Translator: Denise RQ Reviewer: Elisabeth Buffard
So we will resume
and we are happy to introduce the next speaker,
because this is a new thing on this edition of TEDx INSA.
This year in fact, we started to think
of getting talented people from outside campus,
but we ultimately realized
that we had some right here.
And we said,
we will organize a speaker contest
and recruit speakers
directly on campus: students.
So the next speaker is Jules Dourson, a student at INSA.
I leave you with him now.
Thank you
(All in Creole) Wonder, Light, Consciousness.
It’s time for TED.
Today I came in front of you
to tell you about a subject
that is very important to me.
Are you still following? Ok?
Is there no one in the room who speaks Creole?
Oh yes, great.
But, for the others who don’t speak Creole,
I'm sure you can speak a bunch of other languages.
Moreover, earlier during the break,
I had the opportunity to see that we are really
in the presence of a very diverse crowd.
And I would like to invite you to take a few seconds
to look around you, and observe this diversity.
It isn’t only languages:
look at all the types of hair you have around you.
Go on!
Long, short, curly, frizzy: we have everything.
Any bald ones?
No ...
It’s not just the hair either!
We have a wide range of skin tones in this room.
Well you see,
we are indeed the Erasmus generation.
And this multiculturalism that we have in the room,
that’s what I'll talk about today,
because I love it.
For the simple reason that I discovered it very early.
(Laughter)
We are in Guadeloupe. I'm 6.
You see there in the middle, the little white kid?
Can you only imagine what it is like
to be this little blondie in the middle of his class.
Imagine what it’s like to be the only one. Almost, because there was another one,
almost the only one from a given culture, and to grow amidst the difference.
Well, this is what I experienced.
And you see those smiles?
It's the proof: it was wonderful.
I grew up in Guadeloupe.
In Guadeloupe, 8,000 km away from metropolitan France.
But more precisely, it was on a small island of the Guadeloupe archipelago
called Marie-Galante.
Marie-Galante is this pancake here,
It is the land of 9,000 people.
It is the island of an island.
It is a place isolated from the rest of the world,
isolated even from modernity sometimes.
Well, Marie-Galante is a paradise of serenity.
And it’s in this paradise that I grew up with my best friend Romaric.
You see, when you have a boat called "Love and Peace"
and you sail together in love and peace,
obviously you do not notice the differences between each other,
differences in skin color, or otherwise.
Looking back, I think that's where I get it from,
the desire, the hope, the dream to reach a multicultural united world:
a world where different people live together in harmony.
And by the way, it may seems unbelievable,
because first, I was born in Bangkok, Thailand.
Well, at the age of 18, I arrived here for the first time,
to live in Lyon, and study at INSA.
And like many of you, I had an opportunity,
to go on an exchange program, abroad.
So what did I do? I thought:
"Well, where can I go? Why not Brazil?"
So I flew to Brazil.
And there, when I arrived, I met many exchange students.
I was faced with a choice.
Would I live with other exchange students, French like me,
or would I live with different people, Brazilians?
And guess what I chose?
I’m kind of an adventurer, so I did both!
So ont the one hand, when we live with people like us,
French, similar,
it can seem more confortable.
Because we have the same way of life,
the same way of thinking, of seeing the world, cooking, etc ...
Besides, the exchange students
gather in the world under this flag,
because they are exchange students.
In a way, they are grouped according to this similarity.
On the other hand, when I moved out of my comfort zone,
and lived with Brazilians, it allowed me to learn many things.
Every morning, my Brazilian friends got up with their thumbs up.
But what does that mean?
This thumbs-up, it means
And Beleza is the joy of living, the beauty of the world.
So whatever happens during the day, morning or evening,
there would always be their thumbs-up, saying
Beleza is a word that I could have learnt,
but I wouldn’t have understood its deeper meaning
if it had not been the first words,
the first gestures we had shared every day with my friends.
Beleza is a lesson for life,
a philosophy of life.
And it is deeply rooted in me now.
Back to INSA,
INSA, another opportunity presented itself to me,
going abroad for an internship, and where this time...?
China.
So, arriving in China,
well I know what to do now:
I decided to live with a Chinese family.
The parents didn’t speak English;
the 10-year-old boy could, only a little.
I have learned a lot.
For example...
No, this is not exactly what you think, no!
Every evening, my host mom was going out of the bathroom
covered in white: This white!
So I asked her, "But what is it?"
She said: "It is talc."
Talc? What for?
I thought it was only for babies' buttocks.
No, no. Talc can absorb moisture.
It allows for silky smooth skin.
It is a natural and cheap resource.
Well I stop advertising talc.
In short, in the family everybody was using it.
And when you’ve tried it, you cannot stop.
(Laughter)
I had not even thought of that!
Anyway! You see all these experiences ...
All these experiences have helped me understand
that going to the other, we could learn a lot:
about life, about ourselves ...
But I 'm sure that you, in the room,
also have plenty of ideas, from memory, recollections,
moments where you've faced this difference.
And when you see someone who behaves differently,
what do you do? What do we do in general?
Do we think: "It is shocking!"
"It's not like what I do, it's annoying."
Or do we say, "Hey, why not? It could be interesting."
Why not derive inspiration from it?
Because since the dawn of time, we've been learning from others.
It's nothing new.
Only sometimes we have to take this step and go out of our comfort zone,
to get access to this wealth.
And this is not only my personal experience.
Others have already thought about it,
for example, philosopher and sociologist Edgar Morin.
I invite you to read what he tells us,
"Humans must see themselves in their common humanity
while simultaneously acknowledging their individual and cultural diversity.
Together we form humanity.
It is with all of our identities that we shape this diversity.
