Against the Robots

“We understand absolutely nothing about modern civilization if we don’t first admit that it is a universal conspiracy against all forms of inner life,” wrote Georges Bernanos in 1946 in his seminal work, “France Against the Robots.” The phrase has been repeated so often that it has become a mantra. Eighty years after the book’s publication, it has lost none of its relevance. It challenges our way of life, because while we see the various forms of inner life receding, overwhelmed by technoscience that arrogates all rights to all life, it proves difficult to know what drives this process and makes it inevitable. So? Can we still take refuge in inner life, rebel against this world that loves nothing but externality and its attendant emotions pushed to their extreme, and that distorts lives to make them all similar and ghostly?.

These days, life is unraveling into emotions. They are all that matters. Emotions dominate the world. We must let them unfold, wait for them, carry them, understand them, make them our own, respect them, and give them free rein. We live in the reign of emotion, which imposes itself as the only truth of a human being. Experts, so omnipresent these days, encourage us to go in this direction. "It's good for you! You must break free from these chains! You must find calm amidst the storms that agitate you, let your emotions express themselves..." It's common these days to see only the symptoms without ever making the right diagnoses. This touches on a characteristic of exhausted societies, weary of themselves, which will never know how to reform, which no longer know how to question themselves. That would take them much too far. They lower the bar because they lack courage. Omens enlightened us in this direction; we had to adapt: ​​the saints no longer existed! Had they ever truly existed? People devoted to values, educated people, honest people (the mere mention of whom makes the bourgeois-bohemian crowd smile ⁾ also sinned. They pounced on the corpse of the honest man. They had found some who weren't honest, and so they concluded that honesty was worthless since one could no longer be honest, or at least be less so, and also that this example could only lead people astray. Exemplary behavior, to the pillory! For all these reasons, it was decided that the dictates of education and propriety had to be rejected… This paved the way for indifference, individualism, and communitarianism… The schoolteacher of the 1970s knew this: in their class, if there was a disruptive student, they had to be contained, because they influenced the others. What we see as children shapes us. We all know people who impressed us when we were young. Because they dared more than we did, because they spoke louder, being around them gave us a feeling of freedom. We let ourselves be guided by our emotions, which seemed to us the most powerful indicators of our inner selves, and we endured a kind of addiction to these people who dazzled us, who allowed themselves what we couldn't imagine possible… Bad example contaminates the herd. What we see creates us. Claudel spoke of "the listening eye." All the senses are on high alert in a world that gives them free rein. Our senses desperately seek meaning! Our faith crumbles, our world, our universe, becomes mired. We begin to believe in the impossible. We persist in error, we continue a kind of romanticism, when emotions stifle the soul and souls cry out their solitude in a deafening silence.

