The Top 5 TED Talks That Inspire Me

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I enjoy thinking about innovative ways to do things and TED offers an amazing way to look through the eyes of influential people in different areas. The conferences may be elitist gatherings but; rather than keep this knowledge locked away they have begun to share their ideas for change. So I decided I’d give you a list of the talks that I enjoy.

1. Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

A speech on how capability should no longer be based on educational standard and how creativity is a new way to develop one’s capability. Imagination is a the ultimate gift to a child.He takes an astounding non-conformist view and presents it excellently.

2. Malcolm Gladwell: What we can learn from spaghetti sauce

Gladwell speaks about how people base their judgements. He delves into human variability in choice.A very interesting insight in how to develop a product that will be diversly accepted, increasing it’s aspects to fit or providing more with different aspects.

3. Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice

Schwartz looks at the inverse of Gladwell’s talk and how over variation in choice can cause more harm than good. Showing that our world is becoming so simplified for groups that the world is being diluted in complexity.

4. Larry Lessig: How creativity is being strangled by the law

Larry is showing how people are being restricted further and further from modifying the IP of another and creating something new. This talk is quite motivating in the way that you think about recreating it has been around for century’s and now people are labeling it piracy. To go along with this I recommend reading The Pirate’s Dilemma.

5. Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen

Hans Rosling delivers a speech that talks about the inefficiency in the development of current thought, from pre-conceived notions. He displays the data in a fascinating way that enthralls you as you watch it move through time.

In Search Of The Shepherds

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Man is narcissistic from birth; we are taught not to be completely enveloped in our own personal wants and needs as we grow. However, as a baby our world contains only people who will give us what we want, it is bestowed upon us by them when we beckon with a cry. As we grow we never forget this, we choose to affect others by wanting them to accept us and needing them to be like us. As this furthers itself, through time, we all begin to fit in to the crowd and follow those who have already achieved that which we want to achieve. We all fall into our flocks and we will remain there until we realize that we cannot achieve greatness with these others, mere copies of ourselves and us of them.

When one escapes what he knows, he finds knowledge; first he must be wise enough to realize he has to escape. Once he has done this, he shall spread his knowledge to others and shall his knowledge prosper. As he prospers in this new environment he shall see his knowledgeable gains wane. This occurs as he again becomes a copy of those around him, the internal narcissism of man. He shall always become a copy of those he surrounds himself with and he shall create copies of himself within his view of them.

We are naturally herded, by society, by our ideals, and by our own discretion. We are the sheep of this world; we shall follow as we are taught, as our fore-fathers were taught. Yet, did not the fore-fathers of this land remove this teaching from their minds and choose to rebel to gain free reign for themselves and their neighbors. They chose to be the shepherds of this land and its people, they no longer wanted to follow a lord that denied them the same rights as the men that lived among his lands close. This is becoming that land of lords and of sheep, so timid they may be. The time must come that shepherds, hidden among sheep, will rise and reshape our knowledge, teaching us ways anew.

We the narcissistic sheep of this land shall soon relegate our minds to the brink of non-acceptance, out of fear for change, to any shepherd that may arise to bring forth the new rebellion. The rebellion for change must come before we all become diluted into the same mental body. As we become more the same, the chance for change becomes ever more burdensome upon those who will rise. Our best source of knowledge into change comes from enemies, those who we resolved are flawed in there knowledge, they too feel this way of us. What if we sought to understand their knowledge, we shall unburden them of their preaching and hate and allow ourselves to grow substantially.

“We must seek wisdom from the ancients, for age doth leave wisdom in place of youth and as tides change, so do the ages pass.”

Metaphysical Inertia In Relation To The Law Of Attraction

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This is an idea i had during a constitutional back to my apartment. I cannot quite understand what caused me to ask myself about the Law of Attraction; I did however and it led to an idea of Metaphysical Inertia based upon Newton’s First Law. The thought makes sense easily on so many levels, yet it’s still extremely hard to describe.

