YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → How to change the world: John Paul Flintoff at TEDxAthens 2012

How to change the world: John Paul Flintoff at TEDxAthens 2012 — Transcript

by TEDx Talks · 3,990 words · 474 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:00Transcriber: Elaine Cheng Reviewer: Chryssa R. Takahashi
0:09If you had the chance, would you change the world?
0:13(Audience): Yes
0:14Thank you. There is a little delay.
0:16Of course you would. Because I didn't say, save the world,
0:20I said change the world, improve it.
0:24Make it better than we found it. And we all want to do that, don't we?
0:28Great! Because I'm here with the happy news
0:31that you can, and you do, and you will change the world.
0:35But all too often, partly the reason for your hesitation just now
0:38we often think, "Gosh changing the world, that's going to be really hard work,
0:42perhaps impossible, probably not much fun."
0:47And we leave it to someone else, someone really important.
0:49They'll do it. And that's a real shame,
0:52because we are all capable of changing the world
0:56and I am trying to explain how it's going to work for you individually.
0:59I am not going to tell you what to do.
1:01So one of the reasons why we tend to hold back that way
1:04has to do with the way that we've been taught history.
1:08Essentially we are told that it is about
1:09the kind of the things that certain big individuals,
1:11usually men, have done over the time.
1:13The great British historian, Carlyle,
1:15once said that "History is but the biography of great men."
1:20And if you don't happen to think of yourself
1:21as a great man already
1:23that may leave you feeling a little bit left out.
1:26But luckily, happily, Leo Tolstoy, the novelist, came along.
1:29This is him in his glory. And Tolstoy came along and said that history
1:33is more accurately considered to be an infinitely large number
1:37of infinitesimally small things
1:40that we all do and don't do everyday.
1:45What does that mean?
1:46It's easy to understand what he means
1:48if you think about an election.
1:49You vote for this party, or you vote for that party
1:52or you hate them all so you don't vote for any of them.
1:54But we all know that whatever you do,
1:56has an affect on the outcome.
1:58It helps to determine the final result, we all know that.
2:01But what Tolstoy is saying, is that everything you do
2:03and everything you don't do, has an affect on how things are.
2:06It shapes the way the world is.
2:09It's really useful and healthy
2:11and satisfying to take some responsibility
2:13for yourself in that sense.
2:15So what can we do about it?
2:17We want to recognize
2:18that we all make history all the time.
2:20And if you don't recognize that,
2:21if you don't realize what I've just tried to say
2:24you may be one of those people
2:25who complains a lot about the "status quo".
2:28And the Status quo is a horrible abstract noun.
2:31Nobody likes it, it feels really oppressive,
2:32but if you notice that you have some responsibility
2:34then that's good.
2:35So I'm going to offer you another way
2:37to think about the status quo.
2:39I want you to think instead of a powerful king on the stage.
2:42If you like, you can shut your eyes
2:44and imagine what a powerful king on the stage looked like.
2:46It might be a really big crown,
2:48it might be a golden throne,
2:50and I would say, "No! Those only tell you that he is the king."
2:53What makes him powerful?
2:55What makes him powerful are all that other people
2:57on the stage flat on their faces before him.
3:00And if all of those people sat up,
3:01turned their backs on him, went to sleep,
3:04told jokes, smoked cigarettes, played the trumpet,
3:08it would have an enormous effect, wouldn't it?
3:09He would no longer be a powerful king
3:11even without him doing anything differently.
3:13So all of the power comes from those over whom it is exercised.
3:17And you can imagine, if you imagine that stage,
3:19imagine just one of those people getting up, turning their back,
3:21and playing the trumpet,
3:22it would have an amazing sensational effect, wouldn't it?
3:25It's a kind of extraordinary thing.
3:26It's like a human version of the butterfly effect
3:29that physicists talk of.
3:30One flap of the wings
3:32and you have a really distinct change in the weather.
3:34And so it's really rather wonderful.
3:36We can see it when I talk about the stage
3:38but what about in real life?
3:39What about your life? Your everyday life?
3:41If you don't like the status quo,
3:43how can you get up
3:44and turn your back and do something better instead?
3:46Well, there are lots of ways
3:47but I want to have a little experiment in this room.
