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What I’ve come to tell you here today
is an element of inspiration.
To share an idea and try to instill, inside the minds
and hearts of each of you the fostering of this community,
and the fostering of some things which are absolutely important.
This is a very revealing and very important sentence.
It reveals a very relevant aspect of what we’ve seen here today.
For each and every nation there comes a moment when
it thinks of itself as the chosen one.
And it is then that it brings forth both its best and its worst.
And us, we are, we have been chosen.
Brazil is a chosen nation.
And it is out of concern for this, and with this vision, that this event is born,
that many other things are happening.
This is evident,
this moment is evident, from the things that are most unknown to us,
such as biotechnology, to the things that are most familiar to us.
If anyone has any doubt that we’ve been indeed chosen,
nothing better for a Brazilian,
nothing more visible for a Brazilian than hosting the World Cup.
And as if that weren't enough, it went on.
The Olympics.
And if we need other dimensions, beyond the symbology of the Olympics,
which means a lot already,
we can look at the cover of this week’s The Economist.
Beautiful, isn’t it? Nice art.
I, as a researcher, have the great privilege of monitoring young people,
we hold about 8 panels, monthly,
to monitor some of the developments we make for some brands,
for some institutions,
and in this panels we can really grasp the "zeitgeist",
the feeling of the age we’re living in.
And I have to tell you:
we’ve never seen a period of such self-esteem
within the perspective of the Brazilian youth.
And we lovingly refer to this movement,
within Box, as the “new self-esteem”.
A new self-esteem which is rising and which is true.
That is, out there, we’ve been chosen
by the Organizing Committee of the FIFA World Cup,
by the Organizing Committee of the Olympics,
we’ve been chosen, and we’re being chosen,
by the economic analysts
and we also noticed that we’re being chosen by ourselves.
This moment in which we’ve felt like the chosen ones, it has come.
Yes, we’ve been chosen.
But now, an important question.
And now, there’s a mythological rule, since Joseph Campbell, which says:
“He who is chosen and has no purpose shall fail".
“He who is chosen and has a purpose shall succeed".
This happens in the history of men,
This happens in the history of nations.
The American nation, although it has become the scapegoat,
the perspective of a world that is developing into a direction
and that the world may not agree with,
they are a successful nation and have been a successful nation in some ways,
or in many ways.
Or a nation that has found progress with a lot of strength.
And it is important for us to analyze the logics in that,
because this is a nation that was established from the start
within a mythological concept of Manifest Destiny,
which means exactly what it says.
The American nation is born with the notion that it is the chosen one,
and with that it set out roaring to the west and growing,
and that Manifest Destiny, that shared dream flows to
and is moved into the “American dream”,
which is the most absorbed dream, by the world as a whole.
This dream may not have worked that well.
And the world now needs new dreams.
But we must understand the power of this myth, the power of a dream.
And today, at least, the world needs many dreams,
but at least four of these dreams are absolutely important
and relevant for the world.
Brazil, Russia, India and China.
Obviously, there are thousands of other dreams, thousands of other perspectives,
but these are countries expected to evolve
and to revolutionize the ways of thinking and doing things.
The "B" in BRIC had long been disregarded by various perspectives,
and now it is becoming more and more relevant.
The important thing about this is that these absolutely ancient nations--
because if Europe is old, then China is ancient--
then China is ancient;
Russia, maybe not so much, but--
Each of these countries, because they have this conscience
and because they have developed the perspective of a dream
and the perspective of unity as a nation,
now have very clear roles within global economy.
Russia, since the Cold War and to this very day,
plays the role of The Second Ideology.
A source of knowledge, a source of reasoning,
a source in which contemporary Russian art is fighting
with contemporary European art, with new perspectives,
pulling toward new dimensions, with a new language regarding various things.
India has the human resources.
The Human Resources.
There are more PhDs in India than habitants in Canada:
40 million.
Telemarketing, developers... The Silicon Valley is
purely based on Indian intellectual capital.
Mathmaticians, physicists, doctors, we know that.
And for China it’s production.
Production.
It is the world’s production.
And what about Brazil?
I always say that sometimes,
an opportune question is better than an inopportune answer.
And I think this is the question we should be asking:
What is, in terms of decades, in terms of perspective,
what is it that we want to leave behind?
What do we want to foresee for Brazil?
And this involves...
... well, a quote by Dostoyevsky, which I will not read--
If only Dostoyevsky tweeted, it would be much more interesting.
So, I tweeted for him.
Basically, what that long sentence meant to say was:
“A nation that doesn't have a dream is not a nation”.
And that is the most important message that I’d like to share with you.
The power of the myth and the power of how a vision is organized.
I am sort of a beardy type, I think my beard is attacking the microphone.
Well.
The nation of Bra--
Where was I, again? Could somebody tell me?
