A little more than half a century ago, in 1956, the German Jewish philosopher Günther Anders published a book with a prophetic title, Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen (The Outdatedness of Human Beings). He is credited with a quotation, the history of which can be found at this link. The quotation can be considered as belonging to three authors: Anders, Huxley and Serge Carfantan, who gave it its final form. Whatever the ultimate source of this quotation, I have taken the liberty of commenting on it:
“In order to stifle any revolt in advance, one must not use violence. Methods like those used by Hitler are outdated. You need only develop such powerful collective conditioning that the very idea of revolt will not even cross people’s minds. Ideally, individuals should be conditioned by limiting their innate biological abilities from birth…”
This is done already. And even gone way beyond. A whole generation is being trapped in a totally chimerical identity problem, by making them believe that freedom consists in choosing not only so-called sexual identity, but also the sexual body in which they want to grow up.
“Then, we would continue the conditioning process by drastically reducing education in order to bring it back to a form of integration into the world of work. An uneducated individual has only a limited horizon of thought, and the more his thoughts are confined to mediocre concerns, the less he can rebel.”
For half a century, we have been working in France to impose pedagogical methods that have shown their inefficiency, with the complicity of teachers whose ideological marking to the left made them particularly favorable to these new tendencies. The Anglo-Saxon model of a narrow-minded pragmatism, strictly oriented towards adaptation and relational conformism, was imposed in secondary and higher education.
“Access to knowledge must be made increasingly difficult and elitist. The gulf between people and science must be widened. All subversive content must be removed from information intended for the general public. Above all, there should be no philosophy. Here again, we must use persuasion and not direct violence: we will massively broadcast entertainment via television that always extols the virtues of the emotional and instinctive.”
Access to knowledge means—good books, annotated bibliographies, teachers capable of introducing difficult works, of situating them, of commenting on them and of making them accessible. Above all, no philosophy; and where it is still taught, it is only an exegesis deficient in intelligence of abstruse texts that high school students do not have the sufficient level of language to understand them, even literally. By forbidding a large number of teenagers to master the language, a necessary but not sufficient condition for thinking, we block their access to written culture. At the same time, we discredited the field of study that constituted the visibility of these typical skills of the exercise of thought (literature, philosophy, history) until we were able to liquidate purely and simply this “literary” field of study, a moment that we will call the “Blanquer moment.”
“We will fill people’s minds with what is futile and fun. It is good to prevent the mind from thinking through incessant music and chatter.”
In buses, on the station platforms, wherever you have to wait, except at the post office, you have to put up with unbearable musical threads dominated by Anglo-Saxon songs and all kinds of noise whose mixed qualities are praised.
“Sexuality will be placed at the forefront of human interests. As a social tranquilliser, there is nothing better.”
It is indeed everywhere, omnipresent. You are harassed if you are not sexually active—chastity and continence have become unintelligible. Even at the age when one can hope that one’s senses will be appeased and one can take care of one’s grandchildren, one’s garden, and others, one is harassed on the question of sexual activity. And this age, which traditional societies respect and venerate because it is emblematic of the wisdom acquired by and through an entire existence, is dishonored by a whole perverse, perverted and perverting press.
BFMTV is the brilliant daily tribute to the stupidity divinity. Let’s add Koh-Lanta and all the programs intended to show in the most indecent and vulgar way the problems of all kinds of poor people who make fools of themselves without being aware of it.
“In general, we will make sure to banish seriousness from life, to deride anything that is highly valued and to constantly champion frivolity: so that the euphoria of advertising becomes the standard of human happiness and the model for freedom.”
For twenty years, a whole generation was fed by the “Guignols de l’info,” which made fun of life and politicians, until that historic moment when the parody of François Hollande as president, by the comedian Canteloup, seemed more real than the real man himself. That he amply deserved to be mocked in this way, there can be no doubt. But it is appropriate to recall Blaise Pascal’s text on the two greatnesses. We would be entitled to despise Hollande as well as Macron in their totally corrupted persons. But we are bound to respect the function they represent, or have represented, even if they have, each in his own style, dishonored it, thus dishonoring the country, the nation and the people who elected them. As for the press, it has signed on to it for years and still shows its in-culture, and shows the god it worships: the divinity Stupidity.
“Conditioning alone will thus produce such integration that the only fear – which must be maintained – will be that of being excluded from the system and therefore no longer able to access the conditions necessary for happiness. The mass man produced in this way must be treated as what he is: a calf, and he must be kept a close eye on, as a herd should be. Anything that allays his lucidity is good socially, and anything that could awaken it must be ridiculed, stifled and fought.”
And so here we are. And we seem to be getting to the point where those who do not share the prevailing rhetoric may be excluded from the health care system. This mass man is now being closely monitored. Everything is set up, including the feedback questionnaires sent by the “high authorities of the hospital,” supposedly to contribute to the improvement of the structures. Who do they think they are fooling?
“Any doctrine questioning the system must first be designated as subversive and terrorist, and those who support it must then be treated as such.”
This is how a young woman with the significant first name of Cassandra was heavily penalized for carrying a sign with the word “WHO” written on it during a demonstration. This is how the leaders of the Yellow Vests were heavily punished. Meanwhile, the real terrorists preach holy war in our prisons or settle comfortably in our psychiatric asylums, financed by the taxpayers.
Yes, here we are…
Programmed obsolescence is not only in the machines that turn the planet into a huge landfill; it is now programmed for humans. This is what we call the Great Reset, with the complicity of the masses, which were once called peoples and nations.
Some doubt this and Pope Francis seems to find it all very convenient. It is time he opened his eyes. It is urgent, because it is also the Church that is going to be reprogrammed with built-in obsolescence…
So, of course, in Canada, an endless line of truckers drove towards Ottawa to protest against the odious measures of Justin Trudeau’s government. They were obviously defending their particular interests. Let’s not dream, the ideal of freedom was probably not their primary motivation. But it was a start.
The organized division of society, with a view to controlling and squeezing it, could well one day turn against those who have destroyed the glue French society—a certain shared idea of France, of its political, religious, literary and even loving history, a certain confidence in its institutions.
Justice is the glue of peace. It is rooted in a Law, the divine Law scorned in the most ignoble way, in all the domains of life—family, marriage, children, education, history, respect of politics.
It is also a law of history—when a society becomes too radically evil, it is wiped off the face of the earth. The new European empire will know the fate of all empires: it will collapse and go to fill a chapter in the history of the world, in what will remain of our textbooks, or in rewritten history books.
Marion Duvauchel is a historian of religions and holds a PhD in philosophy. She has published widely, and has taught in various places, including France, Morocco, Qatar, and Cambodia.
Featured image: “Justitia,” by Carl Spitzweg, painted in 1857.