2023-06-18 08:00:00
Both like to express themselves through essays (Kalogeropoulos with his Entrepreneurs’ manifesto for the Republic, ed. Balland, and Karklins with For a humanist liberalism, ed. City Press). They are also from the same chapel, that of the liberals. And carries their good word on the same antennas, in particular that of BFM Business.
And yet they are opposed. At the end of March, the consultant publishes In The echoes a Tribune entitled “A French shame!”. And Kalogeropoulos to answer him via the website ecoreseau.fr with a thunderous “A French pride!” While we wonder about the rank of our country in the world in a series of rankings published throughout the week, and its possible decline – “it is quite normal that we have passed behind India, there is nothing to panic about” dixit Karklins – we invite them to a face-to-face in the premises of the editorial staff of Challenges.
Alexis Karklins-Marchay, partner of the consulting firm Eight Advisory. Credit: Stéphane Lagoutte for Challenges
Le french paradox
The floor is given to Karklins, the one who set the fire with his shame: “That the seventh world power is forced to cancel the visit of King Charles III due to demonstrations linked to an altogether secondary reform has for me been a shock.” When a foreign friend, in front of the images of chaos in Paris, telephoned him to hear from him, he downright “felt bad”. It deserved a rant.
“What shocked me in this text is that it attacks the state, the people, the politicians, the media, when this story is only a moment”, replies Kalogeropoulos , for whom “France has a solid keel and knows how to recover after storms”.
Léonidas Kalogeropoulos, founder of the Médiations et Arguments influence firm. Credit: Stéphane Lagoutte for Challenges
But don’t tell Karklins that he doesn’t have the pride of being French: “I’m ashamed, because I love my country and because it has tremendous potential; I’m ashamed because I have a feeling of waste in the face of this image that we send back to ourselves.”
We understand that they agree on the disease – temporary or more serious – from which our nation suffers, the French paradox; a collectively unhappy country while its inhabitants are objectively not to be pitied. All pollsters, sociologists and political scientists have discussed this phenomenon. In the mouth of Karklins, who cultivates the meaning of the formula, it gives: “France is doing better than it thinks and less well than it could.” More simply, his vis-à-vis emphasizes that “the French are lucky to live in their country”.
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How to “make a nation”?
The problem of the seriousness of this malaise remains to be resolved. Karklins points out that his platform in The echoes addressed the elites “because they are the ones who have a responsibility, those who cultivate, out of demagogy or simple weariness, a declining spirit”. To listen to him, the media, politicians, artistic and cultural circles maintain a gap with reality, a harmful “theatrocracy”. And here he is almost sorry that many of his business friends congratulated him on his “shame”. As a good consultant, he delivers his recipes: simplifying administrative life, reforming the education system, and leading a cultural fight against those who pollute the economic debate, in particular the decreasing ones.
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In good Latin, Kalogeropoulos gets carried away. “My pride is that France is the country of freedom of expression, let’s not forget that some of the elites were Maoists, it is healthy to be able to talk nonsense and debate almost everything. But if we is ashamed of ourselves, it is the very cause of integration that is lost.” How to “make a nation”, according to the sacrosanct expression, if we no longer believe in it? The best thing is to believe in it.
“Silent Revolution”
Both, in their own way, found in the bowels of the country a source of hope. Léonidas Kalogeropoulos detected a “silent revolution” which reminds him of the real one, when the Le Chapelier law of 1791 put down the corporations to free the spirit of enterprise. “The wave of entrepreneurship has been bubbling for years, from the campuses of the grandes écoles to forgotten territories, companies are now at the center of the game, they must occupy their rightful place.”
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Entrepreneurship are you there? Yes, answer our debaters. And to conclude, in chorus, that it is undoubtedly the best of our potential.
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