[Talk] Raffael Kemenczy: "How the Starfish outlives the Spider"

TheCosmicFrog

This Tuesday at 7pm Raffael Kemenczy will give a short talk on his great project StarFish.

When a Spider loses one of its legs, it is crippled, chop off its head, and it dies. Cut a Starfish in half or sever one of its legs and it will not only fully regenerate, but the severed part will grow another Starfish. This analogy was coined by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom in their book The Starfish and the Spider.

Society today is facing many challenges – fearing political disorder, social upheaval, economic crisis and environmental disaster. The gap between the people’s wishes and the actions of political leaders
widens, modern lifestyles endanger social cohesion and decisions of the few have grave economic and environmental consequences for the many. The spiders and kraken continue to centralise control and
increase their influence as the public appears unable or even unwilling to resist. Yet if we are to live joyous and prosperous lives on this planet, we cannot afford to have it badly managed by groups and individuals who, all too often, do not have the public’s best interest at heart.

Is it worth it sacrificing individual sovereignty in exchange for a cosy and unconcerned lifestyle? What are the psychological considerations behind this contract which has had such disastrous consequences for our society? What can we do to regain our independence and where do we start? The keywords are self-responsibility, resilience and holarchy – Let’s find out what we can learn from the Starfish…

Raffael Kéménczy is a student, social visionary and start-up entrepreneur.

He is Relations co-Director at the European Organisation for Sustainability. His start-up will help put people back in charge of communications infrastructure.