Mancham speaks about peace of mind and cultural diplomacy at end of London summit |28 July 2015

In his concluding remarks at the international symposium on Cultural Diplomacy that was held in the House of Lords in London last week hosted by the Institute of Cultural Diplomacy of Berlin, former President of Seychelles Sir James R. Mancham, who had been granted the award of the Institute in recognition of his contribution to Cultural diplomacy and World Peace, focused on the question of Peace of Mind.

Peace of Mind, he said, was the most important factor in evaluating an individual's quality of life.  He said that a man could have built for himself a bed made of gold but if when he got on it he couldn't sleep, then the poor man sleeping on the floor and enjoying sweet dreams had a higher quality of life.

For this reason Sir James said that the time has come for the United Nations to start evaluating the standing of nations of the world against a background of human contentment as opposed to just economic development progress. 

Do not disturb the simple life of a villager or islander and make him believe that he will be living next to heaven if he got to reside in the 55th floor of a skyscraper in New York City.  After all, what do we see in the panorama of life?

The man who has worked ceaselessly to build and to become the owner of the skyscraper, his final dream is to retire in some distant island or countryside in search of a simple life and peace of mind. Suddenly he realises that it is more pleasant to sleep to the songs of birds or the waves or even the roar of lions as opposed to the screeching noise of ambulances, fire engines and other alarms.

Today we attend lectures where the audiences are fed with statistics, mathematical formulas by robotic professors who display no emotions and at times seem disturbed and unhappy. First one must recognise the fact that ignorance could be bliss at times.  We live in a world where people no longer appreciate the various blessings which have come their way, who are engaged perpetually in keeping up with the Jones’ and who are made to see all the time that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

For this reason, man is ceaselessly on the go.  So long as he is in the running, the destination is out of mind.

If he was to stop and start thinking, for every question he could find a hundred answers and for every answer he could find a thousand questions.

That is when he faces solitude and appreciates the wisdom of the song "the answer my friend is blowing in the wind".

Today we keep on talking about standard of living and costs of living yet nations are spending astronomical sums in support of military budgets against a policy of "might is right" rather than "right is might".  So much money is diverted in the acquisition of weapons instead of schools, reservoirs, hospitals, housing ...

Many are those who think that we should be training more people to play the guitar instead of teaching them how to operate machine guns and AK47.

This world has become too much a world of division and conflicts, of violence and hatred.

Economic progress is important but it is not everything.  "I do not pretend I have the answer in hand to all our global problems but it is obvious that there is a need for more soul searching and spirit of sharing and caring. In fact, President Barack Obama's current visit to Kenya and Ethiopia is bound to project a high level of cultural diplomacy.  If the concept of Cultural Diplomacy could bring about more attention to necessary changes then cultural diplomacy is an idea whose time has really come," Sir James passionately declared.