The power of the myth.
That’s collaborative intelligence.
Thank you very much.
Well, the power of the myth is something very fundamental
and very important, precisely to connect us
regarding this approach
of knowing what is the history that we’re making together.
It is obvious that each of us has a history.
It is obvious that each of us has their desires.
But what about our collective history, what is our collective history?
This is the most fundamental question
that can be posed.
And I ask you:
What is the Brazilian dream?
And I ask myself:
What is the Brazilian dream?
And it is important that, in communities such as this, it is understood that we,
thinkers, culturally active people,
people who are designing the future of Brazil,
we are the ones in charge of answering that question with clarity--
both to ourselves and to others.
Nobody has that answer.
Once again, it’s a collaborative exchange.
But it is something that, if we don't work harder on it,
we, who stand for those who think
and those who do, this will not come from anywhere else.
Because our history--
our nation was not established upon a dream.
It was established upon an exploitation that unfolded
and the possibility of organic relations, and it unfolds into a party
that Regina Casé thinks is wonderful, and I think it’s wonderful as well.
And much of what this dream we’re looking for wants
is certainly at that party,
it is certainly at this unity, in this transposition.
In any event, it is important that each of us understands
that it is within art, it is within science,
within any field of activity that we are developing,
it is our responsibility to create our culture's vision.
And we have the arms for that,
to create it as quickly as possible, that which has never been thought about.
Each within its field of work.
Because sustainability, the perspective of sustainable innovation
is not in doing something I can't do to improve the world,
but it is in making and thinking sustainability within that which I know how to do.
By planting a tree, I will not expiate my guilt
and I will not reach a new status and level of innovation.
I must understand if I-- for instance:
I, João Paulo, my team, the people who work with me, my partners,
we are researchers, and it is through information
and research that I can build a sustainable world.
If I'm an artist, it’s through art;
if I'm a scientist, it is through science.
It’s about instilling the idea of sustanability,
which is this wholesome philosophy that is rising throughout the world.
And, thinking about that, and thinking about how important this question is,
Box -- myself and the people who work with me,
whose job is getting to know others,
are directing a broad research in Brazil,
precisely so that we can understand, among young people aged 7 to 27,
young people who are building our new reality,
what their... what their vision is,
what their perspective for the future is,
what their values are, what their ideals are,
in order to build a research that will help us,
not that answers the question, but that helps us answer the question
of what the Brazilian dream is.
This is our part, and we are beginning to do it,
by developing this study,
and we’d like to be, a year from now,
in the next TED, which will be much bigger than this one,
with a much more active community,
presenting the results of this perspective
and answering at least a bit more about what this Brazilian dream may be.
And we’ll donate the information from this research to this community.
And we’ll donate the information from this research to the Brazilian government.
This is what we can do
to design this perspective a bit further,
of what the Brazilian dream is.
I’d actually like to share with you,
a bit of what we’ve already learned within this perspective.
We’ve been developing research work on youth behavior
for over five years.
We collected all the perspectives
to serve as the basis for this research that is being born
and which we want to deliver to society.
And I think there’s an insight,
something very beautiful that came up during this research
that I didn’t want to present to you as an answer,
but that I wanted to suggest to you as a thought
that ties some of the things we’ve seen here.
And here it is.
A lot has been said here about diversity and passion.
A lot has been said here about creativity, joy,
and this is the essence, to a large extent, of the Brazilian people.
This is what defines us in various instances.
But one thing that is very interesting,
is that within this matrix of diversity, joy, creativity and passion,
there is a core, something at once very beautiful and very simple,
and that’s our curiosity.
I think the new value, a new perspective that we must understand
and that Brazilians have, above average,
that will make us, and can make us create awesome things,
wonderful things, incredible things,
is this curiosity factor, which is the basic principle of human knowledge
and the basic principle of education
and the basic principle of innovation for the new millennium.
The fact that working on the construction of new works which do not exist,
on new knowledge which does not exist,
the most fundamental thing is precisely curiosity.
And within that mapping
what we have found as one of the greatest essences
of lower classes and upper classes, in Brazil,
is the curiosity factor.
Brazilians are open, they are curious.
This curiosity can obviously become tangled into negative paths.
If this curiosity is not guided by education,
as we’d said here--
several speakers brought up the issue of education and this is fundamental--
it turns into gossip,
it turns into a need to sit an watch the 8 o’clock soap.
Because human beings are curious
and Brazilians are even more so.
And why this curiosity?
Because Brazilians are outward beings.
Beings that relate to one another,
beings that need one another.
And this is why such curiosity is absolutely fundamental.
And within this curiosity,
its fundamentals are in the fact that our roots are diffused.
