Hello, dear friends! Thank you for joining me for this new episode of Walk With Johan.
And before we move on to our topic of the day, which combines personal development and politics a little bit, let me tell you that registrations for the Authentic French Academy are open. There are few openings, they are closed 90% of the year. It is possible that in 2025 they will be even less open than they were in 2024. So, if you are interested in the Authentic French Academy , if you want to access Zoom meetings with tutors and access 180 hours of content, follow the link in the description. Registrations are open for a few days only . And it will obviously be a pleasure to meet you in person.
So today, I would like to talk to you in this somewhat short episode, I think, about an idea that I had for myself. And I like to test my ideas with the audience of Français Authentique and with the members who listen to the podcast Marchez Avec Johan. I would like to set up, for myself, a ministry. Not a ministry in the religious sense of the term, but a ministry in the political sense of the term.
In France, we have a political system that was composed of... we have a separation of powers, so we have a legislative branch that votes on laws. So that is Parliament: the National iran whatsapp number data Assembly and the Senate. So that is the legislative branch. We have a judicial branch, which ensures that the laws are respected, so it punishes those who do not respect them, among other things. And we have an executive branch, so it executes the laws and proposes them. And the executive branch, in France, is structured around the President of the Republic. That is the Fifth Republic.
We made a module of the academy on the Fifth Republic. So, we explain to you exactly how it works. And we have several modules on the history of France, which also show how we got from the First Republic in 1792, after the French Revolution, to the Fifth Republic, through the Restoration, the First Empire, the Second Empire, etc. But that's another subject.
So we have the President of the Republic and the ministers, with a Prime Minister appointed by the President of the Republic and ministers who are appointed in principle by the Prime Minister. But in reality, we know that it is the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic who appoint them. And they, the ministers, the Prime Minister and the President of the Republic, they represent the executive. And we have... for all the major areas of France, of our country, we have a minister, therefore, a ministry. We have, therefore, a ministry... I'm not going to list them all, but we have a Ministry of Education, we have a Ministry of Justice, we have a Ministry of Health, we have a Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we have a Ministry of the Interior for the security of the country, etc. So, each time we have a person, a minister, who is at the head of the ministry for this area of the country.
And so, if we compare ourselves to a country, we could say to ourselves: "Well, I myself am going to..." because a country has many areas, what I just mentioned, but we, as individuals, also have areas. We can have the spiritual area, the moral area, the health area, the education area too, the social area, etc. So, we can define a certain number of areas, and we can choose a minister in charge of this area.
And actually, I got this idea from reading the introduction to Tolstoy's book. So, Tolstoy, a very, very famous Russian writer who wrote, among other things, War and Peace . And he wrote a book called Calendar of Wisdom . I'm reading it in English, maybe it exists in French, I'm not sure. But A Calendar of Wisdom , where actually, every day, he collects a certain number of thoughts on a given subject from the great thinkers of humanity, actually.
And in the introduction, he says he's surprised to see that we don't spend more time than that with the great thinkers. He said: "But wait..." So, he lived, I think, in the 1800s, to check, I think, late 1800s, early 1900s, probably. We'll have to check that, I'm not 100% sure. And he said to himself: "Thinkers have contributed for millennia, centuries, millennia, and we spend little time with them, that is to say we spend little time reading their thinking, their literature." And that's one of the reasons why he wrote this book, saying to himself: "Every day, I'm going to spend time with these great thinkers, since I'm going to read their writings."
And I thought that it would actually be even better, rather than saying to yourself: "I'm going to spend time with these thinkers on an ad hoc basis", to say to yourself: "They're the ones who are ultimately going to govern my life a little bit". And so, I said to myself: "I'm going to try to build, for myself, a small ministry". So, it's in the process of being established. For the moment, I'm just sharing the idea with you like that. And I'm taking my time, because it's a long-term thought. Those that I choose, I want to choose them for a very long time, even forever, in fact. It's really long term, unlike our politicians.
When we look at the history of French politics, especially in 2024, and the establishment of the Barnier government and others, we say to ourselves that they are not necessarily in the long term. We, as individuals, are in the long term. But I can see myself adding names like, you know, Dale Carnegie, Jim Rohn, John Wooden, CS Lewis, Billy Graham, maybe General de Gaulle for certain points related to the vision, etc. I could imagine taking Jesus as Prime Minister.