[Applause]
we live in gloomy times it seems
whenever I open my news desk I’m being
bombarded was really horrifying
information climate change has been
mentioned often enough and in the last
days and if you just look at how the
u.s. is now pumping fossil fuels again
and Brazil is really committing to
DeForest States the whole continent how
half of the world’s population is really
not trying to catching up and co2
emissions I think it’s quite naive that
we can still restore any kind of climate
justice and it’s this naivety that we
need it’s a key element to still be able
to make a change and don’t get me wrong
intellectually I’m a terrible pessimist
I think as three billion people right
now are directly affected by land
degradation and temperatures are rising
we are looking at severe global food
Wars in 2050 so let me ask you who of
you in the audience is younger than 30
years I see you there okay
who of you has kids all right so I’m now
going to give you a few more examples
where we are setting a horrible future
for the next generation and I mean us as
human beings and I’m going to tell you
all these systemic complex economically
driven examples and you will see why
because we’ve worked on them so secret
services for example they are working
closely with big companies like Google
or Amazon to attack the core of our
democracy my lawyers don’t talk to me
anymore if there’s still a smart phone
in the room I’m sure who have you has a
smart phone in the room
right and predictive algorithms are for
seeing our our needs and by this
diminishing the last little pieces of
free will and discourse left coming soon
AI killing drums where humans let
machines decide over life and death all
the weapon industry Germany is very good
in that we are one of the major armed
exploitation in nations in the world and
the UN has 10 million dollars a year for
disarmament sound a locked but the
world’s exportation of weapons 2016 it
was at 31 billion that’s three thousand
times as much and while we are exporting
weapons around the world let me give you
another horrible example who of you has
been buying chocolate to the supermarket
lately produced by two million children
working under conditions that are even
the UN calls modern slavery and there’s
still no law to soothe those
supermarkets who are based on this
system this would be Zeki leverage to
change that in the past three years
sorry to continue let’s go one step even
further into this horrible feeling 8480
mothers children and young hopeful men
died in the Mediterranean Sea trying to
come to Europe 8480 as a reaction sea
rescue missions has been criminalized
and the border control is projecting
over a trillion dollars over seven years
period imagine what you can do with this
money so today it’s one of five people
who is trying to come to Europe over the
Mediterranean Sea dying one of five you
can construe the rose how many that
would be if we as an audience would try
to come to Europe without a passport
it’s that way
and somehow we don’t really seem to
resist as a society somehow we like you
know we talk about it we but we still
let this happen and I wonder why so you
might say it’s because it’s too complex
it’s more complex than what you’re just
saying it’s a structural problem and
what can I do as an individual right and
I’ll give you that it’s complex yes but
this is where naivety kicks in naivety
you think of it often as a risk-taking
as you know you if there’s so much
scalability in there it’s it’s this
feeling of misjudgment of you know
somehow being too light-hearted to do
misinformed decisions to take them so of
course we want to take informed
decisions we want to have a clear moral
compass when we do that I mean what
would the other think right but there’s
also the children’s naivety and the
children’s naivety is very experimental
as curious is not clinging on social
status or you know conventions there is
this open-minded attitude and children
act wizard with a smile so I want to
grab this diabetes and I would say that
there is no direct contradiction between
having a informed decision and still
being naive because anyone who is taking
any decision ever in life will always be
reducing complexity otherwise you
couldn’t even come into this room so if
we keep on walking around in the woods
and we don’t we always weigh if we maybe
should go that way or maybe you know
climate change might kind of you know so
maybe it’s not a good idea to continue
that way then we will never find the
clearing so at a certain point you have
to get out but of course there’s two
things you have to be very careful about
if you’re reducing complexity in a very
naive childish way you should not ever
fall into the traps of populist
reductionism
also you should not use complexity of
course like corporations to obfuscate
and technocrats and saying you know this
is too complex for you but what can you
do for that there is one simple rule I
would like to give you that I hold very
dearly I said whenever I do anything I
want to fight for the voice of the
oppressed and marginalized group first
and when I do that and that’s the
important part I’d never do this at the
expense of other marginalized groups you
might know some people are fighting for
the right of the oppressed but they do
this by kicking down don’t do that so
then I want to give you a few examples
on in my work how we try to with naivety
Twelver comes is paralyzing suppression
of over complex world there’s one father
button fell is a big energy company in
northern Germany and they loved digging
coal they did that for years and they
really loved it so I thought maybe they
should just stop it maybe they should go
hundred percent renewable what about
that and you might know that big
companies sometimes they’re very hard
