Artist Marc Séguin offers his unique perspective on current events and the world.
Caught in traffic, a big smile last week, learning of the existence of a Summit on construction sites in Montreal at the end of March to promote mobility.
No cynicism here; From memory, we have been trying to find solutions for 30 years. What exactly do we believe? I risk myself: probably more to the process than to the result. Let’s take a detour.
Sometimes you have to break the ice from the trough to the chicken coop. ” Oh my Godthey must be cold, your hens”, someone said to me lately.
Behind the house, there is a pond and maple trails. In March, we no longer venture on the bodies of water. Too dangerous.
On a freezing morning a few days ago, I went out in my boxers to go to the shed plug in the tractor. Diesel, to start, sometimes needs a little help from electricity. Told myself that a brisk 300m walk didn’t require a set winter at 1000 piastres; I was not on the Plateau, in Outremont or in Rosemont. No one to criticize or say it didn’t make sense. So boots, and a plaid shirt. Not full chic, OK. But straight to the point. Sometimes it’s good to be independent.
I walked in the snow with this anniversary of the war in echo. And this observation that in an emergency – we have also seen this with the pandemic – there are things that are done more efficiently.
And then, like those billions of snowflakes that undermine visibility during a storm, I thought of all those committees, observatories, research groups, advisory groups, consulting firms, forums, commissions, summits, building sites and other invented administrative retreats and nurtured to smooth our lives. Are they really useful?
Over the past few decades, there has been a heaviness of mind-blowing procedures which, at a glance, slow down and slow down decisions, and which intensify as the world’s anxiety increases. More and more funds and resources seem destined for the administrative functioning of governance rather than for the field. A bureaucratic and formalistic blizzard. Too many people on the ice, thought to myself as I looked at the frozen pond. If, sometimes, it is useful, elsewhere (too often), it paralyzes.
Nothing against the faith and the intentions of these committees, if not this blindness to believe in only one system. We survived the dictatorship of a prime minister during the pandemic, right? Maybe even useful under the circumstances. Since then, things have returned to their slow normality, where sometimes even opposites follow each other. Waiting for urgent things to happen. There is bickering between bosses and unions while the public system operates well below its capacities and recourse is had to the private sector…
A UN summit or a multitude of supporting studies, we discuss and we persist in believing that the social state will improve with the democratic idea of consultations. Everyone goes there with their story, their experience or their feelings. In this excess of republic, one suspects a good will. But in fact, the orgy of complaints (social networks and others) and endless discussions seem rather to weaken the animals that we are; and it disguises our weaknesses by diluting the decisions.
I emphasize weakening here.
If a thousand programs protect me, why fight me? If a system manages me, why become a responsible citizen? Why roll up your sleeves? We’ve been saying for 30 years that the end of the world is imminent? Why take responsibility? There are now committees and illusions to ensure the future. I hear a generation cracking up. Fragile. In distress. Disoriented.
Because the ice is getting thinner and thinner. We seem so strong in a group. It’s when you find yourself alone that it blows up. So many people are breaking up. And yet we are improving, we say, it’s obvious: we consult each other and we listen to each other. Bullshit. And cheers to spring.
Coming back from this walk in the snow, I said to myself that there must be a resource to help me. Couldn’t find any reference or support anywhere that I froze my balls and should have been shielded from myself. Seems to me there must be some support group, forum or procedure for the irresponsible who go outside in the wind in winter at -23 ohC in boxers. Couldn’t find it, but an hour later, to go blow the snow and the trails to the pond, I had put on pants. Magic.
And for the record, no need for demonstrations or a commission, the hens have survived the winter for centuries.