Resistance Or Resilience

Two forces are clashing without us realizing it, one conservative, the other progressive. This antagonism crystallizes around two values: resilience and resistance. Let’s see what they imply:

According to Wiktionary:
Resilience is the “Ability of a person or society to withstand a brutal ordeal and build on it to strengthen itself.”
While resistance is the “Defense that humans, animals, or microorganisms make against those who attack them.”

The globalization which is multisecular forced peoples to oppose and then to adopt a dominant vision which was going to supplant in turn many cultures. The areas of influence, whether they first took the form of economic or linguistic zones, have always provoked reactions in those who were subjected to the new rules that were imposed on them. The first phase of resistance, which constitutes a frontal shock, was destroyed when it could not overthrow the new dominant power. Resistance is the refusal to compromise in the face of an entity that one considers to be an enemy or a predator, particularly with regard to the identity that one defends, whether it be civilizational or not.

Resilience is the second phase: it is a matter of conforming to the new rules while accepting the changes they impose on us. Resilience does not imply a rupture, it is a submission to the new order, while allowing a reinforcement of one or several capacities. Often, resilience makes individuals more robust, but this is rarely accompanied by a desire for change, for rebellion. The ox dragging his plow, who is muscular but does not aspire to freedom, expresses this idea well.

Nevertheless, in some cases, resilience is a path to resistance. For example, those who embodied the figures of decolonization had often followed an exemplary conformist path to integrate the elites of the time. They had been able to use the intellectual baggage they had acquired to find the conceptual levers of their emancipation.

The supporter of resilience is generally a pragmatist, he does not believe in the seriousness of the strategy of rupture. He is relativistic in a way, he thinks that change necessarily requires a form of compromise.
The resistant is more radical or idealist. His rigidity is both his strength and his deficiency. He sees the world with enthusiasm and anxiety. He does not believe in his ability to dilute himself in a world that he considers hostile and fatal.