How would you like to be better than you are? -Harvey Fineberg

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/harvey_fineberg_are_we_ready_for_neo_evolution.html

Harvey Fineberg starts his TED talk with the rhetorical question written in the title. I would say that this is a very effective way to start (even if your English teacher says otherwise). It gets people thinking right of the bat and there is really no beating around the bush. Another move that really accented Fineberg’s speech was the fact that he had visuals on a PowerPoint of some sort. These pictures, quotes, and graphs gave the audience something to look at while they listened and they also helped him explain his main idea: evolution and how it will continue. He gives a short description of evolution and goes s far back as the Big Bang. Also, he tells the audience of how he found his love for biology in college, expressing his nerdiness and therefore making a connection with the people who are listening. As always, a sense of humor comes into play. He makes a couple simple cracks that go along with his topic just to keep the people on their toes. One sound effect is used in this speech. It is a very short ding that symbolizes how short of a time that humans have been here compared to how long the Earth itself is.

The sole test of survival is adaptation to the environment. According to Harvey Fineberg, there are three possibilities in which evolution could occur.

1. No evolution at all. We could simply be the end of the line. Through medicine, we have preserved genes that we wish to keep. Therefore, preventing the natural occurrence of new genes. Also, human beings have almost stopped adapting to their environments. Instead, we have mad the environment adapt to US.
2. Traditional evolution will continue just as it always has. It has been said that the wheels of evolution grind slowly, but they never quite stop. Evolution will always be there, we just won’t be able to see it as clearly. Evolution also occurs when there is isolation and environmental changes. If and when we migrate to other planets, there will be plenty of both of those things.
3. The last possibility of human evolution is neo-evolution. It is extremely controversial because it deals with making our own genes and deciding what stays or goes. Some work has recently been done on a human skin cell to the point where it reverted back to a human stem cell: the root of all life. With self directed evolution, we can take a process that usually takes 100,000 years and condense it to 100.

With a few changes in your genes, you can make yourself however you want to be. We can get rid of diseases, increase life expectancies, and even add “super attributes”. I can understand the desire to be rid of the world’s crippling diseases of today. They do not bring anything but pain in suffering in most cases. But eliminating diseases would cause the world to have a longer lifespan. This is probably not a good thing. Look at how overpopulated we are right now. Would there be room on this Earth if people continued to reproduce but never died? This also eliminates room for mental and social growth. With new generations come new ideas. If the older generations never went away, the new generations would not get a chance to speak and move forward. Now, the most controversial things about self-directed evolution are so-called “super attributes”. No, this doesn’t mean becoming X-Men. It just means bettering the random aspects of life like memory, fitness, creativity, etc. Who would opt for fitness? Memory? Creativity? Unfortunately, not many people would go for the creative aspect. Most lean towards the vainer of the choices. According to Dan Pink and the books he has written, this isn’t good for the future. The world is getting tired of just getting by in life. They need something else to keep them satisfied. Not just the simple, one use ideas. They need something creative. But getting back to the choosing: What if you could change the cells in your offspring before they are born? Hey, who doesn’t want healthier children? I read this book last year called Double Helix. It was about this intern at a science institute that found out a huge secret about the founder: He had been performing experiments on fertilized eggs in order to better their DNA. In real life, there is a certain point where this kind of experiment just isn’t a good idea anymore.

So, what is the next phase in the human existence? Are we destined to become something different? Or are we already there? If we do end up taking the path of neo-evolution, will we choose a community that is better, kinder, and more successful? What about the “super attributes”? Will only some people get these? Is that a good idea? Will the society we make be boring and uniform or robust and versatile? More importantly, will we develop the wisdom to make these choices wisely? Well?

                                   

It Gets Better- Joel Burns

http://www.ted.com/talks/joel_burns_tells_gay_teens_it_gets_better.html

                Joel Burns spoke at the city council in Fort Worth, Texas. You know what his point is for the entire speech. Burns starts out by telling the room that he is there to educate them about suicide in gay teens and to encourage these teens to not give up. The sympathy card was pulled very early in this talk. One great move that Joel Burns made was the fact that he addressed the struggling teens directly. This helps them to feel as if he is sitting there, right next to them, telling them to hang on. It makes them feel as if someone really does care. Joel chokes up at some point while reciting his speech because it really hit home for him. This, plus the fact that what he says is completely heart-wrenching, then caused me to choke up also. He really makes the room aware of his cause and makes an impact.

