The following information is used for educational purposes only.
La fuerza de las emociones
Se debe utilizar la fuerza del embate del oponente a favor de uno mismo para dominarlo
Por Andy Freire | Para LA NACION
El aikido es un arte marcial en el que no existen enemigos sino "oponentes". En japonés lo denominan uke, porque proviene del verbo ukeru, que significa recibir. El que ataca, se denomina nage, que proviene del japonés, nageru (lanzar). Así, en la confrontación, nage se preocupa por no dañar a su oponente más de lo necesario. Pero esta lógica implica otro principio fundamental: se debe utilizar la fuerza del embate del oponente a favor de uno mismo para dominarlo.
Recibir, dominar y utilizar esa energía en beneficio propio. Un proceso simple, pero que esconde detrás una relación con la realidad casi que de índole metafísica: no se puede negarla, sólo enfrentarla.
Con nuestras emociones ocurre algo similar. Mejor dicho, debería ocurrir. Sin embargo, cada vez con más frecuencia escuchamos hablar del burnout, de la epidemia del estrés laboral o de la ansiedad. Todas situaciones derivadas de la dificultad que muchos solemos tener para lidiar con las emociones en lugar de aprovecharlas en pos de nuestro bienestar.
La emoción es una reacción natural e inevitable. Es un proceso desencadenado por un estímulo del entorno que exige una respuesta o acción. Puede que, por ejemplo, frente a la fecha de entrega de un informe laboral importante sienta miedo y que, por ello, se ponga en riesgo algo que valoro. Imaginemos que esa situación provoca en mí un nivel de ansiedad alto y me paralizo. ¿Cuál sería el problema aquí? ¿El miedo o el modo en que reacciono frente a él? Claramente, la reacción.
Ante una emoción como aquella tengo opciones. De hecho, puedo responder de tres modos diferentes: a) reprimirla, y no hacer nada para que aquel informe quede bien b) convertirme en esa emoción y dejar que el miedo me consuma tomando decisiones erradas o c) distanciarme y ponerla en su contexto para aprovechar la alerta que se disparó en mí para tomar las decisiones racionales adecuadas que decanten en un mejor informe.
¿Cuál sería el problema aquí? ¿El miedo o el modo en que reacciono frente a él? Claramente, la reacción
No sólo la clave está en esta última opción, sino que además ésta nos aproxima una sutileza reveladora: las emociones tienen la capacidad de potenciar nuestra razón y, por ende, de ayudarnos a decidir mejor. António Rosa Damásio es un neurólogo portugués que dirige el Instituto para el Estudio Neurológico de la Emoción y de la Creatividad en la Universidad del Sur de California. Él, en 1994, publicó un libro llamado El error de Descartes: la emoción, la razón y el cerebro humano, gracias al que cobró fama internacional. En aquel texto, el autor propuso que los procesos emocionales guían e influyen las conductas, en especial los procesos de toma de decisiones. Damásio afirma que las emociones tienen el poder de hacernos razonar de una forma más creativa y productiva, y que cuando se aprende a entender las conexiones entre ellas y los hechos, las podemos usar de forma correcta.
De hecho, gracias a múltiples estudios, pudo comprobar que las personas que tienden a razonar dejando de lado el componente emocional (los que llama híper racionales) son menos efectivas y, usualmente, incapaces de tomar decisiones correctas. Pero el caso de estudio más conocido del neurólogo europeo es el del paciente al que llama Elliot (seudónimo utilizado para preservar su identidad). Aquel hombre era un esposo, padre y profesional destacado, quien durante una operación para removerle un tumor, sufrió un daño en la corteza prefrontal del cerebro que perjudicó las conexiones entre ésa área y la amígdala cerebral (responsable del procesamiento de las reacciones emocionales).
Cuando se recuperó, Elliot había cambiado. Se había transformado en un hombre impulsivo y sin autodisciplina. A pesar de que los exámenes neurológicos de aquella época (década de los 80) no mostraban inconvenientes y de que en los de coeficiente intelectual obtenía resultados por encima del promedio, no podía hacer bien el trabajo en el que antes era brillante. No era capaz de seguir una rutina, se empeñaba en realizar tareas irrelevantes y no lograba fijar prioridades. Obviamente, al poco tiempo perdió su empleo. También, debido a una serie de pésimas decisiones de inversión, perdió todos sus ahorros. Al tiempo, se divorció.
Elliot se había transformado en una persona incapaz de elegir entre dos cosas simples porque no generaba ningún tipo de preferencia. Su cerebro seguía generando análisis y argumentos, pero para tomar decisiones acertadas le hacía falta la conexión emocional que había perdido.
Así de importantes son las emociones para nuestra vida diaria. Sin embargo, todavía hoy, y a pesar de la evidencia existente, la idea de que ellas "son enemigas de la razón" está bastante extendida en los ámbitos laborales y educacionales. Por eso, cada vez más, la mala convivencia que establecemos con ellas nos afecta. Para no caer en esa trampa es importante tomar perspectiva, aceptarlas y aprovecharlas del modo más eficaz posible. Y no "a pesar" de ellas. Si no, "con ellas". Después de todo, como en el aikido, la fuerza de nuestras emociones puede, y por qué no, debe ser usada a nuestro favor.
Fuente: www.lanacion.com.ar
In this blog, teachers, students and all those who have some kind of interest in the English language will find useful, interesting, curious and funny things to be used in their classes or for their personal enjoyment.
Friday, April 17, 2015
Thursday, April 16, 2015
ECON/TECH/BUS/GralIn-tlynda.com Joins the LinkedIn Family-Video
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
lynda.com Joins the LinkedIn Family
Published on Apr 09, 2015
We are thrilled to welcome the talented lynda.com team to the LinkedIn family. Together, we can make it even easier for professionals around the world to accelerate their careers and realize their potential through the learning and development of new skills.
Learn more: http://blog.linkedin.com/2015/04/09/lynda-joins-linkedin
Source: www.slideshare.net
lynda.com Joins the LinkedIn Family
Published on Apr 09, 2015
We are thrilled to welcome the talented lynda.com team to the LinkedIn family. Together, we can make it even easier for professionals around the world to accelerate their careers and realize their potential through the learning and development of new skills.
Learn more: http://blog.linkedin.com/2015/04/09/lynda-joins-linkedin
Source: www.slideshare.net
BRAIN/HEALTH/GralInt-A Simple Guide to Better Brain Health-15 slides
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
A Simple Guide to Better Brain Health
Published on Apr 09, 2015
Source: www.slideshare.net
A Simple Guide to Better Brain Health
Published on Apr 09, 2015
Source: www.slideshare.net
TECH/GralInt-Top 25 Ways to Speed up Your WordPress Website-35 slides
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Top 25 Ways to Speed up Your WordPress Website
Published on Apr 08, 2015
Be Prepared for Google's Mobile-Friendly Algorithm Update With These 25 Ways to Speed up Your WordPress Website. See blog post here for detailed explanation of each slide:
http://web3.com.au/search-engine-optimisation/mobile-friendly-update/
Source: www.slideshare.net
Top 25 Ways to Speed up Your WordPress Website
Published on Apr 08, 2015
Be Prepared for Google's Mobile-Friendly Algorithm Update With These 25 Ways to Speed up Your WordPress Website. See blog post here for detailed explanation of each slide:
http://web3.com.au/search-engine-optimisation/mobile-friendly-update/
Source: www.slideshare.net
BUS/GralInt-Video Interview-President of the World Bank Jim Kim on Where China is Leading the Way & more
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
President of the World Bank Jim Kim on Where China is Leading the Way
Published on Apr 10, 2015
Can We Really End Extreme Poverty by 2030?
President of the World Bank Jim Kim on Malnutrition
Why is the World Bank Focusing on Poverty in Developing Countries Instead of in the Developed World?
Source: www.slideshare.net
President of the World Bank Jim Kim on Where China is Leading the Way
Published on Apr 10, 2015
Can We Really End Extreme Poverty by 2030?
President of the World Bank Jim Kim on Malnutrition
Why is the World Bank Focusing on Poverty in Developing Countries Instead of in the Developed World?
Why is the World Bank Focusing on Poverty in Developing Countries Instead of in the Developed World? from LinkedIn Pulse
Source: www.slideshare.net
BUS/GralInt-Video Interview-Linkedin Pulse-Howard Schultz On What the Critics Never Understood About "Race Together"
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Howard Schultz On What the Critics Never Understood About "Race Together"
Published on Apr 07, 2015
Source: www.slideshare.net
Howard Schultz On What the Critics Never Understood About "Race Together"
Published on Apr 07, 2015
Source: www.slideshare.net
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
MUS/GralInt-John Legend All Of Me w/Lyrics & more
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
John Legend All Of Me
Published on Feb 14, 2014
Say Something (I'm Giving Up On You)
Laura Doran
Published on Nov 9, 2013
Jason Mraz - I won't give up
Uploaded on Jan 6, 2012
James Blunt - Goodbye My Lover
Uploaded on Nov 7, 2009
Source: www.youtube.com
John Legend All Of Me
Published on Feb 14, 2014
Say Something (I'm Giving Up On You)
Laura Doran
Published on Nov 9, 2013
Jason Mraz - I won't give up
Uploaded on Jan 6, 2012
James Blunt - Goodbye My Lover
Uploaded on Nov 7, 2009
Source: www.youtube.com
Saturday, April 11, 2015
LANG/GralInt-TED Talks-Breaking the language barrier | Tim Doner | TEDxTeen 2014
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Breaking the language barrier | Tim Doner |
TEDxTeen 2014
Published on Mar 9, 2014
http://j.mp/TxT14TimDoner
Tim Doner is a senior at the Dalton School in New York City who has studied over 20 languages. His interest started at the age of 13, after several years of French and Latin, when he began learning Hebrew and soon moved on to more obscure tongues such as Pashto, Ojibwe and Swahili. As he describes it, his goal is not to achieve fluency in each, but rather to learn about foreign history and culture through the medium of language. He spends much of his time perfecting his linguistic skills in different neighborhoods around the city, and to date his Youtube channel has received over 3 million hits. Tim has been interviewed (in English, Mandarin, Arabic and Farsi, among others) for media outlets such as The New York Times, BBC, The Today Show, Reuters and The Economist. He is starting his freshman year at Harvard next year and plans to study linguistics.
04/09/2015
WHY I TAUGHT MYSELF 20 LANGUAGES — AND WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT MYSELF IN THE PROCESS
Timothy Doner
During the past few years, I’ve been referred to in the media as “The World’s Youngest Hyperpolyglot” — a word that sounds like a rare illness. In a way it is: it describes someone who speaks a particularly large number of foreign languages, someone whose all-consuming passion for words and systems can lead them to spend many long hours alone with a grammar book.
But while it’s true that I can speak in 20 different languages, including English, it took me a while to understand that there’s more to language than bartering over kebabs in Arabic or ordering from a menu in Hindi. Fluency is another craft altogether.
I began my language education at age thirteen. I became interested in the Middle East and started studying Hebrew on my own. For reasons I still don’t quite understand, I was soon hooked on the Israeli funk group Hadag Nachash, and would listen to the same album every single morning. At the end of a month, I had memorized about twenty of their songs by heart — even though I had no clue what they meant. But once I learned the translations it was almost as if I had downloaded a dictionary into my head; I now knew several hundred Hebrew words and phrases — and I’d never had to open a textbook.
I decided to experiment. I spent hours walking around my New York City neighborhood, visiting Israeli cafés to eavesdrop on people’s conversations. Sometimes, I would even get up the courage to introduce myself, rearranging all of the song lyrics in my head into new, awkward and occasionally correct sentences. As it turned out, I was on to something.
IF THE STANDARD OF SPEAKING A LANGUAGE IS TO KNOW EVERY WORD — TO FEEL EQUALLY AT HOME DEBATING NUCLEAR FISSION AND CLASSICAL MUSIC — THEN HARDLY ANYONE IS FLUENT IN THEIR OWN NATIVE TONGUES.
I moved on to Arabic, which I’d study every morning by reading news headlines with a dictionary and by talking to street vendors. After that it was Persian, then Russian, then Mandarin … and about fifteen others. On an average day, I’d Skype with friends in French and Turkish, listen to Hindi pop music for an hour and eat dinner with a Greek or Latin book on my lap. Language became an obsession, one that I pursued in summer classes, school, web forums and language meet-ups around the city.
By March of 2012, media outlets such as the BBC and The New York Times featured stories about me, “The Teen Who Speaks 20 Languages!” For a while, it was a fantasy; it made what many thought of as a bizarre hobby seem (almost) mainstream, and gave me a perfect opportunity to promote language learning.
After a while, though, my media “moments” felt more like gruesome chores than opportunities to spread the word. Most news shows were interested only in the “dancing bear” act (“You wanna learn more about the Middle East? Cool… Say ‘you’re watching Channel 2’ in Arabic!”) As lighthearted as that might have been, it left me with an uncomfortably personal lesson in modern media: when the goal is simply to get the viewers’ attention, the real importance of a story often gets lost in translation.
