[Ideas] Deep Thought Series

  • 22/06/2024
  • 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
  • Full Circle House, 89 Ch. de Vleurgat, 1050 Ixelles
  • 12

Registration

  • Places are limited in number. Join the waiting list to receive tickets if more become available.
  • Places reserved for members.
  • Reduced rate for students, interns, unwaged. Please provide proof of status at check-in.
  • Available to Full House Members, until the start of the event.
  • Free tickets for those who need it. Sign up and places will be allocated before the event.
Registration is closed



DEEP THOUGHT

A friendly conversation on stuff that matters
with Andreea Petre-Goncalves

Conversations / Sat 22nd Jun / 5.00-7.00 pm


The age of thanks for small mercies

A few days after an electoral exercise that brought together hundreds of millions across Europe, I find myself spluttering expletives into my coffee every time someone mentions relief. You might find me petulant. Childish. Harbouring apocalyptic fantasies. Yet what joy is there in Flanders still being a touch more bourgeois nationalist yellow than it is straightforward fascist brown? How low our ambitions when we rejoice in the “centre holding” in the European Parliament elections - by which we mean what used to constitute almost the entire political spectrum now amounting to a “blink and you’ll miss it” majority?

Like a frog in a heating pot of water, we reassure ourselves we still have a handle on things. A party balloon a few decades after the party, our political system is emptied of meaning, of promise, of hope - but hasn’t yet imploded. Another lucky escape. We can keep boiling.

What we accept as normal in 2024 would have seemed dystopian in 2019 and unimaginable in 2014. As thankful as we are for these small mercies, it’s within the reach of our collective courage and imagination to fill our public space with better things in the next five years. To do more than await our froggy fate.

In the Deep Thought series, Andreea offers opportunities to interrogate our ideas of what is normal and desirable in society. Together we walk towards the mindset shifts that are needed to protect our planet, make the world safe and ensure lives and dignity and meaning for all. Deep Thought is a space for courage and authenticity, with no stone left unturned. We build trust, encourage each other and take action together.

What happens to trust in a transactional world? What does a selfish society do for our happiness? What does meaningful work mean in an era of precarity, automation and uncertainty? What is society for? Join us for our monthly conversations.

Join us and replenish our shared hope reserves.




Open to everyone | Booking required
Bar open

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ABOUT

Andreea was 8 years old when totalitarian Communism collapsed overnight in her native Romania. She saw then how quickly yesterday’s absolute truth can become tomorrow reviled atrocity. She knows that societal narratives can shift fast, and when they do, they make deep system re-set possible.

For two decades she worked for international development, human rights, health and sustainability in the EU institutions and international NGOs. In 2019 she set up Flare, a Brussels-based think-and-do tank that experiments with practical ways of shifting the collective ideas we hold of what is normal and desirable. This work builds on 15 years of her researching and writing about societal narrative shifts. She is a BMW Foundation Responsible Leader and a member of Global Diplomacy Lab.


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