For 25 years now (much longer according to my parents…) I have been trying to understand the world around me. After the usual school-kid experiments, growing a bean seed and the like, I figured I would understand the world by becoming an engineer. And I did grow in understanding… but not enough to really figure out the world. I very clearly realized that it was no longer science that governed the world but economics and business. This was no longer a world of engineers but of financiers and company lawyers. Never mind, I decided to go in for an MBA. That again did not take me any closer to finding answers to my fundamental questions of the world…
It was then that it dawned on me that the answer was not here but maybe… on the other side of the world. I thought I needed to look at things from the other side of the planet and I was off on a world-tour looking for other cultures, in particular the Eastern. I travelled for a whole year, during a time when there was neither internet nor mobiles. I just had my backpack that contained under my shorts and t-shirts, a suit, two shirts and a pair of town shoes. Those travels exploring the meeting of the West and the East, led to my first book, Asie, Business et Bonnes Manières which was to become the first french business guide for Asia. This book was followed by others, the last to be published being Réussir avec les Asiatiques.
My search continued…
I then thought that we should, after all, return to our base: philosophy. So, like an enthusiastic novice discovering the main philosophic approaches, I began studying both western and eastern schools, from ancient times leading up to the Integral philosophy which, without doubt, is the approach most in resonance with my own vision and our present day world.
Ever since, travelling around the world almost on a yearly basis and after several years of meditation, I have finally found one answer. I observed that the sciences, philosophies, spiritual disciplines, the East, the West, all converged and could very harmoniously give us new keys to understand this changing world.
I wish to share with you what I discovered and understood along the way. I would like thus to show you that the world is getting always better as it suffers more and more and… with increasing speed! To a point where the world has become turbulent and chaotic.
I will also offer you some very simple tools that are based on one of the most advanced domains of science: the theories of chaos. And these tools will help you in analyzing, understanding and acting better in this turbulent, chaotic world.
We shall thus see how we can use new lenses and new tools in order to live and act in this radically transforming world. We shall see how to understand and live our personal and family lives, how to behave in our organizations, our associations, our companies, in this world overrun by an avalanche of changes.
