About me

Image credit: originally a video by Frédéric Cerez on Yayimages

Long Version – TL;DR

Feel free to skip 🙂

I’m Patricia Brun Torre (Brun = maiden name). I’m born in 1970 in Geneva Switzerland and still live near Geneva, in Versoix. My primary language is French, I also speak much better English than a few years ago.

Work

During my 20’s I traveled a bit, and between travels, I worked as a temporary secretary for about 20 companies, on behalf of Adecco. I saw a lot of different kind of companies, and saw for whom I wouldn’t want to work on a long term (architects, lawyers), and that I preferred industry. From 2000 to 2006, I had a fix job at the Geneva Utilities (SIG) but even it was a very good job, I felt I preferred to work on my own. I left and tried to run a small business creating websites for small companies, clubs or freelancers. It was very little money for lot of hours. And long period without working when my kids were toddlers, so now I focus on creating websites that will matter: an entrepreneur community, a multisite hosting for my clients, a local community, and other projects, see full list here.

Other passions and interests

Science at large, Evolution, Neurosciences, Secularism/Humanism, History of Migrations and Invasions (studied through linguistic, genetic, and religious massive conversions), Music (rock, prog, some metal, some folk, chill out) and Alternative Arts, Ethics, Languages, Travelling, Social rights, Minorities rights, Allyship, Peace & Love, Diversity : bio-, social-, cultural-, rescue of old languages and traditions of the world, and of course Environmental issues.

I’m also interested by genealogy (partly to pursue my aunts’ work). I love to connect with living distant cousins (basically everyone on earth) and am less interested by the names and birth/death dates of ancestors… I love the fact that in a distant past we all came out of Africa, and I must admit that I enjoy when white racist persons are given their Ancestry DNA results, much to their surprise 🙂

As you can see, I’m a multipassionate and probably multipotential person, I may talk, or not, on this site about any of the mentioned topics (I will edit and add links whenever it happens), or even other topics as my interest can rise very quickly on any new stuff I encounter.

Family

I have 3 kids born in 2007, 2009 and 2010. More than love, they are a source of inspiration and give me the desire to do more, and try bigger things for them. I would like to travel more with them in order for them to discover and interact with a lot of different people from different cultures and places. I also would like to teach them that we all have an impact on the world. There might be posts about my family on this personal site, about parenting, struggle in family life, but also everyday joy.

Why talk about Core Values and Beliefs?

This page is important in my introduction, and a lot of what is written below is part of who I am.

And for some people, especially people who do not know me in person, if they are ultra-religious for example, and start connect with me, professionally or personally, and they suddenly “discover” where I stand, the fact could disturb them, so I prefer to be clear from the beginning. If you connect with me, it’s for me and the values I virtue, not for religion (see Beliefs below). We can all work and befriend together in the condition you don’t try to convince me. I do not want proselytism. For other of my ethics, I do not want to connect to racists, closed-minded persons, read below, thanks.

Values

– respect: with respect to others, we do not do all the things we wouldn’t want other do to us (attack, harrass, steal, rob, rape, look down at, despise, try to force on an idea, etc), and on the opposite we do to others what we would like other do to us (care, listening, share, teach, show how, guide, help, give)

– learn from others: I love to learn every day something new, I love when people who know something I don’t know, share with me.

– share: especially knowledge, science facts, discoveries, languages, food, travels, I love to share an information and knowledge with people who don’t know, I feel it’s like giving a present.

Sharing knowledge it’s a kind of elevation for me, a bit like the universal knowledge people aimed at in the Renaissance time.

Politics

I must admit I’m quite ignorant of the international politics, how things go, who’s who etc…
however here are my positions:

– Social, now we must note the large scale of meaning of that word. For example the word socialist is extreme left in USA, and almost considered centre now in France.
And for me, when I say social it’s not in a sense like in left-dictatorship examples we have, of course, it’s in a global sense = social … a state should sustain its citizens to provide education, health care and try to keep the state healthy financially. Of course, it sounds a bit cliché and utopist said like that but you do see what I mean, don’t you?

– LGBTQIA+ rights
I’m proud to have been called “an ally” by a lesbian friend. Read more about being an ally here.
Who we love should not interfere with fundamental rights and to be treated like anyone else. You do not judge someone because they have different food tastes than you, right? so you shouldn’t judge someone with a different sexual orientation or for the gender they feel to belong to. Especially that it’s not a choice.

– Minorities rights/anti-racism
A lot of people are unfortunately forced to migrate, it’s not just for the fun to say “well yeah let’s go to Europe and make money”, often it’s because their family starve, because there is hope for decent life, or even it has been decades ago their ancestors moved in. Often though they are not welcome enough, too often they are victims of racism. I’m talking here about what I see here in Europe with migrants, especially with people from Africa or Middle-East, this is what I see the most.

We do not judge someone who has green eyes while we have blue, right? so if it’s simple with eye color, so should it be with skin color.

