1
00:00:00,742 --> 00:00:07,963
So we humans have an extraordinary
potential for goodness,

2
00:00:07,963 --> 00:00:12,363
but also an immense power to do harm.

3
00:00:12,363 --> 00:00:18,029
Any tool can be used to build
or to destroy.

4
00:00:18,036 --> 00:00:21,217
That all depends on our motivation.

5
00:00:21,217 --> 00:00:24,664
Therefore, it is all the more important

6
00:00:24,664 --> 00:00:28,938
to foster an altruistic motivation
rather than a selfish one.

7
00:00:30,508 --> 00:00:37,008
So now we indeed are facing 
many challenges in our times.

8
00:00:37,008 --> 00:00:40,325
Those could be personal challenges.

9
00:00:40,325 --> 00:00:44,911
Our own mind can be our best friend
or our worst enemy.

10
00:00:46,341 --> 00:00:49,225
There's also societal challenges:

11
00:00:49,225 --> 00:00:54,924
poverty in the midst of plenty,
inequalities, conflict, injustice.

12
00:00:54,924 --> 00:00:59,120
And then there are the new challenges,
which we don't expect.

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00:00:59,120 --> 00:01:03,763
Ten thousand years ago, there were
about five million human beings on Earth.

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00:01:03,763 --> 00:01:05,373
Whatever they could do,

15
00:01:05,373 --> 00:01:10,559
the Earth's resilience 
would soon heal human activities.

16
00:01:10,559 --> 00:01:13,775
After the Industrial
and Technological Revolutions,

17
00:01:13,775 --> 00:01:16,008
that's not the same anymore.

18
00:01:16,008 --> 00:01:20,073
We are now the major agent
of impact on our Earth.

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00:01:20,073 --> 00:01:24,977
We enter the Anthropocene,
the era of human beings.

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So in a way, if we were to say
we need to continue this endless growth,

21
00:01:31,970 --> 00:01:35,616
endless use of material resources,

22
00:01:35,616 --> 00:01:38,514
it's like if this man was saying --

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and I heard a former head of state,
I won't mention who, saying --

24
00:01:43,386 --> 00:01:47,395
"Five years ago, we were at
the edge of the precipice.

25
00:01:47,395 --> 00:01:49,972
Today we made a big step forward."

26
00:01:50,587 --> 00:01:56,590
So this edge is the same
that has been defined by scientists

27
00:01:56,590 --> 00:01:59,244
as the planetary boundaries.

28
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And within those boundaries,
they can carry a number of factors.

29
00:02:03,705 --> 00:02:09,231
We can still prosper, humanity can still
prosper for 150,000 years

30
00:02:09,231 --> 00:02:12,563
if we keep the same stability of climate

31
00:02:12,563 --> 00:02:15,721
as in the Holocene
for the last 10,000 years.

32
00:02:15,721 --> 00:02:21,479
But this depends on choosing
a voluntary simplicity,

33
00:02:21,479 --> 00:02:24,160
growing qualitatively, not quantitatively.

34
00:02:24,160 --> 00:02:30,394
So in 1900, as you can see,
we were well within the limits of safety.

35
00:02:30,394 --> 00:02:35,793
Now, in 1950 came the great acceleration.

36
00:02:35,793 --> 00:02:40,762
Now hold your breath, not too long,
to imagine what comes next.

37
00:02:40,762 --> 00:02:46,907
Now we have vastly overrun
some of the planetary boundaries.

38
00:02:46,907 --> 00:02:50,866
Just to take biodiversity, 
at the current rate,

39
00:02:50,866 --> 00:02:57,288
by 2050, 30 percent of all species 
on Earth will have disappeared.

40
00:02:57,288 --> 00:03:03,085
Even if we keep their DNA in some fridge,
that's not going to be reversible.

41
00:03:03,085 --> 00:03:04,936
So here I am sitting

42
00:03:04,936 --> 00:03:10,836
in front of a 7,000-meter-high, 
21,000-foot glacier in Bhutan.

43
00:03:10,836 --> 00:03:17,987
At the Third Pole, 2,000 glaciers
are melting fast, faster than the Arctic.

44
00:03:17,987 --> 00:03:20,994
So what can we do in that situation?