When I was beginning to discover languages, I had a romanticized view of words like “speak” and “fluency”. But then I realized that you can be nominally fluent in a language and still struggle to understand parts of it. English is my first language, but what I really spoke was a hybrid of teenage slang and Manhattan-ese. When I listen to my father, a lawyer, talk to other lawyers, his words sound as foreign to me as Finnish. I certainly couldn’t read Shakespeare without a dictionary, and I’d be equally helpless in a room with Jamaicans or Cajuns. Yet all of us “speak English.”
My linguistics teacher, a native of Poland, speaks better English than I do and seems right at home peppering his speech with terms like “epenthetic schwa” and “voiceless alveolar stops”. Yet the other day, it came up that he’d never heard the word “tethered”. Does that mean he doesn’t “speak” English? If the standard of speaking a language is to know every word — to feel equally at home debating nuclear fission and classical music — then hardly anyone is fluent in their own native tongues.
Reducing someone to the number of languages he or she speaks trivializes the immense power that language imparts. After all, language is the living testament to a culture’s history and world view, not a shiny trophy to be dusted off for someone’s self-aggrandizement.
Language is a complex tapestry of trade, conquest and culture to which we each add our own unique piece — whether that be a Shakespearean sonnet or “Lol bae g2g ttyl.” As my time in the media spotlight made me realize, saying you “speak” a language can mean a lot of different things: it can mean memorizing verb charts, knowing the slang, even passing for a native. But while I’ve come to realize I’ll never be fluent in 20 languages, I’ve also understood that language is about being able to converse with people, to see beyond cultural boundaries and find a shared humanity. And that’s a lesson well worth learning.
Featured illustration by Dawn Kim/TED.
Breaking the language barrier | Tim Doner |
TEDxTeen 2014
Published on Mar 9, 2014
http://j.mp/TxT14TimDoner
Tim Doner is a senior at the Dalton School in New York City who has studied over 20 languages. His interest started at the age of 13, after several years of French and Latin, when he began learning Hebrew and soon moved on to more obscure tongues such as Pashto, Ojibwe and Swahili. As he describes it, his goal is not to achieve fluency in each, but rather to learn about foreign history and culture through the medium of language. He spends much of his time perfecting his linguistic skills in different neighborhoods around the city, and to date his Youtube channel has received over 3 million hits. Tim has been interviewed (in English, Mandarin, Arabic and Farsi, among others) for media outlets such as The New York Times, BBC, The Today Show, Reuters and The Economist. He is starting his freshman year at Harvard next year and plans to study linguistics.
04/09/2015
WHY I TAUGHT MYSELF 20 LANGUAGES — AND WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT MYSELF IN THE PROCESS
Timothy Doner
During the past few years, I’ve been referred to in the media as “The World’s Youngest Hyperpolyglot” — a word that sounds like a rare illness. In a way it is: it describes someone who speaks a particularly large number of foreign languages, someone whose all-consuming passion for words and systems can lead them to spend many long hours alone with a grammar book.
But while it’s true that I can speak in 20 different languages, including English, it took me a while to understand that there’s more to language than bartering over kebabs in Arabic or ordering from a menu in Hindi. Fluency is another craft altogether.
I began my language education at age thirteen. I became interested in the Middle East and started studying Hebrew on my own. For reasons I still don’t quite understand, I was soon hooked on the Israeli funk group Hadag Nachash, and would listen to the same album every single morning. At the end of a month, I had memorized about twenty of their songs by heart — even though I had no clue what they meant. But once I learned the translations it was almost as if I had downloaded a dictionary into my head; I now knew several hundred Hebrew words and phrases — and I’d never had to open a textbook.
I decided to experiment. I spent hours walking around my New York City neighborhood, visiting Israeli cafés to eavesdrop on people’s conversations. Sometimes, I would even get up the courage to introduce myself, rearranging all of the song lyrics in my head into new, awkward and occasionally correct sentences. As it turned out, I was on to something.
IF THE STANDARD OF SPEAKING A LANGUAGE IS TO KNOW EVERY WORD — TO FEEL EQUALLY AT HOME DEBATING NUCLEAR FISSION AND CLASSICAL MUSIC — THEN HARDLY ANYONE IS FLUENT IN THEIR OWN NATIVE TONGUES.
I moved on to Arabic, which I’d study every morning by reading news headlines with a dictionary and by talking to street vendors. After that it was Persian, then Russian, then Mandarin … and about fifteen others. On an average day, I’d Skype with friends in French and Turkish, listen to Hindi pop music for an hour and eat dinner with a Greek or Latin book on my lap. Language became an obsession, one that I pursued in summer classes, school, web forums and language meet-ups around the city.
By March of 2012, media outlets such as the BBC and The New York Times featured stories about me, “The Teen Who Speaks 20 Languages!” For a while, it was a fantasy; it made what many thought of as a bizarre hobby seem (almost) mainstream, and gave me a perfect opportunity to promote language learning.
After a while, though, my media “moments” felt more like gruesome chores than opportunities to spread the word. Most news shows were interested only in the “dancing bear” act (“You wanna learn more about the Middle East? Cool… Say ‘you’re watching Channel 2’ in Arabic!”) As lighthearted as that might have been, it left me with an uncomfortably personal lesson in modern media: when the goal is simply to get the viewers’ attention, the real importance of a story often gets lost in translation.
When I was beginning to discover languages, I had a romanticized view of words like “speak” and “fluency”. But then I realized that you can be nominally fluent in a language and still struggle to understand parts of it. English is my first language, but what I really spoke was a hybrid of teenage slang and Manhattan-ese. When I listen to my father, a lawyer, talk to other lawyers, his words sound as foreign to me as Finnish. I certainly couldn’t read Shakespeare without a dictionary, and I’d be equally helpless in a room with Jamaicans or Cajuns. Yet all of us “speak English.”
My linguistics teacher, a native of Poland, speaks better English than I do and seems right at home peppering his speech with terms like “epenthetic schwa” and “voiceless alveolar stops”. Yet the other day, it came up that he’d never heard the word “tethered”. Does that mean he doesn’t “speak” English? If the standard of speaking a language is to know every word — to feel equally at home debating nuclear fission and classical music — then hardly anyone is fluent in their own native tongues.
Reducing someone to the number of languages he or she speaks trivializes the immense power that language imparts. After all, language is the living testament to a culture’s history and world view, not a shiny trophy to be dusted off for someone’s self-aggrandizement.
Language is a complex tapestry of trade, conquest and culture to which we each add our own unique piece — whether that be a Shakespearean sonnet or “Lol bae g2g ttyl.” As my time in the media spotlight made me realize, saying you “speak” a language can mean a lot of different things: it can mean memorizing verb charts, knowing the slang, even passing for a native. But while I’ve come to realize I’ll never be fluent in 20 languages, I’ve also understood that language is about being able to converse with people, to see beyond cultural boundaries and find a shared humanity. And that’s a lesson well worth learning.
Featured illustration by Dawn Kim/TED.
SP/GralInt-The Power of Now, by Ekhart Tolle: videos
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
The Power Of Now - Eckhart Tolle On Being Yourself
Published on Jul 26, 2012
Visit http://pdfbooky.com/the-power-of-now-pdf to learn where to download The Power of Now in PDF format
Learn to Live in the NOW with Eckhart Tolle
How to Escape the Prison of your own Mind - Eckhart Tolle
How to live without Stress in your day-to-day life - Eckhart Tolle
Source: www.youtube.com
The Power Of Now - Eckhart Tolle On Being Yourself
Published on Jul 26, 2012
Visit http://pdfbooky.com/the-power-of-now-pdf to learn where to download The Power of Now in PDF format
Learn to Live in the NOW with Eckhart Tolle
How to Escape the Prison of your own Mind - Eckhart Tolle
How to live without Stress in your day-to-day life - Eckhart Tolle
Source: www.youtube.com
Saturday, April 4, 2015
BUS/SOCMD/GralInt-Digital hives: Creating a surge around change
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Digital hives: Creating a surge around change
Online communities are helping companies engage with employees to accelerate change.
April 2015 | by Arne Gast and Raul Lansink
New lessons are emerging for executives striving to harness the power of social media in the cause of wider employee participation. Clearly, there’s more to success than just investing heavily in the latest Enterprise 2.0 technology platforms. Large-scale engagement of the workforce requires, first and foremost, a firm grasp of organizational culture and its social dynamics, a psychological understanding of what triggers new behavior, a determination by management to loosen if not relinquish its traditional top-down approach, and an ability to demonstrate how digital activities complement offline or other real-world events.
Those attributes are often absent, so we find that many companies struggle to maintain the momentum of initiatives to encourage broad- and digitally based employee involvement. Indeed, that’s true whether these efforts focus on the formulation of strategy, transformational change, customer service, or other business contexts where fresh ideas or new ways of working are needed for competitiveness. Some initiatives fail to “mobilize the masses” to any significant degree, dissipating energy and effort as the message gets stuck in middle management. Others get going but never reach the organization’s perimeter, thereby missing an opportunity to collect valuable feedback and ideas from the front line.
Four ways to drive change
Here we present four specific approaches to the creation of what we call digital “hives”—electronic hubs bristling with collective activity and designed to solve a particular problem or set of problems, to drive new habits, and to encourage organizational change (exhibit). Digital tools to facilitate networking and collaboration propel these “horizontal” cascades, which at their best can weave new patterns of engagement across geographic and other organizational boundaries. In this way, they make it possible to have new conversations around problem solving, unlock previously tacit knowledge, and speed up execution.
Digital hives facilitate a collective approach to problem solving.(Exhibit)
1. Engaging the workforce in better strategy
Best practice in the formulation of strategy and in organizational change has long been to craft a “story” at the top and then to cascade it through lower echelons of the organization. Some companies refine the message in the light of feedback from middle managers, but however well communicated the refined story may be, it is still management’s second attempt. Employees on the shop or office floor often feel like passive recipients.
That’s beginning to change, though, thanks to social technologies. In a 2012 Quarterly article, we described the emergence of an approach that provides for extensive employee input and modifications. Telling thus equates with sharing, so the narrative grows as it diffuses throughout the organization.1 There are still relatively few social strategy-development processes, but the tools are getting more powerful, and the scale and scope of such efforts are more impressive.
Using the “management hackathon” concept—an integrated multistage platform that allows participants to discuss ideas, express opinions, and contribute expertise collectively2 —a successful consumer-goods company recently involved its entire organization in an open-source strategy process. This effort started with an organization-wide online discussion about risks to the company’s growth engine from higher input costs, stagnant industry growth, and a growing competitive threat from imitators to certain products and the business model. These risks then formed the basis for a bottom-up process that spawned over a thousand new strategic insights using a combination of in-person meetings and workshops as well as online channels.
These insights were aggregated into roughly ten strategic themes—from reengineering the retail experience and digital technology to creating service ecosystems around the company’s strongest brands. All employees were asked, via an online platform, to provide a rank order for these insights and to suggest specific business ideas embodying them. The input from the hive helped management to narrow the strategic themes down to three and to identify several high-priority opportunities. The company is currently developing them, leveraging both online and offline channels to harvest more insights from across the organization and to identify volunteers who want to be involved.
Early experience suggests that better results follow when a problem is presented in stages to avoid overwhelming the participants, when a company uses volunteers rather than conscripts, when it offers training on how to think about innovation, when energy- and community-building offline events (such as workshops or weekly cafeteria sessions) supplement the online discussions, and when executives strike an authentic tone.
2. Connecting silos with a social chain
One of the biggest organizational challenges is to break siloed behavior and get employees talking to one another and cooperating across intracompany boundaries. It’s one thing to diagnose a problem and aspire to collaboration. It’s quite another, once the initial excitement wears off, to maintain momentum through mechanisms that underpin the new behavior and prevent managers and employees from slipping back into old habits.
One promising social-technology experiment we’ve observed is what we call the “social chain”: a digital platform that links everyone working in a particular value chain inside a company. (Value chains often comprise people in different silos or departments working, say, to fulfill a customer order.) The social chain allows employees to work “out loud” online by sharing how they do things. It also encourages people who were previously isolated in part of the chain to identify areas where they depend on others and to tackle problems or bottlenecks collaboratively. Chain leaders can monitor these conversations and inject their own insights when appropriate. The chain can help them to expose old behavior and to highlight the sort of tacit understanding that drives more efficient operations.
The Dutch bank ABN AMRO has been a pioneer in using social chains. The banking crisis, a merger with Fortis, and the ensuing nationalization saw the company embark on a sweeping change program to cut costs, increase the efficiency of the value chain, and make employees more responsive. In the group’s wholesale arm, for example, senior managers discovered that there was no uniform approach to tracking and reporting problems: employees could detect defects at the customer end more quickly through the Internet than through the company’s internal systems. Needing a way to stimulate proactive, real-time problem solving, ABN AMRO introduced a social chain dedicated to employees working in its Acquiring and Issuing Cards unit, who spanned different silos, including IT, customer service, and operations. To push people into the hive, managers discouraged communication through meetings and e-mail.