“The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors, that which it loves, and also that which it fears. It reaches the height of its cherished aspirations. It falls to the level of its unchastened desires — and circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own.”~James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

“Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed.”~ Sir Isaac Newton, Principia Mathematica

I’m going to break the Allen’s down into more general terms in order to derive connection and a better understanding of it. So the first can be perceived as,

“One’s subconscious attracts its ambitions and that which it dreams, that which it refuses to lose, and that which it avoids living with. It shall bring a person to his meaning in life. It then finds its purpose un-rebuked and as such it shall become conscious through its surrounding events.”

Now in relation to the second it develops an overlying idea that there is a force in act. The subconscious is pulling ideals & non-ideals together into the conscious life. The force of the ideals as they are achieved, this is under our mental control, is pushing us forward in a positive direction that leads to more forward advances, the counter is also true.  The uncontrollable, however cannot be predicted by our conscious or subconscious states and is the randomness that can turn a wealthy, businessman, with a family; into a hollow, emotionless, bastard, who cheats upon his wife and children.

What is this force that acts so negatively upon the forward advances that we make? It’s effectively the friction of life, based around the idea of diminishing gains, it shall pull us back as we begin to reach our goals and complete more and more of what we dreamt of, we slow. The only way that we can keep advancing is by not becoming complacent with what we have achieved and strive for more. Also we cannot overburden ourselves with that that we take distaste in, it shall only lead to an harbored contempt for what we’re achieving.

The Time To Fail…

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It is oft-stated that Thomas Edison once said, “I did not fail 10,000 times when creating the light-bulb; I have succeeded in finding 10,000 ways how not to create a light-bulb.” I have read it many times and I find that the number seems quite arbitrary and he was not the first person to create the light-bulb, merely the innovator who found a more viable filament source in tungsten steel. This article is not about him but, about allowing oneself to take risks in life and allowing failure.

I was watching Seth Godin on TED and, he was talking about how to market to the world by not focusing on the masses, but risking your gains on the people who actually give a damn about what you are selling.  “The riskiest thing you can do now is being safe.” You are going to have to take your risks to stand out among the ever growing crowd. Develop your product and sell it not to a crowd but to the few who care about your work. Let the few spread your product, all you have to do is find them and give them what they want.

Man is capable of perceiving risk and finding ways to manage it, however, the simplest way that man knows is to remove it all together. This is quite risky in itself as with higher risk comes higher failure rates but, also, larger success. We should not see these failures as losses but as knowledgeable gains for our future successes. When you truly develop an understanding of the risk you are taking it is no longer a gamble; you have developed a strategy to turn most fortunes, good or bad, into positive successes.

“The time you have is short, better to fail today and have tomorrow left to succeed; you will never know if your failure now will lead to a future success.”

Education Pt 2 – Personal Economics, Subsidized Education, And the Morality Of It All

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Originally Posted on a defunct blog: 3/15/08 Update: First paragraph is heavily flawed after I altered the original math to make it more simple, by adding a link to an outside source, the link is valid just not for this case.

First unto the personal economics, I’m going to defer this to another persons observations. Now of course this is merely a perception on how well you can do with a High School Diploma(HSD) compared to a B.S. The HSD will have roughly a 8 year head start over the BS; as such the BS would have to be putting roughly 2 to 3 times that of the HSD for roughly 1.5 to 2 times longer, just to be roughly even.

Now on to the topic of Subsidized Education. This is the act of the government providing grant money to help students attend college. The government in the past few years has spent around $200 billion annually towards higher education; this can be tracked back for nearly a half century $7 billion in 1965 to $170 billion in 1995 so on average we’re spending $100 billion annually for the last 30 years and with a 60% failure rate. We have wasted $2.4 trillion dollars on education, roughly one-fifth of our national debt. This has caused an effect that has allowed the colleges and universities to raise the price of admission drastically, hurting the middle-class.

Morally, I feel that we should remove subsidies in the education industry. In removing the subsidies and regulating the amount that a school could charge we could gradually reach an equilibrium and prevent the facilities from relentlessly raising tuition rates. In doing this, we would help the economy by stabilizing wages and allowing our country to slowly shift more towards productivity.

