WEBVTT 00:00:00.742 --> 00:00:07.963 So we humans have an extraordinary potential for goodness, 00:00:07.963 --> 00:00:12.363 but also an immense power to do harm. 00:00:12.363 --> 00:00:18.029 Any tool can be used to build or to destroy. 00:00:18.036 --> 00:00:21.217 That all depends on our motivation. 00:00:21.217 --> 00:00:24.664 Therefore, it is all the more important 00:00:24.664 --> 00:00:30.748 to foster an altruistic motivation rather than a selfish one. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:30.748 --> 00:00:37.008 So now, we indeed are facing many challenges in our times. 00:00:37.008 --> 00:00:40.325 Those could be personal challenges. 00:00:40.325 --> 00:00:44.481 Our own mind can be our best friend or our worst enemy. 00:00:44.481 --> 00:00:49.775 There's also societal challenges: 00:00:49.775 --> 00:00:51.586 poverty in the midst of plenty, 00:00:51.586 --> 00:00:54.964 inequalities, conflict, injustice. 00:00:54.964 --> 00:00:59.120 And then there are the new challenges, which we don't expect. 00:00:59.120 --> 00:01:04.263 Ten thousand years ago, there was about five million human beings on Earth. 00:01:04.263 --> 00:01:06.463 Whatever they could do, the Earth's resilience 00:01:06.463 --> 00:01:11.089 will soon heal human activities. 00:01:11.089 --> 00:01:13.775 After the Industrial and Technological Revolutions, 00:01:13.775 --> 00:01:16.178 that's not the same anymore. 00:01:16.178 --> 00:01:20.473 We are now the major agent of impact on our Earth. 00:01:20.473 --> 00:01:25.187 We've entered the Anthropocene, the era of human beings. 00:01:25.187 --> 00:01:28.170 So in a way, if we were to say, 00:01:28.170 --> 00:01:32.326 "we need to continue this endless growth, 00:01:32.326 --> 00:01:35.786 endless use of material resources", 00:01:35.786 --> 00:01:38.514 it's like saying if this man was saying, 00:01:38.514 --> 00:01:43.866 and I heard the former heads of state, I won't mention who, saying, 00:01:43.866 --> 00:01:47.395 "Five years ago, we were at the edge of the precipice. 00:01:47.395 --> 00:01:49.972 Today we made a big step forward." 00:01:51.017 --> 00:01:53.900 So this edge is the same 00:01:53.900 --> 00:01:57.204 which have been defined by scientists 00:01:57.204 --> 00:01:59.654 as the planetary boundaries, 00:01:59.654 --> 00:02:03.705 and within those boundaries, they can carry a number of factors. 00:02:03.705 --> 00:02:09.231 We can still prosper, humanity can still prosper for 150,000 years 00:02:09.231 --> 00:02:12.563 if we keep the same stability of climate 00:02:12.563 --> 00:02:15.721 as in the Holocene for the last 10,000 years. 00:02:15.721 --> 00:02:21.479 But this depends on choosing a voluntary simplicity, 00:02:21.479 --> 00:02:24.160 growing qualitatively, not quantitatively. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:24.160 --> 00:02:26.854 So in 1900, as you can see, 00:02:26.854 --> 00:02:30.394 we were well within the limits of safety. 00:02:30.394 --> 00:02:35.793 Now, in 1950 came the great acceleration. 00:02:35.793 --> 00:02:38.872 Now hold your breath, not too long, 00:02:38.872 --> 00:02:40.742 to imagine what comes next. 00:02:40.742 --> 00:02:44.917 Now we have vastly overrun 00:02:44.917 --> 00:02:47.355 some of the planetary boundaries. 00:02:47.355 --> 00:02:49.631 Just to take biodiversity, 00:02:49.631 --> 00:02:53.376 at the current rate, in 2050, 00:02:53.376 --> 00:02:55.999 30 percent of all species on Earth 00:02:55.999 --> 00:02:57.718 will have disappeared. 00:02:57.718 --> 00:03:03.545 Even if we keep their DNA in some fridge, that's not going to be reversible. 00:03:03.545 --> 00:03:05.786 So here I am sitting in front 00:03:05.786 --> 00:03:10.836 of a 7,000 meters high, 21,000 feet glacier in Bhutan. 