a sense of life

Mr. Bourdieu,

Do you think that if our world goes wrong today, it is because people no longer find the meaning that is necessary for their lives? Why do you believe that what is fleeting and transient is more likely nowadays?

Looking forward to reading you,

Florence

It is very difficult to answer your questions. The history of men reveals to us that misfortunes are not an invention of our time, nor more so than what we call - in a way that undoubtedly raises more questions than it solves - loss of meaning. What seems peculiar to the feeling of misfortune of our time is the concomitance between a fairly universal discourse on equality and the reinforcement of inequalities. It is not funny to be poor in a world that has made equality the foundation of its morality. For beyond the physical sufferings of deprivation, to live them as a curse to which the one who has not been able to seize the equal chances that he has to escape can only lead to despair. Today’s poor, as opposed to those of yesterday (but perhaps in the same way as those of the day before yesterday), are dispossessed of the tools of thought which would allow them to construct a project of overthrow Of the order of things.

Pierre Bourdieu