My TEDxDrobetaTurnuSeverin talk is out 😀 I want to thank my friend Dana once again for bringing all those speakers, volunteers and audience together, and for inviting me to be one of them.

I don’t mind the title given by the publisher, though that’s not quite the question i’m asking — what i’m wondering is whether we’re not confusing privileges for basic needs. Western society sets us up to prioritize the former, crystalizing an ever narrower and more homogeneously accepted notion of what constitutes a position of advantage. Attaining (or maintaining) that doesn’t always yield contentment.

In hindsight, i acknowledge that having the resources to ponder over the distinction between needs and privileges is itself a tremendous privilege, and i should have made that explicit in the presentation — i wanted to emphasize that this privilege is cast wider than many of us notice, and might have made neither point salient enough.

There are some issues with the audio towards the end. Rather than compromising the result, i’d like to think they enrich it. You’re invited to think about the way i dealt with the problem at the event (and the editors dealt with it afterward) as a metaphor for what i wanted to say — indeed, it was when the microphone stopped working that i finally woke up — i wish it had happened in the beginning :p

Other than that, i still stand for the bulk of what i said — i hope i will manage to pack my message more clearly, and deliver it with more confidence and energy in the future. I also hope my name in the video title will be changed to Mika, which is more than just a pen name to me.

Thank you for watching 🙂

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Featured photo: courtesy of TEDxDrobetaTurnuSeverin

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