Carte blanche on 17 January: the place of volunteering in our society

The topic of volunteering is increasingly being documented in recent years, both nationally and internationally. It is being observed all over the world that the willingness to volunteer is decreasing. What is the situation regarding volunteering in Luxembourg? That's where Gaston Ternes comes in with this ‘carte blanche’.

The current government agreement contains two pages about a plan of action for volunteering. That's good! The fact is that volunteering is dropping in all countries. In the USA, for example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the rate fell from 29% in 2005 to 23% after COVID. For Luxembourg, the Statec confirmed this September that 35% of residents do voluntary work.

Volunteering has a component that is more important than maintaining essential services for the community and organising activities. There is a statistically significant positive correlation between social cohesion and people's willingness to volunteer. In other words: more volunteering equals more democracy.

This should be noted in the context of the recent POLINDEX 2024 study. It shows a clear change in our society. Since 2018, it has become increasingly materialistic. ‘Even a technocratic, authoritarian regime would be okay, as long as politics personally benefits me,’ summarises Professor Poirier from the University of Luxembourg. Benevolence can be a driving force for a better functioning democracy. It teaches the right attitudes and behaviours: respect for others, equal rights, taking responsibility.

How can we make volunteering more visible? The Rwanda model ‘Umuganda’ could not be applied here at home one-to-one. ‘Umuganda’ is organised by the state, not voluntarily. But, we can learn from the idea. ‘Umuganda’, translated from Kinyarwanda into English, means “coming together to achieve a common goal”. Once a month, the people of Rwanda engage themselves to carry out community work in their district.

Why not introduce this idea in Luxembourg on 5 December, International Volunteer Day? Wouldn't that be an excellent day for joint activities, for the involvement of schools and associations? In this way, we could firmly anchor volunteering in our society. Gabriela Civico, Director of the Centre for European Volunteering, said: ‘Volunteering is not a new topic, but we want to see it in a better place in the order of priorities.’ Hopefully the fact that she is right has been highlighted by these 2 minutes 30.

Black or white! Petition 3176, which was submitted to Parliament on 4 November, received 4,775 signatures: it aims to ban smartphones on school grounds in general. Petitions are in vogue. A carte blanche from Gaston Ternes. Petitions are positive in themselves: they give committed citizens the opportunity to express their opinions publicly in Parliament, the institution of elected representatives who make decisions for us in our parliamentary democracy. One question is on my mind: Is it always just black or white, without any nuances? The current discussion about the general ban on mobile phones in schools makes me think: is it enough to answer "good" or "bad" with regard to "education"? It makes no sense to simply ban mobile phones. Similarly, it makes no sense to allow mobile phones everywhere all the time! The issue simply doesn't fit into a binary system, either a zero or a one. "Media must be taught and not demonised," psychiatrist Serge Tisseron recently put it in a nutshell. Media need rules that need to be practised both in the family and at school. Recently, when it comes to questions about schools, it's almost always just about "good or bad": International or Luxembourgish schools, for example, without taking the opportunity to systematically exchange best practices! Nowadays, everyone can communicate directly, often with just a "thumbs up" or a "thumbs down" or even an emoji to quickly express a feeling. The nuances fall by the wayside. The complexity of the issue is overlooked. No search for a compromise. Why this trend in our time...? One reason is certainly the filter bubbles that are omnipresent in both internet search engines and social media. Our news is filtered. They are tailored to our profile. We only see one-sided comments and information that correspond exactly to our interests; the algorithm does not show us the flipside. If you are only confronted with your own opinion and are ever confirmed, then you are living in a comfortable opinion bubble. The American activist Eli Pariser warned us back in 2011 in his book "The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is hiding from you". My first question raises new questions: Do we simply tolerate unscrupulous internet and social media big players sacrificing all diversity of opinion on the altar of their profit? Wouldn't it be time to take countermeasures, both through a consistent explanation of how filter bubbles work and through active training in "debating", preferably in the same real space?

Black or white

Petition 3176, which was submitted to Parliament on 4 November, received 4,775 signatures: it aims to ban smartphones on school grounds in general. Petitions are in vogue. A carte blanche from Gaston Ternes.

