Translator: Peter van de Ven Reviewer: Michael Wilson
I am fascinated by events like this,
and it's not just because I love to travel and teach my philosophy,
but because I know that the people who show up to these type of events
are bound by one common goal.
The reason you and I show up to watch a TED talk
is because we are looking, fundamentally, for that one idea
that shifts our perception of the world and the way we perceive ourselves in it.
Six years ago, when I wrote this philosophy,
I was really looking to understand one question:
the existential crisis.
My existential crisis.
But the further down the rabbit hole I got,
I began to understand a different problem,
a human problem:
the human crisis.
In Plato's -
and and I'm sure you guys are familiar with Plato's allegory of the cave -
but in this allegory, Plato describes a row of prisoners
who are bound their entire lives to a cave to where all they can see
are images of shadows projected against the back wall of this cave.
Eventually, these prisoners begin to name these shadows;
it's how they form their world perception.
We see babies do this too
when they are coming into that language explosion phase of life,
they begin to name things:
dada, ball, cat, dog.
What they're doing is, essentially,
making sense of the world in which they find themselves,
just much like these prisoners we're doing.
In the allegory, Plato asked us to imagine that one of these prisoners is set free.
And forced out into the world to see things as they truly are,
he begins to take on a second perception.
Then for a second he realizes how flawed his previous idea was,
realizes how wrong he was about what life was.
And then he looks at the prisoners back in the cave and begins to pity them.
Not only does he pity them,
he feels a sense of moral obligation, now, to show them how wrong they've been,
and I want you guys to come in closer here,
because you might miss this.
This is a 'Be the Verb - Not the Noun' moment, because I will propose
that he is no more enlightened than these prisoners are.
Actually, if he were to take his new belief to be absolute truth,
he is just as narrow-minded as they are.
The difference is context.
When we take a look at perception,
I believe that perception is the fundamental flaw
in the human design.
Much like Chrysler will recall vehicles that are defected,
and Samsung and Google will recall
cell phones that blow up in people's faces,
perception is the defect in humanity.
And guys, we need a recall.
If you haven't seen 'Captain America: Civil War,'
this movie has a lot to unpack;
it gets real, very quickly, as we watch these two men stand firm in their beliefs.
And I think that this is one of the most flawed ideas in humanity,
this idea to stand firm in your belief.
Because what you don't realize
is you are always going to be the hero of your own story,
but in someone else's perception, you are the villain in that story.
Let me unpack some examples here.
Abraham Lincoln was the hero of our Civil War,
but to the man who shot and killed him,
he was the villain who was trying to alter his world perception.
Martin Luther King is the hero of our civil rights movement,
but to the man who shot him,
he's the villain trying to alter his world perception.
It's a defiance, how dare you.
Let's bring this closer to everyday life.
Have you ever gone into a store
just to use the expertise of the salesperson,
the resource of the store, and not really intend to buy anything?
If I told you, you just robbed that store, would you feel the same way?
Because you went in not intending to buy anything,
you went online to buy the same item
that you walked into the store to use the expertise of a salesperson
and the resource they took to stock the items on there.
What if somebody else cut you off in traffic?
And to you this person is being obnoxious,
somebody hits your behind, it ruins your day,
you see the butterfly effect of what is perception.
But what if this person's wife just got shot in the car,
and he was rushing her to the hospital?
Perception has been the root of all evil.
I'll give you another last example,
I work in management,
and this elevator has been down in my organization for two months.
I've been working very hard to get that elevator back and running,
but to my members who can't make it up the staircase,
I am discriminating against them because they can't;
it's like putting their limitation in their face.
So they leave bad reviews online, people see that and assume
that's a reflection of who I am or what business I run.
Perception:
you are always going to be the hero in your story,
but in someone else's perception, you are the villain.
It's why I love this quote by Einstein, he said,
"The bigotry of the non-believer, for me,
is nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer."
And take this out of context, what he's truly saying here
is that there is no such thing as an absolute truth
because every way of thinking is actually flawed.
