Killing the Country and Asking for Forgiveness Afterward!

Here is the ignorance in action that Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spoke of! The most serious thing that can happen to a country is not just visible violence, nor even the brutal collapse of its institutions. It is what Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) designated, with almost prophetic lucidity, as ignorance in action. Not the ignorance that doubts and learns, but the one that acts with self-assurance, certain of itself precisely because it ignores that it ignores. For Goethe, acting without understanding is a moral failing. Action not preceded by thought breaks the balance between knowledge and responsibility. It becomes a blind movement, incapable of measuring its consequences, indifferent to the ruins it leaves behind. Goethean romanticism does not exalt thoughtless impulse; on the contrary, it warns against activism without conscience. In this configuration, power empties itself of its substance. It is no longer a place of reflection, but a stage. It no longer governs; it agitates. Decisions pile up, announcements follow one another, promises align, but no vision connects the whole. Governing becomes a continuous performance, a theater where action serves to mask the absence of thought. Ignorance in action is recognized by its obsession with spectacular modernity. It loves hollow symbols. It intoxicates itself with visible signs meant to prove it is moving forward. Do you remember the time of BBM and tablet demonstrations, exhibited as if they were the advent of modernity? The tablet elevated to the rank of political proof, the screen brandished as a government program. We no longer spoke of public policies, but of objects. We no longer thought of the State; we showed it. Modernity was no longer a project, but a gadget. The tablet then became the fetish of power: a smooth, shiny, silent surface. It gave the illusion of mastery while concealing emptiness. Behind the screen, no structural reform. Beneath the glass, no strategic thought. The country was reduced to a PowerPoint demonstration, and misery to an interface problem. We believed we were governing because we were scrolling through slides. This cult of appearance is fully in line with what Max Weber called the abandonment of the ethics of responsibility. For Weber (1919), governing requires answering for the consequences of one's actions, not just their intentions or their staging. Here, action did not seek to produce lasting results, but to maintain the illusion of effectiveness. Responsibility was dissolved in communication. The depth of the disaster appears even more clearly in the light of Hannah Arendt. In her reflection on the banality of evil (1963), Arendt shows that the supreme danger does not always come from hatred or cruelty, but from the inability to think. Repeated, mechanical action, devoid of moral judgment, can generate massive destruction without ever recognizing itself as such. Applied to political power, this idea reveals how a country can be methodically damaged by leaders convinced they are doing good. When the consequences erupt—fragilized institutions, entrenched poverty, disintegration of social ties—ignorance in action does not accuse itself. It takes refuge in narrative. It asks for forgiveness afterward, as if repentance could repair what irresponsibility has methodically demolished. Forgiveness becomes a screen, a belated gesture placed upon still-smoking ruins. But a country does not die because it was hated. It dies because it was governed without understanding it. Because governing was confused with showing, thinking with clicking, modernizing with exhibiting. Goethe had warned us: the ignorance that acts is more dangerous than the evil that hesitates, for it advances without self-awareness, without limit, without remorse. Killing the country is not always delivering it to chaos through violence. It is often reducing it to a backdrop, a screen, a demonstration. And asking for forgiveness afterward is recognizing too late that the appearance of progress was mistaken for progress itself, while the country, meanwhile, sank deeper into reality. References:

• Goethe, J. W. von. (1749–1832). Various Works — reflections on action, knowledge, and human responsibility.
• Weber, M. (1919). Science as a Vocation and Politics as a Vocation.
• Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil.

Yves Lafortune, Ph.D Candidate,
MAP, Lawyer