and adjusting and changing especially
when it comes to social justice so we
did it for them and we created a press
conference in the headquarters of the
company inviting journalists and we
presented the world researched with
economists environmentalist a program
for responsibility we call it the
responsibility initiative and we there
was even someone from the German
parliament
from the Christian Democratic Party
congratulating them for this great idea
and it was very proud of it
unfortunately they did not really like
it and they did not accept the decision
we made for them and so over the past
weeks they had to explain over 70
newspapers that they’re actually not
willing to take responsibility
so this was a very naive idea and we
could show the world we could have a lot
of fun but show the world also that you
can do something you know of course we
research it what’s complex we didn’t
forget that but then we also looked at
the weapon industry in weapon industry
you also might agree is not very known
for taking self initiative when it comes
to stopping weapon exportation right so
again we did it for them we wrote
letters in the name of a clerk or it’s a
rifle that many children in the world
are having and we send it to all US arms
dealers we could find on the website and
told them to send it back to the factory
please because you know Germany is
having this these laws about peace and
we can’t accept to send weapons under
Trump so the customers were extremely
extremely angry and they wrote in the
blog posts how bad the stupid
peacekeeping Germans are and whether
really neat little brand damage so the
the company blacked the website for a
week and said that they are the victims
now they who are exporting even legally
to states like Mexico again we had a lot
of fun and we could show that it is
possible to do something even in this
weapon industry world was really
difficult to get through then secret
services I mentioned them I think it
would be great if they would stop
droning illegally in Pakistan if they
would stop supporting financially some
neo Nazis and fascists locally we just
heard today that there is a fascist
Network in the German Bundeswehr and
here it’s difficult to do it for them so
we decided to create an exit
organization where we invite them to
come back
democracy we called it Intel exit and we
had a huge band circling around the NSA
and telling them please to come out and
then we took a drone and flew over the
NSA compound in Germany a close to Daum
shut down stat and dropped leaflets to
make them understand that they have a
chance to restart a new life then we
hacked phone numbers 30 songs and we
called them we created a call center and
talk directly to spies so it was
citizens like you who could call these
untouchable agents and talk with them
about Essex some of them reached out to
us and we tried to help them it was
really a crazy time and I heard and this
apart which I really loved that the
whole British Secret Service the GCHQ
had workshop for all their employees to
be prepared for us so again I didn’t
expect that it would explode like that
we didn’t expect that we could really
tear them out of their own little biased
bubble to talk about Essex I guess we
did
thanks to naivety I love chocolate I
guess I’m not the only one in the room
but I think we should have a law that
permits us to su supermarket set us
there is building their whole production
chain on the violation of basic rights
again as a citizen I can’t create a law
not on my own so we want to talk about
it and we created what an app an app
where you can pay the producers directly
instead of some supermarket so people
would go stealing in the supermarkets
and paste through our apps the union’s
Asli producers instead it was kind of a
global Robin Hood then online people
were discussing we’re saying you go too
far
stealing is not good you know Christian
laws and all and then they started while
they were yelling no
saying that maybe stealing a few orange
juices here and there is not as bad as a
whole system based on the exploitation
and on robbing two basic rights of the
producers so Jeffrey Sachs one of the
leading UN economists said that with
this action we were able to raise
awareness for this and employees of the
ministry said that indeed after that
they acknowledge says they have to work
much harder on a law to you know be able
to sue supermarkets who violate Human
Rights in the production chain again
sorry to repeat myself with a good
portion of naivety this would have never
been possible and then what about
migration this is a topic that touches
us a lot we see what is happening right
now while all this like climate
catastrophe is happening and this
exploitation around the world when
people want to come borders are being
pulled up and Nations are creating walls
so I believe it’s really weird that
capital goods information can float
freely around the world by when it comes
to human beings no you need the right
passport so we wanted to change that in
2015 we called out to bring refugees
over the border and we created a legal
fund for everyone who will be caught by
the police
to have legal support so we paid the
lawyers and almost no one was caught
over 700 people followed the call so
there were a lot of family reunions
happening after that I think it was a
shiny advertisement video we put out
there and there was even a company that
where I know I heard about it was not
official but they gave three days of
paid leave to all their employees who
would go to Hungary and bring people
back it was in all German media and we
coined the word floated which is a
positive connotation much better than
smuggling so then we also wanted to talk
about how can you
proves a point that we as European
citizens have certain privileges with
