TANT QUE NOUS VIVONS ET CROYONS
poème en prose

Tant que nous vivons et croyons is, together with its parallel version in This Language (So long as we live and believe), a poem about state religionism, that is, discrimination by the state on the basis of religious or irreligious belief. In the first stanza it refers to the so-called 'unbelievers' in the sense of non-theists such as atheists and agnostics, who are relegated to social obscurity in that they are not treated as equals vis-à-vis (mono)theists or religious people, perhaps, even ostracized. However, so long as they are not killed or otherwise silenced effectively, they may still enjoy their freedom, albeit one without equality.

The second stanza focuses on a group that does not believe in nothing at all, and that does not doubt everything. It concerns those who do believe strongly in the primacy of norms and values over gods and/or demons in the singular or plural, which is their answer to the question of denominational primacy. While the norms and values adopted are not further enumerated in this poem, truth is the first value mentioned, and to know what comes with or after it in a 'natural' (as opposed to supernatural) way is very systematically described in the Model of Neutral-Inclusivity. (Just read the Model poem Truth, Relevance and Neutrality Together, for instance.)

In the third stanza one meets the 'thief of state'. Thieves of state who work together appropriate what belongs to the state to themselves, as a rule theocentrists of the same religion. The appropriation does not consist of some immediate form of physical grabbing then, it is usually the imposition of their own denominational symbols, with other matters in its wake, on the whole of society. Obviously such thieves cannot be our friends, but those who acquiesce in their discrimination against normists cannot be our friends either, especially not where and when they have the freedom to speak out against it and the opportunity to vote differently.