Doit-on forcément progresser ? | Nacer ZORGANI | TEDxArtsEtMétiersAngers

Translator: Antara Pattar Reviewer: Hélène Vernet Alla... the evening is going to be fine, relax! (Laughter) I'm delighted to see everyone. Well, it's a little hypocritical of me, but I'm happy to be among you, happy to be welcomed by TEDx Arts and Crafts. Let's have a round of applause for the team that has struggled for a year to make this happen. (Applause) I'm delighted to be among you to talk about progress. "Progressus" from "progredi..." it's always so stylish when you say something in Latin. I'm going to talk about progress, mainly what inspires progress that oscillates between necessity and fascination, and between progression and sometimes even regression. And the question that I'm going to ask you in this kind of "one-man show of awareness" is: Is progress a necessity? But before that, given that I'm up here by myself and I'm egocentric and narcissistic, let's talk a little about me. (Laughter) I was born in Alger, I grew up in Marseille, I'm bald, handicapped, binational, Muslim, in short, I'm in deep trouble. (Laughter) No seriously, I grew up in Marseille and at the age of 17 I was diagnosed with pigment retinopathy, a progressive degeneration of the retina. And it was then that I learned I was going to progressively lose my vision. I was put in an institute for young blind people called "The Rainbow". I studied for a long time. I studied first philosophy and after that languages, I got a Master in Strategy, a Master of Science in Financial Engineering. I've also been able to work for big companies. All of that is a form of progress that I discovered within myself. And I've learned that ultimately, every one of us is endowed with a phenomenal capacity for resilience and for finding tricks to make up for any lack, any natural deficiency, which just shows that Nature is well-designed. And that is progress as well, but I still hope for medical progress! So that growth, I have experienced it differently than your everyday pace of progress, your relationship with progress, since there're different types of progress: social progress, technological progress, economic progress, moral progress. And within every dimension of our society, whether it be historical, philosophical, or economic, you find progress. Back then, our friends, the Greeks, were already having cat-fights. You all know Pythagoras and Thales, although... I've asked my grand-nephew, "Do you know Thales?" He told me, "Yeah, that's Son Goku's cousin in Dragon Ball." Wow! (Laughter) So already back then, there was a huge debate between two schools of thought, two paradigms. Some people who were esoteric or even religious, thought that progress is nothing more than a form of decline and that humanity is doomed for failure, for its own disappearance, that Man is born in heaven, or in Olympus, or, in the great monotheistic religions, in Paradise, and that Man is bound to fail by that form of progress that is nothing but the idle pursuit of luxury and time saving. The other school of thought, more modern, are all the authors like Bacon, Diderot, etc., that brought encyclopedias and the Enlightenment movement, who think that humanity should progress, and that through progress humanity will achieve its ideal state. Through this ambivalence, that can be found throughout the evolution of different civilizations, I wanted to raise a few questions today about the way we inspire progress. Does progress come from necessity, or does it instead come from our fascination, our curiosity? Well, most of the time, it oscillates between the two. So necessity is the necessity to treat and cure diseases, but we can see that this ambivalence still exists since some illnesses have disappeared from our so-called "civilized" country but still exist in other more complex countries that have developments and systems of production that are not "evolved" from our point of view. And there are other forms of progress that are much more advanced like new technologies. Remember our dear deceased friend: "This is a revolution!" It's true, it's a revolution, and it's what enabled me to adapt quickly because I use other parts of my brain that for you are hogged by your vision. That's why I haven't used any support today. Today, you all are like me, visually impaired. By the way, let's turn off the lights. ... No, I'm just kidding. (Laughter) This ambivalence can be found in scientific progress, in medical progress, and in social progress as well. We created paid leave, vacations, etc., to have more time, but that time, we don't spend it like the Greeks who, in Antiquity, dedicated it to contemplation. And it's precisely that contemplation that tips us over from necessity to fascination. And Humanity has always been fascinated, by the Heavens for example. We had Icarus, and today we have Interstellar. Well, that's not exactly the same... Imagine Thales, Socrates, Pythagoras, and Plato eating popcorn while watching Interstellar? I'm sure they would faint! Ultimately, that fascination has always given rise to progress - we have seen it in the two previous presentations, an immeasurable progress that is going faster and faster. And behind this willingness to make progress, what is really the inspiration? Again, through this same ambivalence between the two trends of thoughts, some people who have a Manichean vision between good and bad, the good guys and the bad guys, will say: "We make progress, but technology is perverting the human being." Why? Because for example, when the Facebook network was created to enable researchers and friends to connect between universities there was a kind of virtuous circle. Today, you see posts like: "I ate cornflakes." People take photos of their plates. So the danger is precisely to fall into a virtual reality, a virtual reality that exists in the digital world. We are not machines, until proven otherwise. If we take all the futuristic novels like those written by Isaac Asimov or George Orwell, and we transpose them to today, well, either their are visionary or they had a crystal ball. And this begs the question, what is the true source of progress? I think, and it's my personal story