OSCAR DI MONTIGNY - 0.0 l’Epoca delle Relazioni. Il tempo mi

How are you? And you? Great. I would like to nominate this man, are you able to get in among the candidates for the next mayor of Milan in some way? No. You don’t want to know about it? Shame. Well, 15 minutes before I sound the Tibetan singing bowl, which by the way I do every morning and so it’s like coming home. Well this is me. I chose my photo in first grade, something that I do often when I happen to speak around the world, because I always reiterate the same thing. I am not here to teach you anything. Although we are lacking a bit in great teachers. I will, however, try to share with you the fruit of fifteen years of work and seventeen years of study, from September, September 1st, a day that is still clear in my mind, 1999 when I studied, examined and tried to better understand a few disciplines: philosophy art, neuroscience. By economy I was necessarily forced and compelled by my work, I don’t have an economic or finance background and I’m very interested in pedagogy, sociology, and psychology. I don’t know a whole lot about all of this but it’s been 17 years that I’ve racked my brains trying to figure out how these things work. Don’t believe anything I tell you, but if something interesting does happen, allow yourself to take it in. The world is full of people who believe in someone else. In fact, then we believe so much in what people tell us that we are ready to go to war to affirm that what we’ve been taught is the truth. However, as said before (seeing how science was spoken of) one of our luminary scientists, if at the end of what I tell you in these few minutes you were to find some confirmation, then great, great. If though there is something on which we are in disagreement, something that doesn’t match up with your point of view, as far as I’m concerned, that’s great too. Or you discover something, or you verify something. That’s the deal, ok? Ok. Good. In this moment in sociology, the more important sociologists around the world are asking one question: the one we’re experiencing in this instant, it is a very particular historical moment, I agree with everything that I heard a few minutes ago. Is it a time of changes or a change of times? They’re not synonymous with each other. What the sociologists are saying in this moment is that we are faced with a real and true epochal change that will lead us into a future that is not completely a linear projection of that which has been our past. That which has been for centuries until now. Unfortunately I don’t have enough time to dwell on all the paradigms that have for centuries formed the basis of our society, which will be replaced by something new and unknown. School, family, government, sport, religion, they are all paradigms that are being shaken in this specific historical epoch. And when the reference points fall away, we cannot be without reference points, so people will try to create new ones. The question is who will be these reference points? Who will offer themselves as a point of reference? Well, having studied these scenarios a bit, I am trying to specialize in studying these macro trends in these years, and I will try to offer you a small overview of the context, in which we can situate everything that’s been said so far and perhaps what will follow after me, about a scenario which is an important first step for those who study demography, sociology, political economy, taking as a reference point what we are saying will be a transitional decade between 2020 and 2030. There will be four great drivers, it is said, that will propel the change. Let me repeat the premise, don’t believe in anything, I’m simply sharing some of the guidelines that are being studied. One of the first big drivers of the change, where you can situate all that you hear today will be demographics. The planet is being completely reshaped. There’s a movement from south to north that has been called “The rising billion,” the “Bottom billion” will be called “The rising billion.” There will be a billion new tenants of our world, that will inhabit our lands, who are moving from south to north. They produce naturally – I’ll give you some data regarding political economy: 8.3 billion people in the world, 0.8 concentrated in 40 megacities of about 10 million, it won’t happen in Italy because the morphology of our country doesn’t allow for megacities, 80% of gross domestic product will be produced in these large cities. Think then what it will mean to produce, distribute, sell, from an economic point of view on the planet. There is a great movement from east to west. Unfortunately they are also eliminating geography from educational curriculum, so when our children turn on the tv and they say there are refugees arriving from Syria, they don’t even know where Syria is on a world map. So you don’t know if they’ve travelled 10 kilometers, 1000 kilometers, or 10,000 kilometers. Which isn’t the same thing when you don’t have half a penny in your pocket. And we are apparently unable to manage this encounter. Do you remember this scene? The Hungarian photojournalist who tripped the Syrian dad with his child in his arms to snap a shot that tv would have paid gold for, a scene of him stumbling with a baby and then crying, no? Unfortunately we are normalizing photographs that, instead of being those we’ve been used to for centuries, have been these. It’s not good, our brains are being programed by technology, even by half information, to accept a normality that is not normal. Our children see this as normal. And if the bar is lowered beyond a certain point, the question is what will be right or wrong tomorrow? Good. Two: our way of life is out of control. The second big driver that’s propelling the world towards 2020-2030 will be the sensitivity of people to the environment. We talk about technology, I’m an expert, considered an expert in exponential technology, innovation, and I travel from Japan to Silicon Valley, start-ups, incubators, accelerators, many beautiful things, then, do you know this company? Curious. These