We need to keep these identities.
Stepping toward the other,
I haven’t denied my personal culture.
Multiculturalism, is not taking all the cultures,
and mixing them to form a unique culture.
Imagine tomorrow, we're all the same, the same culture.
It can be a little bit scary.
No, with multiculturalism,
the goal is to keep our personalities that form our diversity.
That gives us this wealth.
But when we're on a same territory,
we do not speak the same language,
our personalities are clashing,
our differences sometimes lead to misunderstandings.
It is not always easy. What do we do then?
So I will continue my story.
Last year I joined a European student network: ESTIEM.
You see, ESTIEM, on this map,
each orange dot represents a local group.
My greatest luck in this network
is to have participated in an event last summer
in Budapest with these people.
20 different nationalities.
Europe in the broadest sense:
Russia, Turkey, France too, Germany, etc...
And we met last summer
with the goal we had set ourselves,
which was to find solutions for a more united Europe.
So you know, when you're already in a meeting with French people,
it is not always easy to understand each other,
to be effective in the meeting
and to limit clashes of personalities.
So this time, we were 20 people with very different backgrounds.
Everyone spoke a different mother language.
So we all spoke English.
When we addressed the issue,
we had 20 ways of dealing with it.
So we sat in a room in a circle.
And there was no rule of the game, no leader, no structure.
We started talking,
and I'm not going to hide it: it was chaos.
Some began to be frustrated, others were stressed,
others got upset,
others were leaving the room.
It was not easy.
It's crazy!
We had volunteer to come here, full of good will,
to find solutions to a more united Europe
and we could not agree.
That's when, after just three days,
we returned to our common goal to what united us all:
finding solutions for the future of Europe,
for a more united Europe.
And it is only from that moment on
that we came back to our common goal,
we put aside our individuality that drove us to speak,
to always be the one to talk,
and our personal preferences.
At that time, we got together
to talk about these solutions.
And this is where I think that: having a common goal,
allows us to understand that we are connected.
That the future is us, together!
What do we all have in common? In this room, in the world ...
As Edgar Morin said earlier:
we all form humanity, we are all humans.
We're all on Earth, our common home.
We all strive for happiness.
We have seen it earlier in the video.
We all want to find happiness.
But can we really be happy all alone?
No, we can’t feel completely happy
if we see sad people around us.
So the goal is to be happy together.
You see, all these things that connect us,
remind us: the future is in unity.
We’re all linked in these objectives.
But again how can we do it?
Since the future is with the other...
Let's be generous with our neighbors,
tolerant of differences,
give hospitality to the Other...
All of this revolves around one simple concept: Otherness.
Otherness is the recognition of the other’s differences.
Today we are at INSA
and earlier I asked you to look around you.
What do you think would have happened
if we had done this experience 50 years ago?
First, in this room, I think that skin tones would have been lighter...
and we wouldn’t have had as many girls either!
Today, globalization took these difference
and brought them together on some territories.
It’s what made that we have this diversity here with us.
It is the theme of all our lives, every day,
it's all about us.
It is at INSA that this team from four different continents
won this tournament: The volleyball night.
How lucky we are to grow up here
in an environment so favorable to meeting with the Other.
Multiculturalism, perhaps you've figured out by now
is a solution for the future of humanity.
It is a solution for peace, development, etc...
But STOP!
OK, you've heard this message a thousand times.
But hearing it is not enough.
Even understandingit isn't enough.
I think we need to go beyond that,
and I think it has to start here, with us.
So let's start by accepting that these differences enrich us,
accepting that they are necessary for the future.
Accepting that
we all have these common goals
that connect us and therefore our future is together.
As in any approach to solving a problem,
the first step is to notice that there is one.
Then let’s accept it. Accepting is placing a solid foundation for tomorrow's world.
Afterwards, we'll build this world together.
You know, outside there is still too much discrimination,
prejudice, fear of the Other.
But do not feel guilty.
All of this comes from our history, our legacy.
It is in us and in spite of us...
It drives us to have strange reflexes, sometimes,
when the Other comes a little too close to us,
we take a step back. Why?
Let’s learn to notice when we have this kind of negative reflex,
and when we make voluntary steps.
The united multicultural world of tomorrow
is the one where I can go to anyone in the room,
to anyone in the world,
and whatever their origins, culture,
I can look at them in the eyes
and tell them: "You're my brother. I am proud to share this world with you."
So if outside, there are still others
who believe that tomorrow's world will be based on selfishness ,
on every man for themselves, the law of the jungle,
we are here to tell them they are wrong.
Because to change the world,
the only way is as one.
(Applause)
No, it’s not over! (laughter)
You know why I'm very very happy
to be here today,
and to talk to you about that?
It’s because yes, on the one hand I am an idealist,
and I strongly believe that
we can reach this world.
But on the other hand, I am a future engineer.
And I can see that speaking to you today
was a concrete step towards this world.
And it is possible; we can each make concrete steps towards our dreams.
Others have done it, I think mainly of Nelson Mandela,
a great man who left us not too long ago,
and fought all his life for his ideal
which he finally made real.
I also think about someone else, quite different, a singer.
John Lennon singing “Imagine."
This morning I was listening to it again, and I shed a tear.
It’s the truth.
He goes like this :
♫ You may say I’m a dreamer, ♫
♫ But I’m not the only one, ♫
♫ I hope someday you’ll join us, ♫
♫ And the world will be as one. ♫
So if you too have experienced
such warmth and international success.
If you too believe, and want tomorrow's world
to become more united than today’s world.
And if you too
want to leave for your children the best of all possible worlds.
So be ambassadors of this world.
Embrace the differences !
And be proud of it!
Thank you
(Applause)