A systemic strategy to face the systemic issues of our century | Arthur Keller | TEDxLausanne

What if the real danger wasn’t the crises ahead… but the established illusion that we can solve them without changing the system that produces said crises?

In this uncompromising and deeply eye-opening talk, renowned systems thinker and strategist Arthur Keller challenges one of the most comforting ideas of our time: the belief that “solutions exist” to the great planetary predicaments of our time. Climate action, energy transition, technical innovation… are all crucial, yet they’re somewhat off topic if they remain integrated within a system that inexorably turns nature into waste.

Arthur reframes the situation with brutal clarity. Humanity is not facing an ecological crisis: it is nature that’s facing a human crisis. The problematic is no collection of isolated problems to tackle one by one: it is rather the symptom of a civilization operating beyond planetary limits. Decarbonizing energy without transforming the underlying system, he argues, is like treating cancer with painkillers. The disease keeps spreading.

Yet this is not a gloomy talk—quite the opposite. Arthur shows how forthcoming societal disruptions, however unsettling, may be transformed into opportunities for meaningful change and that preparation, coordination and imagination matter more than ever.
He lays out a new strategy, a bold, multidimensional method built on four simultaneous battles that must be fought synchronously. This novel approach may become a decisive framework to empower citizens anywhere with a view to fostering relevant change.

This is a call to the builders, the thinkers, the organizers, the storytellers. Not to wait for miracles, but to connect and organize so as to design the lifeboats before the storm hits.

The question is no longer if the system will crack. It is who will have a lucid, credible and inspiring alternative to offer when it does. Arthur Keller is an esteemed specialist in systemic risks, societies’ vulnerabilities to these risks, resilience strategies, and collective transformation levers. He lectures at prestigious universities and advises public agencies as well as local authorities. He also trains elected officials and civil servants in territorial security and impact storytelling and acts as a consultant and prominent speaker for institutions, companies, and NGOs. The architect of numerous proposals for societal transition, he has been heard by the French National Assembly as part of a parliamentary mission on France's resilience.
Specialist in low-tech innovation and an essayist, Arthur Keller works on the roles of narratives in the dynamics of societal change and shares his advanced knowledge of the levers of collective mobilization and transformation. He is the author of an original classification into four families of the different ways in which people imagine, conceptualize or fantasize the future. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx