I will soon be 35 years old and for some time now, I have found myself wishing for an extinction of the human race which would be rapid, smooth and which would occur in the relatively near future. I’m not a misanthrope, far from it. I’m more of the type who loves others, I’ve always been fascinated by people’s lives, I’m told that I’m warm, that I have a welcoming smile, arms that make you feel good. But now, for several years, my love of humans has weakened.
My elders will certainly say that it is in the order of things, that as we age, we lose our illusions, our naivety and that through these small and big disappointments, we detach ourselves from others, we harden ourselves. But growing up and becoming a woman alongside my mother, my mother with sincere wonder and who, at the age of 63, still devotes her time to trying to reduce certain social injustices, left me with the illusion that another trajectory was possible.
For several years, since the pandemic, since babies, since condos to buy, cottages to renovate, mortgages, since all this steamroller of responsibilities that we think we want and can escape has passed over us, I I feel like we’re a big girl gang to be dead inside.
I venture to repeat one of the maxims of conspiracy theorists (of which I am not): we are completely asleep. As if we were too wrapped up in our privileges and exhausted by this lifestyle (which seeks exactly that, to exhaust us), to imagine doing something for greater than ourselves.
Where is the collective? Where is the We? Where has the desire to participate in building something together gone, the desire to fight, the desire to give without expectation, the desire to contribute, to share?
I had my first experiences of democracy at Printemps érable. I spent several months on the street, with my peers, and this struggle galvanized me. I didn’t want to believe the older people who told us at the time, with a lot of condescension, that these outbursts of revolt would fade with age. I am so disappointed to say that they were right. I look around me and see that we have become gentrified and that we are clearly not “sick of dying”.
We would have so many reasons to tear our shirts off: the housing crisis and its terrible effects on the most vulnerable, the increasingly virulent attacks on the rights of trans people and LGBTQ+ communities, the destruction of the Palestinian people that is possible to follow live on our phones and which is supported by Western powers, the planet which burns in general indifference… I am no better than anyone else, I feel completely overwhelmed by all these tragedies which surround us. I am inhabited by a constant guilt of not doing enough and I am dismayed to see that several of my friends experience this apathy in complete peace.
I know that lots of people are moving, organizing and fighting. I see them, these people, I meet them, I admire them, but I also perceive their exhaustion, their discouragement, their weariness, their depression, their precariousness. I wonder how we can leave the responsibility of saving us to a small minority of individuals.
I wonder what meaning has life if it is only a matter of charting a comfortable, pleasant little path for oneself, avoiding unpleasant situations or negative emotions as much as possible? I wonder why everyone is talking about self-care and so few talk about collective-care ? I wonder what the red squares that we were a little over ten years ago would say about us today. I have a little idea, and it’s not pretty.