What if Poilievre and Duhaime were hippies?

BET À DAY

In the latest edition of the magazine L'Obs, we can read a fascinating interview with the French economist Daniel Cohen, who just published Homo Numericus, an essay on the impact of digital technology on society. 

To him, social media followers are the spiritual children of hippies. 

F**K THE AUTHORITY

What did the hippies dream about? 

To free themselves from vertical power and live as they saw fit, without being accountable to any authority. 

“The dream world of the 1960s was a utopian world where everything had to be subject to discussion, without principle of authority, and where every word deserved to be listened to.

“For the first time in human history, we imagined a horizontal society. To find parallels, one would almost have to go back to hunter-gatherer societies.

For Cohen, the digital society (born on American campuses in the 1970s, thanks to the gadgets that former hippies fiddled with in their garages between two joints) is the direct heir to the counterculture of the 1960s.

Like the hippies, the children of the digital revolution want nothing to do with authority. 

They want the right to say whatever comes into their heads, everywhere , at any time, and in the way that suits them. 

Ditto for work. 

Gone are the days when the boss controlled your schedule and you had to punch in the office at 9 a.m. and leave at 5 p.m. 

Young people today want to choose where they work (at home or at the cafe) and when. 

Aren't you happy?

Bye bye, I'm going to find myself another job!

As Timothy Leary, the pope of the American counterculture of the Woodstock years, said: “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out”.

< p>Open your computer, connect to the Internet and show your middle finger to the establishment.

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DENNIS HOPPER AND PETER FONDA

Look at libertarians like Duhaime and Poilievre…

The worship they devote to freedom, their distrust of institutions, the lack of embarrassment with which they woo conspirators, their ability to use social media to speak directly to their base, the leader of the PCQ who “forgets” to pay his taxes and his electricity, that of the CCP who dreams of abolish the power of the Bank of Canada…

Sit them on a Harley Davidson chopper, and you have the two hippies from Easy Rider!

“Born to be Wild!”

Forget the tousled hair: the new hippies comb their hair on the side…