Eighteen months later, the results were clear. ABN AMRO’s social chain had enabled its employees to share their expertise, in real time, beyond a narrow circle of peers. They could therefore become true ambassadors for, and identify with, the chain as a whole.
3. Enlisting key customers to improve the proposition
A company’s most regular and trusted customers—a group we call the “client rim”—can be a powerful force for change when they provide feedback on service standards or product quality. The opinion of these customers counts; they have extensive experience with the company and its ways of working, are generally committed to its success, know the people, and are typically both its most enthusiastic ambassadors and its strongest critics. Thanks to the power of social technologies, a company that mobilizes such people can solicit specific ideas for improving its customer proposition and demonstrate its client-centricity more broadly.
KLM, the Dutch airline, has successfully used this approach to foster a stronger client-centric mind-set among its employees. Operating in a highly competitive market with tight margins, the airline decided to target the lucrative segment of small and midsize enterprises directly. This approach required a significant shift in perceptions, not least because KLM traditionally focused on larger corporate clients and was often seen as distant, even arrogant, by smaller businesses.
Rather than taking the traditional focus-group route to find new ways to improve the offering, the company’s executives opted for a large-scale digital dialogue between KLM and its emerging customers in this segment. The resulting Bluelab idea-management platform involved 1,500 participants from small and midsize businesses, who generated more than 1,000 concrete ideas and 4,000 other contributions. Both management and customer-facing staff from KLM Netherlands actively participated in these discussions. According to one senior executive, the initiative has “opened our eyes to the possibilities of social media to build a far stronger customer focus among our staff.” KLM has since become one of the airline industry’s foremost social-media exponents.
Companies can embrace key customers in a variety of ways. Mobile apps can transmit a continually updated stream of client quotes on the product and service experience. A buddy system can allow individual customers and employees to have online conversations—preceded, perhaps, by a customer-experience event at which clients and employees explore new paths to common goals. Idea-management platforms can solicit customers’ help in solving vexing problems. Or a company might create social “mystery shoppers” who follow internal conversations anonymously and comment on them.
4. Uniting a dispersed sales force to drive higher sales
We’re all creatures of habit, often reluctant to ditch comfortable routines and to apply new ways of doing things. The desire to address exactly this problem recently prompted a leading beverage company in Africa to employ social media to engage with its far-flung sales force (1,000 reps servicing around 100,000 individual outlets) and win back market share. These reps traditionally had spent several weeks at a time on the road, rarely checking in with the head office and therefore operating in a feedback and knowledge vacuum. Inevitably, they had become disconnected from the organization, and performance suffered.
The turnaround started after the company implemented a simple, low-budget system that uses the hive’s collective wisdom to give each sales rep and call-center agent regular, real-time, and personalized information. Given time pressures, cash constraints, and concerns over the rate of thefts in African townships, the company opted to issue simple mobiles rather than the latest smartphones with a specialized app.
Staff at the center collected ideas based on intelligence gleaned from the calls and e-mails of the sales reps themselves and from district managers familiar with current issues in the beverage trade. The company also analyzed customer data highlighting pockets of fiercer-than-normal competition or SKUs that were selling particularly well. Such insights were then shared with reps and agents, who each received two or three personalized SMS messages a day. Managers could further use this rudimentary social platform to communicate with the sales force by, for example, congratulating teams when they hit milestones and generally celebrating success. The company also created a call-center “leaderboard” allowing executives to track the agents most responsive to the new information at their disposal. The executives then freed up time for these “early adopters” to coach their peers, provide feedback, and strengthen the system with additional insights.
The new network, implemented at minimal cost, puts collective expertise in the hands of each of the frontline reps, binds them more closely to the organization, and generates faster performance feedback. Within a year of the start, the company has increased cross- and upselling rates to more than 50 percent, from 4 percent, realizing an increase in gross margins of $25 million.
A new mind-set for senior managers
The examples in this article illustrate the range of business contexts in which executives are increasingly making use of social media’s growing influence in their employees’ private lives and their increased familiarity with new digital-communication tools. As managers contemplate how to drive broader and deeper employee engagement in their companies, they should bear in mind the following considerations:
Leading while letting go
Digital hives involve large numbers of previously “disenfranchised” employees in setting strategy, company-wide transformations, and customer-outreach initiatives. Creating these hives requires a delicate balancing act—not least a willingness by top managers to let go. Managers should not be afraid to commit themselves explicitly to acting on the results of these initiatives and should encourage unrestrained participation, however unpredictable the consequences.
But that doesn’t mean playing a passive role. Our research consistently shows that without substantial involvement by the CEO or other top leaders, the vast majority of such initiatives fail to achieve their objectives. What’s more, change programs that involve large numbers of people are up to two times more successful than those that do not.3 When we ask change leaders what they would do differently next time, the top three responses always include spending more effort on engaging people and on developing and communicating change stories.
Looking inward
The growing use of social tools to drive employee engagement provides particular opportunities for senior executives to improve role modeling. When people reflect on their behavior, they tend to rely on their own often sketchy perceptions and faulty memories. With many digital technologies, however, people can now track their behavioral footprint—for example, by analyzing conversational threads in microblogs and comparing their actual behavior with the leadership style to which they aspire. Managers at an international insurance company we know did so and found a clear gap between the effect they thought they were creating as leaders and the actual results.
Becoming more responsive
Mobilizing a crowd requires companies to anticipate the crowd’s expectations. Executives can maintain pace and encourage deeper engagement only through transparent feedback and rapid follow-up. We often see companies respond too slowly and erratically, so that employees can only guess what comes next. Radio silence or a prolonged hiatus strongly diminishes any sense of urgency and disrupts the rhythm, or pulse, of participation. Worse, it may spark lingering skepticism. Unleashing collective intelligence through a hive will be more successful if managers think ahead and develop an agile, scrum-like response capability outpacing that of smaller offline programs.
Given the speed of technology’s development, we recognize that digital hives are still an area of fertile experimentation and that new models will evolve over time. What we know already is that the hive’s transparent, inclusive, and egalitarian nature amplifies well-established psychological mechanisms, such as peer pressure and social recognition. Out in the limelight, with clear rules of engagement and a level playing field, people tend to stimulate and encourage others, perform well, and seek recognition. Collective adoption and participation can grow in hives as each one of them becomes a catalyst for change and causes a wider ripple effect throughout the organization.
About the authors
Arne Gast is a principal in McKinsey’s Kuala Lumpur office, and Raul Lansink is a senior adviser to the firm on digital change who is based in Amsterdam.
The authors wish to thank Wesley Smith, a consultant in McKinsey’s Johannesburg office, and Michele Zanini, a Boston office alumnus who is managing director of the Management Information eXchange (MIX).
Source: www.mckinsey.com
Digital hives: Creating a surge around change
Online communities are helping companies engage with employees to accelerate change.
April 2015 | by Arne Gast and Raul Lansink
New lessons are emerging for executives striving to harness the power of social media in the cause of wider employee participation. Clearly, there’s more to success than just investing heavily in the latest Enterprise 2.0 technology platforms. Large-scale engagement of the workforce requires, first and foremost, a firm grasp of organizational culture and its social dynamics, a psychological understanding of what triggers new behavior, a determination by management to loosen if not relinquish its traditional top-down approach, and an ability to demonstrate how digital activities complement offline or other real-world events.
Those attributes are often absent, so we find that many companies struggle to maintain the momentum of initiatives to encourage broad- and digitally based employee involvement. Indeed, that’s true whether these efforts focus on the formulation of strategy, transformational change, customer service, or other business contexts where fresh ideas or new ways of working are needed for competitiveness. Some initiatives fail to “mobilize the masses” to any significant degree, dissipating energy and effort as the message gets stuck in middle management. Others get going but never reach the organization’s perimeter, thereby missing an opportunity to collect valuable feedback and ideas from the front line.
Four ways to drive change
Here we present four specific approaches to the creation of what we call digital “hives”—electronic hubs bristling with collective activity and designed to solve a particular problem or set of problems, to drive new habits, and to encourage organizational change (exhibit). Digital tools to facilitate networking and collaboration propel these “horizontal” cascades, which at their best can weave new patterns of engagement across geographic and other organizational boundaries. In this way, they make it possible to have new conversations around problem solving, unlock previously tacit knowledge, and speed up execution.
Digital hives facilitate a collective approach to problem solving.(Exhibit)
1. Engaging the workforce in better strategy
Best practice in the formulation of strategy and in organizational change has long been to craft a “story” at the top and then to cascade it through lower echelons of the organization. Some companies refine the message in the light of feedback from middle managers, but however well communicated the refined story may be, it is still management’s second attempt. Employees on the shop or office floor often feel like passive recipients.
That’s beginning to change, though, thanks to social technologies. In a 2012 Quarterly article, we described the emergence of an approach that provides for extensive employee input and modifications. Telling thus equates with sharing, so the narrative grows as it diffuses throughout the organization.1 There are still relatively few social strategy-development processes, but the tools are getting more powerful, and the scale and scope of such efforts are more impressive.
Using the “management hackathon” concept—an integrated multistage platform that allows participants to discuss ideas, express opinions, and contribute expertise collectively2 —a successful consumer-goods company recently involved its entire organization in an open-source strategy process. This effort started with an organization-wide online discussion about risks to the company’s growth engine from higher input costs, stagnant industry growth, and a growing competitive threat from imitators to certain products and the business model. These risks then formed the basis for a bottom-up process that spawned over a thousand new strategic insights using a combination of in-person meetings and workshops as well as online channels.
These insights were aggregated into roughly ten strategic themes—from reengineering the retail experience and digital technology to creating service ecosystems around the company’s strongest brands. All employees were asked, via an online platform, to provide a rank order for these insights and to suggest specific business ideas embodying them. The input from the hive helped management to narrow the strategic themes down to three and to identify several high-priority opportunities. The company is currently developing them, leveraging both online and offline channels to harvest more insights from across the organization and to identify volunteers who want to be involved.
Early experience suggests that better results follow when a problem is presented in stages to avoid overwhelming the participants, when a company uses volunteers rather than conscripts, when it offers training on how to think about innovation, when energy- and community-building offline events (such as workshops or weekly cafeteria sessions) supplement the online discussions, and when executives strike an authentic tone.
2. Connecting silos with a social chain
One of the biggest organizational challenges is to break siloed behavior and get employees talking to one another and cooperating across intracompany boundaries. It’s one thing to diagnose a problem and aspire to collaboration. It’s quite another, once the initial excitement wears off, to maintain momentum through mechanisms that underpin the new behavior and prevent managers and employees from slipping back into old habits.
One promising social-technology experiment we’ve observed is what we call the “social chain”: a digital platform that links everyone working in a particular value chain inside a company. (Value chains often comprise people in different silos or departments working, say, to fulfill a customer order.) The social chain allows employees to work “out loud” online by sharing how they do things. It also encourages people who were previously isolated in part of the chain to identify areas where they depend on others and to tackle problems or bottlenecks collaboratively. Chain leaders can monitor these conversations and inject their own insights when appropriate. The chain can help them to expose old behavior and to highlight the sort of tacit understanding that drives more efficient operations.
The Dutch bank ABN AMRO has been a pioneer in using social chains. The banking crisis, a merger with Fortis, and the ensuing nationalization saw the company embark on a sweeping change program to cut costs, increase the efficiency of the value chain, and make employees more responsive. In the group’s wholesale arm, for example, senior managers discovered that there was no uniform approach to tracking and reporting problems: employees could detect defects at the customer end more quickly through the Internet than through the company’s internal systems. Needing a way to stimulate proactive, real-time problem solving, ABN AMRO introduced a social chain dedicated to employees working in its Acquiring and Issuing Cards unit, who spanned different silos, including IT, customer service, and operations. To push people into the hive, managers discouraged communication through meetings and e-mail.
Eighteen months later, the results were clear. ABN AMRO’s social chain had enabled its employees to share their expertise, in real time, beyond a narrow circle of peers. They could therefore become true ambassadors for, and identify with, the chain as a whole.
3. Enlisting key customers to improve the proposition
A company’s most regular and trusted customers—a group we call the “client rim”—can be a powerful force for change when they provide feedback on service standards or product quality. The opinion of these customers counts; they have extensive experience with the company and its ways of working, are generally committed to its success, know the people, and are typically both its most enthusiastic ambassadors and its strongest critics. Thanks to the power of social technologies, a company that mobilizes such people can solicit specific ideas for improving its customer proposition and demonstrate its client-centricity more broadly.
KLM, the Dutch airline, has successfully used this approach to foster a stronger client-centric mind-set among its employees. Operating in a highly competitive market with tight margins, the airline decided to target the lucrative segment of small and midsize enterprises directly. This approach required a significant shift in perceptions, not least because KLM traditionally focused on larger corporate clients and was often seen as distant, even arrogant, by smaller businesses.
Rather than taking the traditional focus-group route to find new ways to improve the offering, the company’s executives opted for a large-scale digital dialogue between KLM and its emerging customers in this segment. The resulting Bluelab idea-management platform involved 1,500 participants from small and midsize businesses, who generated more than 1,000 concrete ideas and 4,000 other contributions. Both management and customer-facing staff from KLM Netherlands actively participated in these discussions. According to one senior executive, the initiative has “opened our eyes to the possibilities of social media to build a far stronger customer focus among our staff.” KLM has since become one of the airline industry’s foremost social-media exponents.
Companies can embrace key customers in a variety of ways. Mobile apps can transmit a continually updated stream of client quotes on the product and service experience. A buddy system can allow individual customers and employees to have online conversations—preceded, perhaps, by a customer-experience event at which clients and employees explore new paths to common goals. Idea-management platforms can solicit customers’ help in solving vexing problems. Or a company might create social “mystery shoppers” who follow internal conversations anonymously and comment on them.
4. Uniting a dispersed sales force to drive higher sales
We’re all creatures of habit, often reluctant to ditch comfortable routines and to apply new ways of doing things. The desire to address exactly this problem recently prompted a leading beverage company in Africa to employ social media to engage with its far-flung sales force (1,000 reps servicing around 100,000 individual outlets) and win back market share. These reps traditionally had spent several weeks at a time on the road, rarely checking in with the head office and therefore operating in a feedback and knowledge vacuum. Inevitably, they had become disconnected from the organization, and performance suffered.
The turnaround started after the company implemented a simple, low-budget system that uses the hive’s collective wisdom to give each sales rep and call-center agent regular, real-time, and personalized information. Given time pressures, cash constraints, and concerns over the rate of thefts in African townships, the company opted to issue simple mobiles rather than the latest smartphones with a specialized app.
Staff at the center collected ideas based on intelligence gleaned from the calls and e-mails of the sales reps themselves and from district managers familiar with current issues in the beverage trade. The company also analyzed customer data highlighting pockets of fiercer-than-normal competition or SKUs that were selling particularly well. Such insights were then shared with reps and agents, who each received two or three personalized SMS messages a day. Managers could further use this rudimentary social platform to communicate with the sales force by, for example, congratulating teams when they hit milestones and generally celebrating success. The company also created a call-center “leaderboard” allowing executives to track the agents most responsive to the new information at their disposal. The executives then freed up time for these “early adopters” to coach their peers, provide feedback, and strengthen the system with additional insights.
The new network, implemented at minimal cost, puts collective expertise in the hands of each of the frontline reps, binds them more closely to the organization, and generates faster performance feedback. Within a year of the start, the company has increased cross- and upselling rates to more than 50 percent, from 4 percent, realizing an increase in gross margins of $25 million.
A new mind-set for senior managers
The examples in this article illustrate the range of business contexts in which executives are increasingly making use of social media’s growing influence in their employees’ private lives and their increased familiarity with new digital-communication tools. As managers contemplate how to drive broader and deeper employee engagement in their companies, they should bear in mind the following considerations:
Leading while letting go
Digital hives involve large numbers of previously “disenfranchised” employees in setting strategy, company-wide transformations, and customer-outreach initiatives. Creating these hives requires a delicate balancing act—not least a willingness by top managers to let go. Managers should not be afraid to commit themselves explicitly to acting on the results of these initiatives and should encourage unrestrained participation, however unpredictable the consequences.
But that doesn’t mean playing a passive role. Our research consistently shows that without substantial involvement by the CEO or other top leaders, the vast majority of such initiatives fail to achieve their objectives. What’s more, change programs that involve large numbers of people are up to two times more successful than those that do not.3 When we ask change leaders what they would do differently next time, the top three responses always include spending more effort on engaging people and on developing and communicating change stories.
Looking inward
The growing use of social tools to drive employee engagement provides particular opportunities for senior executives to improve role modeling. When people reflect on their behavior, they tend to rely on their own often sketchy perceptions and faulty memories. With many digital technologies, however, people can now track their behavioral footprint—for example, by analyzing conversational threads in microblogs and comparing their actual behavior with the leadership style to which they aspire. Managers at an international insurance company we know did so and found a clear gap between the effect they thought they were creating as leaders and the actual results.
Becoming more responsive
Mobilizing a crowd requires companies to anticipate the crowd’s expectations. Executives can maintain pace and encourage deeper engagement only through transparent feedback and rapid follow-up. We often see companies respond too slowly and erratically, so that employees can only guess what comes next. Radio silence or a prolonged hiatus strongly diminishes any sense of urgency and disrupts the rhythm, or pulse, of participation. Worse, it may spark lingering skepticism. Unleashing collective intelligence through a hive will be more successful if managers think ahead and develop an agile, scrum-like response capability outpacing that of smaller offline programs.
Given the speed of technology’s development, we recognize that digital hives are still an area of fertile experimentation and that new models will evolve over time. What we know already is that the hive’s transparent, inclusive, and egalitarian nature amplifies well-established psychological mechanisms, such as peer pressure and social recognition. Out in the limelight, with clear rules of engagement and a level playing field, people tend to stimulate and encourage others, perform well, and seek recognition. Collective adoption and participation can grow in hives as each one of them becomes a catalyst for change and causes a wider ripple effect throughout the organization.
About the authors
Arne Gast is a principal in McKinsey’s Kuala Lumpur office, and Raul Lansink is a senior adviser to the firm on digital change who is based in Amsterdam.
The authors wish to thank Wesley Smith, a consultant in McKinsey’s Johannesburg office, and Michele Zanini, a Boston office alumnus who is managing director of the Management Information eXchange (MIX).
Source: www.mckinsey.com
FUT/TECH/GralInt-My Life in 2030 - Loic Le Meur-49 slides
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
My Life in 2030 - Loic Le Meur
Loic Le Meur, co-Founder & Program Curator, at LeWeb conference,Keynote Author
Source: www.slideshare.net
My Life in 2030 - Loic Le Meur
Loic Le Meur, co-Founder & Program Curator, at LeWeb conference,Keynote Author
Source: www.slideshare.net
BUS/BUSWR/GralInt-How to Write a Cover Letter That Gets Read-18 slides
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
How to Write a Cover Letter That Gets Read
Source: www.slideshare.net
How to Write a Cover Letter That Gets Read
Source: www.slideshare.net
GralInt-Find strength in admitting your weakness-24 slides
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Find strength in admitting your weakness
Daniel Goleman , Co-Director at Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations
Source: www.slideshare.net
Find strength in admitting your weakness
Daniel Goleman , Co-Director at Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations
Source: www.slideshare.net
POL/SOC/GralInt-TED Talks-Boniface Mwangi: The day I stood up alone
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Filmed October 2014 at TEDGlobal 2014
Boniface Mwangi: The day I stood up alone
Photographer Boniface Mwangi wanted to protest against corruption in his home country of Kenya. So he made a plan: He and some friends would stand up and heckle during a public mass meeting. But when the moment came ... he stood alone. What happened next, he says, showed him who he truly was. As he says, "There are two most powerful days in your life. The day you are born, and the day you discover why." Graphic images.
Transcript:
People back home call me a heckler, a troublemaker, an irritant, a rebel, an activist, the voice of the people. But that wasn't always me.
Growing up, I had a nickname. They used to call me Softy, meaning the soft, harmless boy. Like every other human being, I avoided trouble. In my childhood, they taught me silence. Don't argue, do as you're told. In Sunday school, they taught me don't confront, don't argue, even if you're right, turn the other cheek.
This was reinforced by the political climate of the time. (Laughter) Kenya is a country where you are guilty until proven rich. (Laughter) Kenya's poor are five times more likely to be shot dead by the police who are meant to protect them than by criminals. This was reinforced by the political climate of the day. We had a president, Moi, who was a dictator. He ruled the country with an iron fist, and anyone who dared question his authority was arrested, tortured, jailed or even killed. That meant that people were taught to be smart cowards instead of trouble. Being a coward was not an insult. Being a coward was a compliment. We used to be told that a coward goes home to his mother. What that meant: that if you stayed out of trouble you're going to stay alive.
I used to question this advice, and eight years ago we had an election in Kenya, and the results were violently disputed. What followed that election was terrible violence, rape, and the killing of over 1,000 people. My work was to document the violence. As a photographer, I took thousands of images, and after two months, the two politicians came together, had a cup of tea, signed a peace agreement, and the country moved on.
I was a very disturbed man because I saw the violence firsthand. I saw the killings. I saw the displacement. I met women who had been raped, and it disturbed me, but the country never spoke about it. We pretended. We all became smart cowards. We decided to stay out of trouble and not talk about it.
Ten months later, I quit my job. I said I could not stand it anymore. After quitting my job, I decided to organize my friends to speak about the violence in the country, to speak about the state of the nation, and June 1, 2009 was the day that we were meant to go to the stadium and try and get the president's attention. It's a national holiday, it's broadcast across the country, and I showed up at the stadium. My friends did not show up. I found myself alone, and I didn't know what to do. I was scared, but I knew very well that that particular day, I had to make a decision. Was I going to live as a coward, like everyone else, or was I going to make a stand? And when the president stood up to speak, I found myself on my feet shouting at the president, telling him to remember the post-election violence victims, to stop the corruption. And suddenly, out of nowhere, the police pounced on me like hungry lions. They held my mouth and dragged me out of the stadium, where they thoroughly beat me up and locked me up in jail. I spent that night in a cold cement floor in the jail, and that got me thinking. What was making me feel this way? My friends and family thought I was crazy because of what I did, and the images that I took were disturbing my life. The images that I took were just a number to many Kenyans. Most Kenyans did not see the violence. It was a story to them.
And so I decided to actually start a street exhibition to show the images of the violence across the country and get people talking about it. We traveled the country and showed the images, and this was a journey that has started me to the activist path, where I decided to become silent no more, to talk about those things. We traveled, and our general site from our street exhibit became for political graffiti about the situation in the country, talking about corruption, bad leadership. We have even done symbolic burials. We have delivered live pigs to Kenya's parliament as a symbol of our politicians' greed. It has been done in Uganda and other countries, and what is most powerful is that the images have been picked by the media and amplified across the country, across the continent.
Where I used to stand up alone seven years ago, now I belong to a community of many people who stand up with me. I am no longer alone when I stand up to speak about these things. I belong to a group of young people who are passionate about the country, who want to bring about change, and they're no longer afraid, and they're no longer smart cowards. So that was my story. That day in the stadium, I stood up as a smart coward. By that one action, I said goodbye to the 24 years living as a coward.
There are two most powerful days in your life: the day you're born, and the day you discover why. That day standing up in that stadium shouting at the President, I discovered why I was truly born, that I would no longer be silent in the face of injustice. Do you know why you were born? Thank you. (Applause)
Tom Rielly: It's an amazing story. I just want to ask you a couple quick questions. So PAWA254: you've created a studio, a place where young people can go and harness the power of digital media to do some of this action. What's happening now with PAWA?
Boniface Mwangi: So we have this community of filmmakers, graffiti artists, musicians, and when there's an issue in the country, we come together, we brainstorm, and take up on that issue. So our most powerful tool is art, because we live in a very busy world where people are so busy in their life, and they don't have time to read. So we package our activism and we package our message in art. So from the music, the graffiti, the art, that's what we do. Can I say one more thing?
TR: Yeah, of course. (Applause)
BM: In spite of being arrested, beaten up, threatened, the moment I discovered my voice, that I could actually stand up for what I really believed in, I'm no longer afraid. I used to be called softy, but I'm no longer softy, because I discovered who I really am, as in, that's what I want to do, and there's such beauty in doing that. There's nothing as powerful as that, knowing that I'm meant to do this, because you don't get scared, you just continue living your life.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Filmed October 2014 at TEDGlobal 2014
Boniface Mwangi: The day I stood up alone
Photographer Boniface Mwangi wanted to protest against corruption in his home country of Kenya. So he made a plan: He and some friends would stand up and heckle during a public mass meeting. But when the moment came ... he stood alone. What happened next, he says, showed him who he truly was. As he says, "There are two most powerful days in your life. The day you are born, and the day you discover why." Graphic images.
Transcript:
People back home call me a heckler, a troublemaker, an irritant, a rebel, an activist, the voice of the people. But that wasn't always me.
Growing up, I had a nickname. They used to call me Softy, meaning the soft, harmless boy. Like every other human being, I avoided trouble. In my childhood, they taught me silence. Don't argue, do as you're told. In Sunday school, they taught me don't confront, don't argue, even if you're right, turn the other cheek.
This was reinforced by the political climate of the time. (Laughter) Kenya is a country where you are guilty until proven rich. (Laughter) Kenya's poor are five times more likely to be shot dead by the police who are meant to protect them than by criminals. This was reinforced by the political climate of the day. We had a president, Moi, who was a dictator. He ruled the country with an iron fist, and anyone who dared question his authority was arrested, tortured, jailed or even killed. That meant that people were taught to be smart cowards instead of trouble. Being a coward was not an insult. Being a coward was a compliment. We used to be told that a coward goes home to his mother. What that meant: that if you stayed out of trouble you're going to stay alive.
