“Modern man has lost the sense of freedom” – Alexandre Havard

January 9, 2024 SPIRIT OF LIBERTY - ©️ The Epoch Times, https://www.epochtimes.fr/lhomme-moderne-a-perdu-le-sens-de-la-liberte-alexandre-havard-2511021.html

Alexandre Havard is of French, Russian and Georgian origin. He practiced as a lawyer in France and Finland for several years before putting his career on hold to devote himself to the study and teaching of Virtuous Leadership .

A vision of leadership which consists of “growing by helping others to grow” and which is based in particular on the exercise and development of two great virtues  : magnanimity (the habit of striving towards great things) and humility (the habit of serving others) .

“True greatness is the growth of men and not the conquest of an empire. Leadership is not a question of rank or hierarchy: it is a disposition of being. Leadership is not reserved for an elite: it is the vocation of the multitude,” emphasizes Alexandre Havard.

“Leadership is an ideal of life placed entirely under the sign of the greatness and fulfillment of the human personality,” he adds.

A free heart

For Alexandre Havard, although modern man talks a lot about freedom, he has nevertheless lost its true meaning.

“Man has free will: he is capable of making choices. Beyond, however, this basic freedom – this free will – there exists a higher freedom  : the freedom of the heart. »

A fundamental freedom which is also “the fruit of profound work on oneself”.

“A free heart is a heart that has a capacity that many people do not have: the capacity to perceive these transcendent values ​​which are the Beautiful, the Good, the True and to respond immediately with generosity and magnanimity”, observes Alexander Havard.

“Today, many people live by will and intelligence alone. […] The heart, intelligence and will are three spiritual faculties which complement each other and must constantly be in interaction,” he specifies.

For the founder of the Institute of Virtuous Leadership , the heart constitutes “the foundation of the personality” and represents “the most complex, but also the richest part of the human personality”.

“Truths of the heart, intuitive truths, are more often certain than rational truths, even mathematically demonstrable. But above all, and this is what is important, they are almost always more fundamental and more necessary to our personal growth and our happiness. »

Training of the heart

According to Alexandre Havard, it is essential to “improve our heart” in order to produce within us feelings that elevate us.

“If we are to allow our noble feelings to unfold, we must experience beauty, grandeur, love, dignity, freedom and mercy. We must also learn to experience suffering. »

“The education of the heart comes through the experience of greatness. And greatness, most of the time, is discovered in the ordinary realities of life. You just need to know how to observe,” he adds.

“A heart is formed at a very young age. […] It is in the privacy of a child's heart that the first – often decisive – battle takes place between good and evil, between generosity and selfishness. The most fundamental orientations of our existence are forged in the first years of our life, well before our intelligence is capable of taking action,” continues the former lawyer.

According to Alexandre Havard, our civilization has “buried the heart because it knows no other loyalty than submission to ideological slogans. »

Live according to your conscience

If the 20th century was marked by the fight against two great totalitarian ideologies, communism and Nazism, Alexandre Havard believes that "the demons of ideology are once again invading the world" and that we are faced with the emergence of a new totalitarianism .

“We are entering total darkness, we are entering darkness. What is happening now is only a small reflection of what is to come. »

“When we think about the development of new ideologies, the situation in Europe, the zombification of people, this new totalitarianism that is emerging, we say to ourselves that incredible things and much worse than in the past are possible. Today's men are uprooted and seem much less prepared for what is coming,” continues Alexandre Havard.

“We are going to fall more and more into this kind of situation where the totalitarian state will tell us what we absolutely must do and what it expects of us,” he adds. “We are entering the world of ideology and we are going to suffer a lot. We will have to pay attention to our conscience, we will have to lead a heroic life. »

“People need to be prepared. People who experienced Bolshevism know perfectly well what it is, but those who did not experience Soviet-era communism do not know what it means to live according to one's conscience because they have never been exposed to it. the test. »

For Alexandre Havard, it is necessary to arm ourselves with courage and consider the troubled times we are experiencing as an opportunity to elevate ourselves and develop our virtues , “under penalty of being devoured by the spirit of the world”.

“When a society becomes radicalized, as we are seeing in the West, there are only two possibilities. There is no longer an intermediate path, the path of the mediocre. Radical choices must be made. »

And Alexandre Havard concludes: “It is not the world that will make us what we will become, it is the personal decisions that we will make. Mature people can always grow, regardless of circumstances. »