I've been thinking about what to tell you for a while.
And sure enough, I have reviewed extremely interesting things
that have brought me a lot.
I don't have any pictures to show you,
so I'm simply inviting you to picture a vast desert.
A desert of sand, rocks, very big,
what I call a "horizontal abyss",
infinity and silence,
and in the middle of this infinity and silence,
a small green spot,
a small biotope, a small ecosystem called oasis.
It's in one of these man-made oasis,
in the driest zones, that I was born.
So, the silence, the minaret, the five daily prayers,
and you'd say this duct in the middle of the desert is there to stay forever,
and since the beginning of life.
Everything was fine.
My father was a blacksmith, a poet, and a musician,
who would charm people with his music,
and at the same time, all day long, he would forge metal
and make the anvil drum.
The anvil drums in the city, people come and sit, they converse.
That city was created in the 17th century by a sufi thaumaturge
whose teaching was about non-violence.
He had understood that violence only brought on violence.
Then suddenly, a great upheaval.
That country happened to become a French colony.
Then geologists, or some people,
find coal.
On finding coal, of course, a great shift happened: modernity emerged.
So the whole population changes into paid workers,
miners; that dark matter is unearthed,
that was under our feet, unknown to us.
Then, my own father becomes unemployed,
since the people he worked for, forged tools for,
do not consult him anymore,
so he himself has to become a miner.
As a result, the anvil's song comes to an end.
I see my father, who had a certain nobility,
coming home every night covered in coal,
which I deeply felt
as him being sort of humiliated by fate.
modernity was here.
It so happens that about the same time my mother dies,
my father wonders about the future and finally says,
"The rules of the game are no longer in our hands."
So he leaves me in a French couple's care - an engineer and a school teacher -
who had migrated to this country for the work in the mines.
So, at the age of five, I enter modernity, not having known my mother.
I enter this modernity, eventually, where I go,
I jump from tradition into modernity,
from Islam into Christianity,
from fire in the middle of the room to the toothbrush, etc.
And I get caught, so to speak, between these two cultures,
except these two cultures have converging elements
that don't converge much,
and diverge a lot
in their vision, their ways and their culture.
I come to terms with that, and finally, it takes me aback.
I go to school, I'm an average pupil to please my parents,
but I wonder about my true identity.
Who am I?
Which is right?
Is it the traditional population? The modern population?
With this contradictory discourse, I begin wondering,
and of course, instead of being brilliant at chemistry
and maths and the rest, I associated a lot
with philosophers,
therefore those who, eventually, deeply wonder about the fate,
and the meaning that mankind may have.
The Algerian war takes place, I leave Algeria,
not that I had made a choice,
but simply because I had to come over here.
You have to remember that when I was taught,
I was taught that my ancestors were Gauls.
You just have to look at me to see how obvious it is,
unless I'm the only Gaul.
(Laughter)
So what does it mean?
It means conditioning, it means assimilation,
it means the integration of a person into an ideology.
I arrive in Paris, excluded from both cultures,
and I realize, well, I was looking for a job,
and I realize that I hadn't acquired any qualification.
Perhaps I could write a good essay about Socrates, whom I loved,
but my employer didn't seem so interested in that.
So I become what the French call an O.S.,
"Specialized Worker".
Why is it called specialized worker?
Because it's the one who is actually an unskilled worker.
Even though I was on a second-level salary.
So I am in this work microcosme, and I try,
as I was much into the philosophy of history, of anthropology, etc,
I try to give a configuration to this system I was in,
and it was always the big pyramid dominating.
There are some important people at the top of the pyramid,
and unimportant people at the bottom.
There's a hierarchy: the CEO,
the general manager, the top executives,
the not so top executives,
and you get down to us, the unskilled workers,
who, to quote Fernand Reynaud,
didn't have anybody to offend, so here you are,
we were the lowest layer.
(Applause)
And in this overactive work, where finally work has been given --
work is a virtue, they keep repeating that work is a virtue,
so basically, a hard-working man is a man of choice in the social system.
And what is this effervescence within the system?
