Translator: David DeRuwe Reviewer: Raissa Mendes
Good evening.
This is a personal account of my life.
I don't believe it's full of great things,
but people ask me to tell my story because it helps them reflect.
I was born into a wealthy family and had access to good schooling
and to very good information,
and I always lived upper middle class.
One thing always bothered me:
the existence of misery on the city outskirts.
When I was still a boy, six years old,
my mother made a promise and received a duty for grace.
She took me to a favela to distribute bread.
It was the fulfillment of her promise,
and I was astonished.
I saw children of my age living in conditions I couldn't imagine,
and after that, I started to question
my mom on the ride back home,
"Why is there poverty? Why is there misery?
Why do these people live like that?"
And no answers came.
The response was, "It's always been this way, always will be. Stop this."
And this stuck with me and marked me in such a way
that, whenever I could, I watched the poorest people,
the employees in the clubs where I went.
I tried to get close and to understand these people
who seemed to live by other rules, and I got their friendship,
but it wasn't their friendship that interested me.
I wanted to feel equal.
They treated me very well,
but the way they treated each other, I realized, was different.
Among themselves, they talked equally, and with me, they were always polite.
I was getting increasingly stressed, not knowing what to do.
No profession interested me.
I realized that in my social environment,
as a child and in my early adolescent years,
that issue was uncomfortable.
Nobody wanted to talk about it.
When I was 15,
I was convinced that I had something wrong
because the issues that interested me didn't interest anyone else.
I didn't fit into any group.
I was rejected.
I questioned the arrogant attitude of my class towards the poorest people,
and people looked at me like an extraterrestrial, like a weirdo.
Then, I stopped trying to be accepted and started trying to accept myself.
Banco do Brasil tested for jobs, and I got in.
"Well, let's see how this world works."
I was only 15 years old.
I spent ten months and left in horror.
l resigned from Banco do Brasil
because I was only a bolt, a nut, a piece that could be easily traded out.
I needed to get on with life.
The question was, "What is it that life is for?"
In my social class, life was meant to be enjoyed,
but I felt constrained from enjoying it in light of the misery I saw.
In the places I frequented, I didn't see misery, I saw servants,
but, when we traveled,
the city outskirts were always a belt of misery.
So I saw there were millions of miserable people, of poor people,
and I didn't understand.
I couldn't understand.
My social class shirked this view -
always in bubbles, always in bubbles -
and I felt trapped there.
When I left Banco do Brasil,
for sure, I wanted to fit in so as to not hurt my family,
but I saw no professions that interested me.
I didn't have a calling for any profession.
Art, at that time, was not considered by my family as something serious.
It was a hobby.
I never thought of a life in art; it was something for personal time.
So, I tested for the army.
My father was a military man.
My thinking was exactly this,
"Gee, but I don't want to do anything they offer!
What is it that I can be in life?"
Immediately a little light came on, "Military!
I always lived in a military way. To be military is easy."
Then, I took the test,
passed,
and learned the army from the inside.
My father told me the army was important for maintaining public safety,
a good thing for the people because it protected them,
but when I was in the army,
the instructions that I received were pitting me against the people.
After a little more than a year in Cadet School,
I found myself with a rifle in my hands, pointing it at a student demonstration,
unarmed people.
This violated all the rules I had learned from my father.
I said, "I don't want to be here.
The army serves to suppress people, not to protect them."
Then I requested to leave the army.
It was the second time they called me crazy -
the first was Banco do Brasil.
I left the army.
My family was upset, especially my father.
He had great pride that I was military and was following his career path.
So, they tried to sort me out by paying for a pre-college course,
the cheapest they had.
This was my first contact with people who came out of public school,
and these people had not been instructed well.
I couldn't believe how shallow their knowledge was.
I said to my fellow students, "Gee, you were laggards. You didn't study.
You don't know anything! You only know the surface of things!"
One fine day,
a friend brought me a third-year test from a public high school.
I thought is was a joke.
For the first time, I felt that this social class is sabotaged,
that most of these people are deceived,
that this is not real education.
And the difference from my education was so enormous.
I even thought it was intentional, "They're keeping the people ignorant."
Over time, I've been confirming this,
but, at that time, it was only an intuition that guided me
because reason told me I was wrong,
and reason told me to take care of myself.
People said, "You have to take care of yourself."
I realized that how to take care of myself was a never-ending search.
Then I took the university test.
I even thought about doing it in fine arts,
but my family's reaction was such that I said, "No, that's OK, all OK."
I got the departmental curricula, and set about eliminating.
I had math, so I threw it away ... I had physics, biology, chemistry ...
and I was eliminating everything.
