BALANCED CAPITALISM vs UNBRIDLED NEOLIBERALISM
Why should our conception of human society ignore the characteristics of our own species?
Is the concept of money, invented in the mists of time, suited to human nature? Are the abyssal disparities in the workings of our Homo œconomicus society justified and normal?
Based on the book Psychology of the (New) Rich, this talk puts two utopias back to back: communism and capitalism. It sets the state of things under contemporary neoliberalism against a measure of societal balancing that could reverse the main black hole of our social organization — the infinite accumulation of capital by a minority.
It is about the next step up in human evolution.
90 min
ages 23 and up
SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE vs ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
- What is the fundamental difference between the way humans work and artificial intelligence?
- What is the one condition for AI to surpass humans?
- Should we really be afraid of technological progress?
- How do we prepare children for the age of AI? And how do we handle the rise of the machines ourselves?
- Meta-analysis and critique
90 min
ages 16 and up
COLLECTIVISM vs INDIVIDUALISM
(Almost) nobody, (almost) ever, consults the vast body of knowledge on human behavior accumulated in anthropology, psychology, biology or the neurosciences. The answer coming out of those disciplines boils down to a few words: we are a group of endlessly cooperative animals, sensitive to injustice, occasionally warmongering, but essentially peaceful. A society that takes no account of these leanings cannot be optimal.
Of course, we are also animals driven by motivations, self-interested, first and foremost in rank, territory and food security, and no society that disregards these tendencies can be optimal either.
Our species has two faces: social and selfish. But as it happens, it is selfishness that is the dominant hypothesis, at least in the West…
90 min
ages 20 and up
PERCEPTION of the WORLD
- How does our perception of the world work?
- Why are we conditioned by a pile of things without realizing it?
- How do our cognitive biases distort our perception of reality?
- How and why is our native culture limiting?
- What major impact does individual perception have on daily life — at work and in private?
- How do we fight it?
90 min
ages 20 and up
OUR RELATIONSHIP with MONEY
Money is everything in our societies. Absolutely everything runs on it and revolves around it. Everyone needs it. And everyone wants as much of it as possible. But we are not all equal in the face of money. Why?
- What psychological and cultural attitudes exist toward this human invention, as old as the world itself, which has given rise to so many wars and so many beautiful things?
- Could money be a measure of something other than economics? Is it a universal yardstick, one that gauges goods and services as much as people, governments, moral values, and so on?
90 minutes
ages 16 and up
CONFLICTOLOGY
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
- What is a conflict, and where does it keep coming from?
- Disagreement is inevitable; conflict is not.
- The art of managing conflict
- How do you become consensual, and stay that way?
- Applications in management and/or in a relationship
90 minutes
ages 16 and up
THE ATYPICAL vs THE JUNGLE OF THE NORMAL
When someone is intelligent, they are either respected or hated. But where exactly is the line between the idiots (a label any one of us cheerfully applies to everybody else), the normal people, and the intelligent ones (a category each of us assumes, by default, to belong to)?
Atypical people are those who are different from the others. And as a result, they are most often misunderstood and mocked. The fashionable labels are legion: gifted, high potential, highly gifted, profoundly gifted, hypersensitive, hyperactive — and the list is far from exhaustive.
How can atypical people fit into a world of clichés, stereotypes and the ordinary? And how can everyone else deal with atypical people day to day (at work or as a couple)? What makes atypical people different? And why is it as hard to understand them as it is to live with them? And above all, how do you do it?
90 minutes
ages 16 and up
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