45
00:03:22,144 --> 00:03:29,453
Well, however complex
politically, economically, scientifically

46
00:03:29,453 --> 00:03:31,851
the question of the environment is,

47
00:03:31,851 --> 00:03:38,678
it simply boils down to a question
of altruism versus selfishness.

48
00:03:38,678 --> 00:03:42,287
I'm a Marxist of the Groucho tendency.

49
00:03:42,287 --> 00:03:43,712
(Laughter)

50
00:03:43,712 --> 00:03:47,121
Groucho Marx said, "Why should I care
about future generations?

51
00:03:47,121 --> 00:03:49,151
What have they ever done for me?"

52
00:03:49,151 --> 00:03:50,647
(Laughter)

53
00:03:50,647 --> 00:03:55,430
Unfortunately, I heard
the billionaire Steve Forbes,

54
00:03:55,430 --> 00:03:58,958
on Fox News, saying exactly 
the same thing, but seriously.

55
00:03:58,958 --> 00:04:01,293
He was told about the rise of the ocean,

56
00:04:01,293 --> 00:04:04,640
and he said, "I find it absurd
to change my behavior today

57
00:04:04,640 --> 00:04:07,695
for something that will happen 
in a hundred years."

58
00:04:07,695 --> 00:04:10,593
So if you don't care
for future generations,

59
00:04:10,593 --> 00:04:13,494
just go for it.

60
00:04:13,494 --> 00:04:16,420
So one of the main challenges of our times

61
00:04:16,420 --> 00:04:19,538
is to reconcile three time scales:

62
00:04:19,538 --> 00:04:21,683
the short term of the economy,

63
00:04:21,683 --> 00:04:25,915
the ups and downs of the stock market,
the end-of-the-year accounts;

64
00:04:25,915 --> 00:04:28,621
the midterm of the quality of life --

65
00:04:28,621 --> 00:04:33,945
what is the quality every moment of our 
life, over 10 years and 20 years? --

66
00:04:33,945 --> 00:04:37,554
and the long term of the environment.

67
00:04:37,554 --> 00:04:39,903
When the environmentalists
speak with economists,

68
00:04:39,903 --> 00:04:42,982
it's like a schizophrenic dialogue,
completely incoherent.

69
00:04:42,982 --> 00:04:45,814
They don't speak the same language.

70
00:04:45,814 --> 00:04:49,354
Now, for the last 10 years,
I went around the world

71
00:04:49,354 --> 00:04:53,452
meeting economists, scientists,
neuroscientists, environmentalists,

72
00:04:53,452 --> 00:04:57,912
philosophers, thinkers 
in the Himalayas, all over the place.

73
00:04:57,912 --> 00:05:01,834
It seems to me, there's only one concept

74
00:05:01,834 --> 00:05:04,794
that can reconcile
those three time scales.

75
00:05:04,794 --> 00:05:09,198
It is simply having more
consideration for others.

76
00:05:09,198 --> 00:05:14,099
If you have more consideration for others,
you will have a caring economics,

77
00:05:14,099 --> 00:05:17,051
where finance is at the service of society

78
00:05:17,051 --> 00:05:20,319
and not society at the service of finance.

79
00:05:20,319 --> 00:05:22,187
You will not play at the casino

80
00:05:22,187 --> 00:05:25,073
with the resources that people
have entrusted you with.

81
00:05:25,073 --> 00:05:27,919
If you have more consideration for others,

82
00:05:27,919 --> 00:05:31,396
you will make sure
that you remedy inequality,

83
00:05:31,396 --> 00:05:35,136
that you bring some kind 
of well-being within society,

84
00:05:35,136 --> 00:05:37,176
in education, at the workplace.

85
00:05:37,176 --> 00:05:40,599
Otherwise, a nation that is
the most powerful and the richest

86
00:05:40,599 --> 00:05:43,686
but everyone is miserable,
what's the point?

87
00:05:43,686 --> 00:05:45,973
And if you have more
consideration for others,

88
00:05:45,973 --> 00:05:49,369
you are not going to ransack
that planet that we have

89
00:05:49,369 --> 00:05:53,703
and at the current rate, we don't
have three planets to continue that way.