At the end, only fine arts and law were left.
"Law is good for you? So, law it is, at least it's done."
So there I was studying law.
I entered the university, and, for the first time,
I saw explanations for my questions:
why the misery, who runs the world, how things are done,
how politics is influenced by economic power.
I was delighted - for about three months.
(Laughter)
Later, I realized that it was all small talk -
small talk, small talk, small talk -
a revolution that wasn't happening, wasn't speaking the people's language.
Nobody there was going into the favela,
and I realized that most people are poor.
So you have to call the poor to fight,
but the poor are there, unprepared, and drugged by a criminal media
that implants values using unconscious psychology.
Suddenly, I realized that the poor feel to blame for their own poverty,
sabotaged even before they are born;
the world doesn't welcome them,
and they feel to blame for their own poverty.
In a soap opera, when the cool, poor person gets rich at the end,
this richness is seen as a prize.
The naughty, rich person at the end of the soap opera falls into misery,
and this misery is seen as punishment.
So misery today is seen as a punishment for incompetence.
It isn't social planning.
Just like that, I left the university.
I said, "I don't want to be here,
I don't want to be a lawyer. I quit. I don't want to be a 'doctor.'
I want to experience having nothing."
I wanted to see the world from the other side, and I did.
I arrived home with my documents for university dismissal.
First, I delivered them to my father as if they were a debt payment,
"Look, you gave me the best school, gave me the best conditions,
and you insisted that I go to college.
I'm not finishing, not because I can't, but because I don't want to.
I want the experience of not having anything,"
So he eased the process for me and said,
"If you walk out this door, you are no longer my son,
you are no more a part of the family, and you can forget that we exist."
It was a shock at the time.
Years later, I realized that this was a great advantage
because I left alone, devoid of family,
and I could form families in all the places that I went.
In the early days, I went without a profession, without anything,
"I'll have nothing. I want to be a beggar."
I knocked on doors and begged food.
In my naivety, I begged food where it was being left over.
So I went to the wealthiest neighborhoods,
and the people there gave me leftovers.
I got some food from a house, sat on the sidewalk, started to eat,
and a police car arrived.
The guy who gave me the food had called the police.
"I don't want to stay in these neighborhoods,"
and I started to go more to the city outskirts,
the favelas, brothels, gas stations, and roadsides.
I didn't stay in only one city -
I was hitchhiking and talking, always talking.
Dealing with the poorest people, with an illusion that I might teach them,
I kept talking, talking, talking ...
One fine day in the Amazon region,
I was talking with a group of prospectors,
and saw that they were laughing in my face
because they understood nothing I said.
I was using a lot of academic words.
The people don't use this language. This is academic jargon.
Then, I learned - suddenly a light came on,
"Gee, I have two ears, two eyes, and a mouth."
I stopped talking and started to listen
and started to recognize the communication code of these people.
I started to see that they had another code of communication.
What brought me there?
Not accepting the world as it was presented.
I was presented with a world where I would have to compete with everyone.
I was an athlete from when I was in military school,
from when I was ten.
I won a ton of stuff.
In the army, I won a trophy for running. In cycling, I won also.
But, when I got older -
when you are younger, you don't realize, but when you are older, like 18 -
I started to realize the sadness of the defeated.
I lost my taste for competition,
"I don't want to create this feeling. I don't want to compete anymore."
But the world forces you into it.
When I told my army lieutenant, "I don't want to compete anymore,"
I started to be persecuted because I was a medalist.
The world was forcing me.
When I was in the university and said, "I don't want to compete,"
my family punished me with banishment.
And when I was on the city outskirts,
I realized that competition is a big scam.
We are not preparing ourselves to live in a harmonic society.
When I was a kid, I thought that a doctor chose the profession of medicine
to reduce the suffering of people.
Today I see that's not true -
they practice medicine to get money, to get status.
The guy says, "I won't go where there's no doctor
because there's no structure there."
It's exactly because there's no structure that a doctor is needed.
It's full of people.
This corporate mentality has been implanted in society.
I think that misery is a planned thing,
and I won't participate in it.
My answer to my father - I talked for four hours with him
before I left the last time with a small backpack on my back.
He said, "Where will you go?" I said, "I don't know."
"What will you do?" - "I don't know."
"How will you live?" - "I don't know."
"What if you get sick? If you break a leg?" -
"I'll just think about it if it happens.
My fear is living a meaningless life."
At the time, a determining factor
was a meeting that I had with a gentleman, almost 90 years old, in my building,
who had never talked with me before.
He was sitting at the exit of the building
and suddenly, as I was leaving, he called me over to talk.
These encounters happen by "chance," in quotes, no?
