14. The shipwreck of authority
You undoubtedly know what Victor Hugo makes Jean Valjean say in “Les Misérables”: “A school that one opens, is a prison which one closes”. In spite of our many schools, our prisons overflow, proof that it is not enough to read, in Corneille: “I am Master of myself like the universe”, to reach complete self-control! It would be too beautiful! Victor Hugo confused “teacher” and “monitor”. And in the field which will occupy us today, you will understand the importance of this monitoring in the domain, not in the training of the citizen (plan of social rationality), but in the field of what one calls morals, i.e. the control of oneself, foundation of freedom.
It is certain that it is a great difficulty, for the teacher, to have to comply with the rules, while leaving the child sufficient space for the training of its freedom. Very difficult task, in truth, but who is concerned with it in our education system? Nobody. There does not exist, in our republican society which bellows with any wind “Freedom! Freedom!”, a school of freedom. It would be perhaps high time to seize the problem, the more so as we live in a society where laxism is sensitive on all the levels. One cannot, consequently separate the problem from the authority on the school level from the problem of the authority on the family level (I leave aside here the problem of the authority on the government level: we will examine it next time).
The family, at the base, whether it is liked it or not liked, old model or new model, whatever the way in which it is defined in a particular society, is truly the privileged place of the exercise of the authority. In our society, the crisis of the authority goes hand in hand with the destruction of the family. See antagonisms of the man and woman, the divorces, the cohabitation, single-parent families, etc But the child can only reach freedom within a framework in which it is constrained (the best teacher is that which constrained the young one to be opposed to itself). However, currently, the framework no longer constrains. How many families are permissive? Formerly, wrongly or rightly, it does not matter, one received a slap as soon as one said “I want …” (Now it is over!). This is to say that there was a framework; today, this framework no longer exists. You must see that this destruction of the family has had terrible consequences: there is no more distinction of the roles. In other words, if there is no more of this social organization which supposes, for example the principle (sociological) of incest, it has nothing there any more but males and females! One puts the paedophiles in clink, but what it is necessary to put in the clink is the society that makes possible the existence of paedophilia. There are no more borders, no more limits, no more rules of the game. Here is where we are. It is not enough to say: “Before, it was better! ” Just think! But there were rules. Any rules, in a certain manner, are better than the complete absence of rules.
In reality, what is serious is not the “delinquency of the young people”, it is the parental delinquency. If it was the rules that cracked, it was not only the social ones, i.e. the laws which govern the organization of the group, but still the rules of morals, everything crumbles, and if everything crumbles, it is because the adults spoilt it all, whatever their motivations. Often they do not want to make their young ones suffer, they do not want to prevent them from being “happy” like the others. Without me joining the chorus laudatores temporis acti, in other words “reactionaries”, I can assure you that when I was a child, we all were on the same footing: nobody could say if his parents had money or not, so that between the children, there was no jealousy. We did not even know what a wafer was: we didn’t care about it all. In other words we didn’t compare ourselves with the others. But then we did not have any reason to: we awaited the paydays. At Christmas, when one currently sees people, believers or nonbelievers, who ruin themselves in buying gifts for their children! Spoiling the children is what has destroyed everything. Where did this come from? Adults who were, by interposed children, shamed to see that their child was not on the same “socio-economic level” as the others. At this moment, it is certainly the weakened adult who makes the delinquent teenager. I do not want to say that there is no rabble in the youth. But if our age truly has the responsibility to manufacture this youth, well, we have not only the schools that we deserve, but the youth that we deserve (we let ourselves manufacture them), so that, generally, it is not “the young people” who are vicious, it is us who are good with nothing. We were, not too tolerant, but we wanted to be liked by our children. But you can be certain that they do not love us more! Perhaps they would like us, even more, if we had made them able to dominate themselves.
