What if we chose creation over outrage?

Long in vogue, Stephane Hessel’s expression Time for Outrage is now outmoded. Creation is the watchword of the moment. 

The Renaissance was not founded on outrage. Nor were scientific revolutions. Capitalism is not breathing its last, parliamentary democracy is not impotent, and the welfare state continues to function, albeit imperfectly. The people we can count on are the creators, not the merely indignant, men and women taking on giants with courage, boldness and a remarkable cool. Men and women that nothing can hold back, who wish to leave a creative footprint that givesmeaning to their lives. Women and men for whom everything is possible, as several hundred of them demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week, and that too with a smile. Entrepreneurs, researchers, artists, the curious, the mediators, all those concerned with collective intelligence and the creative process. 

Creative energy is the only antidote to dejection and collective anger. 

 The task is onerous because the spirit of the times is not encouraging. One under-estimates, in effect, the destructive potential of the atmosphere generated by declinists. How many of us have seen friends, acquaintances, even loved ones resign themselves to a regression that remains incomprehensible because of the cultural context of which they are a product. There is nihilism in the air, in all spheres of society. It is everywhere. In the tide of publications that make a virtue of resentment, in the righteous anger displayed by opinion makers, in the temptation, for a part of the political establishment, to drape itself in millenarianism, in the multiplication of editorials by intellectuals distanced from business who are nevertheless inclined to tell us that it is time to “increase the din” of demands and, why not, a revolution.

Everyone sees noon at his doorstep, as the old French adage goes, meaning that each is preoccupied by his own concerns – judges speak only to judges, doctors to doctors, teachers to teachers. The discourse is supposed to be global but is, in fact particular points of view about “the other”, engendered in most cases by personal anecdotes - public servants are bureaucrats, businessmen are lawless, etc. Few are those who make the effort to generate a global discussion on society founded on an elementary principle: people perform their tasks conscientiously, and our society is, as Ludovico Ariosto put it, an enchanted forest of small, anonymous exploits. The young generation of entrepreneurs encountered in Las Vegas, transported by their own energy and optimism, appear immune to all this. Let us give them the opportunity to speak out more often and society will be the better for it!

The lack of desire for Europe and the absence of France are heart-breaking

There is another area where creators are equally awaited. In effect, for those who crisscross the world, the lack of desire for Europe and the absence of France are heart-breaking. It’s the American Dream that inspires world youth, of a creative, rich and free America that greedily affirms the legitimacy of its power-hungriness and which rewards success beyond that which is reasonable. America remains the world’s ? ideas machine ? and its inventors become the richest Earthlings. Europe is a well of high culture, a universe of active and brilliant economic development but perceived less as a power centre, a term it does not wish to hear pronounced since 1945. And power attracts, including our own children. Moreover, Europe is unparalled at analysing its own powerlessness, a supreme crime in dominant cultures like China or the United States. 

Our history, past and present, made up of thousands of years of culture and wars overcome, of a prodigious, growing wealth, is indispensible to the world. A return to Europe after a long voyage is always a joy. The continent has studied its humanities. It is culturally more emancipated that a large part of the planet. It is more egalitarian, more balanced. We must live through globalisation whilst acknowledging that we are the children of this great history. The world needs to feel the strength of Europe and Europeans. 

French entrepreneurs present in Las Vegas and in California have understood this and most follow a model where France finds its true place in the equation of values. They have not “left”, their businesses are not uprooted, they create jobs in France, they are proud of belonging to the history and the radiance of France and Europe.Consequently, they are changing the image of the country and, like their compatriots installed in China and elsewhere in the world, they will, little by little, attract global youth towards Europe.

 This is definitely what one takes back from the excellent French presence at the CES in Las Vegas: energy,creativity, responsibility, openness to the word, a desire for power and patriotism, are values one finds everywhere. In the face of a mass of pessimists, there is in France, a large section of creators who remain unimpressed by indignation.