Here, I want you guys to take a look at some pictures of perception,
and I'm going to just be quiet and run you through these slides,
and I want you to start to think about how perception played a role
in the outcomes of these events.
The Holocaust.
Terrorism.
Faith.
Relationships and money.
Hunger.
Caste system. Hierarchies.
Female mutilation. Body modification.
The value of life.
Which one of these perceptions captures the essence of life and what it's worth?
Racism.
Women's choice.
Context.
This quote here sums up the philosophy and is by Buckminster Fuller.
He said, "I live on earth at present, and I don't know what I am.
I know that I am not a category, I am not a thing, a noun.
I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process,
an integral function of the universe."
On this slide, I want to explain, we now see where perceptions come from
and how flawed we are in our perceptions.
What I theorize is they come from these three levels of nouns
that have categorized here: base nouns, hierarchy nouns, and context nouns.
Your base nouns, these are the nouns you inherit from birth,
they form your perceptions, you really don't have any control over these.
Your hierarchy nouns, these are the perceptions that determine
what you perceive to be the value of human life.
And then your context nouns,
these are the perceptions of what you assume your dreams and passions to be.
There's a direct correlation between the context and the hierarchy nouns,
in the sense of how they influence each other.
Let me give you perspective here.
When I lived in Lagos Nigeria,
it was my passion to be a doctor, lawyer, or an engineer
because in that context,
those definitions carry the value of success.
When I lived in Houston, Texas, guess what the kids there wanted to be?
Basketball players, football players, rappers,
because in that context,
those are the definitions that carry the perception of success.
Now I live around Los Angeles, and you can again assume and imagine
what the passions and dreams would be in context.
I point out the context here, to show that a lot of times
what we assume our passion to be is not necessarily your passion,
it's you being a noun in its context.
To be the verb, not the noun and the nature of perception
forces us to realize this one thing, and that is,
there are seven billion people in the world,
seven billion different interpretations,
seven billion different perceptions.
Conflict is bound to arise here.
Here's what I want you guys to do.
Assume you're going to a grocery store with me,
and grab your shopping cart and start shopping.
I want you guys to take a moment
and start throwing your perceptions into a basket.
Are you American, are you Mexican, are you European, African, Indian.
Are you a vegan, are you a keto, are you a Democratic or a Republican,
are you rich, are you poor, are you a wife, are you a daughter,
are you a minimalist, are a materialist?
Take a second,
and just throw your perceptions into a shopping cart here.
Hold on to that cart.
It'll make sense at the end of the talk, but just keep shopping.
So the first half of the presentation
was to explain how I began to understand the human crisis,
and how perception played a role in it.
This back half here, is going to be talking about the existential crisis.
As I began to understand what was going on with my existential crisis,
I really started at the base of these two philosophies here,
essentialism and existentialism.
If you're familiar with the terms,
the essentialist believes that his essence was given pre-existence:
you're born with a purpose or passion,
and it is your life's work to figure out what that passion is.
To the existentialist, existence precedes essence,
which means you are born and then you create your life;
you decide what your passion is, you create your passion,
and you create purpose for yourself as you go.
If you're getting familiar with the term of 'Being the Verb - Not the Noun',
and realizing that there is no such thing as an absolute truth,
you realize where I'm going with this:
that both perspectives are right and wrong.
The problem is they both use nouns.
The essentialist believes that his nouns were given pre-birth;
the existentialist believes
that his nouns and perceptions were something he created on his own.
It doesn't matter; the tools are the same.
The problem is, when they see the nouns as an absolute truth,
that's where the existential crisis comes from.
So again, the essentialist will suffer an existential crisis
because he has not found the passion and purpose for which he was born to be,
and the existentialist will suffer his existential crisis
because he created a purpose and passion for himself,
however, achieving his goals and becoming who he set out to be
did not bring the long-term fulfillment and contentment he thought it would.
And it's for these two reasons, in either context,
that you will suffer an existential crisis.
