Fluctuat …
I don’t think I need to recall you the events of teh week-end. They’re, like, everywhere on the internet, just grab any website and get a deep look into it.
I did not personally suffered from the shootings and the death of those people. Nobody I know was there, and given my current mental state I kind of grew an emotional dampening for this kind of horror. So, except for the checking on people and the continuous anxious flow of data and information coming from the TV of the twitter, I’ve essentially gone through the events unaffected.
I did not join the spontaneous meetings – because I’m still having issues with crowd, and paranoid crowds are the worse – but we did celebrate a birthday in a bar Saturday evening. In one of the – usually – most crowded place I know to drink beers, which was almost empty. Unusual things happened, like strangers checking on strangers while crossing path in deserted streets.
But mostly, I’ve been through it untouched and unaffected. It’s hard for me to feel empathy and emotion those days, and when I’m not keeping them at bay, I’m learning how to induce and emulates them, in a not that much destructive way.
I’m getting good now at detecting thought patterns that lead to anxiety crisis, I’m able to decide with feeling I wanna run in my brain – more or less. It’s an extremely artificial process, but not everyone can manage their emotions as you do. Mine are tsunamis and typhoon destroying any bits of rationality I can have, and it ends up with me boxing walls until I broke my hands or drinking myself to the point I’m unable to feel.
So, I basically removed those feelings, and gone through the motion. Focusing on people helping each other, closing myself into music and drawings, stuff like that, because the anxiety provided by continuous access to information is just the worst thing that could happens to me.
I rode through the horror with detachment and cynism. I was thinking about all the work we – since I’m working at la quadrature du net right now – will have to do on the coming days to check up freedom and civil liberties. But besides that, I was okay.
And then, during the week-end, I’ve seen fluctuat, nec mergitur everywhere. The Paris motto. People were defending their culture of getting out and drink wine, and coffee, partying. People gathered around what has been – in their perception of things – under assault: the parisian way of life (and, as Jon Oliver said it – good luck with that).
And people were already falling into the us VS them trap. Stating that we – the one who party the one who get drunk, the one who don’t respect anything – are the good guys, and that anyone who would disagree with that are the bad guys.
But people’s heart is not at partying. Mine neither.
Mergitur
And then, there was the Congress. For the one not familiar with the French political institution, the Congress is the gathering of the senate and of teh parliament at the request of the President, and it is gathered essentially for Constitutional patch and updates.
Before that, our President established the state of emergency. Basically, it removes the Habbeas Corpus, and allow for administrative house searching – warrantless house search – among other thing (it also grants prefect of police the capacity of establishing a curfew, it stops the rights to gathering, and close most of public space).
And the president then made a discourse before the Congress. He said mostly three things. First that our freedom is partying and going to bars. Everyone seems to forgot that my freedom is also resisting to injunctions, or asking for respect. Second, that we must go in war against Daesh/ISIS. Which means that we need to sit at a table with Poutin and Obama to found a solution for the Syria crisis – meaning they will work with Assad. Third, he asked for a two month prolongation of the state of emergency and a patch of the constitution (especially the articles 16and 36)
And then, everyone in the assistance applauded. And sang the national anthem. In an extremely nationalist way. And no one was there to oppose that. Every single parties represented as basically followed the president talks about the state of emergency.
And everyne was happy, because we were told to party. We had to. To get drunk is now a sign of resistance toward the horror. And no one cares that no ones is actually trying to fix things. No one cares hat the state of emergency will be updated to account for "new technologies", no one said a thing about the Kurd and rebel in Syria that will get the heat from the French alliance with Russia in Syria.
And I could not stand this. I hoped that, for once, things will indeed go in the good way. But nope. Our freedom has been restrained to the freedom to party. And I’m down. Really. The city that could take anything, that’s proud of its stoicism is drowning.
And I’m crying. I’m crying because I’ll get used to it. In the end, you’ll get use to it. That’s the horrific part. I’m used to the military in the street, I’m used to the suspicion toward refugees and foreigners. I’m used to the fact that politician just don’t care. I’m used to be in pain. But I do not see the point of living.
If it’s just for the pain, then why should I? If there’s nothing but more pain incoming, what’s the point to even bother at standing up in the morning? I’m down the lane. I know how it’s induced. I should eat, I should take some rest. But I do not understand the point, I do not see it. The hope is a lie, there’s none.