- Of Contemporary Doomwatch1
A great city in Northern Europe, namely Brussels, is struck by an unusual heat wave in the middle of winter, as an asteroid approaches the Earth. In the evening, residents go out in the streets in their pajamas, wiping away the sweat running down their cheeks, and look up anxiously at the sky, seeing the asteroid growing bigger and bigger as they watch. They all fear the same thing: that this mass of molten matter will collide with our planet. Hordes of panicked rats are fleeing the sewers, car tires explode, the asphalt is melting. Then a strange character, Mr. Phillipulus, long-bearded and dressed in a white sheet, begins to harangue the crowd, striking a gong and shouting: "This is punishment! Repent! The end of Time has come!"
We may smile at this tawdry prophet, since this scene occurs in a comic book, Hergé's "The Shooting Star," whose main hero is Tintin. However, beneath the silliness, what truth there is in the cry: "Repent!"
Give Me Back My Enemy!
Today, Phillipilus has taken over, at least in people's minds in the Western world. With the economic, financial, security, ecological and climatic crises, the prophets of doom have multiplied, competing to be the bearer of the worst news. What a contrast with 1989, when optimism was pouring down upon the Western hemisphere! Indeed, the Cold War was a great provider of meaning for forty years. Communism had had the ambition to fully erase liberal democracies, economically as well as ideologically, through the invention of a new mode of production, brand new relationships between people, and the claim to override the whole previous history of humankind. Communism gathered the citizens of all free countries in a common aversion, as they are always wont to revel in the apathy inherent in wealthy societies. An enemy is a stock of future, a way for a group to posit itself through opposition, and it is also the best way to reform oneself by correcting one's own image as reflected by the other. It makes one certain to last through the hostility of the other, who, paradoxically, comforts us by negating us. You can never be sure of your friends' love, but you can always depend on your enemies' hatred. [End Page 11]
The Soviet Union played a nasty trick against us when it collapsed: it made us lose all our bearings. The binary conflict between East and West illuminated the whole planet and allowed us to know who we were and what we wanted. The loss of our one and only enemy, in 1989, was replaced by the irruption of countless perils. Who could ever claim to substitute our values with such a system as communism did? Who will be able to confront us with such a symbolical challenge? Islamic fanaticism? It is so scant and regressive that it can only hope to seduce the weakest minds of open societies, and it is aimed, first and foremost, against the Muslims themselves, accused of being too moderate. Terrorism? It has lost some of its splendor since 9/11, by becoming a regular fixture of our daily lives, just another one of the usual threats we live with, so much so that President Obama banned the phrase "War on Terror." Together with the secret service and the police, indifference and composure are the best answer to the barbarianism of bombers. So who is my enemy? I'd like to ponder here on the answer brought to this question by some radical ecologists, whose ideology prevails in international circles today: the enemy is now humanity itself, as it destroys its natural habitat by multiplying.
Widespread Depression
Actually, there has been an unending succession of scapegoats for a whole century now: Marxism pointed the finger at the bourgeoisie and capitalism as being responsible for human misery. Third-World supporters turned against the Western world as the great historical criminal, guilty of inventing slavery, imperialism, and colonialism. With the climatic doomwatch, a further step has been taken: man himself is now guilty, eager as he is to colonize the planet, to subdue it for his own selfish and greedy...