I used to question this advice, and eight years ago we had an election in Kenya, and the results were violently disputed. What followed that election was terrible violence, rape, and the killing of over 1,000 people. My work was to document the violence. As a photographer, I took thousands of images, and after two months, the two politicians came together, had a cup of tea, signed a peace agreement, and the country moved on.
I was a very disturbed man because I saw the violence firsthand. I saw the killings. I saw the displacement. I met women who had been raped, and it disturbed me, but the country never spoke about it. We pretended. We all became smart cowards. We decided to stay out of trouble and not talk about it.
Ten months later, I quit my job. I said I could not stand it anymore. After quitting my job, I decided to organize my friends to speak about the violence in the country, to speak about the state of the nation, and June 1, 2009 was the day that we were meant to go to the stadium and try and get the president's attention. It's a national holiday, it's broadcast across the country, and I showed up at the stadium. My friends did not show up. I found myself alone, and I didn't know what to do. I was scared, but I knew very well that that particular day, I had to make a decision. Was I going to live as a coward, like everyone else, or was I going to make a stand? And when the president stood up to speak, I found myself on my feet shouting at the president, telling him to remember the post-election violence victims, to stop the corruption. And suddenly, out of nowhere, the police pounced on me like hungry lions. They held my mouth and dragged me out of the stadium, where they thoroughly beat me up and locked me up in jail. I spent that night in a cold cement floor in the jail, and that got me thinking. What was making me feel this way? My friends and family thought I was crazy because of what I did, and the images that I took were disturbing my life. The images that I took were just a number to many Kenyans. Most Kenyans did not see the violence. It was a story to them.
And so I decided to actually start a street exhibition to show the images of the violence across the country and get people talking about it. We traveled the country and showed the images, and this was a journey that has started me to the activist path, where I decided to become silent no more, to talk about those things. We traveled, and our general site from our street exhibit became for political graffiti about the situation in the country, talking about corruption, bad leadership. We have even done symbolic burials. We have delivered live pigs to Kenya's parliament as a symbol of our politicians' greed. It has been done in Uganda and other countries, and what is most powerful is that the images have been picked by the media and amplified across the country, across the continent.
Where I used to stand up alone seven years ago, now I belong to a community of many people who stand up with me. I am no longer alone when I stand up to speak about these things. I belong to a group of young people who are passionate about the country, who want to bring about change, and they're no longer afraid, and they're no longer smart cowards. So that was my story. That day in the stadium, I stood up as a smart coward. By that one action, I said goodbye to the 24 years living as a coward.
There are two most powerful days in your life: the day you're born, and the day you discover why. That day standing up in that stadium shouting at the President, I discovered why I was truly born, that I would no longer be silent in the face of injustice. Do you know why you were born? Thank you. (Applause)
Tom Rielly: It's an amazing story. I just want to ask you a couple quick questions. So PAWA254: you've created a studio, a place where young people can go and harness the power of digital media to do some of this action. What's happening now with PAWA?
Boniface Mwangi: So we have this community of filmmakers, graffiti artists, musicians, and when there's an issue in the country, we come together, we brainstorm, and take up on that issue. So our most powerful tool is art, because we live in a very busy world where people are so busy in their life, and they don't have time to read. So we package our activism and we package our message in art. So from the music, the graffiti, the art, that's what we do. Can I say one more thing?
TR: Yeah, of course. (Applause)
BM: In spite of being arrested, beaten up, threatened, the moment I discovered my voice, that I could actually stand up for what I really believed in, I'm no longer afraid. I used to be called softy, but I'm no longer softy, because I discovered who I really am, as in, that's what I want to do, and there's such beauty in doing that. There's nothing as powerful as that, knowing that I'm meant to do this, because you don't get scared, you just continue living your life.
Thank you.
(Applause)
POL/INTAFF/GralInt-TED Talks-Kevin Rudd: Are China and the US doomed to conflict?
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Filmed March 2015 at TED2015
Kevin Rudd: Are China and the US doomed to conflict?
The former prime minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd is also a longtime student of China, with a unique vantage point to watch its power rise in the past few decades. He asks whether the growing ambition of China will inevitably lead to conflict with other major powers — and suggests another narrative.
Transcript:
G'day, my name's Kevin. I'm from Australia. I'm here to help. (Laughter)
Tonight, I want to talk about a tale of two cities. One of those cities is called Washington, and the other is called Beijing. Because how these two capitals shape their future and the future of the United States and the future of China doesn't just affect those two countries, it affects all of us in ways, perhaps, we've never thought of: the air we breathe, the water we drink, the fish we eat, the quality of our oceans, the languages we speak in the future, the jobs we have, the political systems we choose, and, of course, the great questions of war and peace.
You see that bloke? He's French. His name is Napoleon. A couple of hundred years ago, he made this extraordinary projection: "China is a sleeping lion, and when she awakes, the world will shake." Napoleon got a few things wrong; he got this one absolutely right. Because China is today not just woken up, China has stood up and China is on the march, and the question for us all is where will China go and how do we engage this giant of the 21st century?
You start looking at the numbers, they start to confront you in a big way. It's projected that China will become, by whichever measure -- PPP, market exchange rates -- the largest economy in the world over the course of the decade ahead. They're already the largest trading nation, already the largest exporting nation, already the largest manufacturing nation, and they're also the biggest emitters of carbon in the world. America comes second.
So if China does become the world's largest economy, think about this: It'll be the first time since this guy was on the throne of England -- George III, not a good friend of Napoleon's -- that in the world we will have as the largest economy a non-English speaking country, a non-Western country, a non-liberal democratic country. And if you don't think that's going to affect the way in which the world happens in the future, then personally, I think you've been smoking something, and it doesn't mean you're from Colorado.
So in short, the question we have tonight is, how do we understand this mega-change, which I believe to be the biggest change for the first half of the 21st century? It'll affect so many things. It will go to the absolute core. It's happening quietly. It's happening persistently. It's happening in some senses under the radar, as we are all preoccupied with what's going in Ukraine, what's going on in the Middle East, what's going on with ISIS, what's going on with ISIL, what's happening with the future of our economies. This is a slow and quiet revolution. And with a mega-change comes also a mega-challenge, and the mega-challenge is this: Can these two great countries, China and the United States -- China, the Middle Kingdom, and the United States, Měiguó -- which in Chinese, by the way, means "the beautiful country." Think about that -- that's the name that China has given this country for more than a hundred years. Whether these two great civilizations, these two great countries, can in fact carve out a common future for themselves and for the world? In short, can we carve out a future which is peaceful and mutually prosperous, or are we looking at a great challenge of war or peace? And I have 15 minutes to work through war or peace, which is a little less time than they gave this guy to write a book called "War and Peace."
People ask me, why is it that a kid growing up in rural Australia got interested in learning Chinese? Well, there are two reasons for that. Here's the first of them. That's Betsy the cow. Now, Betsy the cow was one of a herd of dairy cattle that I grew up with on a farm in rural Australia. See those hands there? These are not built for farming. So very early on, I discovered that in fact, working in a farm was not designed for me, and China was a very safe remove from any career in Australian farm life.
Here's the second reason. That's my mom. Anyone here ever listen to what their mom told them to do? Everyone ever do what their mom told them to do? I rarely did, but what my mom said to me was, one day, she handed me a newspaper, a headline which said, here we have a huge change. And that change is China entering the United Nations. 1971, I had just turned 14 years of age, and she handed me this headline. And she said, "Understand this, learn this, because it's going to affect your future."
So being a very good student of history, I decided that the best thing for me to do was, in fact, to go off and learn Chinese. The great thing about learning Chinese is that your Chinese teacher gives you a new name. And so they gave me this name: Kè, which means to overcome or to conquer, and Wén, and that's the character for literature or the arts. Kè Wén, Conqueror of the Classics. Any of you guys called "Kevin"? It's a major lift from being called Kevin to be called Conqueror of the Classics. (Laughter) I've been called Kevin all my life. Have you been called Kevin all your life? Would you prefer to be called Conqueror of the Classics?
And so I went off after that and joined the Australian Foreign Service, but here is where pride -- before pride, there always comes a fall. So there I am in the embassy in Beijing, off to the Great Hall of the People with our ambassador, who had asked me to interpret for his first meeting in the Great Hall of the People. And so there was I. If you've been to a Chinese meeting, it's a giant horseshoe. At the head of the horsehoe are the really serious pooh-bahs, and down the end of the horseshoe are the not-so-serious pooh-bahs, the junior woodchucks like me. And so the ambassador began with this inelegant phrase. He said, "China and Australia are currently enjoying a relationship of unprecedented closeness." And I thought to myself, "That sounds clumsy. That sounds odd. I will improve it." Note to file: Never do that. It needed to be a little more elegant, a little more classical, so I rendered it as follows. [In Chinese]
There was a big pause on the other side of the room. You could see the giant pooh-bahs at the head of the horseshoe, the blood visibly draining from their faces, and the junior woodchucks at the other end of the horseshoe engaged in peals of unrestrained laughter. Because when I rendered his sentence, "Australia and China are enjoying a relationship of unprecedented closeness," in fact, what I said was that Australia and China were now experiencing fantastic orgasm. (Laughter)
That was the last time I was asked to interpret. But in that little story, there's a wisdom, which is, as soon as you think you know something about this extraordinary civilization of 5,000 years of continuing history, there's always something new to learn.
History is against us when it comes to the U.S. and China forging a common future together. This guy up here? He's not Chinese and he's not American. He's Greek. His name's Thucydides. He wrote the history of the Peloponnesian Wars. And he made this extraordinary observation about Athens and Sparta. "It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable." And hence, a whole literature about something called the Thucydides Trap.
This guy here? He's not American and he's not Greek. He's Chinese. His name is Sun Tzu. He wrote "The Art of War," and if you see his statement underneath, it's along these lines: "Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected." Not looking good so far for China and the United States.
This guy is an American. His name's Graham Allison. In fact, he's a teacher at the Kennedy School over there in Boston. He's working on a single project at the moment, which is, does the Thucydides Trap about the inevitably of war between rising powers and established great powers apply to the future of China-U.S. relations? It's a core question. And what Graham has done is explore 15 cases in history since the 1500s to establish what the precedents are. And in 11 out of 15 of them, let me tell you, they've ended in catastrophic war.
You may say, "But Kevin -- or Conqueror of the Classics -- that was the past. We live now in a world of interdependence and globalization. It could never happen again." Guess what? The economic historians tell us that in fact, the time which we reached the greatest point of economic integration and globalization was in 1914, just before that happened, World War I, a sobering reflection from history.
So if we are engaged in this great question of how China thinks, feels, and positions itself towards the United States, and the reverse, how do we get to the baseline of how these two countries and civilizations can possibly work together?
Let me first go to, in fact, China's views of the U.S. and the rest of the West. Number one: China feels as if it's been humiliated at the hands of the West through a hundred years of history, beginning with the Opium Wars. When after that, the Western powers carved China up into little pieces, so that by the time it got to the '20s and '30s, signs like this one appeared on the streets of Shanghai. ["No dogs and Chinese allowed"] How would you feel if you were Chinese, in your own country, if you saw that sign appear? China also believes and feels as if, in the events of 1919, at the Peace Conference in Paris, when Germany's colonies were given back to all sorts of countries around in the world, what about German colonies in China? They were, in fact, given to Japan. When Japan then invaded China in the 1930s the world looked away and was indifferent to what would happen to China. And then, on top of that, the Chinese to this day believe that the United States and the West do not accept the legitimacy of their political system because it's so radically different from those of us who come from liberal democracies, and believe that the United States to this day is seeking to undermine their political system. China also believes that it is being contained by U.S. allies and by those with strategic partnerships with the U.S. right around its periphery. And beyond all that, the Chinese have this feeling in their heart of hearts and in their gut of guts that those of us in the collective West are just too damned arrogant. That is, we don't recognize the problems in our own system, in our politics and our economics, and are very quick to point the finger elsewhere, and believe that, in fact, we in the collective West are guilty of a great bunch of hypocrisy.
Of course, in international relations, it's not just the sound of one hand clapping. There's another country too, and that's called the U.S. So how does the U.S. respond to all of the above? The U.S. has a response to each of those. On the question of is the U.S. containing China, they say, "No, look at the history of the Soviet Union. That was containment." Instead, what we have done in the U.S. and the West is welcome China into the global economy, and on top of that, welcome them into the World Trade Organization. The U.S. and the West say China cheats on the question of intellectual property rights, and through cyberattacks on U.S. and global firms. Furthermore, the United States says that the Chinese political system is fundamentally wrong because it's at such fundamental variance to the human rights, democracy, and rule of law that we enjoy in the U.S. and the collective West. And on top of all the above, what does the United States say? That they fear that China will, when it has sufficient power, establish a sphere of influence in Southeast Asia and wider East Asia, boot the United States out, and in time, when it's powerful enough, unilaterally seek to change the rules of the global order.
