often those who managed to gain a little bit of hierarchic advantage over others) view as pseudo-anarchist. It is true that as a consequence of having been mediatized abundantely, most forms of active discontent and reactionary positions to the existing hegemony have been decredibilized. On one hand, popular culture in audiovisual content have portrayed such “resisting” characters as quintessentially misguided and as aficionados of such movements for the wrong reasons. On top of that, their profiles are often that of privileged, dominant culture that is psychologically fragile. Society looks down at those individuals or more specifically the cliché image it created of them. On the other hand, facts speak for themselves and one can only accept the fact that a majority of the popular movements that aimed to offer alternatives to the hegemonic powers (either political as Syriza and Podemos; cultural as Mai 68 and OWS or social as BLM and the Arab Spring) have utltimately failed to achieved their desired view of a better society.

A Collective, multi-dimensional challenge

It is not merely a personal challenge to get away from such an imposed rythm. It is not simply a matter of determination and self-control to change one’s habits. It is also an attempt to distance oneself from the image that our families and friends then have of us, but also the image they make of us if we were to be succesfull. I believe that deep down, we indirectly create scales of success for those who surround us. Be it my coworkers, my friends or my family members, I created mental maps with lower and higher bounds indicating an interval of situations in which I can imagine them. The interval is larger as the person is young, and becomes narrower as the person ages, just like one’s skills across time. For instance, a 12 years old with a passion for photography might one day become a world renown artist if he sustained his passion and managed to develop technical skills that match an extraordinary creative process. At the same time, the kid might meet friends the next years that will eventually have a critical view on his personal ambitions and push him to drop those “outlying” envies for a more traditional, widely accepted, pseudo normal behavior, such as playing football and focusing on similar superficial, mass-acclaimed hobbies. An older person however, scientifically has less room to develop skills that will make them stand out in the same way. Simply because their capacity to learn and follow a new path has deteriorated and that their life structure requires an extensive amount of time to be spent in mundane tasks such as work and debts in order to provide for the next generations and leave them off with an acceptable capital.

What should we do?

While the current situation’s analysis is not of the most encouraging, it is nonetheless possible to raise awareness about the positive impact that engaging in alternative movements. Even if the movement itself does not become a driving force that will change society at its core, it contributes to mobilize people and provides them with a platform of discussion that can drive interest in the less engaged and interested citizens, who can then make the difference by becoming informed about certain difficult aspects of society. In Belgium, we are currently facing what some conservative politicians like to call a “migration crisis”. The increasing flux of refugees arriving in Brussels has become “out of control” and some politicians such as Theo Francken, Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, are at the fore front of creating a national feeling of threat from those less privileged people who are fleeing the worst conditions and have endured the most difficult of times throughout their journeys. Loosing their sense of humanity and compassion for other human beings based on repetitive narratives and propaganda, some citizens unite as a building block behind such politicians, supporting their missions with their votes. If only they had the courage to get out of their homes to come and have a discussion with the refugees who attempt to survive and make it to the UK with their smile as an only gift, they might change their views. It might not improve the sociopolitical situation of the country, but it will contribute to improve our society as a whole.

if you want to participate in the collective action that citizens have set up in Brussels in solidarity with refugees, you can follow their actions on Facebook