3:50I want to see what the human butterfly effect can look like,
3:53and what I'm going to ask you to do,
3:54is one of the most beautiful things you can do,
3:56to be a human butterfly.
3:59Don't do anything yet, okay?
4:00Turn to your neighbor,
4:01and it's going to be someone you don't already know,
4:03so its someone behind you or in front of you.
4:04And I want you just to smile,
4:06and say what your name is and introduce yourself
4:08because you don't get to choose your neighbors.
4:10The people who are sitting near you are your neighbors.
4:12Now I've explained it and given to you a little bit of extra time,
4:15because I know that some people are listening on translation.
4:17I don't want them to be shocked by you turning around
4:19and introducing yourself before they understand.
4:21So now if anyone is listening on translation
4:23can you put your hand up
4:24to tell me that you've already understood this?
4:26OK. Thank you.
4:27So now please just quickly introduce yourself to each other.
4:29Now. Off you go!
4:33(Chatter)
4:36Hello, John-Paul. Nice to meet you.
4:41Thank you. Thank you. That's great!
4:45What a lovely sight!
4:47(Applause)
4:49Congratulations to all of you. Thank you.
4:53It's really important to recognize that these neighbors around you
4:56are not the ones you chose but they're the ones you've got.
4:59And it's really lovely to introduce yourself
5:01in a friendly way to your neighbors,
5:02but it's easy at TED because everyone here is obviously really lovely.
5:05But I want you to promise, that when you go home,
5:08you will introduce yourself to another neighbor,
5:10who is not someone who you chose,
5:12and just see if you can spread a little bit of the love that way.
5:15So that's a little thing you can do.
5:16Meanwhile, I want to move on
5:18and I want to talk about certain types of political action we can do,
5:20other than saying hello to our neighbors.
5:23The great American political scientist Gene Sharp,
5:27has spent a lifetime collecting
5:28198 forms of non-violent political action, an amazing variety.
5:33He wants to encourage people to use
5:35some of the things that have been used before.
5:37So he has put all of these forms
5:39into basically three groups.
5:41The first one is highlighting an issue:
5:44That can be drawing attention to an issue
5:45that nobody knows about,
5:47or it could be drawing attention to an issue that
5:49everyone knows about but they do not take it seriously.
5:50So highlighting an issue is very important
5:52and we can all do that.
5:53I'm sure lots of people in this room
5:54have already posted things on Facebook or tweeted about them.
5:57And that's very light-weight and easy, but valuable.
6:00But sometimes highlighting an issue can be really dangerous.
6:02You're putting yourself at some risk.
6:06So I'm going to tell you about the White Rose group.
6:08That's this group in this picture
6:09who are now national heroes in Germany
6:11because they stood up to fascism.
6:13And they didn't want to be a part of what the Nazi regime were doing,
6:17so they sent letters to their fellow citizens.
6:20They wrote letters, they printed them on a machine
6:22and they sent them at random, to people throughout the country
6:25whose names and addresses they got from the phone book.
6:27Can you imagine the effect when you get one of those letters?
6:30In order to give themselves the appearacnce
6:32of being a great nation-wide network,
6:34they also, at great risk, travelled across the country
6:36with their printing press and with their letters,
6:38so they could send them from Dusseldorf to Cologne
6:40and Dresden to Berlin and Munich, and you get the picture.
6:43So that's what they did.
6:44So sometimes just highlighting an issue
6:46can be incredibly dangerous stuff.
6:47It can be easy, it can be dangerous.
6:49The second category is withdrawing your consent
6:52from something you disapprove of.
6:54So I could tell you about Moses and the Israelites
6:57who didn't like the way the Pharaoh
6:59was carrying on, so they got out of Egypt.
7:01It's quite simple withdrawal of consent.
7:03But I want to tell you about Rosa Parks,
7:06a seamstress who, one day, in the 1950s,
7:09decided on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama,
7:11that she was not going to give up her seat
7:13to a white person as the rules required.
7:17And one reason why I like her story, is that she said
7:19she was too tired to go along with the system any longer.
7:22So you don't have to be full of energy and enthusiasm
7:24to change things. You can just be quite tired.