So apart from all of that, it's just fine and dandy, the U.S.-China relationship. No real problems there. The challenge, though, is given those deep-rooted feelings, those deep-rooted emotions and thought patterns, what the Chinese call "Sīwéi," ways of thinking, how can we craft a basis for a common future between these two?
I argue simply this: We can do it on the basis on a framework of constructive realism for a common purpose. What do I mean by that? Be realistic about the things that we disagree on, and a management approach that doesn't enable any one of those differences to break into war or conflict until we've acquired the diplomatic skills to solve them. Be constructive in areas of the bilateral, regional and global engagement between the two, which will make a difference for all of humankind. Build a regional institution capable of cooperation in Asia, an Asia-Pacific community. And worldwide, act further, like you've begun to do at the end of last year by striking out against climate change with hands joined together rather than fists apart.
Of course, all that happens if you've got a common mechanism and political will to achieve the above. These things are deliverable. But the question is, are they deliverable alone? This is what our head tells us we need to do, but what about our heart?
I have a little experience in the question back home of how you try to bring together two peoples who, frankly, haven't had a whole lot in common in the past. And that's when I apologized to Australia's indigenous peoples. This was a day of reckoning in the Australian government, the Australian parliament, and for the Australian people. After 200 years of unbridled abuse towards the first Australians, it was high time that we white folks said we were sorry.
The important thing -- (Applause)
The important thing that I remember is staring in the faces of all those from Aboriginal Australia as they came to listen to this apology. It was extraordinary to see, for example, old women telling me the stories of when they were five years old and literally ripped away from their parents, like this lady here. It was extraordinary for me to then be able to embrace and to kiss Aboriginal elders as they came into the parliament building, and one woman said to me, it's the first time a white fella had ever kissed her in her life, and she was over 70. That's a terrible story.
And then I remember this family saying to me, "You know, we drove all the way from the far North down to Canberra to come to this thing, drove our way through redneck country. On the way back, stopped at a cafe after the apology for a milkshake." And they walked into this cafe quietly, tentatively, gingerly, a little anxious. I think you know what I'm talking about. But the day after the apology, what happened? Everyone in that cafe, every one of the white folks, stood up and applauded. Something had happened in the hearts of these people in Australia. The white folks, our Aboriginal brothers and sisters, and we haven't solved all these problems together, but let me tell you, there was a new beginning because we had gone not just to the head, we'd gone also to the heart.
So where does that conclude in terms of the great question that we've been asked to address this evening, which is the future of U.S.-China relations? The head says there's a way forward. The head says there is a policy framework, there's a common narrative, there's a mechanism through regular summitry to do these things and to make them better. But the heart must also find a way to reimagine the possibilities of the America-China relationship, and the possibilities of China's future engagement in the world. Sometimes, folks, we just need to take a leap of faith not quite knowing where we might land.
In China, they now talk about the Chinese Dream. In America, we're all familiar with the term "the American Dream." I think it's time, across the world, that we're able to think also of something we might also call a dream for all humankind. Because if we do that, we might just change the way that we think about each other.
[In Chinese]
That's my challenge to America. That's my challenge to China. That's my challenge to all of us, but I think where there's a will and where there is imagination we can turn this into a future driven by peace and prosperity and not once again repeat the tragedies of war.
I thank you.
(Applause)
Chris Anderson: Thanks so much for that. Thanks so much for that. It feels like you yourself have a role to play in this bridging. You, in a way, are uniquely placed to speak to both sides.
Kevin Rudd: Well, what we Australians do best is organize the drinks, so you get them together in one room, and we suggest this and suggest that, then we go and get the drinks. But no, look, for all of us who are friends of these two great countries, America and China, you can do something. You can make a practical contribution, and for all you good folks here, next time you meet someone from China, sit down and have a conversation. See what you can find out about where they come from and what they think, and my challenge for all the Chinese folks who are going to watch this TED Talk at some time is do the same. Two of us seeking to change the world can actually make a huge difference. Those of us up the middle, we can make a small contribution.
CA: Kevin, all power to you, my friend. Thank you.
KR: Thank you. Thank you, folks.
(Applause)
Filmed March 2015 at TED2015
Kevin Rudd: Are China and the US doomed to conflict?
The former prime minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd is also a longtime student of China, with a unique vantage point to watch its power rise in the past few decades. He asks whether the growing ambition of China will inevitably lead to conflict with other major powers — and suggests another narrative.
Transcript:
G'day, my name's Kevin. I'm from Australia. I'm here to help. (Laughter)
Tonight, I want to talk about a tale of two cities. One of those cities is called Washington, and the other is called Beijing. Because how these two capitals shape their future and the future of the United States and the future of China doesn't just affect those two countries, it affects all of us in ways, perhaps, we've never thought of: the air we breathe, the water we drink, the fish we eat, the quality of our oceans, the languages we speak in the future, the jobs we have, the political systems we choose, and, of course, the great questions of war and peace.
You see that bloke? He's French. His name is Napoleon. A couple of hundred years ago, he made this extraordinary projection: "China is a sleeping lion, and when she awakes, the world will shake." Napoleon got a few things wrong; he got this one absolutely right. Because China is today not just woken up, China has stood up and China is on the march, and the question for us all is where will China go and how do we engage this giant of the 21st century?
You start looking at the numbers, they start to confront you in a big way. It's projected that China will become, by whichever measure -- PPP, market exchange rates -- the largest economy in the world over the course of the decade ahead. They're already the largest trading nation, already the largest exporting nation, already the largest manufacturing nation, and they're also the biggest emitters of carbon in the world. America comes second.
So if China does become the world's largest economy, think about this: It'll be the first time since this guy was on the throne of England -- George III, not a good friend of Napoleon's -- that in the world we will have as the largest economy a non-English speaking country, a non-Western country, a non-liberal democratic country. And if you don't think that's going to affect the way in which the world happens in the future, then personally, I think you've been smoking something, and it doesn't mean you're from Colorado.
So in short, the question we have tonight is, how do we understand this mega-change, which I believe to be the biggest change for the first half of the 21st century? It'll affect so many things. It will go to the absolute core. It's happening quietly. It's happening persistently. It's happening in some senses under the radar, as we are all preoccupied with what's going in Ukraine, what's going on in the Middle East, what's going on with ISIS, what's going on with ISIL, what's happening with the future of our economies. This is a slow and quiet revolution. And with a mega-change comes also a mega-challenge, and the mega-challenge is this: Can these two great countries, China and the United States -- China, the Middle Kingdom, and the United States, Měiguó -- which in Chinese, by the way, means "the beautiful country." Think about that -- that's the name that China has given this country for more than a hundred years. Whether these two great civilizations, these two great countries, can in fact carve out a common future for themselves and for the world? In short, can we carve out a future which is peaceful and mutually prosperous, or are we looking at a great challenge of war or peace? And I have 15 minutes to work through war or peace, which is a little less time than they gave this guy to write a book called "War and Peace."
People ask me, why is it that a kid growing up in rural Australia got interested in learning Chinese? Well, there are two reasons for that. Here's the first of them. That's Betsy the cow. Now, Betsy the cow was one of a herd of dairy cattle that I grew up with on a farm in rural Australia. See those hands there? These are not built for farming. So very early on, I discovered that in fact, working in a farm was not designed for me, and China was a very safe remove from any career in Australian farm life.
Here's the second reason. That's my mom. Anyone here ever listen to what their mom told them to do? Everyone ever do what their mom told them to do? I rarely did, but what my mom said to me was, one day, she handed me a newspaper, a headline which said, here we have a huge change. And that change is China entering the United Nations. 1971, I had just turned 14 years of age, and she handed me this headline. And she said, "Understand this, learn this, because it's going to affect your future."
So being a very good student of history, I decided that the best thing for me to do was, in fact, to go off and learn Chinese. The great thing about learning Chinese is that your Chinese teacher gives you a new name. And so they gave me this name: Kè, which means to overcome or to conquer, and Wén, and that's the character for literature or the arts. Kè Wén, Conqueror of the Classics. Any of you guys called "Kevin"? It's a major lift from being called Kevin to be called Conqueror of the Classics. (Laughter) I've been called Kevin all my life. Have you been called Kevin all your life? Would you prefer to be called Conqueror of the Classics?
And so I went off after that and joined the Australian Foreign Service, but here is where pride -- before pride, there always comes a fall. So there I am in the embassy in Beijing, off to the Great Hall of the People with our ambassador, who had asked me to interpret for his first meeting in the Great Hall of the People. And so there was I. If you've been to a Chinese meeting, it's a giant horseshoe. At the head of the horsehoe are the really serious pooh-bahs, and down the end of the horseshoe are the not-so-serious pooh-bahs, the junior woodchucks like me. And so the ambassador began with this inelegant phrase. He said, "China and Australia are currently enjoying a relationship of unprecedented closeness." And I thought to myself, "That sounds clumsy. That sounds odd. I will improve it." Note to file: Never do that. It needed to be a little more elegant, a little more classical, so I rendered it as follows. [In Chinese]
There was a big pause on the other side of the room. You could see the giant pooh-bahs at the head of the horseshoe, the blood visibly draining from their faces, and the junior woodchucks at the other end of the horseshoe engaged in peals of unrestrained laughter. Because when I rendered his sentence, "Australia and China are enjoying a relationship of unprecedented closeness," in fact, what I said was that Australia and China were now experiencing fantastic orgasm. (Laughter)
That was the last time I was asked to interpret. But in that little story, there's a wisdom, which is, as soon as you think you know something about this extraordinary civilization of 5,000 years of continuing history, there's always something new to learn.
History is against us when it comes to the U.S. and China forging a common future together. This guy up here? He's not Chinese and he's not American. He's Greek. His name's Thucydides. He wrote the history of the Peloponnesian Wars. And he made this extraordinary observation about Athens and Sparta. "It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable." And hence, a whole literature about something called the Thucydides Trap.
This guy here? He's not American and he's not Greek. He's Chinese. His name is Sun Tzu. He wrote "The Art of War," and if you see his statement underneath, it's along these lines: "Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected." Not looking good so far for China and the United States.
This guy is an American. His name's Graham Allison. In fact, he's a teacher at the Kennedy School over there in Boston. He's working on a single project at the moment, which is, does the Thucydides Trap about the inevitably of war between rising powers and established great powers apply to the future of China-U.S. relations? It's a core question. And what Graham has done is explore 15 cases in history since the 1500s to establish what the precedents are. And in 11 out of 15 of them, let me tell you, they've ended in catastrophic war.
You may say, "But Kevin -- or Conqueror of the Classics -- that was the past. We live now in a world of interdependence and globalization. It could never happen again." Guess what? The economic historians tell us that in fact, the time which we reached the greatest point of economic integration and globalization was in 1914, just before that happened, World War I, a sobering reflection from history.
So if we are engaged in this great question of how China thinks, feels, and positions itself towards the United States, and the reverse, how do we get to the baseline of how these two countries and civilizations can possibly work together?
Let me first go to, in fact, China's views of the U.S. and the rest of the West. Number one: China feels as if it's been humiliated at the hands of the West through a hundred years of history, beginning with the Opium Wars. When after that, the Western powers carved China up into little pieces, so that by the time it got to the '20s and '30s, signs like this one appeared on the streets of Shanghai. ["No dogs and Chinese allowed"] How would you feel if you were Chinese, in your own country, if you saw that sign appear? China also believes and feels as if, in the events of 1919, at the Peace Conference in Paris, when Germany's colonies were given back to all sorts of countries around in the world, what about German colonies in China? They were, in fact, given to Japan. When Japan then invaded China in the 1930s the world looked away and was indifferent to what would happen to China. And then, on top of that, the Chinese to this day believe that the United States and the West do not accept the legitimacy of their political system because it's so radically different from those of us who come from liberal democracies, and believe that the United States to this day is seeking to undermine their political system. China also believes that it is being contained by U.S. allies and by those with strategic partnerships with the U.S. right around its periphery. And beyond all that, the Chinese have this feeling in their heart of hearts and in their gut of guts that those of us in the collective West are just too damned arrogant. That is, we don't recognize the problems in our own system, in our politics and our economics, and are very quick to point the finger elsewhere, and believe that, in fact, we in the collective West are guilty of a great bunch of hypocrisy.
Of course, in international relations, it's not just the sound of one hand clapping. There's another country too, and that's called the U.S. So how does the U.S. respond to all of the above? The U.S. has a response to each of those. On the question of is the U.S. containing China, they say, "No, look at the history of the Soviet Union. That was containment." Instead, what we have done in the U.S. and the West is welcome China into the global economy, and on top of that, welcome them into the World Trade Organization. The U.S. and the West say China cheats on the question of intellectual property rights, and through cyberattacks on U.S. and global firms. Furthermore, the United States says that the Chinese political system is fundamentally wrong because it's at such fundamental variance to the human rights, democracy, and rule of law that we enjoy in the U.S. and the collective West. And on top of all the above, what does the United States say? That they fear that China will, when it has sufficient power, establish a sphere of influence in Southeast Asia and wider East Asia, boot the United States out, and in time, when it's powerful enough, unilaterally seek to change the rules of the global order.
