[SDF2013] Reintroducing Wisdom in Everyday Life (Alain de BOTTON)

very much thank you thank you all so much thank you so thank you Korea for inviting me what I want to talk today about is education and wisdom and business three things all of us in the modern world are very concerned with education when you have children what do you want for them you want a good education and what does a good education mean well in the modern world it primarily means an education in technical capacities accountancy science the biological engineering something that will lead you to a job and then we discover something very surprising that you could have the most brilliant education but your life goes wrong and why does your life go wrong because your education did not prepare you for all the challenges that a life can throw in its way to be a properly educated person just does not mean only a technically able person it means someone who knows how to face the challenges of daily life and there are so many I'm thinking here in terms of the challenges of private life of managing a relationship of dealing with one's children with one's parents of managing one's own ambitions and anxieties of confronting mortality and the duties that one has towards one society all of these things there is a total silence about in most of the world's education system if you showed up at Harvard University or Cambridge University or any University in South Korea and you said you know I've come to study not engineering not accountancy not law but I want to learn how to live they would look at you in a very strange way and would probably call the ambulance or the insane asylum we don't expect that our educators should help us to live who do we think should help us to live at this point people may say well maybe that's a job for the priest but priests don't always have the answer either and for many people an increasing number of people going to the priest is no longer an option so we have a gap we have a gap in the direction of the greatest questions that humans face often in the middle of the night often at some moment of crisis I've been writing books for 20 years and a few years ago I decided on a small change of direction I thought I would start a school it's called the school of life it's not for school children it's for everybody all of us can go you don't get a degree at the end of it you don't have a graduation ceremony it's for you so every night of the week we have classes we have instruction in the great challenges of life there is a class on how to deal with your in-laws your mother-in-law your father-in-law this is not an easy challenge where do you go for advice on such things well if you're in London you can go to the school of life we have branches now in Australia and Brazil in India hopefully perhaps one day in South Korea as well what we're trying to do is to deliver an educational experience in the area of wisdom of emotional knowledge this has not really been done before and I think is symptomatic of a whole new kind of business which awaits us in the 21st century in the 20th century if you look at how people made their money it was not necessarily through the most emotionally significant organizations it was people who made houses who did transport who were involved in heavy industry but at the end of that period we were still just as confused as we had always been about how to lead a relationship how to find meaning in life how to find a sense of perspective and calm in a busy world these are still areas where we are very very unexperienced we have no commercial mechanism that sits on top of these large questions and this really interests me it interests me as a writer and as someone who increasingly looks at business and thinks that one of the great challenges is to get business to make money out of those needs which previously had just been in the hands of writers and poets and priests the needs of the higher self these should also be areas of business investigation the modern world drives us crazy it drives us crazy in two central areas modern the modern vision of success is based around achievement in two areas love and work now these are two wonderful areas and also very challenging areas you know for most of human history it was expected that a job was good so long as it paid you some money that's all you wanted from a job just a bit of money nowadays that is not enough for many people people particularly with an education they want that a job provides you with money yes but also with meaning with a sense of purpose with a sense of enjoyment and creativity that's what people want from their jobs that's very difficult take the area of relationships for most of human history people had no expectation that they would love the man or woman that they married with this was just somebody that they would raise children with do some farming with it was not someone who had to understand them but now we live in a world where you're suppose and this is just extraordinary you're supposed to love your husband or wife who here loves their husband or wife anybody here loved their husband or wife how few people but many not so we have a problem we have a problem some people are married but they don't love their husband or wife this is the modern crisis who here loves their job not just for the money but for the passion who would do their job even if it didn't pay them anything because they just love it so much put up your hand if you just love your job so much a few people so you see already we have a problem here in Seoul today we have many people who are married but not in love and we have many people