EDITORIAL – Everything in the universe seems to be governed by a balance of power. The opposition and interaction between natural forces. And alas, it appears that the human community is no exception to the rule.
“No race is superior to another. Since prehistoric times, it has always been the balance of power that decides who is the master and who is the subject.writes Mohammed Moulessehoul, alias Yasmina Khadra, in his novel The African Equation.
It is clear that the leaders of many countries are trying to decide who is the master and who is the subject. For this, they emphasize, for example, security, in order to impose on the population a society whose management is based on the balance of power.
And the same is very often the case within companies, administrations and couples. While subordination, swearing in and differences of sex, status and social levels and others, should not necessarily be synonymous with a balance of power, or even relations of domination or submission by constraint.
In all animal species, the balance of power is intrinsic to community life. But relationship to others is a force that is clearly superior to it, in essence.
For what ? Not only is the relationship with others essential to the survival of the species itself, but it is also essential to the survival of the community, taken as a structure and/or as a mode of functioning.
Because without cohesion, no grouping can be sustainable, nor can it be effective over time. However, true cohesion cannot result from the balance of power. Only mutual trust and respect can give cohesion the substantiality required for a group of individuals to constitute a truly effective entity.
A simple conglomeration of individuals, more or less homogeneous in appearance, but which would in reality be composed of individual entities, sometimes parasitic on each other, cannot in any way constitute a true community living in harmony and symbiosis.
By this I mean that everyone can, provided they respect its habits and customs, duties, limits and prohibitions, take advantage of the advantages offered by the community. Empathy, this ability to feel what others feel, is obviously the basis of the relationship with others.
“Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you” the saying goes. What is basically comparable to the biblical verse ” Love your neighbor as yourself “. An empathy endowed with benevolence that gives this Christian saying the scope of a fundamental principle, a first rule.
Finally, let’s not forget a crucial aspect: the larger a human community is in terms of the number of individuals, the less its members can have direct interactions with each other (from a stronger frequently). But when, within this human community, the relationship with others has a greater place than the balance of power, then no parasitic entity can have control over it.
Hence the obligation, for any despot at heart who wants to be able to lead an entire society, to have a means of coercion, an armed force sufficiently effective and dissuasive to confine its members to submission, through isolation, by creating a break in the social bond and, often, by designating a culprit, a scapegoat.
Political maneuvers which ultimately consist of replacing harmony in the human community with fear: fear of strangers, fear of unemployment, of a shortage, of a virus, fear of the unvaccinated… perpetually nurtured fear of nuclear conflict… The list is sadly endless.
Governing by fear characterizes the idiosyncrasy of leaders who have no real legitimacy and whose main objective is the smooth running of their own professional or political career. They do not care to harm the individual and collective interests of the human community at the center of which they behave, for their own comfort, basically, like parasites.
As soon as leaders impose by force the decisions they take. Their ultimate wish is to substitute the interests of those who placed them in power with their own interests.
Our leaders, however, would be well advised to remember the phrase of John Fitzgerald Kennedy: “Tolerance is not renouncing one’s own convictions, but refusing to oppress or persecute others”.
What if we showed that we are able to find harmony in our community? What if we start by feeling what the people around us are feeling? If we first make a benevolent gesture, a gratuitous gesture towards his neighbor to whom we no longer say hello, towards the one who has lost everything, towards the one who is angry with us for something so futile that no one cares remember?
What if we started with a smile, a moment of listening, a small gesture that costs us little and that can change the life of someone in despair, of someone who has given up and no longer believes in life, who does not hope for more in a better future?
We make no mistake about it, and expect nothing from above for things to change.
It is only through our actions that we can improve our life in community, starting with simple acts of kindness, with a smile, with a hello, with a kind action, with an outstretched hand, with seemingly small things, but which put end to end will be able to restore us the lost harmony.