Transcriber: Tina Huynh Reviewer: Theresa Ranft
Six years ago, I walked away from my six-figure dream job,
a job that I readily invested 60-70 hours a week in,
consistently over the course of almost five years.
I had my conscious reasons for doing so at the time,
but I also had other reasons that I couldn't quite articulate.
Nowadays, I would say that I had a deep knowing,
and only now do I feel in a position where I can explain it.
But first in order to do so,
I need to tell you about a few things I've learned in the meantime
about both ants and humans.
So as a social entrepreneur and social innovator,
I spend a lot of time thinking about co-opetition in the service economy.
In other words, how we can help each other thrive more efficiently and effectively.
It's this interest that led me to ant research
because ants work together.
And by no stretch of the imagination am I a myrmecologist,
which is the type of scientist that studies ants,
but I do find their research really intriguing and valuable,
and I think that it has vast implications for both us and our systems.
So let me drop a few heavy ant stats on you.
So, ants have been around for a hundred million years,
since the time of the dinosaurs.
Arguably, they are one of the most successful species in history,
and for those of you keeping score,
dinosaurs: zero, ants: one,
so they know something about surviving.
Ants actually constitute a quarter or more of the animal biomass
on the whole planet,
which given the fact that they're a millionth the size of a human
is pretty amazing.
In fact, if you rewind the clock just 250 years,
ants and humans literally weighed the same,
they counterbalanced us on the planet.
And still today, even though we've gotten better at procreating,
that's still largely true.
So while we're having environmental impacts
and other sorts of things that we might not have intended,
ants are quietly working behind the scenes,
repairing forest floors, that sort of thing.
Ants can lift between 50 and 200 times their own weight
and withstand between 3,000 and 5,000 times
their own weight in pressure.
But there's three specific lessons that I think we can look to ants for
that we can practically apply in our own lives.
The first is working together to overcome obstacles
and particularly obstacles that we can't overcome on our own.
This is a picture of fire ants, and before I go any further
anybody who knows fire ants or may have been bitten by a fire ant
might say, "Fire ants are jerks!"
And, you know, probably you're right.
But there are 14,000 known species of ants
and many thousands more that haven't yet been classified.
Maybe sometimes, but so are some humans,
so don't paint them all with the same brush.
(Laughter)
And with that, I will tell you what this is a picture of.
This is a fire ant raft
during Hurricane Harvey in Pearland, Texas.
As you might expect, a flood is pretty threatening for ants,
and if they don't do something, they'll obviously drown.
So what they do is they build a raft,
and all the other fire ants can pile on top,
and it's sustainable for between one and three weeks.
If they tried to individually swim,
they're not going to swim for a week or three weeks,
and so by banding together, they can survive the flood, literally.
Here's another example from a type of army ant.
When these ants encounter a chasm that they can't cross,
they form a living bridge with each other,
and the rest of the ants can walk over the bridge and back
and accomplish whatever they were trying to do
more effectively and efficiently.
In terms of practical applications for us,
I think the problems that we feel most powerless to solve
are the ones where this comes into play.
They are systemic, structural problems,
environmental problems, political problems,
social problems, economic problems.
And it's only through working together
that we can actually do something about those.
The second lesson is on leadership and redefining our idea of leadership.
I'm just going to show you a video now of an ant known as the longhorn crazy ant.
They are carrying this Cheerio.
Eight or nine of them are carrying this Cheerio in a certain direction
and suddenly this one ant zips in
and they start pulling it in a different direction.
Obviously, that ant is not as strong as the other nine ants put together,
but they're confident and assured, and they come in and they know something.
They start pulling in that direction with conviction
and the other ants follow them.
This video and the following video
are from Prof. Ofer Feinerman at the Weizmann Institute of Science
and his colleagues,
and he has a couple things to say in particular about leadership
in the context of this video.
One is, "This leader that comes along, she doesn't have to introduce herself,
she doesn't have to be stronger than the rest -
she just has to pull in the correct direction."
And "As far as we can tell,
the scout is no different to the other ants.
No one designates the leader.
She designates herself
because she has current knowledge about the correct direction."
I think this lesson is most applicable
to those of you who work or volunteer
in roles that wouldn't traditionally be considered leadership positions.
My challenge for you is to think about, is there something that you know,
a better way, a more efficient or effective path where you can show up,
and just start leading in the right direction
and have people follow you?
The third lesson is making sure there's enough for everyone.
This is a video of a type of carpenter ant and a process called ant trophallaxis.
It's fluorescent food, so you can see where the food's going.
Two ants go, and they look for food.
What you'll see is one ant finds pretty much all the food,
and the other ant doesn't find very much food.
Through this process of trophallaxis that you're seeing right here,
they share the food.
Something that you might not know about ants
is they actually have two stomachs.
They have their own stomach, and they have a social stomach.
The purpose of the social stomach is -
this is not really a typical example -
it would be that only certain ants go out and get food,
and other ants are back at their colony, raising young, taking care of operations.
So they will bring the food back and have enough for everybody
through their social stomach.
In our context, our social stomach is our tax system,
where we pay more, or we pay into
to provide for the needs of everyone,
not just ourselves.
And this afternoon, there's going to be a really good talk
about universal basic income
as a potential way to reform our tax system.
So I will leave it to Floyd to talk to you all about that.
The next lesson is about humans
and that humans can also think in the ways that ants do.
"Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu"
is a saying from the Xhosa language of South Africa,
which essentially means,
"I am because you are, and you are because we are."
In other words, no person is an island.
We define ourselves in relation to one another
and better ourselves through our acts of service
and how we serve one another.
