When Do Problems Start in Societies?

Few days ago, the French police fired tear gas and arrested dozens of protesters who threw stuff at them, after thousands of the "yellow vests" demonstrators returned once again to the streets of Paris. The demonstrators chanted slogans denouncing the police and President Emmanuel Macron and his project to reform pension systems, which the mobilization against him led to the longest transport strike in France in decades.

On Friday night, President Macron and his wife, Brigitte, were rushed out  from a theater after demonstrators learned of his presence there and tried to enter the theater before the security forces confronted them. 

The French president seeks to align France with most other countries by establishing a "collective" pension system, and then to abolish private pension systems that allow for example transport workers to leave the job at a lower age, as well as to reach a financial balance in the long-term pension system by urging the French people to work longer. This very point is the largest opposed thing.

What happens today in France is indicating a potential loss of confidence in French society, and other societies in Europe, South America, Asia, and in some countries of the Arab world; in other words, the world today is living in its most difficult period since the end of World War II; and this requires, according to analysts, the existence of confidence.

This is because everyone should work within the framework of institutions and state establishments. The current state also requires trying to reform from within those institutions, with a new mindset and enlightened ideas worth of preserving the state power and permanence of institutions ..... the determinant of success or failure is trust, which must be planted and watered in the societies and between institutions of all kinds ...

When I talk to my colleagues in France about what really happens in their country, most of them believe that their society is lacking the trust and that everyone should think well of institutions and inpiduals and abandon the continuous suspicion out of precaution and discontent which could cost an economic and political monstrous collapse.

Doubt is definitely incoherent with logic and reason, and the inherited suspicion within society undermines the foundations of peace and state’s protective power, so the chances of conflicts increase within society and people reject the state and its followers.

My deep conviction is that the discontent in some western societies as France, grows out of misunderstanding, and the inability of political actors to pass economic information and facts to the people, which is exactly what happened in France as the protests against the pension system reform started even before the government announces it!

Professor Grzegorz W. Kołodko, a distinguished expert on politics and economics, is using simple words to explain the hard concepts of economics, and economists are supposed to describe what is going on. The best of these scientists know what is happening and they can persuade us, because problems arise when:

-They are aware of what is happening, but they cannot convince us

- Or they don't know, but they're trying to persuade us anyway

- Or they know that the reality of things is different as what they persuade us with

In the first case, we can only try to help them deliver the message. Indeed, this is not an easy task. Efforts in this direction need to be supported by literature, knowledge programs, education, independent media, and so on.

In the second case, when these people do not know how things are actually going on and yet they try to convince us of an important concept, they are clearly mistaken; it is then necessary to discuss the whole thing with them calmly and place an attention to the other opinion, because everyone can be wrong ....

When Albert Einstein visited the United States for the second time in 1931, before settling there a year later, he asked for an opportunity to meet another great figure of the twentieth century; Charlie Chaplin. After displaying his masterpiece, "City Lights," the crowd applauded both of the two great men, and Chaplin said: "They salute me because they all understand me, and salute you because none of them understand you."