The seduction of particularisms

Sometimes a particular event has the virtue of bringing us back to the essential.

A consortium of European journalists has revealed the plans of some major European football clubs to put their interests together by creating a new super league and leaving thus their reciprocal national leagues. One can in some way understand that these clubs pursue their own interests. Economic in this case.

On reflection, it reminds what can be observed in everyday life. The multiplication of particularisms. We will therefore not be surprised that some football clubs follow, to another dimension, the same logic.

One can observed this phenomenon at the political level. In Europe, this multiplication of particularisms is reflected for example by the emergence of new political parties, which in some countries make coalitions more and more difficult. Also, the search for independence is on the rise in Europe. Governments that follow their own national interests to the challenge of the European project will soon become the rule far more than the exception. And then the politicians, but we go there beyond the sole European framework, who become a majority by advocating the primacy of particular interests - First - have the wind in their sails. Very recently at the risk of putting the lungs of our planet in danger.

President Macron of France made a few days ago a parallel with the 1930s. Some have accused him of exaggerating. These critics will certainly have forgotten that the Brexit negotiations are currently failing on the issue of a border. A border that experienced not so long ago a wicked fratricidal war.

In a few days the French president begins a journey of remembrance on the occasion of the centenary of the end of the First World War. He will meet eventually with presidents and heads of governments of countries engaged at that time in this murderous madness.

Each then pursued particular interests. In view of these emerging particularisms, indeed in different contexts and different regions of the world, but still pursuing the same logic, it may be time to sober up and think again. On the seduction of particularisms.