7:25Another reason why I like Rosa Parks' story
7:28is that she didn't actually run everything that happened afterwards.
7:31That was her thing, she was a spark
7:33that led lots of other people in the black community to do amazing stuff,
7:36But she didn't run everything.
7:37So don't worry, you can start something and if it's any good,
7:39people will follow and they will take it on.
7:41That's ok, you can relax.
7:43And the third thing I like about her thing,
7:44is that she started with something very small.
7:46It's very hard to believe, with hindsight,
7:48that lots of people at the time
7:49thought that what they were doing was campaigning
7:53to change the rules about where black people
7:55were allowed to sit on buses in Montgomery, Alabama.
7:59But actually of course their success and their ambition
8:02increased over time, so within a very remarkably short period,
8:05they had desegregation across the whole of the U.S.,
8:07which is a previously unthinkable achievement.
8:10So you can start with something small
8:11and you will become more ambitious as a result of it.
8:15So that's withdrawing your consent.
8:16The third broad category is building
8:18a better alternative to what is currently available.
8:21So I could tell you about Charles De Gaulle
8:24who set up the French government in exile in the Second World War,
8:27bacause he didn't like the ones that was in Vichy France,
8:30but I want to tell you instead about my friend Richard Reynolds,
8:33who lives in a tower block in South London,
8:35in a rather unattractive part of London,
8:37he wouldn't mind me saying that.
8:38He lives in a high floor so he doesn't have a garden.
8:42So one day he started to go downstairs,
8:43and look around in the area where he lived,
8:45and he found bits of earth, and he would put plants down.
8:48He wasn't a very good gardener, so some of the plants died
8:51but he got better and some of the plants survived.
8:52And then some of his friends joined in,
8:54and then complete strangers joined in
8:57and then the local authority said,
8:59"You can't do that, it's not your land."
9:01But they carried on anyway,
9:02because they are Guerilla Gardeners.
9:03You see, and Richard is the leader
9:04of the worldwide Guerilla Gardening Movement,
9:06and if you look him up online, he is Richard_001.
9:09But the thing is, the reason why I mentioned this story,
9:11is that anything you do, can be an inspirational example to someone else.
9:14And Richard is an inspirational example, he is a leader.
9:16One other little thing I'd like to point out about Richard,
9:18is [that] his great blessing is he doesn't have a garden.
9:21If he'd had a garden he wouldn't be a Guerilla gardener, would he?
9:24The thing that you see is a lack or a short coming
9:25could be the thing that's really the making of you.
9:27So that's quite an encouraging thought, isn't it?
9:29So, all of these people can be an inspiring example.
9:31I've taken great care to tell you about things
9:33like desegregation or fighting fascism
9:36which is sort of terribly important
9:37but also to tell you about someone
9:39who just wants to do some gardening.
9:40Because when you're changing the world
9:42it doesn't have to be changing the whole world.
9:43And something that you perceive to be very important to you,
9:45it could be just changing your world in a way to make it better
9:47and gardening is fine.
9:49So what are you going to do? I'm not going to tell you.
9:53Often we feel like we're impaled on a kind of a paradox:
9:56We really want to do something,
9:57but we have no idea what it is going to be.
10:00And one way to resolve that
10:01is to think about the things that you enjoy.
10:06And so I want you to think about that.
10:09The positive psychologists are people who got fed up
10:13with being negative psychologists
10:14and saying what's wrong with people.
10:15They wanted to find out what's great about people
10:17and share that knowledge.
10:18So they did a test.
10:19One of the things they did,
10:20they sent out two groups of people to find out what gives people pleasure.
10:23The first was sent to do hedonism,
10:26if you like having a foot massage while eating chocolate.
10:29And the second group was sent out to do something meaningful.
10:31Meaningful to them, I'll come back to that.
10:33The results came in and the people
10:34who'd done something meaningful,
10:36had a much deeper and longer lasting sense of satisfaction
10:38than the ones who'd done the hedonism.
10:40That something about them had changed inside,
10:41they felt, I'm the sort of person who does that thing, which is nice.
10:45So, changing the world is actually nicer
10:46than having a foot massage and eating chocolate.
10:49But the thing is, what is something meaningful?
10:50You impose the meaning on what you do, not me.
10:53I can't tell you what is meaningful.