who are at work but they're not in love with their work and yet the modern dream is love at work and love at home so we are in challenges and this is why we need help and this is why I write books and this is why I think and this is why I started the School of Life and this is why I think we need some work to do we have some capitalists in the room and capitalists are always saying things like how are we going to develop a new phone or a new smart app or a new way of transmitting data listen capitalists look at the problems in this room there are problems that are psychological Samsung makes wonderful phones when is Samsung gonna stop making phones and invent a device that will help marriages to go better because it's fantastic the new Samsung phone is terrific it helps me to speak to my grandmother and far away and send pictures but this is useless compared to the true challenges of how to live with another human being Samsung has not explored this they should I recommend that Samsung develops a psychological division that explores the human being and tries to make technology that is not only impressive and beautiful and elegant but is also useful to the deepest part of the individual at that moment the promise of technology will properly have come to fruition and the promise is this machines that can properly help us with the challenges of life I think we need a new vision of Education you know up until the 19th century in Europe and late little later in a career but the same phenomenon happened education was in the hands of religion it was religions who educated us and they taught us standard skills reading and writing but they also taught us how to be good and how to be calm and how to be kind and then suddenly people stopped believing in religion and what do they believe in they believe in romantic love and they believe in making money and in the evening they watch television and use the Internet this is the modern world it's not enough if you base a society simply around romance love and work and the Internet you will have craziness you will have suicide and you will have low-level depression in other words what we around the modern world are having right now now this crisis began long ago it began in Britain the world's first industrial nation in about 1850 this was the moment when suddenly more people didn't go to church than did first time in history more people did not go to church and suddenly there was a feeling of crisis and many intellectuals came together and they said what are we going to do how could we have a society where how are we going to find consolation meaning morality a sense of purpose a sense of kindness and community where is this going to come from if we just chuck away religion and we just have science technology money romantic love and some people said there is an answer and the answer lies in culture in the humanities in the visual arts in poetry in philosophy in literature this is the solution culture will replace Scripture and it's this is the reason why we have so many museums in the modern world you know in the modern world you go to every city are the museum have you been to the museum the museum is like the new church and why it all comes back to the idea that maybe culture can save us this is why people love going to the theater and serious people always say have you been to the theater and especially if you have a daughter and she doesn't quite know what to do not so much sons if you have a daughter you might say why don't you go and study literature very nice thing for a young lady to do a little bit of literature this is useless culture is not going to help us in this way if I go to the museum of career and I say I am in crisis I cannot find meaning and my life is lost I'm thinking of suicide and my soul is full of sadness the kind of problems are used to bring to a priest if I say if I bring this to the museum they will say my goodness please leave the premises you are crazy we are just trying to show some pots from an ancient dynasty please leave the room we are not giving you the meaning of life so then I go to the University and I say I'm lost and I need the meaning of life and again they will say this is not for you and I go to the nice lady who is studying literature and I say can literature change my life and she will say well the examination doesn't tell me that this is the case so in other words there is nowhere to go we have endless basis to go to buy clothes to go on holiday to learn about bioengineering but if I want to go somewhere serious I don't want to meet a man with a beard with sandals up in a hut who will teach me something from one of the ancient religions if I want something elegantly delivered where do I go nowhere this is the crisis this is the opportunity that the opportunity to educate the modern human soul you know we have so much wisdom out there already we have wisdom for the next thousand years but the problem is where is that wisdom and are we accessing it there's bits of wisdom in the university but the university does not talk to society there is bits of wisdom in the minds of philosophers but philosophers don't come on television and they don't come to conferences I'm an exception Michael Sandel and I making an exception but basically we don't we are stuck in our studies with beards and we just speak to a narrow elite so where do you go who is doing this stuff we need transmission of wisdom from the cave to society wisdom is in the cave we need it transferred to a society and we need your help because this is a creative and technological challenge I think one of the most useful things one can do is