A French philosopher, Alain Badiou, recently defined President Sarkozy as a Barbarian: uncultivated, ostentatious, controlling and exhibitionist in a somehow obscene way. But let's face it! What the French President represents, his values and methods are simply the products and the accurate representation of the barbarian world that the Western model has generated: a capitalism which is now out of control, violent, oppressive, ferociously unequal. There is a certain irony in the French motto 'Liberte Egalite Fraternite': from a legal point of view, Equality has probably never been a stronger notion in our modern societies. However what about the social meaning of it, i.e. as the real and concrete definition of equality?
Here we are: business and mass consumption are the main driving forces of our world, a greater value is given to the 'shareholder citizens' rather than the 'employee citizens', globalisation is expanding in an uncontrolled manner, traditional institutions are now too weak to counterbalance the excesses of the economic model (Trade unions, governements, collectivities) and there is no successful alternative social or business model to ours. Our democracies devoted to this overpowering capitalism have become Barbarian.
One will argue that the Barbarian term should really apply only to the countries with no democratic system and based on physical repression and terror. It would be true, though quite subjective: interestingly enough, one of the definitions of the word Barbarian is: 'a member of a people considered by those of another nation or group to have a primitive civilization'. Should the unacceptable violence in other parts of the world prevent us from looking at ours? Can we really accept our Western model and its consequences on every citizens of the world as the only possible type of organisation? Are we not becoming Barbarians just by accepting that the only way to be is from within the existing system?
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Clearly, it's always easier to see the pustulent boil in someone else's face -and theirs is sooo much uglier!
The root of the problem in governments or societies, of course, lies on the individual. Basically, we are all driven by greed and hatred to some level and only EVERYONE makes a constant effort of being conscious of this and does something about it we'll be able to avoid "barbarian societies", which manifest East, West, North and South. The common denominator is always individual responsibility, wherever we are.
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