Translator: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Thank you, Julianne.
Thank you, TED,
and thank you, the present people who helped me with my presentation.
I'm going to tell you a story, which is actually a true story.
It's a story of a woman called Akatu.
Akatu was named after her grandmother,
who was a Brazilian Indian person,
and Akatu is a beautiful name.
It's made of two words: "a" and "katu."
"A" means, at the same time, "seed" and "world."
For the Indians who live in the forest,
the seed contains the tree that contains the forest
that is the world.
And "katu" means "good" or "better."
So Akatu is "a good seed" and at the same time "a better world."
Since the seed is individual and the world is collective,
it's a good individual for a good collective.
When Akatu was born, her parents were very worried about the world.
Actually, they were living in the world in which paradise is what they bought,
at that period of time.
Everybody was worried about what to buy,
and they were working a lot
and stressed about buying, consuming all the time.
Actually, they were living to consume
actually more than they were consuming to live.
They were not feeling free,
because consumption was so strong in their lives
that their identity was really linked to consumption
and they were feeling like novelty was dictating their lives.
They were running towards a future -
they would lose contact with themselves,
running towards a future, out and away from themselves,
looking for a future
in which they would be more satisfied with their own consumption.
Even in the poor areas, you would see people who were linking -
who were trying to link, actually, I should say -
trying to link their own identity to what they consume.
And even if they were not able to consume something
which was branded and that would portray who they were to society,
they would try to get it, fortunately, this way
and not assaulting someone or robbing tennis shoes.
Social status at that point in time
was very much defined by the way people consumed
and especially what brand they would consume.
Everything had to conform to social recognition
or for social recognition.
Buying things, branded things -
they had to all conform to social norms that would lead to social recognition.
And these were so strong
that even the body of people was being changed
in order to conform to what was right at that point in time.
There was an epidemic of plastic surgery.
But at the same time,
life was becoming unbearably meaningless.
Drugs and alcohol, depression
were part of what people were seeing at the time of Akatu's parents.
There was a study at that point in time
showing the relationship between per capita income and happiness.
And this was what it showed for the United States:
in about 50 years, income per capita had grown almost 300%
and the perception of subjective well-being -
which is another word for saying happiness -
was stable.
And this was an indication that consumption,
which was allowed by the increase in income,
was a competitive consumption.
So people were not consuming because they needed to consume something
but because their neighbor consumed, their brother consumed,
their relatives consumed, their friends consumed.
So people were alienating themselves from society,
alienating themselves from themselves
and from their dear ones.
It was a really bad situation
as far as the parents of Akatu were seeing
and not only from the individual and psychological point of view:
from the point of view of the environment,
the world was consuming, at that point in time,
35% more than the earth was able to renew.
And that was happening
when only 25% of humanity was consuming above its needs.
75% of humanity were consuming at or below its needs.
And even so, there was a staggering speed at which the earth was being consumed:
air, water, land, absorption of residues and garbage.
It went from half a planet in 1960
to the total planet in 1987
and to 35% more than the planet in 2010.
If all the world's inhabitants
would consume as much as the richest people on earth,
what would happen was we would need, at that point in time, five planets.
Of course, there were no five planets.
Akatu's parents were asking themselves,
What is going to happen to our daughter when she grows up,
when she is the age that we are right now?
So humanity was facing two different ways,
and one of them was really a difficult way to go.
Fortunately, there was something good at that point in time.
Telecommunication, internet, mass media - all was available at that point in time
so that there was a possibility
of raising the level of consciousness of people -
in terms of the impacts of consumption,
in terms of what was really happening in society,
in terms of the psychological well-being and health of society -
so that people chose to change the world.
Actually, when I say "people chose,"
the critical mass of opinion leaders in society really worked hard
in order to conform a new world for the next generation.
Akatu was living in that world, where I'm going to portray her,
and this is the true story of Akatu.
She was living in an eco-house, a small house, very comfortable one.
She had all the products she needed
in 50% of the space that her parents needed.
The house was powered by renewable energy,
which is something that her parents knew, but this was widespread now,
like the power of the wind and the solar.
Recycled fashion because they wanted to use, in Akatu's life,
they wanted to use everything to the end of the life of the product.
So they would recycle even clothes in recycled fashion.
And that was a product of the period between her parents and her own lifetime
of awareness of interdependence.
People perceived, during that period of time,
that there was no one thing that could be done in the world
that would not effect the rest of the world.
Everything was connected.
They knew that it was impossible to export pollution, for instance,
from one country to another
because the earth is a unique planet
and you're going to export to the same planet.
It was impossible, they perceived,
to keep the difference between rich and poor the way it was
because it was provoking violence,
and that violence would go worldwide,
and there was no security mechanisms that would be able to hinder that process.
Akatu's life was very much rooted in the community.
She was very close to her friends, to her family.
She worked only 20 hours a week.
She worked at home.
She worked with videoconferencing.
She was very close to the community
in the sense that the community was the space
where she was sharing her sadness and she was sharing her joy.
The community was the space for her self-development,
in terms of knowledge,
in terms of artistic development.
