There is no shortage of avenues for reflection following reading the text by Mr. Yvon Rivard entitled “Duty of Memory and Oblivion” published in The duty from October 19. Allow me to underline this passage: “Let us say that at first glance [Gaza, l’Ukraine] the fight was unequal and once again proved George Steiner right, who deplored the fact that culture had never prevented violence. » In 1932, the League of Nations, of unfortunate memory, invited Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein to discuss a theme as old as humanity itself: “Why war? “.
Here is the question that Einstein addressed to Freud: “ Dear Professor Freud, is there any way of delivering mankind from the threat of war? » And the response from the father of psychoanalysis: “ Meanwhile we may rest on the assurance that whatever makes for cultural development is also working against war. […]. »
Culture “is educating for peace […] it is the recognition of the other not as a simple difference to be tolerated, but as a condition of growth” (Lucien Morin, 1985). I would dare to add, at the risk of waking up Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, that culture is also reading the stories of Alain Stanké.
Culture is empathy towards difference. So, Mr Steiner, culture may not have prevented violence, even if it is true that we could certainly find situations which would refute this presumption, but culture constitutes this vector which condemns the hope that one day we will live in peace.
To watch on video