00:03:10.836 --> 00:03:17.987 At the third pole, two thousand glaciers are melting fast, faster than the Arctic. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:17.987 --> 00:03:21.934 So what can we do in that situation? 00:03:21.934 --> 00:03:26.821 Well, however complex, 00:03:26.821 --> 00:03:29.983 politically, economically, scientifically 00:03:29.983 --> 00:03:32.131 the question of the environment is, 00:03:32.131 --> 00:03:38.678 it simply boils down to a question of altruism versus selfishness. 00:03:38.678 --> 00:03:42.537 I'm a Marxist of the Groucho tendency. 00:03:42.537 --> 00:03:43.972 (Laughter) 00:03:43.972 --> 00:03:47.641 Groucho Marx said, "Why should I care for future generations? 00:03:47.641 --> 00:03:49.301 What did they do for me?" 00:03:49.301 --> 00:03:50.997 (Laughter) 00:03:50.997 --> 00:03:55.430 Unfortunately, I heard the billionaire Steven Forbes, 00:03:55.430 --> 00:03:59.118 on Fox News, saying exactly the same thing, but seriously. 00:03:59.118 --> 00:04:01.293 He was told about the rise of the ocean, 00:04:01.293 --> 00:04:04.640 and he said, "I find it absurd to change my behavior today 00:04:04.640 --> 00:04:08.165 for something that will happen in a hundred years." 00:04:08.165 --> 00:04:10.593 So if you don't care for future generations, 00:04:10.593 --> 00:04:13.494 just go for it. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:13.494 --> 00:04:16.420 So one of the main challenges of our times 00:04:16.420 --> 00:04:20.042 is to reconcile three time scales. 00:04:20.088 --> 00:04:22.003 The short term of the economy, 00:04:22.003 --> 00:04:26.125 the ups and downs of the stock market, the end of the year accounts. 00:04:26.125 --> 00:04:28.621 The midterm of the quality of life: 00:04:28.621 --> 00:04:34.205 what is the quality every moment of our life and over 10 years and 20 years? 00:04:34.205 --> 00:04:37.734 And the long term of the environment. 00:04:37.734 --> 00:04:39.823 When the environmentalists speak with economists, 00:04:39.823 --> 00:04:42.982 it's like a schizophrenic dialogue, completely incoherent. 00:04:42.982 --> 00:04:45.814 They don't speak the same language. 00:04:45.814 --> 00:04:49.354 Now for the last 10 years, I went around the world 00:04:49.354 --> 00:04:53.452 meeting economists, scientists, neuroscientists, environmentalists, 00:04:53.452 --> 00:04:56.262 philosophers, thinkers in the Himalayas, 00:04:56.262 --> 00:04:57.910 all over the place. 00:04:57.910 --> 00:05:01.834 It seems to be, there's only one concept 00:05:01.834 --> 00:05:04.794 that can reconcile those three time scales. 00:05:04.794 --> 00:05:09.368 It is simply having more consideration for others. 00:05:09.368 --> 00:05:11.922 If you have more consideration for others, 00:05:11.922 --> 00:05:14.569 you will be having a caring economics, 00:05:14.569 --> 00:05:17.051 where finances are the service of society 00:05:17.051 --> 00:05:20.319 and not society at the service of finances. 00:05:20.319 --> 00:05:23.447 You will not play at the casino with the resources that people 00:05:23.447 --> 00:05:25.583 have entrusted you with. 00:05:25.583 --> 00:05:28.379 If you have more consideration for others, 00:05:28.379 --> 00:05:31.806 you will make sure that you remedy inequality, 00:05:31.806 --> 00:05:35.346 that you bring some kind of well being within the society, 00:05:35.346 --> 00:05:37.176 in education, at the workplace. 00:05:37.176 --> 00:05:40.599 Otherwise, a nation that is the most powerful and the richest, 00:05:40.599 --> 00:05:42.246 everyone is miserable. 00:05:42.246 --> 00:05:44.146 What's the point? 00:05:44.146 --> 00:05:46.363 And if you have more consideration for others, 00:05:46.363 --> 00:05:49.649 you are not going to ransack that planet that we have 00:05:49.649 --> 00:05:54.083 and that at the current rate, we don't have three planets to continue that way. