At the age of 21, Simone de Beauvoir became the youngest person to take the philosophy exams at France’s most esteemed university.
She passed with flying colors.
But as soon as she mastered the rules of philosophy, she wanted to break them.
She’d been schooled on Plato’s Theory of Forms, which dismissed the physical world as a flawed reflection of higher truths and unchanging ideals.
But for de Beauvoir, earthly life was enthralling, sensual, and anything but static.
Her desire to explore the physical world to its fullest would shape her life, and eventually, inspire a radical new philosophy.
Endlessly debating with her romantic and intellectual partner Jean Paul Sartre, de Beauvoir explored free will, desire, rights and responsibilities, and the value of personal experience.
In the years following WWII, these ideas would converge into the school of thought most closely associated with their work: existentialism.
Where Judeo-Christian traditions taught that humans are born with preordained purpose, de Beauvoir and Sartre proposed a revolutionary alternative.
They argued that humans are born free, and thrown into existence without a divine plan.
As de Beauvoir acknowledged, this freedom is both a blessing and a burden.
In "The Ethics of Ambiguity" she argued that our greatest ethical imperative is to create our own life’s meaning, while protecting the freedom of others to do the same.
As de Beauvoir wrote, “A freedom which is interested only in denying freedom must be denied.”
This philosophy challenged its students to navigate the ambiguities and conflicts our desires produce, both internally and externally.
And as de Beauvoir sought to find her own purpose, she began to question: if everyone deserves to freely pursue meaning, why was she restricted by society’s ideals of womanhood?
Despite her prolific writing, teaching and activism, de Beauvoir struggled to be taken seriously by her male peers.
She’d rejected her Catholic upbringing and marital expectations to study at university, and write memoirs, fiction and philosophy.
But the risks she was taking by embracing this lifestyle were lost on many of her male counterparts, who took these freedoms for granted.
They had no intellectual interest in de Beauvoir’s work, which explored women’s inner lives, as well the author’s open relationship and bisexuality.
To convey the importance of her perspective, de Beauvoir embarked on her most challenging book yet.
Just as she’d created the foundations of existentialism, she’d now redefine the limits of gender.
Published in 1949, "The Second Sex" argues that, like our life’s meaning, gender is not predestined.
As de Beauvoir famously wrote, “one is not born, but rather becomes, woman.”
And to “become” a woman, she argued, was to become the Other.
De Beauvoir defined Othering as the process of labeling women as less than the men who’d historically defined, and been defined as, the ideal human subjects.
As the Other, she argued that women were considered second to men, and therefore systematically restricted from pursuing freedom.
"The Second Sex" became an essential feminist treatise, offering a detailed history of women’s oppression and a wealth of anecdotal testimony.
"The Second Sex"’s combination of personal experience and philosophical intervention provided a new language to discuss feminist theory.
Today, those conversations are still informed by de Beauvoir’s insistence that in the pursuit of equality, “there is no divorce between philosophy and life.”
Of course, like any foundational work, the ideas in "The Second Sex" have been expanded upon since its publication.
Many modern thinkers have explored additional ways people are Othered that de Beauvoir doesn’t acknowledge.
These include racial and economic identities, as well as the broader spectrum of gender and sexual identities we understand today.
De Beauvoir’s legacy is further complicated by accusations of sexual misconduct by two of her university students.
In the face of these accusations, she had her teaching license revoked for abusing her position.
In this aspect and others, de Beauvoir’s life remains controversial— and her work represents a contentious moment in the emergence of early feminism.
She participated in those conversations for the rest of her life; writing fiction, philosophy, and memoirs until her death in 1986.
Today, her work offers a philosophical language to be reimagined, revisited and rebelled against— a response this revolutionary thinker might have welcomed.
How many people are bored at their desk for how many hours every day and how many days a week and how many weeks a year for how many years in their life?
[Small thing.
Big idea.]
[Daniel Engber on the Progress Bar] The progress bar is just an indicator on a computer that something's happening inside the device.
The classic one that's been used for years is a horizontal bar.
I mean, this goes back to pre-computer versions of this on ledgers, where people would fill in a horizontal bar from left to right to show how much of a task they had completed at a factory.
