Human beings are very restless beasts. If they are capable of intelligence, they also do not like to think. They prefer to fidget, to move in all directions, to run towards an elsewhere which takes them away from the here in which they claim to be prisoners.
In the winter and spring of 2020, the whole world suddenly found itself suspended; in a crisis situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, everything had to be stopped. The confinement that we then experienced prompted us to a long moment of reflection and silence. Above our heads, the sky has returned to what it had been before the invention of the airplane. Empty. Calm. Quiet. The big cities, everywhere emptied of their traffic, have also become very quiet, as we have never known them, so quiet, in fact, that even in the biggest cities of the world, we have seen and heard birds that do not were around us more. On the great rivers and seas the great ships have ceased to sail. The port cities have experienced such calm that the water in the rivers has become transparent again, in which we have seen fish, where no one found them anymore!
Many of us then hoped that human beings would learn a lesson…
In February 2022, in Canada and everywhere else in the world, the roads and the skies are again congested. Traffic has resumed as before and we are even calling for new construction of roads, bridges and tunnels… As before too, when impatience and anger win over the population, people have started to demonstrate again in complete freedom. However, perhaps to make up for a bit of the polluting spirit that we had neglected, this time we chose to demonstrate in cars, vans and trucks… Engines and horns sounded — without reasoning — in the center of the large cities, polluting and destroying the well-being of others more than ever.
Human beings have therefore understood that reflection and awareness were not for them since they are still and always only beasts. The slap in the face that was the COVID-19 pandemic did not sound any intellectual awakening. The beasts continue to howl, to act, to harm, to destroy, and this, above all without thinking about the consequences of these gestures. There is nothing to be proud of.