In no man's land

In nature, there are natural brakes limiting an animal's violence toward its fellows — the cessation of aggression as soon as the loser submits, for example. Our philosophy has chosen to use the idea of the "instinct for good" to describe this mechanism, which we believe to be instinctive. This original instinct we undoubtedly possessed at the origin of our species, but millennia of culture have progressively made it disappear from the human mind, replaced by learned values: awareness of others, empathy, morality, ethics and so on. Our species is situated somewhere between the remaining remnants of this instinct for good and the "well-assimilated learned morality" that will be our future.

With the moral instinct gone, education becomes paramount. If one does not fill the human being with human ethics and affective capacity (moral and legislative education, sensitivity, consciousness and respect for others), their actions can sink into cruelty — in other words, they can exceed in violence limits that even animals do not cross.

This, in my view, is where the unique human capacity for barbarism comes from.

Consciousness and the cruel individual

Victim and executioner

What is a cruel individual?

Society is a wonderful machine that allows decent people to be cruel without knowing it. Alain

The cruel individual is above all the victim of a still-imperfect human society.

The human being only becomes human through a particular education dispensed by their species. Isolated from it, they would navigate in a kind of chaos without law. Neither beast nor fully human — human education is therefore our treasure.

On barbarism

When a person is capable of ferocity toward their fellows, it is above all to educational deficiencies that this is owed. The greatest responsibility lies, in my view, with the affective and pedagogical failures suffered in childhood. This yoke placed by our educational deficiencies on our adult behaviour shows the theoretical irresponsibility of the transgressor — for we cannot be held responsible for deficiencies and mistreatment suffered in childhood. Humanity, charged with the affective balance and the education in love of others for the one who commits barbaric acts, has failed in its task.

The responsibilities of human society.

The cruel act emerges when it encounters no zone of sensitivity, empathy or morality — in short, of education in the great human values. These zones have simply not been sufficiently elaborated by the society charged with its humanisation. It is the elected representatives who are the great decision-makers regarding the means injected into education, care and monitoring — to unmask, compensate and treat the educational and affective deficiencies that a child is undergoing.

The responsibility of political leaders

In a democracy, violence increases when the politician neglects the fragile part of their people — when they privilege the powerful and forget disadvantaged areas, when they despise the actors charged with compensating for educational failures (teachers, social services, value creators and so on).

The politician must ensure that everyone benefits from a benevolent and humane education. When the family environment is incapable of providing it, the responsibility of the politician is to compensate.

For several decades, ultra-liberalism has been forgetting ever larger swathes of the world's population. The repercussions have not been long in coming. An epidemic of violence has spread in zones deprived of social fabric. The educational gap between the privileged and the disadvantaged has widened considerably. Millions of individuals find themselves projected into society with enormous educational, moral and sensitive deficiencies — thrown into the world without having been able to build sufficient consciousness, empathy and love of justice. Only these high human values are capable of mastering the power of an individual's transgressive impulses. Mistreated in childhood, deprived of education — it is through a double sentence (imprisonment) that most of these human beings are compelled to act out their acts.

Year 2001