In view of the extraordinary confusion of the times and in order not to contribute to it, the need for a permanent search for coherence in our discourse, our practices and our ways of living has never been greater.

There is obviously no absolute in this domain and this search always remains as if in suspension, like a question that must accompany us at all times. To want to be part of this quest is to accept to face uncertainty and our own ignorance. This quest for consistency is the opposite of ideological reification, which would like to be able to move in a field of certainty even if it means becoming blind to any contradictory reality.

In his “On War” (and we are currently at war for many reasons), Clausewitz formulated this position as follows:

War is the realm of uncertainty; three-quarters of the elements on which action is based remain in the mists of greater or lesser uncertainty. More than in any other field, a subtle and penetrating intelligence is needed to instinctively discern and appreciate the truth. Because of this uncertainty of all information, of any solid basis, and of these constant interventions of chance, the acting person is constantly faced with realities different from those he expected. (…) Our knowledge of realities has increased, but our uncertainty, instead of diminishing, has on the contrary increased. This is because all these experiences are not acquired all at once, but gradually, because our decisions are constantly struggling with them and our minds must always remain on guard, if one dares to express it that way. However, to get through these constant conflicts with the unexpected unscathed, two qualities are essential: first, a mind that even in this increased darkness does not lose all trace of the inner clarity necessary to lead it towards the truth; second, the courage to follow this faint glimmer.

There is therefore no ready-made recipe; we can only be guided by a constantly renewed taste for truth, for what experience combined with the senses allows us to discern as being true. And this is not at all obvious in an age when everything seems to want to reduce us to the status of a cog in the techno-economic machine, where the individual is constantly led to compartmentalize himself into an unfortunate individualism that locks him behind his blinkers and makes him desperately seek anything to hold on to, even if it means ignoring everything else.

The problem with the search for coherence is the level at which we wish to place it, how it is situated, in relation to what it seeks to determine itself. By restricting its universe and its horizon, it is certainly easier to establish an apparent form or model. However, this form will quickly come up against other forms of coherence with which it will prove incompatible, and it will then become very difficult to maintain it, except by shutting oneself off and isolating oneself or going to war with all these other forms. The solution then consists of pushing back the limits of this form until it can start to make sense again, but without losing sight of the glimmer of light that leads us. We then realize that pushing back the limits is in the very nature of this quest, that coherence must always try to push itself a little further in order to maintain itself.

This approach is most certainly felt as destabilizing and uncomfortable by many who fear getting lost in this movement because it means letting go of some beliefs and certainties that previously served as our bearings. But in fact, there is no search for coherence that does not ultimately aspire to grasp the globality of the world around us in its human dimension and in its natural environment at a sensitive level.

This choice may seem complicated if we do not mention what conditions it, namely the presence, being there in the world and implicitly the refusal of everything that works towards our absence, our distancing.

However, in the neo-society enslaved to the categories and dogmas of capitalism, there is no shortage of mechanisms that participate in and fuel this estrangement and lead us in many ways to a kind of permanent unavailability to others and to the living world. In these mechanisms, we recognize everything that tends to make us both accomplices and victims of the profound incoherence of this type of society, distancing us from ourselves and keeping us in confusion.

REBOUNDS

• CONSISTENCY in anarchist encyclopedia
• “IDEOLOGY” – Primer of Social Ecology
• “CONFUSION” – Primer of Social Ecology

For his part, Murray Bookchin implicitly dealt with “coherence” through his reflections on the need for an integrated philosophical, political and ecological vision. In The Ecology of Freedom (1982) and Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism (1995), he emphasizes the need for theoretical and practical coherence in social and political movements. He criticizes piecemeal approaches and advocates a holistic vision of the ecological and social struggle.

Translated by TerKo with the help of a free translation tool.