The power to think ahead in a reckless age
-
0:01 - 0:04So in the winter of 2012,
-
0:04 - 0:06I went to visit my grandmother's house
-
0:06 - 0:07in South India,
-
0:07 - 0:09a place, by the way,
-
0:09 - 0:12where the mosquitos have a special taste
for the blood of the American-born. -
0:12 - 0:14(Laughter)
-
0:14 - 0:15No joke.
-
0:15 - 0:19When I was there,
I got an unexpected gift. -
0:20 - 0:22It was this antique instrument
-
0:22 - 0:24made more than a century ago,
-
0:24 - 0:27hand-carved from a rare wood,
-
0:27 - 0:28inlaid with pearls
-
0:28 - 0:30and with dozens of metal strings.
-
0:32 - 0:34It's a family heirloom,
-
0:34 - 0:36a link between my past,
-
0:36 - 0:38the country where my parents were born,
-
0:38 - 0:40and the future,
-
0:40 - 0:42the unknown places I'll take it.
-
0:43 - 0:46I didn't actually realize it
at the time I got it, -
0:46 - 0:50but it would later become
a powerful metaphor for my work. -
0:51 - 0:53We all know the saying,
-
0:53 - 0:55"There's no time like the present."
-
0:56 - 1:00But nowadays, it can feel
like there's no time but the present. -
1:01 - 1:06What's immediate and ephemeral
seems to dominate our lives, -
1:06 - 1:08our economy and our politics.
-
1:10 - 1:14It's so easy to get caught up
in the number of steps we took today -
1:14 - 1:17or the latest tweet
from a high-profile figure. -
1:19 - 1:23It's easy for businesses to get caught up
in making immediate profits -
1:24 - 1:26and neglect what's good
for future invention. -
1:28 - 1:32And it's far too easy
for governments to stand by -
1:32 - 1:35while fisheries and farmland are depleted
-
1:36 - 1:38instead of conserved
to feed future generations. -
1:40 - 1:42I have a feeling that, at this rate,
-
1:43 - 1:48it's going to be hard for our generation
to be remembered as good ancestors. -
1:49 - 1:53If you think about it,
our species evolved to think ahead, -
1:53 - 1:55to chart the stars,
-
1:55 - 1:57dream of the afterlife,
-
1:57 - 1:59sow seeds for later harvest.
-
2:01 - 2:06Some scientists call this superpower
that we have "mental time travel," -
2:06 - 2:10and it's responsible for pretty much
everything we call human civilization, -
2:10 - 2:12from farming to the Magna Carta
-
2:12 - 2:14to the internet --
-
2:14 - 2:17all first conjured in the minds of humans.
-
2:18 - 2:20But let's get real:
-
2:20 - 2:22if we look around us today,
-
2:22 - 2:26we don't exactly seem to be
using this superpower quite enough, -
2:28 - 2:30and that begs the question: Why not?
-
2:33 - 2:38What's wrong is how our communities,
businesses and institutions are designed. -
2:38 - 2:41They're designed in a way
that's impairing our foresight. -
2:42 - 2:45I want to talk to you
about the three key mistakes -
2:45 - 2:46that I think we're making.
-
2:48 - 2:50The first mistake is what we measure.
-
2:52 - 2:55When we look at the quarterly
profits of a company -
2:55 - 2:58or its near-term stock price,
-
2:58 - 2:59that's often not a great measure
-
2:59 - 3:02of whether that company
is going to grow its market share -
3:02 - 3:04or be inventive in the long run.
-
3:04 - 3:09When we glue ourselves to the test scores
that kids bring back from school, -
3:09 - 3:12that's not necessarily
what's great for those kids' learning -
3:12 - 3:14and curiosity in the long run.
-
3:15 - 3:18We're not measuring
what really matters in the future. -
3:20 - 3:23The second mistake we're making
that impairs our foresight -
3:23 - 3:25is what we reward.
-
3:26 - 3:29When we celebrate a political leader
or a business leader -
3:29 - 3:32for the disaster she just cleaned up
-
3:32 - 3:35or the announcement she just made,
-
3:35 - 3:36we're not motivating that leader
-
3:36 - 3:40to invest in preventing
those disasters in the first place, -
3:40 - 3:45or to put down payments on the future
by protecting communities from floods -
3:45 - 3:47or fighting inequality
-
3:47 - 3:49or investing in research and education.
-
3:51 - 3:55The third mistake
that impairs our foresight -
3:55 - 3:57is what we fail to imagine.
-
3:58 - 4:00Now, when we do think about the future,
-
4:00 - 4:03we tend to focus
on predicting exactly what's next, -
4:03 - 4:06whether we're using horoscopes
or algorithms to do that. -
4:08 - 4:13But we spend a lot less time imagining
all the possibilities the future holds. -
4:14 - 4:19When the Ebola outbreak
emerged in 2014 in West Africa, -
4:19 - 4:23public health officials around the world
had early warning signs -
4:23 - 4:25and predictive tools
-
4:25 - 4:28that showed how
that outbreak might spread, -
4:28 - 4:32but they failed to fathom that it would,
-
4:32 - 4:34and they failed to act
in time to intervene, -
4:34 - 4:37and the epidemic grew
to kill more than 11,000 people. -
4:39 - 4:42When people with lots of resources
and good forecasts -
4:42 - 4:45don't prepare for deadly hurricanes,
-
4:45 - 4:49they're often failing to imagine
how dangerous they can be. -
4:51 - 4:54Now, none of these mistakes
that I've described, -
4:54 - 4:56as dismal as they might sound,
-
4:56 - 4:58are inevitable.
