From benevolence to massacre, the temptation of violence

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EDITORIAL. To understand why a peaceful and prosperous society paradoxically aspires to chaos, one must read “The Pangbourne Massacre”., of JG Ballard.

By Peggy Sastre

IContemporary existence, and all the more so in the most developed countries, seems condemned to an aporia. On the one hand, on the scale of human history, we have never lived in such prosperous, healthy and peaceful societies. On the other hand, in living memory, it is as if we had never been so close to chaos. And France seems particularly affected, as evidenced by the endless series of eruptions of violence observed in the current protest movement against the pension reform.

Perhaps this impression is the result of the famous delusional focus bias – we are French, not Swedish or Belgian or British, and therefore we tend to underestimate the ambient mess of the countries in which we do not live and.. .