So, think about this,
the theory that there is no such thing as an absolute truth.
Gravity is not an absolute truth,
but for the point I'm about to make here, let's assume it is,
because I could throw this up in the air,
and it could land on a tree and not come down,
but we'll assume that it is.
If I threw this clicker up in the air, what's going to happen?
It would fall, okay.
Who in the world will argue that with you?
No one.
Because, in this scenario, gravity is an absolute truth.
So for a truth to be absolute, it has to be void of perception.
There can be no perception in what we know to be an absolute truth.
So if your truth has perceptions in it, then it is not absolute.
Let me ruffle your feathers here, just a little bit.
Theism, atheism, are not absolute truths,
because if they were, they would ring true to every human being in the world;
it would be foolish to question it.
So now we understand how the nouns play a very key role
and create the perceptions in our lives.
Next question is what is the solution,
and the solution for me is to be the verb, so how then do we do that?
There are four quadrants that I've developed
that aid us to do this.
First is self-awareness, your authentic self.
Self-esteem, arrogance versus being arrogant.
Self-reliance, which is a new model for leadership.
And then self-motivation,
which is you are essentially the consequence of your actions.
Let's dive into these a little bit.
Self awareness: there is no such thing as an authentic self.
This means that I go through different phases in my life:
who I was in college is not who I was when I got married to my wife,
is not who I am now, it's not who I'm going to be in the future.
Guaranteed.
You will go from someone's son,
to someone's brother, to someone's husband,
to someone's father, to someone's grandfather.
What self are you going to be true to?
You can't be true to any one of those selves because they change;
your perceptions change.
What I believed in high school is not what I believe now.
So the premise that you should be true to your authentic self,
again is another very misleading thought in human history.
And again, as we see here, purpose is in context.
Now, these are two terms that I want you to be familiar with,
and this deals with your self-esteem.
It's the difference between having an arrogance and being arrogant.
Your arrogance is your perception,
and I believe that man fundamentally has two rights:
he has the right to choose his own course of action,
which is his free will and perception;
and he has the right to suffer or gain
from the consequences of his own course of action,
free will and perceptions.
You cross over into being arrogant when you believe your perception
is more valuable or authentic than any different perception,
or you seek to convince, convert, or force your perceptions on others,
evangelizing your perception as absolute truth.
Context.
So I have to apologize to you guys, now,
because in this moment, I am being arrogant,
evangelizing my arrogance to you as absolute truth.
I am sorry.
(Laughter)
And, of course, self-reliance.
The new model for what leadership needs to be as a verb
is one that doesn't include absolute truth.
Just real quickly here, traditional hierarchy just represents
any form of leadership we know in society today:
government, education, and so on.
Insurgent hierarchy is just where -
it's something you see almost in coups,
where people overthrow one ideology but then replace it with theirs.
So the new model for what leadership needs to be
needs to be more circular itself.
Then, to end here,
this is summarizing the idea of being the verb and not the noun,
and I apologize for the time here, but we need perceptions.
I am not saying we get rid of perceptions.
I need to know that that's a lion: run!
I need to know that, you know, that's poison: don't eat that.
We need perceptions, it's how we make sense of the world.
But imagine a bird flying across the ocean,
and the nouns are the tree stumps in between the ocean that it perches on
to make sense of where it's at, where it's going, redirect,
and then move forward to the next thing.
So to be the verb and not the noun
is this constant integral evolutionary process,
where you question whatever perceptions and truths you come into.
To end here, pull out that shopping cart
that you had when we went shopping earlier on.
Is it nice and full?
Okay.
I want you to begin to take out whatever you can do without.
Begin to take out the nouns and perceptions you can do without.
Whatever is left in that basket is what you've taken to be absolute truth.
These are the areas of your life that you have accepted without question,
completely refuse to question.
They are the narrow minded blind spots that you have,
and until you are ready to question those,
possibly let go,
you will continue to suffer in misery,
not have the success you want,
and not have your life be fulfilled.
Thank you.
(Applause)