Philosophical quiz | A riddle in the forest

Once a month, The Pressinspired by the magazine’s “Questionnaire de Socrate” Philosophy, questions a personality on the great questions of life. This Sunday, journalist and host Marie-Louise Arsenault, who can be heard these days in two summer series (The power of words And political passion), before the return of Everything can happen (HERE Premiere) and In the media (Télé-Québec), this fall, answers our questions.

Who am I ?

Despite some life experience, it is still difficult for me to answer this question. I am a being on the move, constantly challenged by what I learn about myself through contact with others. I try not to fix what I am, what I feel, what I think, I try to stay open, flexible. I have spent a good part of my life reading and listening to the words of others. I am a sponge.

What do you remember from your education?

May we continue, if we remain humble and open, to learn throughout our lives.

Are we free?

As much as we wish, if we have the will to avoid received ideas, dogmas and conventions. One can always be free if one has been lucky enough to have been educated to think for oneself. Writers who were imprisoned and continued to write in their cells, such as the Malian Seydou Badian Kouyaté or the Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong’o, are proof of this. They have all my admiration.

The most surprising thing you’ve done for love?

I loved.

An author or a philosopher who has been with you for a long time?

The German philosopher Hannah Arendt, whom I read in bits, because her writing is rather dry. His exploration of the workings of fascism is very topical, as far-right ideas gain ground across the West. In The origins of totalitarianism (1945-1949), she wrote: “To take root, totalitarianism needs isolated and decultured individuals, uprooted from organic social relations, socially atomized and driven to extreme selfishness. » I also like Spinoza, who affirms that there is only joy in the present moment, in the quality of the presence.

Your demon?

I am very afraid of death, of mine and that of the beings I love. I know her well, however, having lost my father at the age of 15. Since then, I think about death every day.

The perfect place to create or dream?

Swimming in a Quebec lake in July.

A benefit of being selfish?

It is an attractive mirror in the short term, in the splendor of youth, because it gives the illusion of being powerful, of being self-sufficient, of moving faster. But over a lifetime, I don’t see any. We end up alone and embittered when we are selfish.

An idea that you would defend against everything?

Education and knowledge are the only ways to be free.

A recurring dream (or nightmare)?

I dream that I have to play a musical instrument (often the trumpet, my favorite instrument) during a concert. I know very well that I don’t know how to play it, but everything forces me to. The concert, obviously missed, is a great humiliation.

What other job would you have liked to do?

Athlete. I would have liked to master a sport, go to the end of myself, have a sense of competition. Be powerful and physically agile.

What infuriates you in life?

The lack of love and compassion. Let the supreme value be money. That greedy and thirsty billionaires decide the fate of humanity with total impunity, paying no taxes, going beyond the power of States, supporting wars, aggravating the precarious fate of the planet by destroying natural environments and the enslavement of populations. That people support dangerous ideas (which appeal because they are easy answers to overwhelming situations like poverty and intellectual misery), for the sole thirst for power.

Complete the sentence: If God exists…

…he hides in the beauty of a forest, in the morning.