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Thursday, July 12, 2012

Why We Do What We Do......

YouTube is an amazing source of information, entertainment, etc.  Within the last couple of years, one of the best resources I've discovered on the web for really well made videos about topics of incredible interest has been the TED talks.

Per Wikipedia:

TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading."
TED was founded in 1984 as a one-off event. The annual conference began in 1990, in Monterey, California. TED's early emphasis was technology and design, consistent with its origins in the Silicon Valley. The events are now held in Long Beach and Palm Springs in the U.S. and in Europe and Asia, offering live streaming of the talks. They address an increasingly wide range of topics within the research and practice of science and culture. The speakers are given a maximum of 18 minutes to present their ideas in the most innovative and engaging ways they can. Past presenters include Bill ClintonJane GoodallMalcolm GladwellAl GoreGordon BrownRichard DawkinsBill Gates, educatorSalman KhanGoogle founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and many Nobel Prize winners. TED's current curator is the British former computer journalist and magazine publisher Chris Anderson.
From 2005 to 2009, three $100,000 TED Prizes were awarded annually to help its winners realize a chosen wish to change the world. From 2010, in a changed selection process, a single winner is chosen to ensure that TED can maximize its efforts in achieving the winner's wish. Each winner unveils their wish at the main annual conference.
Since June 2006, the talks have been offered for free viewing online, under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Creative Commons license, through TED.com. As of November 2011, over 1,050 talks are available free online. By January 2009 they had been viewed 50 million times. In June 2011, the viewing figure stood at more than 500 million, reflecting a still growing global audience.
While searching through the list of TED talks on YouTube, I found the following video of a talk by Tony Robbins on "Why We Do What We Do and How We Can Do It Better."  Personally, the focus of the talk for me is about much more than that.....what drives us?  Yes, he gives us his view and it clicks for me.  But, beyond that, what is it that fulfills our lives?  Is it amassing material objects?  Earning personal fame and recognition?  He says what really fulfills us is giving to others; recognizing that I is partial and that each of our worlds is happiest when we recognize the "we" that we belong to --
the we of humankind, when we reach out to give of ourselves to other people.

It is approximately 25 minutes long but well worth watching (IMHO).  Below, Tony Robbins delivering a remarkable TED talk:



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