10:54I can give you an example:
10:55You could walk your neighbor's dog,
10:57and really feel resentful and really hate the whole thing
11:00and just not really be happy about it.
11:01Or you could walk your neighbors' dog,
11:03because your neighbor's unwell,
11:04and you know that they'd feel really happy
11:05for you having done it.
11:06As you would feel all puffed up with joy,
11:07you'd feel like a really great person.
11:09So the same thing, can be either good or bad.
11:11You impose meaning, not me.
11:12So you need to think what actually is something meaningful to you,
11:15and one way to do that is to ask yourself
11:16what have you done in the past to make a difference,
11:19that made you feel good.
11:20And what are the dreams that you've had.
11:22But if you really want to cut to the absolute nub of issue,
11:24you must ask yourself this question:
11:27What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?
11:31As if success was magically guaranteed.
11:32It's important to ask the question in that way.
11:34So you get rid of the boring answers
11:36that are sort of achievable,
11:37and you don't really want to do them.
11:38Go for the one that is absolutely sensational,
11:40and you are really passionate about,
11:41because then you will persist with it.
11:43So you do that. Ask yourself that question,
11:44keep that question from now to the rest of your lives.
11:46And then once you've come up with an answer,
11:48I'll hope it would be something so magnificent,
11:50you're almost embarrassed to tell anybody because it's so great.
11:52And then there is a danger:
11:53What might happen then,
11:55is you put it on a shrine and it will be like an icon.
11:57Or it will be like a beautiful painting
11:59that's been beautifully painted, has got a beautiful frame
12:01and you know just where it's going to go in the whole way at home.
12:03But nobody is painting it, so it's not going to happen.
12:07And you are using static thinking.
12:08We might want to move away from static thinking to process thinking.
12:11Instead of thinking about the end result,
12:13start thinking about it as a process.
12:15One person who can help us with that,
12:16is the german philosopher Nietzsche, who said:
12:19"Not every end is a goal. The end of a melody is not a goal."
12:23He's got a point but what does he mean?
12:24Well if you go to a concert, you don't say,
12:26"I wish this music would finish and then I can really enjoy it."
12:29You enjoy it as it goes along.
12:31So start thinking about your mission instead as a piece of music.
12:35It's already started. Can you hear it? I think it sounds great.
12:37So that's what you want to do.
12:39What is great about noticing that,
12:40it is a process instead of an end result that you are after,
12:42is you then liberate yourself to stop being freaked out
12:44by the sheer monumental scale of what you want to do,
12:46and you enjoy every step, because no one did anything
12:48in all of human kind except in small steps.
12:51And Neil Armstrong didn't wake up one morning,
12:53and said, "I'm going to the moon now."
12:54Lots of people had to go to the office and do stuff.
12:57So we can all do that.
12:59We have to notice the smalls steps
13:00and the great thing about smalls steps is they give you courage.
13:01There are mini victories, they move you onto the next small step,
13:04that's not quite so small,
13:05and so you can use those as a way to encourage yourself.
13:07So you've got your mission,
13:08you've got the need to find small steps,
13:11but if you really want to pin down the small steps,
13:12ask yourself this question:
13:14What can you do in the next 24 hours?
13:17Because if you can't do anything in the next 24 hours,
13:19what makes you think you will ever start?
13:22Ok, so you've got the mission, you've got the small steps,
13:25and now you're going to need to find some allies.
13:27You're not going to do much all on your own.
13:29So one way you can do that,
13:30is to try and draw a map of your support network,
13:32the people you already know.
13:33Do it like this, put yourself in the middle,
13:34put the names of people around the edge
13:36who give you support and to whom you give support.
13:38So on this one you can see I'm giving a lot of support to William.
13:40He is giving me nothing back.
13:42What do I do about that? I'll have to work it out.
13:44But the relationships that are most useful,
13:48and psychologists use this with addicts and alcoholics,
13:50are the ones that are reciprocal.
13:51So you can see Sonya and Ben, both are reciprocal relationships.
13:54So you might want to draw this map, it is quite interesting.
13:56And then go and ask those people for help.
13:58You must actually ask them to help you.
14:00You might think, "I can't ask, that's awful, a real imposition."
