Read moreA woman lays flowers at a memorial for the victims of the June 9 attack in Annecy / Photo AFP, OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLEAtlantico: Some tragedies seem to affect us more than others. But are there tragedies that can turn a society upside down? Allowing it to break pre-established cultural and mental patterns, to overcome political impotence, etc.? How does this manifest? Christophe Boutin: Let's be clear about the terms: when we talk here about "dramas", "dramatic events" or "tragedies", we are talking about what we call news items, but which have taken on an exceptional resonance, affecting, well beyond the relatives of the victims, an entire social group - and, for some of them, even world public opinion. When you say that such tragedies allow us to "break pre-established cultural and mental patterns", we must also put things into perspective. The shock felt in the face of such tragedies, for the individual as well as for the group, this brutal break with everyday life and what we think is "normality", on the contrary very often reactivates the old patterns in which we were raised - or even older ones. This is how, for example, the feeling of solidarity of the social group, often not very present in our individualistic societies, becomes immediately evident once again when what is considered to be one of our commonly accepted social rules and necessary for the very survival of the group, is thus affected. This is a spontaneous survival reflex, this response to what is for us an attack on one of the pillars of our society. But this is also why the same events are not identical tragedies depending on the societies in which they occur, just as there can be significant differences within the same society depending on the times when they occur or the context surrounding them. In this context of transition from news item to national – or international – drama, we must finally make a distinction between what is spontaneous and what can be provoked. The only true spontaneous reaction is that of the person who directly witnesses the drama: in all other cases there will be mediation, and reaction to information or images. Now it goes without saying that the media, which broadcast and comment on this information, and the political power, which at least partially controls these media, are no more neutral than we ourselves are when faced with a raw fact: we necessarily sort through all the data to which we have access to privilege the elements which seem to us to be the most relevant, and we are therefore faced with an interpretation of reality. Now this interpretation, again, in spite of ourselves, because it is part of our mental schemata, is subject to the influence of what we call "confirmation bias": our brain more easily retains the elements which confirm what we think or believe we know. From there, at least partially, this incomprehension that we often see between commentators on the same fact: very quickly, they no longer speak of the same thing, the raw fact, but of what they have retained from this fact. And the interpretation of the other seems to them to be a manipulation, a recovery, serving in any case a completely different purpose than their own, necessarily neutral and/or noble. Here again we are talking about what happens spontaneously. But everyone knows since Gustave Le Bon and his Psychology of Crowds the power of emotion on the latter, and some can, voluntarily this time, transform the news item into a drama to obtain from the crowd the choice they expect. With a well-chosen image, with information broadcast at the right time, we can effectively change a society and make it adhere to the projects of the person who is manoeuvring in this way. This will happen either "for," by using the mobilizing power of the drama and turning certain consciences to unite them behind these projects; or "against," by using the disabling power that group emotion can have on an opponent who will no longer be able to appeal to reason, any attempt to analyze the issue in a "cold" manner disqualifying them for lack of empathy. What conditions are necessary for this to happen? For such a societal event to occur, there must first be awareness of the tragedy in question, which implies information and the widest possible dissemination of that information. Nowadays, between social networks and continuous news channels, a news story can very quickly take on national, if not international, resonance. He does not always do it for the noble desire to inform the public: the media know full well that a tragedy causes the audience rating or the number of clicks on a page to soar – and, let's be honest, we do the same thing by posting this on our social networks. All the people caught up in this tornado at the same time are then psychologically part of the same crowd – even if they are not gathered in the same place – and even more so when they go, formerly by chatting with their neighbors, today via social networks, to relay images or phrases. They will have in common the primacy of emotion over reason, not analyzing information but reacting, in an effective manner, according to these mental patterns evoked, these defense reflexes which apply to societies as well as to individuals. This is not in itself a negative thing: millennia of evolution have taught us that when the survival of our group is at stake, the responses must be collective and rapid. Yet these tragedies are instinctively perceived as intolerable attacks on the very structures of the group to which they belong. The first condition is therefore the occurrence of a profoundly shocking event; the second is its wide dissemination. But let us clarify here that the consequences will also depend on the narrative that will be grafted onto this broadcast, and which may very well be intended to annihilate certain of the reflexes that we have just mentioned. To simplify, when faced with what they feel is a major aggression, the individual or group reacts in two possible ways: after having determined the main source of danger, they choose between flight or confrontation. But these two reflexes can pose problems for the State, which can either worry about the potential violence that would arise from the definition, under the influence of emotion, of enemies to be confronted, or want to avoid a reflex of flight and panic, which is just as devastating. He will then ensure that, in order to influence these choices, certain elements are erased from the narrative, while others are overvalued, or even that other "targets" are presented to "popular emotions".  