Under these conditions, which would have to be generalized, it is the School of the parents, but which is a School of authority (on this account, one would need a true School for the parents more than a school for the children). One needs the parents to learn how to constrain their children, by the play of licit and illicit, to develop in them the capacity of self-censorship. In other words it is not a question to make their child follow the moral lessons, but it is a question of forcing it to educate itself morally. How? By giving them the understanding of the interdict: there are unacceptable behaviours (it does not matter which). However today, any child has the impression, since they are legal, it is legitimate. But you know well that there are misdeeds which the law does not condemn and which are absolutely not legitimate from the point of view of self-control. As long as one has not integrated this truth in the children’s education, we will not make the man. Perhaps with the child, we will learn how to speak in a (more or less) distinguished way, to work (perhaps) like a chief, but – good lord – it is necessary to be able to work oneself and to be held accountable to oneself, quite simply because to be a man, is initially to be free with regard to oneself. In other words in the institution and the training whatever they are, which is the most important, it is not this or that subject, it is the discipline. The child can be totally ignorant of the remainder, what is necessary to make him acquire, to be able to become a free man, is the discipline, founded or not. That it is said to him “Lick the ceiling, even if you cannot!” or anything, it acts, at this time to constrain it with a discipline of which it sees as unnecessary (same exemption from payment who characterizes the sporting exploit). As soon as the child is an adult, it will laugh at the memory with you and, if it is not completely stupid, it will be grateful to you to have wanted to constrain it, but like a constrained physiotherapist will constrain you, for your good, to make completely idiotic movements. Here is what should be concern number one of the parents.
Morals thus should be reinvented, and more especially as the problems with which we are confronted with and to which nobody can answer, are not economic nor political problems, they are, “problems of society” – problems which are, most of the time, those of a new morality: drugs, eugenism, euthanasia, cloning, environment, etc So, what is ecology if not displacement in the sociological plan – or scientific – moral problems? One goes on up to speaking about the “animal right”, which is, at the very least, a completely eccentric expression, because nothing indicates, until the opposite has been proved, that the animal can become “subject to rights” (then, as Tocqueville said it, it would be advisable to also grant them the right to vote as well!). However, it will be necessary all the same to take into account these ridiculous formulations, because they are the sign that, during a time such as ours where it was completely obscured, morals reappear in the form of a “return of suppression”. We will not cross there, or we will reinvent morals, or the power will return to the hands of the priests, as we already see in certain countries like Iran, Afghanistan, etc
However, it is not a question of returning to the authoritarianism of olden days: education with freedom is impossible if one confuses virtue with order and discipline. We spoke before about the “virtue of order”, and the “virtue of discipline”. Under these conditions, morally, which happened? The teachers tended to practise taming, quite simply because they wanted peace: they did not seek to train the capacity in the other to control or dominate itself, but they were made its dominators and they tamed it. Stability appeared then like the end of the end of morality: insofar as the orders were carried out, the children were “quiet”, they did not want to infringe on the discipline.
This is more serious than all, insofar as, under these conditions, one kills the initiative. Think of the military discipline of: “I do not want to know!”. At the limit, you will manage to form the “SS”, the same ones as those who, accused in Nuremberg, pled for their defence: “We obeyed orders!”. But there is not only the military order which is concerned: it can be religious order or, of course, school order. However, if there is no education of the initiative, in other words, freedom, how can you make the man? Perhaps you will make ordered, but stupid people (“disciplined brutes”).
You see that the authoritarianism of yesterday was no better than the negligence of today. While passing from the one to the other, we have only changed pathologies; we passed from the neuroses, to what?
I evoked, earlier on, paedophilia, but, actually, there is no difference between a hooligan who stabs his teacher, a paedophile and a banker. What do they have in common? To be at the same time amoral and irresponsible people. How, under these conditions can one judge them? The judges are constantly in the presence of crimes that the Right did not foresee, so much that they no longer know what to do. Hospital or prison? Some say “Prison!” But what good is it, since these people are not improvable, not being affected by the punishment (because to be affected by the punishment requires an understanding of fault, which is denied by their amorality). “Hospital!” say others. Fine, but then what are these people suffering from? The expert psychiatrists, according to the courts, say anything, quite simply because they do not know anything about amorality.