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:54.083 --> 00:05:56.556 So the question is, 00:05:56.556 --> 00:06:00.387 okay, altruism is the answer, it's not just a novel ideal, 00:06:00.387 --> 00:06:04.021 but can it be a real, pragmatic solution? 00:06:04.021 --> 00:06:06.649 And first of all, does it exist, 00:06:06.649 --> 00:06:10.213 true altruism, or are we so selfish? 00:06:10.213 --> 00:06:15.594 So some philosophers thought we were irredeemably selfish. 00:06:15.594 --> 00:06:21.195 You know, but are we really all just like rascals? 00:06:21.195 --> 00:06:23.819 That's good news, isn't it? 00:06:23.819 --> 00:06:26.548 Many philosophers like Hobbes have said so. 00:06:26.548 --> 00:06:29.429 But not everyone looks like a rascal, 00:06:29.429 --> 00:06:32.572 or is man a wolf for man? 00:06:32.572 --> 00:06:35.150 But this guy doesn't seem too bad. 00:06:35.150 --> 00:06:38.493 He's one of my friends in Tibet. 00:06:38.493 --> 00:06:40.652 He's very kind. 00:06:40.652 --> 00:06:43.937 So now, we love cooperation. 00:06:43.937 --> 00:06:47.265 There's no better joy than work together. 00:06:47.265 --> 00:06:48.611 Isn't it? 00:06:48.611 --> 00:06:52.350 And then not only humans. 00:06:52.350 --> 00:06:54.837 Then, of course, there's the struggle for life, 00:06:54.837 --> 00:06:59.768 the survival of the fittest, Social Darwinism. 00:06:59.768 --> 00:07:05.015 But in evolution, cooperation, though competition exists, of course. 00:07:05.015 --> 00:07:08.382 Cooperation is much more creative 00:07:08.382 --> 00:07:10.723 to go to increased level of complexity. 00:07:10.723 --> 00:07:15.414 We are super cooperators and we should even go further. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:15.414 --> 00:07:19.153 So now, on top of that, 00:07:19.153 --> 00:07:21.697 the quality of human relationships. 00:07:21.697 --> 00:07:23.655 You know, the OECD did a survey 00:07:23.655 --> 00:07:25.958 among 10 factors, including income, everything, 00:07:25.958 --> 00:07:29.208 the first one that people said that's the main thing for my happiness 00:07:29.208 --> 00:07:32.621 is quality of social relationships. 00:07:32.621 --> 00:07:35.908 Not only in humans. 00:07:35.908 --> 00:07:38.844 And look at those great grandmothers. 00:07:38.844 --> 00:07:41.386 So now, 00:07:41.386 --> 00:07:44.590 this idea that we go deep within, 00:07:44.590 --> 00:07:46.890 we are irredeemably selfish, 00:07:46.890 --> 00:07:49.224 this is armchair science. 00:07:49.224 --> 00:07:51.491 There is not a single sociological study, 00:07:51.491 --> 00:07:54.737 psychological study, that's ever shown that. 00:07:54.737 --> 00:07:56.977 Rather, the opposite. 00:07:56.977 --> 00:08:00.355 My friend, Daniel Batson, spent a whole life 00:08:00.355 --> 00:08:03.118 putting people in the lab in very complex situations, 00:08:03.118 --> 00:08:05.637 and of course we are sometimes selfish 00:08:05.637 --> 00:08:07.472 and some people more than others. 00:08:07.472 --> 00:08:10.149 But he found that systematically, no matter what, 00:08:10.149 --> 00:08:13.149 there's a significant number of people 00:08:13.149 --> 00:08:16.504 who do behave altruistically, no matter what. 00:08:16.504 --> 00:08:19.696 Now if you see someone deeply wounded, great suffering, 00:08:19.696 --> 00:08:22.318 you might just help out of empathic distress. 00:08:22.318 --> 00:08:24.688 You can't stand it, so it's better to help 00:08:24.688 --> 00:08:26.448 than keep on looking at that person. 00:08:26.448 --> 00:08:28.484 So we tested all that, and in the end, 00:08:28.484 --> 00:08:34.284 he said, "clearly people can be altruistic." So that's good news. 00:08:34.284 --> 00:08:39.896 And even further, we should look at the banality of goodness. 