What fear can teach us
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0:00 - 0:03One day in 1819,
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0:03 - 0:063,000 miles off the coast of Chile,
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0:06 - 0:08in one of the most remote regions of the Pacific Ocean,
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0:08 - 0:1220 American sailors watched their ship flood with seawater.
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0:12 - 0:15They'd been struck by a sperm whale, which had ripped
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0:15 - 0:18a catastrophic hole in the ship's hull.
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0:18 - 0:20As their ship began to sink beneath the swells,
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0:20 - 0:24the men huddled together in three small whaleboats.
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0:24 - 0:26These men were 10,000 miles from home,
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0:26 - 0:30more than 1,000 miles from the nearest scrap of land.
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0:30 - 0:32In their small boats, they carried only
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0:32 - 0:33rudimentary navigational equipment
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0:33 - 0:37and limited supplies of food and water.
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0:37 - 0:39These were the men of the whaleship Essex,
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0:39 - 0:42whose story would later inspire parts of "Moby Dick."
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0:42 - 0:45Even in today's world, their situation would be really dire,
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0:45 - 0:47but think about how much worse it would have been then.
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0:47 - 0:50No one on land had any idea that anything had gone wrong.
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0:50 - 0:53No search party was coming to look for these men.
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0:53 - 0:56So most of us have never experienced a situation
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0:56 - 0:59as frightening as the one in which these sailors found themselves,
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0:59 - 1:01but we all know what it's like to be afraid.
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1:01 - 1:04We know how fear feels,
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1:04 - 1:06but I'm not sure we spend enough time thinking about
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1:06 - 1:07what our fears mean.
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1:07 - 1:10As we grow up, we're often encouraged to think of fear
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1:10 - 1:13as a weakness, just another childish thing to discard
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1:13 - 1:16like baby teeth or roller skates.
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1:16 - 1:18And I think it's no accident that we think this way.
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1:18 - 1:21Neuroscientists have actually shown that human beings
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1:21 - 1:24are hard-wired to be optimists.
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1:24 - 1:26So maybe that's why we think of fear, sometimes,
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1:26 - 1:28as a danger in and of itself.
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1:28 - 1:31"Don't worry," we like to say to one another. "Don't panic."
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1:31 - 1:34In English, fear is something we conquer.
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1:34 - 1:38It's something we fight. It's something we overcome.
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1:38 - 1:40But what if we looked at fear in a fresh way?
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1:40 - 1:44What if we thought of fear as an amazing act of the imagination,
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1:44 - 1:47something that can be as profound and insightful
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1:47 - 1:49as storytelling itself?
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1:49 - 1:52It's easiest to see this link between fear and the imagination
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1:52 - 1:55in young children, whose fears are often extraordinarily vivid.
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1:55 - 1:57When I was a child, I lived in California,
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1:57 - 2:00which is, you know, mostly a very nice place to live,
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2:00 - 2:04but for me as a child, California could also be a little scary.
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2:04 - 2:07I remember how frightening it was to see the chandelier
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2:07 - 2:10that hung above our dining table swing back and forth
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2:10 - 2:12during every minor earthquake,
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2:12 - 2:14and I sometimes couldn't sleep at night, terrified
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2:14 - 2:17that the Big One might strike while we were sleeping.
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2:17 - 2:19And what we say about kids who have fears like that
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2:19 - 2:23is that they have a vivid imagination.
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2:23 - 2:25But at a certain point, most of us learn
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2:25 - 2:28to leave these kinds of visions behind and grow up.
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2:28 - 2:31We learn that there are no monsters hiding under the bed,
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2:31 - 2:34and not every earthquake brings buildings down.
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2:34 - 2:37But maybe it's no coincidence that some of our most creative minds
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2:37 - 2:40fail to leave these kinds of fears behind as adults.
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2:40 - 2:44The same incredible imaginations that produced "The Origin of Species,"
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2:44 - 2:47"Jane Eyre" and "The Remembrance of Things Past,"
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2:47 - 2:50also generated intense worries that haunted the adult lives
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2:50 - 2:55of Charles Darwin, Charlotte BrontĂŤ and Marcel Proust.
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2:55 - 2:58So the question is, what can the rest of us learn about fear
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2:58 - 3:01from visionaries and young children?
