Un Nouveau Monde (A New World)

Before I begin, I want to first apologise to Rob. In one of my previous postings, I somewhat condescendingly painted him as something of a hippie. Most hippies know much less about economics than him, so I think that it is not the fairest image. And hippies also tend to have longer hair.

Seriously, Rob is far from a hippie. I wanted to present a sharp contrast between my stress and his calm, and upon re-reading it, it came out the wrong way.

Although he does point out to me that he did drop out from economics to become an arts students, and once had hair down to his shoulders. You be the judge.

1. AIESEC France National Conference (NATCO) 2006

Held in Ancenis, a small town about 30 minutes from the city of Angers. I was VERY VERY IMPRESSED by the conference organising committee; they had a genuine concern for the needs of every delegate, continually strove for excellence and simply DID NOT STOP MOVING. I have been to 14 conferences in AIESEC and a couple outside of it, and this was by far the best organising committee I had ever seen. Congrats to them!

The conference delegates all seemed extremely switched on in their willingness to engage in debate and discussion, however they are unaware of some of the basic facts of the organisation...MASSIVE potential here, but going completely to waste: I saw real heart and soul here, but I do not see it being used. I realise this seems contradictory to some of my earlier posts...I think meeting people clarified the situation somewhat for me, much better than some simple measurement sheets could ever do.

I also was very happy with the MC's performance at this conference. They are a very fantastic group of people. Yet I feel like there is a massive barrier between them and the members. If both the members and the Mc are great, what is holding them back? It is difficult to say. Perhaps the language barrier is a severe problem...or perhaps it is comprehension of the local reality. France poses a curious challenge for the foreigner, and the foreigner poses an even greater challenge for the French. A solution to this problem needs to be found urgently.

The three MCP candidates were extraordinary people, each of whom would have done a brilliant job. I send my congratulations to all three of them, because that was the most difficult election I have ever witnessed. The candidate who carried the day was François Fleury, who I am sure with his 'never say die' attitude will lift AIESEC France out of the quagmire it is currently in, to something resembling the organisational vision statement for 2010. He is an exceptionally charismatic and inspiring individual who simply will not stop believing, and this is precisely what is needed to drive the future.

2. Jean's resignation

I don't fully understand the reasons, but the MCP of AIESEC France, Jean Penny, resigned a few days after NatCo. From what he put in his farewell letter to the organisation, I think he felt the experiences he was gaining from AIESEC were not aligned with his direction...my apologies to Jean if this is not the reason. I wish him all the best for the future.

Resignations and departures from the organisation are something to be expected in the near future, across the planet. Many people signed up for an organisation which is changing both its face and heart. This is no longer what they want, or is no longer aligned with their future goals. In fact, the fact that nowadays, at an early stage, we ask people to define their future goals will mean that people who stay the distance in the organisation are sure of their future direction and sure that AIESEC is key to delivering that future.

3. A new world

The 'cheery' attitude of the paragraphs above does nothing to convey the difficulties I have faced recently, and the complete overhaul of perspective that I have undergone in the last few weeks.
I have been very reluctant to finish this blog posting; I don't know why, perhaps I had a feeling it would be the 'be all and end all' posting, the one which defines my basic worldview for the rest of my life.

But I've decided to finish it anyway. It would be stupid and ignorant of me to imagine my point of view will never change...even if I have a 'foundation' which doesn't change, there are layers which are always going to be added, layers which will be removed and layers which will change form.

The only absolute foundations that make sense, therefore, are a sense of values and an open mind. Even the values can be changed (albeit not easily) - it's the open mind which has to be utterly consistent.

4. The first difficulty - integrating into French culture

Living like an exchange student, speaking English or even French with other exchange students, is not integrating into another culture. As a group of internationals, we very quickly find the lowest common denominator of interculturally acceptable behaviour and interact with each other on that basis. It is a valuable experience to be sure, for we realise how much we have in common over national boundaries, even in cases where globalisation is NOT the cause, but it is ultimately limiting in nature.

