In 2015, Alain de Vulpian wrote in Praise of Metamorphosis: "The representative and partisan democracy we practice is at odds with the new society, which feels excluded from power and begins to challenge its legitimacy. The authoritarian and bureaucratic governance we have inherited becomes ineffective and produces turbulence when it intervenes in a hyper-complex and functioning society. The resulting mis-governance pits the people against the elites. The tutelary state and the uniform social protection system that we built in the middle of the 20th century are slowly unravelling and taking a back-and-forth a society that aims to optimize the particular situation of each. The European Union between two chairs is paralyzed. As a result of these misalignments, the governments of most of our countries and the Governments of the Union are losing their effectiveness and unable to adequately support our development in the context of the ongoing globalisation. They do not provide the common good that people's society expects. Our people are suffering and are demoralized. They accuse the governing elites, both national and European, of being responsible for their misfortune and brutally challenge them in the ballot box as well as in the streets. Serious political crises could disrupt the metamorphosis. »
The Yellow Jackets, the movement that shakes France
There was originally a childish side, playful in the yellow vests. The originality of these movements that develop in social networks is that there is no leader, no organization with which the public authorities can discuss. They don't want to be represented. We are in the complexity of "dissipative systems", self-regulation is done or not done, this depends on each member of the networks and in reality internal and external manipulations. Physical pressures can go a long way. There is a profound ambiguity: yellow vests probably don't care about ecology because personally, in the short term, they first look for ways out in their daily lives. What did they originally propose? Let's listen to them? That we listen to mayors and other forms of organization? But their disenchantment has crystallized on a person, their "indignations" manipulated by extremism, turning into anger that can be violently destructive. We urgently need "catalysts for public action" in situations of extreme complexity. It would be acute socioperceptives that would feel the main dynamics of the ongoing metamorphosis. They would be at the origin of "hybrid collectives" where socio-receptor agents could meet, coming from public authorities, intermediary bodies, trade unions, associations… Can they play their role as natural self-organizers in a complex system? Metamorphosis also means turning even serious crises into opportunities. It's the caterpillar that becomes a butterfly. What will socioperceptive, creative "imaginal cells" do? Could this movement, now reclaimed by political extremism, be, could it have been an opportunity for Emmanuel Macron to abandon technocratic expertise and get back to the daily reality by being more attuned to people's society? The future is not decreed.