Now how do we become more productive. We gradually have more citizens filling the roles of the illegal immigrant laborers, the current state of our nation is that we are a nation of hedonistic intellectuals when our society needs physical labor, not mental. If you were a true intellectual you would develop your skills and let yourself be discovered by others. If you aren’t willing to express your intellectual capacity your have yet to realize any dream requires will and determination.

This is the nation of freedom and dreams that our forefathers fought for, our rights and dreams, with their blood, sweat, and tears. Yet, we have become a nation of daydreamers who don’t have a clue about what true labor is. Working men founded one of the strongest nations and we, their heirs to this land, have become the hedonistic clan to lead the United States down the path of Greeks and the Romans. The greatest empires fall when they believe they are greater than all others, another shall rise with a dream and and prove them wrong.

So do you have the will and determination to follow through with your dreams?

Will & Determination

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I had a conversation with a friend about the education system and “The Plan” where he discussed the focus of the formal student vs. informal student. He stated, “The problem with the informal education is that it is usually not the main priority/focus of the person. They are usually working in some meaningless job that distracts them from their higher goal. It’s hard to accept someone of “higher knowledge” when they seem to be stuck behind the counter of a fast food store.” This is a post based on that fact that the average person will not be primarily focused, upon the informal studies which they undergo. Their focus will be subjected to free time, and it shall be put upon them to learn during this time. This is where the will and determination shall come into play.

The first thing they must do is be willing to give up their time to learn. If they are unwilling they will push knowledgeable gains to the back burner and achieve very little. If however, they decide to devote in part or whole this time to self-education and they shall have the ability to gain knowledge at a semi-constant steady pace. This pace is still mediocre in the majority of cases, because they can still remove themselves from their studies fairly easily.

The second thing that can help with this is their personal determination to learn from these studies. The undetermined will lack the consistency to achieve much in a timely fashion, not necessarily, but most likely. If they decide to be both determined and willing to garner thorough knowledge, from their studies; they shall have a rather constant pace that is faster, than just being willing to learn. If you aren’t  willing, but extremely determined, you shall only exhaust yourself with utter boredom in search of the knowledge. Without both in unison, you will not be at the best position for learning.

These two things are rather influential, in any aspect of life. This reminds me of Ryan’s The Business of Running about pacing one’s self to achieve what they set out to achieve, without over exerting yourself. Therefore, my metaphor on this subject in accordance to the prior info is the following:

” One’s willingness is the pace at which one shall go forth with their problems and tasks in life and determination shall be the speed at which they are able to maintain at this pace. “

If they do not follow both, they shall struggle at a speed too high or pace themselves too inconsistently, and they will achieve little.

Education Pt 1 – What Is It, The Social Perception and Ideology

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Education in the formal sense is part of “The Plan,”  it is one of the cornerstones of modern society, and in general a very interesting subject on a multitude of levels. It possesses economical, ideological, moral, and societal value to the modern world. The world would not fail without it, but it would neither grow.

A formal education is possessing the knowledge through coursework and the conversion of knowledge from one body to another, both mechanics and linguistics of the course. It is often referred to as a formal learning environment where one is to pick-up skills in a particular field, along with knowledge from a more vast pool of knowledge of general education. Generally, this area is merely obtained to comply with “The Plan” to obtain a higher salary or general monetary gain.

Learning, however, does not come just from such a formal environment. We use the formal environment to leverage one’s future wealth. Learning is habitual to many a human spirit, and we are constantly learning, if we seek knowledge and understanding. Learning can be more influential and more focused outside of a formal education, or vice-versa. However, we all shall make the choice between a formal education or a non-formal education whether focused or not.

Social Perception and Ideology guide us through the realms of our life and to us choosing to follow “The Plan,” to lead the dreams of our families, our friends, and the general public. We choose to do this because it is pushed upon us, from when we are young, “The only way you’ll be anybody is if you go to college.” I have come to the realization that if we seek knowledge, it shall not be hidden, it shall not be shrouded from our heart, however society will hide the wealth and acceptance from us, because we did not follow the societal plan. Society shall turn us away without proof of our knowledge even if we possess more knowledge and skill, because we don’t have a piece of paper saying we possess that knowledge and skill.