To soften my last text a little – quite dark indeed – and distract us from what is wrong, I thought I would take a look at some reasons for hope. I won’t do it in an academic way. Instead, I will present a small gallery of portraits that I have collected over the past few years. I have arranged them a little for the purposes of the presentation, but they are not fictitious. These are people that I have known either personally, or through my readings, or even through what friends and colleagues have told me about them. Each in their own way, they modestly embody a way of remaking the world.
Here is a middle-aged couple with two children. Both father and mother have gainful jobs. Until recently, they led a very enviable life, free from worries. It was by thinking about their children, about their future, that they were alerted: would they have the same chance as them? They thought about it and made a life-changing decision. Now, they donate a good portion of their income to social organizations run by generous people who work to help young people in need.
“Y” teaches primary school. She is saddened by the fact that Quebec seems to her to become a society like any other: materialist, individualist, selfish… She believes that children are the only hope provided that they are taken care of seriously. They are malleable, open to what is offered to them. But she feels that we must act upstream, before false idols take over. In her school, she brought together quite a few teachers and they came to an agreement. With the support of management, they change the content of the programs a little to inject more humanity.
They have designed activities that make students aware of the beauty of things, the quality of simple life, respect for true values, sources of wonder and, if possible, how to be happy. They have few resources, but they ensure that no student is excluded. They take them to public gardens, make them visit museums and libraries. Young people are then invited to speak to express their impressions. Each month, they participate in a show whose content they design. They recite tales that they have composed, exhibit their drawings, write messages to their parents, to their friends, to foreign children who are less happy than themselves. “Y” realizes that it’s not much. But maybe it’s a lot too. She would like to sow something.
He is an MP from a middle-class constituency and a business owner. He takes his mandate to heart and strives to be helpful and fair with people. He thought things were going well. Social workers opened his eyes: there was a real problem with delinquency in the district. He formed a team of volunteers, they worked hard, but their means were modest. He mobilized other traders, he managed to approach two or three ministers. He found a calling.
She is a young person a little rebellious against the powerful who are not very sensitive to the tragedy that is coming. She is also angry at others who let themselves be dizzy by the gadgets of our time. She formed a “cell” at CEGEP made up of guys and girls her age. They organize demonstrations. She writes a manifesto.
He is Catholic. Sometimes he thinks things are getting worse for good. So he gets anxious. Then he comes back to the thought that God sacrificed his son to save humanity. And he begins to hope again. He leads a group of believers, they think about what they could do.
She has a degree in social sciences. When she started working, she realized that her classmates were all working on Quebec. She decided to look elsewhere. She joined international groups that addressed development issues in “broken” societies. She now leads a project in Africa. She finds what she hears about the state of this continent exaggerated. By working at the grassroots level, she sees that progress is being made. It encourages him to continue.
He’s an old priest. While several of his colleagues abandoned the cassock, he hung on. It was out of loyalty to his parents, who were so proud to have a son in the priesthood. He takes care of five or six parishes, he is without illusions. Additionally, there are only a handful of ancestors who attend services. What interests him most is meeting young people. To his great surprise, they laugh at him a little, but don’t run away from him: what could this dinosaur have to say? He is helpless, he talks to them. Not from the Good Lord, but from other things that life has taught him. He believes that talking to them can change things. Young people see that his actions are gratuitous. It makes him feel like he’s getting a little older.
To conclude, I may be naive, but I believe that the population is made up largely of honest people. Distraught people, outraged by the evils of the day, but who cannot express themselves. Is it therefore impossible to make their voices heard? It would be a tragedy and a source of deep cynicism if it turns out that citizen action is powerless to correct the course of things. Will it always take disasters to bring lost societies back to their senses?