Les pétitions sont positives en soi : elles donnent au citoyen engagé la possibilité d’exprimer publiquement son opinion, et ceci au Parlement, l’institution des représentants élus qui décident pour nous dans notre démocratie parlementaire.

One question is on my mind: Is it always just black or white, without any nuances? The current discussion about the general ban on mobile phones in schools makes me think: is it enough to answer "good" or "bad" with regard to "education"? It makes no sense to simply ban mobile phones. Similarly, it makes no sense to allow mobile phones everywhere all the time! The issue simply doesn't fit into a binary system, either a zero or a one. "Media must be taught and not demonised," psychiatrist Serge Tisseron recently put it in a nutshell. Media need rules that need to be practised both in the family and at school.

Recently, when it comes to questions about schools, it's almost always just about "good or bad": International or Luxembourgish schools, for example, without taking the opportunity to systematically exchange best practices!

Nowadays, everyone can communicate directly, often with just a "thumbs up" or a "thumbs down" or even an emoji to quickly express a feeling. The nuances fall by the wayside. The complexity of the issue is overlooked. No search for a compromise. Why this trend in our time...?

One reason is certainly the filter bubbles that are omnipresent in both internet search engines and social media. Our news is filtered. They are tailored to our profile. We only see one-sided comments and information that correspond exactly to our interests; the algorithm does not show us the flip-side.

If you are only confronted with your own opinion and are ever confirmed, then you are living in a comfortable opinion bubble. The American activist Eli Pariser warned us back in 2011 in his book "The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is hiding from you".

My first question raises new questions: Do we simply tolerate unscrupulous internet and social media big players sacrificing all diversity of opinion on the altar of their profit? Wouldn't it be time to take countermeasures, both through a consistent explanation of how filter bubbles work and through active training in "debating", preferably in the same real space?

Unclassified

Carte blanche from May 31, 2024 – Our society is collapsing, … and no one realizes it?

Our society is collapsing... and no one realizes it?

Our daily lives are increasingly marked by intolerance, premature judgments, fake news and verbal attacks. Social networks are a daily example of this. No age group is spared. Add to that the hustle, stress and financial worries. Is our entire society slipping...and no one notices? What is the role of politics? Gaston Ternes answers this question in his Carte Blanche.

Today's subject is not specifically Luxembourgish, it concerns our so-called "Western" society, the way in which we live together, the way in which politics accompanies it. I am going to choose, from a panoply, 2 very extreme examples, of the way in which politics regulates in the first case, capitulates in the second!

Britain has just passed a law to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. Two years ago, Charles III, then still Prince of Wales, called the bill a “terrible idea”. He signed the law as king in late April this year.

We are irritated that there are also voices within the European community who accept this inhumane solution. A week ago, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer praised this British “Rwandan model”! How can people who are supposed to represent democratic values make such inhumane decisions? No proponent of this idea is interested in the situation in Rwanda itself, because that country faces its own refugee problem. Hundreds of thousands of Rwandan refugees have wanted to return to their country of origin for years. Nobody talks about the dramatic unemployment rate in Rwanda.

Let us cite another example very different from the first: the mental health of many children and young people in Western Europe is not good. The children's agitation reverberates throughout the classroom. At school, more and more “specific measures” are necessary to support children with inappropriate behavior. I feel these measures like band-aids, without getting into the real causes.

The average age at which children are first exposed to pornographic images is now 10 years old! Access to extremely violent video clips and films is unlimited. All too quickly, children are confronted with social networks, which expose them to the dictatorship of the gaze of others and to destructive criticism. The policy here is “no subscriptions”. It does not regulate.

Over the decades, governments have systematically placed human values behind economic interests. They turned a blind eye to the collateral damage. “Economic growth comes at the price of an intellectual, cultural, psychological and spiritual collapse,” writes the French author Laurent Gounelle very aptly in his recent work “The Wake”. When will we wake up, when will politicians wake up and return to their core business?

“Polis”, from ancient Greek, in the sense of shaping and regulating harmonious coexistence, collective consciousness!