Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Second Impression

Some times I am feel that I have been left to the mercy of the Almighty.

As a media man with long experience in this sector that stretches three decades and a half plus, I have been invited to attend thousands of press conferences. I have attended most of those, to the best of my ability.

However, at times, I am invited to such programs that appear simple and very easy outwardly, but then those while attending or better say listening to the lectures by eminent scholars or scientists, I get puzzled as to how to grasp the matter the scholars have been lecturing and that too extempore?

I admit that I am jack of all trade but master of none.

Last week the French Chambers of Commerce in collaboration with the Alliance Francoise invited me to listen to a subject that made me to laugh at first but when I listened to the lecture delivered by a French Political Scientist, NICOLAS Gravel, I was forced to conclude that my understanding of the society as yet was incomplete and that I have had to learn more from such eminent scholars about the society wherein I myself live.

The title of his lecture was "when can we say that one society is better than another"?

It was though a simple title but the manner Nicolas presented and compared different societies of the world, I was stunned to know that so many things should be taken into account while comparing societies and that there were several paradigms which determine a particular society different than others.

Indeed the level of income, providing of health facilities, mortality rates and so many things were the determinants of whether a society could be termed as affluent or otherwise.

For having a better society, Gravel stressed the need for the prevalence of justice. Or in his own words, a society can be best judged by whether the society is a just one or the otherwise to its people.

"A just society is a society that maximizes (a function of the happiness-welfare-of its members", Gravel explained.

According to him, the larger is the value of this function, the more just the society is, said a beaming Nicolas Gravel.

Then he said that various attributes that a society provides to its members also determines the status of the society.

A just or unjust society, according to Gravel, could best be determined by examining as to what share of the CAKE the State provides to its citizens.

Money can contribute to securing happiness but that is not all, added Nicolas Gravel.

This much I understood from his lecture and the rest was beyond my capacity to grasp with.

Gravel was born in Ghana as a Canadian citizen. After spending his childhood in France, he obtained a Bachelor Degree in Political Science and Economics at the Varsity of Montreal in 1986, and a Masters degree in Economics at the same university in 1989 and a doctoral degree in Economics from the Varsity of British Columbia, Canada in 1993.

Frankly speaking, It was a subject that I liked but what is also true is that the more I listened to his lecture, the more I got confused. What others concluded about his heavy dose of economics I can't say.

I am sorry Dr. Gravel. Nevertheless, your lecture impressed me very much. Thanks the organizers.