people sell air to the Chinese. The famous line “To empty, how do you say it, the void is nothing…” I don’t remember They sell air from the Canadian rocky mountains to the Chinese. And they make millions of dollars. This is technology. This is innovation. So we’re producing a world where we destroy everything to have something that gives us exactly what was already there. Simply because we don’t see it anymore. Just to give an order of magnitude, in Singapore the sensitivity they have towards the environment has reached such a standard that if you, has anyone ever been to Singapore? If you throw gum on the ground, or a cigarette on the ground, you end up in prison. The woman says “They beat you.” Only now that the genetic code has been decoded thanks to exponential technologies and processes of digitalization, it costs 900 euros, in 2007 it cost 1 million euros. At this point the sanitation workers in Singapore go around, collecting cigarette butts, and extract the saliva left on the butt, pull out the genome with only 900 euros, and put up your face on the bus stops saying: “This is a litterer.” These are the standards of environmental sensitivity of the world where we are to project our lives and those of our children. It’s not the recycled paper, plastic, cans, or biodegradable products that we have under our sink at home. The impact on the environment, the so-called “footprint” has been devastating, so we either make a move or the planet will shake us off just like a dog shakes off the things that most annoy it: fleas. Excuse me but we don’t have much time, I want to be efficient, otherwise I could have just stayed in the office. The third great diver of change is technology. You will be told a lot about this today, so I don’t want to talk about it because there are bigger experts than me. That said, this is the dimension with which we have grown. We struggle, some of us who maybe watched tv in black and white, or the radio; have you seen how many buttons are on your remote control at home? It used to be three or four. As yourself why. Curious, isn’t it? We are building a world that will be pervaded by technology. I say this just to give you an idea of the magnitude, you’ve heard people speak about the Internet of Things, which is about to become the Internet of Everything? 2020, 50 billion devices around the globe; and by 2030 1 trillion devices around the globe. I’m giving you an idea of the scale. Our devices that we pick up in the morning, probably someone in the bathroom after waking up because it’s the last thing left on the bedside table in the evening as an alarm, it’s not simply what we think it is! And our grandparents don’t know any of this because it’s a new instrument. But it’s actually redesigning the urban plan of the city. Here we are in China. They are designing walkways for people using cell phones who don’t want to look up, and for those who instead walk freely as we’ve done for centuries. It’s true, it’s funny, but it’s starting to reprogram the brain at a neurological level. It means that the world will have different dimensions. And this is the historical period in which these two dimensions must co-exist. A historical mess. It’s the best time to be alive, a fantastic opportunity. Because when these people grow up, as the professor before me said, what will be the neurological processes that guide their consumer choices, their social habits, their social relations? Because the adults, and that’s us, today don’t have the same neurological programming to which they’ve been programmed. Here we are, Union Square in New York and in a building on 5th Avenue in New York. The city had to say to adults like us, not digital natives, “If you have to check your Facebook updates, don’t do it while you cross the street or walk.” Because people were ending up underneath cars. If you have to tweet, don’t do it while the building is on fire. This, we are on the back staircase of a building on 5th street. Don’t tweet! Because you know a tweet with flames behind you looks really cool, and you get a bunch of likes. The brain doesn’t make the connections. It’s very dangerous. Because when they tell it to you with street signs, it’s because they are talking with australopithecines, which are us. And unfortunately technology has already been able to reproduce states of consciousness. It’s no coincidence that it’s a military project. And we are on Panoramo.it in 2014. When an article is published on Panorama.it it’s because it’s already been ten years that we’ve worked on it. Because you didn’t read it in a scientific document, produced for four nerdy professors, right? We should reflect on this. As the famous anthropologist said: “If this ‘me against the world’ model is an indication of your relationship with nature, and you have advanced technology, then your chances of survival will be the same as a snowball in hell.” We are the generation that must deal with this moment of transition. We can’t shirk it. Our children will not ask for our commentary. If we lower our guard, we are screwed forever. But us too, because I love my children, so in some way… When I first met Tara Gandhi, the granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi, she told me that her grandfather, she lived for 14 years in an ashram with her grandfather, he told her: “Tara speed does not make a difference if you’re going in the wrong direction.” Four great drivers of change, after demographics, technology, sensitivity to the environment, is precisely ethics, values, and behaviors. Everyone wants good people. The least innovative thing is technology. Or maybe today the most innovative and technological that there is. Because it’s not as important as the reference point you’re at, if you don’t know where you’re going, the faster you go, the more dangerous it will be for everyone. Is that idea clear? Perfect. In fact, as Einstein said, the true revolution that we must face, according to him, for example, is that of conscience, more than that of technology. It’s one of the principles on which I’m trying to elaborate this