“We take refuge in mediocrity out of despair for the beauty we have dreamed of.”
Flaubert.
Hello, young Padawan
Today, we will delve into a topic that is not just close to my heart, but also a pressing concern for our society. It’s about wokism, a symptom of the societal cancer that the West is currently grappling with.
How can we inspire a return to beauty in a society that seems to be embracing ugliness? How can we uphold our responsibilities as adults in a culture that promotes instant gratification, a nanny state, and widespread infantilization, even in our advertisements and how our governments communicate with us?
How can we empower ourselves to resist the looming threat of intellectual collapse, the pull of sectarian ideologies, and the pressure of political correctness? How can we ensure our healthy evolution in a society that, since the sexual revolution of 1968, has glorified subversion and marginalization, only to realize the inherent contradiction?
Please be cautious; this is going to sting.
The beautiful, the true, the just
In his quote above, Flaubert was not necessarily referring to our individual lives but to society; this is even more true today, in this empire of the ugly, the mediocre, and the easy. Thus, ugliness and atrocious amateurism assault our eyes every day, every hour, every minute. In 2024 we applaud poops on exhibited canvases or degenerates incapable of aligning two right notes — a pleonasm, like the child king whom we would congratulate excessively, “bravo, what a beautiful turd!”, even in the case of mistake, ending up making him proud of his indignity when he reaches adulthood.
Wokism is clearly the symptom of the child king who has become an adult. Unable to manage his emotions, annoyances, and frustrations because he was not taught to manage them when he was little, he finds himself lost in this adult world. A child star of his parents who has become an ordinary citizen, anonymous, he does not understand the lack of attention for his person, does not accept the frustrations of our modern lives, is unsuited to living together. Thus, he seeks to attract others to him, but clumsily, in the worst way: forcing the other to think like him, to enter his world of personal illusion, whimsical and grotesque, to the point of violating the simple rules of interactions in society, and consequently condemns himself to be rejected by the group which does not understand why so many screams, so many tears, because after 10 years old, having tantrums is considered ridiculous.
He doesn’t see himself like that, his being forged with “I can do anything in society”, “I have no limits” by his parents, the former child king who has become an adult even thinks he is credible in this impossible dialogue. However, to integrate into a group, from the small clan of yesteryear to the great modern society, we must agree on a minimum of rules. Even anarchists have many, contrary to what many think. These rules are also called “common sense”, which you have probably heard of, namely reason, the evidence shared by the greatest number, which is why we are here today, and why humanity has not died out. These rules are standard to all civilizations across the world in broad outline, for example, protecting children and women. It may involve offering them, as in the West, reserved places such as toilets in order to avoid aggression from certain — but that was before. However, to refuse the obvious, what has been acquired logically and consensually for hundreds of years, is to condemn oneself to a sectarian vision, even dangerous for the future of our civilization. Indeed, it is the extremist religious movements that go against the scientific and societal consensus and isolate their disciples to be able to control them better and manipulate them more.
The ultimate goal is obviously to make a part of the population stupid, depressed, miserable, and on medication for life — the beautiful income for big pharma! — and much easier to govern since it feels subversive, liberated, and unique, while it is the mass. Such an oxymoron should wake up the majority of us, and yet…
The high, the strong, the powerful
It is up to us to bring back the difficulty, the beautiful, the dignified, the fair, the mastery of the craftsman or the musician who has acquired his notoriety through reputation, thanks to the perfect gesture through repetition, work, and not his celebrity by showing his butt on TikTok. Art is what will save us if we return to what usually is art, namely the beautiful, the marvelous, the perfectly mastered gesture, the nobility of the right note, the greatness of our Western know-how, of the musicians of Vienna, of the Italian painters, of the French poets, and of all the fabulous new artists from all over Europe who cannot break through in this era of mediocrity. There is no chance of being exposed in a museum or broadcasted on the radio because they do something honest, fair, and beautiful.
Everything that is easy appeals to the child in us. It’s easy to stay on your couch eating chips, but it requires discipline to get up and do a physical activity. It’s easy to make music via artificial intelligence and sing with autotune, while mastering an instrument requires patience, courage, and resilience. The same goes for visual art. We dare to call “art” the infamous ugliness that is displayed before our eyes, some wool threads hastily stuck on a canvas, a paper torn, crumpled, then placed on a metal base, with grandiloquent interpretations to try to make us accept the truth, which is that we are being made fun of, that if you don’t understand, it’s because you’re stupid. Still, art, real art, is accessible to everyone, or it’s not art.
