Translator: Mohand Habchi Reviewer: eric vautier
I’m sure you’ve all thought about changing the world.
I’m sure you’ve all already said:
“But what can I do at my level? “
So I’m here to try to give you an answer.
How to change well-established traditions?
My idea is in two words: the word transmission and the word tradition.
What report will you tell me?
If I tell you about tradition,
there you think rather of something cultural, authentic,
rather something stable, fixed, which passes from one individual to another,
which endures.
Sometimes we want to annihilate a tradition,
sometimes we want to keep it.
My father said, “Tradition is anti-modernity. “
If I speak to you now about transmission.
There, we are in something that moves, in movement,
we pass something from one person to another,
from one place to another,
we transmit.
So if I’m talking about a transmission, a tradition,
there, we speak of something moving, moving, of a fixed thing.
There is no such thing as a contradiction?
And if in fact, the tradition innovated?
If the tradition changed?
I’m telling you this because it’s something I’m experimenting with
in my job, because my job is to be an ethnologist,
and as an ethnologist, one learns and lives on one’s land
that things, traditions, actually move.
What is ethnology?
It’s studying a culture, studying a population, a society,
or that’s it, we ask a lot of questions.
It can be a little embarrassing for our interlocutors.
[What is the answer to stop the questions?]
So, if I’m talking about two authors named Hobsbawm and Ranger,
who also worked on the tradition,
they will tell us that a tradition goes from generation A to generation B,
and that generation B remembers the tradition of the A as it can,
so she can not remember all the elements of the tradition.
She has to select certain parts,
some elements of the tradition.
It means that there are shadows,
interstices in which, in fact, tradition can innovate and change.
Finally, tradition B will be a little different from the A
but it will remain unconscious.
For example, if I want to redo the traditional cake of my grandmother
and that I use everything she does,
and that she put a lot of butter,
Well, maybe I do not know exactly how much she put in,
but I will put a lot of butter, as I think it is.
So I put a plate of butter.
It’s a lot. I make my cake, it’s good,
it’s always my grandmother’s cake,
except that I forgot, and everyone forgot, that she put two pads,
but the cake is always the tradition.
Why ? Because the change remains subtle.
We are in a subtle change,
so he is accepted and the tradition is still valid.
To give you a more real and concrete example of my work as an ethnologist,
I work with Tibetan people living in the Himalayas,
and I was lucky to live in a village for five months
and stay with a family of Tibetan doctors.
In this family,
there was the father and the son who were both doctors.
Both practice Tibetan medicine,
a tradition,
but, there are slight changes between the two practices.
Both practice taking the pulse at the wrist,
but also the mixing of medicinal herbs, plants,
but, finally, there are things that vary.
To give you an example,
one day, I join this former doctor with whom I lived, who was 75 years old,
I join him on his terrace where he used to spend a lot of time,
and the roofs are flat,
so he was sitting there on his terrace watching the scenery,
and I sit next to him.
I sit next to him and we remain in silence watching the mountains,
to look at the view of the village, the recent road that has just been made,
and then we stay there silent,
and then suddenly, spontaneously, he says to me:
(Speaks Tibetan)
To do it in French, he says:
“There are no more horses, there are only cars and motorcycles,
there are no more people in the houses,
there are no more doctors, they are abroad. “
What does it mean ?
It means things are changing.
It means that tradition, the world changes under the eyes,
in the passivity in fact, the eyes of the old.
And this old doctor, he realizes that he has always stayed in his village,
but his son and the younger doctors go abroad, leave to transmit
their knowledge abroad and learn new things,
for example the massage that he did not practice.
And his son also has an imperative that he did not have,
which is the financial imperative,
we are in a world where there is a need for money,
and you have to integrate that into Tibetan medicine,
because at the base, it’s a medicine in which you have to be
in compassion and humility, and not ask for money in return.
Today, the son oscillates between humility, compassion
and try to have money because you have to live well.
So the tradition changes,
and this tradition changes but in a very subtle way.
It extends in time,
that’s why it’s still valid, in fact, Tibetan medicine.
It is always said that it is Tibetan medicine.
If the change had been radical, imposed, it would not have worked.
If we impose overnight the change of tradition,
people will say:
“Ah, but that’s not how we’ve always done, it does not work. “
Why do I tell you all this?
I tell you all that, because if we realize that we change ourselves,
that the tradition in any case changes whatever happens –
it’s something unconscious in fact, from generation to generation, it changes –
Well, that means maybe it’s that way
that the changes we want to see in the world will pass.
That is, becoming aware
that a tradition changes no matter what happens,
that it changes, that what has always been like that changes whatever happens,
Well, we realize that we can change ourselves,
to be the author of this change.
For example,
if you work in a company and there is the tradition of the coffee break,
and that in fact, you are tired of drinking soluble coffee,
because it’s the tradition of drinking soluble coffee,
and you, you want to drink filter coffee,
if you say, “Now we put a coffee machine”,
people will say, “That’s not how we do it,
we have always had soluble coffee. “
So maybe you can think
to bring back your thermos cup of coffee filter from the house
and start talking to people, saying it’s better for you.
People will start thinking.
Or maybe after
you can bring your own coffee maker while keeping the coffee soluble.
After, people will start making filter coffee for themselves,
and little by little, the tradition will change but the tradition will always be the same,
we will go to drink coffee, but it will have changed subtly.
What I want to say to you to finish,
we all have a force for change,
it is not violent, it is subtle and it can be used wisely,
so use it,
because it is by small successes that great changes are made.
