[3] The underlying idea inspiring his books and articles is that "the link that attaches individual persons to society is so strong that, even in the so called 'individualistic society', people struggle to exercise the critical thinking needed to resist mass trends, and end up readily consenting to the annihilation of what they cherish most: their freedom".

Sceptical of all forms of partisanship, including partisancship in the area of ecology, he laid out the foundation of a new type of society based on personal experience,[4] in rupture with most accepted ideologies of the 20th century.

He accepted a teaching position in a higher education establishment ("École Normale") in Lescar, near Pau, in the Pre-Pyrenees (currently Lycee Jacques Monod) where he worked until his retirement.

Charbonneau started various discussion groups, some with Jacques Ellul who was his friend for his entire life, with the aim of talking and thinking about the changes resulting from scientific and technical progress.

Ellul admits that without his friend, who was a genius and taught him how to think, he would never have understood the technical society phenomenon" explains Patrick Troude-Chastenet".

He took his friends in long hikes in Galicia, the Canary Islands, in the Spanish Pyrenees as well as in the Aspe valley and in Saint-Pé-de-Léren.

He noted the problems resulting from ever more technocratic social, political and ecological spheres, from State propaganda and mass communication, from the move from fine art to entertainment and consumerism and from the liquidation of traditional farming, among other factors.

His books l'Etat[8] and Je fus[9] are the two major cornerstones of his work, previously announced in Par la force des choses.

Charbonneau resumed the analysis of the industrial society that he had started before the war with a book named Pan se meurt but once again, failed to find an editor.