Significance of Ideas (English)

The other day, I volunteered for TEDxManagua.

TED is a non profit organization that holds conferences in which guest speakers present "Ideas Worth Spreading" and distribute those presentations online so that everyone can watch those.

TED: http://www.ted.com/

It gets really famous recently but actually started in 1984.

I have gotten many inspiration and motivation from the speeches in TED and it is one my favorite web sites. I listen to the TED radio hour almost every day.

So today, I would like to think about the significance of ideas a little bit.

In Japan, (I don't know about other countries but at least in Japan,) people who only present ideas are sometimes criticized as "All talk and no action" person....!!

For example, sometimes scholars are made a sarcastic by being said "You elaborate an armchair theory and talk a lot about it but do not do anything."

Maybe, some people are thinking the same thing about this blog... "This author Taiki Namiki is always writing something complicated but he does not actually do anything."....... I'm afraid!!!!hahaha!!

Surely, it goes without saying that action is important. Without actually taking action, nothing changes and nothing happens.

But it is also true that all action is based on ideas.

Decision makers in our society; politicians, business executives, educators etc etc.. are basing their judgement on some ideas or ideology that they learned before.

And based on that idea or ideology, the society is moving.

It is said that leaders are readers. If leaders are readers and learning through reading books written by scholars, journalists and so on, it can be said that what affects leaders are their ideas.

Therefore, I believe that ideas are important. Everything starts from ideas and imaginations.

Everybody has his own function in our society. Nobody is useless.

Though frequently criticized, those present many ideas are contributing to the society, I believe.

And this is one of the reasons why I am writing blog like this.

(Contrary to what I wrote here, I would like to think about the importance of "action" in the next article.)