What did Georges Bernanos foresee when he wrote his prophetic essay and that terrible sentence accusing the modern world of conspiring to eradicate inner life? What did the writer mean by "inner life"? Silence, without a doubt. Freedom, his totem, too. Everything that stands in opposition to the often pointless clamor of the surrounding world. Bernanos evokes an intimate and precious world where nature and culture refine and sharpen the singularity of each person. It is not a question of proscribing emotions, which open a door to the soul, and depriving ourselves of them would deprive us of a part of our humanity. In the past, education taught us to filter our emotions and discover those that were worthwhile, those that would strengthen the soul and allow it to encounter other souls. Everything resided there: knowing oneself in order to better know others. “Thus, civility contains three kinds of elements that you have not failed to distinguish: conventions to be known and respected solely in the name of custom; psychological conventions based on our natural feelings and our relationships; and finally, moral virtues that permeate etiquette and give it its highest meaning,” wrote Reverend Father Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges in 1934. ^He added that a “purely formalistic” civility proved to be of no interest: “True civility is something else entirely; it is based on morality, and, in a civilization like ours, which stems from the Gospel, it is based on Christian morality.” This precisely outlined the profound objective of education: to transmit and instill a love for what is transmitted. Father Sertillanges continued, with the aim of once again uniting heaven and earth: “A true saint cannot fail to be polite, because he is virtuous and wise; Because he has a sense of others and self-respect. The supernatural, grafting itself onto nature, would have it perfect. It itself perfects it.” All this morality, a science of discernment and will, set an infinite ideal for young people by defining the path to follow. Authority presided here ^{Rudyard Kipling} ’s poem offered a lyrical version of this. A science that did not proclaim itself as such, that used emotions as a means and not as an end in order to access the soul and fortify it each day of a life, the only true stake. Our world has changed so much. But did Bernanos foresee that this modern civilization, so aptly defined, would no longer have much to do with civilization? When it renounced transmission and began to kill inner life in its infancy. This civilization questioned itself, it doubted: what did it still want to say after two world wars? If moral values ​​hadn't protected us from acting like animals, who would protect us? We should have thought differently, realized that war had always existed, that it arose from people who lacked or distorted moral values, and finally, that our moral values ​​had allowed us to survive such hell. So our education, our civility, our moral values ​​didn't protect us from hardship and infamy? Because, even then!, we dreamed of a world without hardship and infamy! At the end of the 20th century, a French singer belted out, "For pleasure!" wanting to sweep the crowd along with him! Pleasure took center stage and, beneath its angelic veneer, erased everything that existed. Thus, the reign of relativism began. Everything was worth everything, since what we had always been sold as the absolute good was failing. Good and evil intertwined in a frenzied dance. Moral virtues elevated the soul, while pleasure stifled values, discouraged them, blurred boundaries, and ultimately prevented growth. Forgetting the purpose of things glorifies the origin of the loss of meaning. Without good and evil, there is this delicious feeling that there are no more prohibitions, that everything is permitted, that we are like gods, free. This feeling of freedom that is not freedom, but that intoxicates, that intoxicates… This feeling of freedom that is in fact only power, a residue of power. Pleasure-king imposed its law, its justice, its mimicry… Little by little, it transformed each person into everyone without anyone noticing. Under the pretext of allowing everyone to live their own life, it forced us to become an undifferentiated mass. Under the pretext of eliminating those old trappings that stifled our development, we created dazzling and useless novelties. A complete inversion of values. Civilization allowed us to fulfill ourselves by obeying common rules and a shared culture; the new civilization inaugurated a new way of life where good and evil were no longer defined a priori and no longer expressed the truth of an action. Georges Bernanos hadn't seen this civilizational vertigo looming on the horizon, but, as often happened, his exceptional intuition compelled him to denounce the loss of inner life, which attacked and offended him, which could prove fatal. Because the disappearance of a bit of humanity bodes ill. The Catholic sees the world from a single perspective. Through his intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, he perceives God's ambition for him. This unique connection gives him the legitimacy to grasp the world and take possession of it. The power that truth bestows is embodied in the one who claims it.

Education, good manners, elegance (which had nothing to do with the cost of clothing), and care for one's surroundings constituted the qualities one found in a Frenchman not so long ago, a few decades at most. As Father Sertillanges said, it was a matter of "building" men capable of embodying Christian moral values. These values, or moral virtues, persisted long after the great anti-Catholic movements that struck the country. Even without God, these moral virtues grew in the Catholic soil and could not be separated from it. But like a headless chicken, they now ran around aimlessly and in every direction. Until then, what went astray was addressed through tradition and empiricism; it was decided that only novelty brought improvement. Progress, that great contemporary myth, found here an unexpected and inalienable source of fuel. A perpetual and tireless novelty, driven by advertising, for masses of individuals all desiring the same thing or one of its variations. The great progress, dreamed of by socialists and capitalists alike, found the alpha and omega of its project in the most absurd consumerism! By losing moral values, one lost the soul, for it was no longer cherished, it was avoided, it was even stopped talking about; it withered and gave no further sign of life. And since everyone acted the same way, the habit took hold of thinking it was good to act this way. Individualism led to unbridled mimicry. Moral values ​​compelled everyone to understand, appreciate, and adapt to one another; we stepped on the toes of our elders, which forced us to humble ourselves. And in this lineage, each person found their place by distinguishing themselves, which stemmed from a sense of rootedness. Now, we think we are "inventing" our lives. Everything is about novelty, or at least what we label as such, knowing that there aren't many truly new ideas on earth, rather new vehicles for old ones. The soul continues to be ignored, as does the singularity that represents its transmission belt. Social networks impose rules more restrictive than the old moral virtues, and everyone rushes to adopt them because they are new and their constant renewal makes them ever more attractive. Individualism spreads codes and attitudes that are not based on any truth, but which propagate at the speed of light and find their truth in the number of their followers, and once again, we don't follow them for their truth, but to belong to a community. This behavior is becoming commonplace; Generation Z cannot tolerate the slightest criticism, only amends itself if it chooses to, gets worked up over the smallest things, and has made procrastination an art form. Thus, complaining is necessary to feel valued. Narcissism casts a new veil over reality. The victim replaces the hero, a product of patriarchy. It is increasingly forbidden to forbid. Many saints would be considered tormentors today because they forced people to go where they themselves refused to go. So much for saints! Bertrand Vergely, the orthodox philosopher, defines this trauma: "This generation needs to rely on fundamentals, but those fundamentals have not been respected. The foundations upon which they rely are unclear, and this generates fear."

