WEBVTT 00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:05.000 You know, I'm struck by how one of the implicit themes of TED 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:08.000 is compassion, these very moving demonstrations we've just seen: 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:13.000 HIV in Africa, President Clinton last night. 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:18.000 And I'd like to do a little collateral thinking, if you will, 00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:23.000 about compassion and bring it from the global level to the personal. 00:00:23.000 --> 00:00:25.000 I'm a psychologist, but rest assured, 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:26.000 I will not bring it to the scrotal. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:31.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:34.000 There was a very important study done a while ago 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:38.000 at Princeton Theological Seminary that speaks to why it is 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:42.000 that when all of us have so many opportunities to help, 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:45.000 we do sometimes, and we don't other times. 00:00:46.000 --> 00:00:49.000 A group of divinity students at the Princeton Theological Seminary 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:54.000 were told that they were going to give a practice sermon 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:57.000 and they were each given a sermon topic. 00:00:57.000 --> 00:01:00.000 Half of those students were given, as a topic, 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:02.000 the parable of the Good Samaritan: 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:04.000 the man who stopped the stranger in -- 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:07.000 to help the stranger in need by the side of the road. 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:10.000 Half were given random Bible topics. 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:13.000 Then one by one, they were told they had to go to another building 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:15.000 and give their sermon. 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:18.000 As they went from the first building to the second, 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:21.000 each of them passed a man who was bent over and moaning, 00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:26.000 clearly in need. The question is: Did they stop to help? NOTE Paragraph 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:27.000 The more interesting question is: 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:31.000 Did it matter they were contemplating the parable 00:01:31.000 --> 00:01:35.000 of the Good Samaritan? Answer: No, not at all. 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:39.000 What turned out to determine whether someone would stop 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:40.000 and help a stranger in need 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:43.000 was how much of a hurry they thought they were in -- 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:48.000 were they feeling they were late, or were they absorbed 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:49.000 in what they were going to talk about. 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:52.000 And this is, I think, the predicament of our lives: 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:57.000 that we don't take every opportunity to help 00:01:57.000 --> 00:02:00.000 because our focus is in the wrong direction. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:00.000 --> 00:02:03.000 There's a new field in brain science, social neuroscience. 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:08.000 This studies the circuitry in two people's brains 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:10.000 that activates while they interact. 00:02:10.000 --> 00:02:14.000 And the new thinking about compassion from social neuroscience 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:18.000 is that our default wiring is to help. 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:22.000 That is to say, if we attend to the other person, 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:26.000 we automatically empathize, we automatically feel with them. 00:02:27.000 --> 00:02:29.000 There are these newly identified neurons, mirror neurons, 00:02:29.000 --> 00:02:33.000 that act like a neuro Wi-Fi, activating in our brain 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:37.000 exactly the areas activated in theirs. We feel "with" automatically. 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:41.000 And if that person is in need, if that person is suffering, 00:02:42.000 --> 00:02:46.000 we're automatically prepared to help. At least that's the argument. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:49.000 But then the question is: Why don't we? 00:02:49.000 --> 00:02:51.000 And I think this speaks to a spectrum 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:54.000 that goes from complete self-absorption, 00:02:55.000 --> 00:02:57.000 to noticing, to empathy and to compassion. 00:02:57.000 --> 00:03:01.000 And the simple fact is, if we are focused on ourselves, 00:03:02.000 --> 00:03:05.000 if we're preoccupied, as we so often are throughout the day, 00:03:05.000 --> 00:03:08.000 we don't really fully notice the other. 