90
00:05:53,703 --> 00:05:56,056
So the question is,

91
00:05:56,056 --> 00:06:00,387
okay, altruism is the answer,
it's not just a novel ideal,

92
00:06:00,387 --> 00:06:03,611
but can it be a real, pragmatic solution?

93
00:06:03,611 --> 00:06:06,469
And first of all, does it exist,

94
00:06:06,469 --> 00:06:10,213
true altruism, or are we so selfish?

95
00:06:10,213 --> 00:06:15,553
So some philosophers thought
we were irredeemably selfish.

96
00:06:15,553 --> 00:06:20,765
But are we really all just like rascals?

97
00:06:20,765 --> 00:06:23,579
That's good news, isn't it?

98
00:06:23,579 --> 00:06:26,108
Many philosophers, 
like Hobbes, have said so.

99
00:06:26,108 --> 00:06:29,429
But not everyone looks like a rascal.

100
00:06:29,429 --> 00:06:32,262
Or is man a wolf for man?

101
00:06:32,262 --> 00:06:35,150
But this guy doesn't seem too bad.

102
00:06:35,150 --> 00:06:38,073
He's one of my friends in Tibet.

103
00:06:38,073 --> 00:06:40,312
He's very kind.

104
00:06:40,312 --> 00:06:43,937
So now, we love cooperation.

105
00:06:43,937 --> 00:06:48,275
There's no better joy 
than working together, is there?

106
00:06:48,275 --> 00:06:52,350
And then not only humans.

107
00:06:52,350 --> 00:06:54,837
Then, of course, there's
the struggle for life,

108
00:06:54,837 --> 00:06:59,178
the survival of the fittest,
social Darwinism.

109
00:06:59,178 --> 00:07:05,015
But in evolution, cooperation --
though competition exists, of course --

110
00:07:05,015 --> 00:07:10,732
cooperation has to be much more creative
to go to increased levels of complexity.

111
00:07:10,732 --> 00:07:15,414
We are super-cooperators 
and we should even go further.

112
00:07:15,414 --> 00:07:21,443
So now, on top of that,
the quality of human relationships.

113
00:07:21,443 --> 00:07:25,925
The OECD did a survey among 10 factors,
including income, everything.

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00:07:25,925 --> 00:07:29,268
The first one that people said,
that's the main thing for my happiness,

115
00:07:29,268 --> 00:07:32,621
is quality of social relationships.

116
00:07:32,621 --> 00:07:35,498
Not only in humans.

117
00:07:35,498 --> 00:07:38,844
And look at those great-grandmothers.

118
00:07:38,846 --> 00:07:44,000
So now, this idea 
that if we go deep within,

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00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:46,570
we are irredeemably selfish,

120
00:07:46,570 --> 00:07:49,224
this is armchair science.

121
00:07:49,224 --> 00:07:51,491
There is not a single sociological study,

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00:07:51,491 --> 00:07:54,737
psychological study,
that's ever shown that.

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00:07:54,737 --> 00:07:56,697
Rather, the opposite.

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00:07:56,697 --> 00:08:00,355
My friend, Daniel Batson, 
spent a whole life

125
00:08:00,355 --> 00:08:03,118
putting people in the lab
in very complex situations.

126
00:08:03,118 --> 00:08:07,487
And of course we are sometimes selfish,
and some people more than others.

127
00:08:07,487 --> 00:08:10,149
But he found that systematically,
no matter what,

128
00:08:10,149 --> 00:08:13,149
there's a significant number of people

129
00:08:13,149 --> 00:08:16,504
who do behave altruistically,
no matter what.

130
00:08:16,504 --> 00:08:19,696
If you see someone
deeply wounded, great suffering,

131
00:08:19,696 --> 00:08:22,318
you might just help
out of empathic distress --

132
00:08:22,318 --> 00:08:26,468
you can't stand it, so it's better to help
than to keep on looking at that person.

133
00:08:26,468 --> 00:08:32,344
So we tested all that, and in the end, 
he said, clearly people can be altruistic.

134
00:08:32,344 --> 00:08:34,284
So that's good news.

135
00:08:34,284 --> 00:08:39,896
And even further, we should look
at the banality of goodness.

