TEDxAmsterdam

(Re) read philosophy books (Nico Baken)

Interview with Nico Baken (Senior strategist at KPN and part-time professor at TU Delft) Taken from the book “Breakthrough”, special edition for TEDxAmsterdam 2009.

The world has found itself in crisis, but we do not know the extent of it. The financial and ensuing economic crisis is very much alive in many of us, but we are also in the midst of a climate crisis. I view this crisis as a crisis of values. Our values have crumbled away in the past decades, people need new views and new bodies of thought. I see TED as a combined force of ideals and ideas.

Nico Baken This “TED box” offers an outlook on a new paradigm, TED people do not have the desire to score at all costs. TED-people want to tell a great story and they want their story to touch others, make them think and make them act. This gives me a good feeling, because these are people who are made up from a completely different mold.

My favourite TEDTalk is by Barry Schwartz. He makes a passionate call for “practical wisdom” as an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. Schwartz tells a telling tale of a father whose eleven year-old son has been taken away from him, because he accidentally gave his son a lemonade during a baseball game that contained a small percentage of alcohol. I found the image of powerlessness and the failure of the system, very telling. He shows us that rules often fail us, incentives often backfire such that they make us do things collectively that non of us want individually. Barry demonstrates practical everyday wisdom will help rebuild our world. An excellent example of a new body of thought that is available in the TED box.