Francis Eustache suggests modern societies are sliding toward collectivities of victims engaged in permanent recovery. That slide now feels less like an accident and more like a destination. The catalogue of victims expands relentlessly, while the pool of perpetrators shrinks to a handful of increasingly abstract villains. At this rate, soon no one will be left who isn’t injured by something, except a small, conveniently demonised demographic blamed for everything.
This worldview requires faith. Specifically, faith in a perfect society—one that would exist already were it not for a few defective humans clogging the pipes. Remove them, silence them, shame them, re-educate them, and harmony will emerge. This belief is not new. It has uniforms in old photographs.
A university lecturer once asked what the far right, the far left, and the ultra-religious share. They all possess a final answer. Not a proposal, not a theory—a solution. An operating system to which everyone must submit. Disagreement isn’t error; it’s heresy. And heresy has always required punishment: cancellation, camps, gulags, hellfire. The methods differ. The impulse does not.
This is the fantasy of total sameness. Ideological photocopying. A society so purified of dissent that it resembles an aquarium—beautiful, silent, dead. Only goldfish permitted.
We are told diversity is sacred, yet only in forms that don’t threaten power. Skin colour is acceptable. Food preferences are charming. Pronouns are manageable. But diversity of thought? Intolerable. That’s dangerous. That’s “harm.”
The ruling moral class insists people are fundamentally good, except for those who aren’t—and they, conveniently, are the ones who disagree. The guardians of virtue imagine themselves standing between good and evil, enforcing morality through obedience. The obedient wait for the red man to turn green at 2 a.m. on an empty street and call it integrity. It isn’t. It’s conditioning. Morality without risk is not morality; it’s fear rehearsed until it feels noble.
I trust people who can be a little bad. So does everyone who’s honest. They feel human. Zealots don’t. Zealots are intolerable. They don’t drink, don’t doubt, don’t laugh properly—and they drive normal people toward excess just to escape the suffocation.
Alex in A Clockwork Orange is not interesting because he’s violent; he’s boring because he’s absolute. Tintin is the same in reverse—pure, spotless, never conflicted. Neither is human. One is all shadow, the other all light, and both are propaganda. Only when you corrupt them—drunk Tintin, sexualised Tintin, compromised Tintin—does something real appear. A pulse. A flaw. A self.
Jung called this the shadow. The part of us capable of cruelty, domination, obedience. The part required to run camps, point fingers, follow orders. People who insist they lack this part are either lying or dangerous. Given the opportunity, most would adapt quickly. The initial revulsion fades. Authority feels good. Power always does.
There are no good people and bad people. That division is childish. There are only people, and systems that reward or punish particular traits. Every system built to impose “the good” eventually mutates into something grotesque. This is not speculation. It is history’s most reliable pattern.
Which is why I prefer disorder to purity. Too many parties. Too much speech. Arguments that never resolve. The solution to bad speech is more speech, not enforced silence. I’ve found that listening dismantles extremist ideas more effectively than shouting ever could. The far left, however, is uniquely resistant to this—not because it’s always wrong, but because it believes itself infallible.
That’s the moment politics turns into religion.
A perfect society would eliminate dissent, ambiguity, contradiction, and shadow. It would also eliminate humanity. If such a society were ever built, it would not be gentle. And it would not last. Someone would smash the glass.
They always do.