Ah, indignation!

Society should not be a symbol factory

Of all the recuperations, that of an event or a thought by a 'people* under the ideological flag or influence of political diktats is for me the worst. A symbol, a slogan, is the reduction and practical devaluation of the nuances of thought.

It's the advertising that covers our walls, it's the little formula that hits the nail on the head to make it easier to identify with this or that side, it's the mercantile and dangerous snobbery of attaching this or that brand to its own identity. It is the assurance of playing on emotion through its most inconstant and impersonal aspect.

Once they are born and released into the wild, symbols are not killed - at least not easily, they are not eaten, they serve no purpose except to camouflage and weaken the diversity of opinions. It is intellectual and social pollution par excellence. Of course, to live is to pollute, but no, we are not stronger all together under the banner of a logo, a symbol, a colour.

If so, stronger to do what? To say what? That we are opposed to murder in all its forms? No kidding! In that case, why not work seriously to found a truly pacifist society, an everyday society, in which no citizen would admit physical violence, social injustice, abuse and ideological pressure that would be embodied before his or her eyes or at the other end of the world. A society where "all together" is an everyday reality and therefore truly meaningful. To date, human beings have been unable to achieve this. To have a chance of achieving this, if it is truly a goal, we would have to become truly "better". In concrete terms, this would mean: constantly available, even if only by listening, emotionally empathetic, concerned on a daily basis with the well-being of our fellow human beings. But it would not be enough to think all this inside. It would be a matter of acting when necessary, for example in the middle of the street, in transport, right now, when it happens, taking the risk of not being followed in one's action by an immediate entourage of anonymous people; perhaps even becoming the target in turn. Generosity, since that's what it's all about, has to be cultivated and learned, and it's very difficult to progress beyond fine principles. If it comes down to a whole week, a year, a lifetime, to marching in the streets, why not, that's fine, but from there to thinking that by doing so, you're doing something that will have a permanent influence on your own behaviour once you're on your own, with your family, in your daily life... It's far from certain, because the other strength of the symbol is that it clears your name and makes you lazy.

There have always been those who create and those who follow. The National UnionIn all conflict situations, people have been forced or persuaded to join. Some people think they are going there in the name of their own ideas, that is possible. It is up to each person to know the content of what drives him/her.

Emotional impulse?

How long will the indignation in its flamboyant expression last when people start obeying and denying their identity the very next day, against their original feeling, in exchange for an indispensable salary?

The great strength of political animals within parties is that they manage to make people believe that there is a will and sometimes even a reality to the notion ofUnit. It is quite normal that this symbol is at the heart of all political formations without any distinction, as a universal value (the first of these formations being certainly the family, the clan and, well after, the company), since without this notion, it would be impossible for them to be at the head of any group which, without the help of an ideology, would not crystallise by itself. However, other natural groupings exist which do not require their members to think in the same way and do not need a leader or a banner. These are simply called friends which, because of having chosen each other and without propaganda, remains the only potentially democratic social cell in my eyes, where each person remains himself or herself and nevertheless meets with others, exchanges and sometimes on this basis collaborates.

Until the nations, and then the world, form one group of friendsI believe, for my part, that there is a great deal of work to be done on everyone's doorstep concerning fear, tolerance, venality, contempt, intelligence, the debate of ideas... in short, I'm not going to draw you a picture, it's too risky these days... all cultures included, and that it's a full-time job of a lifetime to get down to it. Beyond this beautiful utopia, which, let's be optimistic, may not be a utopia any more one day soon, once humanity is exhausted from having gone to the end of its stupidity and defeated by all the ideologies and artificial concepts, we are forced for the time being to react, each one of us according to what we are, in the face of an emotional gust of wind and terrible events to which, in this country, we are no longer used.

It is not symbols that have been killed in recent days. They are people. What's more, for some of them - I'm talking about the people on the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo, of course, more than the other victims, whose thoughts we know nothing about - people whose work never ceased to amuse themselves by ridiculing all kinds of symbols. If this wasn't obvious enough from their drawings, other cartoonists of the weekly have clearly expressed it in the media recently (see the very enlightening interview with Luz at the bottom of the page). As I said in my first reaction to this horror, I have never been a reader of Charlie Hebdo, just as I have never been a faithful reader of any press, and I'm not going to become one now, that's not the point. On the other hand, apart from being naturally shaken in my gut by the anguish and sadness of such carnage, I am flabbergasted by the way in which the word of those people who are better placed than anyone else to claim that it was never the intention of the editors of Charlie Hebdo to be a national cause is being ignored.

