Pico Iyer: The beauty of what we'll never know
Pico Iyer has spent more than 30 years tracking movement and stillness -- and the way criss-crossing cultures have changed the world, our imagination and all our relationships. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
a group of rough men
for a bar of chocolate at home.
between palaces and pagodas.
he had come to the city from his village.
under a military dictatorship,
he could make a living.
he actually slept in his trishaw
off the all-night train.
that in certain ways,
by foreign cultures --
crowded streets,
down rough, wild alleyways.
could happen to me now.
he had ever received
every moment that you're not,
of things, either.
as we are unsettled
we've been lucky enough
new ideas and discoveries
pushed excitingly forwards.
or uneasy or carried out of yourself,
who showed me the laws of physics
three times three makes nine.
minus three makes nine,
that almost feels like trust.
isn't always ignorance.
it's the things I don't know
and pushed me forwards
to everybody around me.
with the Dalai Lama.
reassurance and confidence
going to get world peace?"
economist Daniel Kahneman
researching human behavior,
of what we think we know
to ignore our ignorance."
is going to win this weekend,
is going to do tomorrow?
as some people call them,
were eating from the tree of life.
of good and evil,
a little too late, perhaps,
that we need to know,
that are better left unexplored.
in classrooms collecting facts,
in the information business,
for two-and-a-half weeks,
about Japan's temples,
I couldn't explain to you yet,
very much at all
I'm making some new discovery,
and seeing the hundred thousand things
can be more dangerous than ignorance.
is flooding into our little apartment,
the weather forecast,
writer now for 34 years.
when I'm not in charge,
than everything around me.
well-lit streets;
of the first law of travel
as your readiness to surrender.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Pico Iyer - Global authorPico Iyer has spent more than 30 years tracking movement and stillness -- and the way criss-crossing cultures have changed the world, our imagination and all our relationships.
Why you should listen
In twelve books, covering everything from Revolutionary Cuba to the XIVth Dalai Lama, Islamic mysticism to our lives in airports, Pico Iyer has worked to chronicle the accelerating changes in our outer world, which sometimes make steadiness and rootedness in our inner world more urgent than ever. In his TED Book, The Art of Stillness, he draws upon travels from North Korea to Iran to remind us how to remain focused and sane in an age of frenzied distraction. As he writes in the book, "Almost everybody I know has this sense of overdosing on information and getting dizzy living at post-human speeds ... All of us instinctively feel that something inside us is crying out for more spaciousness and stillness to offset the exhilarations of this movement and the fun and diversion of the modern world."
Pico Iyer | Speaker | TED.com