The future

I think this one is originally from somebody else, but I read it again in this book anyway:

"The future cannot be forecast, but it can be explored."

E. F. Schumacher, Small is beautiful.

See also this related and much more developed post from my friend François.

When stupidity becomes more intelligent than cleverness

I used to like and look for optimality when I was younger, but since then I have learned the following bit of wisdom:

"I think the stupid man who says "something is better than nothing" is much more intelligent than the clever chap who will not touch anything unless it is optimal."

E. F. Schumacher, Small is beautiful.

What is education for ?

"Is education to be a "passport to privilege" or is it something which people take upon themselves almost like a monastic vow, a sacred obligation to serve the people ?"

E. F. Schumacher, Small is beautiful.

Law & Order

"[...] maintaining public order and curbing violence [...] is potentially a big and underappreciated advantage of centralized societies over noncentralized ones. Anthropologists formerly idealized band and tribal societies as gentle and nonviolent, because visiting anthropologists observed no murder in a band of 25 people in the course of a three-year study. Of course they didn't: it's easy to calculate that a band of a dozen adults and a dozen children, subject to the inevitable deaths occuring anyway for the usual reasons other than murder, could not perpetuate itself if in addition one of its dozen adults murdered another adult every three years. Much more extensive long-term information about band and tribal societies reveals that murder is a leading cause of death. For example, I happened to be visiting New Guinea's Iyau people at a time when a woman anthropologist was interviewing Iyau women about their life histories. Woman after woman, when asked to name her husband, named several sequential husbands who had died violent deaths. A typical answer went like this: "My first husband was killed by Elopi raiders. My second husband was killed by a man who wanted me, and who became my third husband. That husband was killed by the brother of my second husband, seeking to avenge his murder." Such biographies prove common for so-called gentle tribespeople and contributed to the acceptance of centralized authority as tribal societies grew larger."

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, chapter "From egalitarianism to kleptocracy".

So much for the idealization of tribal societies of ancient times that I have read in Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. Too bad, I liked this myth of gentle tribespeople... But can I keep my dream of gentle "civilized" people in an hypothetical future, please ?

Small is beautiful

"Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful."

E. F. Schumacher, Small is beautiful.

Simplicity again

"It is my experience that it is rather more difficult to recapture directness and simplicity than to advance in the direction of ever more sophistication and complexity. Any third-rate engineer or researcher can increase complexity; but it takes a certain flair of real insight to make things simple again."

E. F. Schumacher, Small is beautiful.

See also this post.

From a scientific perspective, I like this viewpoint, and I am always trying to understand what I observe with some explanatory mechanisms based on simple principles. But I am aware that it is also dangerous to go too far in this direction, and that the simple theoretical principles are most often valid only under strong assumptions that are never satisfied in reality, so that their explanatory power is questionable and the possibility that what I observed was the result of something else must at least remain open.

From a philosophical perspective, I dislike this viewpoint, which would lead to a meaningless world where everything is deterministic and we are just complex machines without souls. I prefer the holistic philosophies of people like Ram Dass and Eckhart Tolle.

Lorsque l'Enfant Paraît

Lorsque l'enfant paraît, le cercle de famille
Applaudit à grands cris.
Son doux regard qui brille
Fait briller tous les yeux,
Et les plus tristes fronts, les plus souillés peut-être,
Se dérident soudain à voir l'enfant paraître,
Innocent et joyeux.

Soit que juin ait verdi mon seuil, ou que novembre
Fasse autour d'un grand feu vacillant dans la chambre
Les chaises se toucher,
Quand l'enfant vient, la joie arrive et nous éclaire.
On rit, on se récrie, on l'appelle, et sa mère
Tremble à le voir marcher.

Quelquefois nous parlons, en remuant la flamme,
De patrie et de Dieu, des poètes, de l'âme
Qui s'élève en priant ;
L'enfant paraît, adieu le ciel et la patrie
Et les poètes saints ! la grave causerie
S'arrête en souriant.

La nuit, quand l'homme dort, quand l'esprit rêve, à l'heure
Où l'on entend gémir, comme une voix qui pleure,
L'onde entre les roseaux,
Si l'aube tout à coup là-bas luit comme un phare,
Sa clarté dans les champs éveille une fanfare
De cloches et d'oiseaux.

Enfant, vous êtes l'aube et mon âme est la plaine
Qui des plus douces fleurs embaume son haleine
Quand vous la respirez ;
Mon âme est la forêt dont les sombres ramures
S'emplissent pour vous seul de suaves murmures
Et de rayons dorés !

Car vos beaux yeux sont pleins de douceurs infinies,
Car vos petites mains, joyeuses et bénies,
N'ont point mal fait encor ;
Jamais vos jeunes pas n'ont touché notre fange,
Tête sacrée ! enfant aux cheveux blonds ! bel ange
À l'auréole d'or !

Vous êtes parmi nous la colombe de l'arche.
Vos pieds tendres et purs n'ont point l'âge où l'on marche.
Vos ailes sont d'azur.
Sans le comprendre encor vous regardez le monde.
Double virginité ! corps où rien n'est immonde,
Âme où rien n'est impur !

Il est si beau, l'enfant, avec son doux sourire,
Sa douce bonne foi, sa voix qui veut tout dire,
Ses pleurs vite apaisés,
Laissant errer sa vue étonnée et ravie,
Offrant de toutes parts sa jeune âme à la vie
Et sa bouche aux baisers !

Seigneur ! préservez-moi, préservez ceux que j'aime,
Frères, parents, amis, et mes ennemis même
Dans le mal triomphants,
De jamais voir, Seigneur ! l'été sans fleurs vermeilles,
La cage sans oiseaux, la ruche sans abeilles,
La maison sans enfants !

Victor Hugo


Je dédicace ce poème (envoyé par ma soeur Lauriane pour l'occasion) à mon fils, Anaël, né le 1er mai 2009.