to study how religions educate people even if you don't believe in religions I don't believe in religions I'm very interested I don't believe but I'm fascinated by how religions educate people and one of the things that how religions educate is they keep repeating things okay in the modern world when you're educated you go to university when you're 20 21 22 you sit in a classroom a teacher tells you something and they just fill you up with some knowledge like a jug of water they pour the jug of knowledge into your head and then the idea is you will remember these lessons for the next 40 years after one session 40 years now religions know that is crazy if you want someone to remember something you have to tell them something maybe 10 or 15 times a day otherwise they will forget and that's why all the religions have us praying all the time from morning till night because they know that what you knew at 10 o'clock in the morning you will forget at lunch time so you need at lunch you need it at breakfast you needed in the evening otherwise you will forget they also know that you have to have calendars that you can't just give someone a book and tell them to go away and read it this won't really change them you need to structure the calendar so if you look at everything Buddhism Catholicism Judaism they all have calendars they have moments of the year where you are supposed to think of something in Judaism in the Jewish calendar we've just had now the festival of beer cattle are hot on this festival you go out with a rabbi into the fields and you look at the first blossom on the trees and you say prayers to God to thank him for springtime for the beauty of the springtime and you say some poetry and and you say some prayers now you could say I don't need religion to remind me of this I'll just do this on my own I'll pick up a book of poems and I'll wander out into the countryside the problem is we don't because we forget because there's something great on our smartphone because there's something nice on TV we don't focus on on the springtime but we do within a religious structure so my question is when you do away with religion what reminders are there are the things that religions used to teach us about what reminders are there of things that we need in our souls but that the surrounding environment doesn't help us with you know think of Zen Buddhism once a year Zen Buddhists want us to look at the moon there's the famous festival of moon viewing in the autumn when with friends you go out into the fields in the countryside and you look up at the moon and you're eating rice cakes and you're saying poems and it's a festival of friendship and the beautiful festival now you could say you don't need Zen Buddhism to look at the moon anyone can look at the moon at any time time the problem is we don't because we need an agenda we need the inner life to have a calendar outside so that we will have an appointment not just with our friends not just with our business associate but with the most important ideas in the world the most important ideas will be forgotten unless they are in our calendars and it's so far only religions that have been good at doing that religions have also been fascinating in realizing that if you want to seduce an audience if you want an audience to listen to you you have to make it exciting that's why religions use music they use fantastic architecture and they use fantastic speakers you know if you think of the way in which Catholicism particularly has invested in the art of oratory they will give you amazing speeches and at the end of a speech you think yes I want to follow this because it was said nicely if you listen to most university professors they sit like this they speak in a not very clear voice they're not trying to seduce you they are not entertainers religions are they understand enough about entertainment to realize that if you want to touch someone deeply you have to learn how to speak well and how to entertain this is part of being a serious person in the modern world we have the serious people who can't speak who can't communicate and then we have the brilliant communicators who are on television all the time and they know how to do this brilliantly but they don't have anything very substantial to tell us so we need a uniting of the best communicators with the highest messages you know the other thing we need to do desperately is to practice to be good now this sounds very weird you know if I said to you some said you know how are you doing what are your what are your ambitions I said you know this week I want to practice how to be a good person I think what what's wrong with you if I say to somebody I want to practice to be healthy I want to build up my muscles I want to learn to jog oh yeah no problem but if I say I want to learn to be a better human being this sounds very strange why because we have no idea of self-improvement the very idea of self-improvement is very odd in religions of course self-improvement is absolutely core and the idea is we constantly need to practice at being good we need to practice virtue and that's why all the religions make lists of kinds of behavior that we need to remember to be we need to be kind we need empathy we need generosity we need patience we need a sense of humor these things are so important and unless we have them as were reminded of them all the time we will forget now in the modern world there are no reminders of goodness we have no public system of reminding us to be good the idea sounds totally strange I think that's wrong in England through the school of life this year I started something called