Ideas worth spreading

Last year Trump was elected in the United States. In France Emmanuel Macron became president. The extreme right wins votes in almost every country. Fifty years after May 1968, a new wind blows through the political landscape. The traditional parties lose. Fifty years ago it was the left wing which protested against the establishment, now it seems to be the turn of the right wing.

However, times have changed. While people had to come in the streets to share their opinion back then, they now have disposal of something bigger: the social media. One minute, a click, and the world knows how it should be. But these media are so widespread no-one listens to it, although it can cause a lot of fuss from time to time. Can the media really change something? Maybe they can. What about #metoo? Nobody who does not know it. It is a sign, a sign it has been enough. The hashtag enables women around the world to unite and to stand up together. What about racism? It is just the same. Without the possibilities of the social media, the mass media in general, would we be as aware of it as we are now?

And yet, don’t we have to protest in the streets if we want the world to change, if we want the politicians to do something? The social media are the best proof of our individualism. We are an egologic society, like Levinas would say. An individual cannot change the world. We need to unite our protests. In 1968 they stood up together, they did take action and the politicians were forced to react. In Belgium, the university of Leuven did become Flemish. Would an online protest have had the same effect?

And yes, some people do protest in the streets nowadays as well. Look at the United States, after thelast school shooting. Look at the strikes of the public transport that shut down the country. If we want the world to change, we need to do something, but still, the question rises if these protests are really a good thing. Don’t we forget the silent majority, the people who just want to live their lives, but who have to suffer from the unrequested protests? It is quite ironic they protested against the Vietnam war, but protests are a form of conflict too. “Make love, not war” was the sentence of the sixties, but where is the love, the harmony, in a world full of conflict? The common people in the sixties were afraid of a war, because of the protests. Protests can escalate.

At least we can say we have some good products of the sixties: the sexual liberation, the acceptance of homosexuality, our awareness of the environment. Yet, I don’t completely agree. The sixties have positively affected our society in certain ways, but there is still a lot to do. The sexual liberation freed the way for the sexual harassment of today. We can even say it was not that different. Male students burst into the rooms of the female students and called it a sexual revolution, but for the female students it was not a liberation. Le deuxième sexe of Simone de Beauvoir is still relevant today and used by feminists all over the world. Every year there is still a lot of violence against homosexuals because they love the wrong people. The shootingin Orlando is an extreme example. In some countries gay people are still sentenced to death.

We must conclude there is still a lot to do, but maybe that is just our fate. The world and therefore society are never “done”. Sartre already said our existence proceeds our essence, but it also applies for the world. We need a constant evolution, we need imagination. In the long history of society, of philosophy, it seems almost everything has already been thought and there is little left to the imagination. In the sixties they looked forward to the future, but in our postmodern society, we ask ourselves if we still have a future. Conflicts everywhere, the upcoming extreme right wing, poverty, the tension between the United States and North Korea, the Rohingyas, refugees who die in their boats, … The twentieth century was not much better: two World Wars, the genocide against the Jews, against the Tutsis in Rwanda and perhaps even another one against the Hutus, the civil war in former Yugoslavia, the victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam, disabled children because of Chernobyl, …

We are marked by the ideas of the sixties, we feel very strongly about liberty, equality, women’s rights. We only miss the spirit. I spill great words on paper, but will I ever put them into practice? I do not think so. I am one of the silent majority, like everyone else. I only have my ideas, but does not everything start with ideas? Without ideas, philosophy would not exist. Socrates did not even write a single word and he is maybe the most famous philosopher of all times. Even if we do not create new ideas, it is our mission to share them. “All power to the imagination” and we can all get “ideas worth spreading”.

Note
I wrote this for the Belgian Philosophy Olympiad in 2018, which celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of May '68. We had to write an essay about its legacy nowadays within two hours, without internet (although we knew the subject before), with a maximum word count of 1000. I got the sixth prize with this essay.