In fact, the amorality results, either from an education to a freedom completely failed, or from a deterioration (undoubtedly genetically programmed) of the impulse, or, still, this amorality results purely and simply from a deficiency (perhaps also genetically programmed) of the acculturation of the impulse. But, in all three cases, this amorality is rather difficult to detect. Take any banker: chances are they will not show any chromosomal characteristic, will not suffer from any mood disorder, that their unconscious does not know a particular torment. They have, generally, only one defect; to be of an appalling normality. Of course! It is very often observed that a patient, in his clinical reality does not show his disorder, but the compensation of this disorder, in other words the self-defence of his disorder. Transpose in a more conceivable medicine: suppose that you have an organic disorder, whatever it is. Your pressure goes up, or your temperature goes up, etc But, for many people, it is an illness “to have a temperature” or “to have high blood pressure”, as they say, to have a hyperthermia or a hypertension. But, most of the time, for a person who has a bad blood circulation, a high pressure is a way for the organization of defending itself and of making blood circulate nevertheless. One should not take for illness what is nothing but normal defence. With regard to the phenomena known as “mental”, it is very similar. In the patient known as “mental”, there is a whole load of compensations of the disorder, i.e. phenomena which are normal in its case. It is, indeed, normal, but “hyper-normal”, monstrously normal, if one can say. In the case of our banker, as in that of all the amoral beings, this compensation results in a hyper-sociability. Then, is our banker pathological? No, but they are not normal however.
But if they are not pathological, what would they do in a hospital? You see the problems which these non-persons in charge and non-culprits can create for Justice! It is not a question for us, obviously to make the choice “Hospital or prison?”. It is simply a question of showing that which is easy to see, in amorality, is not what one may observe. What is given in amorality, very frequently, is the typical compensation of the case, because it is describable, rather than the pathological reality of the same case. In the “case” of our banker, it is true that they are not immoral, insofar as they are not affected by any neurosis nor any psychopathy. You can conclude that they are perfectly amoral. You see that one should not confuse the amorality and immorality. But there is perhaps a symptom which makes it possible to distinguish the immoral being from the amoral person. The amoral, does not show any personal suffering (with the difference to an immoral person). You can be certain that a paedophile does not have any state of heart! SS neither. But if there is demonstration of suffering, is this suffering simulated or not? In other words, is there at the same time a problem with a pervert? I stop here. The questioning could be (almost) infinite, insofar as the “patient” in his clinical reality, is infinitely more complicated than the disease. The disease is much simpler than the patient, because the patient is a complex with all the reactions which its pathology causes. But you understand that famous word: “There are no illnesses, only patients”, it is true in one way, false in another. All depends on what one seeks: do you have therapeutic or nosographic concerns? For therapeutic, the patient is a complex: this patient can have influenza, a psychosis and a corn. But if you conducted nosography, you will distinguish the things. Actually, to favour the patient compared to the disease, or the disease compared to the patient is an error, because both are necessary. Only one is not interested obligatorily in the same thing at the same time.
It remains that, in the case of amorality, there is a whole jumble of processes which it is advisable to clear up. It is not early tomorrow that we’ll manage it. Why? Because everyone makes fun of these pathologies of the “will”. Still one should try to understand why, because one never makes fun of something without a motivation. If one makes fun of something, it is because of the pressures of a system of dominating thought which, generally, hides a certain type of reality, quite simply because it is “disturbing”. Let’s take the business of Outreau, for example. It is very significant that in this connection one spoke only about the dysfunctions of Justice, whilst hiding completely that this “business” resulted simply from projection on certain children of the mythomania of a “good” mother. I do not defend the examining magistrate concerned, but finally, where is the true culprit? And you will find other cases of this sick, educational relationship, without having to look very far, just switch on your television set!
Coming from amorality, taking it into account is doubly disturbing. On the one hand, because our system has created pseudosciences which are used as alibis by the impotent psychiatrists to impose pathologies of the “will”. I want to speak here about characterology or criminology. There is a second reason, much more important which is due to the fact that society, by the means of the family unit and therefore by the means of education, plays, in these disorders, a terribly pathogenic role. It is not that the family is the cause of the disorders, but nevertheless the family is a medium which can favourise them more than others.
And I will conclude by saying to you that the crisis of the family, that of the school, that of the society, is only one and the same crisis: a crisis of the exercise of authority (the art of control), this authority being able to be founded only on the moral level. In the same way, as one should not confuse freedom, which raises morals with its exercise (autonomy) the crisis of authority is the moral slope of a problem which is also sociological: sociologically, it is about a formidable crisis of the paternity, a crisis about which I spoke to you a few years ago.. As I often say to you: all holds together!