Translator: Leena Kariapper Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
It is so exciting to be here with all of you,
and I know in this room, we have sort of a skewed sample,
but I want to do a brief survey.
How many of you -
I need a moment of transparency and vulnerability -
how many of you would say, "I am a creative genius?"
Just, sort of hold up your hand.
Okay, we have a lot of people in the front row.
Alright, there's a lot of self-efficacy, way up here.
Alright, but still that's maybe 1% of 1% of 1%.
Alright, we didn't do well.
Let's try something else.
How many here would say that you are a linguistic savant?
Linguistic savant.
If you are not sure what savant means, the last one doesn't apply to you either.
(Laughter)
Linguistic savant, raise your hand.
I can't see hands, I'm sure there is some.
Okay, we're not doing well, alright.
So, how many of you here would say, "I understand English."
I want to give you a win.
Alright, so everyone.
Except I'm going to come to a pretty quick conclusion here:
those of you who raised your hand, "I can speak English,"
did not learn English when you achieved your PhD
or finished your masters degree,
or when you finally received your BA, or went to high school.
But you learned English when you were around two years old.
You were learning one of the most difficult languages in the world
before you could walk, before you could talk,
before you could feed yourself, change yourself,
before you had any genuine value to society,
before you could hold the job, before you were bringing income,
you were learning one of the most difficult languages in the world.
And if they had moved you from wherever you lived to Tokyo,
you would have learnt Japanese at the age of two.
If they had moved you to the Philippines, you would have learnt Tagalog.
If they'd moved you to Venezuela, you would've learnt Spanish.
If they'd moved you to England, you would've finally learnt English.
(Laughter)
And yet, somehow you've convinced yourself that your are not a linguistic savant.
Except, what would you call someone
that at the age of two, could be moved anywhere in the world,
and learn the most complex languages on the planet?
If they'd moved you somewhere in Africa,
(Clicking)
you would have learnt a clicking language -
and I hope I didn't say anything offensive -
but ...
(Laughter)
but if you are also a linguistic savant,
then is it possible you are also a creative genius?
That when you were two years old, you were a creative genius,
equally as you were a linguistic savant?
But somewhere along the way, that genius inside of you,
that creativity inside of you, that capacity inside of you,
instead of being awakened and optimized,
was actually beaten away and lost.
Years ago, I began asking myself this question:
"What makes us uniquely human?"
See, some people have been entrusted with the great burden of great talent.
I was not cursed with that.
(Laughter)
There are some people who, at the age of five,
become world-class violinists;
there are those who, by the age of eight, are clearly at a world-class level
in understanding of physics and mathematics;
there are those of you here that always knew what you were going to do
because you are so talented
that it was clear that one day you would be a surgeon;
one day you would be a teacher; one day you would be a dancer;
one day you'd be an artist.
For me, even being a human was a challenge.
(Laughter)
I remember when I was 12 years old, I walked into our living room,
and my mom was talking to my stepdad,
and they were talking about me.
And when they saw me, they called me in close and they said,
"Sweetie,
we'd like to send you to a psychiatrist."
(Laughter)
Now when they said that, I started screaming,
"I'm not crazy!
I'm not crazy, I'm not crazy!"
And at the age of 12, I had a moment of self-awareness,
and I realized I look absolutely crazy, and so I stopped,
and they were trying to pull back, and tell me that I didn't have to go,
that they were just trying to help me.
And I said: "Okay, I want to go.
I want to go, because if I am crazy, I want to know."
But isn't that the catch-22?
(Laughter)
That if you are crazy, you just - do you really ever know?
(Laughter)
Some people can't figure out what they'll do when they grow up.
They can't figure out what their unique talent is,
what their particular greatness is.
But for me, even being human was a challenge.
And I didn't know this at 12.
That we're that one unique species that doesn't seem to know how to be human,
even though that is the only species we are.
Isn't it odd
that humans go to therapy to figure out what it means to be human?
How to "do" human well.
I don't think there are killer whales going,
"I don't know, I don't know if I got this right."
(Laughter)
I don't think there are giraffes going, "Have you looked at me?
(Laughter)
I could be a model but just a neck model, that's about it, that's all I got."
(Laughter)
There's no zebra that's going,
"What am I? What does this mean?
Am I black on white or white on black? I don't know."
(Laughter)
But we spend our lives trying to figure out
how to "do" human.
And if you have a pet,
you realize that there are nuances of our humanity in our animals.
If you have a dog, you see loyalty and love -
it reflects human characteristics.
If you have a cat,
you see disloyalty and indifference, just like you see in humans.
(Laughter)
We had a squirrel in our backyard,
and that squirrel chose to leave its natural essence
and choose a life of crime
(Laughter)
and kept breaking and entering into our house,
stealing things that no squirrel
with any sense of self-respect would ever steal.
And because we do not really believe in capital punishment,
we captured our squirrel,
put him in a cage, and put him in the witness relocation program.
But not after I talked to him and said: "What you're doing is wrong, man.
Live up to what you're supposed to be as a squirrel."
You never have those conversations, and yet we have conversations as humans,
describing ourselves as being inhumane.
We never think of a tiger being inhumane if it rips a gazelle's throat.
