“Apres moi, le deluge” (After me comes the flood) is an expression that was attributed sometimes to Louis XV, and other times to the Marquise de Pompadour. The expression was told after a lost battle against the Austrians and signifies contempt for the consequences of an action. Thus, the person who acted, because of the privileged situation, will not suffer the consequences of their actions or these actions will take effect after their death.
I would venture to say that I have seen this type of attitude many times in recent years.
People make their own decisions without considering the impact of those decisions on others. For example, they decide to leave suddenly and do not ask themselves, even for a moment, if this departure affects if it is good to transition smoother for all parties. They resign from one day to the next; they break up suddenly and leave behind a partner, children, a team, colleagues. Everything for those people to go the other way, with a feeling of freedom.
We are witnessing a kind of individualization, impoverishment, detachment from context, self-centering without scruples.
But when you are very focused on yourself, on your own things, you lose contact with the world.
It’s like these people are turning their backs on everything and everyone.
But I don’t think we can function in our little square, independent of the rest of the people. This illusory square will be affected by the whole quickly. We are interdependent, eventually, we meet again.
Perhaps this individualization is a natural movement that comes after many years in which we have been educated to pay attention to others, to ‘what the world says’, to make decisions that sometimes suppress our own being. In order to reach a more balanced state, in which we take care of ourselves and we behave elegantly, discreetly, in professional and personal relationships, we maybe go first through the other extreme.
The road to a middle path, balanced, is long and comes with a level of grinding, of sophistication for one’s own means. Until then, it often happens to us to levitate between passivity, victimization, and indifference, disobedience, lack of scruples.
But the promise of a happy ending exists. Otherwise, how could we build something with confidence?