our passport that we can’t really share
or maybe we can so we thought what if
with one passport two people can travel
and we tried it out so we took federica
mogherini our EU commissioner and one of
our teams sophie and merged their faces
and gave it to a passport office the
point is that you can recognize both
people in the same picture so we went to
the streets we still have this passports
it’s working totally fine both can
travel with it
Vika didn’t want to and we went to the
streets and asked people if they would
do it if they would be willing to share
their passport if they could with
someone in need who cannot travel freely
and you would be amazed how many people
were really willing to do it and we’re
thankful for this opportunity it is it
was a theoretical thing if we would do
it I would not be standing here but this
showed to us that this naive idea really
opened up a space where people could
talk about it and and you know reflect
their own privilege so in the beginning
of the summer when the governments were
criminalizing sea rescue missions we
didn’t like it and we want to talk about
this
– and just disguised as the government
and said that in the name of the German
government we welcome all refugees that
are being rescued until 20 end of 2019
to come to Germany out of this little
joke grew an international movement
called Z blocker and we had over a
hundred and fifty thousand people
demonstrating on the streets we had 26
cities that committed to be safe havens
and welcoming refugees who are being
rescued in the Mediterranean we had no
idea this was happened we had just you
know it was three days work of this
little video and we had no idea that so
many people would follow the call it was
of course just a mosaic and a whole
movement that spread out from there but
it did happen
so I believe fear is just a projection
to the future and we have to get rid of
this broken future and ignore it for a
while and break open the present naivety
is making the best out of the moment so
I don’t know if we’ve always made its
best decisions as peg collective surely
not but what I know is that have not
been paralyzed but just by this over
complex world where you know you don’t
really know where to start and what I
know for sure is that any revolution and
revolutions I think we need a lot right
now
different progressive movements has
always been explained only
retrospectively no one was ever saying
it’s going to happen tomorrow but when
it happened
everyone knew why it would so all we can
do is to create opportunities for
revolutions to create the possibility
for radical change so maybe one of the
naive actions we’ll take will be a
butterfly’s flap that will turn out to
be a world wind around the world for
justice and turning nation’s capital and
patriarchy upside down and if not at
least I will have a good sleep
thank you very much [Applause]
we live in gloomy times it seems
whenever I open my news desk I’m being
bombarded was really horrifying
information climate change has been
mentioned often enough and in the last
days and if you just look at how the
u.s. is now pumping fossil fuels again
and Brazil is really committing to
DeForest States the whole continent how
half of the world’s population is really
not trying to catching up and co2
emissions I think it’s quite naive that
we can still restore any kind of climate
justice and it’s this naivety that we
need it’s a key element to still be able
to make a change and don’t get me wrong
intellectually I’m a terrible pessimist
I think as three billion people right
now are directly affected by land
degradation and temperatures are rising
we are looking at severe global food
Wars in 2050 so let me ask you who of
you in the audience is younger than 30
years I see you there okay
who of you has kids all right so I’m now
going to give you a few more examples
where we are setting a horrible future
for the next generation and I mean us as
human beings and I’m going to tell you
all these systemic complex economically
driven examples and you will see why
because we’ve worked on them so secret
services for example they are working
closely with big companies like Google
or Amazon to attack the core of our
democracy my lawyers don’t talk to me
anymore if there’s still a smart phone
in the room I’m sure who have you has a
smart phone in the room
right and predictive algorithms are for
seeing our our needs and by this
diminishing the last little pieces of
free will and discourse left coming soon
AI killing drums where humans let
machines decide over life and death all
the weapon industry Germany is very good
in that we are one of the major armed
exploitation in nations in the world and
the UN has 10 million dollars a year for
disarmament sound a locked but the
world’s exportation of weapons 2016 it
was at 31 billion that’s three thousand
times as much and while we are exporting
weapons around the world let me give you
another horrible example who of you has
been buying chocolate to the supermarket
lately produced by two million children
working under conditions that are even
the UN calls modern slavery and there’s
still no law to soothe those
supermarkets who are based on this
system this would be Zeki leverage to
change that in the past three years
sorry to continue let’s go one step even
further into this horrible feeling 8480
mothers children and young hopeful men
died in the Mediterranean Sea trying to
come to Europe 8480 as a reaction sea
rescue missions has been criminalized
and the border control is projecting
over a trillion dollars over seven years
period imagine what you can do with this
money so today it’s one of five people
who is trying to come to Europe over the
Mediterranean Sea dying one of five you
can construe the rose how many that
would be if we as an audience would try