In the same way that dramatic events can turn a society upside down, what about heroic acts, can they have the same impact?  For its cohesion, a society needs to be able to identify with positive heroes, with those who stand up to defend the group against its enemies, sometimes at the risk of losing their lives. Faced with these behaviors, which reaffirm essential human values ​​and present a social ideal, there is both a feeling of recognition towards the hero and an attempt to identify with the model he represents. Even if a society evolves more often "against" - against a threat - than "for" - to try to remain faithful to its civilizational ideal - no one will deny the mobilizing effect that these heroic acts can have and the impact they can have on the changes in a society. This time, we should no longer think of Gustave Le Bon, but of Georges Sorel and his notion of the "mobilizing myth" - certainly analyzed by this author around the "general strike", but which can also be nourished by the pantheon constituted by these heroes of a social group. Once the shock has passed, can the desire for resilience, revenge, or simply anger lead to profound changes in society?  It all depends on what we call "astonishment". Is this the period of time during which, faced with the brutality of the event, the emotion felt has not yet led to the survival reflex? Or is it the longer period of time after which, once the emotion has passed, we regain the ability to analyze the situation and respond to it with reason? The first is tiny, on the order of a few seconds: any longer and the survival of the individual or group would be threatened. Flight or aggression are, as we have said, a question of reflexes – the famous “survival reflexes”. Without them, as their name suggests, the individual or the social group will not survive, and our nervous system is therefore designed so that this stunning effect, which leaves us for a time helpless against the attacker, is as short as possible. In our sanitized world, ultraviolence is used by some to increase this initial advantage. As for the rest, a society or an individual who does not show themselves capable of resilience, which can indeed mean wanting to take revenge on their enemy and getting angry, is destined to disappear. When faced with danger, the choice to flee is not one of resilience, since it always leads to abandoning something – a packet of cigarettes, a mobile phone or territory, it's all the same thing. It is not a way of changing society and its values, but its replacement by another, with other values. Now if the tragedies we are talking about have such an effect, as we have said, it is because, individually and collectively, there is a refusal by the members of the society concerned to see the disappearance of these values ​​which are specific to them and structure their societies. The other choice, that of resilience, is therefore necessarily that of confrontation, which this time imposes a change in society: this can be achieved through a specific budget to which the community will this time agree to contribute, through controls and bans, or through increased mobilisation of citizens, but there will be a change. Again, nothing too surprising: a living organism that is not able to adapt to changes in its environment – ​​in this case, this aggression – dies.  To what extent can the consequences of a tragedy cause lasting upheaval in societies? The first question here is whether politicians will take up the issue. Will they analyze, after the event, what could have led to it happening? Will they implement the necessary measures to ensure that this does not happen again? This is the first possibility for a lasting upheaval in a society: the change in the norms that govern it through policies. The second possibility for lasting societal upheaval lies this time with the people as a complement to and/or in the place of politicians. Considering that the latter have shown themselves incapable of avoiding this tragedy, and that they have subsequently shown themselves just as incapable of putting in place measures to prevent further ones, citizens can address the issue directly. This can be done in a normative manner, for example by implementing a citizens' initiative referendum. In other cases, this will happen through movements of self-organization of society, alongside and outside of what can be established by norms. It is no longer the State, which has become impotent, which organises the defence of society; it is society which organises itself. The third possibility of lasting upheaval would come from the contradiction which we would observe between the will of the social group to persist in its being and the choices of policies which would, on the contrary, want to impose a mutation by force on it, and would prevent it from using its elements of defence – whether by a total denial of reality or by coercive measures taken against it. This would then be, with this physical or cultural insecurity created by the leaders, the end of the social contract, and as Robert Aron said: "when order is no longer in order, it is in revolution".

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