he looks like an ordinary guy he could
be the taxi driver who took you to the
airport a maths teacher or the manager
of a gym in fact he's one of the richest
and most powerful people who has ever
lived and he's only just in his 30s he
may be only still at the early stages of
his career the downbeat casual personal
style seems endearing how nice that he's
not at all pompous no one calls me mr.
Thackeray
but those jeans and t-shirts signals
something deeply disturbing and causes
immense underlying psychological
problems by stressing how average he is
Mark Zuckerberg projects the idea that
it's within the reach of everyone to be
like him if you're not a multi
billionaire by the time you're 30 there
might be something wrong with you
through his manner mark tells us
implicitly one of the world's largest
most powerful and respected corporations
is being run by an ordinary
down-to-earth guy I used to be really
terrified of public speaking up to the
point where when I did All Hands which
at the time were like 10 or 15 people
had to sit down because I was so afraid
that message has a nasty sting in the
tail it might be abnormal to be you who
also looks so ordinary
but sadly has no corporation in the
background this is pretty devastating
mark is a great business leader in many
ways but without meaning to
he has hugely damaged our pride the
modern world presents itself as
egalitarian and it is in the sense that
in principle people can come from any
background and get to the highest
positions
it's just that in practice most people
almost always don't get very far there
are more ambitions than there are
glorious destinies with the victims of
class genes biology bad luck
and our own lack of inspiration and
confidence we are told repeatedly that
we are free to succeed but what is less
often stressed is the way social
mobility works both ways we are also
free to fail but when we do so we can
nowadays blame only ourselves for our
mediocrity it's a new kind of agony in
the past people at the very top went to
great lengths to show how different they
were from everyone else and how
inconceivable it was that you could ever
get to be like them their clothes habits
ways of life were utterly distinctive
they made it clear that they were not
normal in any way Louie the xiv of
france liked to wander about in ermine
cloaks and gold brocade coats
he carried a golden stick he sometimes
donned a suit of armor it was all very
haughty and unfair of course but it did
have one huge advantage
you couldn't possibly think you could
get to the top and be like Louis
you couldn't envy the King because Envy
involves thinking it's theoretically
possible to secure what the envied
person has already got the number one
question that folks will ask me is what
mistakes do you wish you could have
avoided and I actually think that that's
not the right question because mistakes
are how you learn right we're not trying
to tell Mark Zuckerberg to put on a
golden suit or carry a scepter can keep
wearing the jeans but we as viewers
should appreciate what problems all this
causes us we need to work on greater
compassion for ourselves it's hard to
live in modern times when the rich and
powerful often look just like us
unexpectedly we all pay a price and
anxiety every day for those wardrobe
choices thank you thank you guys so much
my name is Barack Obama and I'm the guy
who got marked to wear a jacket and tie
you