I remember putting my children - watching National Geographic
so we can watch something wholesome and healthy.
We saw all these baby elephants roaming across the prairie,
and then all of a sudden these baby lions came after them.
You could hear this really elegant, sort of NPR-voice saying,
"And the baby lion cubs have to refine their hunting skills on baby elephants,
though their claws are not yet capable
of breaking through the strong elephant hide."
And my children are freaking out, going, "What is going on?"
I had to change the channel to HBO, to watch something that wasn't as violent.
(Laughter)
And we never put the classification on any other species.
Do you know why?
It's because we humans have this unique
capacity to imagine ourselves
different than we are, better than we are.
See, we humans have this unique gift known as the imagination.
And I am convinced that what makes us uniquely humans
is that we materialize the invisible.
Doesn't that sound like a superpower?
If you are a human being, you have the capacity -
in fact, this is an inherent nature of being human -
you materialize the invisible on an on-going regular basis,
even though you may not realize it.
See, as a human being, you imagine a world that does not exist;
you imagine a future that has not been created;
you imagine a life you've never lived;
you imagine a self you have never become.
And that imagination that we call "ideals" drives us.
Sometimes they haunt us and taunt us,
but they always rule us and call us -
which is why the imagination is both a curse and a gift.
Some of you know your imagination has been a curse.
When you imagine yourself better than you are;
when you imagine your life better than it is;
when you imagine the world better than we know it to be,
it can become an incredible curse to all of us.
There're some of us here that have been paralyzed because of our imagination,
we've been lost in our darkest imagination.
I want to assure you, there is no creature on this planet
having a crisis of imagination like a human being does.
There is no gazelle saying, "Can't you see it?
The routine, the redundancy, the monotony of life.
We've sold out man, we're trapped; the man has taken over.
We need to rage against the machine.
We get up, we eat grass, we hear the roar, we run.
(Laughter)
We don't look back, you don't look back, man.
(Laughter)
We pretend no one's missing.
(Laughter)
We eat a little more grass, we drink some water.
Next day, repeat."
Wouldn't it be great if some animal got up and said,
"I'm done.
I'm done being the hunted; from now on I'm the hunter.
I am going after a lion, who is going with me?"
(Laughter)
It would be a one day career, woah!
(Laughter)
He was good at catching that lion.
And yet you will live your life, always haunted by a sense of more.
Of wondering if you've lived the life you were created to live,
if you've stepped into the full potential of who you are as a human being.
I think names are amazing.
There are people whose names are Farmer and Carpenter and Smith.
You have those names, because somewhere in your history,
you had a great, great, grand-father who was a carpenter,
and his son was a carpenter, and his son was a carpenter.
You had some ancestor who was a farmer and his son was a farmer
and his family were farmers.
And you have some ancestor that was a blacksmith,
and so you had Smiths from Smith to Smith.
See, if beavers had last names they would be "Dam."
(Laughter)
If you were a beaver, you would have one career option:
you would be building a dam for the rest of you life.
Because you're human, you can have the name Farmer and become an architect.
You can have the name Carpenter and become a dancer.
You have the name Smith and become an engineer.
Because humans can re-imagine who they are
and create a future that does not yet exist.
See, we live in the world of ideas and dreams and visions and thoughts.
We are talking about a future that does not yet exist, and really,
if anyone should be meeting about climate change,
it should be polar bears and penguins,
but they do not have the foresight or the personal responsibility
to do something about the problems in the world.
(Laughter)
But we can see where this is going, so we need to do something about it.
I was in a conversation in Rio de Janeiro at TED,
and one of my friends who invited me to Hong Kong came and said,
"What we really need is the highest level of human consciousness.
We need the elimination of all thought."
I said: "When you said elimination of all thought,
do you also mean imagination?"
He said: "Absolutely, we need to eliminate imagination.
But not only that, we need to eliminate all feeling."
"When you're saying let's eliminate all feeling,
do you also include love?"
He goes: "Absolutely.
We need to eliminate all love, all thought, and all feeling."
I said: "Maybe I'm missing something here,
but if you give me love and imagination, I can change the world."
See, I am convinced that what we as humans bring...
(Applause)
that is different than every other species on this planet,
is in the same way that bees create hives and ants create colonies,
humans create futures.
And what we oftentimes underestimate
is the human capacity to create a future
that the world desperately needs.
You see, evil men do not wait for permission
to create what they imagine,
but good people keep responding to the future
as if we have no control over what's coming
into the human story.
We need to realize that it's time...
(Applause)
for us to embrace our responsibility
that we have been imagined to imagine,
created to create.
And that we are all works of art, and artists at work.
And that there is no question whether we will create,
the only question is: "What will we create?"
There're some of you who are haunted by your imagination;
you imagine a world without poverty.
You are haunted by your imagination; you imagine a world without injustice.
You are haunted by your imagination.
You are haunted by an imagination of a world with peace, without violence,
with equality, with economic prosperity for everyone.
You imagine a world, where we take social responsibility
and environmental responsibility.
You imagine a world that has never been known,
has never been experienced, has never been created,
but you know that it's more important to imagine and create,
than to reflect and regret.
The question is not whether we can create or whether we will create,
but what kind of future will we create?
God bless you.
(Applause)
Thank you.