Mothers Courage or Making a Pact with the Devil

Epochs succeed one another, to the rhythm of flowing blood. Before, during, and after war, homo sapiens in his male incarnation has multiplied massacres. Since always, he has fulfilled his rough and violent destiny. While males are busy dying at all costs, women must alone watch over the survival of the species. Ready for all battles and sufferings, ready for all acts of courage, they move from one camp to another, from one ideology to another, like Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage. Thus trampling and ridiculing the light contest for death that males wage. Dying for ideas, agreed, but slow death, sang Brassens. These women who save civilizations, or rather create them, carry and protect what is essential. For a long time, they held on and endured the assaults of males thanks to mutual defense. Women of wars, we live with the last generation of resource-less fighters, the struggle and courage that brought them to the extreme. With resourcefulness and solidarity in their pockets, they had to save the furniture. Same era, the scent of friendship floats in the air with Hannah Arendt. Without knowing it, they do what Arendt thinks. Friendship, the fruit of friendly human encounters in every sense, contact, and not the destructive clash of ideologies — that is their defense. For Arendt, friendship is sincere confrontation, sheltered from stupidity, the necessary nuance to resolve conflicts. Opposing ideas and ideologies is sterile and invites perpetual animosity. Wisdom, respect, and compassion have prevailed, but also love. The women of that time assumed the destiny reserved for them, but it could have been otherwise. The liberated will of sex dominated, in a way, to save the species. Mothers courage, you who make pacts with angels and demons, tell us how they meet in your heart? If not by friendship.

 — Jacques Gagnon, engineer, CEO of Imagem