Conversation with Jad Amine Zeitouni on Feminist Humanism

 

 

 

 

 

 

Publisher: In-Sight Publishing

Publisher Founding: March 1, 2014

Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com

Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada

Journal: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal

Journal Founding: August 2, 2012

Frequency: Three (3) Times Per Year

Review Status: Non-Peer-Reviewed

Access: Electronic/Digital & Open Access

Fees: None (Free)

Volume Numbering: 12

Issue Numbering: 3

Section: A

Theme Type: Idea

Theme Premise: “Outliers and Outsiders”

Theme Part: 31

Formal Sub-Theme: None

Individual Publication Date: August 15, 2024

Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2024

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Word Count: 6,881

Image Credits: Sinitta Leunen on Unsplash.

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN): 2369-6885

*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citations, after the publication.*

Abstract

Jad Amine Zeitouni is a dynamic political figure and advocate, currently serving as a political advisor for equal chances, economy, employment, LEZ, and energy under the cabinet of Minister Elke Van den Brandt in Brussels. A candidate for the Brussels Parliament, ranked sixth on the list for Groen, he brings extensive experience in public service and advocacy, particularly in areas of diversity, inclusion, and youth rights. His work spans organizing workshops on diversity and identity, moderating debates on critical societal issues, and consulting on diversity and inclusion strategies, continuously influencing and shaping policies that promote social justice and equality in Belgium. Zeitouni: discusses feminism and humanism out of Belgium.

Keywords: ecologism and long-term impacts, feminist principles and intersectionality, humanist activism and political transition, political decision-making and social awareness, practical application of humanist values, socialism and social risk management, the intersection of feminism and gender roles, youth humanism leadership experience.

Conversation with Jad Amine Zeitouni on Feminist Humanism

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Okay, let’s go from here. The first interview is long-lost. We connected through Young Humanists International when transitioning from the International Humanists and Ethical Youth Organization (IHEYO) to the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU).

You already had a political interest or intrigue in political science then. So, what did you learn from your leadership days in youth humanism? How have you now transferred that over to your political life? From what you’re telling me, you are extremely busy right now—a bit of a broader question.

Jad Zeitouni: I’ve always been active. I had my humanist activism, but I also had many other things. The humanist experience was one of the most important ones. I’ve been mainly active in politics and policymaking. I’ve been actively advising and executing political mandates. The humanist experience is similar. In the end, I was vice president. I was part of the group of thinkers that allowed us to reflect, think about the world, and find concrete solutions. We had to figure out how to support young humanists in Nigeria or stimulate them with a budget we had allocated practically. How do we manage a group with a social purpose and a vision for the world to execute? In the end, political work is similar. There are 6,000 things you can do, and probably 5,000 that everybody agrees you should do, but you only have the money and time to do 100. I didn’t find it that different from the humanist experience, except it was my full-time job the last year. Humanism was my extra on the side. We all did this voluntarily.

The first part is that I’ve seen the young humanist bubble soften over the last few years. It makes me a bit sad. It was valuable for the international humanist movements and us. I swear we did the same as what I’m doing now as a professional political advisor.

The second thing is that I was in charge of the finances. I was handling the budgets. I had to do my financial report. If you remember, I had to do all the checks and balances. It ended up being a more useful experience than I thought it would be because it helped me develop an understanding of budgets. That understanding of budgets has grown even more afterwards, quite a lot more. One of the most important things I’ve done in the last year, for which I’ve also gotten the most recognition, is going through the budgets of some projects from a different political party-affiliated minister. I spend my evening nights reflecting and thinking, okay, where does the money go? I find flaws, sometimes done to secure budgets and sometimes not intentionally. People sometimes overestimate or underestimate the budgets.

This is similar to my thinking work when we had our young humanists’ projects, knowing when they applied for grants. One of my biggest time investments back then was reviewing those applications, advising them, and telling them what to do. Weirdly enough, what I did over the last years, while it’s a lot fancier on paper and the impact is a bit more direct and bigger, is similar to what we were doing back then. Also, if somebody wanted to do my job for ten years, I’d advise them to gain similar experience. It’s a good learning school. I find my motivation in doing real stuff. I need to improve on an academic bench.