It is driven by you having to produce more and more,
that you must be a good worker,
and finally, you end up increasing the GNP,
through that effervescence,
but without the equity I would have liked to see.
Then, the great proclamation of modernity,
was that progress would somehow
set human beings free.
But as I followed the path of a human being into modernity,
I found a series of incarcerations.
Rightly or wrongly, from kindergarten to university,
we get locked in what we call in French "un bahut", a chest.
Everybody works in boxes,
small boxes, large boxes, etc.
Even to have fun, we say "aller en boite" (go into a box).
(Laughter)
Of course, you get there in your car, "une caisse" (box)
(Laughter)
An the last box, where they store the elderly,
(Applause)
while waiting for the final box, I'll let you figure it out.
(Laughter)
That's why I ask the question:
"Is there a life before death?"
Because if living means being incarcerated for life,
until the moment when the system finally rejects you,
to go into the transition before you disappear,
well, what does it mean?
Alienation.
Basic alienation of the human being.
So, from there, obviously,
you'll understand that I didn't subscribe to that at all,
and I said to myself: I must find
another time, another space.
That is to say, reconquer somehow
the freedom to do what I want to with my life,
not being determined by an imposed system.
So I returned to the land,
with my wife, in South Ardèche.
That's where I meet with agriculture
and we choose a place,
as if we were stupid,
we choose a place with degraded soil,
hard, no water, no electricity,
no telephone, no nothing.
And the bank I'm borrowing from tells me:
"You are crazy to settle there."
It would be hard for me to explain
that the important factor behind our choice,
is the beauty of the place, not just profit.
It's the beauty, we din't want to give up the beauty of the place.
Now, the second stage: I'm a farmer,
and I learn modern agriculture,
which involves, of course, chemical fertilizers, pesticides,
you spend your time killing and polluting.
At the same time, in the soil,
you put chemical fertilizers that deteriorate it,
and that will pollute ground water, etc.
So, subscribing to that logic was out of the question.
Which lead me to organic farming,
and from that moment, I understood
that you could perfectly expect the land to feed us
in quantity, in quality and at the same time,
improve it, improve its quality,
and pass it in a better state to the next generations
in a better state than before we got it.
So we were performing some sort of healing act,
an act of responsability,
towards this life.
Then they tell me, "You'll never succeed",
but we did.
We succeeded in raising our five children
who are all musicians, etc.
We haven't been in dire straits,
instead, we found balance again,
that is we must involve life in balance,
that is, if you put too much excess in life,
that's alienation, and if we stick to moderation,
that moderation brings things to our own measure,
and gives us balance, therefore it gives us the joy of being,
providing, of course, for our basic needs,
and even leaving a very important margin
to what concerns the promotion of the very human being,
so that life isn't simply
a life of labour, but is also a time,
in which we find fullfilment,
we will have the necessary space
to look after ourselves, our inner selves,
develop skills that aren't just
merchant skills,
or skills indexed on financial value,
but free ourselves from as much surplus as possible,
to be able to get back the freedom of a personal development.
In doing so, organic farming proves
its capacity to regenerate soils,
and I am invited in African countries
where I bring organic farming as an alternative
to farmers who have suffered disastrous drought,
and who, at the same time, can no longer feed themselves properly,
since fertilizers are so expensive,
polute the soil, etc.
So, I bring organic farming
by creating the first organic farming training center,
and today, there are 100,000 farmers using those methods,
more or less properly, but anyway, we can say
there are 100,000 farmers made aware of the principle
that you can perfectly take degraded soil,
regenerate it, make it fertile and at the same time
provide for your food requirements in a better way
since they are the basic needs without which nothing else can exist.
It works, and then the general idea,
the reflexion on ecology takes a certain dimension,
and indeed, by 2002,
some friends urge me to stand for the presidential elections,
so you nearly got yourselves an Obama,
(Laughter)
but the point was not to get into politicking,
in the classical sense, even if I've had to adopt the scenario,
but the point was to say, there's an absolute emergency:
to place humans and nature at the core of our preoccupations,
first and foremost, dropping everything else,
today, it's about humans and nature.