00:08:39.896 --> 00:08:41.730 Now look at here. 00:08:41.730 --> 00:08:46.130 When we come out, we are going to say, "That's so nice, there was no fistfight 00:08:46.130 --> 00:08:49.067 while this mob was thinking about altruism." 00:08:49.067 --> 00:08:51.099 No, we expect that, isn't it? 00:08:51.099 --> 00:08:54.848 If there was a fistfight, we would speak of that for months. 00:08:54.848 --> 00:08:58.029 So the banality of goodness is something that doesn't attract your attention, 00:08:58.029 --> 00:08:59.807 but it exists. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:59.807 --> 00:09:06.993 Now, look at this. Look at this. 00:09:08.107 --> 00:09:09.663 Okay. 00:09:09.663 --> 00:09:12.054 So some psychologists said, 00:09:12.054 --> 00:09:15.031 when I tell them I run 140 humanitarian projects 00:09:15.031 --> 00:09:17.875 in the Himalayas that give me so much joy, 00:09:17.875 --> 00:09:21.009 they said, "oh, I see, you work for the warm glow. 00:09:21.009 --> 00:09:24.063 That is not altruistic. You just feel good." 00:09:24.063 --> 00:09:26.991 You think this guy, when he jumped in front of the train, 00:09:26.991 --> 00:09:29.277 he thought, "I'm going to feel so good when this is over?" 00:09:29.277 --> 00:09:31.563 (Laughter). 00:09:31.563 --> 00:09:33.849 But that's not the end of it. 00:09:33.849 --> 00:09:36.391 They say, well, but when you interviewed him, he said, 00:09:36.391 --> 00:09:39.526 "I had no choice, I had to jump, of course." 00:09:39.526 --> 00:09:41.947 He has no choice. Automatic behavior. 00:09:41.947 --> 00:09:44.342 It's neither selfish nor altruistic. 00:09:44.342 --> 00:09:45.572 No choice. 00:09:45.572 --> 00:09:47.624 Well, of course, this guy's not going to think for half an hour, 00:09:47.624 --> 00:09:49.841 "should I give my hand, not give my hand?" 00:09:49.841 --> 00:09:54.056 He does it. There is a choice, but it's obvious, it's immediate. 00:09:54.056 --> 00:09:56.037 And then, also, here they have a choice. 00:09:56.037 --> 00:09:58.738 (Laughter). NOTE Paragraph 00:09:58.738 --> 00:10:01.080 So now, there are people who had choice, 00:10:01.080 --> 00:10:03.258 like Pastor André Trocmé and his wife, 00:10:03.258 --> 00:10:05.457 and the whole village of Chambon-sur-Lignon in France. 00:10:05.457 --> 00:10:09.225 For the whole Second World War, they saved 3,500 Jews, 00:10:09.225 --> 00:10:11.872 gave them shelter, brought them to Switzerland, 00:10:11.872 --> 00:10:15.517 against all odds, at the risk of their lives and that of their family. 00:10:15.517 --> 00:10:17.734 So altruism does exist. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:17.734 --> 00:10:19.279 So what is altruism? 00:10:19.279 --> 00:10:23.121 It is the wish "may others be happy and find the cause of happiness." 00:10:23.121 --> 00:10:28.786 Now empathy is the effective resonance or cognitive resonance that tells you, 00:10:28.786 --> 00:10:31.537 this personality is joyful, this person suffers. 00:10:31.537 --> 00:10:34.463 But empathy enough is not sufficient. 00:10:34.463 --> 00:10:36.686 If you keep on being confronted with suffering, 00:10:36.686 --> 00:10:39.447 you might have empathic distress, burnout, 00:10:39.447 --> 00:10:43.507 so you need the greater sphere of loving kindness. 00:10:43.507 --> 00:10:46.324 With Daniel Singer at the Max Planck Institute of Leipzig, 00:10:46.324 --> 00:10:48.797 we showed that the brain network 00:10:48.797 --> 00:10:52.385 for empathy and loving kindness are different. 00:10:52.385 --> 00:10:54.416 Now, that's all well done, 00:10:54.416 --> 00:11:00.000 so we got that from evolution, from maternal care, parental love, 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:01.625 but we need to extend that. 00:11:01.625 --> 00:11:04.968 Can we extend it to other species? NOTE Paragraph 00:11:04.968 --> 00:11:09.375 Now, if we want a more altruistic society, we need two things: 00:11:09.375 --> 00:11:12.932 individual change and societal change. 