This is why I am the way I am. Young humanists, it’s real. It’s a real world. That’s nice. That’s motivating. At the same time, it was voluntary youth work. You were allowed to make some mistakes. You have a team; you have good vibes. Half our meetings were a group of friends from all across the globe, where you have humanist friends specifically venting their frustrations about the world. The other half was us doing a good job. I look back, and we underestimated ourselves a bit. I would trust us if I had the money, budgets, and power to put the same constellation in charge of executing humanist policies. We did well. We had diverse profiles, expertise, and perspectives, all motivated with the heart in the right place. I sound ableist, and I apologize. We also had the intellectual capacity as a group to envision, execute, think, reflect, and be self-critical. How important I’ve noticed in the last few years is how much of a difference that makes. This is a summary, but I can keep going on a monologue, but that might be too extensive.

Jacobsen: What do you make of the policy and politics you’re into now, and those orientations related to humanist principles? How do you find much overlap between the political side of things and values that humanism more or less taught?

Zeitouni: Yes, I work. I’ve been active within the Greens, the ecological movement. There’s an obvious natural overlap. I can think of many differences. One of the subtle differences might be that I’ve never been the most hardcore humanist. I believe in individual rights for people to have religious freedom. People should matter. A lot of my humanist buddies, they’re more anti-religion. No, I’m not anti-religion on an individual level. I’m anti-religious structure. So I’ve always been soft in that aspect of my humanism- live and let live- all fine.

But I feel like progressive political movements in Western Europe sometimes have borderline poverty. That’s a different thing. I’m not a big fan of it; I’m not sure if stimulating is the right word, but let’s say enabling religious structures where individuals carry way too much power and where people get low-key brainwashed. They are also very passive to me. My stance is a bit more radical, but religious people have robbed a part of our humanity. When you think of religious structures, we never developed the structures to handle the loss of a loved one, to celebrate love, to celebrate birth. Religious structures so dominate those. They have thousands of years of culture they’ve developed in a way. That means we never had a place in our society to take care of that, right? Because we always, almost in a lazy way, built our modern societies and said, ah, they’ll go to the church, right?

And if tomorrow I could, and I’m trying to push that, my political party has shifted because of me. We need to handle that. We must invest in developing the structures so people cannot be religious. They don’t have to be. Never mind if you want to get married in a church, if you want to mourn with a priest and believe that your loved one went to heaven, fine. It should be possible without, and that possible without, that frustrates me a lot. That’s my humanist side; it’s sometimes the most frustrating part of politics. We’re too passive. But on the bigger principles, it easily transitioned. So I never had any worries. My party, the Greens, is generally human rights-centred and very… Priorities-wise, there’s a reason I’m with the Greens. The whole ecological thing fits the humanist because it’s science-based, evidence-based, rational, away from dogmas and prejudice, and daring to think of a different world. So, it overlaps. But, as an ecologist thinker, whatever the right terminology, I prioritize it a bit more. There may be a subtle difference.

Yes, it overlaps 99.999%. In some areas where it doesn’t overlap, it has more to do with priorities or the example I gave, how seriously they take it, and their willingness to change society and allow non-religious lifestyles. In Dutch, we have this saying, “I’m laying on my hunger.” I’m not satisfied with using that same phrase. This means there are no other problems at all. The Greens and the humanists have always been well aligned.

That’s one funny, interesting thing. The humanist bubble in Belgium is a bit more liberal than social or ecological. That has more to do with priorities because the liberals are, of course, a good ally from my ideological perspective for individual liberties and the freedom of individuals to do whatever they want. But I was already frustrated even when I was not politically active. We tend humanists, maybe in a certain elitist form in our infrastructure, to still allow–I don’t know–I call it unchecked capitalist structures to continue, while the ecological mindset is more about individual freedom. Let’s look at the consequences; we must impact it if needed. For example, if I’m going to give an easy example if you want to have a car,

Fine, but if your car is old and it’s poisoning the surroundings, you’re not allowed to have this car. You would be taxed more if you had a big car because it would take up more space. If you have a car, we want the same. There’s more, weirdly enough, a more pragmatic approach to individual freedom than some humanist bubbles because individual freedom doesn’t mean anything if the most powerful one impacts other people’s freedom.

