Welcome back, TEDxers! We hope you enjoyed Trine’s delicious lunch as much as we did. Now we’re back with Session 3: Making Together.
First up, journalist and human rights campaigner Steve Crawshaw talks about the impossible coming true, based on his own residency in Poland in the 80s, where he witnessed the achievements of Solidarity up close. Back then, without our benefit of hindsight, what Wałęsa and Solidarity were up against seemed impossible. And yet, even once martial law came in and tanks were rolling down the streets of Warsaw, small and large acts of defiance of courage and mischief continued – and worked! “Fear turned to euphoria” as the regime backed down due to the sheer strength of the individuals who came out to protest. This pattern continued throughout the Soviet Bloc, until the fall of the Berlin Wall was nothing but inevitable. This example has been repeated over and over throughout history and around the world, from Burma to China and the Middle East.
The next speaker, Waldemar Domański, could just be one of those people who bring about change through small acts of resistance that Steve described. His medium is song, a way of bringing rhythm and discipline to an idea, in this case patriotism and celebrating historical events in a less depressing way than was the case in Poland. It’s also a good way to introduce humor in other aspects of daily life, such as dealing with the Polish railway system or city bureaucracy. Oh, and most importantly: don’t waste time with the administration! Just do something worth doing and the funding will come…
Roger Antonsen loves science. However, grade school made him hate science and mathematics, and it wasn’t until he began studying logic in college that his love was reborn. That was when he realized that mathematics is not just doing equations, it’s communicating through symbols – finding simple rules that describe complex behavior. Since then, his mission has been to communicate this understanding of math to others, through telling stories and making science and math fascinating, relevant and interactive.
Finally, Janusz Makuch began his adventure with Jewish culture due simply to an overwhelming desire to do something – anything. The Krakow Jewish Culture Festival is a mirror held up to Janusz as much as to Jewish culture, and as he says, “I am the festival, the festival is me”. Because he was born in this strange country obsessed with history, full of myths and stereotypes and Rabbis and anti-Semitites and scholars and heretics, a country built in part by Jews but whose Jews were all but gone after the Second World War, this goy has also been the director of the world’s largest Jewish festival in the world for 25 years – and Kraków is the only place where this is not only possible, but probable.