TED Circles with CN&CO 2020
October 23, 2020

What it takes to Make Change in “Everyone’s Environment”

TED Talks open our minds, spark new ways of thinking and can lead to some very interesting conversations. Over the last few years, each week on a Tuesday a member from the team has picked a TED Talk and published it. Our TED Talk Tuesdays allow the CN&CO team to play their part on spreading ideas and helping to make the world a better place. Check out a few of the other TED Talk Tuesday picks HERE. Our TED Circles get togethers build on this love for TED, conversations and people. Here’s a wrap-up of our latest TED Circle Hosted by CN&CO.

Our latest TED Circles event in October 2020

Our TED Circles journey started back in March of this year, just as South Africa went into lock down. Hosting our seventh one for the year, we decided to change things up a bit and invited a co-host, Joan Middleton from the UK, to pick the talk for us to watch and discuss.

These sessions have been great to build on ideas, share views, and start conversations. The hope is that we will over time be able to drive small elements of change and expand the conversation. The journey continues and we are grateful to the people who have supported it thus far, who knows where it will take us in 2021 and we look forward to incorporating some “in real life” get togethers into the plans soon.

Here’s a quick summary of the take-aways from the discussion and some of the ideas that were shared.

What can you do to build a better world? 

The theme that TED Circles had picked for the month of October was “Everyone’s Environment”.

With most of our guests being well versed on the climate and need for action, Joan opted to draw on a theme that extends across a number of areas in our lives, mental health. How often is our mental health and traumas attributable to but also affect by our environments i.e. home, work and the planet.

Earlier in October, Joan attended the Collective Trauma Summit. There were loads of super interesting speakers including lots of psychologists including Gabor Maté, an incredible therapist and human being, therapists, and community activists. Joan battled to choose a talk and spent hours finding one that would be just right, eventually she settled on Jacqueline Novogratz’s “What it takes to Make Change”. Next time you see Carel, ask him about the time he met Jacqueline in a cramped minibus at TED.

Jacqueline’s new talk called What it takes to Make Change is based on her excellent new book, called the Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to build a better world set the scene for a discussion that extended far wider than just mental health. Everything in our environment is connected.

In her talk Jacqueline raises the importance and urgency for us to develop a Moral Imagination, hold opposing tensions and the idea of accompaniment and radical empathy . In her book there is an idea that she speaks to which shares how we are not only connected but interdependent in terms of our relationships but also with the planet and the critical importance of restructuring how we view and define success. 

This talk evoked a variety of responses from those in attendance in our virtual get together over zoom. This, in part, is why these monthly sessions are great because they ask us to listen to the views of others and to take time to process them.

A couple of points that grabbed our attention from the discussion:

  • Radical imagination
  • How do we drive change – shifting narratives, creating opportunities and being open to difference.
  • How can we do more?
  • Our reliance on structure and certainty. A stark contrast to how we can thrive in chaos.
  • Our adaptability as humans
  • Moral imagination and leadership
  • Collective seeds to drive change
  • Connectivity and relationships

She ends here talk with a call to action, “what can you do for the rest of today and for the rest of your life, to give back more to the world than you take?”

So, as Jacqueline say lets “recommit to dreams that were so big”.

Ps, you may also enjoy this talk from Priya Parker on the Transformational Power Of Everyday Gatherings and her book The Art of Gathering and Why it Matters. 

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