It is clear that throughout the advanced world there is a genuine and widespread concern to maintain cohesion in societies as diverse and changing as today’s. This concern underlines the need to combat inequality and all forms of discrimination and poverty. This concern underlines the need to combat inequality and all forms of discrimination and poverty. However, in my opinion, social cohesion, understood as a struggle for equity, does not guarantee the solution of the great problem that is implicit in it: social bonding. That is to say, equity does not ensure the essential link to be individuals who show solidarity and are committed to their society in order to facilitate its prosperity and collective well-being.

Equity does not ensure the essential link to be individuals who show solidarity and are committed to their society in order to facilitate its prosperity and collective well-being.

In this line of reflection, I found the metaphor describing the weakening of the social bond, used by Jérôme Fourquet, French political analyst at the ‘Institut Français d’Opinion Publique’ (IFOP), very interesting. In the “Marianne” interview, Fourquet points out that today’s France is a “hydroponic” society (28 October). Hydroponics – or hydroponics – is a soil-less method of growing plants using only water and mineral nutrients. According to the analyst, France would be a society without roots, situated in a kind of artificial reality without the deep anchors that nourished its culture.

What Fourquet says for France can be said of all Western societies and, of course, of Catalan society. I would add that, so as not to fall into apocalyptic visions, although hydroponics is a growing reality everywhere, there is at the same time sufficient evidence of the strength of the resistance that opposes it. Here, and without wishing to make an inventory, we have seen in a single week, on the one hand, the extraordinary response capacity of a solidarity-based volunteer movement to the serious floods in Valencia. And on the other, we have once again seen that cultural associationism has great strength and resilience in the associations of the Països Catalans, as was clearly seen at the awards ceremony held every Saturday in Lleida by the ENS (https://www.ens.cat/), a meeting point for many federations with tens of thousands of active members. This associationism is characterised not only by its roots, but also by its capacity to put down roots in those who participate in it.

It is, however, a question of understanding the extent of the disengagement process and its social, cultural and political consequences. In fact, more and more experts are arguing that the victory of Donald Trump or the advance of the extreme right in Europe has its origin in the feeling of insecurity and fear, in the lack of interest felt by citizens in political institutions and the resulting mistrust, or in the resentment caused by the lack of recognition, all of which is a consequence of this crisis of social ties.

All social struggles, in whatever field and however universal they may be, from feminist struggles to education or the climate, should be built with roots in the society in which they work, starting with respect for the country’s own language. Any goal of cohesion should make it clear that without individual sacrifice, general welfare cannot be improved. This is because cohesion also has duties of rootedness and loyalty. It is the social bond that can offer valuable promise for the collective future.

The extent of uprootedness is easy to see. In the school environment, the transmission of the common basic culture in school curricula is disappearing. Demographically, 40% of the population registered in Catalonia was not born there, and we have new ‘transitory’ population flows that do not care about the territory they occupy or the language spoken there, unless they have a diametrically opposed position. In the cultural and festive sphere, we have the example of a commercial, uprooted and Americanised celebration such as “Halloween”. And, to say the least, in communication there are very unstable and anonymised networks of social relations, totally deterritorialised. That is to say, teachings, people, parties and networks that do not need to establish commitments of national allegiance.

I am not saying, in short, that inequality, discrimination or poverty should not be tackled, of course. I am saying that this is manifestly insufficient. Some countries that are very advanced in these struggles – the poet’s educated, happy and free north – have not escaped the weakening of the link and its consequences. What is more, and in the opposite direction, it is precisely the crisis of the social bond that is pushing back the struggles previously won by social advances.

All social struggles, in whatever field and however universal they may be, from feminist struggles to education or the climate, should be built with roots in the society in which they work, starting with respect for the country’s own language. Any goal of cohesion should make it clear that without individual sacrifice, general welfare cannot be improved. This is because cohesion also has duties of rootedness and loyalty. It is the social bond that can offer valuable promise for the collective future.

Images: Salvador Cardús, Pixabay