It’s not the right terminology, but it’s at the top of my thoughts. I never thought about it too much. I can feel that we too easily have liberal mindsets where it’s not needed to be a human aesthetic. Wait, that needs to be well-phrased. It’s essential. Me too; I would never say I’m not a liberalist because, in a way, liberal values are a core part of our DNA. But we might put our list of priorities too high. 

Daring to break free of certain oppressive structures harmful to humanity, the planet, and everybody, daring to dismantle them, might be higher on the list. It needs to be more specific. Let me know if I need to be more philosophical and specific. 

Jacobsen: Is it looking for a balance between individualism and the pursuit of financial success and well-being, seen in some interpretations of humanism, thinking of some people who might lean more towards objective, capitalist rationalism instead of those who lean more toward social responsibility? Then, they end up with the same values but ranked differently, so they end up in a green party: the same values, different rank-ordering, and a different frame on them.

Zeitouni: If you had asked me this question a few years ago, I would have given you the same analysis. But now, I may be too deep in it; that’s a possibility, as are subjectively biased humans inherently. I’m starting to remember things that might not be that; it might also be. Regardless of those priorities, we are still deciding. If we want to build consistently within our humanist value society, bit by bit, baby step by step, without dismantling power structures while doing so, we end up in the same place. It’s like a pretty circle, which you’ve got to be where you were standing before. If we don’t, let’s say society goes forward, everybody can buy a new car; people love big cars now, right? It’s like a trend. Then, you end up poisoning all the poor people and all the marginalized people.

On the one hand, society worsens again, health problems, blah, blah, blah, your city’s congested, all the people with money go out of the city, poor people are low-key stuck, and people with low incomes can’t afford the city. You see, the whole system collapses anyway. So, what is the point of humanism if we create a dying world?

Humanism is also science-based; it’s about evidence-based. The science is clear. Science is, for example, now one of the things I’ve been fighting hard for, and I’m low-key, honestly; it’s maybe part of the reason I’m getting tired of my job now, that I’m losing the fight a bit, is the low emission zone. We’re allowing cars into the city, which we know like science is clear. There’s no doubt they poison us like kids are going to have five to ten years less to live. The impact on marginalized groups that live in small, poorly insulated apartments is even bigger. Poor people have the biggest impact, and the richer people are the ones with the cars that are poisoning everybody around. People outside of Brussels who live in rural areas where it’s not a problem because there’s more space and more nature drive into the city because they don’t want to take a train. Then they poison the kids that go to school amid the cars. So, in a way, our humanist vision of the future must handle that. Ignoring that because you prioritize individual freedom, I’m starting to think it’s a bit of bullshit because that means you’re not ambitious enough. That means you don’t dream of a humanist world of tomorrow. You dream of small humanist victories.

That’s the question we inevitably have to ask ourselves. Do we dream of a world that fits our human values? Or do we want to defend the human values of our fellow humanists? Do we seek small victories where non-religious people can have more rights? Or do we seek a humanist world where policies are evidence-based, individual freedom goes hand in hand with not hurting other people, the rule of law is democratic and consistent, and simultaneously inclusive, where people can reach their potential regardless of religion or ethnicity? Do we dream of that human rights-based, evidence-based, science-based society? Or do we seek a humanist church at the end of the day?

For me, it’s the first one. We have to solve this. We can’t ignore it. Oh, I’m sorry. That was a long answer, but to say that right now, it’s my perspective. Of course, I no longer think it concerns a list of priorities. It has to do with the level of ambition and how in touch we are. Because we know, like, the numbers don’t lie. The facts don’t lie, whether it’s with racism or sexism.

The structural impact on people with different social backgrounds, not typically associated with humanism, is significant. For example, I can list the numbers of gender-based violence, even in Belgium, which is objectively one of the better countries in the world for fighting sexism and misogyny. We still have one woman every three days dying from gender-based violence. One woman every three days in a country of 11 million inhabitants, and we are one of the best in the world.

But we know the numbers; we know the facts. So, ignoring that and not making it a priority is nonsense. 

Jacobsen: What about having room for variation in the rank ordering of the same values? So, they have the same matrix of values, different weighting, and a variation in the scale of ambition. People have different amounts of time and resources at different points in life. That also needs to be allowed for, combining your view from four years ago and your current view.