that I'm going to tell you, that we are the progress. We are the source of our own progress. Again, in the same ambivalence, some think Man is God, and God is Man. Others think precisely the opposite, that, in a primitive way, Man tends towards his own destruction. But in my personal case, when I began to progressively lose my vision, I told myself, "Now I am powerless against people who are able to see." Now I don't know how I did it, but I naturally discovered that being in two worlds, that of the sighted and the partially sighted, was giving me an outside and objective view that allowed me to question my environment and understand in a different way more strategical or even tactical how the environment functions, and I had to find new solutions. At first, at school, I was reading with a lamp. People called me Aladdin throughout my entire schooling, it was horrible! (Laughter) At the end, I could not read anymore. So I used a type of software that made me discover that auditory memory is immensely more powerful and more anchored in time than visual memory. And by listening to my lessons and no longer being able to read the board, I started developing a kind of "hypermnesic" memory which is the opposite of "amnesia". And from there, I began to develop a spatial memory, and I have a good sense of direction, it's rather paradoxical. It is what I call a "topographic vision". I've developed a topographical vision. I specifically say "vision" because seeing is a mechanical action that depends on the eyes - in the primary visual cortex, vision is inverted and you see - whereas perceiving is about discernment and requires abstraction, a sort of astral vision... I haven't been smoking anything! (Laughter) So I was able to develop this topographic vision thanks to a discipline that was key in my personal growth, but I'm not going to talk about it. Rather we're going to see it, you're going to be surprised, I think. (Video) (Music) [January 21, 2017] [Marseille, France] Any volunteer? (Laughter) Martial arts have guided my whole life. I first started with French boxing, then I did judo, aikido, I even practiced Japanese sword fighting, the handling of weapons, and of course English boxing. This video was from a gala in January against a former world champion light heavyweight. Now you may think "How does he do?" since I can't see anything coming. My opponents don't dare to hit me, so I tell them, "Go for it, I bump into posts, walls, sidewalks, go ahead!" (Laughter) They don't want to, but let's take a volunteer. Come on, Pierre... I'm going to show you with an experiment, it will make better sense. Human beings are gifted with senses, we all agree - I'm not Daredevil - and all the senses are interconnected within our brain that distributes them like in a nuclear power plant, more or less equally. Sight is a sense that consumes a lot of energy. When I stop seeing, what is left is not hearing but rather logic. If Pierre talks and he is here, his voice is over there, right? Now he's going to recite the alphabet... and his head is right here. So I don't need more details. His head is here, his family jewels are around here... (Laughter) Thank you, Pierre. That experiment, you can do it yourselves with your fingers, your sense of touch. When you go back home in the evening and there is no light, you all have this instinct to turn on the light in order to insert your key into the lock. Yet all you have to do is use your finger - some people do it - and you can directly find the lock's keyhole. You just have to concentrate internally on what senses are left when you're disabled so that you develop the capacity to be resilient and to be just as "able-bodied as any other able-bodied person". I'm not saying "normal" because normality isn't really a norm. All of that to tell you that progress, to me, is the inspiration that we have and should have for what is, for us, humanity. What is humanity? It is the human race. It is to live in society, to live in a collegial way, etc. Capitalism, neo-liberalism, all of that, are not necessarily modern ideas. The needy and the wealthy have always existed throughout History. Technical, technological and medical progress must enable Humanity to move forward but especially to question its own behavior. Today, we see the emergence of new movements such as degrowth, frugal innovation, or biomimicry. By the way, I invite you all to go see and read Idris Averkamp's lectures, an triple Doctor Emeritus, who talks about Humanity's rebirth through this new technological era. But rebirth needs to be the search for the ideal state of Humanity, and not the prolongation of Humanity. That's the big question we should ask ourselves. Are we bound to live eternally? Google and all the tech giants invest billions of dollars in eternal life, in replacing our organs, and so on. I would be the first one to happily have my eyes replaced. But are we destined to live a thousand years? Two thousand years? And this is really where the gift of ubiquity, meaning being everywhere simultaneously all the time, experiencing everything idly is kind of our intrinsic defect that question us saying: "Is progress taking advantage of everything or just taking the time to observe, contemplate and understand Nature and not trying subjugate it? You can't fight against a typhoon or a drought. Our technology can help us to adapt, not to fight against Nature. So in conclusion, I invite you to wonder what could help us progress as human beings, especially during the troubled times in which we are currently living. Who knows, maybe next week I'll return to my village? (Laughter) What is valuable about human beings? Is it the fact that they're all the same, they resemble each other, or the fact that they're all different? Difference is a virtue, a strong value, it's not an obstacle. Being handicapped is an asset. I even invite you to blindfold yourselves sometimes to feel things. We should inspire progress, it is not progress that should inspire us. We need to master it, be its master rather than its slave. And it's time for me to progress towards the exit, and for you, to continue to progress in this conference. Thank you very much. (Applause)