(The following section in square brackets was written when I was very, very tired and in an extremely bad mood at the time - I do not agree with or endorse its content anymore, and actually think it is somewhat insulting. But this is my personal record, so I need to keep my original postings here for later reading)

[In my group of 10-12 exchange students at IEP, I sometimes feel like I am speaking to 12 clones. I do not wish to insult them at all, I myself am one of those clones - it is the consequence of people from different countries trying to find what is in common, latching on to it, and refusing to budge from it (a completely subconscious process). Perhaps the size of the group lowers the denominator even further, ruling out any eccentric and interesting behaviour, preferring instead a reasonably flat and uninteresting world of wine and discussions on random topics. The randomness of group socialising is another reason why it makes no sense to me. I can understand getting to know people you are working with - as a group we have shared objectives, we need to understand one another's thought processes on how to reach those objectives - but socialising en masse for its own sake seems like a waste of time to me.

The banality of discussion is a great shame to me, because I am sure every single person is vibrant and interesting in their own right - if you are reading this, do not take this as an insult, but an invitation to unleash some of your inner eccentricity onto the conversation! This is why I have much preferred my conversations with Bernard, Youssef, Rob and Marc-André - I know each of them more as individuals than as part of a group, and have had fantastic discussions with each of them, and gotten to understand them much better for who they are. I should probably make a greater effort to get to know the 'group members' as individuals rather than calling them 'group members'. ]

Because of the way I had been living for the last 1.5 months, as above, the National Conference proved a great test for me, because it was the first time I was required to not only live with French people for a period of time, but actually work with them too. It was like a massive extension of the steering team, and all the accompanying cultural difficulties that came with it. You have heard it all before - the pessimism, the feeling of hopelessness - but imagine it from 70 people instead of 1 or 2.

At first, pessimism is infectious. You present an idea, and it gets knocked back because you don't understand 'local reality' - after this happens about 35 times, even the strongest willed tend to lose their courage. This was particularly bad for me, because I entered with a sense of 'strategic arrogance', thinking I had all the answers to the strategic questions. Garbage. But at the time, I began to feel like it was the country that was wrong, not me.

So what did I do?

I opened my mind.

I really began to think about what I had learnt about French AIESEC Reality. I really began to understand their difficult situation, without losing sight of the organisational objectives. I began to ignore the pessimism that accompanied the rejection of ideas, and took them as neutral statements of explanation why certain ideas would not work here. And slowly, I started to come up with solutions. Different ones, not Australian ones. And best of all, I could see they were starting to get through!

My error had been associating the rejection of my ideas with a general blanket pessimism. In fact, pessimistic phrasing just seems to be the way people say things here which they know don't work...while there is still a bit of blanket pessimism, people will try ideas that make sense in terms of the local reality.

This taught me the need to COMPLETELY open my mind. I had always paid lip service to the idea of an open mind, and I always considered myself open-minded because my ideas are generally radical, but it is quite something else. It is a willingness to really consider and internalise those ideas you disagree with. Not necessarily agree with them, but really, really think about them, as opposed to immediate mental rejection, or acting like a debater and finding problems in the idea that can be criticised.

I've realised that open-mindedness is the only way we can achieve peace on earth, because some things (like monotheistic religions) simply cannot be brought together through dogmatic teaching alone - the worshippers need to be open-minded. The Dalai Lama puts it wonderfully, "Just like in a restaraunt when everyone chooses the meal that suits their tastes, everyone can choose their path to happiness according to their own tastes. How boring would the dinner be if everyone ordered the same meal?"

The Dalai Lama has much to teach the world about open-mindedness. This is one quotation from him I know I will never, ever forget, because it symbolises the ultimate open-mindedness: "If science finds something which contradicts a Buddhist belief, it is Buddhism that will need to change" - this coming from the head of the religion!!