00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:10.000 And this difference between the self and the other focus 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:11.000 can be very subtle. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:11.000 --> 00:03:15.000 I was doing my taxes the other day, and I got to the point 00:03:15.000 --> 00:03:17.000 where I was listing all of the donations I gave, 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:21.000 and I had an epiphany, it was -- I came to my check 00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:24.000 to the Seva Foundation and I noticed that I thought, 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:26.000 boy, my friend Larry Brilliant would really be happy 00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:28.000 that I gave money to Seva. 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:31.000 Then I realized that what I was getting from giving 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:35.000 was a narcissistic hit -- that I felt good about myself. 00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:40.000 Then I started to think about the people in the Himalayas 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:42.000 whose cataracts would be helped, and I realized 00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:46.000 that I went from this kind of narcissistic self-focus 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:50.000 to altruistic joy, to feeling good 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:54.000 for the people that were being helped. I think that's a motivator. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:57.000 But this distinction between focusing on ourselves 00:03:57.000 --> 00:03:58.000 and focusing on others 00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:01.000 is one that I encourage us all to pay attention to. 00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:04.000 You can see it at a gross level in the world of dating. 00:04:05.000 --> 00:04:08.000 I was at a sushi restaurant a while back 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:11.000 and I overheard two women talking about the brother of one woman, 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:15.000 who was in the singles scene. And this woman says, 00:04:15.000 --> 00:04:17.000 "My brother is having trouble getting dates, 00:04:17.000 --> 00:04:19.000 so he's trying speed dating." I don't know if you know speed dating? 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:23.000 Women sit at tables and men go from table to table, 00:04:23.000 --> 00:04:26.000 and there's a clock and a bell, and at five minutes, bingo, 00:04:27.000 --> 00:04:29.000 the conversation ends and the woman can decide 00:04:29.000 --> 00:04:33.000 whether to give her card or her email address to the man 00:04:33.000 --> 00:04:35.000 for follow up. And this woman says, 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:39.000 "My brother's never gotten a card, and I know exactly why. 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:44.000 The moment he sits down, he starts talking non-stop about himself; 00:04:44.000 --> 00:04:45.000 he never asks about the woman." NOTE Paragraph 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:51.000 And I was doing some research in the Sunday Styles section 00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:54.000 of The New York Times, looking at the back stories of marriages -- 00:04:54.000 --> 00:04:57.000 because they're very interesting -- and I came to the marriage 00:04:57.000 --> 00:05:00.000 of Alice Charney Epstein. And she said 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:02.000 that when she was in the dating scene, 00:05:03.000 --> 00:05:05.000 she had a simple test she put people to. 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:08.000 The test was: from the moment they got together, 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:11.000 how long it would take the guy to ask her a question 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:13.000 with the word "you" in it. 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:17.000 And apparently Epstein aced the test, therefore the article. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:17.000 --> 00:05:18.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:20.000 Now this is a -- it's a little test 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:22.000 I encourage you to try out at a party. 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:24.000 Here at TED there are great opportunities. 00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:29.000 The Harvard Business Review recently had an article called 00:05:29.000 --> 00:05:32.000 "The Human Moment," about how to make real contact 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:35.000 with a person at work. And they said, well, 00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:38.000 the fundamental thing you have to do is turn off your BlackBerry, 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:42.000 close your laptop, end your daydream 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:45.000 and pay full attention to the person. 00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:50.000 There is a newly coined word in the English language 00:05:51.000 --> 00:05:54.000 for the moment when the person we're with whips out their BlackBerry 00:05:54.000 --> 00:05:57.000 or answers that cell phone, and all of a sudden we don't exist. 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:02.000 The word is "pizzled": it's a combination of puzzled and pissed off. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:05.