to come to Europe without a passport
it’s that way
and somehow we don’t really seem to
resist as a society somehow we like you
know we talk about it we but we still
let this happen and I wonder why so you
might say it’s because it’s too complex
it’s more complex than what you’re just
saying it’s a structural problem and
what can I do as an individual right and
I’ll give you that it’s complex yes but
this is where naivety kicks in naivety
you think of it often as a risk-taking
as you know you if there’s so much
scalability in there it’s it’s this
feeling of misjudgment of you know
somehow being too light-hearted to do
misinformed decisions to take them so of
course we want to take informed
decisions we want to have a clear moral
compass when we do that I mean what
would the other think right but there’s
also the children’s naivety and the
children’s naivety is very experimental
as curious is not clinging on social
status or you know conventions there is
this open-minded attitude and children
act wizard with a smile so I want to
grab this diabetes and I would say that
there is no direct contradiction between
having a informed decision and still
being naive because anyone who is taking
any decision ever in life will always be
reducing complexity otherwise you
couldn’t even come into this room so if
we keep on walking around in the woods
and we don’t we always weigh if we maybe
should go that way or maybe you know
climate change might kind of you know so
maybe it’s not a good idea to continue
that way then we will never find the
clearing so at a certain point you have
to get out but of course there’s two
things you have to be very careful about
if you’re reducing complexity in a very
naive childish way you should not ever
fall into the traps of populist
reductionism
also you should not use complexity of
course like corporations to obfuscate
and technocrats and saying you know this
is too complex for you but what can you
do for that there is one simple rule I
would like to give you that I hold very
dearly I said whenever I do anything I
want to fight for the voice of the
oppressed and marginalized group first
and when I do that and that’s the
important part I’d never do this at the
expense of other marginalized groups you
might know some people are fighting for
the right of the oppressed but they do
this by kicking down don’t do that so
then I want to give you a few examples
on in my work how we try to with naivety
Twelver comes is paralyzing suppression
of over complex world there’s one father
button fell is a big energy company in
northern Germany and they loved digging
coal they did that for years and they
really loved it so I thought maybe they
should just stop it maybe they should go
hundred percent renewable what about
that and you might know that big
companies sometimes they’re very hard
and adjusting and changing especially
when it comes to social justice so we
did it for them and we created a press
conference in the headquarters of the
company inviting journalists and we
presented the world researched with
economists environmentalist a program
for responsibility we call it the
responsibility initiative and we there
was even someone from the German
parliament
from the Christian Democratic Party
congratulating them for this great idea
and it was very proud of it
unfortunately they did not really like
it and they did not accept the decision
we made for them and so over the past
weeks they had to explain over 70
newspapers that they’re actually not
willing to take responsibility
so this was a very naive idea and we
could show the world we could have a lot
of fun but show the world also that you
can do something you know of course we
research it what’s complex we didn’t
forget that but then we also looked at
the weapon industry in weapon industry
you also might agree is not very known
for taking self initiative when it comes
to stopping weapon exportation right so
again we did it for them we wrote
letters in the name of a clerk or it’s a
rifle that many children in the world
are having and we send it to all US arms
dealers we could find on the website and
told them to send it back to the factory
please because you know Germany is
having this these laws about peace and
we can’t accept to send weapons under
Trump so the customers were extremely
extremely angry and they wrote in the
blog posts how bad the stupid
peacekeeping Germans are and whether
really neat little brand damage so the
the company blacked the website for a
week and said that they are the victims
now they who are exporting even legally
to states like Mexico again we had a lot
of fun and we could show that it is
possible to do something even in this
weapon industry world was really
difficult to get through then secret
services I mentioned them I think it
would be great if they would stop
droning illegally in Pakistan if they
would stop supporting financially some
neo Nazis and fascists locally we just
heard today that there is a fascist
Network in the German Bundeswehr and
here it’s difficult to do it for them so
we decided to create an exit
organization where we invite them to
come back
democracy we called it Intel exit and we
had a huge band circling around the NSA
and telling them please to come out and
then we took a drone and flew over the
NSA compound in Germany a close to Daum
shut down stat and dropped leaflets to
make them understand that they have a
chance to restart a new life then we
hacked phone numbers 30 songs and we
called them we created a call center and
talk directly to spies so it was
citizens like you who could call these
untouchable agents and talk with them
about Essex some of them reached out to
us and we tried to help them it was
really a crazy time and I heard and this
apart which I really loved that the
whole British Secret Service the GCHQ
had workshop for all their employees to
be prepared for us so again I didn’t
expect that it would explode like that
we didn’t expect that we could really
tear them out of their own little biased
bubble to talk about Essex I guess we
did
thanks to naivety I love chocolate I
guess I’m not the only one in the room
but I think we should have a law that
permits us to su supermarket set us
there is building their whole production
chain on the violation of basic rights
again as a citizen I can’t create a law
not on my own so we want to talk about
it and we created what an app an app
where you can pay the producers directly
instead of some supermarket so people
would go stealing in the supermarkets
and paste through our apps the union’s
Asli producers instead it was kind of a
global Robin Hood then online people
were discussing we’re saying you go too
far
stealing is not good you know Christian
laws and all and then they started while
they were yelling no
saying that maybe stealing a few orange
juices here and there is not as bad as a
whole system based on the exploitation
and on robbing two basic rights of the
producers so Jeffrey Sachs one of the
leading UN economists said that with
this action we were able to raise
awareness for this and employees of the
ministry said that indeed after that
they acknowledge says they have to work
much harder on a law to you know be able
to sue supermarkets who violate Human
Rights in the production chain again
sorry to repeat myself with a good
portion of naivety this would have never
been possible and then what about
migration this is a topic that touches
us a lot we see what is happening right
now while all this like climate
catastrophe is happening and this
exploitation around the world when
people want to come borders are being
pulled up and Nations are creating walls
so I believe it’s really weird that
capital goods information can float
freely around the world by when it comes
to human beings no you need the right
passport so we wanted to change that in
2015 we called out to bring refugees
over the border and we created a legal
fund for everyone who will be caught by
the police
to have legal support so we paid the
lawyers and almost no one was caught
over 700 people followed the call so
there were a lot of family reunions
happening after that I think it was a
shiny advertisement video we put out
there and there was even a company that
where I know I heard about it was not
official but they gave three days of
paid leave to all their employees who
would go to Hungary and bring people
back it was in all German media and we
coined the word floated which is a
positive connotation much better than
smuggling so then we also wanted to talk
about how can you
proves a point that we as European
citizens have certain privileges with
our passport that we can’t really share
or maybe we can so we thought what if
with one passport two people can travel
and we tried it out so we took federica
mogherini our EU commissioner and one of
our teams sophie and merged their faces
and gave it to a passport office the
point is that you can recognize both
people in the same picture so we went to
the streets we still have this passports
it’s working totally fine both can
travel with it
Vika didn’t want to and we went to the
streets and asked people if they would
do it if they would be willing to share
their passport if they could with
someone in need who cannot travel freely
and you would be amazed how many people
were really willing to do it and we’re
thankful for this opportunity it is it
was a theoretical thing if we would do
it I would not be standing here but this
showed to us that this naive idea really
opened up a space where people could
talk about it and and you know reflect
their own privilege so in the beginning
of the summer when the governments were
criminalizing sea rescue missions we
didn’t like it and we want to talk about
this
– and just disguised as the government
and said that in the name of the German
government we welcome all refugees that
are being rescued until 20 end of 2019
to come to Germany out of this little
joke grew an international movement
called Z blocker and we had over a
hundred and fifty thousand people
demonstrating on the streets we had 26
cities that committed to be safe havens
and welcoming refugees who are being
rescued in the Mediterranean we had no
idea this was happened we had just you
know it was three days work of this
little video and we had no idea that so
many people would follow the call it was
of course just a mosaic and a whole
movement that spread out from there but
it did happen
so I believe fear is just a projection
to the future and we have to get rid of
this broken future and ignore it for a
while and break open the present naivety
is making the best out of the moment so
I don’t know if we’ve always made its
best decisions as peg collective surely
not but what I know is that have not
been paralyzed but just by this over
complex world where you know you don’t
really know where to start and what I
know for sure is that any revolution and
revolutions I think we need a lot right
now
different progressive movements has
always been explained only
retrospectively no one was ever saying
it’s going to happen tomorrow but when
it happened
everyone knew why it would so all we can
do is to create opportunities for
revolutions to create the possibility
for radical change so maybe one of the
naive actions we’ll take will be a
butterfly’s flap that will turn out to
be a world wind around the world for
justice and turning nation’s capital and
patriarchy upside down and if not at
least I will have a good sleep
thank you very much [Applause]
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