WEBVTT

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This room may appear
to be holding 600 people,

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but there's actually so many more,

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because within each one of us,
there is a multitude of personalities.

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I have two primary personalities

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that have been in conflict
and conversation within me

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since I was a little girl.

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I call them "the mystic"
and "the warrior."

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I was born into a family of politically
active intellectual atheists.

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There was this equation in my family
that went something like this:

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if you are intelligent,

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you therefore are not spiritual.

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I was the freak of the family.

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I was this weird little kid

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who wanted to have deep talks
about the worlds that might exist

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beyond the ones we perceive
with our senses.

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I wanted to know

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if what we human beings see
and hear and think

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is a full and accurate picture of reality.

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So, looking for answers,

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I went to Catholic mass;
I tagged along with my neighbors.

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I read Sartre and Socrates.

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And then a wonderful thing happened
when I was in high school:

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gurus from the East started washing up
on the shores of America.

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And I said to myself,
"I wanna get me one of them."

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(Laughter)

NOTE Paragraph

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And ever since, I've been walking
the mystic path,

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trying to peer beyond
what Albert Einstein called

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the "optical delusion"
of everyday consciousness.

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So what did he mean by this?

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I'll show you.

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Take a breath right now
of this clear air in this room.

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Now, see this strange,

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underwater-coral-reef-looking thing?

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It's actually a person's trachea.

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And those colored globs are microbes

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that are actually swimming around
in this room right now,

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all around us.

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If we're blind to this simple biology,

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imagine what we're missing
at the smallest subatomic level right now

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and at the grandest cosmic levels.

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My years as a mystic have made me question
almost all my assumptions.

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They've made me a proud
"I-don't-know-it-all."

NOTE Paragraph

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Now, when the mystic part of me
jabbers on and on like this,

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the warrior rolls her eyes.

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She's concerned about what's happening
in this world right now.

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She's worried.

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She says, "Excuse me, I'm pissed off,

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and I know a few things,

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and we better get busy
about them right now."

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I've spent my life as a warrior,

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working for women's issues,

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working on political campaigns,

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being an activist for the environment.

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And it can be sort of crazy making
housing both the mystic and the warrior

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in one body.

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I've always been attracted
to those rare people

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who pull that off,

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who devote their lives to humanity

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with the grit of the warrior

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and the grace of the mystic --

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people like Martin Luther King, Jr.,

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who wrote, "I can never be
what I ought to be

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until you are what you ought to be."

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"This," he wrote, "is the interrelated
structure of reality."

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Then Mother Teresa,
another mystic warrior, who said,

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"The problem with the world
is that we draw the circle of our family

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too small."

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And Nelson Mandela, who lives
by the African concept of "_buntu,"

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which means "I need you in order to be me,

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and you need me in order to be you."

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Now, we all love to trot out
these three mystic warriors

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as if they were born with a "saint" gene.

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But we all actually have
the same capacity that they do.

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And we need to do their work now.

NOTE Paragraph

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I'm deeply disturbed

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by the ways in which all of our cultures
are demonizing "the other,"

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by the voice we're giving
to the most divisive among us.

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Listen to these titles
of some of the best-selling books

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from both sides of the political divide

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here in the US:

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"Liberalism is a Mental Disorder,"

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"Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot,"

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"Pinheads and Patriots,"

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"Arguing with Idiots."

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They're supposedly tongue-in-cheek,

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but they're actually dangerous.

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Now here's a title
that may sound familiar,

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but whose author may surprise you:

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"Four and a Half Years
of Struggle Against Lies,

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Stupidity and Cowardice."

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Who wrote that?

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That was Adolf Hitler's first title
for "Mein Kampf" -- "My Struggle" --

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the book that launched the Nazi Party.

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The worst eras in human history,

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whether in Cambodia
or Germany or Rwanda --

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they start like this,
with negative "other"-izing.

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And then they morph
into violent extremism.

NOTE Paragraph

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This is why I'm launching
a new initiative.

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And it's to help all of us,
myself included,

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to counteract the tendency to otherize.

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And I realize we're all busy people,

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so don't worry, you can
do this on a lunch break.

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I'm calling my initiative
"Take the Other to Lunch."

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If you are a Republican,

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you can take a Democrat to lunch.

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Or if you're a Democrat,

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think of it as taking
a Republican to lunch.

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Now, if the idea of taking
any of these people to lunch

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makes you lose your appetite,

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I suggest you start more local,

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because there is no shortage of the other
right in your own neighborhood:

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maybe that person
who worships at the mosque

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or the church or the synagogue
down the street;

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or someone from the other side
of the abortion conflict;

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or maybe your brother-in-law
who doesn't believe in global warming --

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anyone whose lifestyle may frighten you

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or whose point of view
makes smoke come out of your ears.

NOTE Paragraph

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A couple of weeks ago,

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I took a conservative
Tea Party woman to lunch.

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Now, on paper, she passed
my "smoking ears" test:

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she's an activist from the Right,

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and I'm an activist from the Left.

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We used some guidelines
to keep our conversation elevated.

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And you can use them, too,

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because I know you're all going
to take an other to lunch.

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So first of all, decide on a goal:

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to get to know one person from a group
you may have negatively stereotyped.

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And then, before you get together,

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agree on some ground rules.

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My Tea Party lunch mate and I
came up with these:

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don't persuade, defend or interrupt;

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be curious, be conversational, be real;

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and listen.

NOTE Paragraph

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From there, we dove in.

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We used these questions:

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Share some of your life
experiences with me --

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what issues deeply concern you?

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And what have you always wanted to ask
someone from the other side?

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My lunch partner and I came away
with some really important insights,

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and I'm going to share just one with you.

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I think it has relevance to any problem
between people anywhere.

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I asked her why her side makes
such outrageous allegations and lies

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about my side.

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"What?" she wanted to know.

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"Like, we're a bunch of elitist,
morally corrupt terrorist-lovers."

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Well, she was shocked.

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She thought my side beat up on
her side way more often --

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that we called them brainless,
gun-toting racists.

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And we both marveled at the labels

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that fit none of the people
we actually know.

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And since we had established some trust,

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we believed in each other's sincerity.

NOTE Paragraph

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We agreed we'd speak up
in our own communities

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when we witnessed
the kind of "otherizing" talk

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that can wound and fester into paranoia

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and then be used by those on the fringes

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to incite.

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By the end of our lunch,
we acknowledged each other's openness.

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Neither of us had tried
to change the other,

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but we also hadn't pretended

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that our differences were
just going to melt away

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after a lunch.

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Instead, we had taken
first steps together,

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past our knee-jerk reactions

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to the _buntu place,

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which is the only place

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where solutions to our most
intractable-seeming problems

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will be found.

NOTE Paragraph

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So who should you invite to lunch?

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Next time you catch yourself
in the act of otherizing,

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that'll be your clue.

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And what might happen at your lunch?

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Will the heavens open

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and "We are the World" play
over the restaurant sound system?

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Probably not.

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Because _buntu work is slow,
and it's difficult.

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It's two people dropping the pretense
of being know-it-alls.

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It's two people, two warriors,
dropping their weapons

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and reaching toward each other.

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Here's how the great
Persian poet Rumi put it:

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"Out beyond ideas
of wrong-doing and right-doing,

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there is a field.

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I'll meet you there."

NOTE Paragraph

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(Applause)