By: Albert Bergeron Gravel

The naivety of the neophyte

We are not telling you anything new by articulating that secularism was introduced to Quebec by the Quiet Revolution. However, this secularism, everywhere in the West, is associated with a rationalization of the governance structure. This rationalization
stemming from a secular society leads us into two opposing currents.

On the one hand, we are aiming for a meritocracy of power by accepting that citizens, ultimately, through their vote, choose the leaders. This meritocracy is rational in that we have stopped accepting that some humans are divine beings.

On the other hand, this rationalization leads us to reject all forms of suffering. While, in the Christian tradition, human suffering was going to be absolved by the afterworld, in this quest for rationalization, we rejected the idea of reaching a better world, after suffering
of human life.

In this new intellectual paradigm, the ills of each individual become societal issues for the state. No longer able to justify the sufferings of human life in a religious conception, we shift the blame to the rational state and the latter must find solutions or change its government.

The absence of evils is no longer a means to human happiness, but an end in itself. The achievement of a suffering-free society is now the compass of our social ethics. We call this process “social progress.”

SOCIAL PROGRESS

Social progress necessarily refers to a linear chronological conception in that past generations are, in our opinion, more backward than ours. In other words, we believe that we are smarter, probably because of technological tools , than our ancestors, and we believe that we have the keys to ethics. In the same logic, we are constantly progressing towards the absolution of human suffering as an end in itself.

ANACYCLOSE

Our ancestors in ancient Rome believed that society operated in a cyclical universe. The Romans saw themselves in a temporal continuity of governance. In this cyclical continuity, the idea of social progress is absent. It would be doubtful to use the term progress in the contemporary sense to speak of progress from democracy to monarchy.

CIVIL LAW

We note that civil law in Quebec is a victim of our conception of social progress and the absence of human suffering. We believe, when we suffer a civil injury, that the state has an obligation to us to implement our civil compensation. We believe that the state must pay our legal fees . We believe that the state must build more palaces in order to facilitate access to justice. We believe that the state is the solution to our ills.

We note that Quebec society associates civil justice with social progress, without taking into account that the same rules existed, to a certain extent, two millennia ago in Europe. And these rules of justice are part of a logic. These rules are not aimed at absolving societal ills, but rather at providing a framework that allows citizens to solve their problems. It is only when citizens cannot agree that the state is called upon. At that time, the state did not make decisions on "social progress". The State makes legal decisions .

THE ILLS OF THE PLANET

Keep in mind that approximately 250,000 people lost their lives in
armed conflicts on the planet in 2025.
Is it appropriate to speak of chronological and linear progress?

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