So apart from all of that, it's just fine and dandy, the U.S.-China relationship. No real problems there. The challenge, though, is given those deep-rooted feelings, those deep-rooted emotions and thought patterns, what the Chinese call "Sīwéi," ways of thinking, how can we craft a basis for a common future between these two?
I argue simply this: We can do it on the basis on a framework of constructive realism for a common purpose. What do I mean by that? Be realistic about the things that we disagree on, and a management approach that doesn't enable any one of those differences to break into war or conflict until we've acquired the diplomatic skills to solve them. Be constructive in areas of the bilateral, regional and global engagement between the two, which will make a difference for all of humankind. Build a regional institution capable of cooperation in Asia, an Asia-Pacific community. And worldwide, act further, like you've begun to do at the end of last year by striking out against climate change with hands joined together rather than fists apart.
Of course, all that happens if you've got a common mechanism and political will to achieve the above. These things are deliverable. But the question is, are they deliverable alone? This is what our head tells us we need to do, but what about our heart?
I have a little experience in the question back home of how you try to bring together two peoples who, frankly, haven't had a whole lot in common in the past. And that's when I apologized to Australia's indigenous peoples. This was a day of reckoning in the Australian government, the Australian parliament, and for the Australian people. After 200 years of unbridled abuse towards the first Australians, it was high time that we white folks said we were sorry.
The important thing -- (Applause)
The important thing that I remember is staring in the faces of all those from Aboriginal Australia as they came to listen to this apology. It was extraordinary to see, for example, old women telling me the stories of when they were five years old and literally ripped away from their parents, like this lady here. It was extraordinary for me to then be able to embrace and to kiss Aboriginal elders as they came into the parliament building, and one woman said to me, it's the first time a white fella had ever kissed her in her life, and she was over 70. That's a terrible story.
And then I remember this family saying to me, "You know, we drove all the way from the far North down to Canberra to come to this thing, drove our way through redneck country. On the way back, stopped at a cafe after the apology for a milkshake." And they walked into this cafe quietly, tentatively, gingerly, a little anxious. I think you know what I'm talking about. But the day after the apology, what happened? Everyone in that cafe, every one of the white folks, stood up and applauded. Something had happened in the hearts of these people in Australia. The white folks, our Aboriginal brothers and sisters, and we haven't solved all these problems together, but let me tell you, there was a new beginning because we had gone not just to the head, we'd gone also to the heart.
So where does that conclude in terms of the great question that we've been asked to address this evening, which is the future of U.S.-China relations? The head says there's a way forward. The head says there is a policy framework, there's a common narrative, there's a mechanism through regular summitry to do these things and to make them better. But the heart must also find a way to reimagine the possibilities of the America-China relationship, and the possibilities of China's future engagement in the world. Sometimes, folks, we just need to take a leap of faith not quite knowing where we might land.
In China, they now talk about the Chinese Dream. In America, we're all familiar with the term "the American Dream." I think it's time, across the world, that we're able to think also of something we might also call a dream for all humankind. Because if we do that, we might just change the way that we think about each other.
[In Chinese]
That's my challenge to America. That's my challenge to China. That's my challenge to all of us, but I think where there's a will and where there is imagination we can turn this into a future driven by peace and prosperity and not once again repeat the tragedies of war.
I thank you.
(Applause)
Chris Anderson: Thanks so much for that. Thanks so much for that. It feels like you yourself have a role to play in this bridging. You, in a way, are uniquely placed to speak to both sides.
Kevin Rudd: Well, what we Australians do best is organize the drinks, so you get them together in one room, and we suggest this and suggest that, then we go and get the drinks. But no, look, for all of us who are friends of these two great countries, America and China, you can do something. You can make a practical contribution, and for all you good folks here, next time you meet someone from China, sit down and have a conversation. See what you can find out about where they come from and what they think, and my challenge for all the Chinese folks who are going to watch this TED Talk at some time is do the same. Two of us seeking to change the world can actually make a huge difference. Those of us up the middle, we can make a small contribution.
CA: Kevin, all power to you, my friend. Thank you.
KR: Thank you. Thank you, folks.
(Applause)
HEALTH/SOC/GralInt-TED Talks- Bill Gates: The next outbreak? We’re not ready
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Filmed March 2015 at TED2015
Bill Gates: The next outbreak? We’re not ready
In 2014, the world avoided a horrific global outbreak of Ebola, thanks to thousands of selfless health workers — plus, frankly, thanks to some very good luck. In hindsight, we know what we should have done better. So, now's the time, Bill Gates suggests, to put all our good ideas into practice, from scenario planning to vaccine research to health worker training. As he says, "There's no need to panic ... but we need to get going."
Transcript:
When I was a kid, the disaster we worried about most was a nuclear war. That's why we had a barrel like this down in our basement, filled with cans of food and water. When the nuclear attack came, we were supposed to go downstairs, hunker down, and eat out of that barrel.
Today the greatest risk of global catastrophe doesn't look like this. Instead, it looks like this. If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it's most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. Not missiles, but microbes. Now, part of the reason for this is that we've invested a huge amount in nuclear deterrents. But we've actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic. We're not ready for the next epidemic.
Let's look at Ebola. I'm sure all of you read about it in the newspaper, lots of tough challenges. I followed it carefully through the case analysis tools we use to track polio eradication. And as you look at what went on, the problem wasn't that there was a system that didn't work well enough, the problem was that we didn't have a system at all. In fact, there's some pretty obvious key missing pieces.
We didn't have a group of epidemiologists ready to go, who would have gone, seen what the disease was, seen how far it had spread. The case reports came in on paper. It was very delayed before they were put online and they were extremely inaccurate. We didn't have a medical team ready to go. We didn't have a way of preparing people. Now, Médecins Sans Frontières did a great job orchestrating volunteers. But even so, we were far slower than we should have been getting the thousands of workers into these countries. And a large epidemic would require us to have hundreds of thousands of workers. There was no one there to look at treatment approaches. No one to look at the diagnostics. No one to figure out what tools should be used. As an example, we could have taken the blood of survivors, processed it, and put that plasma back in people to protect them. But that was never tried.
So there was a lot that was missing. And these things are really a global failure. The WHO is funded to monitor epidemics, but not to do these things I talked about. Now, in the movies it's quite different. There's a group of handsome epidemiologists ready to go, they move in, they save the day, but that's just pure Hollywood.
The failure to prepare could allow the next epidemic to be dramatically more devastating than Ebola Let's look at the progression of Ebola over this year. About 10,000 people died, and nearly all were in the three West African countries. There's three reasons why it didn't spread more. The first is that there was a lot of heroic work by the health workers. They found the people and they prevented more infections. The second is the nature of the virus. Ebola does not spread through the air. And by the time you're contagious, most people are so sick that they're bedridden. Third, it didn't get into many urban areas. And that was just luck. If it had gotten into a lot more urban areas, the case numbers would have been much larger.
So next time, we might not be so lucky. You can have a virus where people feel well enough while they're infectious that they get on a plane or they go to a market. The source of the virus could be a natural epidemic like Ebola, or it could be bioterrorism. So there are things that would literally make things a thousand times worse.
In fact, let's look at a model of a virus spread through the air, like the Spanish Flu back in 1918. So here's what would happen: It would spread throughout the world very, very quickly. And you can see over 30 million people died from that epidemic. So this is a serious problem. We should be concerned.
But in fact, we can build a really good response system. We have the benefits of all the science and technology that we talk about here. We've got cell phones to get information from the public and get information out to them. We have satellite maps where we can see where people are and where they're moving. We have advances in biology that should dramatically change the turnaround time to look at a pathogen and be able to make drugs and vaccines that fit for that pathogen. So we can have tools, but those tools need to be put into an overall global health system. And we need preparedness.
The best lessons, I think, on how to get prepared are again, what we do for war. For soldiers, we have full-time, waiting to go. We have reserves that can scale us up to large numbers. NATO has a mobile unit that can deploy very rapidly. NATO does a lot of war games to check, are people well trained? Do they understand about fuel and logistics and the same radio frequencies? So they are absolutely ready to go. So those are the kinds of things we need to deal with an epidemic.
What are the key pieces? First, we need strong health systems in poor countries. That's where mothers can give birth safely, kids can get all their vaccines. But, also where we'll see the outbreak very early on. We need a medical reserve corps: lots of people who've got the training and background who are ready to go, with the expertise. And then we need to pair those medical people with the military. taking advantage of the military's ability to move fast, do logistics and secure areas. We need to do simulations, germ games, not war games, so that we see where the holes are. The last time a germ game was done in the United States was back in 2001, and it didn't go so well. So far the score is germs: 1, people: 0. Finally, we need lots of advanced R&D in areas of vaccines and diagnostics. There are some big breakthroughs, like the Adeno-associated virus, that could work very, very quickly.
Now I don't have an exact budget for what this would cost, but I'm quite sure it's very modest compared to the potential harm. The World Bank estimates that if we have a worldwide flu epidemic, global wealth will go down by over three trillion dollars and we'd have millions and millions of deaths. These investments offer significant benefits beyond just being ready for the epidemic. The primary healthcare, the R&D, those things would reduce global health equity and make the world more just as well as more safe.
So I think this should absolutely be a priority. There's no need to panic. We don't have to hoard cans of spaghetti or go down into the basement. But we need to get going, because time is not on our side.
In fact, if there's one positive thing that can come out of the Ebola epidemic, it's that it can serve as an early warning, a wake-up call, to get ready. If we start now, we can be ready for the next epidemic.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Filmed March 2015 at TED2015
Bill Gates: The next outbreak? We’re not ready
In 2014, the world avoided a horrific global outbreak of Ebola, thanks to thousands of selfless health workers — plus, frankly, thanks to some very good luck. In hindsight, we know what we should have done better. So, now's the time, Bill Gates suggests, to put all our good ideas into practice, from scenario planning to vaccine research to health worker training. As he says, "There's no need to panic ... but we need to get going."
Transcript:
When I was a kid, the disaster we worried about most was a nuclear war. That's why we had a barrel like this down in our basement, filled with cans of food and water. When the nuclear attack came, we were supposed to go downstairs, hunker down, and eat out of that barrel.
Today the greatest risk of global catastrophe doesn't look like this. Instead, it looks like this. If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it's most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. Not missiles, but microbes. Now, part of the reason for this is that we've invested a huge amount in nuclear deterrents. But we've actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic. We're not ready for the next epidemic.
Let's look at Ebola. I'm sure all of you read about it in the newspaper, lots of tough challenges. I followed it carefully through the case analysis tools we use to track polio eradication. And as you look at what went on, the problem wasn't that there was a system that didn't work well enough, the problem was that we didn't have a system at all. In fact, there's some pretty obvious key missing pieces.
We didn't have a group of epidemiologists ready to go, who would have gone, seen what the disease was, seen how far it had spread. The case reports came in on paper. It was very delayed before they were put online and they were extremely inaccurate. We didn't have a medical team ready to go. We didn't have a way of preparing people. Now, Médecins Sans Frontières did a great job orchestrating volunteers. But even so, we were far slower than we should have been getting the thousands of workers into these countries. And a large epidemic would require us to have hundreds of thousands of workers. There was no one there to look at treatment approaches. No one to look at the diagnostics. No one to figure out what tools should be used. As an example, we could have taken the blood of survivors, processed it, and put that plasma back in people to protect them. But that was never tried.
So there was a lot that was missing. And these things are really a global failure. The WHO is funded to monitor epidemics, but not to do these things I talked about. Now, in the movies it's quite different. There's a group of handsome epidemiologists ready to go, they move in, they save the day, but that's just pure Hollywood.
The failure to prepare could allow the next epidemic to be dramatically more devastating than Ebola Let's look at the progression of Ebola over this year. About 10,000 people died, and nearly all were in the three West African countries. There's three reasons why it didn't spread more. The first is that there was a lot of heroic work by the health workers. They found the people and they prevented more infections. The second is the nature of the virus. Ebola does not spread through the air. And by the time you're contagious, most people are so sick that they're bedridden. Third, it didn't get into many urban areas. And that was just luck. If it had gotten into a lot more urban areas, the case numbers would have been much larger.
So next time, we might not be so lucky. You can have a virus where people feel well enough while they're infectious that they get on a plane or they go to a market. The source of the virus could be a natural epidemic like Ebola, or it could be bioterrorism. So there are things that would literally make things a thousand times worse.
In fact, let's look at a model of a virus spread through the air, like the Spanish Flu back in 1918. So here's what would happen: It would spread throughout the world very, very quickly. And you can see over 30 million people died from that epidemic. So this is a serious problem. We should be concerned.
