In a world dominated by bad news, we tend to sit back and accept it. An Autopoetic Ideas Festival is a good antidote. Seriously

by David Holt

To a strategist, two questions are of prime importance. First, do we think we live in a friendly universe? According to Einstein, this is one of the most important decisions we can make. And second, to what degree can we control our own destiny? Can we set and achieve goals? Too often these days, the answer coming from authorities in government, economics, and media is no.

After 9/11, a terrible but anomalous event, the West lurched into two ill-conceived and expensive wars. Progressive deregulation of the financial industry in the U.S. helped tip a complex global economy into a recession that almost no one saw coming. Together, these two events reinforce a view that the universe is not friendly and that we are not much in control of our own destinies.  The result is a climate of fear.

"What passes for news these days is often not news, but sensational reporting of traumatizing events—fear mongering," Anne Thibeault-Bérubé tells me as we sit at an outdoor café on a sunny morning. "It's so one-sided. I would rather focus on what's positive, on what can be done, on expansive ideas."

So many of the stories we tell ourselves these days are about terrorism, war, tanking markets, rising unemployment, a pandemic of this or that. The message that we are powerless in the face of circumstance becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We set our ambitions aside and wait for the dust to settle.

Anne counters that with her own inspired creation: the Autopoetic Ideas Festival, a forum that blends intellect and creativity. This year's festival took place at Oceanstone Inn on Nova Scotia's South Shore in late October. Interactive and experiential, it was designed "to inspire the mind, body, and soul. So what does "autopoesis" mean? I ask Anne. "Self-creating," she says. Of course.

Last fall Anne brought Deepak Chopra to Halifax, where he spoke to 1,400 people in the main room at the World Trade and Convention Centre. Chopra's message is that we create our own experience, but he acknowledges the bumps along the way. He told us about his own culture shock: how, as a newly minted MD from India, he arrived almost penniless in New York City and was then immediately whisked by helicopter to a hospital. His first task was to pronounce a man dead, in a room filled with machines but empty of people—the opposite of what he would have seen in India.

The founder of a wellness clinic in California, Chopra is an endocrinologist, a global authority in holistic medicine, a student of Western science and Eastern philosophy, and a best-selling author and speaker. 

Chopra's premise is that the world is created continuously from the non-stuff of empty space—the "quantum soup" discovered by modern physics that is the analogue of the timeless realm described by the philosophers of ancient India. Chopra said we create our own destinies by our thoughts, words, and deeds, and the best ground for this is a quiet mind. Then, by a sharp-edged exercise in logic, he showed that our mind stretches far beyond the confines of the brain. It was quite a show.

Anne Thibeault-Bérubé, now a PhD in French literature, conceived of the "experiential, inspirational" festival after driving from Montreal, where she had attended a conference and met with an energy healer working at a hospital. "Inspired people allow me to rediscover and reawaken aspects of myself I might have lost sight of along the way," she says. "Through the festival I have met talented artists, practitioners, educators, visionaries, healers, and facilitators who live here and are dedicated to creating

a new world based on compassion, creativity, love, and abundance."

Anne herself has been subject to a wide range of influences. Her thesis for the University of Bordeaux was on a Chinese writer who moved to Quebec and began writing in French. She and her husband have spent time on an unspoiled island in Hawaii, learning about local spiritual traditions. Her liver was severely injured in a car accident, which prompted her interest in alternative healing.

Anne brought Chopra back to our part of the world on Nov. 5, this time to Moncton, which is a smaller setting than most places that attract international (read: pricey) speakers. But Anne was confident the event, which will also contribute to the local library, would do well. "Moncton has a community feel," she says. "They support each other's organizations." But there is a deeper issue. "Moncton did a study that concluded that to keep young people, you have to have entertainment and bring in big names."

These young people need to believe they live in a supportive universe and that they can create their own futures. The strength of that belief is probably more essential to the fate of our region than any other factor.

David Holt is a writer and consultant on strategy and communications. He can be reached at dholt@eastlink.ca.