Personal transformation and collective change:
interactions?Seminar proposed by "Transversales Science Culture"
February 3rd and 4th, 2002Second World Social Forum of Porto Alegre french version After a brain storming started a few months ago about the matter of connections between personal transformation and collective change, the magazine Transversales Science Culture proposes a conference on this theme within the Second World Social Forum, on February 3rd and 4th in the afternoon.
The meaning of a work:
How to switch, collectively and for an unlimited period, from a culture which generates exclusion, competition, selfishness, valorisation of belongings, fear to a culture aiming to cooperation, evolution, sharing, equality, brotherhood, the acknowledgement of the human being? The path from one logic to another must be based on the creation of new systems of regulations, ecological, political, economical and social. The World Social Forum of Porto Alegre is its echo and its enhancer at the same time.
But this is not enough. Because all the attempts to reform societies through their structures only have always ???crashed??? on the barrier of individual behaviours which were not compatible with the aims. The success of the evolution that we are striving for implies that we deeply change our values, as well as the behaviours and the attitudes which result from these values.
The job is huge, for the recent development of the world market economy have induced habits of domination in the head and in the soul of the individuals, in the heart of their personal lives. Always going faster, worship of individual gains, arising of new fears, all sorts of "unease's" are the most noticeable aspects. It is obvious to confirm that the reactions to these ways of domination must adamantly take the personal dimension into account.
Why are we arising the matter at Porto Alegre?
We believe the tendency starting to take place around the idea of a "new world", today gathering at Porto Alegre, must take these matters into account. This is the only alternative for it, in order to find efficacy and legitimacy. At least four reasons plead toward this direction :
- Haven't we, most of us and most of the time, experienced the waste resulting from petty quarrels, fights for power, personal ambitions within our organizations and our network ? Meetings whose aims tend to put hands on others, projects that die off in front of difficult relationships, impossibility to raise good conditions for dialogues enriched with positive arguments and the list is long, with all these situations that reveal the poor inner ability to overcome the obstacles, which is necessary if one wants to improve the world.
- The political project that we support aims to place the human being to the centre of the situations, economical, social, political, cultural. So that the human being is therefore able to have a role in history. Are we really convinced of this? And can we really witness the will to elaborate new practices? Why do our movements give so little importance to personal evolution, even when enterprises pretend &endash; in an ambiguous and interested manner as a matter of fact - to take personal evolution into consideration.
- In a article which were issued in Le Monde Diplomatique about two years ago, Officer MARCOS talked about the necessity to build "a world which contains and accepts all the possible worlds". One can't prevent oneself from emphasizing this idea of pluralism: it must be in the centre of the political project to build. But who says "pluralism" necessarily means "equality" and we are not educated and prepared for that.
- At last, one can't forget that most of the great attempts for social and political transformations in History have ended into failures, into diversions, and eventually into monstrosities. If we want to avoid the same causes to lead to the same effects, we have to embrace to problem. Therefore, we have to analyse the means to prevent this type of diversion in the movement which is arising today.
Content of the conference
This work about connections between personal transformations and collective change covers in fact three main questions:
1. The question of homogeneity between our individual behaviours and the transformations we whish for the society.
2. The question of the shared values which will eventually be the basis of our collective practices.
3. The question of the running of our groups and organizations, and specially their capacity to generate positive personal transformations.
At Porto Alegre, we would like to privilege the third question: to us, it seems the World Social Forum is the ideal place to exchange on our ways of "fights" and to ask about the ad equations between our ways of running and the society we aim to.
The main part of the work will be the presentation of experiences showing how our groups and our organizations can favour, or not favour, the personal transformation of each individual while working for the well-being of all. These tales will be used in play roles which will allow us to detect the deals and to show the many possible personal choices in front of concrete situations. An analysis grid will be suggested so that we can evaluate the effects &endash; either positive or negative &endash; of each experience on the partakers and on the group, and so that we can find out the theoretical foundations and/or more global deals being worked behind these experiences. At the end of the second session, the whole of the work will lead to concrete suggestions concerning:
- Eventual "networking" of our practices and experiences ;
- Some great society deals (education, equality between women and men, time handling) where the connection between personal transformation and collective change is being built.
This conference will take place after the one organized on February 1st and 2nd about the theme : "re-consider wealth" around the mission of Patrick VIVERET. Thus, the link between the two themes of work will be done during the opening session of February 3rd.
Transmited by Laurence BARANSKI, member of the group inPorto Alegre (2002) Translated by some members of the network "WomenTranslators for Peace"
Project Manager: Claire GAGNEROT
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