http://www.ted.com Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure — and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always earned? Is failure? He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work.
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Duration : 0:16:52
In short words: …
In short words: just as “meritocracy” dictates you yourself are in complete control of your life, you also have complete control of what affects you. Seeing the unequaltiy is something different than letting it affect you. Are people who judge you by outer factors(snobs) really worth spending time on anyway?
As long as you can function with them without losing your selfesteem I see no problem…
There is no use in …
There is no use in thinking about what kind of society we are or what we should become. The crucial thing ppl need to learn is how to get a selfimage and selfesteem so they don’t need to rely any longer on outside factors to get their validation. Every form of society will have it’s unequalities but in essence there should be no value connected to who is at “the top” and who is at “the bottom”. In the context of the greater whole both fullfill a function. One not more worthy then another…
Meritocracy is …
Meritocracy is insane! When we’re born and up to a certain age, we have NO control over how we live, our parents do! And those precious years just happened to have the greatest impact on our future.
Furthermore, societies are at the mercy of those who no longer live in them! What our fathers have done, impact how we live today! So explain meritocracy to me! It’s nonsense. You do your best keeping in mind that you’ll never be in complete control, and you do it for you & those who come after you.
… ,, we are an …
) nice Freudian slip
… ,, we are an international organization… ,,
Hi TEDtalksDirector …
Hi TEDtalksDirector
I always enjoy watching your videos and I will be back again to watch more soon as they really are of top quality.
Cheers to your success.
Mark McCulloch
what an amazing …
what an amazing speech
Success = hedonism …
Success = hedonism = satisfaction of needs. Voila! Done in 1/15th of the time it took Alain.
love this,greetings …
love this,greetings from sweden
@renumeratedfrog
…
@renumeratedfrog
To lose one’s hair at a young age is enough to get said person into philosophy.
Great stuff….I …
Great stuff….I really liked your message…need to cut out some of your enunciated pauses to smooth out the communication of your message…but it was very well done
interesting ideas i …
interesting ideas i thing human kind reach the top of paradoxical situations in many fields and we may have to look to alternative kind of thinking have a look at Venus project. thx all
Alain de Botton …
Alain de Botton looked so cute when he had a head full of hair.
Amazing.
Amazing.
@kedordu a chilling …
@kedordu a chilling thought
self help guru for …
self help guru for the nerds and geeks that run the world
soursour indeed!
soursour indeed!
Six stars for this …
Six stars for this amazing TEDtalk!
alain de botton is …
alain de botton is nothing but a self help guru for nerds
Thanks for helping …
Thanks for helping me question my assumptions about winners and losers. I’m going to have to go back and read Oedipus the King, Macbeth, and Madame Bovary. Love your mix of humor and wit.
Simply great’
Simply great’
You’ll have to …
You’ll have to explain yourself better, this thread is about the harshness to which Botton aluded and his stoical and moralistic “solution”, his acceptance of these as facts, as though they had no history.
Acknowledging contingency means accepting it as real, I fail to see why it would be a call to anything; anyhow why would anyone follow a call that is made from this bland metaphysics of niceness?
As to outcomes and merit is this not a different thread?
@Zeitschen When he …
@Zeitschen When he says that we need to acknowledge the ‘haphazard’ (he could have added determined) aspects of our lives, I saw that as a call to try and understand how those factors work. In other words he was suggesting certain approaches to issues rather offering any analysis of underlying causes himself. If we took it as true that outcomes were always merited then we wouldnt bother taking a close look at organisational forms etc.
Well on the common …
Well on the common sense not being common any more, on that we can agree!
I guess – with children being bombarded at ever younger ages by more and more aggressive advertising, from every direction, for just one example, common sense will continue to diminish ever more. It will serve the elites well in the short term, but the masses less so. Imho.
Great message. I …
Great message. I particularly liked the idea that Tragedy as an art form creates sympathy for other people and thus equips us for reality.
interesting
interesting