Everything was shared within the community,
not only personally or physically but also virtually.
This situation was taken, also, to the choice of criteria
for products and services.
So the criteria that Akatu used
were that products that she bought would have to be durable,
and they would be repaired again and again -
a service economy was developed.
They had to be reusable, repairable and recyclable -
all of the products.
They couldn't be disposable;
she wouldn't buy anything that was disposable.
They should be local more than global,
in the sense that to develop the community
was interesting for everyone in the community,
but some things had to come global
because the community couldn't do everything.
But they wouldn't be transported for long distances
just for the sake of consuming for the sake of consuming.
Shared use was extremely important.
It was a complete change in the concept of ownership -
someone was talking about this just a while ago -
in shared use, for instance, in automobiles, in cars.
She didn't have a car;
she would use a shared car from a company,
using it on a pay-per-use basis and coupled to the transportation system.
On the weekend, she would rent a larger car
to go farther away from the city with her family,
which was her husband and two kids.
All the materials used were renewable, nontoxic
and organic in the case of food.
No waste was produced by [anything] that she would buy
so that packaging was reduced to the least possible
and everything was reusable and renewable,
so no waste.
Virtual was preferable to material,
like in music, in literature,
which her parents already saw,
but in her case, most of the things were virtual, including trips.
She could take trips to other countries, other places
and feel the sand,
feel the perfume of a place
or even talk to a person in a different country.
And finally, intangible.
Intangible was preferable to tangible,
in the sense that she would love to go on a stroll in a park
with friends, with her dog, with her family,
and she had the time to do it.
She had the time to do it because she worked at home most of the time;
she only worked 20 hours a week.
She had the free time,
she had the friends,
she had the good things that would nurture her
to have a life full of intangibles, which are free goods.
There was a world library,
which was being supplied by knowledge from all over the world.
And experts all over the world -
who were elected to be the good judges
of what would be in the world library
and what not -
helped by the whole community on an open-source basis,
built a world library, which had everything,
and the future of education.
The education at that point in time, for her kids, was mostly virtual
except for a relationship to teachers
who would try to get from children the best that they could give
in terms of developing a reflection on community,
developing a reflection on the universal rights of citizens
and making out of the children citizens
that would have a very clear identity to each one of them
but at the same time would be able to talk and share a community,
to work in a community,
to play in a community
in a way that would be totally in tune with the values of the community
and with the values of humanity.
Interconnectivity was important;
the cloud's internet, which had started in her parent's time,
was totally active.
Everybody could have access to knowledge and information.
Videoconferencing for her work, working in a virtual world,
that was a day-to-day thing for Akatu and everybody who was living at that time.
So, the world of Akatu
was a world which was completely different from her parents' world.
First, consumption as an instrument for well-being and not an end in itself.
So identity was not linked to consumption any longer.
Second, consume to live and not live to consume.
Even advertising, because of that, was changed.
Advertising was functional in terms of products
or would talk about the values and beliefs of the companies
so that consumers could feel their identity shared
with the company they were buying products from.
And that was the measure of loyalty for consumers and companies.
Search for a meaningful and fulfilling life
was the center of life;
consumption was not.
So people were not being consumed by consumption
as it was happening at her parents' time.
And most important,
friendship, love, affection, emotion and art,
which are all expressions of humanity,
were central to the life of Akatu
and were central to the lives of everyone in the time of Akatu.
Relationships were built
based on elements of affection and emotion.
Fragilities as well as strengths were legitimate in that society
where Akatu lived.
So that a balance between waknesses - fragilities - and strengths
were able to bring the best out of each person in that society.
Mother and father of Akatu -
actually Akatu, talking to her kids,
would say three conditions for partners and friends.
The first one - they have to bring out of you the best that you can give.
The second one - they have to offer you a very generous mirror,
a very generous image of who you are.
And the third one - mutual admiration.
In this society,
in which friendship, love, affection, emotion and art were so important,
it was possible to find people
who would have such a close identity to you along those lines.
And finally - work subordinated to life and not the other way around.
At the time of her parents, life was subordinated to work.
Work was the most important thing in life -
okay, with my fellow speaker who was here before -
work was so important
that even talking about playing was talked about working -
it was related to work and play.
So play in order to work better was something that was happening
at the time of her parents.
I'm sorry to have joked with my previous speaker.
Enjoying art is a very important part in Akatu's life.
And that leads to the world where Akatu was living.
Actually, it is an infinitely more humanized society than in the old days.
People were happy to age gracefully.
Akatu loved to say that people had received permission to shine.
Governing bodies were usually indicators of progress,
which were not any longer quantitative only
but qualitative, in the sense of to the quality of life,
the psychological stability of people
and how meaningful and how fulfilling life was to everybody.
The acceptance of self-fragility and strength
led to a renaissance of creativity and intelligence and art and emotions.
Art was in life;
life was a work of art.
People who built this work were people like you,
people who believed in a utopia of a new world,
who wanted to "Be the change you want to see in the world,"
and people who would sing a song
that was very important in Akatu's parents' time,
which was something like this:
Somewhere over the rainbow,
skies are blue.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
The dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
(Applause)