-
4:58 - 5:00In fact, they're all avoidable.
-
5:01 - 5:04What we need to make
better decisions about the future -
5:04 - 5:06are tools that can aid our foresight,
-
5:06 - 5:08tools that can help us think ahead.
-
5:08 - 5:11Think of these as something
like the telescopes -
5:11 - 5:15that ship captains of yore used
when they scanned the horizon. -
5:15 - 5:19Only instead of for looking
across distance and the ocean, -
5:19 - 5:22these tools are for looking
across time to the future. -
5:24 - 5:26I want to share with you a
few of the tools -
5:26 - 5:28that I've found in my research
-
5:28 - 5:30that I think can help us with foresight.
-
5:32 - 5:34The first tool I want to share with you
-
5:34 - 5:37I think of as making
the long game pay now. -
5:37 - 5:41This is Wes Jackson, a farmer
I spent some time with in Kansas. -
5:41 - 5:43And Jackson knows
-
5:43 - 5:47that the way that most crops
are grown around the world today -
5:47 - 5:50is stripping the earth
of the fertile topsoil -
5:50 - 5:52we need to feed future generations.
-
5:53 - 5:55He got together
with a group of scientists, -
5:55 - 5:59and they bred perennial grain crops
which have deep roots -
5:59 - 6:01that anchor the fertile topsoil of a farm,
-
6:01 - 6:04preventing erosion
and protecting future harvests. -
6:05 - 6:07But they also knew
-
6:07 - 6:11that in order to get farmers
to grow these crops in the short run, -
6:11 - 6:14they needed to boost
the annual yields of the crops -
6:14 - 6:18and find companies willing
to make cereal and beer using the grains -
6:18 - 6:22so that farmers could reap profits today
by doing what's good for tomorrow. -
6:23 - 6:25And this is a tried-and-true strategy.
-
6:25 - 6:28In fact, it was used
by George Washington Carver -
6:28 - 6:32in the South of the United States
after the Civil War -
6:32 - 6:34in the early 20th century.
-
6:34 - 6:39A lot of people have probably heard
of Carver's 300 uses for the peanut, -
6:39 - 6:42the products and recipes
that he came up with -
6:42 - 6:44that made the peanut so popular.
-
6:44 - 6:47But not everyone knows
why Carver did that. -
6:48 - 6:51He was trying to help
poor Alabama sharecroppers -
6:51 - 6:53whose cotton yields were declining,
-
6:53 - 6:56and he knew that planting
peanuts in their fields -
6:56 - 6:57would replenish those soils
-
6:57 - 7:00so that their cotton yields
would be better a few years later. -
7:00 - 7:03But he also knew it needed
to be lucrative for them in the short run. -
7:04 - 7:07Alright, so let's talk
about another tool for foresight. -
7:08 - 7:12This one I like to think of
as keeping the memory of the past alive -
7:12 - 7:14to help us imagine the future.
-
7:15 - 7:17So I went to Fukushima, Japan
-
7:17 - 7:20on the sixth anniversary
of the nuclear reactor disaster there -
7:20 - 7:24that followed the Tohoku earthquake
and tsunami of 2011. -
7:25 - 7:30When I was there, I learned
about the Onagawa Nuclear Power Station, -
7:30 - 7:33which was even closer
to the epicenter of that earthquake -
7:33 - 7:35than the infamous Fukushima Daiichi
that we all know about. -
7:36 - 7:41In Onagawa, people in the city
actually fled to the nuclear power plant -
7:41 - 7:43as a place of refuge.
-
7:43 - 7:45It was that safe.
-
7:45 - 7:47It was spared by the tsunamis.
-
7:48 - 7:51It was the foresight of just one engineer,
-
7:51 - 7:53Yanosuke Hirai,
-
7:53 - 7:54that made that happen.
-
7:55 - 7:59In the 1960s, he fought
to build that power plant -
7:59 - 8:00farther back from the coast
-
8:00 - 8:03at higher elevation
and with a higher sea wall. -
8:04 - 8:08He knew the story of his hometown shrine,
-
8:08 - 8:12which had flooded
in the year 869 after a tsunami. -
8:13 - 8:16It was his knowledge of history
that allowed him to imagine -
8:16 - 8:18what others could not.
-
8:20 - 8:22OK, one more tool of foresight.
-
8:23 - 8:27This one I think of
as creating shared heirlooms. -
8:27 - 8:30These are lobster fishermen
on the Pacific coast of Mexico, -
8:30 - 8:32and they're the ones who taught me this.
