A new approach for the world…

Paper for the international political economie class

Human beings are always looking for more sense for everything. Finding reasons to explain their irrational choices, changing their approach and changing again, always unsatisfied with every possible solution, always trying to be better than they were, using past experiences, and hoping for a better future. But hoping is not a good strategy, just another chance to wait. This time, what is our approach for the upcoming world ? The new generation is asking.

 

Delearn the old capitalism

Politically speaking, nation-states no longer mean something. Globalisation had fastened communication and transport, leading to Erasmus students travelling the world and people working in different countries in the same time. Partly with the actual financial crisis, supranational institutions become more and more powerful and nobody want to keep trusting the invisible hand of Adam Smith. Instead, millions of dollars are given to the IMF, hoping that they would succeed in solving all deficit problems of the world. Presidents from all over the world are meeting in order to encourage trust and solidarity, in contradiction with the protectionism of the 1930s. It seems that new relationships may be think between Businesses and Governements, between taxpayers and private sectors, between employers and employees, investors and companies.

Our actual consumption’s society seems to face a crisis as well, following the actual financial one. Consumers are fed up with feeling exploited and manipulated. Nowadays, fair trade is trying to replace mass consumption that is exploiting people’s bad mood to encourage them buying and drinking more than they actually need. Increasing numbers of blogs and especially political ones, are trying to deal with media’s manipulation which constently tries to transform insignificant issues into scandals to actually hide what they don’t want citizens to see. Just have a look at the main page of the last french magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, in big letter you can read « Is there really a risk of Revolution in France ? » which is actually encouraging French people to come up with the idea of the Revolution. People now wants to learn how to read between the lines and understand what is between the words they read. At least to learn how not to be manipulated.

Indeed, our mind is so easy to manipulate! Because our language creates the context, those who know how to play with the words can make people think and even make them say what they want them to say. If I tell you not to think about a pink elephant, it is already too late, because you are thinking about it. Depending on the question I will ask you, the answer would always be different, not depending on you but rather depending on the way I will ask you. Because our mind is not rational at all. Why is the « Exit » sign in the green color although it is physically proven that the red color is better recognized by our mind ? Simply because we associate the red color with stopping. Simply because we can associate ideas in an irrational way.

Manipulating the words can give you some power. But don’t overevaluate your power neither. Because a big part of our control over the world is just an illusion. Just go to the supermarket and you will realize how manipulated we are. While we are dealing with the cookies’ brand we would choose, every single choice we make is already expected. How many times did we come back with more than we first needed ? At the restaurant, how many time did we eat what the waiter suggest instead of what we first thought we would eat ? That’s unbelievable how powerful a man becomes, as soon as he wears a waiter’s costume. I let you imagine how weak we should feel in front of the President of the US. Just because he is the President of the US. Because the position already gives you a certain power, it becomes easy to manipulate. Would you disagree with the indication of the doctor ? Or should I say : would you disagree with a man who is wearing a white blouse? Authority comes a lot from your position, not only from your charisma.

To conclude this first part, entrepeneurship was the miracle solution to solve the great depression of the 1930s. Thus, consumption was the main objective of the mass media which encourage people to consume more and more. But our society is claiming for some changes, against this manipulation and for the  protection of our natural resources. With the crisis, people are looking for simple pleasures, holidays with their families to share common values rather than going the the five star hotel on Côte d’Azur of France. It seems we have to find a new way to conciliate people’s hapiness, world’s stability and planet’s harmony.

 
Where to go ?

What are guiding our choices? Herbert Simon introduced the idea that human beings are not rational when making decisions because of our bounded rationality. Although a woman would pretend to be on a diet, she would soon go to the restaurant and eat a chocolate cake as a dessert. The Cynefin framework  tries to solve this issue by providing different solutions depending on the complexity of the situation. It explores « the relationship between man, the situation and the context » and offer new ways of communication and decision making process for organisations. The situation can be analysed as simple, complicated, complex or chaotic. Concerning the chocolate cake issue, it seems already a very complex situation, and relationship bewteen causes and effects are hard to define.

If we don’t know where to go, at least we should remember we should not go back. In times of crisis, we are trying hard to come back to the past and what we already know. Postcapitalism is trying hard to look like the capitalism we’ve always known. We should have given a complete different name to our new society because it seems actually hard to do a dramatic change. It is rather very incremental. Governements are trying to make the GDP grow again to come back to the level it reached before, to increase consumption as it worked before. Like the poor girl feeling alone who is tempted to call back the ex boyfriend because she is afraid of the unknown guy that she will soon meet. But we never go back to our innocent childhood, and we should keep growing, and not fear the future. Because Roosevelt used to say the only thing we should fear is fear itself. Act as if you can not fail, that’s what he meant. And trust yourself.