                It gets better. This is the key phrase in Burns’ speech. No matter how bad it is now, it gets better. This is a vital idea to believe in as someone who is struggling with their life. Kids sometimes have tunnel vision. This means that they think there is only one side of the story and that nothing will ever change. This is wrong. There is ALWAYS a way to avoid a certain situation and things hardly ever stay the same in ANYTIHNG in life. However, kids continue to think that life is never going to get any better so they decide to just end it. Look at this boy.

Can you see how happy he looks? Does it look like he has a love for life? If you just took one look at him, would you believe that, one day, he was bullied so badly that he had finally had enough of this life? Would you believe that he went home, wrapped one end of a noose around his neck and the other around a tree and jumped? Now look at this boy.

See how young he is? He can’t be any older than 13. This child was also bullied to the point where he believed there was no way out. This child also committed suicide.

                It is not fair that people so young have to deal with these huge aching feelings that people thrust upon them. And, on top of all that, they have to deal with all of the normal stressors in regular teenage life (getting good grades, trying to make friends, trying to figure out where you belong). Bullies form at exactly the wrong moment: the youth. Teenagers are already distressed because they don’t know who they are or what they are supposed to do. Youth is the time to figure this out. If you are told that no one will ever like you and that you aren’t wanted in the world at this crucial point in life, then you will most likely believe it. This is what causes teen suicide. This is why so many lives hang in the balance at this very moment. These people are too young. They haven’t even had a chance to truly live. Joel Burns is not only here to tell children that it gets better. He is here to tell the adults that something needs to be done. The world cannot continue in this way. The kids cannot possibly deal with this on their own.

                How could bullying get this far? It started out as simply arguing in the sandbox. Why did it escalate to this level? Why did we LET IT? Could we not see what was going on? It has been said that ignorance is bliss. I’m positive that this only applies to half of the parties in this day and age. The people who ignore the bad are happy in their own little bubble. The struggling teenagers? This isn’t them. They are obviously not happy. Can we stop this madness? Can we accept others and the decisions that they make? Answer me this: Why can’t people just let each other be?

Dave Eggers- Once Upon A School

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dave_eggers_makes_his_ted_prize_wish_once_upon_a_school.html

                One very excellent move on Dave Eggers’ part was the fact that he admitted that he was nervous. If you have the confidence to say that, then you also have to confidence to present a great talk. However, during the telling of his life stories, Eggers definitely uses the word “uh” too many times and gets slightly off topic occasionally. This TED talk is accented by funny one-liners that keep the attention of the audience quite nicely.

Almost every good idea starts as something that may seem ridiculous to the rest of the world. Dave’s idea starts with the building on 816 Valencia in California. He and some business partners decided to open up shop there as a publishing site for a couple quarterlies. For some reason or another, they all decided to open up a free English tutoring site. Hey, there were already writers there. Unfortunately, they had to sell something in order to keep their space and pay the rent. Someone made a crack about the new floorboards making the place look like a pirate ship. And so began the pirate supply shop/publishing office/tutoring center. People should be spilling in right?? Not quite. As Dave explained it, there was a sort of “trust gap”. This inspired them to hire actual teachers to do the tutoring. Soon, business was booming. The one on one attention has really been helping these kids. The creative atmosphere inspires them not to just finish their homework but to also start writing for their own enjoyment. This unique shop even started publishing a collection of works by these students. This causes the students to work harder and generate better pieces of writing because it is permanent up there on the shelf for everyone to see. Strangely enough, after these books were stocked, the pirate supply shop actually started making money. Eventually, other states started to pick up on this idea. New York has a similar space but, instead of pirate stuff, they sell everything you need to become a superhero. LA has something similar to a “7-11”. Think about it. This one little idea has become a full-blown epidemic. Amazing. How far could this go? Could it reach every continent? Every country? Well, just maybe.

