TED Community » Shane Bates

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• A comment on Talk: Dan Pallotta: The way we think about charity is dead wrong

  Mar 26 2013: Struck with the insight that the title of this talk is right on the money. Much of what Dan speaks about addresses the inner working or charities, I would also add that our individual engagement with charity is dead wrong. Most of us perceive charity as something the fortunate get to partake in, something that sounds nice but isn't possible, something we don't have time for. Almost everyone would say charity is a good thing, but how many individuals are taking action. This gap needs to be bridged. We need to discover more effective ways to communicate that charity will add value to your life, that by helping others you will truly be helping yourself. The breakdown of how many charities v.s how many companies have reached X amount of money shows that we are not communicating this value. Just as a product adds value to ones life, so does giving back through charitable actions. I think a major issue is, as Dan touches upon, awareness and accessibility. We need to find more effective ways to communicate and get people on board.

• A reply on Talk: Young-ha Kim: Be an artist, right now!

  Feb 19 2013: Are you really just asking what is it like to be one, or are you inferring that if everyone is one, it takes away from actually being one because it is merely a fundamental part of being?
  
  If its the latter I think as he explains in the talk that we all have it within us to be an artist but we disconnect from our abilities to do so. Yes we are all artists, but we are not all being artistic, we suppress those instinctual capabilities. So much of what we do is dictated by our efforts to be practical and so many of our actions are guided for economic and social motivators that many of us fail to take the artist within ourselves and find a successful medium to express it.
  
  So what is it like to be that artist? Passion. The feeling is one of liberation and contentment. When we do tap into our inner artist it helps to feel the rapture of being alive, what we all seek. Human nature is one that strives to express and share, being artistic, we can communicate in our own unique way. It frees us from that desire to do so and satisfies the thirst we all wish to quench.
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  A comment on Talk: Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice

  Feb 7 2013: I loved it at first, I really did, but look at this guy he is trying to convince me choice is bad! What?!?!
  
  He is a clever fellow I don’t deny it, I’ve actually used the jeans example a lot it’s a great talk to engage some serious thinking, but I don’t think that choice is the foundation for the problems. But instead the problem is centered around our processes of choosing and our desire.
  
  Why is it that you choose anything at all? Do you wish not to be able to choose? There is no in between, is there really an optimal level of choice? That sounds like such a cop-out, “let me choose this much, but then you handle restricting me and the world from other possibilities,” it just doesn’t happen that way.
  
  Take a minute and actually think about what it would entail to limit choice on any level. Think about choice at its meaning, its purpose. What does it serve? Choice is inextricably linked to freedom. Can you suggest man be removed of his free will, then what remains is not man. A person who convinces himself choice is what brings about his unhappiness is a person misled from truth.

• A reply on Conversation: Have you realized your potential?

  Jan 19 2013: this sounds miserable