Revenge of the elementary particles
Karst S. was driving the car which drove into the crowd gathered in Apeldoorn (central Netherlands) on Thursday with the aim, admitted to the police just after the incident, of reaching the royal family, leaving 7 dead and eleven injured. . Aboard a black car, the man forced two roadblocks, then drove into the crowd to reach the convoy of the royal household, which was parading in an open-top bus. He had crashed into the base of a monument a few meters from the bus, under the eyes of Queen Beatrix, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and his wife Maxima. (…) For a few hours, this criminal act, which caused the death of seven people, was perceived as a deliberate attack against the monarchy. Our northern neighbors were celebrating their Queen. A cement. A symbol. But as information filtered out, it became clear that this sinister event was more a reflection of dark despair. A 38-year-old security guard lost his job. Finds himself unable to pay his rent – 580 euros. he lives alone, too. It would be the banal story of unease, the terrible tale of sudden madness. Here we are. The financial and economic crisis we are going through, with its procession of bad news and broken destinies, is akin to a war. It crushes lives. It unsettles fragile souls. There is indeed cause for despair. Unless we reverse the settings. Despair and gloom reveal the path to changing the world. Such unbearable images must generate more than revolt: the conviction that this world must change, that united values must see the light of day again. (Le Soir 02/04/2009)
Several recent cases, in the United States, Germany, Belgium, and now the Netherlands, highlight the harsh reality of a crisis that is not over. Unemployment will increase. A “Japanese-style” scenario is not excluded, with an economy floundering for a decade.
But the economic crisis is only one indicator here. What these events remind us, beyond economic precariousness, is the fragility of social bonds. As is often the case, these acts of violence are perpetrated by a lonely and reserved man, whose pain cannot be shared with anyone. There is no outlet for his suffering: no place of expression, no shared values, no social support, no person available to put them into perspective and give them meaning. The man is often tidy, well-intentioned and rather structured. Nothing is visible in his external behavior. He plays the game of the system, but the latter does not return the favor. State power talks about everything except the essentials. He listens to all demands, except those of these helpless atoms.
From then on, the only possible mode of expression of unease becomes violence, directed towards “the others”, so indifferent and egocentric, on a campus, in a nursery or in a school – incarnations, perhaps, of social integration and family happiness. Or again, it strikes those who, during a parade or a ceremony, embody an established order which fails in its duties. In its madness, this ultimate proof of existence has its dignity.
The existence of “social protection systems” will not alleviate such a phenomenon. In fact, these systems are exclusively economical. They just redistribute monetary resources. However, some research, around the interesting hypothesis of “crowding out”, suggests that, far from strengthening or preserving social bonds, they actually accelerate their expiration. There is, in reality, no “social protection”. For the well-being of the population to increase again, and for this type of violence to disappear, it is necessary to link individual energies together by creating spaces for speech and sharing, and to renounce the individualist values disseminated by the current power.
