Following is the full transcript of American film director Ondi Timoner’s TEDx Talk: When Genius and Insanity Hold Hands @ TEDxKC conference.
Listen to the MP3 Audio: When genius and insanity hold hands by Ondi Timoner @ TEDxKC
TRANSCRIPT:
Ondi Timoner – American film director
Few hundred years ago, the lions and tigers were kings of the jungle, and then they wound up in zoos.
“I predict the same will happen to us.” Internet pioneer Josh Harris told me this from deep inside a bunker in Manhattan at the turn of the millennium.
He meant that we would herd ourselves into our own virtual boxes — our phones and computers and only realize once we’ve been enslaved. And he was right.
Most of us in this room can’t go about an hour without checking for messages and updates. Our every move is recorded and tracked. We’re never offline.
We’re overwhelmed by our email but concerned if the load lightens. Our so-forth rises and falls with the numbers of likes and comments we receive. In fact, research has shown that our brains release a hit of dopamine every time we post something personal about ourselves and receive attention from our social networks in return.
Josh Harris made millions in the 90s, forecasting internet trends and he even started the first Internet television network long before there was broadband. He was determined to spend his money to create a living social experiment that would give us all a vision of his — of our future online.
He predicted that we would trade our privacy and eventually our freedom for the recognition and connection we so dearly crave. His miniature society had 150 living pods, an 80 foot long dining room table and a gun range.
He told them, “everything’s free except your image that we own.” Yet hundreds lined up for a spot, answering 500 questions about the most personal aspects of their lives, donning uniforms, subjecting themselves to interrogations. They lived in public for weeks until the SWAT team shut it down, perceiving it to be a millennial cult on New Year’s Day 2000.
But Josh had proved his point. With the internet, well each want a 15 minutes of fame every day and he withstood ridicule for this vision especially when he showed up in the bunker dressed as his alter ego lovey the clown, who symbolized his consumption of electronic calories from overdosing on TV and media all of his life.
10 years later, his Facebook soared in popularity and we were posting what we had for breakfast online. It became clear that the bunker had come true.
We’ve always been interested in watching each other, from painting on cave walls to peeking over our neighbor’s fence, we’re fascinated by each other. We want our lives to matter and we’re desperately uncomfortable with the notion that it might all be meaningless. So we seek to be remembered long before we’re gone.
We live in public is really a warning shot across the bow of the future and it’s a horror film starring all of us scarier now that it’s come true than when it was mere prophecy about five years ago.
But there’s an alternative to this kind of self-destructive creativity. And for the first time ever almost all of us have access to it. We each have moments. When we see something that can be done better or differently and we either go out there and step out of line and pursue that or more likely we consider the consequences and stay the course.
Meanwhile we post a pretty picture with a preset filter and enjoy praise from the web but this might be a distraction, a temporary feeling of importance that needs to be constantly maintained and only delays us for making our real contribution.
For me, the camera’s been a bridge into worlds I could never otherwise enter — from prisons to army barracks, from Mad rock-and-roll escapades to climatology labs and even deep inside a cult. It’s given me permission to enter and ask questions and with a camera in my hand I find people answer them.
Renoir says, “every director makes the same film again and again.”
When I first heard that I thought gosh how boring, hope I don’t do that. And then now looking back I realize actually I kind of do and most of us do. We track some kind of human aspect — aspect of human behavior across all of our work. For me that’s meant looking at what people will give up to have their lives matter.
But at the center of every world I explore there’s always someone who can’t help but do what they do and they do it against all odds. Their lives inherently matter because they envision something greater than themselves which they’re determined to make real. I call these people impossible visionaries. Because they’ve all been told that what they’re trying to do is impossible and they frustrate the people around them with their impossible behavior as they plow forward anyway.
Ten years after I stood in that bunker, it was clear that the same technology that allowed us to expose every corner of our lives and create self-serving avatars online was also removing all financial, geographic, and cultural boundaries. It was allowing us to solve real problems faster and more efficiently than ever before.
