Recently, against all expectations, I was told this during a discussion on the future of the planet: “Yes, but you have to live and let live!” »
The expression was mentioned in 1622 by Gérard de Maylnes in a book on commercial law in these words, in Dutch: “ leuen ende laeten leuven “, or live and let others live.
More recently, the proverb has been given the meaning that we must let others behave as they wish and not criticize them because they behave differently from us.
At a time when democracy was in its infancy and when it was probably looking for slogans, this proverb, a sort of humanist magic formula, carried weight through its moral charge and its relevance in the context of social proximity. Furthermore, Mr. de Maylnes was thinking in commercial terms, at a time when people already did not want people to put obstacles in our way, a metaphor which then referred to the wheels of carts. In 1622, the negative externalities of commerce and business existed only in the minds, quite alone, of a few philosophers.
Today, is the adage “Live and let live” still relevant? Doesn’t it become, in the context of current modernity, a permission to do whatever one wants oneself while prescribing it to others? Finally, what would this slogan mean now, closer to a consumerist and individualist diktat than to an incitement to democracy? That we should live while allowing the worst abuses of consumer society to take place? Allow the destruction of ecosystems to let the millionaires who will build mega-shopping centers live as they wish? Give free rein to the lifestyle of the rulers of this world, ready to destroy it, so that they can feed their sick ego and the kind of politics that supports it? Accept that the neighbor burns his tires in front of your house while making the engine of his car roar, hoping thus, by pressing the accelerator pedal, to give himself a power that he does not feel within himself?
Unfortunately, the latter could still invoke this false moral law to silence all criticism aimed at him and to bring us back to this shoddy social justice: “I am at home, I have the right to do what I want”, “we is in a free country”, “live and let live, my dear”.