136
00:08:39,896 --> 00:08:41,600
Now look at here.

137
00:08:41,600 --> 00:08:44,370
When we come out, we aren't 
going to say, "That's so nice.

138
00:08:44,370 --> 00:08:48,937
There was no fistfight while this mob 
was thinking about altruism."

139
00:08:48,937 --> 00:08:51,099
No, that's expected, isn't it?

140
00:08:51,099 --> 00:08:54,278
If there was a fistfight,
we would speak of that for months.

141
00:08:54,278 --> 00:08:57,949
So the banality of goodness is something
that doesn't attract your attention,

142
00:08:57,949 --> 00:08:59,437
but it exists.

143
00:08:59,437 --> 00:09:04,913
Now, look at this.

144
00:09:09,253 --> 00:09:12,054
So some psychologists said,

145
00:09:12,054 --> 00:09:15,291
when I tell them I run 140 humanitarian 
projects in the Himalayas

146
00:09:15,291 --> 00:09:17,545
that give me so much joy,

147
00:09:17,545 --> 00:09:20,799
they said, "Oh, I see,
you work for the warm glow.

148
00:09:20,799 --> 00:09:23,703
That is not altruistic.
You just feel good."

149
00:09:23,703 --> 00:09:26,991
You think this guy,
when he jumped in front of the train,

150
00:09:26,991 --> 00:09:29,277
he thought, "I'm going to feel
so good when this is over?"

151
00:09:29,277 --> 00:09:31,563
(Laughter)

152
00:09:31,563 --> 00:09:33,849
But that's not the end of it.

153
00:09:33,849 --> 00:09:36,391
They say, well, but when
you interviewed him, he said,

154
00:09:36,391 --> 00:09:39,526
"I had no choice.
I had to jump, of course."

155
00:09:39,526 --> 00:09:43,407
He has no choice. Automatic behavior.
It's neither selfish nor altruistic.

156
00:09:43,407 --> 00:09:44,882
No choice?

157
00:09:44,882 --> 00:09:47,844
Well of course, this guy's
not going to think for half an hour,

158
00:09:47,844 --> 00:09:49,881
"Should I give my hand? Not give my hand?"

159
00:09:49,881 --> 00:09:53,676
He does it. There is a choice,
but it's obvious, it's immediate.

160
00:09:53,676 --> 00:09:56,037
And then, also, there he had a choice.

161
00:09:56,037 --> 00:09:58,738
(Laughter)

162
00:09:58,738 --> 00:10:02,500
There are people who had choice,
like Pastor André Trocmé and his wife,

163
00:10:02,500 --> 00:10:05,187
and the whole village
of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in France.

164
00:10:05,187 --> 00:10:09,135
For the whole Second World War,
they saved 3,500 Jews,

165
00:10:09,135 --> 00:10:11,792
gave them shelter,
brought them to Switzerland,

166
00:10:11,792 --> 00:10:15,237
against all odds, at the risk
of their lives and those of their family.

167
00:10:15,237 --> 00:10:17,394
So altruism does exist.

168
00:10:17,394 --> 00:10:19,119
So what is altruism?

169
00:10:19,119 --> 00:10:23,021
It is the wish: May others be happy
and find the cause of happiness.

170
00:10:23,021 --> 00:10:28,266
Now, empathy is the affective resonance
or cognitive resonance that tells you,

171
00:10:28,266 --> 00:10:30,977
this person is joyful,
this person suffers.

172
00:10:30,977 --> 00:10:34,463
But empathy alone is not sufficient.

173
00:10:34,463 --> 00:10:36,686
If you keep on being
confronted with suffering,

174
00:10:36,686 --> 00:10:39,447
you might have empathic distress, burnout,

175
00:10:39,447 --> 00:10:43,507
so you need the greater sphere
of loving-kindness.

176
00:10:43,507 --> 00:10:46,234
With Tania Singer at the Max Planck 
Institute of Leipzig,

177
00:10:46,234 --> 00:10:52,335
we showed that the brain networks for
empathy and loving-kindness are different.

