If you are, in your spare time, even the slightest bit of a mechanic, it is a safe bet that you have already set foot at GBS. In Sherbrooke, on Wellington Street, the local brand of this chain which delights DIY enthusiasts has always been dedicated to the sale of ball bearings. GBS stands for General Bearing Service. For everyone, GBS also means “common sense”. When there is a feeling that something is not right, the GBS is always called to the rescue.
Ball bearings are a marvelous invention. During the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci had sketched the outline. They were only made and patented at the end of the 18th century.e century. From the beginning of the 20th centurye century, they became strong enough that the industrial world could not do without their use.
With ball bearings, the effort required to generate movement is reduced by a thousand times. In other words, the steel balls make it possible to multiply the output obtained with the same energy. Provided that the bowls are well adjusted and greased, it is, for example, possible to spin more wool in an hour on a loom mounted on bearings than previously in a week in a workshop. Ball bearings allow both the bicycle and the car to run using less energy. They enabled large turbines as well as swimming pool pumps. In other words, the use of ball bearings marks a break with an old world. Everything, suddenly, can go faster and further. Remote suburbs as well as annualized trips are direct consequences of ball bearings.
In the wake of the announcement of the establishment in Quebec of a mega battery factory of the Swedish company Northvolt, Ministers Pierre Fitzgibbon and François-Philippe Champagne repeated in all tones, in their desire to convince each show , that we are entering a new era. We are now, to hear them, creating a different world because we are subsidizing the production, with billions, not only of green batteries, but also of green steel, green aluminum and what else I know. supposedly green, for what the word green can mean in such matters.
A huge battery factory, planted in a place where explosives were once manufactured, will save the world from implosion, we have been told in recent days. This enthusiasm for the pursuit of an expansive economic model, painted in green, is largely due to the fact that our leaders wear rose-colored glasses. And they invite us, of course, to see the world through the filter of their little lens.
All these beautiful people thus begin to dream of a renewed expansion of economic growth which would be capable of generating an almost magical solution to the problems created by this same growth. Thus, when the Prime Minister of Alberta, the conservative Danielle Smith, is criticized for the increase in greenhouse gases in her province, she mentions future technologies to solve a problem that she knows is fueling. What does reality matter: everyone holds as true the fact that, on the road to economic expansion, we will one day come across solutions to our problems.
Our governments happily give themselves the illusion of being able to continue the race for development more or less as before. It is not surprising that François Legault’s conservative nationalists are constantly recalling the greatness of the large hydroelectric projects initiated in the 1960s and brought to fruition in the 1970s. This old model of development is constantly brought forward as a progress to imitate. On this all-economy momentum, Prime Minister Legault takes the opportunity to announce that he will be a candidate again beyond his two mandates, delighted by the attention paid to him these days .
“Everything runs like on ball-bearing German”: this garage expression once indicated that everything was fine. A former console operator DutyPierre Beaulieu, famous among journalists for his sense of humor, reused this expression with irony to ensure, at nightfall, that everything was under control.
When everything is working, the mechanics of the present believe, it is because common sense (GBS) greases reality to ensure its progress without a jolt. This principle of the GBS has just been invested in an uninhibited manner by Canadian conservatives until it has reached, without any embarrassment, the height of ridicule.
The GBS has thus become the ready-to-wear of thought. Electoral theme for the upcoming election, it claims to say everything while saying absolutely nothing.
The challenge is to make this idea of GBS a mainstream opinion. And a dominant opinion presupposes that there are dominated opinions. As luck would have it, the adequacy between the GBS and conservative ideology is now taken for granted.
According to these ideological ruts, without checking our backs, everything appears to be obvious that we will not take the trouble to question. Even gross stupidity can thus be confused with common sense. So there is an extraordinary form of populist condescension in making contempt for thought an electoral slogan disguised as enlightened judgment.
All this reveals to what extent the program of Canadian conservatism, the one for which François Legault invited people to vote during the last federal campaign, is after all very simple, not to say simplistic.
You see, evil is solidarity. Stupidity, thinking about what you do. Freedom, the supreme right to be left to one’s own devices.
In short, it’s still big. Very big. But that hardly makes any sense. Will we also give a green light to such a matter?