[Music]
visibility is the rule of the day
identity is forged by clicks and
followers social media invites us to
post our most cherished personal
experiences online and facial
recognition technology tracks our every
move
transparency is a condition of modern
times and often this makes sense
connectivity is essential to human
experience and to see and be seen is
vital to who we are that said there's it
still seems that sometimes we put a
disproportionately high value on public
identity when transparency and
visibility reign we can forget the value
of being alone of being remote of being
under the radar and we forget the fact
that we're really actually just one
small part of a larger collective so I'm
not saying invisibility is always good
in fact it's not there are plenty of
times when lack of visibility opens us
to abuse neglect even violence but still
there are times when stepping out of the
spotlight does this good and as someone
who writes about nature and culture and
design I became interested in how this
happens and why and so I spent the last
few years talking to a lot of people
scientists biologists physicists like
psychologists artists and designers and
poets and writers and kids I talked to I
talked to a whole bunch of kids and what
I learned was that in a wide range of
human experience invisibility is a
positive condition it enhances our
creativity and it also helps to connect
us more both to ourselves and to others
certainly when we're kids invisibility
is the route to creativity it's also a
route to independence and to
resourcefulness when were kids we learn
about the ephemerality of language
through invisible ink and those staples
and so much of children's literature
hats the cloaks the capes the Rings all
of that stuff that allows kids to think
they've disappeared allow kids to think
they're unseen and in that unseen world
they kind of get this kind of taste of
hidden power and secret knowledge
children also love to experience
invisibility spatially the upper rings
of the the upper limbs of the beech tree
where I found Haven as a child allowed
me to allowed me to disappear allowed me
to exist remotely separately apart from
my family and every every limb of that
tree was a step towards autonomy it was
the place where my imagination
flourished and it sounds simple looking
back on it but why don't when I was up
there it was really just it was looking
back it was a way to disappear and I
found when I disappeared this way that
it was it was noticed that I wasn't with
my family that I didn't even need to be
in their view I didn't even need to be
in their sight to feel real and I think
for a lot of kids this is kind of a
revelation you don't have to be seen to
be real I know it was a revelation for
me and and the Empire of childhood is
full of these spaces the closet the
attic the nook under the stairs the
cabinet wherever it is that kids go to
vanish into their own worlds and their
own imaginations and their own worlds of
private power kids don't just love to be
invisible they love to experience what
is invisible and invisible friends come
in all shapes and sizes they could be
confidence for secrets subjects of
devotion and visible allies and visible
adversaries but what all of these do is
they teach kids something about what it
is to be known by another and they also
say something to kids about what it is
to have this deep core of private
awareness that kids kids sometimes take
a while to find this can be especially
true for teenagers who are trying to
negotiate a route away from their pair
and who sort of have some some instinct
some clue that maybe their peers don't
yet have all the answers so they kind of
formed these relationships with with
invisible companions maybe celebrities
who don't have a clue they exist and
they you know sort of sort of begin to
work out what it is to be known by
another and what it is to know another
and I think I think there's something
here that maybe carries into adulthood I
think there's something here for most of
us I mean how many of us have had you
know have worked out a problem we have
with a partner or a friend in a
conversation when we're driving in the
car all by ourselves right how many of
us you know sort of talk things out with
favorite characters in plays or novels
and how many of us just kind of work
things out in our mind by having
conversations with people who don't
happen to be in the room invisibility in
nature is more is about power and it's
about necessity to exist in the in the
mountains in the forest or in the deep
sea we have to be quiet we have to be
still we have to step back because
otherwise those places are unlikely to
accept us when I'm diving in the deep
sea my sense of presence is diluted it's
not exactly that I'm invisible but
rather I'm unperceived my ego dissolves
when I'm underwater I carry myself
differently and floating among the the
tortoises the sea urchins the angelfish
I find myself suspended not only in
water but in time and if the blue tang
searching for algae or the spotted
butterfly fish foraging foraging for
tiny invertebrates are indifferent to my
presence that indifference is exactly
what allows me to enter their world for
biologists during their fieldwork
invisibility is a condition of knowledge
whether their research is in the
glaciers or in the desert or in the in
the woodlands they actively work to be
invisible so those places will better
accept them and it
the way that they learn about animal
behavior vanishing species a changing
environment or put it at whatever it is
they're trying to understand and I think
again this lesson also has relevance to
us because sometimes whether it's at the
at the dinner table the family dinner
table or the office conference table
just listening without responding just
paying attention just observing just
being absorbed in the conversation is
what's going to give us knowledge there
is so much to be learned when we're not
working to make ourselves visible
there's so much to be learned when we
allow people to tell their own stories
whether it's a teenager trying to
explain their aunt or a client talking
about some problem they're having when
we let people just tell their stories
and we absorb them that can be that can
be the important thing I found that
invisibility also involves anonymity and
human affinity vast public spaces
whether it's a world football match in
Wembley Stadium or a concert at Madison
Square Garden
generate a vast sense of social
Congeniality when tens of thousands of
people are doing the same thing at the
same time whether it's you know waving
glow sticks with Mick Jagger or cheering
a strikers goal sense of collectivity
sets in it's it's kind of primal
collectivity that it's not really some
single collective brain rather it just
kind of says something about our knack
for social cohesion and then there's the
invisibility that comes with age and
this this works to enhance our sense of
social empathy age comes in with a kind
of flickering presence we're in and out
of public view and this can work for us
because we have a greater set of choices
of when and how to be seen rereading the
celebrated novelist British novelist is
that when
century virginia woolf i encountered her
heroine mrs. Dalloway Clarissa Dalloway
is a woman of means she's a woman of a
certain age and she's living in London
after the end of World War one and she's
walking down a London Street and she's
feeling unobserved unrecognized unseen
that if she's feeling invisible no one
sees her pays the slightest bit of
attention and she's reflecting on the
fact that you know why is it that women
of that age were only known by their
shoes or their handbags or their
husbands surnames and she's having this
whole kind of reverie about being
invisible but at the same time she's
aware very attuned to all the people
around her and it's almost she feels as
though she almost knows them psychically
and intuitively she knows who they are
for her being unseen is not a condition
of it's not a condition that limits her
life but one that sustains and informs
her life it's not about being dismissed
or ignored or disparaged rather it's
about being more psychically absorbed
into the larger world around her as a
writer
Virginia Woolf was receptive and
prescient about human behavior and as it
turns out modern social research a
century later confirms her thinking we
humans it turns out we're an altruistic
species but our sense of kindness and
goodness comes for the most and fairness
comes not from temperament and
disposition but rather the data suggests
it comes from our place in the social
social hierarchy status prestige
reputation and it turns out that being
inconspicuous is something that can
connect us more to a kind of larger
humanitarian view of things being
unrecognized can help us recognize and
acknowledge the emotional states of
others and perhaps most of the point it
Clues us in to you know kind of what our
place really is
in the larger scheme of things being
unseen takes us from self interest to a
large yourself of inclusion in the human
family and sometimes being invisible is
just about losing sight of yourself
and this is what I learned in the end is
that sometimes finding your place is a
matter of losing at first and that
sometimes what's required of us is
negotiating that that route between
erasure and exposure both conditions of
great power because I think the bottom
line is that each one of us is capable
of being that place where visibility and
invisibility converge with grace and
ease thank you
[Applause]