06 Nov This immoderation attracts us but also destroys us (PASCAL BRUCKNER)
For the past half-century we have been pursuing, in the domain of manners and morals, a strange adventure: that of an emancipation that both liberates and oppresses us.
Many taboos have fallen, but on their ruins new injunctions have proliferated. These injunctions are different in that they no longer prohibit but exhort and demand the maximum: we have to enjoy more, love more, earn more, consume more, speculate more, live more and without pause.
In all these domains, a lack of moderation prevails over the logic of profit peculiar to the mercantile system.
Everywhere, doctrinaire proponents of a standardized fever pitch are dominant.
A strange misadventure for our generation, which is infatuated with the romantic and with justice, but is now noticing, rather late, that its revolutionary mottos – passion for life, intensity, and ecstasy – have become advertising slogans and hedonism has become the last stage of capitalism.
What needs to be invented today is a non-commercial hedonism that includes surprise, balance, and level-headedness, and that is first of all an art of living with others and not an art of self-enjoyment.
We are constantly called upon not to be satisfied with what we feel, to move beyond it.
This immoderation attracts us but also destroys us, poisons our slightest joys, and leads us to engage in an insatiable quest. Presently, resisting these mirages must be our wisdom.
A certain kind of unbridled liberation is self-contradictory in its principle, and creates the setting for its own defeat if it is not reined in by a sense of limits.
In ages of moral censorship, the right to caprice has to be defended, and in ages of permissiveness the principle of kindness.
Since society has ceased to constrain us but persists in conditioning us, it is up to each individual to impose rules on himself. In this area, our best weapons are indulgence and delicacy: let us pardon each other our respective weaknesses, and avoid wounding those whom we cherish.
Let us thank the people we love for existing, and for accepting us as we are. That is what we call the sweetness of life.
Has Marriage for Love Failed
Pascal Bruckner