                For the past couple weeks, we have all been asking each other: What matters? This question is extremely hard to answer for the entire world as a whole. It would most definitely be ideal to find even one thing that matters deeply to everyone on the entire planet. Right now, that is not entirely possible. We can make fairly decent predictions, but can you think of just one thing? At the moment, the only way to answer this question is by asking the individual. So, what matters to HIM? What does Dave Eggers care about? Obviously, one of the answers is “education”. He wants children to not just get through school, but to have fun while going by with flying colors. He believes that this is definitely possible if the kids give themselves even just one chance to shine. Can kids do this on their own without having to be tutored or walked through every single step? Of course! They just have to have the desire to be great at something and then start down that path. But how are such young people so inspired to get up and go? Could the younger population possibly have a greater intrinsic drive? I honestly have no idea (I’m no scientist). However, I do know that there are so many more opportunities for my generation than there have been ever before. We can do music, dance, publish books, and basically do anything we set our minds to. Can anyone start anything as big as what Dave Eggers did? Most definitely! My fifth grade teacher is a great example. Every day, after the pledge of allegiance, he had us recite this line: I can do anything I set my mind to. By the end of the year, almost every single student believed this. It doesn’t take much to change a life. The question is not: Why are we doing this? The question is: Why not?

Are We All Wrong? -Kathryn Schulz

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html

Kathryn Schulz has a very unique way of presenting her ideas verbally. She begins her TED talk with the telling of a story of when she was on a road trip in college. She mistakenly thought that the sign for “picnic area” was actually a Chinese symbol. It is silly, yes. However, Kathryn uses her sarcastic and humorous personality to explain that not all the situations in which you are wrong are funny. In fact, some can be very serious. The trick, she explains, is how to react when you are wrong.

The main question is: Why do we obsess about being wrong? It’s over. Bam. Done with. We can never go back and fix it. And yet, we strive to make everything right! Does this even make sense?? Of course not! This is the human race we are talking about here. Even hundreds of years ago, humans have been wrong. St. Augustine said, “I err, therefore I am.” Wrongness is what makes us human. And yet, everyone continues to stress about making things up. We live our lives trying to make up for past errors. You get a bad grade on a test, you spend the rest of the year trying to bring up the grade. You mess up on one soccer game, you run it over and over again in your mind trying to find out what it is that you did badly. You say something mean to a friend and are forever trying to gain back what is lost. As the human race, we cannot just let things go without trying our darndest to get it back. Is it worth the effort if you are going through mental anguish while trying to “correct” something that has already been done? Why can’t we simply move on? Is it because we are “programmed” that way? Not everything needs to be made up for. Some things just simply are and they need to be left alone.

Secondly, why do we insist on being right? Why is that such an important factor in our lives? Is it really such a big deal? So, you win one little argument. But how does the person who “lost” feel when you are gloating and they realize they are wrong? We all know how it feels. It’s an embarrassing, dreadful, heart-dropping-to-the-bottom-of-your-gut feeling. Think of how this person felt before they realized they were wrong. It’s like they are walking on solid ground only, when they look down, they find that they are actually walking on nothing. The feelings mentioned above are the falling feelings. Now, if what they were saying still feels right to them, you might impose on them what Kathryn calls “A Series of Unfortunate Assumptions.”1. This person is just ignorant. If I bring them to the light, they will be on my side.

2. This person is obviously an idiot for not agreeing with me.

 And when neither of those are true… 3. This person is evil and out to get me.

We never even entertain the notion that this could just be what they believe and that both people might be “right”. Occasionally, we have to acknowledge that we are wrong and just accept it. Searching for rightness all the time is not healthy. But, on the other hand, it is also not healthy to just ignore the wrong completely in this desperate search. Ignorance may seem like bliss. But when you are looking for an answer to anything, you will not be able to learn from your mistakes. When there is something wrong, we seem to think that there is something wrong with us. Why is that? Have we been programmed at a young age to think that we always have to be right? Even in kindergarten, we see the slacker getting bad grades. We are automatically taught that he is the dumb kid and we shouldn’t be like him. Take a good look at that kid. Is he really wrong? Or is he just different? (I know that is cliché but it explains this very well.) He learns differently and maybe more slow than the other kids. He is not wrong. WE are wrong for looking at him in this way. Your beliefs don’t perfectly match what is happening. So why do we always feel that they do?

What do you see when you look at the night sky?

