hey everybody how’s it going how was
your week what did you get up to you
probably spent most of it at work
did you drive or take public transit you
probably popped into a grocery store
once or twice but chances are you did
not cook your own foods from scratch
most of it maybe you were too busy maybe
you were just tired did you unwind in
front of the TV or on Facebook maybe you
got out to the gym or to yoga or went
for a jog does any of that fit with your
life probably because that’s how most of
us live in North America these days well
I’m here today to tell you you are not
normal let me explain why I say that we
live in a three-dimensional world three
spatial dimensions it’s really easy to
look around us in space and go yeah I’m
like everyone else therefore I must be
normal problem is if you only look very
close to you and you’re only looking at
people who are already like you you’re
kind of only looking in your own little
bubble and you might get a very skewed
sense of what normal actually is if
normal means the usual average or
typical state or condition you need to
look at everyone and that means looking
further away in those spatial dimensions
last month I was on my way back from
South America so I had just spent six
weeks immersed in a very different type
of normal I was waiting for my
connecting flight at Vancouver Airport
and there was this family sitting across
from me
mom dad a boy looked like he was about
ten and a little girl who looked like
she was around three mom dad and the boy
you guessed it they’re immersed on their
phones expressionless ignoring one
another
the little girl had a phone too but she
wasn’t isn’t interested in it it was
sitting on the seat beside her and she
was fidgeting around standing up on her
seat sitting down again she had a paper
airplane she was playing with and her
whole family was ignoring her it made me
really sad and it made me even sadder to
think that in a couple years he’s
probably going to be just like them
obsessed with her phone and begging mom
and dad for next year’s upgraded
thousand dollar model a few years ago I
was hiking around in Peru up in the high
Andes in an area where not many tourists
get to and my husband and I were coming
down from this high pass and we came
across these kids I was struck by how
they were playing on the side of the
road
check out their toys these kids do not
need anyone to or any device to keep
them from getting bored and these kids
sure as heck are not gonna be begging
mom and dad for next year’s upgraded
model of anything same thing a few years
later I was in India what struck me was
the kids I was there to run a five-day
ultramarathon up in the Himalayas and
what’s really cool about this race is
that our route takes us to some really
just so remote they don’t even have road
access the only way in is on foot race
has been going on for decades and for
the villagers it’s a big deal it’s the
one day of the year that these crazy
foreigners come running through their
village with numbers on their chest it’s
like an annual holiday for them so what
they do is they line up their kids along
the side of the road to cheer us on or
at the finish lines thing is this is a
really hard race and the time difference
between the first runner in and the last
person it can be four six or eight hours
so these kids they can be out there for
half a day or more not obediently not
grudgingly cheering us participating
laughing they’re having fun out there
they have this vibrancy about them not
to mention attention span that I don’t
see around here very much so the reason
I’m bringing up these examples from Peru
and from India is to show you that what
might seem normal to you for example
yeah it’s normal to drive everywhere
it’s normal that nobody has time to cook
anymore it’s normal our kids spend hours
a day on the phones it might not be
normal at all once you start looking
further away aside from my travels there
are two other things that have got me
thinking about this idea this question
what is normal
one thing is something I’m actually
quite proud of the other one is a little
bit more of a confession so let’s get
the confession over with first I used to
be a squatter for several years I lived
in a tiny little cabin on a tiny little
island off the west coast of Vancouver
Island my cabin was 10 by 11 foot
smaller than most people’s bedrooms I
did work a little bit over the summers
so I earned a couple thousand dollars a
year which I spent mainly on buying
staple foods to supplement what I was
able to find or gather myself but for
the most part I lived a very simple life
I didn’t buy much I couldn’t most of
what I needed I had to get for example
how do you get heat probably most likely
you have a job which means you earn
money which means you can pay an account
to an electricity or gas company which
means when you want heat you just flick
a switch me I had my wood stove and a
kayak and a handsaw for me to get Heat I
had to paddle out to a beach find a log
tie it up tow it back sawed it up dry it
out and then burn it I didn’t have a
regular paying job but you could say
that that was my full-time job
physically getting the things that I
needed heat light food and water without
having money as an
termi Thierry so onto the thing I’m
proud of these days I work as a writer
and photographer but I used to work as a
geologist exploring for gold mines I
actually have a PhD in the earth
sciences so remember earlier I was
saying how we can consider our earth or
our world in terms of three spatial
dimensions there’s also this thing
called time that some people consider to
be a sort of fourth dimension and one of
the really cool things about studying