-
8:32 - 8:35They have protected
their lobster harvest there -
8:35 - 8:37for nearly a century,
-
8:37 - 8:41and they've done that
by treating it as a shared resource -
8:41 - 8:44that they're passing on to their collected
children and grandchildren. -
8:44 - 8:46They carefully measure what they catch
-
8:46 - 8:49so that they're not taking
the breeding lobster out of the ocean. -
8:51 - 8:54Across North America,
there are more than 30 fisheries -
8:54 - 8:57that are doing something
vaguely similar to this. -
8:57 - 9:01They're creating long-term stakes
in the fisheries known as catch shares -
9:01 - 9:03which get fishermen to be motivated
-
9:03 - 9:07not just in taking whatever they can
from the ocean today -
9:07 - 9:09but in its long-term survival.
-
9:11 - 9:14Now there are many,
many more tools of foresight -
9:14 - 9:15I would love to share with you,
-
9:15 - 9:17and they come from all kinds of places:
-
9:17 - 9:21investment firms that look
beyond near-term stock prices, -
9:21 - 9:23states that have freed their elections
-
9:23 - 9:26from the immediate interests
of campaign financiers. -
9:27 - 9:31And we're going to need to marshal
as many of these tools as we can -
9:31 - 9:34if we want to rethink what we measure,
-
9:34 - 9:35change what we reward
-
9:35 - 9:38and be brave enough
to imagine what lies ahead. -
9:40 - 9:44Not all this is going to be easy,
as you can imagine. -
9:45 - 9:48Some of these tools
we can pick up in our own lives, -
9:48 - 9:53some we're going to need to do
in businesses or in communities, -
9:53 - 9:56and some we need to do as a society.
-
9:58 - 10:00The future is worth this effort.
-
10:03 - 10:08My own inspiration to keep up this effort
is the instrument I shared with you. -
10:08 - 10:09It's called a dilruba,
-
10:10 - 10:14and it was custom-made
for my great-grandfather. -
10:14 - 10:17He was a well-known
music and art critic in India -
10:17 - 10:18in the early 20th century.
-
10:20 - 10:25My great-grandfather had the foresight
to protect this instrument -
10:26 - 10:30at a time when my great-grandmother
was pawning off all their belongings, -
10:30 - 10:31but that's another story.
-
10:34 - 10:37He protected it by giving it
to the next generation, -
10:37 - 10:38by giving it to my grandmother,
-
10:38 - 10:40and she gave it to me.
-
10:43 - 10:46When I first heard
the sound of this instrument, -
10:46 - 10:47it haunted me.
-
10:48 - 10:52It felt like hearing a wanderer
in the Himalayan fog. -
10:53 - 10:56It felt like hearing
a voice from the past. -
10:57 - 11:01(Music)
-
11:33 - 11:34(Music ends)
-
11:37 - 11:40That's my friend Simran Singh
playing the dilruba. -
11:41 - 11:44When I play it, it sounds
like a cat's dying somewhere, -
11:44 - 11:46so you're welcome.
-
11:46 - 11:48(Laughter)
-
11:48 - 11:51This instrument is in my home today,
-
11:51 - 11:53but it doesn't actually belong to me.
-
11:55 - 11:57It's my role to shepherd it in time,
-
11:58 - 12:02and that feels more meaningful to me
than just owning it for today. -
12:04 - 12:10This instrument positions me
as both a descendant and an ancestor. -
12:11 - 12:15It makes me feel part of a story
bigger than my own. -
12:17 - 12:18And this, I believe,
-
12:18 - 12:22is the single most powerful way
we can reclaim foresight: -
12:24 - 12:28by seeing ourselves
as the good ancestors we long to be, -
12:30 - 12:32ancestors not just to our own children
-
12:34 - 12:35but to all humanity.
-
12:37 - 12:39Whatever your heirloom is,
-
12:40 - 12:42however big or small,
-
12:44 - 12:45protect it
-
12:47 - 12:50and know that its music
can resonate for generations. -
12:51 - 12:52Thank you.
-
12:52 - 12:57(Applause)
- Title:
- The power to think ahead in a reckless age
- Speaker:
- Bina Venkataraman
- Description:
-
In a forward-looking talk, author Bina Venkataraman answers a pivotal question of our time: How can we secure our future and do right by future generations? She parses the mistakes we make when imagining the future of our lives, businesses and communities, revealing how we can reclaim our innate foresight. What emerges is a surprising case for hope -- and a path to becoming the "good ancestors" we long to be.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 12:31
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for The power to think ahead in a reckless age | ||
Brian Greene approved English subtitles for The power to think ahead in a reckless age | ||
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for The power to think ahead in a reckless age | ||
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for The power to think ahead in a reckless age | ||
Joanna Pietrulewicz accepted English subtitles for The power to think ahead in a reckless age | ||
Joanna Pietrulewicz edited English subtitles for The power to think ahead in a reckless age | ||
Joanna Pietrulewicz edited English subtitles for The power to think ahead in a reckless age | ||
Joseph Geni edited English subtitles for The power to think ahead in a reckless age |