Zeitouni: That would be relatively accurate. The only thing is, that’s always the life case, right? Like I told you, with politics, if I had to summarize for 10-year-olds what it means to do politics, it is that. It means you have 6,000 things you want to do. There are 5,000 that everybody agrees you have to do, but you only have the money and time for 20 a year. So how do you choose the 20 a year?

You need to be aware. That’s the best part of the thinking, where it’s inevitable. You need to be aware of the consequences of not doing certain things. You need to be aware of the long-term ambition. Please keep that in mind. Because if you keep doing small things, like the 20 you choose in a year, but never build something for the long term, that’s bad policy. Because in 20 years, you’ll have less than 5,000 things that everybody knows need to happen. You’re going to have 25,000. The problems are going to become bigger, too.

It would help if you created new things that advance society and think long-term, considering what we must avoid or create for the future. It would help if you considered all those priorities, no matter how you make the hierarchy, and then strategically think, taking those into account. We need to understand them. Doing humanism without understanding the structures of oppression towards women, to take an easy example, like sexism, is not humanism.

That’s male humanism. You might have different priorities, and blah, blah. However, how you made your priorities is inherently problematic because you need to understand the consequences of not doing the other stuff. If I love horses and don’t care about all the other animals, my priorities for taking care of animals will be biased towards the horses.

And I’m not going to understand what it’s like to think… It’s a weird example, but you get what I mean, right? And in the same way–Oh, I work with horses. I wanted to give you an example closer to you. It’s the same with humanism. One of the things that I’ve started to think about is that I’m wrong in my realization, but in my current subjective mind, we are too tunnel-visioned. We need to understand the other things to make the right decisions. Because objectively is a strong word, but there is a certain logic in the list of priorities. What is the biggest impact of your limited resources? What is the most urgent? If you take those two, you can make a reasonable, logical list of priorities. But if you need help understanding half of your society, you do not know the racist structures, the colonial structures, the sexist structures. You don’t care or understand how social and worker rights impact people. Then you’re not going to be able to make the right decision.

It’s weird thinking, but we were talking before about the frustration of how, in a way, humanity has been robbed. We’ve allowed religious structures to hijack so much of our human lives. Today, a religious person benefits more and has an easier life than a humanist. That said, I say this as a convinced humanist. Of course, it’s easier. Why? Because religion takes many steps to understand many things. Even if you feel bad about your job, the value of hard work is also one of the problematic structures, right? The whole concept of humility in Christianity is very… It’s capitalism enablement 101. It’s humble, so shut up and do your hard work. Are you being paid a fair wage or not? It doesn’t matter. I’m simplifying and ridiculing it. So my apologies to those.

If somebody sees this, I will ridicule it. But you see what I mean? We’re like… they exaggerated for effect and a point. My frustration is how we so easily dismiss those, let’s say, parallel realities and don’t consider them when making our priorities. Because we don’t do that, we feel too much like liberals. Now, I mean liberal in the political sense. We should feel more like social progressive, ecological, liberal thinkers who may be beyond the political spectrum. Could you be a bit more consistent with this? I’m venting a lot. 

Jacobsen: So what I’m getting from what you’re saying is a distinction between your practical work, where you are given your limitations, with a simultaneous philosophical reflection on wider impacts. So, if I were to take my previous work for 27 months at an equestrian facility where I am shovelling horse manure for several hours each day, I need to consider patience with a large animal so they are comfortable and their well-being is taken into account as well as for my safety. Horses are jumpy and can trample people if not kill them if erratic in an enclosed space. So, I’m considering my well-being and safety while simultaneously considering the emotions and feelings of the horse relative to how much we can understand their experiences and capacity to suffer.

Yet I’m not going to be in that moment deciding to make sure I’m gentle with the horse or firm with the horse in some cases for the sake of making sure horses, in general, are never turned into glue or sold in parts as horse meat. It will be that philosophical reflection as an important contextualization of everything. However, I’m dealing with the reality of the moment, the experiential, phenomenological reality of that moment, in practical terms, making sure I don’t piss off the horse, spook the horse, and ensure my safety. I will also ensure they feel calm. Is that practical and philosophical reality what you’re trying to distinguish between?