5. The second difficulty - dealing with impermanence

Second, my cat Philip, who has lived in my house for 13 years (over half my life), recently passed away. I really did love him as one of my closest friends, and the speciest barrier that people tend to place between people and animals just did not exist in my house. He really was one of the family. There was a time when I was younger when I was truly cynical of the whole human race, and I had considered him my ONLY friend in the world.

It was particularly hard for me because I was not there in person. His illness (cancer in the liver) only became obvious after I left, and when diagnosed, apparently he did not have more than 1-2 weeks to live.

The news of his illness hit me very hard. Being a cat, I also knew that he would not live for a very long time, but my mind always jumped away from this, and never sought to deal with it. It will come when it will come, and I will deal with it then. I think that I thought he would live forever, or at least a really long time (like 20 years), because we had cared for him so well. Especially my mother, she had really devoted so much to this cat.

Jus the thought that he might die sent me into a frenzy...I spent an entire day on the internet searching for ways on how to deal with death of a loved one, which sent me of course to a considerable amount of religious material. In the past I have generally switched off at the sight of religion, but that day was different. I had to do something, because I was feeling desperate, and no atheist or agnostic was capable of giving me an answer to relieve what I was feeling.

That day was one of the most important days of my life. I read massive amounts of things from all sorts of religions, and continued to do so over the next few days...and at the same time pulled out of all of them a philosophy of life which I am going to do adhere to from now on.

Basically, it seems the cause of suffering is attachment. What does that mean? By emotionally attaching ourselves to physical things, like objects and other sentient beings, we are setting ourselves up for failure, because everything in the world has a limited life span. Instead of attaching ourselves to others, we should hold a sense of compassion/empathy towards them instead. This kind of detached compassion can naturally be extended to any sentient being, not merely to people we consider our friends and family. When we first meet another human being, empathy seems to be the way to go.

Empathy goes further than being a simple replacement for attachment. Its how we should view all human beings. The concept of 'like' and 'dislike' simply vanish - our task is to understand people and have compassion for their suffering (and all entities suffer because there is no escape from death). With this absolutely non-judgmental approach, it is possible to have an equal amount of compassion for everyone from your brother to Mahatma Gandhi to Joseph Stalin. The very idea of hatred no longer functions...there is no point hating anyone, is there? Compassion for everyone, even your worst enemy, is the only way we can have some kind of peace.

Does this absence of hatred invite weakness or giving in to people? Not at all - one needs to exercise empathy for the self as well, and it is impossible to let others take advantage of you, just as it is impossible for you to take advantage of others. Strong counter-action in the short term is a form of compassion - e.g. restraining a violent person before they do more damage.

But what does all this compassion, absence of attachment and absence of hatred add up to? PEACE. The very meaning of our lives is to seek peace of mind, to live in a perpetual state of calm and to have complete control over our minds. Freedom is freeing our minds from attachment, and freeing it from negative states of mind like anger, jealousy, hatred, etc. so we are completely free to seek peace.

But it doesn't end there. The mind is generally quite out of control, and we need to spend years bringing it to heel. Calming it one day may mean little the next - it takes practice. So we need to find and maintain peace.

But what do we do with our lives while we are finding inner peace, assuming we don't want to become clergymen (i assure you, i won't be a priest or a monk or anything like that :) )? Work towards peace amongst humanity, and peace between people and the environment.

This probably sounds a bit waffly to many people. But I can say that I have had a marked change of perspective...I am a much happier, much calmer person than I have ever been. I'm able to focus and concentrate on my goals a lot more clearly than ever before. The idea of dedicating one's life to peace is most appealing to me...I had already dedicated my life externally to this idea, but it was the mind which was lacking...such that I wasn't able to concentrate or achieve anything really. A degree of inner peace is needed before we can venture out to try and make the world a better place.

People will read this and scoff and call me idealistic, naive and stupid. But understand that I know of no other way to escape from the turbulence of daily existence, and the only way we can escape the continual barrage of difficult questions which undermine any reason at all to even be alive. In a world devoid of meaning, spiritual peace is the only answer for those who wish to remain sane.