"Everyone looks at us, we have become symbols, just like our drawings. L'Humanité ran the headline "C'est la liberté qu'on assassine" (It's freedom that's being murdered) above a reproduction of my cover on Houellebecq, which, even if it has some substance, is a load of crap about Houellebecq. We put a symbolic burden on our shoulders that does not exist in our drawings and that is a bit beyond us. I'm one of those people who have trouble with that. Luz

"We have a lot of new friends, like the Pope, Queen Elizabeth or Putin: it makes me laugh" Willem

But all the big hearts to turn a deaf ear to the same citizen's impulse, to disrespect the spirit of an iconoclastic magazine and to pay tribute to it in such an ugly and repulsive way.

To seize on the pain of another, even if it affects us, to make a personal argument to halo one's own feelings of fear or indignation, is the most revolting reaction of compassion. I'm not forcing anyone to think this way, but I'm expressing my deepest opinion here. It reminds me totally of the famous "It's for your own good", a great educator's slogan if ever there was one, to deny the singularity and the word of those for whom we know better than they do what to say and what to do. Yuck!

So marching because you're suddenly scared and need a remedy, yes; because you don't know what to think of yourself in the world, yes; because you want to make a gesture towards all the victims, yes (although, in that case, why not do it every day for all the murdered people in the world? - Perhaps that would be a good idea - are some victims more important than others? The answer is inevitably yes, of course, it is human, even for a parent / cf. Sophie's choice).

One last word on this famous symbolism that is so harmful in my eyes. I am convinced that if some religious people, sickly sensitive, manipulated or intimately inhabited, decided to assassinate satirical humorists and with them, the entire editorial staff of a free-thinking newspaper, it is not only because of the relevance of their drawings, however talented they may be. It is also because our society first, our media, reacted to them in a polemical way, seizing on cartoons intended simply to make people laugh or smile as symbols of a political, social and religious debate. It was here, at the time, on television and on our airwaves that there was a great deal of discussion and ideological tearing around an issue that today is supposed to bring everyone together so naturally: the right to freedom of expression.

By making them, not carry beyond their words, but deviate the real approach of its authors, they have erected children's jokes (and I am well placed in my own way to claim such a posture as being very serious) into political banners.

But the politics of this kind of artistic approach, which is certainly powerful if you want to see it, lies in the very fact that it refuses to be a symbol of anything. It is and must remain only a drawing with all its force and impact. Artistic creations, at least good ones, are never symbols and should not be used as such. There should be a law against this. Since it is forbidden to hijack the symbols of the nation (flag...), it should, in return, be forbidden to use the power of art as a social symbol.

To make a symbol of an artist's work is certainly to misunderstand it, if not to deny it voluntarily (cf. Sade), to make it a target for fools and a shameful shield behind which to shelter oneself if one does not have one's own ideas. It also means risking having the artist killed for what he does not defend, at least not in this way. It is also to ensure that he is killed a second time, by taking care to immortalise him and freeze him in values that he will have defended only temporarily or not at all.

The only international unity that is worthwhile in my eyes is that we are all, all over the world, in possession of an incredible brain which we must learn to use carefully every day, or else it will become a real bomb, very often delayed via the following generations and without our knowledge.

Here you are, dear mourners, all of you and the others. I too have taken the time to walk with you in my own way. I am going back to my shaken and confused affairs while awaiting the next episodes of our common evolution, which I hope will be as calm, thoughtful and far from any slogan that is supposed to unite us in a great emotional leap. Our only common base is what we call our humanityWith its feats and its aberrations. Let us try to understand it step by step, a little better, without too much brutality. I believe that in a way we are doing this, although not yet every day.

With kind regards,

David Noir, artist and only artist, deserter of national causes

*What do we mean by the word 'people': all of us? The others? A mass of individuals who no longer think as individuals and can be grouped together under one label? The opposite of 'leaders'? The employees at the first level of the hierarchy?

Interview with Luz on Mediapart