Let’s be honest: how many times have we been on the verge of sarcastic laughter when we wondered what this contemporary thing was, and how many times have we been on the verge of tears in front of the works of Rubens, Botticelli, or when discovering Caravaggio’s fruit basket, Vigée le Brun’s portraits, Michelangelo’s paintings on the ceilings of the Sistine Chapel. Who hasn’t been feverish in front of a Rodin, who has never skyrocketed with Beethoven’s sonata no 17, Tempest? (I’ll put it here for you, just in case, ed). Beauty is universal. That’s why these old works have always been visited or listened to by human beings worldwide for centuries, of course, but even more so today while they try to force amateurism, the easy, and I would even say, the ridiculous, on us.
Do you want to know if it’s art? If a five-year-old tells you it’s so beautiful, if an Alzheimer’s patient sings the song, if 150 different nationalities line up to see it, to hear it, if we are moved to vibrate all together, all in unison, then it’s art; otherwise, it’s crap for the big city bohos who run on coke and need to feel unique, those who are all dressed the same, who do the same meaningless jobs, who find themselves in the same trendy places congratulating themselves on being so subversive, so marginal, so … deep down so sad, and so empty.
We can draw a parallel with some young people today who are passionate about luxury items. Tailor-made suits, beautifully handmade shoes, timepieces, and bags, through luxury, they seek a return to truth, to craftsmanship, to beauty, to our roots. I understand these young people; they are trying and are not far from finding the truth. For the others, it will be a long and painful road, but we must hang on and keep hope.
The Dada movement was the catharsis of the horrors of the Great War — the trenches, the courageous soldiers, the broken faces. The second layer of 39-45, just as sordid, morbid, and pathological, we have still not recovered from the indigestion of so many horrors of this beginning of the century, neither on a societal nor philosophical level. As soon as a politician is a little vehement, the “dark hours” are back. We are emptied of our substance, at the end of the cycle, without inspiration, and the coup de grâce, we are now caught up in these new technologies that make us stupid, illiterate, incapable of concentration, and without inspiration. Do you know that the IQ is declining year after year in the West, while it is stabilizing or increasing in other regions of the world? Do you know that some major French engineering schools have chosen to simplify or even eliminate the French language test in their entrance exams because students are no longer up to standard? We are leveling down, by the easy way, without realizing that we are the only ones in the world, we Westerners, to regress. In contrast, others look at us bewildered, frightened, horrified that we are no more than a shadow of ourselves, we who were so inspiring, so joyful, so alive.
Keep hope
“Having goals is not only necessary to motivate us, but it is essential to our survival.”
Robert H. Schuller.
So yes, it is a kind of resistance, a grand refusal of the Western neurosis, and it is up to all of us to be part of it. Now, that is a great goal. Given the work, we have what it takes to be a centenarian!
Thus, by fighting against general mediocrity, we will restore greatness in ourselves individually. It is up to each of us to start reading again, listening, and seeing the true, the beautiful, the just, to put our money into things that matter and not into ideological crap whose only goal is to humiliate us internationally, to stupefy us, or to make us join sects that will ultimately make us depressed, unhappy and miserable.
Note that when subversive and marginality become fashionable again, it is the red flag of the beginning of an end of civilization and a one-way ticket to psychosis, depression, sadness, and death, since, by definition, an entire group cannot live healthily by being on the margins (cf end of the Roman Empire, ed). It is up to us to bring back into the game the old-fashioned, the obsolete, the common, the banal, the popular, even, since they are the only ways to be truly ourselves, happy, and healthy in this era of the end of the cycle, of the circus, of perpetual carnival.
Remember that a chicken whose head is cut off starts running frantically in all directions — sorry for the slightly appalling image — we note that it is a bad idea to follow the ideologies of fear, death, anxiety, and panic. Let us return to calm and clarity and take a step back. Our heads are still on our shoulders, so choosing a dignified, adult, and responsible direction is not so difficult.
Let’s trust ourselves, reassure those a little lost without losing ourselves in our certainties, which are just as harmful, and move forward together. Let’s abandon the “I believe, therefore I know” of wokeism to return to the “I think, therefore I am” of Descartes, which is much more mature and philosophical, and then it’s French, unlike the woke movement which is a degeneration of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, which, consequently, has nothing to do with the land of Pot-au-feu and Camembert.
On this cultural and gastronomic note, I wish you an as corny, old-fashioned, and banal as possible weekend, but joyful, inspiring, and alive!
XO☀️
Annecy, Haute-Savoie, France.