Thank you.
(Applause)
I’m sure you’ve all thought about changing the world.
I’m sure you’ve all already said:
“But what can I do at my level? “
So I’m here to try to give you an answer.
How to change well-established traditions?
My idea is in two words: the word transmission and the word tradition.
What report will you tell me?
If I tell you about tradition,
there you think rather of something cultural, authentic,
rather something stable, fixed, which passes from one individual to another,
which endures.
Sometimes we want to annihilate a tradition,
sometimes we want to keep it.
My father said, “Tradition is anti-modernity. “
If I speak to you now about transmission.
There, we are in something that moves, in movement,
we pass something from one person to another,
from one place to another,
we transmit.
So if I’m talking about a transmission, a tradition,
there, we speak of something moving, moving, of a fixed thing.
There is no such thing as a contradiction?
And if in fact, the tradition innovated?
If the tradition changed?
I’m telling you this because it’s something I’m experimenting with
in my job, because my job is to be an ethnologist,
and as an ethnologist, one learns and lives on one’s land
that things, traditions, actually move.
What is ethnology?
It’s studying a culture, studying a population, a society,
or that’s it, we ask a lot of questions.
It can be a little embarrassing for our interlocutors.
[What is the answer to stop the questions?]
So, if I’m talking about two authors named Hobsbawm and Ranger,
who also worked on the tradition,
they will tell us that a tradition goes from generation A to generation B,
and that generation B remembers the tradition of the A as it can,
so she can not remember all the elements of the tradition.
She has to select certain parts,
some elements of the tradition.
It means that there are shadows,
interstices in which, in fact, tradition can innovate and change.
Finally, tradition B will be a little different from the A
but it will remain unconscious.
For example, if I want to redo the traditional cake of my grandmother
and that I use everything she does,
and that she put a lot of butter,
Well, maybe I do not know exactly how much she put in,
but I will put a lot of butter, as I think it is.
So I put a plate of butter.
It’s a lot. I make my cake, it’s good,
it’s always my grandmother’s cake,
except that I forgot, and everyone forgot, that she put two pads,
but the cake is always the tradition.
Why ? Because the change remains subtle.
We are in a subtle change,
so he is accepted and the tradition is still valid.
To give you a more real and concrete example of my work as an ethnologist,
I work with Tibetan people living in the Himalayas,
and I was lucky to live in a village for five months
and stay with a family of Tibetan doctors.
In this family,
there was the father and the son who were both doctors.
Both practice Tibetan medicine,
a tradition,
but, there are slight changes between the two practices.
Both practice taking the pulse at the wrist,
but also the mixing of medicinal herbs, plants,
but, finally, there are things that vary.
To give you an example,
one day, I join this former doctor with whom I lived, who was 75 years old,
I join him on his terrace where he used to spend a lot of time,
and the roofs are flat,
so he was sitting there on his terrace watching the scenery,
and I sit next to him.
I sit next to him and we remain in silence watching the mountains,
to look at the view of the village, the recent road that has just been made,
and then we stay there silent,
and then suddenly, spontaneously, he says to me:
(Speaks Tibetan)
To do it in French, he says:
“There are no more horses, there are only cars and motorcycles,
there are no more people in the houses,
there are no more doctors, they are abroad. “
What does it mean ?
It means things are changing.
It means that tradition, the world changes under the eyes,
in the passivity in fact, the eyes of the old.
And this old doctor, he realizes that he has always stayed in his village,
but his son and the younger doctors go abroad, leave to transmit
their knowledge abroad and learn new things,
for example the massage that he did not practice.
And his son also has an imperative that he did not have,
which is the financial imperative,
we are in a world where there is a need for money,
and you have to integrate that into Tibetan medicine,
because at the base, it’s a medicine in which you have to be
in compassion and humility, and not ask for money in return.
Today, the son oscillates between humility, compassion
and try to have money because you have to live well.
So the tradition changes,
and this tradition changes but in a very subtle way.
It extends in time,
that’s why it’s still valid, in fact, Tibetan medicine.
It is always said that it is Tibetan medicine.
If the change had been radical, imposed, it would not have worked.
If we impose overnight the change of tradition,
people will say:
“Ah, but that’s not how we’ve always done, it does not work. “
Why do I tell you all this?
I tell you all that, because if we realize that we change ourselves,
that the tradition in any case changes whatever happens –
it’s something unconscious in fact, from generation to generation, it changes –
Well, that means maybe it’s that way
that the changes we want to see in the world will pass.
That is, becoming aware
that a tradition changes no matter what happens,
that it changes, that what has always been like that changes whatever happens,
Well, we realize that we can change ourselves,
to be the author of this change.
For example,
if you work in a company and there is the tradition of the coffee break,
and that in fact, you are tired of drinking soluble coffee,
because it’s the tradition of drinking soluble coffee,
and you, you want to drink filter coffee,
if you say, “Now we put a coffee machine”,
people will say, “That’s not how we do it,
we have always had soluble coffee. “
So maybe you can think
to bring back your thermos cup of coffee filter from the house
and start talking to people, saying it’s better for you.
People will start thinking.
Or maybe after
you can bring your own coffee maker while keeping the coffee soluble.
After, people will start making filter coffee for themselves,
and little by little, the tradition will change but the tradition will always be the same,
we will go to drink coffee, but it will have changed subtly.
What I want to say to you to finish,
we all have a force for change,
it is not violent, it is subtle and it can be used wisely,
so use it,
because it is by small successes that great changes are made.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Please follow and like us: