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 --> 00:00:28.938 to foster an altruistic motivation rather than a selfish one. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:30.508 --> 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 --> 00:00:44.911 Our own mind can be our best friend or our worst enemy. 00:00:46.341 --> 00:00:49.225 There's also societal challenges: 00:00:49.225 --> 00:00:54.924 poverty in the midst of plenty, inequalities, conflict, injustice. 00:00:54.924 --> 00:00:59.120 And then there are the new challenges, which we don't expect. 00:00:59.120 --> 00:01:03.763 Ten thousand years ago, there were about five million human beings on Earth. 00:01:03.763 --> 00:01:05.373 Whatever they could do, 00:01:05.373 --> 00:01:10.559 the Earth's resilience would soon heal human activities. 00:01:10.559 --> 00:01:13.775 After the Industrial and Technological Revolutions, 00:01:13.775 --> 00:01:16.008 that's not the same anymore. 00:01:16.008 --> 00:01:20.073 We are now the major agent of impact on our Earth. 00:01:20.073 --> 00:01:24.977 We enter the Anthropocene, the era of human beings. 00:01:24.977 --> 00:01:31.970 So in a way, if we were to say we need to continue this endless growth, 00:01:31.970 --> 00:01:35.616 endless use of material resources, 00:01:35.616 --> 00:01:38.514 it's like if this man was saying -- 00:01:38.514 --> 00:01:43.386 and I heard a former head of state, I won't mention who, saying -- 00:01:43.386 --> 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." 00:01:50.587 --> 00:01:56.590 So this edge is the same that has been defined by scientists 00:01:56.590 --> 00:01:59.244 as the planetary boundaries. 00:01:59.244 --> 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 --> 00:02:30.394 So in 1900, as you can see, 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 --> 00:02:40.762 Now hold your breath, not too long, to imagine what comes next. 00:02:40.762 --> 00:02:46.907 Now we have vastly overrun some of the planetary boundaries. 00:02:46.907 --> 00:02:50.866 Just to take biodiversity, at the current rate, 00:02:50.866 --> 00:02:57.288 by 2050, 30 percent of all species on Earth will have disappeared. 00:02:57.288 --> 00:03:03.085 Even if we keep their DNA in some fridge, that's not going to be reversible. 00:03:03.085 --> 00:03:04.936 So here I am sitting 00:03:04.936 --> 00:03:10.836 in front of a 7,000-meter-high, 21,000-foot glacier in Bhutan. 00:03:10.836 --> 00:03:17.987 At the Third Pole, 2,000 glaciers are melting fast, faster than the Arctic. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:17.987 --> 00:03:20.994 So what can we do in that situation? 00:03:22.144 --> 00:03:29.453 Well, however complex politically, economically, scientifically 00:03:29.453 --> 00:03:31.851 the question of the environment is, 00:03:31.851 --> 00:03:38.678 it simply boils down to a question of altruism versus selfishness. 00:03:38.678 --> 00:03:42.287 I'm a Marxist of the Groucho tendency. 00:03:42.287 --> 00:03:43.712 (Laughter) 00:03:43.712 --> 00:03:47.121 Groucho Marx said, "Why should I care about future generations? 00:03:47.121 --> 00:03:49.151 What have they ever done for me?" 00:03:49.151 --> 00:03:50.647 (Laughter) 00:03:50.647 --> 00:03:55.430 Unfortunately, I heard the billionaire Steve Forbes, 00:03:55.430 --> 00:03:58.958 on Fox News, saying exactly the same thing, but seriously. 00:03:58.958 --> 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 --> 00:04:07.695 for something that will happen in a hundred years." 00:04:07.695 --> 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 --> 00:04:19.538 is to reconcile three time scales: 00:04:19.538 --> 00:04:21.683 the short term of the economy, 00:04:21.683 --> 00:04:25.915 the ups and downs of the stock market, the end-of-the-year accounts; 00:04:25.915 --> 00:04:28.621 the midterm of the quality of life -- 00:04:28.621 --> 00:04:33.945 what is the quality every moment of our life, over 10 years and 20 years? -- 00:04:33.945 --> 00:04:37.554 and the long term of the environment. 00:04:37.554 --> 00:04:39.903 When the environmentalists speak with economists, 00:04:39.903 --> 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 --> 00:04:57.912 philosophers, thinkers in the Himalayas, all over the place. 00:04:57.912 --> 00:05:01.834 It seems to me, there's only one concept 00:05:01.834 --> 00:05:04.794 that can reconcile those three time scales. 00:05:04.794 --> 00:05:09.198 It is simply having more consideration for others. 00:05:09.198 --> 00:05:14.099 If you have more consideration for others, you will have a caring economics, 00:05:14.099 --> 00:05:17.051 where finance is at the service of society 00:05:17.051 --> 00:05:20.319 and not society at the service of finance. 00:05:20.319 --> 00:05:22.187 You will not play at the casino 00:05:22.187 --> 00:05:25.073 with the resources that people have entrusted you with. 00:05:25.073 --> 00:05:27.919 If you have more consideration for others, 00:05:27.919 --> 00:05:31.396 you will make sure that you remedy inequality, 00:05:31.396 --> 00:05:35.136 that you bring some kind of well-being within society, 00:05:35.136 --> 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 --> 00:05:43.686 but everyone is miserable, what's the point? 00:05:43.686 --> 00:05:45.973 And if you have more consideration for others, 00:05:45.973 --> 00:05:49.369 you are not going to ransack that planet that we have 00:05:49.369 --> 00:05:53.703 and at the current rate, we don't have three planets to continue that way. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:53.703 --> 00:05:56.056 So the question is, 00:05:56.056 --> 00:06:00.387 okay, altruism is the answer, it's not just a novel ideal, 00:06:00.387 --> 00:06:03.611 but can it be a real, pragmatic solution? 00:06:03.611 --> 00:06:06.469 And first of all, does it exist, 00:06:06.469 --> 00:06:10.213 true altruism, or are we so selfish? 00:06:10.213 --> 00:06:15.553 So some philosophers thought we were irredeemably selfish. 00:06:15.553 --> 00:06:20.765 But are we really all just like rascals? 00:06:20.765 --> 00:06:23.579 That's good news, isn't it? 00:06:23.579 --> 00:06:26.108 Many philosophers, like Hobbes, have said so. 00:06:26.108 --> 00:06:29.429 But not everyone looks like a rascal. 00:06:29.429 --> 00:06:32.262 Or is man a wolf for man? 00:06:32.262 --> 00:06:35.150 But this guy doesn't seem too bad. 00:06:35.150 --> 00:06:38.073 He's one of my friends in Tibet. 00:06:38.073 --> 00:06:40.312 He's very kind. 00:06:40.312 --> 00:06:43.937 So now, we love cooperation. 00:06:43.937 --> 00:06:48.275 There's no better joy than working together, is there? 00:06:48.275 --> 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 --> 00:06:59.178 the survival of the fittest, social Darwinism. 00:06:59.178 --> 00:07:05.015 But in evolution, cooperation -- though competition exists, of course -- 00:07:05.015 --> 00:07:10.732 cooperation has to be much more creative to go to increased levels of complexity. 00:07:10.732 --> 00:07:15.414 We are super-cooperators and we should even go further. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:15.414 --> 00:07:21.443 So now, on top of that, the quality of human relationships. 00:07:21.443 --> 00:07:25.925 The OECD did a survey among 10 factors, including income, everything. 00:07:25.925 --> 00:07:29.268 The first one that people said, that's the main thing for my happiness, 00:07:29.268 --> 00:07:32.621 is quality of social relationships. 00:07:32.621 --> 00:07:35.498 Not only in humans. 00:07:35.498 --> 00:07:38.844 And look at those great-grandmothers. 00:07:38.846 --> 00:07:44.000 So now, this idea that if we go deep within, 00:07:44.000 --> 00:07:46.570 we are irredeemably selfish, 00:07:46.570 --> 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 --> 00:07:56.697 Rather, the opposite. 00:07:56.697 --> 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 --> 00:08:07.487 And of course we are sometimes selfish, and some people more than others. 00:08:07.487 --> 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 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 --> 00:08:26.468 you can't stand it, so it's better to help than to keep on looking at that person. 00:08:26.468 --> 00:08:32.344 So we tested all that, and in the end, he said, clearly people can be altruistic. 00:08:32.344 --> 00:08:34.284 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 --> 00:08:41.600 Now look at here. 00:08:41.600 --> 00:08:44.370 When we come out, we aren't going to say, "That's so nice. 00:08:44.370 --> 00:08:48.937 There was no fistfight while this mob was thinking about altruism." 