Zeitouni: Yes, and maybe to use the analogy, thinking about where am I going to put the manure that I cleaned up so I don’t poison my horse tomorrow, so I don’t poison another horse tomorrow. You have the concrete task of cleaning up the manure, but you need to consider that if the manure is there tomorrow and the horse lays in its manure, it’s a problem. You think long-term and short-term, your safety and the horse’s safety. It is a complex insight. I can’t be wrong. It takes work. But sadly, I’ve seen how the political world at least aspires to do it. So why would we not as humanists?

Why would we hold a lesser standard? If anything, I want to hold a higher standard to my fellow humanists because there’s much bullshit in politics. I can talk for days about it. So I want to say how we do better. That’s why I’m so proud of our little humanist group. We did well. Maybe we were too many thinkers together. So, in the end, we had much reflection. But at least on a thinking level, we did. I want to remember us ever doing something with the young humanists without reflecting on various aspects, such as how to brand and tell people and how not to make it, too, like we did the whole thinking exercise. We don’t simplify the world. The world is complex. We make it simple, too. It’s doable.

Jacobsen: What I’m getting at, what I’m seeing with your story, insofar as I’ve known you for about five, maybe six years, you dealt with things in a youthful way when you were younger, in terms of abstract philosophy, going to conferences, having fun, being involved with some policy stuff and some financial stuff, and doodling around. Having late-night calls with a bunch of fun friends worldwide doing various humanist leadership stuff, then transferring to not necessarily more serious but more substantive stuff practically because you’re dealing with policy and politics on the ground. That’s beside the point of being paid or not; you’re dealing with practical elements of things that will affect people in your immediate vicinity. I’ve seen that trajectory for you, too. So, this delves down from highfalutin philosophy to more practical policy and politics, which is what you’re experiencing now in your thoughts and a reflection of your self-development through this process from youth humanism to politics.

Zeitouni: Yes, probably. Also, I am still determining what you’d say I’d think in five years. I’m still on my learning curve. I’m not there. I have yet to understand everything about the world. I still need to get all the answers. It would be arrogant of me to think I did now. Especially in politics, there are way more variables than in some physics equations. When I started this job, I thought I was not good enough. I got lucky. On paper, I did. There was a need. I was in the right place at the right moment. But then, when I started doing the job, I was good at it. Turns out I was overthinking it.

Yes, part of this is way more complex, but at the same time, it’s way more simple too. It sounds like a contradiction, but they’re more complex because there are more facets and more dimensions. But they’re also simpler because you can create objective indicators of a good decision. For example, I had to deal with the energy crisis when I started. It’s a bit of lingo, but I was responsible for everything social. The energy crisis was the technical knowledge area, but you were sick. We didn’t have anybody else technical on the team.

Energy is a competency of a different minister, but the federal energy minister is a Green person on the federal level. But she needed to be more staffed, and the office was overworked. So I jumped in and decided what we should do with the energy policy for the whole region of Brussels, at least for our political party. But there was also nobody on the mobility team. So, as I explained before, the team of people managing mobility also involves managing this big company that manages all the metros, trams, and buses in Brussels, the Brussels region. Like STIB, it’s like the public transportation administration plus a company. So we’re in charge of that. In a way, it’s much simpler because I knew the energy prices would go up. With all the knowledge I had gathered, every expert in my network indicated that the prices would go up within two or three weeks. I understood how the market worked.

I knew how the energy markets operated. I could explain for hours, but I won’t do that now. It’s like a speculation market where the prices can shift easily, and it’s based on tomorrow’s predictions. People speculate what the energy is going to cost tomorrow, etc. Long story short, energy prices were going to go up. The ministerial decision-making process needs to be faster. It might take a week or two to get a political agreement. So, I went beyond my job.

I have bruised a bunch of egos. I started calling the head of STIB, the organization. I told them to start doing this and this—energy consumption-reducing measures I had identified based on Google searches. I told them to start already. You’ll have the legal paperwork in two weeks when the minister’s agreement is finalized, but you must act now. A week or two later, the energy price was going to be actualized for that company, a huge amount. It turned out I was completely right. A month later, the prices increased by 300%, 400%, and 500%. Ultimately, they saved millions of euros because I acted two weeks earlier than anybody else. So, in a way, it’s simpler. Once you’re right, you can swing the baseball bat.