178
00:10:52,335 --> 00:10:54,416
Now, that's all well done,

179
00:10:54,416 --> 00:10:59,790
so we got that from evolution,
from maternal care, parental love,

180
00:10:59,790 --> 00:11:01,625
but we need to extend that.

181
00:11:01,625 --> 00:11:04,968
It can be extended even to other species.

182
00:11:04,968 --> 00:11:09,375
Now, if we want a more altruistic society,
we need two things:

183
00:11:09,375 --> 00:11:12,592
individual change and societal change.

184
00:11:12,592 --> 00:11:15,150
So is individual change possible?

185
00:11:15,150 --> 00:11:18,349
Two thousand years
of contemplative study said yes, it is.

186
00:11:18,349 --> 00:11:21,951
Now, 15 years of collaboration
with neuroscience and epigenetics

187
00:11:21,951 --> 00:11:26,435
said yes, our brains change
when you train in altruism.

188
00:11:26,435 --> 00:11:30,707
So I spent 120 hours in an MRI machine.

189
00:11:30,707 --> 00:11:33,493
This is the first time I went
after two and a half hours.

190
00:11:33,493 --> 00:11:37,167
And then the result has been published
in many scientific papers.

191
00:11:37,167 --> 00:11:40,749
It shows without ambiguity
that there is structural change

192
00:11:40,749 --> 00:11:44,502
and functional change in the brain
when you train the altruistic love.

193
00:11:44,502 --> 00:11:46,252
Just to give you an idea:

194
00:11:46,252 --> 00:11:49,073
this is the meditator at rest on the left,

195
00:11:49,073 --> 00:11:52,776
meditator in compassion meditation,
you see all the activity,

196
00:11:52,776 --> 00:11:55,330
and then the control group at rest,
nothing happened,

197
00:11:55,330 --> 00:11:57,272
in meditation, nothing happened.

198
00:11:57,272 --> 00:11:59,250
They have not been trained.

199
00:11:59,250 --> 00:12:03,671
So do you need 50,000 hours 
of meditation? No, you don't.

200
00:12:03,671 --> 00:12:07,837
Four weeks, 20 minutes a day,
of caring, mindfulness meditation

201
00:12:07,838 --> 00:12:14,141
already brings a structural change
in the brain compared to a control group.

202
00:12:14,141 --> 00:12:17,879
That's only 20 minutes a day
for four weeks.

203
00:12:17,879 --> 00:12:21,217
Even with preschoolers --
Richard Davidson did that in Madison.

204
00:12:21,217 --> 00:12:27,627
An eight-week program: gratitude, loving-
kindness, cooperation, mindful breathing.

205
00:12:27,627 --> 00:12:29,882
You would say, 
"Oh, they're just preschoolers."

206
00:12:29,882 --> 00:12:31,508
Look after eight weeks,

207
00:12:31,508 --> 00:12:33,958
the pro-social behavior,
that's the blue line.

208
00:12:33,958 --> 00:12:39,402
And then comes the ultimate
scientific test, the stickers test.

209
00:12:39,402 --> 00:12:43,350
Before, you determine for each child
who is their best friend in the class,

210
00:12:43,350 --> 00:12:47,425
their least favorite child,
an unknown child, and the sick child,

211
00:12:47,425 --> 00:12:50,129
and they have to give stickers away.

212
00:12:50,129 --> 00:12:54,181
So before the intervention,
they give most of it to their best friend.

213
00:12:54,181 --> 00:12:57,640
Four, five years old, 
20 minutes three times a week.

214
00:12:57,640 --> 00:13:01,123
After the intervention,
no more discrimination:

215
00:13:01,123 --> 00:13:05,048
the same amount of stickers to their 
best friend and the least favorite child.

216
00:13:05,048 --> 00:13:08,436
That's something we should do
in all the schools in the world.

217
00:13:08,436 --> 00:13:10,430
Now where do we go from there?

218
00:13:10,430 --> 00:13:14,678
(Applause)

219
00:13:14,678 --> 00:13:17,359
When the Dalai Lama heard that,
he told Richard Davidson,

220
00:13:17,359 --> 00:13:20,815
"You go to 10 schools, 100 schools,
the U.N., the whole world."

221
00:13:20,815 --> 00:13:22,499
So now where do we go from there?