It's not difficult to understand that mimicry destroys freedom by replacing free will with the whims of influencers whose independence remains to be seen. Without freedom, there will soon be no more love. It's already disappearing. It can still be heard on the lips of men and women, but it no longer vibrates, it no longer sparkles, it flattens, it shrinks… Like many words used by this modern civilization, it will even end up meaning the opposite of what people have given it for centuries. The control of emotions will become the key to all politics, replacing the common good. Modern civilization will proceed as it has long known how: it will push people to express their emotions, to reveal themselves, in order to constrain and damage them. Emotions will be controlled by defining what is worthy of desire. Consumerist desires are already controlled by creating useless or futile objects. The uprooted will swallow whatever is offered to them, since no traditional culture will challenge their tastes anymore. This society, which constantly talks about diversity, watches without reacting as nearly half the world's spoken languages ​​disappear, and hears the French spoken today in schoolyards and even universities sound more like gibberish than a native language. It doesn't care; it uses words as advertising tools, one word for another, one word for any other. Words, like everything else, must become ever newer. Nothing is fixed. Everything is fluid. There's no longer time to get used to things, much less to put down roots, because speed and novelty reign supreme. Father Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, whom some consider one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century, viewed moral virtues as stable and habitual dispositions that guide people toward good in their daily actions. They enhanced human faculties, enabling them to act in accordance with reason enlightened by faith. These virtues—prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance—through their practice, the discipline they impose, and the joy they offer in return, satisfied the soul, which was strengthened, and provided guidance in life's trials. For the Dominican, moral virtues could only be conceived as supported by the theological virtues. God's help in adversity and the gratitude offered to Him in the euphoria of times of joy rest upon these moral virtues, which are themselves grounded in the theological virtues.

The true death of the soul occurs when we live on the surface of ourselves. A fool or a poor person laden with moral values ​​is neither a fool nor poor ⁵ </sup> Abbé Hamon, parish priest of Saint-Sulpice in the 19th century, described two kinds of moral storms: “These storms sometimes come from without, sometimes from within. Storms from without: these are the affairs that preoccupy us, the setbacks that overwhelm us, the bad examples that shake us, the contradiction of languages, the clash of wills and characters, and difficulties of all kinds. Storms from within: these are the passions, pride, lust, and avarice, which destroy souls without their even realizing it; the senses that revolt, the desires that torment us, the imagination that runs wild, the mind that dissipates in useless thoughts, chimerical fears, or vain hopes.” Learning to delve into one's deepest desires requires relentless practice, which inevitably leads to mistakes, but the experience gained will console one for failure and allow one to recover. In a world vibrating to the rhythm of the addictions it constantly creates, a world that uses virtues to invert them, that changes the meaning of words so that they are emptied of their substance, it is important to remain "awake" (not to be confused with woke deviance, further proof of what Chesterton called Christian virtues gone mad). We hold the door to our soul, which we open or close according to our free will. “What is it that creates this greed and this powerlessness within us, if not that there was once in humankind a true happiness, of which now only the empty mark and trace remain, and which we try in vain to fill with everything around us, seeking in absent things the help we cannot obtain from present ones, but which are all incapable of providing it, because this infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, by God himself ^. ” This infinite space is within us, and we must venture into it. What is the use of observing the universe if we never savor our inner life? Therein lies the place where we truly know ourselves ^. No one can forget it once they have been there. It is our duty to reveal this infinity so that it may germinate in everyone. We must no longer seek outside what resides within. If we must live, it must be as rebels, for we must always hold this world at bay, a world that defies our inner life with its taste for noise and vulgarity. To prevent Bernanos's fear from being realized, the need to rediscover moral virtues is paramount. So that we no longer merely skim the surface of our lives.