A humbling TED talk by Alain de Botton hijacked my morning MRT ride. A non-gibberish, kinder, gentler philosophy of success, where Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure, and questions the assumptions underlying these two judgments. Is success always earned? Is failure? He makes an eloquent, witty case to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work. Spare 17 minutes of your day for this video – I think you will like it too.

One of the fascinating quotes:

 

… we’re often told that we live in very materialistic times, that we’re all greedy people. I don’t think we are particularly materialistic. I think we live in a society which has simply pegged certain emotional rewards to the acquisition of material goods. It’s not the material goods we want. It’s the rewards we want. And that’s a new way of looking at luxury goods. The next time you see somebody driving a Ferrari don’t think, “This is somebody who is greedy.” Think, “This is somebody who is incredibly vulnerable and in need of love.” In other words, feel sympathy, rather than contempt.

Re-blogged from macchiato.getitcomms.com, The GetIT | Comms Blog, Aug 2009