Liberating Spaces

Tomorrow I’m flying to Warsaw. Since June, I’ve been training Polish civil servants on EU negotiations for the Polish Presidency in the second semester in 2011. I won’t tell you about my impressions at this moment. I’ll do it when the training is finished at the end of January 2011. At this moment, it is mixed, though more positive than negative…

In the meantime, France is melting down, or so it looks like. Would the government concede or the demonstrators become tired of so much protesting? I’d bet for the second. Sooner or later people will have to go back to their jobs, to consume and ignore the neighbour…this is not 68 anymore. This has negative – e.g. no further debate about the appropriateness of the economic measures or a path to change of economic model – and positive – e.g. defeat of the most conservative forces in the left (which are, I reckon, quite powerful in France (and arrogant too!)) – effects. Europe is trapped in this false dilemma between neo-liberal recipes for our economic predicament and old, reactionary social policies, which are based on the actual exploitation of a big part of the human population and natural resources e.g. cheap oil price, low salaries, authoritarian governments…

A new narrative, discourse is necessary. A discourse that’s brewing, and it’s actually there, but that needs (1) leadership and (2) momentum i.e. the right generation to support it. This discourse is based on simple ideas: (1) Big truths do not exist = nobody is 100% and always right, (2) we only have one planet, (3) we are what we are = we should solve our own problems, each and everyone of us, (4) everything is connected.

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What does someone do in a bunker? And in a train station? The answer seems quite straightforward. The bunker guy protects himself, the station guy buys a ticket and catches a train. But they are also doing something else more relevant to the transformations that the new information environment is making possible.

The people in the bunker are isolated from the world. Their primordial value is security. They want to protect themselves and their property. In principle, they have everything they need inside the bunker. Whenever they need something else they know where to get it. They quickly get out of the bunker, go to the predetermined place, get what they need and go back straight after. All the information they get is contained in the bunker, and in the few trips to their “trusted sources”. They live in a self-inflicted closed information environment, with nearly zero occurrence of serendipity.

And at the train station?

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