Topics on Life
Society keeps progressing. There is no pausing, there is no turning back. The great news is there is no need for turning back.
Some might say that we can make the best out of our future by looking at the past and learning from our mistakes; others will say it's best to just live to moment and make the future happen now.
There are three aspects that influence us as beings. Heredity - our starting condition - what we inherit and what we give further to our children. Environment - the sum of all things (space, time, family, society...) - that define where we live, how we live, with whom we live. Education - our evolutionary catalyst. The good news is that education can level the downs and augment the ups we face throughout life.
I am a believer in the power of education, but not the type of education you think about out of experience. Imagine the one that is perfectly crafted for your personality, skills and interests, and never feels like it adds effort. It's the natural way of enhancing your capacities, in the best way that suits you. Education helps me everywhere and every time.
I am not a writer, or a psychologist, or an experienced educator so I want to share some enlightening thoughts which others have had in time about Life. They are grouped as videos showing, in my opinion, immensely daring ideas about education and the prospects of a better way of life. All videos feature selected TED Talks. What are they ? Well, ... once a year, 1000 remarkable people gather in California to exchange something of incalculable value: their ideas. You can read more about TED online.
Another topic close to my heart is the increasing dissatisfaction of young adult's lives. I keep seeing the same patterns around me, in my students and friends: everyone is "just fine"; no sparks, nothing unusual, nothing bothering, but nothing exuberant about life either. It's certainly not their fault, they're all great people, but they - and we altogether - are victims of our times: technology, corporations, environment, our false perceptions of what to expect from life. All millennials (born after '84) should closely watch the following movie - a great source of motivation and a powerful warning to how we could find our pure selves again and be happy. Some key ideas 7:57 and 10:11.
Promoting happiness and a good health is the desire of all kids. When they are small, they don't necessarily want to become doctors or lawyers. They want to be as happy as they are now.
What keeps us happy and healthy as we go through life? If you think it's fame and money, you're not alone – but, according to psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, you're mistaken. As the director of a 75-year-old study on adult development, Waldinger has unprecedented access to data on true happiness and satisfaction. In this talk, he shares three important lessons learned from the study as well as some practical, old-as-the-hills wisdom on how to build a fulfilling, long life.
Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how “power posing” — standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident — can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even have an impact on our chances for success in life.
Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied. He claims that adding options to people can't but increase the expectations people have as to how good those options will be, and that will produce less satisfaction, even when there are actually good results. When we have just one option, we have the chance to be surprised, and if it fails, we can only blame the world. But when we have a hundred choices there is only one person to blame: ourselves. And this can become dangerous.
The Fermi Paradox - Where is everybody in our galaxy ?
A New Equation For Intelligence - Is there an equation for intelligence? Yes. It’s F = T ∇ Sτ. In a fascinating and informative talk, physicist and computer scientist Alex Wissner-Gross explains what in the world that means.