Occultation

It is useful, often, to conceal a failure, fear, threat, wickedness, in order to better succeed a delicate action. The sniper, in order to reach his target, has to hide the shock that his weapon or even the homicide that he is committing will send him.

This psychological function allows us to neutralize the obstacles that could make us tremble, close ourselves, abandon the struggle. The child whose mother is a psychopath develops better when he casts the veil on his delusional acts. Similarly, the husband of a neurotic woman often emerges by occulting his wife’s nerve attacks.

Like any psychological function, the occultation can also be used for bad purposes. Especially with regard to the environment: the concealment of the damage caused by the various artifacts that led us to the edge of the disaster allowed us to continue a development which we could have known for a long time that it led us straight into the wall. Similarly, in developing countries, occultation is hindering the urgent awareness of the irreversible damage that the repetition of our past mistakes may cause.

It is everywhere the occultation of the harmful consequences of our inventions and of our unbridled consumption that allows us to continue on the same path, even if we make from time to time a “action for the planet”. With the demographic explosion, these actions will not be enough to stop the vicious circle. They too often serve to give us a good conscience to continue to manufacture, pollute and consume in peace.

A good example of this is the purchase of good carbon, allowing industrialists to pollute more under the pretext that other people pollute less…

Another major occultation is the demographic problem. We know, figures before the eyes, that the population of the planet is increasing too much compared to what it can bear. We also know that it is famine, lack of water and other suffering that await our descendants and already some of our contemporaries who will be responsible for limiting the world population. We even know that this fatal proliferation is related to our sexual behaviour, to advances in medicine, to the increase in life expectancy, to the ban on abortion.

But we prefer to hide all this and let the boat follow the sea currents without looking at where the pitfalls and icebergs are, or if there is a way to give a bar to straighten the path. This is a singular reminder of the tragedy of the Titanic, which occurred just a century ago…

It is therefore urgent to ask ourselves what are the factors that lead us to use our occultity in situations where vigilance is needed. Otherwise, we will soon have enough sand on the planet to plunge our heads…