Word of the year | Press

Ah! The famous word that begins with a P! “Shortage” will have been the word of the year in 2021. We have experienced shortages of everything: 2X4, cement, catering employees, skilled workers, health workers, veterinary technicians, semiconductors, paper for printing books, secretaries, hotel maintenance staff, lifeguards, affordable housing and wine at the SAQ last weekend.

Some of these shortages were fanciful and created from scratch by our worried minds or clever little ones, but others reflected a recurring and structural lack of manpower that jumped out at us. They were attributed primarily to government aid and the PCU. We have not finished studying the drivers and the systemic effects of the various shortages.

If scarcity had a universal symbol, it would be the roll of toilet paper; the first to be the subject of anguished assaults at Costco in March 2020, and on several occasions thereafter. Because scarcity speaks of our very deep fear of scarcity. It is associated with the throes of war, the dark times of the communist regimes, the black economic crises. In our rich society of abundance andoversize, the shock is titanic, and the eventuality disturbing.

Shortage is on its way to becoming the universal excuse. Is something or someone missing? Is there a delay in delivery or execution? Are costs skyrocketing? Blame it on the shortage ! We do not question enough about the profiteers, about the programmed delays, the controlled shortages, about some of the perverse effects of government aid. The shortage is a key, a catch-all explanation, a state of mind on the scale of an entire society.

Lack, or rather, the fear of lack speaks of scarcity, real or imaginary, created from scratch. Shortage is not just the word of the year; it speaks of the entire era. An era of abundance, of waste, of years which inexorably sink into a physical and moral wall. A time when everything, immediately, is a way of life, where the word degrowth sounds like a heresy, where the fear of running out of flour is almost the admission of psychological regression. The shortage is seen as an insult to our standing.

But the lack, if it first affects our economic stability, goes beyond this field and that of consumer goods to be embodied elsewhere, precisely because it deeply colors our 20s. cultural, the second degree has deserted us, like a cigarette in the theater? We can see it these days with the film Aline, by Valérie Lemercier. Quebec is split in two. We laugh at the transposition of Celine Dion’s life or we are furiously outraged. For many, the second degree, hindsight, the ability to appreciate a fiction, are in total deficit. In the case of the film Aline, the absence of a second degree in the reception flirts with a now familiar theme. It is difficult, or even inadvisable, to talk about a reality or to interpret its characters if you are not part of the group concerned. Accusations of cultural appropriation will rain. What does a French woman know about Charlemagne, han? The freedom of creation is suspect if it is not confined to its own group of belonging, let’s create in silo! In this sense, we are experiencing a dearth of discussion and confrontational encounters, the most fruitful …

But let’s be reassured: the shortage will not hit the COVID-19 vaccine. In any case, not here. Pharmaceutical companies will know how to adapt RNA vaccines to the Omicron mutant. On the other hand, the poor or outlying countries will continue to be under-vaccinated without causing any problems of conscience in the West. There is a dearth of empathy and global vision here. However, if our vaccine comfort prevents us from seeing what is happening elsewhere, the pandemic will come back again and again knocking on our doors with precisely mutant variants. Abundance and false security here, vaccine shortage there: a global problem.

Shortage is the word of the year. It hits hard on the shelves of grocery stores, in the warehouses of large companies, even in our heads. It is the quantifiable expression of lack. And lack is the word – and evil – of the time. Bad times, which will last a long time. Let’s stock up.