00:08:48.937 --> 00:08:51.099 No, that's expected, isn't it? 00:08:51.099 --> 00:08:54.278 If there was a fistfight, we would speak of that for months. 00:08:54.278 --> 00:08:57.949 So the banality of goodness is something that doesn't attract your attention, 00:08:57.949 --> 00:08:59.437 but it exists. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:59.437 --> 00:09:04.913 Now, look at this. 00:09:09.253 --> 00:09:12.054 So some psychologists said, 00:09:12.054 --> 00:09:15.291 when I tell them I run 140 humanitarian projects in the Himalayas 00:09:15.291 --> 00:09:17.545 that give me so much joy, 00:09:17.545 --> 00:09:20.799 they said, "Oh, I see, you work for the warm glow. 00:09:20.799 --> 00:09:23.703 That is not altruistic. You just feel good." 00:09:23.703 --> 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 --> 00:09:43.407 He has no choice. Automatic behavior. It's neither selfish nor altruistic. 00:09:43.407 --> 00:09:44.882 No choice? 00:09:44.882 --> 00:09:47.844 Well of course, this guy's not going to think for half an hour, 00:09:47.844 --> 00:09:49.881 "Should I give my hand? Not give my hand?" 00:09:49.881 --> 00:09:53.676 He does it. There is a choice, but it's obvious, it's immediate. 00:09:53.676 --> 00:09:56.037 And then, also, there he had a choice. 00:09:56.037 --> 00:09:58.738 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:09:58.738 --> 00:10:02.500 There are people who had choice, like Pastor André Trocmé and his wife, 00:10:02.500 --> 00:10:05.187 and the whole village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in France. 00:10:05.187 --> 00:10:09.135 For the whole Second World War, they saved 3,500 Jews, 00:10:09.135 --> 00:10:11.792 gave them shelter, brought them to Switzerland, 00:10:11.792 --> 00:10:15.237 against all odds, at the risk of their lives and those of their family. 00:10:15.237 --> 00:10:17.394 So altruism does exist. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:17.394 --> 00:10:19.119 So what is altruism? 00:10:19.119 --> 00:10:23.021 It is the wish: May others be happy and find the cause of happiness. 00:10:23.021 --> 00:10:28.266 Now, empathy is the affective resonance or cognitive resonance that tells you, 00:10:28.266 --> 00:10:30.977 this person is joyful, this person suffers. 00:10:30.977 --> 00:10:34.463 But empathy alone 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 --> 00:10:46.234 With Tania Singer at the Max Planck Institute of Leipzig, 00:10:46.234 --> 00:10:52.335 we showed that the brain networks for empathy and loving-kindness are different. 00:10:52.335 --> 00:10:54.416 Now, that's all well done, 00:10:54.416 --> 00:10:59.790 so we got that from evolution, from maternal care, parental love, 00:10:59.790 --> 00:11:01.625 but we need to extend that. 00:11:01.625 --> 00:11:04.968 It can be extended even 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 --> 00:11:12.592 individual change and societal change. 00:11:12.592 --> 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 --> 00:11:21.951 Now, 15 years of collaboration with neuroscience and epigenetics 00:11:21.951 --> 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 --> 00:11:33.493 This is the first time I went after two and a half hours. 00:11:33.493 --> 00:11:37.167 And then the result has been published in many scientific papers. 00:11:37.167 --> 00:11:40.749 It shows without ambiguity that there is structural change 00:11:40.749 --> 00:11:44.502 and functional change in the brain when you train the altruistic love. 00:11:44.502 --> 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 meditator in compassion meditation, you see all the activity, 00:11:52.776 --> 00:11:55.330 and then the control group at rest, nothing happened, 00:11:55.330 --> 00:11:57.272 in meditation, nothing happened. 00:11:57.272 --> 00:11:59.250 They have not been trained. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:59.250 --> 00:12:03.671 So do you need 50,000 hours of meditation? No, you don't. 00:12:03.671 --> 00:12:07.837 Four weeks, 20 minutes a day, 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 --> 00:12:21.217 Even with preschoolers -- Richard Davidson did that in Madison. 00:12:21.217 --> 00:12:27.627 An eight-week program: gratitude, loving- kindness, cooperation, mindful breathing. 00:12:27.627 --> 00:12:29.882 You would say, "Oh, they're just preschoolers." 