Presence and a sense of reason

Does being right make us more human? This need for certainty, this “external scaffolding” that I call the feeling of reason, obscures our anchored presence and can lead us to dehumanize the other.

The quest for reason and its dead ends

Who wants to be wrong? Who enjoys a form of humiliation felt when someone would prove our thinking was false? How do we maintain the feeling of our dignity in the debate of ideas? Why do interlocutors wish to impose their reason on others? Why in spaces of good conscience, political, ecological, feminist and others, can there sometimes be so much violence inflicted on one another, and towards the outside? Why does this feeling of reason seem consubstantial with one’s presence in the world, with one’s existence? How can we share our ideas while respecting the dignity of others? This is precisely the role of democratic institutions, councils, organizations, the right to speak, which should guarantee plurality of expressions.

External scaffolding against anchored presence

What I call the feeling of reason is a kind of external scaffolding that comes to substitute for presence. Presence is the anchoring in oneself, it is something solid, immovable, unlike the feeling of reason, which is a relationship to a certain knowledge as being the condition of one’s dignity. On the contrary, in presence, one’s own dignity is a feeling intrinsic to one’s existence.

We could compare this to the fable “The Oak and the Reed” by Jean de la Fontaine (1688). Presence is the reed, planted in the ground and supple in the wind, which will not be uprooted by the violence of gusts, while the oak, apparently much more solid and immutable, impressive, centuries-old, could be broken in two by the power of the elements. However, the oak’s roots will remain, because they are deeply anchored in the earth, except in the case of granitic soil where the roots remain on the surface, forming large discs once the trees are uprooted. These trees are like the colossus with feet of clay. This is why I call the feeling of reason a scaffolding: it is external. It can, for a very long time, create an illusion, really make us believe that it is presence, when precisely, it masks the absence of presence. What orientalist thoughts might call the silent observer within, what in the West we would call the little voice, this ourselves slightly offset from the ourselves living its experiences. Our solid and lasting anchoring in our presence depends on this slight offset that accompanies us, this step aside from what we believe to be ourselves.

The dangers of certainty: when good intentions dehumanize

It is this small distanced look at ourselves that enacts our presence as presence, that is to say as being, independent of any contingency, any scaffolding, any reason. I therefore oppose presence and the feeling of reason. And if I do so, it is to point out the immense difficulty in escaping the feeling of reason, which can unfortunately lead to the worst in all good conscience.

This scaffolding brings together and feels good, we can share the feeling of reason with other people to form community, which reassures us because, as we can say, we “share the same values”. But deep down, what we are looking for, psychologically speaking, is to reassure ourselves to strengthen ourselves. But in doing so it is possible that without wanting to, we detach ourselves a little from our presence, which is nevertheless so essential. I am not saying that it is wrong to gather with people who support us, in ideas too. I simply want to point out that this feeling of well-being, of sharing reason, also has its reverse side, which is a form of obscurantism to one’s own presence, masked by personal and collective strength, constructive rationality, which passes itself off as our intrinsic presence, our existence. In reality, and this can last, we are, like the oak, certain of our eternal solidity, but in truth very fragile in the face of adversity, because no longer anchored at all, when precisely, we have the certainty of being so. The feeling of reason is a simulacrum of presence, which passes itself off as presence, but which is not. This can lead to violence, because this feeling of reason, which has become indispensable to our existence, must be absolutely protected, by force if necessary, as if it were ourselves.

We can see people who are a priori the most sincere, with the best intentions, exclude others because of their feeling of reason. We know the expression, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”, it is very accurate. We think we are doing good. We can see for example shows about ecology, equality, democracy, created and defended by left-wing people, certain of the reason they have for wanting to protect the earth and humanity, who will impose their thinking in an absolutely intolerant way on spectators who, if they dared to think differently from what is proposed to them, would immediately be humiliated, stigmatized, and perhaps even excluded, considered as public dangers. I have unfortunately witnessed this type of functioning too often.

This is very serious because the feeling of reason, even with the best intentions, produces, through lack of flexibility, an absence to oneself and to the other, the negation of otherness as an enriching element, the absolute certainty of belief in one’s own reason, which therefore becomes obscurantism. Because without knowing it, we have lost our humanity and our humanism, by removing from the regime of humanity those who do not share the same feeling of reason. We dehumanize them, we judge them as dangerous, and therefore we remain absolutely convinced that we are in the good, that we are in reason, without realizing that in reality we have lost our presence, that we have become absent, to empathy for example.

