Friday, November 20, 2009

Really excellent TED speech - "Devdutt Pattanaik: East vs West -- the myths that mystify."

Sounds genius, frankly. Starts with a Ganesha story, gets better from there. And he does it all with a light touch and a deft sense of humor.
"The difference between Logos and Mythos... Stories, symbols and rituals... always indifferent to rationality... Nothing lasts forever, not even death... Groundhog's Day... the mythology of business... Binary Logic vs a comfort with Fuzzy Logic... Everything is relative, sort of. Mostly... there are many promised lands... it's not about documentation and contract it's about conversation and faith... a cyclical world view, so it's rapidly changing, highly diverse, chaotic, ambiguous, unpredictable. And people are okay with it... 'Step A. Step B. Step C. Mostly.' ...all you seek is divine empathy... Which is the better way? This way or that way? And it is a very dangerous question because it leads you to the path of fundamentalism and violence... Depending on the context, depending on the outcome, choose your paradigm. You see because both the paradigms are human constructions, they're cultural creations not natural phenomena... The next time you meet someone, understand you live in the subjective truth - and so does he."
Everything is all about the stories we tell ourselves and each other.

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