geology is that you get a really deep
understanding of time geological time I
understand time the way a CEO
understands dollars if she tells me her
company earned ten million or a hundred
million or a billion dollars last year
doesn’t mean much to me I don’t have
personal experience in those quantities
of dollars I know it’s a lot but I just
don’t really get it but give me those
exact same numbers in terms of time and
I know exactly what they mean I can tell
you exactly what our planet was like
then our earth is very old
four-and-a-half billion years and if you
try to draw a timeline of that it just
gets too long you can’t fit all the good
stuff in so this is a very cool graphic
designed by the US Geological Survey
where they’ve oiled that time spiral up
so it fits so let’s look at those exact
same numbers not as dollars but in time
one billion years ago our planet was
still pretty much devoid of life a
barren rocky landscape some barren seas
and a bit of pond scum floating around
the edges 100 million years ago we were
smack in the middle in the dinosaur age
by ten million years ago the dinosaurs
were long gone and we were well into the
age of mammals our earth was a lot like
it is today so if you want to talk about
what normal is for our planet
along that dimension of time normal
actually is not much life at all
definitely not much in the way of human
life we have been around here such a
short time we’d hardly even show up on
this diagram so to show how we fit in
I’ve actually drawn up my own time
spiral that only covers these last 10
million years 6 million years ago the
first hominids appeared by three and a
half million years ago these primitive
humans were beginning to use basic stone
tools but they weren’t us yet our
species Homo sapiens we didn’t appear
until around 250,000 years ago and for
most of our time on this planet we were
nomadic hunter-gatherers it wasn’t till
around 15,000 years ago that our
ancestors started to develop farming at
any sort of scale and what’s significant
about this dawn of Agriculture is that
we didn’t need to move around any more
we could live in one spot and start to
have homes not homes with electricity
and running water and making sure the
paint on the walls matches the floor
tiles but homes with roofs and heat and
cooking areas and beds for 15,000 years
simple homes like this were our normal
in fact until incredibly recently your
grandparents grandparents probably lived
in a simple basic home like this whether
here or overseas and for millions of
people today living in a simple home
made out of mud or of stone or of reeds
or of wood and getting most of what you
need locally still is normal so you know
when I was a squatter my family thought
I was totally weird I tried to justify
my life decisions to them and suddenly I
realized hey you guys are the ones who
are weird I am living how humans beings
have lived for 99
point nine percent of our time on this
planet you are the ones spending hours
of your day in cars you are the ones
eating strange foods with who knows what
inside them packaged by people you don’t
even know living in a tiny little cabin
comfortable enough with all the basics I
need but not a lot more actually is
normal just not here now
so what am I getting at well what is the
biggest problem our planet is facing
today I think most people would say its
climate change whether or not our earth
will be habitable for future generations
we have some tough decisions ahead of us
and I believe that this skewed sense of
normal is keeping us from making the
right ones for example you’ve probably
heard about the water shortages in Cape
Town South Africa that affluent city and
surrounding region four million people
they are on the edge of running out of
water their reservoirs as of this week
their reservoirs are down to 18% level
and dropping their taps may literally
run dry soon so a few months ago they
enacted extreme water rationing down to
50 liters per person per day and when I
heard that I thought what the heck 50
liters when I lived in my little cabin I
don’t think I ever used more than 5
litres in a day and yes I bathed I had
sponge baths in front of the wood stove
and it was actually really relaxing I
could do all of my dishes in two bowls
of warm water one to wash and one to
rinse of Cape Town’s 50 litres 38 of
that goes straight down the drains
showers dishwashing laundry and toilet
flushing they are so stuck in the idea
that flushing water down the drains like
that is normal that they will waste
every last drop of their
life-giving water even as their very
source runs dry and then what will they
do if we are to survive as a somewhat
civilized society we need to become
normal again and that can only happen if
we even know what normal is and that is
the whole reason I’m standing here today
is to get you to question your own
normal because we are all right here
right now we are in exactly the same
position as Cape Town we are so stuck in
this skewed sense of normal that it’s
preventing us from taking the very
actions that will save us like Cape Town
we’re using stuff up we’re wasting our
precious resources we’re only looking
around in our own little bubble and
fooling ourselves that we’re actually
normal and hoping that everything’s
going to be okay well it might not be we
do have some very tough decisions ahead
of us our survival whether talking as a
species or talking future generations
possibly even talking ourselves
personally you and me our survival
depends upon us making the right
decisions we are not normal but at least
understanding that might help get us on
to a better track thank you [Applause]
