Last Sunday, I posted a not entirely positive review of TEDx SIPA. At one point, I took issue with a speaker’s depiction of the Peace Corps:
Later, a SIPA student passionately critiqued the Peace Corps model, declaring, “Grateful as I am for my experience in the Peace Corps, I recognize that the developing world cannot just be a training ground for young, idealistic Americans. The problems in communities like the one I lived in are far too serious for that.” And yet he was speaking at a conference created entirely for young, idealistic (and often inexperienced) Americans interested in solving enormous global problems — the type whose very presence at TEDx signalled their personal enthusiasm for the brand of fifteen-minute bursts of inspiration in which the speaker was participating himself. Indeed, his extrapolation of his own disillusionment with his two-year volunteering effort in South Africa into an ardent condemnation of the entire Peace Corps’ allegedly flawed practices was itself a case study in misplaced idealism.
It appears I wasn’t the only one. Today, SIPA’s student-run newspaper The Morningside Post (disclosure: I am its opinion editor) ran a piece by Audrey Huse that zeroed in on the Peace Corps talk’s flaws:
I’m surprised Mr. Kortava finished his two years, and I commend him for it. But it seems he thought he was going to South Africa to singlehandedly halt the HIV epidemic, and such high expectations can lead to disillusion and disappointment. The TEDx event did not seem an appropriate venue to vent his frustrations. The TEDx platform is intended to present innovative ideas worth spreading. If there was one in Kortava’s talk, I missed it.
Granted, Kortava’s is hardly the first critique of the Peace Corps, nor will it be the last. (It’s also not the first time he’s done it himself, either.) But I wasn’t primarily interested in discussing the specific merits of the Peace Corps in my previous post. I was bothered more by Kortava’s overly simplistic take on it, and the way in which that “quick fix” attitude permeated so many of the speeches I heard during the TEDx conference that day.
Anyway, my friend and flatmate Andres Lizcano Rodriguez — who, incidentally, runs a very cool blog of his own — took issue with some of my comments. With his permission, I’ve reproduced portions of his response here:
I think you’re being a big, arrogant ass. Of course there’s a problem in fitting everything into a 17-minute presentation. The fact is, most of the world does not consist of Ivy League grad students, and not everyone can simply digest complicated critiques or fact-based lectures and policy analysis.
I’m not sure those Krugman graphs would be for everyone. I think your critique is in large part a critique of the ascendant pop-intellectual craze, but what is the problem with making intellectuality a popular thing? TEDx conferences will never be intellectual activities, but that isn’t their goal in the first place. (I think…and I hope.) They’re meant to motivate you to start considering something that you might not have known about, or seen in the same way, before. All the “goddamn assholes” that already know all this stuff aren’t representative of the broader population.
(By the way, the Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa makes a similar point to yours — not about TED talks but about culture. He keeps whining about the fact that everybody can be an artist or writer now, and that that has diminished the quality….all because he seems to feel that the intellectual aristocracy is threatened.)
Additionally, I think you’re underestimating the importance of passion and empowerment. Granted, it’s a big US-American cliché — I also despise all this “OMG that was so inspiring” stuff — but it’s not like that everywhere in the world.
You said:
There is a clear line connecting the type of thinking exemplified by TEDx and that of similarly grandiose but ill-informed ventures like the “Kony 2012” campaign. It’s not passion that’s lacking. But passion is dangerous in the hands of an institution that encourages superficial speech-giving and a daylong mutual back-scratch with an adoring audience.
But passion and self-esteem actually lack in many places. In my college in Bogotá — an elite university — we were not told all the time, like we are here, that we would be the future leaders of our country, that we could do everything we wanted, etc. etc. And thus I was often surrounded by many people — who were much smarter and more competent than I was — who didn’t dare to do anything because they didn’t feel they could actually achieve their goals. Most people had never actually considered that they could “dream big.”
Essentially, here are my points:
1. I think you’re misinterpreting the objective of a TED talk and, if interpreted differently, it could actually be of greater value to a broad audience than you’ve given it credit for.
2. I think you’re underestimating the importance of inspiration, empowerment, and passion.
After watching the above video, he summarized:
While we all agree on his points, nothing is being done about them. And I think part of the reason for this is that there are not enough people reminding us of his points. Meanwhile, there are tons of people (such as our own Office of Career Services) telling us all day long (in other formats) that we need to find a job at Goldman Sachs or the World Bank. Maybe it would be more efficient if TED opened offices at the big schools and scared the hell out of people so that they started behaving correctly. The point is that people need to be reminded of these big ideas, even if they already know them.
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