                Maybe the reason for wanting to be right is the fact that we are all searching for the answer to the question, “Why?” Why are we here? Why am I doing this? Just why? There is an upside and a downside to this search. The upside is the fact that humans will always be creative and productive while we are still looking. The downside was explained in the previous paragraph. As mentioned before, humans are natural error-makers. So why do we feel like being wrong is just an embarrassing defect? Why do we think we can overcome it? And if we could overcome it, what would this world look like if we did? There would only be small talk because we can’t argue. The search would be over and this would cause life to be boring in and of itself. We need wrongness to make our stories work. Without being wrong, books wouldn’t have twists. People would never be surprised. In this case, being wrong is an extremely good thing. Kathryn Schulz ends by telling her audience that if they want to rediscover wonder, they all have to look around and say, “Wow, I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.” I know that everyone has at least some miniscule plan for their lives. Is yours set in stone? Or could you be wrong?

The Power of Creativity -Clay Shirky

           Clay Shirky begins his talk with a story. A while ago in Kenya, there was a dispute over the presidential election. A local lawyer started a blog in which people could post anything they wanted to about the issues. Basically, it was impossible for her to publish all of this information. And thus, Ushahidi was born. Ushahidi is something that is called “crisis mapping”. Here is a photo.

When you click on the little red blips, you can read articles about what is going on in that area. By incorporating the humor of LOLcats and his personal opinions, Shirky goes on to explain the positives of a world with connected knowledge or “cognitive surplus”.

This leads to an interesting question.  What would the world be like if we all shared everything we know? After all, no single person knows what everyone knows. Take a look at the International Space Station. Would all of those advances in science have been possible if it was just the “national” space station? Mmm…probably not. It is human generosity that forms collaborations like Ushahidi and the space station.  In my opinion, there are two different types of generosity. Passive and active. Passive generosity is just writing a check to a local charity and that’s that. This is pretty lazy. Active generosity is fully committing yourself to a cause. You show up, do hard work, and then you STILL want to come back and do more. Writing a check is no substitute for actually being involved.

The internet has supplied the world with a very easy way in which to be involved. People are always looking for information or entertainment. They wouldn’t be able to find anything unless someone else had already posted it for the entire world to see. It’s easy to understand that we look up information for assignments or general knowledge and that we need entertainment to escape the previously stated assignments. But why on earth would someone post this information and/or entertainment in the first place? That just seems like a lot of work! These people aren’t even being payed to do so. Some even pay the internet in order to post. Is there some human instinct that makes us all want to create, share, and launch our ideas out into the world? Were we always like this? If we were, then it was a little harder to notice than it is now. Before, there weren’t many outlets in which to express ourselves or do things like charity work. Maybe the reason that human generosity wasn’t seen in the same way as Clay Shirky sees it is because we were never given a chance to actually do anything that was even slightly easy to access. Creativity is everywhere you look now. Even look at the computer you are reading this on right now. Someone had to come up with a way to put all of this information into one box. Someone had to design the clean lines on it. Heck, someone had to think of what color to make it in! They wouldn’t have just done that because they were being payed (even though that’s most of the reason). Some people just like to create in order to make life better. So, are we equipped with a natural sense that we need to give? I do believe so.

Clay Shirky points out that, if everyone on the entire planet was combined, they would hold over a trillion hours of free time every year. We can all give back. It doesn’t matter how you do it or how big your cause is. If you work to make the world suck a little bit less, it will be worth it. What would you do with your trillion hours?

What is this thing called "Motivation"? Dan Pink Response

Dan Pink is, to say the least, slightly insane when it comes to public speaking. He shows emotions in a very dramatic and sometimes over-hyped way. By using this technique, there is no possible way for the audience to stop paying attention to what he is saying and doing. Pink not only verbally addressed the audience but he also showed pictures and diagrams that backed up what he was saying. For example: When he was telling of a puzzle called “The Candle Problem”, he posted pictures on the giant screen in order to better the understanding of the audience.

In “The Candle Problem”, the puzzle solver must find a way to attach the candle to the wall (given tacks, matches, and a candle) without getting any wax on the table. For a while, the solver does not see the box as a material. Eventually, they figure out that they can put the candle in the box and tack the box to the wall.