Whereas in many other parts of the world,
peoples’ roots are great density landmarks
which hold back historical creativity,
which hold back the capacity for innovation,
which causes them to have such density that
they become unable to relate to absolutely new things,
new institutions.
For us, this is not a problem.
This is what's rich in our poverty.
We have no roots.
And this "rootlessness”, this looking back and
not having that historical density requiring us to
move in a certain direction is fundamental,
and it’s amazing and it enhances this natural curiosity,
and it makes things like proto-sciences,
absolutely avant-garde lines of scientific research
such as the biotechnology we’ve just seen,
and which is one of the cutting-edge studies in the world,
news sciences are being born in our country
because of this natural curiosity.
And we need to encourage that,
we need to turn this curiosity into a much more professional perspective
that our educational system is entirely concerned for.
Mash-up and remix, the clash of cultures,
our capacity to mix and match cultures
stems from this natural curiosity.
And this natural curiosity brings up something that’s fundamental,
which is ingenuousness.
And here we have spoken a lot about ingenuousness.
Regina Casé has lost her ingenuousness.
Someone else mentioned they’d like to lose their ingenuousness.
But I say no!
Do not, and let us lot lose our ingenuousness.
Because the etymology of the word “ingenuousness” is:
“in”: that which is within; "genio": that which is being generated.
That is, being within that which is being generated.
This is the principle of passion.
Passion is when we become one which that which is being generated.
Passion is an absolutely fundamental driving principle
for the development of new sciences and a new global society.
And this passion for another, this interest for another,
this interest for the outside world--
this TED that’s taking place here is one of the largest TEDx in the world.
Why?
Because we’re curious.
What is new, what is foreign, what pertains to another strikes us as very curious.
How can we make an invitation to someone else
to come here an speak like Casey has come?
This is the dialogue we must open,
this is the dialogue we must open beyond our society.
And this is the vision
that I’d like to start opening a little bit inside our heads.
We are absolutely the avant-garde of social software in internet use.
The avant-garde in terms of adoption.
It is the country that grows the most in terms of adoption, within Twitter, for example.
That is, we are the avant-garde within a social relationship with others.
We must understand that these others are, today, in the world.
These others may nor be just inside Brazil.
These others lead to openness to the global conversation,
to being open for a global conversation,
for an essence,
because all these countries have historical densities
that do not allow them to have smooth dialogues with Europe,
smooth dialogues with the United States,
We have that neutrality.
Why can’t we become some sort of Switzerland of ideas?
With absolute neutrality when it comes to ideas?
We are an open country which creates conferences, which creates gathering movements.
The hospitality industry in Brazil will also be thankful.
Creating these movements,
bringing these people, these new discussions regarding Brazil.
And this brings up a fundamental element,
which I firmly believe in:
the fact that, within this natural curiosity of the Brazilian people,
there’s the germ of collaborative intelligence.
As far as we can see,
this is much more of a provocation for us to think about.
Brazil is a country that’s ready for collaborative intelligence,
ready to open this discourse and this discussion.
There are many things that are absolutely avant-garde
and absolutely amazing within the development of Brazil.
We are ahead, in terms of discussion,
and development of web-democracy.
We are ahead in the study and development of biotechnology,
which I did not include because I didn’t know,
I’ve just found out, watching the talk of our previous friend whose name,
I am sorry, I cannot recall.
- But... - Sandro.
- Collaborative, once more. - Thank you very much.
So, within these gatherings we promote knowledge, curiosity.
I am sure that people, that everyone,
that each of you here today has less and less answers,
right now, in their minds, but much more focused questions.
A desire to reach a new level,
with a new vision, a desire to change directions.
Why? Because this has been fostered by this gathering.
It has been fostered by this curiosity.
It has been fostered by this vision.
This is, to some extent, collaboration.
But we beed to bring this discourse to a new level,
How can we continue to collaborate? How can we continue to create?
How can we continue to evolve?
How can we answer this question
of what is the Brazilian dream is?
And I believe this is deeply connected
to the issue of collaborative intelligence.
How?
One of these answers...
One of these answers is precisely this event that's taking place right now.
How to continue this community?
How to continue to provoke the question of what is the Brazilian dream is?
How to continue to answer this question?
I do not have the answer to that.
I hope I have helped you, though,
helped myself, understand a bit better what this dream would be.
And I hope to bring a bit more information next year,
so we can continue to answer this question
which I think is absolutely fundamental.
Because it is absolutely important for these images to be created in our minds.
Images like the one Regina Casé has created,
and, in my opinion she’s one of the most Brazilian people in the world.
A truly mythological, important representation of Brazilian culture.
The party, the confluence, that’s an important image.
Is this the image? Is this our dream?
Certainly, it flows in this direction.
Certainly the Brazilian dream is connected to
offering the world tools that can
integrate all the other dreams available in our planet.
This is it.