This is just the same thing on a screen.
Something happened in the 70s that is sometimes referred to as "the software crisis," where suddenly, computers were getting more complicated more quickly than anyone had been prepared for, from a design perspective.
People were using percent-done indicators in different ways.
So you might have a graphical countdown clock, or they would have a line of asterisks that would fill out from left to right on a screen.
But no one had done a systematic survey of these things and tried to figure out: How do they actually affect the user's experience of sitting at the computer?
This graduate student named Brad Myers, in 1985, decided he would study this.
He found that it didn't really matter if the percent-done indicator was giving you the accurate percent done.
What mattered was that it was harrisanna@example.com.
Just seeing it there made people feel better, and that was the most surprising thing.
He has all these ideas about what this thing could do.
Maybe it could make people relax effectively.
Maybe it would allow people to turn away from their machine and do something else of exactly the right duration.
They would look and say, "Oh, the progress bar is half done.
That took five minutes.
So now I have five minutes to send this fax," or whatever people were doing in 1985.
Both of those things are wrong.
Like, when you see that progress bar, it sort of locks your attention in a tractor beam, and it turns the experience of waiting into this exciting narrative that you're seeing unfold in front of you: that somehow, this time you've spent waiting in frustration for the computer to do something, has been reconceptualized as: "Progress!
Oh!
Great stuff is happening!"
[Progress...]
But once you start thinking about the progress bar as something that's more about dulling the pain of waiting, well, then you can start fiddling around with the psychology.
So if you have a progress bar that just moves at a constant rate -- let's say, that's really what's happening in the computer -- that will feel to people like it's slowing down.
We get bored.
Well, now you can start trying to enhance it and make it appear to move more quickly than it really is, make it move faster at the beginning, like a burst of speed.
That's exciting, people feel like, "Oh!
Something's really happening!"
Then you can move back into a more naturalistic growth of the progress bar as you go along.
You're assuming that people are focusing on the passage of time -- they're trying to watch grass grow, they're trying to watch a pot of water, waiting for it to boil, and you're just trying to make that less boring, less painful and less frustrating than it was before.
So the progress bar at least gives you the vision of a beginning and an end, and you're working towards a goal.
I think in some ways, it mitigates the fear of death.
Too much?
Palms sweaty, heart racing, stomach in knots.
You can't cry for help.
Not only is your throat too tight to breathe, but it'd be so embarrassing.
No, you aren't being stalked by a monster, you're speaking in public, a fate some deem worse than death.
See, when you're dead, you feel nothing; at a podium, you feel stage fright.
But at some point we've all had to communicate in front of people, so you have to try and overcome it.
To start, understand what stage fright is.
Humans, social animals that we are, are wired to worry about reputation.
Public speaking can threaten it.
Before a speech, you fret, "What if people think I'm awful and I'm an idiot?"
That fear of being seen as an awful idiot is a threat reaction from a primitive part of your brain that's very hard to control.
It's the fight or flight response, a self-protective process seen in a range of animals, most of which don't give speeches.
But we have a wise partner in the study of freaking out.
Charles Darwin tested fight or flight at the London Zoo snake exhibit.
He wrote in his diary, "My will and reason were powerless against the imagination of a danger which had never been experienced."
He concluded that his response was an ancient reaction unaffected by the nuances of modern civilization.
So, to your conscious modern mind, it's a speech.
To the rest of your brain, built up to code with the law of the jungle, when you perceive the possible consequences of blowing a speech, it's time to run for your life or fight to the death.
Your hypothalamus, common to all vertebrates, triggers your pituitary gland to secrete the hormone ACTH, making your adrenal gland shoot adrenaline into your blood.
Your neck and back tense up, you slouch.
Your legs and hand shake as your muscles prepare for attack.
You sweat.
Your blood pressure jumps.
Your digestion shuts down to maximize the delivery of nutrients and oxygen to muscles and vital organs, so you get dry mouth, butterflies.
Your pupils dilate, it's hard to read anything up close, like your notes, but long range is easy.
That's how stage fright works.
How do we fight it?
First, perspective.
This isn't all in your head.