your week what did you get up to you
probably spent most of it at work
did you drive or take public transit you
probably popped into a grocery store
once or twice but chances are you did
not cook your own foods from scratch
most of it maybe you were too busy maybe
you were just tired did you unwind in
front of the TV or on Facebook maybe you
got out to the gym or to yoga or went
for a jog does any of that fit with your
life probably because that’s how most of
us live in North America these days well
I’m here today to tell you you are not
normal let me explain why I say that we
live in a three-dimensional world three
spatial dimensions it’s really easy to
look around us in space and go yeah I’m
like everyone else therefore I must be
normal problem is if you only look very
close to you and you’re only looking at
people who are already like you you’re
kind of only looking in your own little
bubble and you might get a very skewed
sense of what normal actually is if
normal means the usual average or
typical state or condition you need to
look at everyone and that means looking
further away in those spatial dimensions
last month I was on my way back from
South America so I had just spent six
weeks immersed in a very different type
of normal I was waiting for my
connecting flight at Vancouver Airport
and there was this family sitting across
from me
mom dad a boy looked like he was about
ten and a little girl who looked like
she was around three mom dad and the boy
you guessed it they’re immersed on their
phones expressionless ignoring one
another
the little girl had a phone too but she
wasn’t isn’t interested in it it was
sitting on the seat beside her and she
was fidgeting around standing up on her
seat sitting down again she had a paper
airplane she was playing with and her
whole family was ignoring her it made me
really sad and it made me even sadder to
think that in a couple years he’s
probably going to be just like them
obsessed with her phone and begging mom
and dad for next year’s upgraded
thousand dollar model a few years ago I
was hiking around in Peru up in the high
Andes in an area where not many tourists
get to and my husband and I were coming
down from this high pass and we came
across these kids I was struck by how
they were playing on the side of the
road
check out their toys these kids do not
need anyone to or any device to keep
them from getting bored and these kids
sure as heck are not gonna be begging
mom and dad for next year’s upgraded
model of anything same thing a few years
later I was in India what struck me was
the kids I was there to run a five-day
ultramarathon up in the Himalayas and
what’s really cool about this race is
that our route takes us to some really
just so remote they don’t even have road
access the only way in is on foot race
has been going on for decades and for
the villagers it’s a big deal it’s the
one day of the year that these crazy
foreigners come running through their
village with numbers on their chest it’s
like an annual holiday for them so what
they do is they line up their kids along
the side of the road to cheer us on or
at the finish lines thing is this is a
really hard race and the time difference
between the first runner in and the last
person it can be four six or eight hours
so these kids they can be out there for
half a day or more not obediently not
grudgingly cheering us participating
laughing they’re having fun out there
they have this vibrancy about them not
to mention attention span that I don’t
see around here very much so the reason
I’m bringing up these examples from Peru
and from India is to show you that what
might seem normal to you for example
yeah it’s normal to drive everywhere
it’s normal that nobody has time to cook
anymore it’s normal our kids spend hours
a day on the phones it might not be
normal at all once you start looking
further away aside from my travels there
are two other things that have got me
thinking about this idea this question
what is normal
one thing is something I’m actually
quite proud of the other one is a little
bit more of a confession so let’s get
the confession over with first I used to
be a squatter for several years I lived
in a tiny little cabin on a tiny little
island off the west coast of Vancouver
Island my cabin was 10 by 11 foot
smaller than most people’s bedrooms I
did work a little bit over the summers
so I earned a couple thousand dollars a
year which I spent mainly on buying
staple foods to supplement what I was
able to find or gather myself but for
the most part I lived a very simple life
I didn’t buy much I couldn’t most of
what I needed I had to get for example
how do you get heat probably most likely
you have a job which means you earn
money which means you can pay an account
to an electricity or gas company which
means when you want heat you just flick
a switch me I had my wood stove and a
kayak and a handsaw for me to get Heat I
had to paddle out to a beach find a log
tie it up tow it back sawed it up dry it
out and then burn it I didn’t have a
regular paying job but you could say
that that was my full-time job
physically getting the things that I
needed heat light food and water without
having money as an
termi Thierry so onto the thing I’m
proud of these days I work as a writer
and photographer but I used to work as a
geologist exploring for gold mines I
actually have a PhD in the earth
sciences so remember earlier I was
saying how we can consider our earth or
our world in terms of three spatial
dimensions there’s also this thing
called time that some people consider to
be a sort of fourth dimension and one of
the really cool things about studying
geology is that you get a really deep