But in fact, we can build a really good response system. We have the benefits of all the science and technology that we talk about here. We've got cell phones to get information from the public and get information out to them. We have satellite maps where we can see where people are and where they're moving. We have advances in biology that should dramatically change the turnaround time to look at a pathogen and be able to make drugs and vaccines that fit for that pathogen. So we can have tools, but those tools need to be put into an overall global health system. And we need preparedness.
The best lessons, I think, on how to get prepared are again, what we do for war. For soldiers, we have full-time, waiting to go. We have reserves that can scale us up to large numbers. NATO has a mobile unit that can deploy very rapidly. NATO does a lot of war games to check, are people well trained? Do they understand about fuel and logistics and the same radio frequencies? So they are absolutely ready to go. So those are the kinds of things we need to deal with an epidemic.
What are the key pieces? First, we need strong health systems in poor countries. That's where mothers can give birth safely, kids can get all their vaccines. But, also where we'll see the outbreak very early on. We need a medical reserve corps: lots of people who've got the training and background who are ready to go, with the expertise. And then we need to pair those medical people with the military. taking advantage of the military's ability to move fast, do logistics and secure areas. We need to do simulations, germ games, not war games, so that we see where the holes are. The last time a germ game was done in the United States was back in 2001, and it didn't go so well. So far the score is germs: 1, people: 0. Finally, we need lots of advanced R&D in areas of vaccines and diagnostics. There are some big breakthroughs, like the Adeno-associated virus, that could work very, very quickly.
Now I don't have an exact budget for what this would cost, but I'm quite sure it's very modest compared to the potential harm. The World Bank estimates that if we have a worldwide flu epidemic, global wealth will go down by over three trillion dollars and we'd have millions and millions of deaths. These investments offer significant benefits beyond just being ready for the epidemic. The primary healthcare, the R&D, those things would reduce global health equity and make the world more just as well as more safe.
So I think this should absolutely be a priority. There's no need to panic. We don't have to hoard cans of spaghetti or go down into the basement. But we need to get going, because time is not on our side.
In fact, if there's one positive thing that can come out of the Ebola epidemic, it's that it can serve as an early warning, a wake-up call, to get ready. If we start now, we can be ready for the next epidemic.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Friday, April 3, 2015
SOC/GralInt-¡A bailar con Michelle Obama... de nuevo!
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Viernes 03 de abril de 2015
¡A bailar con Michelle Obama... de nuevo!
La primera dama de los EE.UU. se animó otra vez a mostrar sus pasos de baile para celebrar los cinco años de su campaña contra la obesidad infantil
Fuente: www.lanacion.com.ar
Viernes 03 de abril de 2015
¡A bailar con Michelle Obama... de nuevo!
La primera dama de los EE.UU. se animó otra vez a mostrar sus pasos de baile para celebrar los cinco años de su campaña contra la obesidad infantil
Fuente: www.lanacion.com.ar
PASCUAS/EASTER/GralInt-"Recen para que Dios lave mis suciedades", dijo el Papa Francisco antes de lavarles los pies a 12 detenidos
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
"Recen para que Dios lave mis suciedades", dijo el Papa Francisco antes de lavarles los pies a 12 detenidos
El pontífice cerró el Jueves Santo con una tradición que realiza desde sus épocas de arzobispo porteño, para imitar el gesto de Jesús con sus discípulos en la Última Cena
Por Elisabetta Piqué | LA NACION
ROMA.- Tal como solía hacer siendo arzobispo de Buenos Aires, en señal de servicio y evocando lo que hizo Jesús durante la Última Cena, Jorge Bergoglio les lavó hoy los pies a 12 detenidos -seis hombres y seis mujeres- de la cárcel romana de Rebibbia.
En un clima extremadamente emotivo, antes de realizar este rito tradicional del Jueves Santo por tercera vez fuera del Vaticano, en un sermón brevísimo, directo y conciso, el papa Francisco explicó el por qué de este gesto de humildad y servicio.
"Jesús nos amó, nos ama, sin límites, siempre. El amor de Jesús no tiene límites, no se cansa de amar, nos ama a todos. Es tanto el amor, que se hizo esclavo para purificarnos, curarnos", dijo.
Tal como había hecho el año pasado, el Papa explicó que en tiempos de Jesús era una costumbre lavar los pies de quien llegaba a un hogar, porque las calles eran polvorientas. "Pero eso no lo hacía del dueño de casa, lo hacían los esclavos", recordó.
"Yo también necesito ser lavado por el Señor. Recen para que Dios lave mis suciedades y para que me convierta aún más esclavo en el servicio"
"Tenemos que tener la certeza de que cuando el Señor nos lava los pies nos purifica, nos hace sentir su amor", siguió, y lo definió como un amor tan incondicional como el que tienen las madres por sus hijos. "Yo lavaré los pies de 12 de ustedes, pero en estos hermanos y hermanas están representados todos los que viven aquí", aseguró, al referirse a la cárcel de Rebibbia, de las afueras de Roma, que aloja a unos 2000 detenidos. "Pero yo también necesito ser lavado por el Señor", advirtió. "Recen para que Dios lave mis suciedades y para que me convierta aún más esclavo en el servicio", pidió.
Acto seguido, ayudado por algunos colaboradores y en un evidente esfuerzo debido a sus 78 años, Francisco se fue arrodillando doce veces ante seis hombres y seis mujeres de diversas nacionalidades, entre los cuales algunos africanos, de Ecuador y Brasil. Les lavó los pies -utilizando una jarra y una toalla- y luego se los besó. "Gracias", les decían tímidamente los elegidos para este gesto, a quienes el Papa les devolvía una sonrisa.
Jesús lava los pies a los apóstoles. ¿Estamos dispuestos a servir también nosotros así a los demás?
La emoción era evidente en el rostro de los doce reclusos. Una de las imágenes más fuertes fue cuando el Papa le lavó los pies a un bebe de color y luego a su madre, que estaba en lágrimas.
GRAN ENTUSIASMO
Igual de conmovedora fue la llegada del Papa a la cárcel. En medio de aplausos y gran entusiasmo, saludó, uno por uno, a las decenas de reclusos de diversas nacionalidades que lo esperaban detrás de un vallado, que no iban a poder estar en la misa en la capilla de la cárcel, donde cabían solamente unas 300 personas. Entonces, bendijo rosarios, se dejó besar y abrazar por los detenidos, sonriente, concediéndose a todos. Lo mismo ocurrió al ingresar con paramentos a la misa de la Última cena y al salir de la ceremonia. El año pasado el Papa le había lavado los pies a 12 doce enfermos de un centro y el anterior, a 12 menores detenidos en una cárcel de las afueras de Roma.
Por la mañana, durante la misa crismal- celebración en la que se bendicen los óleos sacros que se utilizan en bautismos, confirmaciones, ordenaciones y para los enfermos y los sacerdotes renuevan sus votos sacerdotales- en la Basílica de San Pedro, Francisco sorprendió con un sermón muy profundo que giró en torno del cansancio de los sacerdotes: sacerdotes que deben cansarse por su servicio por los demás, que no deben ser curas con cara de vinagre o aburridos, sino alegres y con olor a oveja.
"¿Saben cuántas veces pienso en el cansancio de todos vosotros? Pienso mucho y ruego a menudo, especialmente cuando el cansado soy yo. Rezo por los que trabajan en medio del pueblo fiel de Dios que les fue confiado, y muchos en lugares muy abandonados y peligrosos. Y nuestro cansancio, queridos sacerdotes, es como el incienso que sube silenciosamente al cielo. Nuestro cansancio va directo al corazón del Padre", dijo.
Exaltó luego el cansancio del sacerdote con olor a oveja, " pero con sonrisa de papá que contempla a sus hijos o a sus nietos pequeños", que diferenció totalmente de aquellos sacerdotes "que huelen a perfume caro y te miran de lejos y desde arriba". "Si Jesús está pastoreando en medio de nosotros, no podemos ser pastores con cara de vinagre, quejosos ni, lo que es peor, pastores aburridos", dijo, al pedir "olor a oveja y sonrisa de padres".
Fuente: www.lanacion.com.ar
"Recen para que Dios lave mis suciedades", dijo el Papa Francisco antes de lavarles los pies a 12 detenidos
El pontífice cerró el Jueves Santo con una tradición que realiza desde sus épocas de arzobispo porteño, para imitar el gesto de Jesús con sus discípulos en la Última Cena
Por Elisabetta Piqué | LA NACION
ROMA.- Tal como solía hacer siendo arzobispo de Buenos Aires, en señal de servicio y evocando lo que hizo Jesús durante la Última Cena, Jorge Bergoglio les lavó hoy los pies a 12 detenidos -seis hombres y seis mujeres- de la cárcel romana de Rebibbia.
En un clima extremadamente emotivo, antes de realizar este rito tradicional del Jueves Santo por tercera vez fuera del Vaticano, en un sermón brevísimo, directo y conciso, el papa Francisco explicó el por qué de este gesto de humildad y servicio.
"Jesús nos amó, nos ama, sin límites, siempre. El amor de Jesús no tiene límites, no se cansa de amar, nos ama a todos. Es tanto el amor, que se hizo esclavo para purificarnos, curarnos", dijo.
Tal como había hecho el año pasado, el Papa explicó que en tiempos de Jesús era una costumbre lavar los pies de quien llegaba a un hogar, porque las calles eran polvorientas. "Pero eso no lo hacía del dueño de casa, lo hacían los esclavos", recordó.
"Yo también necesito ser lavado por el Señor. Recen para que Dios lave mis suciedades y para que me convierta aún más esclavo en el servicio"
"Tenemos que tener la certeza de que cuando el Señor nos lava los pies nos purifica, nos hace sentir su amor", siguió, y lo definió como un amor tan incondicional como el que tienen las madres por sus hijos. "Yo lavaré los pies de 12 de ustedes, pero en estos hermanos y hermanas están representados todos los que viven aquí", aseguró, al referirse a la cárcel de Rebibbia, de las afueras de Roma, que aloja a unos 2000 detenidos. "Pero yo también necesito ser lavado por el Señor", advirtió. "Recen para que Dios lave mis suciedades y para que me convierta aún más esclavo en el servicio", pidió.
Acto seguido, ayudado por algunos colaboradores y en un evidente esfuerzo debido a sus 78 años, Francisco se fue arrodillando doce veces ante seis hombres y seis mujeres de diversas nacionalidades, entre los cuales algunos africanos, de Ecuador y Brasil. Les lavó los pies -utilizando una jarra y una toalla- y luego se los besó. "Gracias", les decían tímidamente los elegidos para este gesto, a quienes el Papa les devolvía una sonrisa.
Jesús lava los pies a los apóstoles. ¿Estamos dispuestos a servir también nosotros así a los demás?
La emoción era evidente en el rostro de los doce reclusos. Una de las imágenes más fuertes fue cuando el Papa le lavó los pies a un bebe de color y luego a su madre, que estaba en lágrimas.
GRAN ENTUSIASMO
Igual de conmovedora fue la llegada del Papa a la cárcel. En medio de aplausos y gran entusiasmo, saludó, uno por uno, a las decenas de reclusos de diversas nacionalidades que lo esperaban detrás de un vallado, que no iban a poder estar en la misa en la capilla de la cárcel, donde cabían solamente unas 300 personas. Entonces, bendijo rosarios, se dejó besar y abrazar por los detenidos, sonriente, concediéndose a todos. Lo mismo ocurrió al ingresar con paramentos a la misa de la Última cena y al salir de la ceremonia. El año pasado el Papa le había lavado los pies a 12 doce enfermos de un centro y el anterior, a 12 menores detenidos en una cárcel de las afueras de Roma.
Por la mañana, durante la misa crismal- celebración en la que se bendicen los óleos sacros que se utilizan en bautismos, confirmaciones, ordenaciones y para los enfermos y los sacerdotes renuevan sus votos sacerdotales- en la Basílica de San Pedro, Francisco sorprendió con un sermón muy profundo que giró en torno del cansancio de los sacerdotes: sacerdotes que deben cansarse por su servicio por los demás, que no deben ser curas con cara de vinagre o aburridos, sino alegres y con olor a oveja.
"¿Saben cuántas veces pienso en el cansancio de todos vosotros? Pienso mucho y ruego a menudo, especialmente cuando el cansado soy yo. Rezo por los que trabajan en medio del pueblo fiel de Dios que les fue confiado, y muchos en lugares muy abandonados y peligrosos. Y nuestro cansancio, queridos sacerdotes, es como el incienso que sube silenciosamente al cielo. Nuestro cansancio va directo al corazón del Padre", dijo.
Exaltó luego el cansancio del sacerdote con olor a oveja, " pero con sonrisa de papá que contempla a sus hijos o a sus nietos pequeños", que diferenció totalmente de aquellos sacerdotes "que huelen a perfume caro y te miran de lejos y desde arriba". "Si Jesús está pastoreando en medio de nosotros, no podemos ser pastores con cara de vinagre, quejosos ni, lo que es peor, pastores aburridos", dijo, al pedir "olor a oveja y sonrisa de padres".
Fuente: www.lanacion.com.ar
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