00:11:12.932 --> 00:11:15.150 So is individual change possible? 00:11:15.150 --> 00:11:18.349 Two thousand years of contemplative study said yes, it is. 00:11:18.349 --> 00:11:21.641 Now, 15 years of collaboration with neuroscience and epigeneticists 00:11:21.641 --> 00:11:26.435 said yes, our brains change when you train in altruism. 00:11:26.435 --> 00:11:30.707 So I spent 120 hours in an MRI machine. 00:11:30.707 --> 00:11:33.773 This is the first time I went after two and a half hours. 00:11:33.773 --> 00:11:35.095 And then, the result 00:11:35.095 --> 00:11:37.487 -- I've been published in many scientific papers -- 00:11:37.487 --> 00:11:40.749 it shows without ambiguity that there are structural change 00:11:40.749 --> 00:11:42.432 and functional change in the brain 00:11:42.432 --> 00:11:44.638 when you train the altruistic love. 00:11:44.638 --> 00:11:46.252 Just to give you an idea: 00:11:46.252 --> 00:11:49.073 this is the meditator at rest on the left, 00:11:49.073 --> 00:11:52.776 meditation in compassion meditation, you see all the activity, 00:11:52.776 --> 00:11:54.890 and then the control group at rest, 00:11:54.890 --> 00:11:57.512 nothing happened, in meditation, nothing happened. 00:11:57.512 --> 00:11:59.440 They have not been trained. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:59.440 --> 00:12:02.551 So, do you need 50,000 hours of meditation? 00:12:02.551 --> 00:12:03.657 No, you don't. 00:12:03.657 --> 00:12:05.657 Four weeks, 20 minutes a day, 00:12:05.657 --> 00:12:07.838 of caring, mindfulness meditation 00:12:07.838 --> 00:12:14.141 already brings a structural change in the brain compared to a control group. 00:12:14.141 --> 00:12:17.879 That's only 20 minutes a day for four weeks. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:17.879 --> 00:12:20.967 Even with preschoolers, we showed in Madison, 00:12:20.967 --> 00:12:26.482 eight weeks program: gratitude, loving kindness, cooperation, 00:12:26.482 --> 00:12:28.157 mindful breathing, you would say, 00:12:28.157 --> 00:12:29.832 "Oh, they're just preschoolers." 00:12:29.832 --> 00:12:31.508 Look after eight weeks. 00:12:31.508 --> 00:12:33.958 The pro-social behavior, that's the blue line, 00:12:33.958 --> 00:12:39.612 and then comes the ultimate scientific test, the stickers test. 00:12:39.612 --> 00:12:43.350 Before, you determine for each child who is their best friend in the class, 00:12:43.350 --> 00:12:47.425 their least favorite child, the unknown child, and the sick child, 00:12:47.425 --> 00:12:50.129 and they have to give stickers away. 00:12:50.129 --> 00:12:54.181 So before the intervention, they give most of it to their best friend. 00:12:54.181 --> 00:12:57.640 Four, five years old, 20 minutes, three times a week. 00:12:57.640 --> 00:13:01.123 After the intervention, no more discrimination. 00:13:01.123 --> 00:13:03.422 The same amount of stickers to their best friend 00:13:03.422 --> 00:13:05.488 and the least favorite child. 00:13:05.488 --> 00:13:08.866 You know, that's something we should do in all the schools in the world. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:08.866 --> 00:13:10.430 Now where do we go from there? NOTE Paragraph 00:13:10.430 --> 00:13:14.998 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:13:14.998 --> 00:13:17.529 When the Dalai Lama heard that, his solution, he said, 00:13:17.529 --> 00:13:20.965 "You go to 10 schools, 100 schools, the U.N., the whole world." NOTE Paragraph 00:13:20.965 --> 00:13:22.649 So now where do we go from there? 00:13:22.649 --> 00:13:24.762 Individual change is possible. 