concept of economics 0.0. Try to make a contribution to move from a space of “mors tua vita mea”, which has underpinned the social fabric for centuries until now, inviting people to try taking a step within. This doesn’t mean returning to a primitive condition, it means making an effort to return to a space, to a digital humanism. An interior space Let’s ask ourselves questions. I can’t go to Singapore, see that stuff and not ask myself questions, I don’t know how to say it. It’s important. We have to learn how to recognize ourselves in each other in a space of togetherness. Because we depend on each other. To stay within the title that has been entrusted to me, you exist only in relation. The entire history of our species has been marked by three important moments related to the concept of community. Fire, we closed ourselves in caves, afraid of the beasts, afraid of the dark, we needed to cook food, and communities were born, as we would call them now, ok? Before we were nomads, going around remote lands alone, we coupled up when necessary, then went back to being solitary individual nomads. Fire, community, we didn’t invent it, we adapted it, adopted it. Then there was the wheel. Small communities began to spring up, trade was born, as well as religion, philosophy, art, science, and much more. Notice that not everyone began to move around, because they were used to living at walkable distances, it’s not as if the cart and everything was invented… Perfect. Now you, like me, we, we are the third large communitarian movement of our species. A single click and 7 billion people are in contact. It is a fantastic moment. Then the question becomes: are we neurologically ready for this dimension? Because with the same click, the US military has drone parked in the air above caves in Yemen that in a few thousandths of a second photograph the faces of people going in the cave, comparing them with a database that matches faces, and if that face matches with a face of a terrorist in the database, the red dot fires and they’re done for. One button. What position do we give to all this? The second principle of economics 0.0 is: What goes around comes around. Whatever you leave behind will come back to you. Whatever action you take will come back to you, for better or for worse. Today I am here to terrorize you, so I’ll say only the bad. The economic system that we’ve produced, as someone who deals with economics and works in finance would say, has not produced a sustainable result. Period. Whatever you say, period. Marketing people like me have become skilled and experienced in simply creating conditions in which, a psychological need is produced in the consumer, the consumer consumes independent of their actual need. For those who saw the film “Fight Club,” do you remember? Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, are sitting at a table – then you discover that in truth Brad Pitt is the conscience of Edward Norton – with Brad Pitt saying two things: I don’t understand all those people who wear underwear with someone else’s name on them, right? I have Calvin Klein underwear, and each time I put them on, I have the name of someone else. And then he said: “We buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like.” “We buy things we don’t need with money we don't have, to impress people we don't like." This is all of marketing up to this point. What will be marketing 0.0? I don’t know. So, time for pleasure to allocate ourselves. The egocentric system doesn’t work. We are not the pyramid, we are part of the whole. I propose an eco-centric system. And the economy should deal with this. What good is the economy? A question for you, is it a purpose or means? You’re all a part of the economic fabric of this country if not of this world, even if you just export or consume products that come in. And should the human being who is at the center of economic processes be the purpose or the means of economic processes? I invite you to reflect. What I do know is that we are rarely stimulated to make these reflections in newspapers and on television, or in marketing courses… Really? One more minute! So though this may sound simply philosophical, quantum physics has recently discovered something: that which unites us is much more important and stronger than what divides us. The origin of everything was the big bang, an explosion that created everything that exists, before the big bang everything was one as claimed by all the great religious traditions of the world, and after the big bang everything divided and created life in all its forms. Thanks to quantum physics and particle behavior we now know that the smallest atomic elements, the quanta, behave as if they were still part of this big unity. It has also proven that everything that was united never loses its connection with the rest. So it follows that any change, no matter how small, affects the whole. Our, we depend exclusively – our condition – on the condition of others. We have to take care of others so that others can take care of us. We are all interconnected it’s not a religious fact, it’s not a philosophical fact, it’s physics. Whoever understands this first has an enormous advantage. So my final proposal seeing as how they have me, indeed seeing as how I’ve arrived at the end is: a great moment of assuming responsibility. I don’t know who you all are, I don’t know what role you serve in the world, responsibility is the ability to give answers. In a commercial sense, I leave you with this operating reference point, my proposal is if all of you offer something to someone, you could be a parent with children, a politician in an election campaign, someone who sells or does marketing, in short, who among you, surely you can recognize that you have something to offer to someone who needs to buy it, well I think you should, we could, we should pursue three objectives. What we offer must respond to three necessities: it must produce a benefit for us. Fundamental. Otherwise what can we do? Good. Two: it must produce a benefit for others. It seems trivial but