the virtue project where what we did was to take a whole list of virtues very ordinary ones non-religious ones we looked at resilience we looked at patience we looked at empathy we looked at sacrifice we looked at humor hope forgiveness and we made campaign we persuaded an advertising agency to put posters all over London reminding people of how to behave and this had a huge amount of impact on social media etc because suddenly people thought yes I try to be a good person but sometimes I need a little bit of a reminder in order actually to be good a good person what I'm really saying is we need a lot of help in being good virtuous wise calm people it used to be that we got help from religions for many people now religion has become impossible we then said okay we will find this in culture we built museums we sent young ladies to study French literature it hasn't worked because we are treating this like a hobby we are treating something that should be the meaning of life as an elegant pastime for the weekend we don't have this at the centre of our culture what we need is the brightest minds in technology to unite with those who know about wisdom to create applications both in the real world and in the online world that will create meaningful content that will not just help us to communicate but will help us to communicate about the most important things so what I'm looking for is a moment when we can unite technology with wisdom and meaning thank you very much there I do meet of course that was a fascinating and very intriguing presentation uh well it's was a good opportunity for us to think about the everyday joys and worries of life I would love to enroll in your school but that's a little bit unpractical but instead I'd like to have an in-depth discussion with you as well no mr. Pepitone is very popular not only in Korea but throughout the world he actually has 300 more than 300 thousand Twitter followers and of those one-third are Korean woman those who are laughing in the audience even our chamber television or probably these are followers and we see that in the audience there is a lot of woman compared to the usual digital forum anyhow we'd like this session to be fun it's about filling the blanks we conducted a survey on Korean adults between 25 and 60 and based on this open survey we selected questions that they would like to ask mr. tobert on especially centering on collaboration now let us go through this fill in the blanks exercise with mr. Alain de Botton let's look at the first question it's on the screen the first thing I do or think of when I wake up in the morning is plunk Ted young very firmly under fashion boondi those who answered the survey I responded as follows let's take a look at how we responded get to work was the number one answer that's pretty natural and then it was my girlfriend thinking about my girlfriend all right oh it would be my boyfriend if the the responder was a woman then coffee when I wake up but this morning as I do every day I look at the ratings on let yesterday's news and usually I'm relieved to see the ratings mr. de Botton what do you think or do first thing you do in the morning when I wake up my thoughts are in confusion from the dream world in which I've spent the last eight hours or so so my mind is confused and I want to bring order to my thoughts and for me the way to order my thoughts is writing and I don't have pen and paper near me in bed but what I do have near me is my smartphone and particularly Twitter so I immediately write about five tweets every morning and any of you who do follow me on Twitter will know that about six o'clock London time almost every day six tweets will come on the screen and they are my attempts to clear my mind and to digest the thoughts of the previous day and to capture them in a kind of aphorism and so that's that's what I will do to clear my mind with a few tweets good tweet are there so many people who reply to your tweet um how many responses do you get well I get retweets but I'm a very horrible person on Twitter in that I don't really believe in communicating I believe it as a broadcast medium so I know some people I get letters particularly from California going you are a bad person you are supposed to reply to everyone I always reply to anyone who emails me on my website but I don't use Twitter like that because I always think other people are not interested in my responses to a selectively others so I like to have it for everybody and just make a list of my tweets anteaters hang it on the internet so you use it in a different way more as a communication with myself yes yes it's kind of self therapy and also you know it's kind of like a collection of wise sayings but they're often quite crazy I I got into trouble yesterday because I wrote a tweet saying that the proof of being a good parent the proof of being a good parent is that your child does not want to be famous and I argue this as a way of thinking about where the desire where the hunger to be famous comes from and I the art the argument is that people want to be famous because their parents haven't loved them properly so I say if you are a good parent your child will not want to be famous and I had lots of parents Sweeting me go that's not fair my child wants to be on television but he's nice really and you are you are mean person but anyway we'll see later Smitha so go to entertain mindomo very similar thank you let's go to the second question sundae's how is the biggest source of comfort in modern life yes blank Tigan wonder i linger with him here the show we listen to mr deburr tongs up in there first what does he think