Gatineau Monde lecture series:

Resistance to repression and dehumanization

Jean-Claude Ravet spoke at an event sponsored by the Société Gatineau Monde at the Old Aylmer Cultural Centre, March 22. His topic: “To stem the expanding desert: art, politics, and spirituality.” He is editor-in-chief of the Jesuit journal Relations and an advocate of non-violence. Ravet took part in resistance to Augusto Pinochet in Chile.

What is the desert Ravet wishes to stem? Increasing social injustice, mondialization, growth of right-wing extremism, ecological emergency, and political failure.  For him, modialization appears to mean homogeneity and the uprooting of cultures. He is concerned that we examine everything under the lens of utility.  What about love?

He calls out for resistance. For him, to resist is to exist.  We need, he urges, to resist the dehumanizing nature of the machine and technology.  We are enslaved to production for profit.  Instead, he calls for the simple life and connection with the earth.

Ravet is a romantic and a man of the left, but his opposition to technology reminds one of the conservative writer Friedrich Georg Jünker, author of The Failure of Technology.  Jünker is short on answers, but Ravet has one: Resist!