Zeitouni: And people will be happy that you did. I remember back in the young humanist days when I was using this example; there were things where every possible, evidence-based thing would tell me I was right. But you could not hurt anybody’s ego. That’s, in a way, more complicated, as well as the social activism bubble in the broad sense, including humanism. Sometimes, it’s harder to shift people. The fact that I function that way is probably why I’m a bit tired of it now; I always have to find ways to handle people’s egos. People need to take it more seriously. But in the end, I did get things done. I could do whatever I liked. As long as I am right, I can build those achievements. Politics is more complex, but there’s sometimes a clear answer at the end of the day, and you need to build those up. That’s fine.

Jacobsen: What would be your recommendations for humanists who want to get involved in politics or policy work?

Zeitouni: That’s a good question. I’m going to start with politics. Find a political party that aligns with your values. Expand your knowledge, too. There’s stuff that they don’t necessarily align with completely, but that’s fine. Figure out what you want. Politics is open. In most countries I’ve been to, we overthink sometimes. No politician will think the same as you. It’s fine if you have a few disagreements. As long as the base values correspond, you can go. The only thing you must be careful of is that humanists usually end up being humanists because they’re over-thinkers, which is a good thing, right? We think a lot. We’re all philosophers in our own right. But politics doesn’t need more philosophers. We need people who get things done, are honest and can convey a complex message in simple terms. So, adapt your way of functioning.

Keep things simple, explain things, and you will get more than enough opportunities in politics. Make sure you’re the one who gets things done. Again, we can use less pre-talking thinkers. There are enough people better at that, and they’re already there. So you get through by being the person who gets things done. To get into policy, be bold and jump in. If I’ve learned anything, we also make things more complex than they are in policymaking. For most of my job, I did well. Honestly, if I would summarize all the good things I did, it would be because I was the dude who was afraid that he was not good enough, which was not bad for me. So, I would spend my evenings looking things up. I would call people who knew stuff. I would ask them. I would learn. This open, critical mindset is the biggest strength of a humanist.

We inevitably have a critical, open mind, in theory, right? Because we’ve refuted all the weird, supernatural stuff, there are many smart people around you to learn from. Don’t be afraid to learn from them. You have no idea how many dumb questions I asked in the first month. I didn’t care. My whole purpose was to learn. I went and asked again and again until I learned. I had the willingness to learn. I didn’t believe I was smarter. I believe in science. I believe in facts. That’s a strength. That’s good. That’s amazing. Hold on to that. If anything, use it as a strength. Be the person who is reading PDFs late at night because you’re afraid you don’t know enough.

And a last tip for humanists in politics and policymaking: consider the value of being an organized group that gets stuff done. Those basic little online chat events and little projects were valuable. As a young humanist, I only regret that I was too doubtful. I was only sometimes sure. I wasn’t thinking as much as I would have wanted to. But that’s fine. If you have a failed event, you still learn from it. Suppose you have a successful event. That’s great. You did something good for the cause. Doing those things and trying to do those things will be valuable. But it would be best to be self-critical in a positive, productive way. Learn from it. If you do it and don’t learn from it, you won’t reflect afterwards or learn from it.

Jacobsen: Would you consider conscientiousness and cooperativity important values and personality traits? If so, how do you develop them?

Zeitouni: The quality of doing one’s work well and thoroughly. Yes, I wouldn’t use the word because I didn’t know it, but I coach many young people as part of one of my many social activities besides my job. We sometimes use the term discipline, but discipline is a good word, often wrongly filled in. So, I prefer a sense of responsibility. That sounds nicer. The sense of responsibility is hugely important. Use it because the thing that motivates you is your sense of responsibility. If you’re motivated, you will find and use your strengths. I genuinely believe that. If you’re not motivated, you will do your job and won’t be good at it. The danger with not being good at it is that we all have bad moments. In bad moments, when you’re okay at your job and don’t use your strengths, you don’t show what you’re good at.