all of marketing has never considered the other until some days ago. Ours is a generation, I’m talking about habits. Those who sell rarely consider the other. The other is always a tool for their own benefit. But it’s not enough anymore. We need, in the transaction, to consider the benefit for ourselves, the benefit for the other, and the benefit for the collectivity. If there isn’t also a benefit for the whole, the system will no longer hold out. I leave you with this example. In the Pacific ocean, there is a 10-meter-deep floating island of plastic as big as Central Europe. Nobody talks about it. If you sell water, until yesterday it was enough to just have the purest source of water, and sell it at the price you wanted, because it was the best water, the benefit was just for you. Then you understand that there is competition, so you begin to say, but no, a benefit also for the other, I’ll give you good water at a fair price. And we’re still there, not very far. We still have to reach all the others. As long as that water is in a plastic bottle, we have no hope. Sooner or later you’re going to try surfing in front of your house and there will be an ocean of plastic. And it will be too late. It’s a metaphor. We must address the collective good. I would say that at this point there was something else but time is up. Come Oscar, let’s comment. Good, good, I really loved Oscar’s speech because it was exactly what I expected from him, so a good reflection, very deep and very radical. Naturally people are still fascinated by the things you say, I would like to invite Roberto Donzelli, if we can get him a microphone, to ask a question. Roberto is a great and dear friend, a great expert in neurolinguistic programming, he also deals with all the best at a global level, when you come to find my Tibetan friends on Lake Maggiore we’ll wait for you together. Roberto. I know you have, I feel it empathetically, you have a question ready, go ahead. I don’t have any questions, I’m sorry, the only thing is that I like this approach, naturally it’s commendable and easy to agree with, I like above all when we are able to translate it into everyday life with our neighbor. Let’s move on to a very large chunk. What can we do in the reality of everyday life to apply this principle because the difficulty is putting it into the little things. Yes, thank you. It wasn’t prepared, it was the only question I was missing in order to get to the end, thank you! I told you that ------ The Dalai Lama always says: “There are no people born under good stars or bad stars, only people who know or don’t know how to read the stars.” As far as I’m concerned, two things: the act of love is the quintessential economic act. Excuse the triviality and demagoguery, but now we recite it from memory. So come on, get it. Return on investment. It’s not trivial, heck it’s the truth. Human beings naturally desire to be loved, we live only in relation, and relation is essentially an act of love. So the market demand is huge. Human beings naturally want to love. Because we cannot live without loving. So the supply is huge. It’s the quintessential economic act and above all an invitation to reflect on something. I think the feedback from a true act of love, coated in an economic act that is not the prostitution of the act of love, is the exaltation of the act of love. It’s too easy to show the act of love only for your children. Show it for a stranger who buys something from you. What is the feedback I think we can receive when we have made an economic act of love? It will be that feeling that I’ve learned to express in my life, the most noble feeling of all: gratitude. If you look up gratitude in the dictionary the lesson is one of marketing. The memory of a benefit received and the willingness to express it. Brand awareness, buzz. Watch out, there are many more people that we love than there are people to whom we are grateful. There are many more people who love us than people who are grateful for us. Generating gratitude is a huge difficulty. Because you have to give everything and not ask anything in return. But when you’ve generated gratitude in the other, the memory of a benefit received and the willingness to express it. Show me a list of people you love, and you’ll have a list like this. You can love your parents without being grateful. Your children can love you and respect you without really being grateful. So to answer: your small gesture that becomes an act of love. I’ll conclude with a reference to quantum physics, sorry but I like it. They’ve recently discovered the principle of minimum stimulus. Don’t believe anything, go verify it yourself. Is there some physicist that can correct me directly, because then… no? Fantastic then grab him If I, can I? Ah, hi I didn’t recognize you! If I apply a force, ok beyond a certain applied force, the recipient, the body that receives it, by body I mean physical body, not necessarily, the body that receives the force reacts according to an algorithmic scale, marked 10 I react by an increasing algorithmic level, ok? In short, the more I push, the more he shifts. Below a certain threshold… Or, hi, how are you? We all thought until yesterday that no movement is produced. But physics has found that below a certain threshold, minimum stimulus, the same thing happens that happened above that threshold, but the process, rather than being outbound, is inbound. That is, you produce on the other an interior effect. That which the whole world has said “it is unmoved” and “it has produced a moment of awareness.” A tone of voice, a caress, a small gesture, which is an economic act clothed in love, if it produces gratitude it produces a change in the other. Mother Teresa always said: ”When you meet someone, make it so they are better off when you leave them than when you met them.” Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of love. The technology will follow us. Create technology and innovation without guidance, without love, without sense, and we will self destruct. It is written. Good, thank you. Good. Great.