understanding of time geological time I
understand time the way a CEO
understands dollars if she tells me her
company earned ten million or a hundred
million or a billion dollars last year
doesn’t mean much to me I don’t have
personal experience in those quantities
of dollars I know it’s a lot but I just
don’t really get it but give me those
exact same numbers in terms of time and
I know exactly what they mean I can tell
you exactly what our planet was like
then our earth is very old
four-and-a-half billion years and if you
try to draw a timeline of that it just
gets too long you can’t fit all the good
stuff in so this is a very cool graphic
designed by the US Geological Survey
where they’ve oiled that time spiral up
so it fits so let’s look at those exact
same numbers not as dollars but in time
one billion years ago our planet was
still pretty much devoid of life a
barren rocky landscape some barren seas
and a bit of pond scum floating around
the edges 100 million years ago we were
smack in the middle in the dinosaur age
by ten million years ago the dinosaurs
were long gone and we were well into the
age of mammals our earth was a lot like
it is today so if you want to talk about
what normal is for our planet
along that dimension of time normal
actually is not much life at all
definitely not much in the way of human
life we have been around here such a
short time we’d hardly even show up on
this diagram so to show how we fit in
I’ve actually drawn up my own time
spiral that only covers these last 10
million years 6 million years ago the
first hominids appeared by three and a
half million years ago these primitive
humans were beginning to use basic stone
tools but they weren’t us yet our
species Homo sapiens we didn’t appear
until around 250,000 years ago and for
most of our time on this planet we were
nomadic hunter-gatherers it wasn’t till
around 15,000 years ago that our
ancestors started to develop farming at
any sort of scale and what’s significant
about this dawn of Agriculture is that
we didn’t need to move around any more
we could live in one spot and start to
have homes not homes with electricity
and running water and making sure the
paint on the walls matches the floor
tiles but homes with roofs and heat and
cooking areas and beds for 15,000 years
simple homes like this were our normal
in fact until incredibly recently your
grandparents grandparents probably lived
in a simple basic home like this whether
here or overseas and for millions of
people today living in a simple home
made out of mud or of stone or of reeds
or of wood and getting most of what you
need locally still is normal so you know
when I was a squatter my family thought
I was totally weird I tried to justify
my life decisions to them and suddenly I
realized hey you guys are the ones who
are weird I am living how humans beings
have lived for 99
point nine percent of our time on this
planet you are the ones spending hours
of your day in cars you are the ones
eating strange foods with who knows what
inside them packaged by people you don’t
even know living in a tiny little cabin
comfortable enough with all the basics I
need but not a lot more actually is
normal just not here now
so what am I getting at well what is the
biggest problem our planet is facing
today I think most people would say its
climate change whether or not our earth
will be habitable for future generations
we have some tough decisions ahead of us
and I believe that this skewed sense of
normal is keeping us from making the
right ones for example you’ve probably
heard about the water shortages in Cape
Town South Africa that affluent city and
surrounding region four million people
they are on the edge of running out of
water their reservoirs as of this week
their reservoirs are down to 18% level
and dropping their taps may literally
run dry soon so a few months ago they
enacted extreme water rationing down to
50 liters per person per day and when I
heard that I thought what the heck 50
liters when I lived in my little cabin I
don’t think I ever used more than 5
litres in a day and yes I bathed I had
sponge baths in front of the wood stove
and it was actually really relaxing I
could do all of my dishes in two bowls
of warm water one to wash and one to
rinse of Cape Town’s 50 litres 38 of
that goes straight down the drains
showers dishwashing laundry and toilet
flushing they are so stuck in the idea
that flushing water down the drains like
that is normal that they will waste
every last drop of their
life-giving water even as their very
source runs dry and then what will they
do if we are to survive as a somewhat
civilized society we need to become
normal again and that can only happen if
we even know what normal is and that is
the whole reason I’m standing here today
is to get you to question your own
normal because we are all right here
right now we are in exactly the same
position as Cape Town we are so stuck in
this skewed sense of normal that it’s
preventing us from taking the very
actions that will save us like Cape Town
we’re using stuff up we’re wasting our
precious resources we’re only looking
around in our own little bubble and
fooling ourselves that we’re actually
normal and hoping that everything’s
going to be okay well it might not be we
do have some very tough decisions ahead
of us our survival whether talking as a
species or talking future generations
possibly even talking ourselves
personally you and me our survival
depends upon us making the right
decisions we are not normal but at least
understanding that might help get us on
to a better track thank you [Applause]
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