So I thought if we could track this impossible gene across my subjects, maybe we could cultivate these trailblazing traits in ourselves to seize upon this special moment in time.
All of my subjects can be loved or loathed depending on the part of the film you’re watching but you can’t help but respect their courage and determination. They may be called geniuses or insane or both but they all share a commitment to realizing their vision no matter what consequences they might suffer and suffer they do. Not one of them has come out unscathed, because they’re trying to do something that’s never been done before or they’re breaking the rules of how it’s done.
So no matter how many fans they have, they can’t help but remain outsiders. Josh Harris was right when he pictured our vision online but he lost everything for it: his girlfriend; his money; and even his sanity for a while. Yet he stands by his choices with no regrets maintaining that every step of the journey informs what he’s about to do next.
Amanda Palmer had a record record-breaking Kickstarter by using the unprecedented power in her pocket — that computing power — and a vast social network to innovate an economy of art-making that was brand new, with rewards like house parties that went all night and painting sessions yet all the while she was lambasted continuously because she operates outside the system and threatens the power structure and those who stand to benefit from it.
She tells me, “I get a lot of hate. Sometimes it gets to be too much and I collapse, I cry and I shake my fist at God but then I get up again and do something productive.”
Anton Newcombe, the lead singer of The Brian Jonestown Massacre and the star of my film Dig! defy the system from how he wrote his songs to how he put them out. When I met him, he was facing an industry showcase and a record deal which he ultimately destroyed. “I am a letter writer and they are the postmen”, he told me. He prided himself from operating outside the system recording record after record for less than a price of a case of beer and then put those songs online before anybody thought of it.
Anton was uncomfortable with being comfortable. He needed to ride that line between genius and madness to record the vast and respected catalog of music he’s known for today.
Bjørn Lomborg is an economist. Yes, that’s right, economist. He realized we’re not doing anything about climate change partially because we’re paralyzed by a feeling of fear and futility but also because of a political logjam has left a single solution so economically unfavourable no one will pass it.
So for 25 years we leave conferences around the world with no agreement while facing a future for our children that grows hotter by the minute.
Lomborg while I was filming him was called names, had a pie thrown in his face and was kicked out of offices because he refuses to surrender to adversity. He stands by and fights for what he believes that utilizing technology and testing less expensive experimental yet logical solutions is the only way to fight climate change.
While filming Cool It, we were equally inspired by his cohorts other impossible visionaries like Steven Salter who invented wave energy and also developed a way for us to shoot, salted the clouds to brighten them and reduce the temperatures in Jonathan Trent who grows algae underneath the water that traps the carbon down there while creating food and fuel.
For three years since my team has amassed the stories of some of the greatest thought leaders and doers in the world today from the perspective of their passionate beginnings on so we might recognize ourselves in the narrative. All of these people see a problem and they try to solve it. We’ve documented hundreds of them and we’re not done yet.
In fact, yesterday in the lobby I was interviewing Larry Lessig who you’re about to see. The total disruption is an ongoing empowerment network and we share our stories as we go. As Mike mentioned it’s a constantly releasing documentary which in and of itself is disruptively forging a new model for documentary filmmaking.
Haven’t we all driven by a building and abandoned building and imagine what it could be. Maybe we picture a school or a restaurant or dance studio and then the light changes and we drive on. We think to ourselves: how could I ever do that? That’s impossible.
What is it that stops us from stepping out of line to go after these fleeting thoughts that we never pursue. We were all impossible as kindergarteners, drawing on the walls or outside the lines until ultimately we understood, whether taught or ridiculed, that we needed to draw inside those lines. And when we did we were rewarded for it.
How can we entertain these impossible thoughts and give them a seat at the table? It’s the people that step out of line and risk doubt and ridicule who bring the most interesting things into our lives. They see opportunity where others see impossibility. They risk the doubt and the ridicule: how can we do this?
They trump the fear that scares and seizes so many of us when facing change, and they do as Amanda Palmer advises they embrace the flux.