I can understand there can be some cultural clash, but then it’s not racism, it’s a problem of understanding each others.
The worse form of racism in my opinion is where white people are not the original inhabitants but migrated en masse and became the majority (like on America and Oceania continents for example) and dare to be racist to others? This is really something I can’t understand. And anyway, we all come out of migration in a more or less distant past… and by the way, I never understood the human-constructed concept of nations and borders.

– we are all brothers and sisters… peace please
one of my projects’ site is mostly about make a better world, work in direction of peace etc.
and peace means to respect others, and respect others means not to try to convince they are wrong in their beliefs, but rather learn from each other.

– food, environment
I still eat meat, because I unfortunately like the taste, but knowing how animals are treated, and how this affect our environment, + large scale food industry, including soil pollution etc… I might become vegetarian in some time, I already reduced a lot my meat consumption (such as only once every 10 days) … the idea is growing in me!
I will update with links when written on the subject.

Environmental issues: we are in a state of emergency, it’s not one solution we have to consider, but the total of all the solutions, I still hope science will help. The CO2 levels are creating an acceleration in a vicious circle. The main thing would be to have more trees (so fighting deforestation is a must), transform industrial crops into organics ones (it reabsorbs the CO2), and many possibilities. I’m not sure if the mankind will manage that, especially when “people in charge” put money and business before that fight.

Beliefs

I’m a “peace & love atheist/agnostic”, it’s defined as :

– atheist [wiktionary : “from Ancient Greek ἄθεος (atheos, “godless, without god”), from ἀ- (a-, “without”) + θεός (theos, “god”)..]
I do NOT believe in a supreme deity (god) who could see us, judge us, and listen our prayers. I do NOT worship any deity, so I do not think there is a god and a devil, do not believe in heaven and hell concepts, neither in a judgment, so when I do a so-called good action, it’s really what I mean, and not just to deserve a place in my eventual afterlife. I consider myself free, religion-free, dogma-free, and I do choose which ethic rules I do follow, and not ones gathered in the name of a religion.

– however I do consider the possibility that there might be a kind of life after death, it’s possible that the soul doesn’t die with the corpse. I had close people experimenting out of body soul journey through meditation and yoga, and I think the people experimenting a near death experience (NDE) are really seeing something with lights and tunnel, and my mom got message from her deceased father the day he passed away, etc.
I do not know if we go anywhere neither where do we go (as I do not believe in heaven and hell, judgment, karma, god, etc).

So the 2 above statements might be contradictory, but it’s how I feel. Also I know the human mind is very easily tricked into that kind of beliefs, so maybe the NDE is only a chemical-induced hallucination to people in coma, and message from my deceased grand-father to my mother might be due to her simple desire to believe that. How the human brain functions is highly interesting to study. So I don’t know if the soul survives, and it’s not that important for me to know it now.

See, I’m an atheist/agnostic, but I’m very much “peace & love” so I won’t judge people who think differently, I have friends who are christian believers, of all kind of sub-movements, and especially among friends from the USA (amazing how much I stumble upon the words “Christ Follower” when I search for marketing, writing, self-development sites and can clearly see a difference between USA and Europe over this).

I have friends who are following religions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism (family of my ex, lot to learn from hinduism), some Buddhism, some Paganism, and a lot of Atheists are among the greatest persons I know, etc… and some talking/painting about hell stuff, mostly in an artistic/provocative way like often in my favorite music, but I do not believe there is any devil as well.

And usually, we do not talk about religion with friends, unless it’s to learn about the history of religions, how it evolved and mixed through centuries. I also think even though religions *usually* teach to be tolerant and love each others, it brought a lot of wars, submission and domination in the history, too bad. I also really dislike the “I’m right and you are wrong” state of mind. Also, on personal level, how many people just feel guilty for natural things (ie sex) just because their religion teaches that, I feel sorry for them. However, I reckon some beliefs can be a relief for some people, if they need as a guide or help in grief for example. I do not belong to that group of people, but I can understand that, if it’s good to them. In any case, I think that all education should be secular even if people live their religion.

Furthermore, I must tell that I’m especially amazed that people can still think the world is only a few thousands years old. I’m very much into science and consider species evolution to be so obvious. While I try to respect everyone’s belief, I keep away from extreme stuff and obscurantism.

I strongly believe in the evolution of species, for example we are in the same family (primates) than apes, and there has been other forms of humans species now extinct. I love those topics.

Added in 2022: since 2 years and the COVID pandemic, I have been shocked to see how some people fell into “alternate reality”, chose to follow neo-gurus, linked to alt-right stuff without realising it. I saw people I thought I knew become totally endocrinated. It triggers different feelings in me: shock, disbelief, a kind of pity, but at the same time it’s quite interesting to see what socially led to that situation. I talk above about respecting other’s ideas, sure but there are limits, when putting others in danger, so some medical, environmenal and political views are dangerous for the rest of the society. When people are not thinking freely and have been manipulated, it’s good if we can help them get out of their cult-like movements.

Well, that’s all for now, this page has been written over the years since 2013 (now 2023).