Alain de Botton at TED Global in Oxford last week. This must be the second most significant TED presentation after the famous talk by Sir Ken Robinson. Alain de Botton is a cultural synthesizer; he has an incredible range, despite our age of specialization. This enables him to see angles that are hidden for most. Alain de Botton manages effortlessly to highlight the most profound cultural agonies of our time.
Notes to self from Alain’s lecture:
- Snob – defining a person according to one marker – job, race, country of origin, birth town, etc.
- Equality increases envy.
- Meritocracy implies the not only advancement is by merit but the failure is also deserved (This is the argument against meritocracy. Since by definition only small number of people can win and winning is gaining control of scalable resources or scalable creativity (Google), it would mean that for the vast majority of the “losers” meritocracy increases the perceived failure).
- Drama as an artistic way of coping
- Culture is not anchored in the supernatural, nature as an escape from the human anthill
- Can’t have it all. Concede.