I can stand here today and urge you to go and pursue that idea or that vision because — because of this sweeping change we have an unprecedented opportunity with the greatest access to collaborators and information across space and time. The lowest cost ever to starting our own business, selling our own art or helping people who may need our support.
Graphic artist Shepard Fairey told me selling my art directly to my fans means that there’s more to go towards the cause itself. He’s built a thriving business online which allows him the freedom to support other artists and charities and his work shows in prestigious galleries and museums around the world. But that doesn’t stop him from hitting the streets to make public art which has landed him arrested 16 times to date.
With the total disruption we document chief executive artists like Shepard Fairey and also the invisible superheroes that are inventing our future — people like Bram Cohen, the founder of BitTorrent; Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos who is taking $350 million of his personal funds and his deep knowledge of the importance of company culture to revitalize downtown Las Vegas, or Dean Kamen who invented the portable dialysis machine and a water purifying system that requires no electricity which is saving thousands of lives in Africa.
These people have the courage to take the first step and the tenacity to follow through even after failure and they all fail and fail and fail until they succeed. We document them in the hopes that we may be inspired to grow smarter, faster together and nurture each other into living more fulfilling, more independent lives.
I was recently interviewing it a San Quentin inmate, that’s a prison in California, for a total disruption. He’s part of a tech incubator called the last mile. He’s learning how to start his own business but he’s never touched a computer because he’s in prison. I asked him what he thinks the internet might look like. He said, “It’s a place your dream can live and you have the power and access to connect with anyone anywhere in the world to make something of what’s going on inside your mind.”
So think through those dreams you put away for another day and get with a friend or go online; someone somewhere probably has the same impossible idea you do. And now you can connect with them across all geographic boundaries and you can test your idea almost immediately instead of using that same feedback loop to bask in your 15 minutes of fame.
My latest documentary that I’m making now is about Russell Brand who realized that fame and those money, sex and drugs that came along with it didn’t make for a fulfilling life. His new mission is to wake us up to realize we’ve been led to pursue these things so that we can be controlled and exploited by the powers that have — well the interests that have the power.
I heard him call himself crazy the other day and it sounded like he was saying in a positive way. So I asked him to define insanity for me. He said it’s listening to the voice inside your head over the voices outside of it. He advises if you want to get anywhere in your life you got to learn to disobey the people that are telling you what to do right now.
The impossible part of an impossible visionary means that they can be frustrating and difficult; they will be. But it also means they’re tackling something that seems impossible to pull off and they might just need to have a little bit of impossible in them in order to hang in there despite the financial and emotional struggle, despite the prevailing wisdom and logic and reason and the hemming and hawing of everyone around them.
All of these visionaries seem driven by a confidence and a tenacity that’s fed by an endless flow of serendipity. Like they’re in touch with or in sync with something that’s greater than themselves. I’ve learned that serendipity breeds serendipity, that blessed good fortune or that aha moment, it can be obtained and it can be grown but in order to experience increased serendipity we need to recognize it.
All of these disruptors, these crazy people, they make plans but then when they realize that something they’re doing in the now is more important or that they need to change direction, they’re willing to break those plans. If we listen to our inner voice it will grow stronger, our lives will blossom and as our ideas take physical shape the world around us will blossom too.
It’s predicted that 40% of our jobs will be obsolete in the next 20 years or we will be replaced by robots or the jobs will change so significantly they’ll require an entirely new set of skills. This is really scary but it’s also really exciting, because most of us weren’t working on our dreams all day anyhow.
Well technology destroy us or save us, it can go either way, towards the dark vision of we live in public or towards the passion driven democratization and actualization of a total disruption. Will we be trapped by our virtual boxes or freed by them? It’s a little bit of both right now but what is for sure is that the power we have in our pocket is greater than all the world’s computers just five years ago.
So this is our chance, this is our opportunity to step out of line and be impossible together, to make something truly massive and meaningful with our lives. Let’s not pass it up.
One disruptive entrepreneur on the ATD platform said it best, if someone says your idea is crazy, it’s probably worth doing.
Thank you very much.
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