Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
For most of the millions of people who watch TED videos at the office, it's a middlebrow diversion and a source of factoids to use on your friends. Except TED thinks it's changing the world, like if 'This American Life' suddenly mistook itself for Doctors Without Borders.
I never wanted to change the world. Norman Mailer wanted to, he set himself the task of changing the consciousness of our age. And I think he came pretty close, in the 1960s, to actually managing to do it. But me? No, no, I never wanted anything like that. I'm not Maileresque.
I started when I was 15 years old. And at that time, I was not thinking about changing the world, I was doing graffiti - writing my name everywhere, using the city as a canvas. I was going in the tunnels of Paris, on the rooftops with my friends. Each trip was an excursion, was an adventure.
I would consider myself to be a moderate Republican, but more important than that, I believe our system of government is the best system there is... and while I have no illusions of changing the world, I've had good opportunities in life, and I believe there's an obligation to give something back by participating.
When we talk about technology changing the world, we often hear about how it makes our lives easier, more connected, safer, or even healthier. They're all things we can easily identify with. The Internet makes our lives easier; services like Skype and WhatsApp allows us to be more connected - the examples are endless.
I started off at the Second City in Chicago... It's an improvisational theater that ostensibly does social and political satire, but when I was there, we generally didn't. We did character work, and we did just the silliest things we could think of. We weren't all that concerned with, you know, changing the world through mime.
We are becoming able to see the pursuit of external power for what it is and the futility of trying to escape the pain of powerlessness by changing the world. When we look inward, not outward, we can dismantle the parts of our personalities that have controlled us for so long - such as anger, jealousy, vindictiveness, superiority, inferiority.