00:12:29.882 --> 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 --> 00:12:39.402 And then comes the ultimate scientific test, the stickers test. 00:12:39.402 --> 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, an 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 --> 00:13:05.048 the same amount of stickers to their best friend and the least favorite child. 00:13:05.048 --> 00:13:08.436 That's something we should do in all the schools in the world. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:08.436 --> 00:13:10.430 Now where do we go from there? NOTE Paragraph 00:13:10.430 --> 00:13:14.678 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:13:14.678 --> 00:13:17.359 When the Dalai Lama heard that, he told Richard Davidson, 00:13:17.359 --> 00:13:20.815 "You go to 10 schools, 100 schools, the U.N., the whole world." NOTE Paragraph 00:13:20.815 --> 00:13:22.499 So now where do we go from there? 00:13:22.499 --> 00:13:24.762 Individual change is possible. 00:13:24.762 --> 00:13:29.378 Now do we have to wait for an altruistic gene to be in the human race? 00:13:29.378 --> 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 --> 00:13:43.301 Cultures, as specialists have shown, change faster than genes. 00:13:43.301 --> 00:13:44.829 That's the good news. 00:13:44.829 --> 00:13:48.189 Look, attitude towards war has dramatically changed over the years. 00:13:48.189 --> 00:13:53.370 So now individual change and cultural change mutually fashion each other, 00:13:53.370 --> 00:13:56.146 and yes, we can achieve a more altruistic society. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:56.146 --> 00:13:57.888 So where do we go from there? 00:13:57.888 --> 00:14:00.137 Myself, I will go back to the East. 00:14:00.137 --> 00:14:03.597 Now we treat 100,000 patients a year in our projects. 00:14:03.597 --> 00:14:07.346 We have 25,000 kids in school, four percent overhead. 00:14:07.346 --> 00:14:09.921 Some people say, "Well, your stuff works in practice, 00:14:09.921 --> 00:14:11.945 but does it work in theory?" 00:14:11.945 --> 00:14:15.287 There's always positive deviance. 00:14:15.287 --> 00:14:17.706 So I will also go back to my hermitage 00:14:17.706 --> 00:14:20.995 to find the inner resources to better serve others. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:20.995 --> 00:14:24.182 But on the more global level, what can we do? 00:14:24.182 --> 00:14:25.973 We need three things. 00:14:25.973 --> 00:14:28.325 Enhancing cooperation: 00:14:28.325 --> 00:14:32.041 Cooperative learning in the school instead of competitive learning, 00:14:32.041 --> 00:14:35.612 Unconditional cooperation within corporations -- 00:14:35.612 --> 00:14:40.019 there can be some competition between corporations, but not within. 00:14:40.019 --> 00:14:43.971 We need sustainable harmony. I love this term. 00:14:43.971 --> 00:14:45.914 Not sustainable growth anymore. 00:14:45.914 --> 00:14:49.500 Sustainable harmony means now we will reduce inequality. 00:14:49.500 --> 00:14:53.826 In the future, we do more with less, 00:14:53.826 --> 00:14:58.310 and we continue to grow qualitatively, not quantitatively. 00:14:58.310 --> 00:15:00.615 We need caring economics. 00:15:00.615 --> 00:15:06.446 The Homo economicus cannot deal with poverty in the midst of plenty, 00:15:06.446 --> 00:15:08.798 cannot deal with the problem of the common goods 00:15:08.798 --> 00:15:11.096 of the atmosphere, of the oceans. 00:15:11.096 --> 00:15:12.679 We need a caring economics. 00:15:12.679 --> 00:15:14.788 If you say economics should be compassionate, 00:15:14.788 --> 00:15:16.273 they say, "That's not our job." 00:15:16.273 --> 00:15:19.588 But if you say they don't care, that looks bad. 00:15:19.588 --> 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 species. 00:15:28.307 --> 00:15:31.732 Sentient beings are co-citizens in this world. 00:15:31.732 --> 00:15:34.724 and we need to dare altruism. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:34.724 --> 00:15:38.605 So, long live the altruistic revolution. 00:15:38.605 --> 00:15:43.155 Viva la revolución de altruismo. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:43.155 --> 00:15:48.515 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:15:48.515 --> 00:15:50.496 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:50.496 --> 00:15:52.448 (Applause)