2023-04-23 21:00:00
EDITORIAL – In my editorial of April 11, 2023 (“The balance of power and the strength of the relationship to others”), I indicated that I wanted to come back to this specific subject: do you have to obey everything ?
Indeed, nowadays, there are more and more situations in which workers find themselves faced with this alternative: to decide in their soul and conscience to follow or not to follow illegal instructions – or at the very least questionable – given by their hierarchy. A difficult choice.
Consider this scene from film Outbreak : actor Dustin Hoffman, who plays a military doctor, tries to convince an army pilot not to drop a bomb on a small town in California, contaminated by a terrible virus. At the last moment, the pilot turns around, breaking orders.
All things considered, let’s compare this to another example, that of maintaining order in France since the Covid crisis. Let us remember, at the time, a television presenter named Emmanuel Lechypre belched out a crazy idea: “supervised by two gendarmes”recalcitrants to the anti-Covid-19 vaccine must be forced to take the injection.
If this real medical and scientific misinterpretation was fortunately not carried out under the injunction of the excited of BFMTV, the use of brutal force was however illustrated in other forms. From 2020, some police and gendarmes fell into overzealousness during checks on health passes (another medical and scientific misinterpretation). And the only consequences here were ridiculous fines against walkers on the beaches…
The determination to enforce political measures that are as coercive as they are ineffective in terms of health has led to the suspension of caregivers, forced the experimental and unqualified vaccination of young populations who had no need for it, but also made it possible to locking up people for weeks, abandoned to idleness and depression.
By following inappropriate, even inept instructions, violence arises as a disastrous consequence. Thus, in the context of the recent mobilizations against the pension reform project, the same pattern has been reproduced. Even following an order to engage peaceful protesters who pose no threat to public safety, no member of law enforcement should indulge in humiliating, molesting or beating anyone.
Remember that we should in no way generalize these slippages which are sometimes filmed by onlookers’ mobile phones before creating the buzz. These facts are those of a handful of individuals who do not honor their functions, within the police or the gendarmes.
But there again appears the fact of a disorderly use of force in the service of a certain vision of politics: the one that wishes to inspire fear by dispatching orders taken at face value by a few thugs, instead of the will to play appeasement, dialogue.
Why not prefer nice gestures on both sides? You sometimes see other videos in which law enforcement, for whatever reason, removes their helmets. Isn’t this a way of showing more respect and moderation in the exercise of the functions of maintaining security? To show the absence of fear between citizens who simply wish for some to speak their mind and for others to do their job?
What prevents this virtuous pattern from developing is perhaps related to the lack of media coverage of a certain awareness, about what the idea of democracy really means. As a citizen, how can we imagine that no one wishes to share the fate of the other? That no one can understand what a suspended caregiver can feel deprived of all his resources? Or a peaceful demonstrator who receives a de-encirclement grenade on the head for no reason. Or that of an employee exercising a profession with difficulty who learns that he will have to work until the age of 64 without rational economic justification.
This kind of awareness through empathy could launch a new trend, that of questioning certain political decision-making and the evaluation of administrative orders that results from it. More and more players in society want to think about it and express it publicly, beyond the duty of reserve or the confidentiality of their professions. Some become whistleblowers. Asking questions is already informing.
In the field of journalism, which has been very popular lately, a few reversals of clothes… sorry, a few realizations appear. Some are careful to fill their gaps in data and analysis. So much the better. In order not to obey stupidly, one must also be well informed. And let citizens inform themselves freely. This allows for great insights.
#Consciousness #instructions #FranceEvening