I doubt, therefore I am

I was born a child. This seemingly trivial fact, however, captures the essence of it all: we begin by believing. As children, we marvel at everything, with a innocence that life methodically sets out to erode. I believed in Saint Nicholas, in Santa Claus, I looked forward to Michel Vaillant when my father took me to Francorchamps, I adored Eddy Merckx, Jacky Ickx, John Lennon, and Sheila, with whom I was madly in love, and I had boundless admiration for Gaston Lagaffe.

My father, who had fought in Korea and at Stanleyville, was my hero right there within reach. The day, when I was twelve, he said to me, “Among men, we don’t kiss anymore,” while holding out his hand to me, I understood that a new world was beginning. We hide our emotions rather than express them.

I was like that young macaque, Punch, a social media star in a Japanese zoo, starved for affection. In the absence of an Ikea stuffed animal, I took refuge in Standard Liège jerseys, as if a crest could take the place of a hug.

I cried my heart out when they killed Bambi’s mom, when E.T. went home, when Bourvil and Walt Disney died. And what about that night in front of the Dakota Building, when they shot Lennon, my distant hero, less than two years after the sudden death of my hero up close: my father.

For a long time, I believed everything I was told. Then, one day, doubt set in. It never left me. I developed a sort of extra sense, a vigilance that tracks down flaws and triggers free will. My older sisters provided my alternative education, through Radio Carolina, Hara Kiri, Actuel, Fluide Glacial, … Thanks to them, I discovered that one could laugh at what was supposed to remain serious, and take seriously what was presented to us as frivolous.

I doubt, therefore I am. And I bear the brunt of the hasty, protective judgments of those who dare not doubt.

When Faith Cracks

My first real doubt concerned the Catholic world. Not spirituality, but the institution. It no longer seemed Catholic to me at all. When a clergyman who had been important in my life was defrocked for the third time, I thought, like my hero Gaston: “Come on!” A teacher, through his speeches and dictates, finally turned me off official Catholicism.

Everything was spinning in my head! If those who claim to hold the truth back like this, what’s left of the truth? Then I met Claire, who would become the mother of my children. Her family was agnostic. I discovered that one could live without God, without catechism, and without the threat of damnation, and that the world didn’t collapse because of it. It was a personal earthquake: so we did have a choice.

Forms versus substance

Later, I felt that same sense of vertigo when faced with the workings of the justice system and those in power. Some were dragged before the courts for lifting a corner of the veil. Others, like Frédéric Baldan, dared to take legal action. In these cases, decisions were often made on a technicality, without ever daring to judge the substance. The authorities, in their role as defendants, play for time, pushing cases toward “unreasonable delay,” until they sink, exhausted, into the procedural trash bin.

So the questions pile up. They go round and round, with no one to answer them:

— Who really killed JFK?
— What did Marilyn Monroe die of?
— Did man really walk on the Moon, and if so, why does so much suspicion persist?
— Is Dutroux just one link in a larger chain that we dare not name?
— What occult powers are shaping our era behind the scenes?
— What do we really know about the September 11 attacks?
— Why aren’t cases like Kazakhgate, Footballgate, and Qatargate—despite being backed by whistleblowers—moving forward?
— How were Fortis executives able to escape any real prosecution?
— Why did the Vatican cover up certain actions by figures who were presented as beyond reproach?
— Has the handling of Covid been as transparent as we’re told?
— Will Ursula von der Leyen ever tell us everything about the vaccine purchases?
— When will the truth about the Epstein case come to light, completely, without filters or cover-ups?
— Will the Belgian justice systemhavethe “cojones” to see the Reynders case through to the end?
— Has BlackRock become our master of spending, somewhere above the ballot box?

I’m searching for my voice

At this point, some conclude: “This guy is a conspiracy theorist.” If simply asking the questions the mainstream press no longer asks is enough to be lumped into that category, then I prefer to define myself differently: I am a self-proclaimed skeptic.

I don’t claim to hold the truth. I claim the right not to swallow pre-chewed narratives. I ask myself questions and I ask others. It’s uncomfortable, but it has its merits: it puts humor, surrealism, common sense, and the absurd to work. In short, the liveliest part of our critical mind.

Almost all of us have come across George Orwell’s 1984 at some point. That book made an impression on me. Yet the contemporary world bears a closer resemblance to a Huxley-style dystopia, where alienation takes the form of distraction, comfort, and image overload. Reality today surpasses their fiction, not through an excess of brutality, but through an excess of gentle control.

Opacity as a System

The political, economic, legal, and media worlds operate in a vacuum. They feed off themselves, legitimize themselves, and protect themselves. Opacity is no longer a dysfunction; it has become the mode of operation. The gap between that world and ordinary people is widening, until it becomes an abyss. The elastic is stretching. The day it snaps, no one will be able to say they didn’t expect the backlash.

The temptation of violence lurks, not out of a taste for chaos, but because the absence of answers, of accountability, of real responsibility erodes trust to the breaking point. The tipping point is not a fictional scenario; it is built into the logic of the system.

A single drop of water for the great tipping point

The straw that could break the camel’s back has a name: Epstein. If, despite this case (its ramifications, its networks, its address book), the world persists in failing to ask the right questions, in failing to face up to responsibilities, then it will be up to civil society to organize a confrontation with reality. We can already see the outlines of this, for example in the initiatives by Respect Brussels, We Are Brussels, or Beci regarding the formation of the Brussels government. A successful attempt to get our political friends to talk to one another and to build with, not against. History is in motion.

It is no longer a matter of “moralizing” public life at the margins. We must judge the substance, right down to the depths of the structures: Davos and the World Economic Forum, political parties, governments, institutions, the media, religions, diplomacy, …

An added sense of vertigo: we, the citizens, are subject to ever-more-sophisticated, ever-more-digital surveillance, while those we elect largely escape any effective oversight and any transparency worthy of the name.

A Face of Doubt

In this landscape saturated with official narratives and hysterical counter-narratives, an unexpected figure may embody another path: Timothée Chalamet. Through his roles—Paul Atreides in Dune, the outsider in Bones and All—and through some of his public statements, he sketches out a post-neoliberal sensibility: mistrust of savior figures, lucidity in the face of the ongoing collapse, a need to find one’s tribe rather than believe in grand unifying narratives.

Through him, a few lines of flight are taking shape—and why not a path forward right away:

A distrust of political and economic messianism: his characters warn of the dangers of surrendering to leaders who promise salvation, whether they be prophets, CEOs, or presidents.

A quest for authenticity against the cynicism of American-style capitalism: the star shuns the role of the polished celebrity, embracing fragility and contradiction.

A keen awareness of impending collapse: he speaks of a generation seeking its place in a world saturated with information, disasters, and social media, where a diffuse yet persistent pessimism hangs in the air.

A return to the local and to concrete social action: when he mentions initiatives like the Mitchell-Lama program in New York, which created tens of thousands of affordable housing units for the middle class. He reminds us that a different housing policy is possible, beyond pure financialization.

A new masculinity: he embodies a man who need not shout or dominate to exist, blending vulnerability, self-awareness, and a rejection of the macho codes inherited from triumphant capitalism.

One day, he posed this question: “Neoliberalism is coming to an end. But what comes next?” This question is a program in itself. It flips the perspective: it is up to you, to me, to us to answer it.

Perhaps what comes next will simply be this: a society where we have stopped confusing doubt with conspiracy, where we accept that democratic maturity begins the day we are no longer born merely as children, but also as self-assured skeptics.

Pietje Schramouille

The opinions expressed in this op-ed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of BAM!

Lead-in and illustration by BAM!