There's a quote.
You may have heard this concept under a different term,
which is "ubuntu," which is a lot more widely known.
Audrey Tang says
that ubuntu "implies that everyone has different skills and strengths;
people are not isolated,
and through mutual support,
they can help each other to complete themselves."
This is the closest human worldview
to what I like to believe ants think and how they operate,
which is basically what an ethos means,
and how we, as humans,
could really start embodying more of how ants work.
But in order to do that, I think it's time for a firmware upgrade.
If you don't know what firmware is,
it's a little bit of software that runs on a motherboard like that.
You might be most familiar with it from your cell phone.
If you've ever updated your Android or iOS phone, done a system update,
it allows you to do, express, or build things
that you couldn't do before.
A most practical example is about once a year
you do a system update and you have new emojis.
(Laughter)
But the firmware upgrade that's needed for us
is to do the inner work.
Our firmware - I'll move to the next slide -
our firmware is passed down over generations, millennia,
and there's a lot of things in there.
The firmware, just to be clear,
is the software that runs between our ears.
A lot of the things passed down
are no longer relevant, they're not useful.
Let's just say there are a lot of bugs in the system -
(Laughter)
pun moderately intended.
The way that we can work on getting those bugs out is through inner work,
and that's working on how we think, and on our hearts,
and how we perceive the world.
I'm really encouraged
that there are thousands of people stepping forward
to help do that work,
because much like the Cheerio, we can't lift the heavy rocks ourselves.
And those are heavy rocks
that are revisiting basic programming that we don't even think of
that has us operate day in and day out.
But I think, specifically, we're in need of a "reoriANTation,"
if you'll allow me that,
to move away from something towards something.
What to need to move away from is the basic way of thinking of,
how can I get the most value for me, or for me and mine right now,
and move towards?
How can I add the most value for all of us right now?
So with that said, I can now tell you in a better way
why I walked away from my six-figure dream job
six years ago.
Essentially, I realized I had this deep knowing
that while what I was doing was valuable,
and I was working extremely hard at it, I wasn't showing up as my whole self.
I wasn't showing up with all the value I could bring to the world.
And this is a question that I have really unpacked over the last six years,
which has seen me start and found not one, not two,
but three very different businesses.
The best way I could explain that
is that one represents the most value I can bring to the world
with the left side of my brain;
one is the most value I can bring with the right side of my brain;
and one is the most value I can bring with my heart.
And a lot of people don't understand that,
and I'm not necessarily looking for them to.
I'm not looking for their permission or approval.
I know that what I'm doing is valuable,
and much like the ant with the Cheerio,
I'm just pulling with all my focus and energy in that direction,
or in those directions.
My question for you is, what are you leaving on the table?
What parts of yourself are you not bringing to the world?
How can you add the most value for all of us right now?
This is basically doing more than you need to do.
So, rather than working your nine to five job,
and then playing Candy Crush, or binge-watching Netflix,
or scrolling social media for five hours,
or if you're like me, maybe more than one of those things,
take some of that time
and devote it to creating value for others
instead of simply consuming the value that other people have created.
There's a saying which is,
how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.
And just for some context,
assuming that you've got about 16 hours a day to use
and that you sleep sometimes,
if you spend an hour a day on social media for a year,
that's three weeks of your year.
Two hours is one and a half months.
The one thing we can't get is more time.
So I hope that that inspires you to take at least 5 minutes or 15 minutes
of one of those hours
and contribute it to what I'm talking about.
So there's one other person who's talked about "ubuntu,"
and his name's Nelson Mandela - you might have heard of him.
And he says, "Ubuntu does not mean that people should not enrich themselves.
The question therefore is,
are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you
and to enable it to improve?"
I like to believe that he meant enrich in the broadest sense:
physically, mentally, spiritually, financially.
But there's something missing:
a way to make this practical
and an easy way to remember in our daily lives
because ubuntu is not necessarily a concept that floats around here.
So bear with me, I'm going to go off for a second,
but I promise I'll connect the dots in a few slides.
The word that came to mind for me is "ante,"
and for anybody that plays poker, it comes from there
where each round of the card game, everybody has to pay a certain amount.
I think we need a new definition of "ante,"
which rather than a small amount of money from every player that goes into the pot,
a small amount of value from every human
that has contributed to the world.
Another phrase is "ante up," which means to do one's part,
and that's really what I want to leave you with
is to think of what it is to do your part.
To me, that's choosing to do more than you absolutely need to do.
So, in other words, start doing what you know has value
on top of what the world tells you has value,
even if other people don't necessarily appreciate it yet.
And a fair question that you might ask is,
"Well, how do I know what that is?"
What I would say is I believe everybody has the same deep knowing
and that if you quiet your mind and sit with yourself,
there's something inside you, a small voice that you can listen to
that will tell you what that is.
And if you don't hear it, listen even more intently.
As a hint, if there's something that you always wished that you could do,
or known you could do but aren't doing,
go and do some of that.
Just quickly, as a mental hook here,
I was thinking about ants and energy,
and Einstein had E = MC2 for energy,
so I think of "ante" as "ant energy."
And it's not enough just to believe in what I'm saying,
but also Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world."
To me, that is about embodying this.
How do you embody ant energy?
And so, we face some pretty significant problems today,
ones that are seemingly intractable
and I believe need us to bring our full selves to the table.
The "ante" is already being upped in the poker chips kind of game.
The world is getting more complex, and the problems are getting more complex.
I think it's time for us to up the ant energy to match that.
And so the question I'm leaving you with is,
how are you going to "ante" up?