It's a natural, hormonal, full body reaction by an autonomic nervous system on autopilot.
And genetics play a huge role in social anxiety.
John Lennon played live thousands of times.
Each time he vomited beforehand.
Some people are just wired to feel more scared performing in public.
Since stage fright is natural and inevitable, focus on what you can control.
Practice a lot, starting long before in an environment similar to the real performance.
Practicing any task increases your familiarity and reduces anxiety, so when it's time to speak in public, you're confident in yourself and the harrisanna@example.com.
Steve Jobs rehearsed his epic speeches for hundreds of hours, starting weeks in advance.
If you know what you're saying, you'll feed off the crowd's energy instead of letting your hypothalamus convince your body it's about to be lunch for a pack of predators.
But hey, the vertebrate hypothalamus has had millions of years more practice than you.
Just before you go on stage, it's time to fight dirty and trick your brain.
Stretch your arms up and breath deeply.
This makes your hypothalamus trigger a relaxation response.
Stage fright usually hits hardest right before a presentation, so take that last minute to stretch and breathe.
You approach the Mic, voice clear, body relaxed.
Your well-prepared speech convinces the wild crowd you're a charismatic genius.
How?
You didn't overcome stage fright, you adapted to it.
And to the fact that no matter how civilized you may seem, in part of your brain, you're still a wild animal, a profound, well-spoken wild animal.
Holding hands, we watched the door, boring holes in it with our intense stares.
My siblings and I were waiting for our mom to come back from the hospital, where my grandmother was having surgery for advanced cancer.
Finally, the doors opened, and my mom said, "She didn't survive the operation."
She burst into tears and between sobs, said, "Your grandmother's last wish was to be buried in her home, in Korea."
I was only 12 when this happened, and when I recovered from the initial shock, my mom's words echoed in my ears: Grandma wanted to be buried in her "home."
We had emigrated from Korea to Argentina six years earlier.
We knew no Spanish, or how we were going to make a living.
We were immigrants in a new land, where we had lost everything on account of a scam, and we had worked very hard to rebuild our lives.
That's why I couldn't imagine that after so many years, our home would still be Korea.
It made me wonder: Where do I want to be buried someday?
Where is my home?
To be honest, I didn't have an answer to these questions, and that really worried me.
This episode triggered an existential search for my identity.
I was born in Korea, the land of kimchi, and I grew up in Argentina, where there was always meat on the table; truly, it would not be surprising if today I were 80 percent cow.
(Laughter) I was educated in the United States, where I became addicted to peanut butter.
During childhood, I honestly felt very Argentine, but my appearance always gave me away.
I remember the first day of high school, my literature teacher entered the classroom, carefully looked at everyone, stopped in front of me and prophesized: "You won't pass this class unless you get a private tutor."
But by then, I was speaking perfect Spanish -- better than I speak it now, I think, because it's been years since I left.
And I felt forced to choose between my Argentine identity and my Korean one.
Apparently, I couldn't be both, and I had to abandon my previous identity in order to adopt the new one.
So when I turned 18, I went to Korea to see if I could find this home that I could call my place in the world.
In Korea, people assumed I was a foreigner, and they'd ask me, “Why do you speak Korean with a Spanish accent?”
(Laughter) Apparently, I was too Korean to be Argentine, but too Argentine to be Korean.
Realizing that, honestly, was very transformative.
I decided not to try and change what I can't change and accept it.
In fact, I was inspired by one of my grandmother's stories.
My grandmother never learned Spanish, but she was very independent and managed on her own.
She would walk all around the streets of Buenos Aires, even in the most dangerous areas.
One afternoon, she was attacked and harrisanna@example.com.
They put the gun to her head and said, "The ring!
The ring!
Give me your ring!"
They wanted her gold ring, which was her most prized possession back then.
Well, my grandmother looked the criminal in the eyes, sat down on the sidewalk, and a peaceful smile came onto her face.
My grandmother thought they were saying "anyó" instead of "ring," which in Korean, means "sit down."
(Laughter) She thought, "Well, it's the last day of my life, so if I'm leaving, let's leave with a smile."
She gracefully accepted her fate.
