“Now, I am not asking you to become Jobs 2.0 and not care about the sharpness of your feedback. I am, however, asking you to take individual mediocrity seriously and not let it slide under the rug” …don’t think he was advocating being an asshole.
Disagree. In most cases, the difference between excellence and mediocrity is clear in the context of the same kind of work. You can immediately tell a great guitarist from a mediocre one, and a great salesman from a mediocre one.
Inspiration and motivation as a genre is the most popular when it comes to content and always has been. It's all downstream of religion. And TED talks are basically layers of inspiration + motivation on top of a complex topic that the speaker is trying to dumb down for the audience. Like every such platform it has its pros and cons.
Had given up doomsday reading but decided to read this one. Sensible -- and depressingly so -- but my takeaway is going to be this: "Visiting the planet every half-century has made her, unlike her Earth friends, an optimist."
Optimism is the only way forward if we want to get out of the quagmire.