about this um look I think for me the biggest source of consolation and comfort is art and love and I think that if you look at what unites art and love it's the feeling that we are not lonely when you read a book for me my favorite books are books that I read and I feel ah the author is describing an emotion or a feeling that is deeply mine but that I was not able to understand or see as clearly without the help of this person's book so a book written by someone else helps me to know myself better and there's a similar moment I think in the best moments in relationships in love when somebody says something to you and you understand yourself better as a result you are less lonely I think you know one of the great tragedies of life is loneliness feeling that once feelings have no echo in other people and in their different ways art and love are solutions to the problem of loneliness I guess me that table Rambo moisture ill burn in the road together let's see how people answered hadoo geek a young family was the number one that answer that was followed by books and you're laughing right now but money money money money money money in the form of salary cash or bonus so it's all the same in English money but it just came in different forms so there's great expectation for money how do you think about this look money is obviously very important up to a certain level but all the research on money shows us one thing that once you're beyond absolute necessity money comes to be important for other things the number one thing it comes to be important for is status respect you know the reason why many Koreans are being driven crazy by money is not for they have nothing to eat or they have no home to go to it's because somebody else that they were at school with has got more money than they do it's competition it's what I've called in a book I wrote status anxiety it's not so much money anxiety its status anxiety and the two obviously related but it's important to recognize that the reason you want money is for respect you know in a modern society nowadays the first time people to people meet they say how do you do and then they say what do you do and if you can answer that by saying a good job people will be very happy to see you and if you can't have a good answer then people will look at you in a strange way in other words we want good jobs and we want money because we want respect in a way we want love we want to be treated kindly and what we are very afraid of is humiliation humiliation is what we are trying to run away from desperately along the bottom to cancel another there's our consumer education anymore I'm not sure how much interest you have had in our country in Korea but status of anxiety that you just mentioned I believe that that is quite true in Korea because we believe were cut severe in that respect but do you believe that that is true for the Western society as well yes I think it is a modern global phenomena the interesting thing is that every country I go to thinks it's only them so we are even lonely about thinking that this is the modern problem and I'll tell you exactly why it happens there are clear historic reasons in traditional societies people do not move between ranks you are born a farmer you die a farmer your father was a blacksmith you will be a blacksmith nowadays you grow up in Korea or in New York or in London and the school system tells me it tells you you can be anything anything you like the sky is the limit you could be the president you could be Bill Gates and it's a beautiful idea and it drives us crazy because we think ah I'm not everything I'm not yet Bill Gates oh I failed I'm going to kill myself because I have not yet reached the pinnacle the chances of becoming Bill Gates are as small statistically as winning the lottery or being the King of France in the 17th century it is totally unlikely and yet we have this modest this message that no no it's totally possible and if you read these self-help books you know Korean books those are full of self-help books how to make a million dollars this week how to expand your portfolio how to be a better manager how to win and then there are all these other kinds of books all of them come from America and they tell you how do you cope with depression with low self-esteem with a sense of no of not feeling like you have any self-worth the two kinds of books are related a society that tells people you can have anything we're going to have 90 percent of people going oh what happened to me it didn't work out the dream didn't work out what we desperately need is to be honest with ourselves about how many people in this society will so-called succeed and we also need to look at that word success and realize that 16 if I said there's a very successful person over there they're about to come on stage come on stage successful person you would think this was somebody who was very who was famous who had done well in business that's what you all think but if I said come on very successful person and I showed you a woman of 80 who was not attractive who had a kind face and it would help to raise two generations of people and who knew about life in all sorts of ways and I said this is success you'd go really it's just a friendly grandmother and I said no friendly grandmother's whole society together it's because we don't have enough friendly grandmothers that career is falling apart you would go really I thought that we needed more celebrities you go no no it's not a celebrity problem we have we have a kindness problem a wisdom problem and a richer sense of who deserves high status problem high status should be