Tribune. The recent protests against compulsory vaccination and other restrictive measures have shown some amazing things. I am not talking about the amazement that one could feel in front of these people who wore a yellow star, probably too stupid to understand their ignominy.
I would rather be interested in those who marched with crosses of Lorraine, emblem of the Resistance, while it could rather be reactance, psychological defense mechanism implemented by an individual when he believes that his freedom is taken away or threatened, described by Jack Brehm in 1966.
Resistance? At the instigation of General de Gaulle, it was born from a sublime impulse of life aimed at ensuring the protection of freedoms, of our freedoms, in a collective and altruistic enthusiasm which has led many heroes, known or unknown, to the supreme sacrifice.
As we were far from the resistance of those who today demonstrate against vaccination or restrictions, without understanding that they are driven by a desire on the contrary to selfishly ensure their only individual freedom, with the risk that it prolongs the epidemic with its deaths. Does this desire deserve a cross of Lorraine?
Freedom is in essence plural
Reactance: Jack Brehm (1928-2009) had described the concept in relation to children. Reactance is usual with them; it is that they discover the world which surrounds them, which risks taking away their property and imposing limits on their omnipotence. Do not touch this glass and here they are touching it; give me your doll and it’s screaming. Which parents have not seen in their children this reactance, an expression of the subsequent development of their autonomy?
But, then, would not reactance in this case be a mark of adult infantilism, who, by the way, spend their time complaining about being infantilized? Freedom, darling freedom, defend yourself, yes! But freedom cannot be an individual concept: freedom is essentially plural.
I cannot be free if the other is not free and, above all, if my freedom infringes his freedom: I am free with you, not against you and we understand the seriousness of the “vaccine fracture” to which we are attending today. Plural freedom: perhaps this is the deep meaning of the definition of ethics given by Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005): we truly enter into ethics when, to the self-affirmation of freedom, is added the will that the freedom of the other be. I want that your freedom either.