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:11.000 I think it's quite apt. It's our empathy, it's our tuning in 00:06:12.000 --> 00:06:15.000 which separates us from Machiavellians or sociopaths. 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:20.000 I have a brother-in-law who's an expert on horror and terror -- 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:23.000 he wrote the Annotated Dracula, the Essential Frankenstein -- 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:24.000 he was trained as a Chaucer scholar, 00:06:24.000 --> 00:06:26.000 but he was born in Transylvania 00:06:26.000 --> 00:06:28.000 and I think it affected him a little bit. 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:32.000 At any rate, at one point my brother-in-law, Leonard, 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:34.000 decided to write a book about a serial killer. 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:37.000 This is a man who terrorized the very vicinity we're in 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:40.000 many years ago. He was known as the Santa Cruz strangler. 00:06:41.000 --> 00:06:45.000 And before he was arrested, he had murdered his grandparents, 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:48.000 his mother and five co-eds at UC Santa Cruz. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:51.000 So my brother-in-law goes to interview this killer 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:54.000 and he realizes when he meets him 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:55.000 that this guy is absolutely terrifying. 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:58.000 For one thing, he's almost seven feet tall. 00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:01.000 But that's not the most terrifying thing about him. 00:07:01.000 --> 00:07:06.000 The scariest thing is that his IQ is 160: a certified genius. 00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:11.000 But there is zero correlation between IQ and emotional empathy, 00:07:11.000 --> 00:07:12.000 feeling with the other person. 00:07:13.000 --> 00:07:15.000 They're controlled by different parts of the brain. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:16.000 --> 00:07:18.000 So at one point, my brother-in-law gets up the courage 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:21.000 to ask the one question he really wants to know the answer to, 00:07:21.000 --> 00:07:24.000 and that is: how could you have done it? 00:07:24.000 --> 00:07:26.000 Didn't you feel any pity for your victims? 00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:29.000 These were very intimate murders -- he strangled his victims. 00:07:30.000 --> 00:07:32.000 And the strangler says very matter-of-factly, 00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:37.000 "Oh no. If I'd felt the distress, I could not have done it. 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:43.000 I had to turn that part of me off. I had to turn that part of me off." NOTE Paragraph 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:48.000 And I think that that is very troubling, 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:53.000 and in a sense, I've been reflecting on turning that part of us off. 00:07:53.000 --> 00:07:55.000 When we focus on ourselves in any activity, 00:07:56.000 --> 00:07:59.000 we do turn that part of ourselves off if there's another person. 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:05.000 Think about going shopping and think about the possibilities 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:07.000 of a compassionate consumerism. 00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:10.000 Right now, as Bill McDonough has pointed out, 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:16.000 the objects that we buy and use have hidden consequences. 00:08:16.000 --> 00:08:19.000 We're all unwitting victims of a collective blind spot. 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:22.000 We don't notice and don't notice that we don't notice 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:29.000 the toxic molecules emitted by a carpet or by the fabric on the seats. 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:35.000 Or we don't know if that fabric is a technological 00:08:35.000 --> 00:08:39.000 or manufacturing nutrient; it can be reused 00:08:39.000 --> 00:08:41.000 or does it just end up at landfill? In other words, 00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:46.000 we're oblivious to the ecological and public health 00:08:47.000 --> 00:08:50.000 and social and economic justice consequences 00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:52.000 of the things we buy and use. 00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:58.000 In a sense, the room itself is the elephant in the room, 00:08:58.000 --> 00:09:02.000 but we don't see it. And we've become victims 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:05.000 of a system that points us elsewhere. Consider this. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:09.000 There's a wonderful book called 00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:12.000 Stuff: The Hidden Life of Everyday Objects. 00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:16.000 And it talks about the back story of something like a t-shirt. 00:09:16.000 --> 00:09:19.000 And it talks about where the cotton was grown 00:09:19.000 --> 00:09:21.000 and the fertilizers that were used and the consequences 00:09:21.000 --> 00:09:25.000 for soil of that fertilizer. And it mentions, for instance, 00:09:25.000 --> 00:09:28.000 that cotton is very resistant to textile dye; 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:31.000 about 60 percent washes off into wastewater. 