The classic problem of indefinite freedom and restrictions is what’s characterising the fiasco around the current Burkini Ban. The desire to protect modernist liberal values has reached a point where they have effectively become an enforcement, a contradiction to the exact principles it seeks to protect. The problem behind this is the assumption that humans have a definitive set of social behaviours and can’t make choices which are conservative. Ask the same question to nudists or pansexuals, their insistence on certain social and sexual behaviours can effectively render the whole modern world quite conservative.
It’s a very common mistake that even best of the civilisations and systems tend to make at some point countering an Undesirable with opposite position. It’s a fairly common mistake that we have made worldwide as a global population by suppressing the right. It’s not only the Islamist movements which have gone totally horrible but it’s also the right minded people in Europe and Americas that have been pushed to the brink. The Right has been neglected, unheard and contempt upon for so long that the only choices we have been left with are Brexit, Trump’s America and now Sarkozy’s France.
Clearly, both are failing some rather spectacularly others slowly, one type of ignorance incites other. The responsibility to navigate in these circumstances resides with everyone. However, if responsibility is a scale then it’s the responsibility of developed nations and the Left, in this case, Europe and Americas to make the right call.
An examination of great civilisations in the past repeatedly points that failure to adapt and accept, modernist evolution, natural balance ultimately causes the systems to collapse. Writing history, studying history after few hundred years is not exactly correct.
In an imaginative dystopian future imagine a historian writing the history of Europe, will talk about the rise of Islamist movements which resulted in a war or whatever. But is he likely to find this single point in history, where Burkini was banned, Hijab was banned and the courts failed to make it right (the French supreme court has made the ban illegal) or the parliament ratified it as a law anyway. History is never created by major events, but by their sum components, sometimes when it’s about principle one violation is enough to topple the civilisations.
In order to take human evolution and civilisation to unprecedented place without wrecking it up, we need to do something differently this time. It might involve some sacrifices, some courage to stand up to our own fears, and a little faith to see ourselves through these challenging times. But it can be done, the current civilisation is best placed to do so. I believe if we can get the balance right this civilisation can last longer than any previous ones, and maybe forever.
Neomodern 