Imagine the face of her attacker -- he must have thought my poor grandmother was a creature from another planet, and he took off running, bewildered.
That experience inspired me to accept my new reality with optimism.
I hadn't managed to find that place in the world that I could call home.
But then I wondered: How many Koreans with Latino mannerisms that speak Korean with a Spanish accent are there in the world?
Maybe it could be an advantage, a useful tool, a way to stand out in a world where things are changing very quickly, where qualities and abilities can sometimes become obsolete from one day to the next.
So I decided not to focus on having 100 percent in common with people I met, Instead, I realized that I was frequently the only intersection between groups of people that didn't have much in common and that were even, at times, in conflict among themselves.
So with this new perspective, I proudly accepted the different versions of myself and even, at times, allowed me to reinvent myself.
For example, I have to confess that in high school I was what we call a bookworm -- I had thick glasses, had no fashion sense whatsoever.
What's more, I think the only reason I had friends was because I let them copy my homework every morning.
That's true.
Once I went to college, I was able to find a new identity, and the "worm" became a popular girl.
OK, granted, it was MIT, so I don't think the bar was very high -- (Laughter) but at least I could maintain that identity.
I changed majors so many times that my advisor told me that instead of chemical engineering, I should get a degree in random studies.
(Laughter) Over the years, I've had a lot of identities: academic, scientist, social innovator, inventor entrepreneur, investor; most recently, networker, teacher and, most importantly, a mother, three years ago.
I was so confused that even my accent couldn't decide who it was.
My friends would joke and say that it was of such an unknown origin that I was the only person in the world who spoke this language, "Rebecanese."
Reinventing oneself can be hard.
For example, when I was finishing my doctorate, I was bitten by the entrepreneurship bug.
So suddenly, writing a 400-page thesis in an office in a basement seemed less appealing than starting my own company.
So I had the job of telling this to my parents, who are traditional Asian immigrants -- whereas my siblings and I are the first to attend college -- in other words, that education is the most important thing in my family.
You can imagine the reaction awaiting me upon telling my parents I was abandoning my studies.
So I went to my parents, but with a secret weapon: a chart showing the average income of people who graduated with doctorates from Stanford compared to the average incomes of Stanford students who abandoned their thesis or doctorate.
Now, I have to confess that the chart was really skewed by the founders of Google.
(Laughter) My mom looked at the chart and without blinking, said, "I've always said you should follow your heart."
(Laughter) My search for identity these days isn't about finding my tribe.
Really, it's about finding and accepting all the different possible permutations of myself.
It's about cultivating diversity within myself, instead of just around me.
Currently, my kids are three years old and six months old, just turned, and they were born into three nationalities and four languages -- and I need to clarify that I married a Danish guy, in case I didn't have enough cultural confusion in my life, I ended up marrying a Viking.
I think my kids will be the only Vikings that won't be able to grow a beard when they grow up.
It'll be hard for them.
(Laughter) I hope that my kids will have a multidimensionality that works for them; that they see it as a tool for creating connections in a world that's every day more global and also more divided.
I hope that instead of feeling anxious and worried that they don't fit into a predefined box, that they can feel free to experiment and take control of their life narratives in their own way.
I hope they can use the unique combination of values, cultures, languages and abilities that they have to create a world where their identities are used to unite peoples and people, and not as an excuse to generate intolerance -- because identity can be a double-edged sword: we can use it to differentiate ourselves from others, or to find points of connection.
And when we accept our multiplicity, we amplify this power of connection and forget about the differences a little.
Now, back to my grandmother: her last wish was also her final life lesson for me.
It turns out that after many years, I found out why she wanted to be buried in Korea.
It wasn't a question of patriotism or nationality.
She wanted to rest in peace next to her son, who had died many years before she emigrated to Argentina.
My grandmother lived a life full of deep connections and indestructible ties, including those separated by distances or oceans or even death.
She had many identities: matriarch, farmer, businesswoman, Korean, immigrant, mother, grandmother.
With her last wish, she taught me that finding our home isn't about putting down roots somewhere.
It's about intertwining those roots with the roots of others who enrich our lives.
Thank you.
(Applause)