Dear TEDizens,
The more you look at her, the more
Mother Nature delights, shocks, intrigues and amazes.
It's not just the power of a tsunami ...
... or the beauty
of a desert ...
... or the ingenuity of a virus ...
... or the riches of a rainforest ...
... or
the mystery of space ...
... or the magic of a
developing foetus ...
... it's the realization that
we have barely begun to scratch the surface of knowledge. That
everywhere you look there are a thousand new extraordinary tales
to be told.
It's a generalization, but you could argue
that one of the big stories of the last century is that mankind
grew arrogant and claimed a mastery over nature it had never
earned. We thought we could create architecture and music and art
and machines and cultures purely through our own brilliance, and
no longer needed to pay so much attention to the world that
spawned us.
And then:
• our ingenious, brave art
came to seem a little too absurd
• our clever, efficiently
built buildings came to seem drab, lifeless
• our
money-over-community culture made some of us depressed
• our one-size-fits-all medicines made some of us sick
• our all-powerful machines turned out to have deeply unpleasant
consequences, threatening to destroy our planet
Perhaps the biggest questions this century poses is: will we listen to Nature once again? Will she help us rediscover the roots of our aesthetic values? Will she share with us some of the extraordinary designs she has spent three billion years working on? Will she help us heal? (And will we let her heal??) Might she even restore to us that magical sense of wonder our busy, cynical lives are prone to bury?
This week in Monterey we get to pull back from out normal bustle and engage in such questions in the company of remarkable people. You are one of them, and I thank you so much for being art of this.
Let the magic begin!
Chris Anderson
TED Curator