He said the following, "You see, I did everything they told me to do.
I am a successful guy in life.
I studied foreign trade.
I have an import/export business.
I make money, I'm a winner,
but I'm getting close to 90 years old.
I am full of illnesses, taking a ton of medicines.
I feel like death is approaching.
Suddenly, I looked back at my life and it didn't make any sense.
I'm a winner, but I feel defeated."
This was before I left the university.
I left in a trance, "This is not happening to me!
I may die first, but I'm not going to get to his age and feel that way."
So, when I left for life, I left to die
because, if I had to live the life that was programmed for me,
I preferred to die.
It was then I started to understand the world.
It was then that I started valuing persons who are not valued by society
because where I was living, on the city outskirts,
relationships were more beautiful, people were much more supportive.
The ignorance was glaring, and it still is,
mostly because of an attitude, scripted by society,
that denies education to these people
and still blames them for being ignorant.
"I don't want to participate in this.
I don't know what I'll do, but I know what I won't do,
and I won't participate in this society in the manner imposed on me.
I refuse."
What could be the consequence?
I was certain that I wouldn't live to 30.
I thought that I would die before 30 years passed by.
Then I thought that I wouldn't reach 40 because I saw so much death around me,
much violence - a guy got shot and died by my side.
Another died overdosing in my room. I had to flee from the hotel to be safe.
I thought my life would end, but I passed 40,
and when I got to my 50s,
I was showing handicrafts on the street
and already telling the world what I thought through my art.
I made it to 50.
Someone had a camera, filmed me, and put it on YouTube.
People started looking for me.
I didn't think I was saying anything much, but other people thought so.
What I say seems obvious - I found satisfaction.
It was exactly what I said when I left the university,
"I will find satisfaction in life.
I will find it, or I will die trying
because I won't live the frustrating life that has been programmed for me.
I don't want to live this life. I prefer to not live."
Life was making sense, alone, by itself.
When I see someone reflecting on my work,
I say, "This is the way I chose. This is what I want."
The life that is programmed for us is not satisfying.
When I was hitchhiking,
it was rare that a very expensive car gives you a ride, but I got them.
It was 20 years of hitchhiking,
and I got some rides with very successful business people
who all expressed their distress.
These are persons who don't reveal their distress in their environment,
but, when you find a guy who's a real "social shit,"
who can speak well and understands,
they confess incredible things.
I have heard incredible confessions, and what impresses me most
is that the most successful business people have the biggest distress.
So I realized that the ideal that's presented for us -
to follow the rules and get rich -
is not ideal for our lives.
What is satisfying about being human is affection and nobody tells us that.
That little old man who I talked with, who felt frustrated as he neared death,
who looked at life and it didn't make sense,
told me that he had stepped on the affections of his life.
His children were distant from him.
In the same way that, when he was younger fighting to have business success,
he paid very competent people to care for his children,
now he was ill, needing help,
and his children lived far away and paid very competent people to care for him,
and he felt a lack of affection.
One time, I was on a city outskirt - I think it was Fortaleza -
and I was in an abandoned house with several beggars,
and a little old man was dying.
I misspoke and said, "Let's take him to the hospital."
I only heard a voice say,
"You're crazy. Let him die in peace,"
and I saw the guy die smiling, with his dog licking his face.
This guy was rich,
while the other guy was rich with money, but poor without affection.
We forget affection.
Society doesn't see affection as a goal in life,
and we are deluded
because the more you reach for material things,
the more dissatisfaction you have, and you establish another material goal.
This is a big mistake - we are surrounded by lies on all sides.
I think that society was constructed by an elite, the royalty,
who needed to prove their nobility.
They shaped society in a way that favors a small minority
and suppresses the grand majority.
The royalty today are the big bankers and mega-entrepreneurs,
who shape society - it's a scam, not a democracy -
invade the institutions, including the universities,
and arrange everything to benefit the business interests,
including competition.
Competition prevents people from uniting.
Everyone is an enemy of each other.
A university graduate today is terrified
he will leave the university and not do well in the "market."
It's something so crazy - everybody is enemy of everybody.
I found it very easy to reject that.
People say, "You're very courageous."
I never felt courage.
I had a huge fear of living a life that didn't have meaning.
To live a life that didn't have meaning wouldn't have had value.
Richness can't make life valuable.
I prefer to have nothing, but to feel that my life has value.
And this is who is saying this - not only me - it's the world,
because I talk and am stunned by the astonishment that I cause
because, for me, I'm only stating the obvious,
and I'm not saying anything more.
I think, deep down, everybody knows.
Well, we're out of time.
Thank you all. Thank you.
(Applause) (Cheers)