The silly and the profound

Every morning and evening, I ride the tram with a selection of some of the most intelligent, forward-thinking, witty and clever people in the world. They’re all packed tightly and conveniently into my phone, approximately 10 at a time. It’s the TED talk podcast. I’m a big fan. Look it up in iTunes and subscribe, it’s brilliant stuff. In case you’ve not heard of TED, check out <http://ted.com/> then come back here and keep reading. It’s okay, I’ll wait. 

I started at the beginning, and have watched 3 or 4 talks a day. I’m currently up to TED 2009 or so. I’ve resisted talking about them here in the past (how does one choose brilliant standouts out of a field of brilliant standouts?) but the two I watched this morning moved me to talk about them. First was a talk by Mary Roach, author of a book called “Bonk”, whose talk was called “10 things you don’t know about orgasm”.

http://blog.ted.com/2009/05/20/10_things_you_d/ It’s worth watching if only for the video in the middle of a man bothering a pig. I was trying not to be the creepy guy laughing in the corner of the tram, but I don’t think it worked. I was the creepy guy twitching and making strange guttural throaty sounds in the corner of the tram. Hilarious.

After that was over, there was time for one more. So I watched the next one in my queue, which turned out to be absolutely profound. Liz Coleman, the speaker, started off by tearing a strip off traditional Western liberal arts higher education, then showing us the way forward to a more holistic educational method. If you care about learning, watch it now. http://blog.ted.com/2009/06/01/a_call_to_reinv/

I share many of her thoughts about a good liberal arts education. When I was in school, I yearned for something like what she was describing - but since I didn’t know what it was called, or couldn’t even articulate what it was that I wanted, I wasn’t really able to find it in the school system. I did recognise intuitively that higher education is designed to create people who specialise in things - and that wasn’t very useful if everyone went and did that. For whatever reason, I knew that it would be much better for me to have a broad understanding of a number of topics. This isn’t to say that experts and specialists aren’t required - of course they are! - but the social and economic requirements for subject matter experts need to be balanced with the requirement to have people who understand a little about a lot. Part of Liz Coleman’s argument is that there are too many specialists, and not enough generalists.

Ultimately, this direction (such that it is) in my life has served me very well. For a while it was more difficult to get a job, because I didn’t have enough experience, and I didn’t have a piece of paper. But now that I have much more experience, the piece of paper isn’t all that important anymore. And I’m still learning. Half of the books by the side of my bed are nonfiction. I watch several TED talks a day, and give myself time to reflect on them, and think about how they may connect with my life. I encourage you to watch these talks, gentle reader, they will expand your mind into areas that you hitherto didn’t know existed. You will discover amazing things about the world, and you will get a taste of a proper liberal arts education.

And you’ll watch a man bother a pig.