Trust… That’s exactly what governements are trying to restaure, because we lost a great part of it during the financial crisis. And without trust, it would become hard to go further. The main objective is to avoid protectionism, that prevents from talking about their actions and thus provoke  misunderstandings. Governements should trust each other and take decisions together in order to avoid opposing policies. Nevertheless, before trusting the others, we should first trust ourselves. Some people believe in destiny, or autoprogrammation, but we can also think it this way : we always go where our weaknesses are in order to keep improving ourselves. As said in the introduction, we are constantly seeking for being a better person. Unconsciously, we are attracted by our weak point. And we will fail and fail again until understanding and overcoming it. Then we can go to the next step. And the best way to achieve the next step is to listen to our enemies better than our friends. Because the enemy will give you the truth no matter if it hurts, although the friend will say what you want to hear. Here we go ! Not only should we trust ourselves but also our enemies. That sounds as a paradox, but the compromise between both can bring a very interesting outcome.

The question is : do we really want to know what our enemies have to say ? Do we want to get this knowledge ? We should consider knowledge as a precious gift that can help us a lot in order to take good decisions. It is better to ask to the company you applied for in order to know if they are interested in your application. We should ask to the loved one if he loves you as well, we should listen to the global warming problems instead of closing our eyes waiting for the time we won’t be able to improve the situation. We should have the right to raise our hand in class to ask the professor to explain the meaningless word, talk about our doubts and fears and let the others help us in our decisions, laugh about some tabous and learn from it. Knowing help us to grow faster, to go to the next step. That’s unbelievable how much we don’t know, and that’s a shame that our actual society is blaming the child who doesn’t know how to answer the question. Rewards should be given to the child who dare to say that he doesn’t know without denying it.

To conclude our second part, we should remember how important it is to introduce trust in our relationships if we want to go further. It is crucial to avoid going back to what we already know, not only in our day-to-day life but also in business between the seller and the customer, and for sure between governements and private businesses. We don’t know where we are going but we should keep going. Trust is definitly lacking in our society, and questions of ethics are relevant at this time. Maybe does globalisation can help to increase trust and better understand our neighbors ?

Seeing the world through Erasmus

Be global, act global. It can become an Erasmus slogan. Nowadays, the young generation try to live one or two exchange programs, and has to deal with many different cultures. In this context, how to express ourselves in a way that other would understand ?  The language is different, the manners, the education and the culture. Although Chinese people speak louder when they get excited, for some other culture it is associated with anger. Thus, we can not refer to your old believes and our own culture. Young generation learn to open their mind, and build strong and friendly relationships around the world Facebook helping them to remember it. That could help for the stability of the world, as students’ dreams are moving from the old family paradigm to new plans like living abroad and marrying a guy from a different culture. The mix of the culture can bring a very good and different approach for the world.

We should remember Churchill, who already was saying "To improve, we must change. Thus, to be perfect, we must have often changed" Meeting new civilizations can help in self improvement and fasten the process, because we can take the best from all cultures.

Can we become as efficient as the fast french TGV that is going straight, as structured as the German, having as honour as the Japanese ? Then, we would learn some wise words from Tibet, we would be diplomat like the English but also direct like the Dutch, we would be sometimes nice like the Chinese and sometimes as determined as an American. Chris Pattern, the last English governor from Hong Kong said that the East has as much to learn from the western democracy than the  West has to learn from the confucian society. When the Japanese Samourai meets the lonely American cowboy, what does it give ? Instead of fighting, they can go partying together in an Eramus party and learn from each other. Remembering this party, they won’t fight because of bad relationships between their parents.

New cultures can help us to beat the routine, and deframe us from what we know. To discover new standards. That’s exactly what the world needs to improve. New cultures can help us to go beyond the common ideas, by understanding that our common ideas are definitely different than the common ideas of other people. Thus, common ideas does not mean anything anymore. When arriving into the new culture, we are no one to nobody, we don’t belong to anybody, and we don’t possess anything. Is there a more perfect context for feeling free, in other words, having nothing to loose?

Now that we feel free and open-minded, it is possible to rethink the world. Ambitions are coming back and also inspiration. Finally we re-find the fantasy that was outsourced. We no longer go crazy about shopping and prefer instead spending time sharing free information on Wikipedia, writing a blog, twittering and facebooking. Our computer-life is increasing, but not over our social life. Instead, it helps.

Now that we are abroad, whatever the great things we discover, we all want one thing : going back to our unremovable and original values. In this time of crisis especially, people want to find back their family values. We want to revive the fire almost extinguished, and renew the old resources. Maybe that is the key : recycling. Reviving our old stuffs, clothes, values, friends ? Re-decoring, re-design, re-decore. Changing the color, changing the approach, but not changin the object in itself.  Instead of buying, and throwing away and buying again. As human beings, we spend so much efforts to improve ourselves, why don’t we also spend the same amount in re-newing our belongings, full of symbols and reprensentations ? (www.storyofstuff.com) Schumpeter believed in the « creative destruction » and wanted to destroy the old paradigm before creating a better one. Nowadays, we also need to forget about the old capitalism,  but it shouldn’t be replaced by a new capitalism but a recycled one. Since the time we discovered the world was not flat and our resources were limited, how come we still have a linear production line ?

What do you think?