00:13:24.762 --> 00:13:27.768 Now do we have to wait for an altruistic gene 00:13:27.768 --> 00:13:29.951 to be in the human race? 00:13:29.951 --> 00:13:33.132 That will take 50,000 years, too much for the environment. 00:13:33.132 --> 00:13:37.567 Fortunately, there is the evolution of culture. 00:13:37.567 --> 00:13:40.979 Cultures, as specialists have shown, 00:13:40.979 --> 00:13:43.661 change faster than genes. 00:13:43.661 --> 00:13:44.829 That's the good news. 00:13:44.829 --> 00:13:48.189 Look at attitudes towards war has dramatically changed over the years. 00:13:48.189 --> 00:13:51.300 So now, individual change and cultural change 00:13:51.300 --> 00:13:53.352 mutually fashion each other, 00:13:53.352 --> 00:13:56.756 and yes, we can achieve a more altruistic society. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:56.756 --> 00:13:58.358 So where do we go from there? 00:13:58.358 --> 00:14:00.517 Myself, I will go back to the East. 00:14:00.517 --> 00:14:03.977 Now, we treat 100,000 patients a year in our projects. 00:14:03.977 --> 00:14:05.916 We have 25,000 kids in school, 00:14:05.916 --> 00:14:07.333 four percent overhead. 00:14:07.333 --> 00:14:09.921 Some people say, "Well, your stuff works in practice, 00:14:09.921 --> 00:14:12.185 but does it work in theory?" 00:14:12.185 --> 00:14:15.807 So there's always the positive deviance. 00:14:15.807 --> 00:14:19.266 So I will also go back to my hermitage to find the inner resources 00:14:19.266 --> 00:14:21.425 to better serve others. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:21.425 --> 00:14:24.362 But on the more global level, what can we do? 00:14:24.362 --> 00:14:25.973 We need three things. 00:14:25.973 --> 00:14:28.635 Enhancing cooperation: 00:14:28.635 --> 00:14:32.361 cooperative learning in the school instead of competitive learning, 00:14:32.361 --> 00:14:35.612 Unconditional cooperation within corporations. 00:14:35.612 --> 00:14:40.209 There can be some competition between corporations, but not within. 00:14:40.209 --> 00:14:42.399 We need sustainable harmony. 00:14:42.399 --> 00:14:44.411 I love this term. 00:14:44.411 --> 00:14:46.524 Not sustainable growth anymore. 00:14:46.524 --> 00:14:50.030 Sustainable harmony means now we will reduce inequality. 00:14:50.030 --> 00:14:53.826 In the future, we do more with less, 00:14:53.826 --> 00:14:57.200 and we continue to grow qualitatively, 00:14:57.200 --> 00:14:58.825 not quantitatively. 00:14:58.825 --> 00:15:00.985 We need caring economics. 00:15:00.985 --> 00:15:06.766 The old economics cannot deal with poverty in the midst of plenty, 00:15:06.766 --> 00:15:09.008 cannot deal with the problem of the common goods 00:15:09.008 --> 00:15:11.096 of the atmosphere, of the oceans. 00:15:11.096 --> 00:15:12.779 We need a caring economics. 00:15:12.779 --> 00:15:14.788 If you say economics should be compassionate, 00:15:14.788 --> 00:15:16.193 they say, "That's not our job." 00:15:16.193 --> 00:15:19.838 But if you say they don't care, that looks bad. 00:15:19.838 --> 00:15:22.967 We need local commitment, global responsibility. 00:15:22.967 --> 00:15:28.307 We need to extend altruism to the other 1.6 million other species. 00:15:28.307 --> 00:15:31.732 Sentient beings who are co-citizens in this world. 00:15:31.732 --> 00:15:35.064 and we need to dare altruism. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:35.064 --> 00:15:38.605 So long life to the altruistic revolution. 00:15:38.605 --> 00:15:43.155 Viva la revolucion de altruismo. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:43.155 --> 00:15:51.665 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:15:51.665 --> 00:15:53.116 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:53.116 --> 00:15:54.688 (Applause)