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:34.000 And it's well known by epidemiologists that kids 00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:39.000 who live near textile works tend to have high rates of leukemia. 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:44.000 There's a company, Bennett and Company, that supplies Polo.com, 00:09:45.000 --> 00:09:50.000 Victoria's Secret -- they, because of their CEO, who's aware of this, 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:55.000 in China formed a joint venture with their dye works 00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:57.000 to make sure that the wastewater 00:09:57.000 --> 00:10:01.000 would be properly taken care of before it returned to the groundwater. 00:10:01.000 --> 00:10:05.000 Right now, we don't have the option to choose the virtuous t-shirt 00:10:06.000 --> 00:10:10.000 over the non-virtuous one. So what would it take to do that? NOTE Paragraph 00:10:13.000 --> 00:10:16.000 Well, I've been thinking. For one thing, 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:21.000 there's a new electronic tagging technology that allows any store 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:25.000 to know the entire history of any item on the shelves in that store. 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:28.000 You can track it back to the factory. Once you can track it 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:32.000 back to the factory, you can look at the manufacturing processes 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:36.000 that were used to make it, and if it's virtuous, 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:40.000 you can label it that way. Or if it's not so virtuous, 00:10:40.000 --> 00:10:44.000 you can go into -- today, go into any store, 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:47.000 put your scanner on a palm onto a barcode, 00:10:47.000 --> 00:10:49.000 which will take you to a website. 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:51.000 They have it for people with allergies to peanuts. 00:10:52.000 --> 00:10:54.000 That website could tell you things about that object. 00:10:55.000 --> 00:10:56.000 In other words, at point of purchase, 00:10:56.000 --> 00:11:00.000 we might be able to make a compassionate choice. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:06.000 There's a saying in the world of information science: 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:09.000 ultimately everybody will know everything. 00:11:09.000 --> 00:11:11.000 And the question is: will it make a difference? 00:11:13.000 --> 00:11:16.000 Some time ago when I was working for The New York Times, 00:11:17.000 --> 00:11:19.000 it was in the '80s, I did an article 00:11:19.000 --> 00:11:21.000 on what was then a new problem in New York -- 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:23.000 it was homeless people on the streets. 00:11:23.000 --> 00:11:27.000 And I spent a couple of weeks going around with a social work agency 00:11:27.000 --> 00:11:30.000 that ministered to the homeless. And I realized seeing the homeless 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:35.000 through their eyes that almost all of them were psychiatric patients 00:11:35.000 --> 00:11:39.000 that had nowhere to go. They had a diagnosis. It made me -- 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:43.000 what it did was to shake me out of the urban trance where, 00:11:44.000 --> 00:11:47.000 when we see, when we're passing someone who's homeless 00:11:47.000 --> 00:11:50.000 in the periphery of our vision, it stays on the periphery. 00:11:52.000 --> 00:11:54.000 We don't notice and therefore we don't act. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:57.000 --> 00:12:02.000 One day soon after that -- it was a Friday -- at the end of the day, 00:12:02.000 --> 00:12:05.000 I went down -- I was going down to the subway. It was rush hour 00:12:05.000 --> 00:12:07.000 and thousands of people were streaming down the stairs. 00:12:07.000 --> 00:12:09.000 And all of a sudden as I was going down the stairs 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:12.000 I noticed that there was a man slumped to the side, 00:12:12.000 --> 00:12:16.000 shirtless, not moving, and people were just stepping over him -- 00:12:17.000 --> 00:12:18.000 hundreds and hundreds of people. 00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:22.000 And because my urban trance had been somehow weakened, 00:12:23.000 --> 00:12:26.000 I found myself stopping to find out what was wrong. 00:12:27.000 --> 00:12:29.000 The moment I stopped, half a dozen other people 00:12:30.000 --> 00:12:31.000 immediately ringed the same guy. 00:12:32.000 --> 00:12:34.000 And we found out that he was Hispanic, he didn't speak any English, 00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:39.000 he had no money, he'd been wandering the streets for days, starving, 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:40.000 and he'd fainted from hunger. 00:12:40.000 --> 00:12:42.000 Immediately someone went to get orange juice, 00:12:42.000 --> 00:12:44.000 someone brought a hotdog, someone brought a subway cop. 00:12:45.000 --> 00:12:48.000 This guy was back on his feet immediately. 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:52.000 But all it took was that simple act of noticing, 00:12:53.000 --> 00:12:54.000 and so I'm optimistic. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:55.000 Thank you very much. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:57.000 (Applause)