Rhodes 2011 – Time to shine, Time to Pretend
“Incredible, amazing, awesome, unbelievable, stunning, terrific” – the minimal description for the event of the year, which was held in Rhodes Island during 5 days from 10th to 14th of October. All this is hardly to imagine for 5 days, but believe me and believe those 150 participants who every day put maximum efforts to realize their ideas in the life, that was really fantastic. To meet new interesting, smart people and old friends, to be able and have an opportunity and privilege to say own opinion for the world, for the bright future; to develop practical skills through participation in conferences and interactive games – what can be better? And mostly interesting – all that process was screening live in Internet, so other participants from all over the world and just people who were interested in the event but were not able to present physically in Rhodes had a possibility to watch it in online regime!
During the conferences and plenary sessions we could get new deep knowledge from elder generation. Master-classes and workshops with Mr. Yakunin (co-founder and honorable guest of ‘Youth Time’) and Dr. Mofid Kamran showed the importance of the right position of youth in nowadays world. There is no doubt that modern society lives in the times of political, economical and cultural crisis. But first of all this crisis is a phenomenon which was born in our minds – the crisis of the system. Crisis of the system crashes traditional values of people: family, religion, inner spiritual beauty. And the collapse in traditional values brings its results: consumerism as a logical end of the consumer society, multiculturalism in its negative aspects, variations about middle sex, etc. The world faces the point, where the money pretends to be the only value. As we can notice, sometimes and even rather than it should be people can not or do not want to see it. The situation which had been recognized as very dangerous overcame to the process of losing traditional values year by year. Money makes business. Money affect on everything. As a consequence we have Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Spain, Portugal and mostly USA – countries with a huge debt. And the most important circumstance is the falling role of spiritual in the system of values, as it mentioned Dr. Kamran. ‘The only and the unique way to escape coming catastrophe is to review the role of spiritual and material, to bring them in the position of harmony and complementarity, to bring the love and hope to this sinful and cruel world again!’
From the beginning till the end the whole five days were passed in a non-stop regime, in a blink of an eye. Fantasy, that brought all of us together – was the strong belief, that we can make the world better in spite of everything: in spite of religious, cultural, political and other differences. We shared our opinion, the opinion of the young generation of our countries and tried together find answers for the most important questions of modern society. Finally, we promised ourselves to be in touch during the whole year till the new meeting in Rhodes, Altay (as it was last summer) or somewhere else. And I believe, that our friendship in contradistinction to colossus of Rhodes will stay for ever, no matter what kind of difficulties we’ll face, because together we can everything, as we are the youth! And it is our time! Time to shine, time to pretend!