Because my point is to know,
if for example, some aliens were watching us,
and studying us, they would conclude:
"They are exceptionally gifted, but they are unintelligent."
Because being exceptionally gifted with knowledge, etc.
doesn't imply that you organized the world the way it should be.
In addition, the discrepancies and tremendous injustice,
when 4/5 of the world's population
can hardly provide for their vital needs,
and the fifth spending, obviously feasting,
after plundering, by the way, and continuing to do so,
others' territory.
So this inequity, and this --
how shall I put it,
this disparity seemes to me the first alternative
that needs to be sorted out.
If we don't sort it out, women's subordination,
the subordinated woman,
No, women must not be subordinated.
They must be the elment that will allow
the male-female balance that will give back to our society
another sensibility and balance,
and during my electoral campaign,
of course, I would insist a lot on the need for education,
the need to get back to the local economy,
not subordinated to the transport of foods, etc.
I have little time to explain all these things to you,
but anyway, they are, if you will, part of an approach
that is more and more asserted,
and finally, the big question --
I borrowed Dostoievski's sentence:
"Beauty will save the world"
or "Beauty can save the world."
I don't remember exactly,
and I have pondered a lot on this notion of beauty saving the world.
I thought, well --
We have a lot of music, a lot of paintings,
a lot of extraordinary monuments,
but does it save the world?
No.
So the question today is:
"What is this beauty that can save the world?"
It is in us.
The beauty that will save the world is generosity,
it's sharing, it's compassion,
all these values we think of as outdated,
and yet, where do they lead to?
They lead to a tremendous energy, the energy of love:
And without love, there can be none.
The other element that leads to this,
I am told, alternatives, okay,
but I tell people,
you can eat organic, recycle your water, use solar heating,
and exploit your fellow man, it isn't incompatible.
(Laughter)
alternatives aren't the thing, you see?
(Applause)
So we must be careful not to get lost
in substitutions for something we reject
and forget that the first substitution that must be done,
must be done from the very human heart,
that is the vision we have of life.
If we don't forge such a vision for ourselves,
eventually we will disappear.
So, to conclude,
I have wondered a lot about:
"What is the purpose of the human being on Earth?"
We have a vision, unfortunately, of a planet that's magnificent,
but we don't perceive it as an extraordinary destiny gift.
It's after all very small, lost in a huge sidereal desert.
And all we do, is to treat it
as a resource deposit we have to plunder
until the very last fish, until the very last tree, etc.
Here is the radical and deep unintelligence
if we don't reconsider and change that vision.
So to conclude I will tell you an anecdote to illustrate what I mean
and I see I'm on zero now.
(Laughter)
OK, now I must --
(Applause)
I am going to transgress a little,
have a teeny-weeny bit more to conclude.
Organic farming has proved to be a real path,
where we become a little therapist for the Earth,
where we take care of it.
We feed her, and that's what we need to develop.
Besides, I will quote an anecdote
I have experienced in Ardèche, since we had a farm,
our flock of sheep, etc.
And we had built our little freedom,
on actions that were meaningful to us,
and which brought us a lot of happiness,
but based on a principle of sobriety.
The principle of sobriety and moderation
sets you free at once.
Because the problem of the human society is that
what is essential hasn't been solved,
and what is superfluous has no limit.
Since what's superfluous has no limit,
we are in an exponential economic growth
that imposes itself no limit, so much so that,
obviously, in my electoral campaign,
I committed blasphemy: I talked about degrowth.
And what I meant
was not having to regress,
I meant a civilization of moderation.
Because today we are living a wonderful experience,
of great things that we had gained,
some of which we have mentioned.
But to what use?
From what paradigm do we get those benefits?
Surely if we don't choose
a civilisation of moderation,
if we don't transform our society through a change in humans,
if we don't choose the priceless value of life,
life is so precious, so priceless.
If you put a price tag on it, you defile it.
If we watch our global behavior on this magnificent planet,
we can surely conclude
that our species is an accident.
(Applause)