222
00:13:22,499 --> 00:13:24,762
Individual change is possible.

223
00:13:24,762 --> 00:13:29,378
Now do we have to wait for an altruistic 
gene to be in the human race?

224
00:13:29,378 --> 00:13:33,132
That will take 50,000 years,
too much for the environment.

225
00:13:33,132 --> 00:13:37,567
Fortunately, there is
the evolution of culture.

226
00:13:37,567 --> 00:13:43,301
Cultures, as specialists have shown,
change faster than genes.

227
00:13:43,301 --> 00:13:44,829
That's the good news.

228
00:13:44,829 --> 00:13:48,189
Look, attitude towards war
has dramatically changed over the years.

229
00:13:48,189 --> 00:13:53,370
So now individual change and cultural 
change mutually fashion each other,

230
00:13:53,370 --> 00:13:56,146
and yes, we can achieve
a more altruistic society.

231
00:13:56,146 --> 00:13:57,888
So where do we go from there?

232
00:13:57,888 --> 00:14:00,137
Myself, I will go back to the East.

233
00:14:00,137 --> 00:14:03,597
Now we treat 100,000 patients
a year in our projects.

234
00:14:03,597 --> 00:14:07,346
We have 25,000 kids in school,
four percent overhead.

235
00:14:07,346 --> 00:14:09,921
Some people say, "Well,
your stuff works in practice,

236
00:14:09,921 --> 00:14:11,945
but does it work in theory?"

237
00:14:11,945 --> 00:14:15,287
There's always positive deviance.

238
00:14:15,287 --> 00:14:17,706
So I will also go back to my hermitage

239
00:14:17,706 --> 00:14:20,995
to find the inner resources
to better serve others.

240
00:14:20,995 --> 00:14:24,182
But on the more global level,
what can we do?

241
00:14:24,182 --> 00:14:25,973
We need three things.

242
00:14:25,973 --> 00:14:28,325
Enhancing cooperation:

243
00:14:28,325 --> 00:14:32,041
Cooperative learning in the school
instead of competitive learning,

244
00:14:32,041 --> 00:14:35,612
Unconditional cooperation
within corporations --

245
00:14:35,612 --> 00:14:40,019
there can be some competition
between corporations, but not within.

246
00:14:40,019 --> 00:14:43,971
We need sustainable harmony.
I love this term.

247
00:14:43,971 --> 00:14:45,914
Not sustainable growth anymore.

248
00:14:45,914 --> 00:14:49,500
Sustainable harmony means now
we will reduce inequality.

249
00:14:49,500 --> 00:14:53,826
In the future, we do more with less,

250
00:14:53,826 --> 00:14:58,310
and we continue to grow qualitatively,
not quantitatively.

251
00:14:58,310 --> 00:15:00,615
We need caring economics.

252
00:15:00,615 --> 00:15:06,446
The Homo economicus cannot deal
with poverty in the midst of plenty,

253
00:15:06,446 --> 00:15:08,798
cannot deal with the problem
of the common goods

254
00:15:08,798 --> 00:15:11,096
of the atmosphere, of the oceans.

255
00:15:11,096 --> 00:15:12,679
We need a caring economics.

256
00:15:12,679 --> 00:15:14,788
If you say economics
should be compassionate,

257
00:15:14,788 --> 00:15:16,273
they say, "That's not our job."

258
00:15:16,273 --> 00:15:19,588
But if you say they don't care,
that looks bad.

259
00:15:19,588 --> 00:15:22,967
We need local commitment,
global responsibility.

260
00:15:22,967 --> 00:15:28,307
We need to extend altruism
to the other 1.6 million species.

261
00:15:28,307 --> 00:15:31,732
Sentient beings 
are co-citizens in this world.

262
00:15:31,732 --> 00:15:34,724
and we need to dare altruism.

263
00:15:34,724 --> 00:15:38,605
So, long live the altruistic revolution.

264
00:15:38,605 --> 00:15:43,155
Viva la revolución de altruismo.

265
00:15:43,155 --> 00:15:48,515
(Applause)

266
00:15:48,515 --> 00:15:50,496
Thank you.

267
00:15:50,496 --> 00:15:52,448
(Applause)