In bad moments, you’ll be bad at it. The thing is, in policy, you don’t have the luxury of being bad at it. It would help if you had the luxury of being good at politics. You can be okay in bad moments and good in good moments. That’s the scope. So, this self-discipline, confidence, sense of responsibility, pride that you’re doing something, and desire to do it will stimulate you in good and bad moments.

Finding that in small social projects when I was younger helped me stimulate and nurture it for the future. Now, I have a great sense of responsibility. Part of why I have that is because I enjoyed having it before in small stuff. Then there’s the cooperative thing, definitely, as well. But it may be my experience. The world is a bit harder than I thought when I was younger. So before cooperative spirit comes, you need to know who you are, how to function, how to communicate from your thing and recognize which people are easier or harder to communicate with. It is like finding the right people, bubble, and place to function, and then you can invest in the cooperative element, which is hugely important because we are social beings in varying degrees and says. But we all need other people to function well. I doubt anybody; some specific types of individualistic people, and that’s fine. But most people, you’re going to need people around you.

When I said about learning a lot, and you asked me what tip I would give, I learned a lot from people around me. I’m a social being. I’ll ask questions, I’ll get along with them, I’ll smile. I’ll help them back, however. I’m also going to invest in this. One of my biggest strengths is that everybody knows that if I were sick, I would message him and ask him if he could attend the meeting. Why? People knew my strength. My strength was verbal debates, argumentatively wise. My strength was less in minutes with little knowledge, figuring out what is important for a political party. My strength was that I’d gladly help out. What happens if I don’t understand something and I’m supposed to understand it for my job?

But you get stuff you don’t know. I asked that colleague I helped last week, and she’ll explain to me off the record. She’ll make sure, and I’ll get away with not doing my homework that I didn’t know I had to. Fine. I have a team. You need a network; you need a team. That’s also the thing that we did well to take our example of the young humanists back in the day. We had a team with varying profiles, different types of people, and different shapes. I was more inclusive and diverse thinking. Mariko was the one more about getting things done. I’ll give credit to her. I love her much for her go-and-get-it-done attitude. She was great. She was so great. It was good because it was complementary. After that, I also made her more inclusive and mindful of different types of people. She made me more efficient and productive. We learned from each other.

We had a good time. We made friends. I haven’t talked to her in a long time, but I have no doubt we’re friends for life. Anytime she would hold up that I was in Brussels, I had a basic question; it would be with pleasure. Like, I would love it.

Zeitouni: Yes, I was saying, for example. We were complementary. So, I made her more inclusive and more mindful of different types of people. She made me more productive, more concrete, more get-things-done. As you said, I have both as I’ve grown from a philosophical thinker to a more get-things-done. Part of the growth was Marieke. But because we had a good cooperative spirit, I didn’t mind her flaws. She didn’t mind mine. I would help her cover hers. She would help me cover mine. We worked well as a duo. I learned a lot. She learned a lot.

And we made friends, and now we have friends for life with each other. That’s great. Right? I had the same experience; if we were not cooperative and were both doing our things, I would learn a lot less. She would learn a lot less. I wouldn’t be able to use my strengths because I would be dragged along to get things done, and I would be frustrated. She wouldn’t understand why I’m frustrated. It’s fine. She’s a different type of person. We wouldn’t have been friends. It’s such a loss not to have this cooperative development with people. Pride, we often make it an ugly word.

However, one of the things that helped me a lot was that I wanted to be proud of my work. I was proud of the work I had already done, and you want to know, go through, and get all the way. I was working my job and using the example of Marieke and us back in the day. Being more cooperative by taking into account the people around you and by learning to work together is obviously beside the ethics of an inclusive world where people work together, but even besides the ethics, it’s a strategic investment. Because by working with people, you learn from them, and you have somebody to jump in when you have more difficult moments.

And you can also cover your weaknesses. Nobody’s perfect; there will be stuff you’re bad at. If you’re close and work closely with people, especially those different from you, you cover each other’s weaknesses. I can’t tell you how much I got from having more academic colleagues, but they reread my work, which was much better. One of my strengths is the verbal, almost debate elements, but it is important and worth investing in because that’s how you get the job done.

Jacobsen: What philosophies or stances appeal to you? For instance, in North America, some people find an appeal to ethical culture. They might join The Satanic Temple as non-theistic if they’re more creative and enjoy hilarious activism and protests.