much more widely spread than it is now and we are being driven crazy by a status system that rewards only a very few people for only a very few skills gets me that yes thank you understand let's go to the next question the technology that we need the most is blank let's look at the answers first communication the leading answer was communication that was followed by IT and on in the corner there is something like mind-reading vada we can just pass that communication and IT those two probably have a lot in common that means that communication takes place so much through IT what do you think is the right answer I'm very interested in communication but when tech people talk about communication they mean smaller phones smart phones long distance communication spreading a bit the one thing they don't talk about is communication in the way that a philosopher or a psychoanalyst will talk about it we don't know how to talk to one another we know how to make a telephone call we know how to call you know Vladivostok and Beijing and New York on telephones no problem there anymore Samsung has solved this for us the planet what we don't know how to do is to explain to our wife or husband that we're a little bit unhappy about something that kind of communication goes very wrong people lose their temper how do you mean you're unhappy how do you mean you you like the other person how do you mean etc we don't know how to communicate with our parents with our bosses in the true sense we know how to talk but we don't know what to talk about in order to communicate the deepest parts of ourselves so as I said in my talk the real challenge of anybody in the communication industry is to work out ways not just of making communication faster and cheaper and smaller but how to make it psychologically more effective and I would love the brightest brains in technology to set themselves the challenge of how to make sure that parents can speak to their children speak properly to their children and lovers can speak to their lovers and colleagues can speak to their employees properly this is what we need the help of technology for we've done enough it's great that we can speak to New York and Vladivostok that's fantastic and we needed that we now need to look at the way in which technology can serve the human need of communication that is mitosis are all manufactured in an Iranian good yes that's a very good food for thought communication related technology being required by many people I think it's more focused on true communication with other people rather than the need for technology and let's look at the next question which is actually the reverse in that case the technology that we need the least is what is your opinion on this I think the technology that distracts us from understanding ourselves and setting our goals you know I am amazed by how there's almost a conspiracy nowadays to put music and screens everywhere so that we are never alone with our own thoughts that we are always distracted I was in a taxi in London and the driver said oh look at my new gadget got a whole big television in the back of the screen I said please can I switch this television off I want to spend a few minutes thinking about myself and my projects I don't want to look at a television screen the guy said no no you can't switch this off customers love it you go on to Korean air and there you are for 10 hours you should be a wonderful moment a look out of the plane window look at the clouds think there's a screen in front of you it wants to watch films in other words everywhere we go we are surrounded by information from others and if we are always surrounded by ideas from others we cannot have our own ideas for thousands of years there was a place called the monastery you escape from the city and went to the monastery because you needed to be alone with your own thoughts we've done away with the monastery but more than ever what we need is moments moments not a whole life but moments of silence moments when it's it's a chance to develop our own thoughts and we need technology that understands that we don't always need to be distracted and if technology is always distracting us with the latest headlines the latest messages we will become uncreated sterile unimaginative people our economy will will suffer so we need help in finding silence I get summoned everyone yes then let's look at what people said no such thing that was the lady answer that was followed by IT and it's a bit different from what to you said perhaps smartphone you greet war are things that you both have belief is unnecessary let's go to the next question my biggest rival is blind let's look at what people said right there myself welcome that means life is hard for so many people that was followed by colleagues and even everyone what do you think okay what do you think my biggest rival is anyone who is doing something that I want to do and the moment that I know I have arrival is when you get that funny feeling in your stomach or in your mind when you meet someone and they tell you what you do and you feel Envy now Envy is a really difficult subject because if you're good person you're not supposed to feel Envy Envy oh very bad and people will also know I'm not an envious person well we are all of us envious and we should be envy is a wonderful emotion because without Envy we don't know what we should be ambitious about every time you meet someone they tell you what they're doing and you feel envious this is a clue to what you should do with your future so use envy as a guide to where you want to go next so nowadays whenever I meet someone and they make me