Sobriety Cannot Be a Project of Society. The Voracity of Economy of the Life Must Be.
Let's eliminate what needs to be eliminated, and be voracious about what needs to be kept.
Since the beginning of time, those who run states, churches, armies, and companies, have tried to choose a word that could serve as a simple watchword, to train their followers, their soldiers, their subjects, and their employees. They have spoken of salvation, homeland, profit, purchasing power, employment, and growth.
More recently, we have started to talk about sustainable development, green economy, and many other things. And now a new word, coming from nowhere, is insinuating itself in political debates, in companies, in administrations, and the media: “sobriety”.
And just as for decades executives, civil servants and consultants have been commissioned to draw up plans to improve profit, growth, employment, or sustainability, now everyone is being asked to implement “sobriety” plans.
It is understandable that with the Ukrainian crisis and the cutting off of gas and oil supplies to the European Union by Russia, it is necessary to reduce consumption; and, out of modesty, we call “sobriety” what is announced as rationing. For some, once this crisis is over, we can put an end to this episode. For others, on the contrary, it will be necessary to maintain this rationing, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Finally, for others, sobriety is justified in the long term differently, because it refers, in all cultures, to mortification, sacrifice, purification, redemption, and the search for paradise.
Today's sobriety refers to the very ancient and universal idea of redemption. It is almost everywhere based on fasting, voluntary deprivation, and the refusal of all excess. It is everywhere a positive concept. It is a welcome, unifying, economic, ecological, and ideological concept. On the contrary, in all languages, the opposite of sobriety is always a pejorative word: intemperance, voracity, gluttony.
And yet, we cannot, we must not reduce a project of society, nor even the economic project of a country, a company, or a person, to the ambition to do less, to consume less, to have less. We cannot be satisfied with a global decrease, of which sobriety is another name. From every point of view, to set sobriety as the ultimate ambition is a dangerous ambition:
From an economic point of view, to be satisfied with reducing energy consumption, through some form of rationing, is to fail to see that the most effective way to consume less energy is through lifestyle changes and technical progress: for example, we must not only use fewer private planes; we must above all travel less and develop electric and hydrogen planes.
From a social point of view, it is obscene to ask those who have nothing, or not much, to be sober, while those who have everything do not feel concerned.
From a political point of view, it is not enough to set the ambition of consuming and producing less of what pollutes. A political project must propose much more if it wants to create the conditions for a consensus, for legitimacy.
We cannot be satisfied with advocating sacrifice and mortification and making sobriety a ruse of submission. All in all, if we stick to a sobriety project, as we see it being announced at the moment, we can only enter into an economically, socially, and politically suicidal dynamic.
Final Thoughts
A good solution would be to be much more than “sober” in the harmful fields. For example, we should not set ourselves the goal of consuming less gas. We must do everything possible to stop consuming gas at all. Nor should we set ourselves the goal of consuming fewer artificial sugars. You should not consume anymore.
More generally, it is not by consuming less poison that we avoid poisoning. It is by not consuming anymore.
On the other hand, we must not be sober when it comes to producing and consuming the goods of the life economy, i.e. the goods and services of health, education, culture, agriculture and healthy food, democracy, research, the digital economy, hospitality, support for the weakest, and everything that makes all this possible (finance, security, the press, democracy).
Forget about sobriety. We must seek the voracity of economy of the life.
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Methinks you are reinventing the wheel. Sister Marcella taught all of her students for 40 years exactly what you are describing. They are called the Seven Deadly Sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. Attempting to reformulate this rather ancient advice for the Woken is a waste of time. Far better they experience the paddle of a Sister Marcella for not paying attention to a very important lesson that will govern one's life.