14:03But people like to be asked, because it means
14:04that they are wise and kind and generous and sensitive.
14:06But the only reason people don't like to be asked,
14:09is when they can't see a way to say no.
14:11So you say to them, "Would you help?
14:12And by the way if you can't,
14:13either now or at any time in the future, I really don't mind."
14:16And you have to mean it.
14:17And once you've asked them in that way,
14:18why would they say no?
14:19And what you have done then is liberate them
14:20to be an active part of your mission.
14:22They will want to do things, to really be part of it.
14:25And they'll phone you and say,
14:26they've seen something in the newspapers.
14:27So that's great.
14:28You may also find that there are other people,
14:30sort of activists all over the country.
14:31This is my country, the U.K.
14:32You may find people spread all over the place,
14:34and you can go and find some of those.
14:36And I want to end, by giving you some account of my own experience.
14:40Because I feel a bit dishonored,
14:41standing in front of you and say anyone could change the world,
14:44if I didn't try to say something how I've tried to do.
14:48So some years ago,
14:49I got very seriously freaked out,
14:50very depressed about climate change,
14:52and peak oil, result shortages, that are coming.
14:56And I didn't know what to do,
14:57I thought we had to change the whole way that everyone lives,
14:59we had to get much more self-sufficient, more resourceful,
15:01stop flying things around the world.
15:02Everyone has got to start growing food.
15:05They've got to start making their own clothes,
15:06doing all sorts of things like that.
15:07So I joined all the campaign groups you can imagine
15:09and there were wonderful
15:11and we did some great stuff joining these networks nationwide.
15:14After about a year,
15:16I realized we were doing some amazing stuff
15:17but I was seeing all the same faces.
15:18Lovely faces, but all the same faces.
15:20And I wanted everybody to change,
15:21not just the seasoned campaigners.
15:24And I happen around then to read a book by Alistair Mackintosh
15:26which talks about how it's no good being a campaigner,
15:29if you're not a good neighbor.
15:31And it kind of hit me in the head right there,
15:32so you know why I've now asked you
15:34to think of each other as neighbors.
15:35I felt like, what can I do with it,
15:36so I can resign from these campaigners,
15:38and I went to work on my street,
15:40and I had an allotment where I was growing my own food.
15:43And so I went to the allotment, filled a sack full of apples
15:46and I went home.
15:47And I have a wonderful beautiful wife and daughter,
15:49little daughter at the time, Nancy, and so I grabbed Nancy's hand,
15:53I didn't need to take Nancy, but she gave me courage basically.
15:56And so I took the sack and the apples,
15:57and I carried Nancy along with me.
15:59We knocked on every door, and people opened the door
16:01and I said I'm taking the risk.
16:03Yeah, a man with apples and a lovely daughter isn't a big threat.
16:06And they opened the door and I took the apples,
16:07and so that was nice to get to know people a bit better.
16:09Then, the sneaky bit was six months later
16:13but forgive me, because it came from the right place.
16:15I deliberately grew too many tomato seedlings,
16:18and I put them all in a box,
16:19and I grabbed Nancy's lovely hand again,
16:21and we walked on the street, and knocked on the doors.
16:23We'd said, "Hello", then Nancy again said, "Hello"
16:26and I said "Oh dear, I've got too many tomato seedlings"
16:29and I gave it to them, and they took them.
16:31And I know for a fact that many people in my street
16:33that year for the first time started growing food.
16:35So I hadn't had to freak them out about climate change or resort shortages.
16:39I just got them growing a plant,
16:40that was kind of the solution.
16:41So I was very lucky, it was possible in that way,
16:43to find the happy solution that way.
16:45Nancy drew a picture, this is a reenactment for you.
16:49So I had been lucky
16:51and by chance I discovered something that's really important
16:54which is: Try to emphasize the positive.
16:56Because as the late philosopher Reynold Williams once said,
16:59"The key is not to make despair convincing,
17:02but to make hope possible."
17:05You are on a journey, it starts now.
17:08You might as well make it fun.
17:09Thank you.
17:11(Applause)

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of How to change the world: John Paul Flintoff at TEDxAthens 2012 by TEDx Talks, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 3,990 words across 474 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, translation to 100+ languages, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.