The Covid crisis, revealing a collective obscurantism

We could see this during the Covid crisis (2020-2022), which is slowly beginning to enter History: these immense violences done by feelings, by emotions, by communication, and even by laws against those who did not share the same feeling of reason as the majority, who were dehumanized and immediately judged as enemies of good, and therefore ostracized, excluded in social terms. Such as for example the unvaccinated healthcare workers of the Covid vaccine (which incidentally was not one), who were not fired from their work, which would have opened their right to receive unemployment benefits, but suspended, without remuneration and having lost their right to collective solidarity, which is nevertheless one of the fundamentals of the social system built by the National Council of Resistance after the Second World War.

They were finally reinstated two years later, without any compensation for the salaries they had lost. It is not easy in the world as it is to live socially for two years without receiving a salary. Not everyone, far from it, is an heir.

I take this example which, I know, is still controversial, perhaps, for some, because we already knew at the time, but today has entered into consensus, the knowledge that these “vaccines” did not protect against transmission of the virus. The vaccine manufacturers had not sought to work on this aspect and political leaders knew it.

The only purpose of this vaccine was the prevention of death in case of morbid evolution of the disease. They could have this effectiveness, but in no case did they prevent transmission, contagion. It is simply that they saved from death some who, without being treated (because this “vaccine” was neither a treatment nor prevention) could have succumbed. It did not prevent being sick with Covid, it prevented death at the end. I take this example because there is this consensus today, so a priori my word, even on this controversial subject, is today, five years later, consensual. We can clearly see here that the feeling of reason, the certainty of good that led to doing the worst in excluding the other out of fear of the other’s dangerousness, was in reality a complete obscurantism, completely unscientific, based on false information constructed, then transmitted by states and media. A part of them acted with real good conscience: they did not at all have the feeling of lying or doing evil, and yet that is what they did. But why? And how is this possible?

Was it out of interest, but whose? Yes, this crisis and this massive sale allowed the fortunes of the richest billionaires on the planet to double in two years, but the citizen, the journalist, the political leader or the mayor of his city did not directly benefit himself from this immense enrichment, unprecedented in the history of the capitalism of the powerful. He had the feeling of reason that had obscured or even canceled his presence, which meant that he could divest people of their status as human beings, consider them as public dangers, people who it is proven today (and already at the time if one looked a little) that they presented no danger to the community. It was therefore already proven at the time, but this information, which would not have served the “cause” of the massive sale of these vaccines, was knowingly masked by these merchants, who always work for their financial interest and never for that of the community, just like pesticide merchants who are absolutely aware of the major dangers they pose to the entire community, but who succeed through active lobbying in making farmers prisoners of this feeling of reason: they absolutely need pesticides, otherwise they do not have the same productivity and therefore find themselves excluded from the competitive capitalist system, perhaps forced to file for bankruptcy of their farms. Thus, farmers find themselves being the first defenders, by feeling of reason, of an agriculture that destroys the earth and health.

The fatal sharing of the feeling of reason

I do not mean by this that there would be great demiurges in power who would manipulate everyone, no, absolutely not. This happens at the level of each actor in their place. For example if we take a large capitalist shareholder, or the boss of Monsanto, there is a feeling of reason there too, based on certain criteria, for example the criteria of the financial profitability needs of shareholders, on which the boss of Monsanto has become dependent. The feeling of reason leads them to share a value, which is the progressive increase of capital benefiting this community. And even small investors, those who buy shares at their bank branch or on internet trading sites, and even who deposit their financial assets in savings accounts, also have the expectation of a percentage of gains each year, this expectation transmitting its logic higher and higher up the financial pyramid. The whole system is supported by the same feeling of reason, a form of “right” to an increase in value by itself, as if by magic, just because capital is deposited. It is this feeling of reason shared by everyone, from the small investor to the big boss to the shareholder, that undermines presence. So what I’m pointing out is not the malevolence of some who would have more power than others, it is rather an unfortunate philosophical posture, which is that of the feeling of reason, as opposed to presence, which in my opinion would save us from many things.