Jacobsen: There are some close philosophies. Even though they look different on the surface.

Zeitouni: I mean, there’s the obvious ones. I’m a feminist; I put much thinking and effort into feminism. I’m active in anti-racism as well. They overlap feminism overlapsnism, but there are differences. But, of course, Ofcus is a bit different. But what is important is this social awareness. I don’t know if that’s the right translation, but let’s go with social awareness. The ability and the intense willingness to understand the roles around you, how they impact people, and how they impact people differently. This philosophy and life stance are found in various forms of feminism and anti-racism, whether it’s the intersectional approach in feminist literature or… Yes, I can’t even think of specific examples. But if you ask me about a life philosophy element I value, it is that. Being socially aware means you can make the most difficult political decisions, like choosing between evils. 

There’s no good answer. What if the policy decision you must make is whether people should be poor or rich? You want people to be rich. That’s easy. Then there are medium-level decisions, and then you have the shitty ones. It would help if you had more budgets. There’s an energy crisis going on. I need to choose between lowering the costs for hospitals and lowering the cost for small companies that; if you don’t support them now, they’re going to go bankrupt, which is going to cause a bunch of people to lose their jobs, creating an economic deficit in the coming years. In the end, the hospitals still pay the price.

Jacobsen: Do you adhere to a specific branch of feminist philosophy, or is it adherence to general feminist principles, or both?

Zeitouni: I’m a bit of both. I’ve always been a fervent reader and have my philosophy, but I’m not adhering to any specific branch. I’m surrounded by many feminist thinkers right now, so if I had to pick, I’d be more in the new generation intersectional feminist wave. But a progressive, socially aware intersectional feminist. That would be the best description of this new wave of intersectional feminism, which is no longer about the core fight against sexist structures but the idea that it’s for all women. Specifically, my academic expertise is about the role of men therein and the impact on men. And that means looking at the oppression forms for all women, but also all the gender-related ones, for example, towards gay men, etc. It’s part of my feminism. But also the process, something like that.

And then, of course, there’s my ecologism. That’s an obvious one. Maybe I skipped through because I’m so dependent. I am figuring out what ecologism is. There are many approaches, many forms, and many variants. But in classic politics, I would be a socialist and an ecologist. Yes, socialism would be, in one sentence, taking into account social risks, like taking care of social risks. We are social beings that carry risks and bad things together. Ecologism would be that everything you do takes into account the long-term impacts. It’s making things durable.

Bibliography

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Footnotes

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Citations

American Medical Association (AMA 11th Edition): Jacobsen S. Conversation with Jad Amine Zeitouni on Feminist Humanism. August 2024; 12(3). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/zeitouni-feminist-humanism

American Psychological Association (APA 7th Edition): Jacobsen, S. (2024, August 15). Conversation with Jad Amine Zeitouni on Feminist Humanism. In-Sight Publishing. 12(3).

Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): JACOBSEN, S. Conversation with Jad Amine Zeitouni on Feminist Humanism. In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, Fort Langley, v. 12, n. 3, 2024.

Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (17th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. 2024. “Conversation with Jad Amine Zeitouni on Feminist Humanism.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 12, no. 3 (Summer). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/zeitouni-feminist-humanism.

Chicago/Turabian, Notes & Bibliography (17th Edition): Jacobsen, S “Conversation with Jad Amine Zeitouni on Feminist Humanism.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 12, no. 3 (August 2024).http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/zeitouni-feminist-humanism.

Harvard: Jacobsen, S. (2024) ‘Conversation with Jad Amine Zeitouni on Feminist Humanism’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, 12(3). <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/zeitouni-feminist-humanism>.

Harvard (Australian): Jacobsen, S 2024, ‘Conversation with Jad Amine Zeitouni on Feminist Humanism’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 12, no. 3, <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/zeitouni-feminist-humanism>.

Modern Language Association (MLA, 9th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. “Conversation with Jad Amine Zeitouni on Feminist Humanism.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vo.12, no. 3, 2024, http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/zeitouni-feminist-humanism.

Vancouver/ICMJE: Scott J. Conversation with Jad Amine Zeitouni on Feminist Humanism [Internet]. 2024 Aug; 12(3). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/zeitouni-feminist-humanism.

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