feel envious rather than trying to escape the feeling of envy I get down I write on a piece of paper and I think okay why do I feel envious of them is it how they look is it the job they're doing what aspect of their job what what is it that what is it that I could use so learn to steal from the people you're envious about don't run away from envy learn from envy but in some cases you can make yourself go mad with envy let's go into the next question I've always wanted to collaborate with blank let's take a look at the respondents response first friends yes that's finest logical I think job the president Steve Jobs I think that would be impossible now tendonman duty lay it out there we are I think that many years the people had known that this was going to be shown to me styling the photo would have probably written down and Alain de Botton after friends but in any way what is your if you did a pretty response look the the area of collaboration that I'm really interested in is you know I'm a writer a person of ideas and what I'm more and more aware of is I would like to collaborate with people who can make ideas powerful in the world so I like to collaborate with anyone who is able to to take ideas and put them into the world in different ways that means people who were involved in technology people who were involved in education people were involved in government these are for me always exciting moments of collaboration and I've had little moments of this I was doing some work with the prime minister in London I've done some work with companies I've done some work with technology people trying all the time to say okay I'm interested in wisdom and how to live and how can we take this outside of books outside of the university and make it powerful in the world in career I tell you exactly what I would love to collaborate I would love to collaborate with some people who want to set up the school of life in Korea I would love to find collaborators who can come to me and say okay you have the content you know what this school is about we will help to provide the capital and know how to make it work in Korea but what for me will be a beautiful and interesting collaboration so anyone who is inspired come and talk to me gets me that thousand one in the Moi's all right next question Todd I get to me so much smartphone me look at the Red Room how everyone did it let's look at how people responded to this first I guess much poni to it off smartphone to me is a friend from Utah that wasn't a bonus yeah necessity was next door like I did and two were some others disappointed I get home and their their smartphone is a phone but that was the least number of worse responses that's my um look my phone is the place where I write my books for a lot of the time I still have a keyboard ice love a blackberry I know I'm not allowed to mention that company in Korea but I have a blackberry phone that I like simply because of its keyboard and people are always thinking I'm on my phone all the time texting friends or whatever but I'm just I use it as a notebook and so it's always with me and I just write bits of my books on it I find that ideas never come when they're supposed to when you sit down and you have a free morning to write that's the worst time but just a you know when your food shopping or when you're going to the airport that's the moment when suddenly the idea will come and I get my smartphone and I put it on there so if you see me on my smartphone don't think I'm being rude I'm just trying to write the next bit of my book good I'm in a body melt in winning minimize it there I think you mentioned this earlier but the complexities of daily life since we cannot go all the way to a monastery in the modern days given this current situation the high-tech devices and the network if we truly open our hearts and minds in order to collaborate wouldn't the smartphones and the technologies be a barrier or would you believe that it can be a tool look I think one of the things that smartphones can do is to time is to connect us with time to certain ideas so you know if there was if your phone rang at a certain moment and said right this is your moment where you're going to spend 10 minutes meditating this is your 10 minute meditation moment of the day and your phone insisted that you did this and it cleared everything it's stopped messages coming and it and it then produced an image a beautiful image of you know a cherry blossom and it said right is the time for meditating my phone will itself go dead until you have meditated for 10 minutes you think okay so it was steering you in a good direction so a phone is just a diagnostic tool that can direct us to what it thinks is most important up till now that means any message from anyone at any time and that's not the most important so we simply need to reprogram our phones to make them calendars of the most important ideas and attitudes and you can do that with a phone I guess in either go through that yes thank you thank you very much we had a very interesting conversation with mr. Alain de Botton regarding things that are important in our lives we wish we had more time but we have to stop here once again we have to send him I will let him go

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Keywords: sbs, sdf, forum, ted, lecture, speech, csr, nonprofit organization, knowledge, 포럼, 디지털포럼, 강의, 강연, 비대면포럼, 사회공헌, 비영리포럼, 테드, 연사, 지식, 명강의, 알랭 드 보통, alain de botton, the school of life, education, alain de botton emotional education, alain de botton love

Id: pnFeSByySTg

Length: 44min 56sec (2696 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2013