Busy times on the Côte d'Azur. A 20 minutes bike ride along the coast towards west and I reach the Croisette and the glamour of the Cannes film festival, if I ride towards east I pass the Hotel du Cap after ten minutes and a pack of paparazzi sitting on their scooters smoking and chatting while waiting for some celebrity to go for a morning run. Do they do that?
Even more to the east, about 90 minutes ride, you get to Monaco and the F1 circus of last week.
The glamour, the expensive cars, the champagne, the often intended jaw dropping appearance of the opposite sex - all interesting to watch, all in all quite a contrarian display these days.
Nuff said, the more interesting issue was pointed out in NYT/IHT on Saturday - namely how the new and scrappy teams are beating the shit out of the well funded, well managed old teams. How Brawn and Toro Rosso beats the MacLarens, Williams and Ferraris.
In a way it's an image of how dramatic times changes the rules, in particular how the established and their ways that works like a dream during stable and good times then lets the heretics and sceptics win when the rules changes. And the rules are changing. Big time.
It's happening everywhere, just ask anybody at any big corporations. It's far beyond an issue of cutting costs and realigning, it's about much bigger changes. And for that we need sceptics and heretics.
Heretic - somebody holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted.
Sceptic - somebody inclined to question or doubt all accepted opinions.
Attitudes, both two sides of the same issue, that are made for times like these. Perhaps they're even instrumental in pushing the rule changes?
But as attitudes goes, attitude comes from the heart. A sceptic reacts instinctively, a heretic has no fear of being rebuffed. Nothing you can add to your personality palette by reading the latest "10 rules to...". A sceptic child is called quarrelsome, a heretic child is a disrespectful one. Some survive the attempts to being conditioned and good is that.
And the results of being a sceptic and heretic are well... eh... results. You cannot be say a contrarian, that would lead nowhere. It's the sceptic that might choose to act in a contrarian fashion and become a heretic. That's contrarianism with meaning. And only meaning gives... eh... meaning.
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