                Throughout his TED talk, Dan Pink tries to explain a new kind of motivation. Research has found that if people are given a reward (i.e. money) to solve things like the above puzzle, it takes them longer for them to complete it and the task is done with less creativity and more closed-mindedness. In a short amount of time, monetary rewards can be helpful in getting a simple task completed. However, in the long run, this could ruin a person’s actual want to accomplish different tasks. Look at today’s school systems. The grading system is just like payday in the real world. Students are graded on literally everything. This will most likely cause them to wonder why in the world they are working on something for which they are not being graded. They will not know how to work in this situation and therefore will not really try. If students are just told that they are at schools in order to better themselves and grades were not given for literally everything, then maybe, just maybe, they would have a greater appreciation for learning.

                This has lead me to wonder about some things. What motivates me? Well, I think that it is a combination of many things. First, there is motivation for rewards. Grades, which I mentioned above, help me to want to finish my schoolwork. Why don’t I just do the bare minimum? Once in a while, I try extremely hard to go above and beyond. This is mostly because the teacher wants it that way. Sometimes, I do this because it feels extraordinary to turn in something that I am proud of. I can’t explain the sense of relief and serenity I get when I finish something that took lots of difficult work. That has nothing to do with wanting the teacher’s acceptance. Another term that goes with motivation is mastery or the desire to be great at what you do. I have always been interested in getting to the highest level of mastery in almost everything I do. Take the game, “Angry Birds”, for example. There is literally no reward to winning this game besides the satisfaction you get when beating it. Why do you think I practice my saxophone so much? I’m probably not going to get a job with it in the future and yet I continue to play away on the darn thing! That’s where the mastery comes in again. In order to be great, you have to woodshed the music over and over and over again, and when it finally clicks…it doesn’t get much better than that. Everyone has a drive to do something that matters to them. The only tricky part is finding what it is that matters.

Chip Conley on Happiness

Here is a link to Conley's TED talk. http://www.ted.com/talks/chip_conley_measuring_what_makes_life_worthwhile.html

Chip Conley is the founder and CEO of a hotel chain called “Joie de Vivre”. His business thrives on its exceptional hospitality and he hopes that all of his employees and customers can realize their full potential in life. Conley never once strayed from his point and used many outside sources to accent his views. He tells it like it is (in other words: blunt) and this manages to captivate the audience for the full time slot because people are used to speakers beating around the bush before they actually say what they came to say. Conley uses his TED talk time to explain his opinion on happiness. Or, more specifically, he talks about the difficulties that many have encountered while trying to “count” this happiness.

                “Joie de Vivre” is defined as an exuberant enjoyment of life. The point that Conley brings into the light is the fact that large businesses, countries, and even small social groups only take into account the GDP (gross domestic product) and not the GNH (gross national happiness). The world has been so focused on industrialism and investment in these past couple centuries that the leaders of the countries have overlooked a very essential part in their society: happiness. They count the tangible, not the intangible. A very famous scientist named Albert Einstein (you may know him, but if you don’t…I’m not here to judge) once said, “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.” The word sort of loses its meaning after a while, doesn’t it? (Look! It’s even in the word “country”!) But maybe that’s what we need. We need to find a new meaning to the word, or at least a new way of looking at it. Why is it that the only things that are cared about are the physical products of humanity? What happened to caring about the emotions of a society as a whole? When asked about his country’s GDP, the most recent king of Bhutan answered with this point exactly. He was extremely perplexed by the state of mind that this world has been in. Frankly, so am I. How are we supposed to know what should really be counted in life? In my opinion, you should judge your happiness on how you feel about how you spend your time each day. Time is the most limited thing right now in the world (right next to money, I assume). If there is at least one thing that puts that warm and fuzzy feeling in your core every day, then that should probably be enough. That’s the way I feel, at least. However, this can all lead back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Maslow states that there is a pyramid that starts at the bottom with basic human needs and goes to the top with finding one’s purpose in the world. If the basic needs are met, then people slowly move up the pyramid. Eventually, happiness is going to have to amount to something more than just the small moments in life. It all depends on a person’s definition of happiness.

Conley ended his talk by asking, “What counts?” Well? What do you say?

“It’s the heart that really matters in the end” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhZ1BdMtw_Q