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3:01 - 3:04Well let's return to the year 1819 for a moment,
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3:04 - 3:08to the situation facing the crew of the whaleship Essex.
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3:08 - 3:10Let's take a look at the fears that their imaginations
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3:10 - 3:13were generating as they drifted in the middle of the Pacific.
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3:13 - 3:17Twenty-four hours had now passed since the capsizing of the ship.
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3:17 - 3:20The time had come for the men to make a plan,
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3:20 - 3:22but they had very few options.
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3:22 - 3:25In his fascinating account of the disaster,
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3:25 - 3:28Nathaniel Philbrick wrote that these men were just about
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3:28 - 3:32as far from land as it was possible to be anywhere on Earth.
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3:32 - 3:34The men knew that the nearest islands they could reach
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3:34 - 3:38were the Marquesas Islands, 1,200 miles away.
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3:38 - 3:41But they'd heard some frightening rumors.
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3:41 - 3:42They'd been told that these islands,
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3:42 - 3:46and several others nearby, were populated by cannibals.
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3:46 - 3:49So the men pictured coming ashore only to be murdered
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3:49 - 3:51and eaten for dinner.
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3:51 - 3:53Another possible destination was Hawaii,
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3:53 - 3:55but given the season, the captain was afraid
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3:55 - 3:58they'd be struck by severe storms.
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3:58 - 4:02Now the last option was the longest, and the most difficult:
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4:02 - 4:06to sail 1,500 miles due south in hopes of reaching
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4:06 - 4:08a certain band of winds that could eventually
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4:08 - 4:10push them toward the coast of South America.
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4:10 - 4:13But they knew that the sheer length of this journey
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4:13 - 4:16would stretch their supplies of food and water.
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4:16 - 4:20To be eaten by cannibals, to be battered by storms,
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4:20 - 4:23to starve to death before reaching land.
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4:23 - 4:26These were the fears that danced in the imaginations of these poor men,
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4:26 - 4:29and as it turned out, the fear they chose to listen to
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4:29 - 4:32would govern whether they lived or died.
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4:32 - 4:36Now we might just as easily call these fears by a different name.
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4:36 - 4:38What if instead of calling them fears,
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4:38 - 4:40we called them stories?
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4:40 - 4:42Because that's really what fear is, if you think about it.
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4:42 - 4:45It's a kind of unintentional storytelling
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4:45 - 4:48that we are all born knowing how to do.
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4:48 - 4:51And fears and storytelling have the same components.
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4:51 - 4:53They have the same architecture.
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4:53 - 4:55Like all stories, fears have characters.
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4:55 - 4:58In our fears, the characters are us.
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4:58 - 5:02Fears also have plots. They have beginnings and middles and ends.
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5:02 - 5:06You board the plane. The plane takes off. The engine fails.
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5:06 - 5:09Our fears also tend to contain imagery that can be
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5:09 - 5:12every bit as vivid as what you might find in the pages of a novel.
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5:12 - 5:15Picture a cannibal, human teeth
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5:15 - 5:17sinking into human skin,
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5:17 - 5:20human flesh roasting over a fire.
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5:20 - 5:23Fears also have suspense.
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5:23 - 5:25If I've done my job as a storyteller today,
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5:25 - 5:27you should be wondering what happened
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5:27 - 5:29to the men of the whaleship Essex.
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5:29 - 5:33Our fears provoke in us a very similar form of suspense.
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5:33 - 5:37Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention
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5:37 - 5:41on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature:
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5:41 - 5:44What will happen next?
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5:44 - 5:46In other words, our fears make us think about the future.
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5:46 - 5:48And humans, by the way, are the only creatures capable
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5:48 - 5:50of thinking about the future in this way,
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5:50 - 5:53of projecting ourselves forward in time,
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5:53 - 5:55and this mental time travel is just one more thing
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5:55 - 5:59that fears have in common with storytelling.
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5:59 - 6:01As a writer, I can tell you that a big part of writing fiction
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6:01 - 6:03is learning to predict how one event in a story
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6:03 - 6:05will affect all the other events,
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6:05 - 6:07and fear works in that same way.
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6:07 - 6:12In fear, just like in fiction, one thing always leads to another.
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6:12 - 6:15When I was writing my first novel, "The Age Of Miracles,"
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6:15 - 6:18I spent months trying to figure out what would happen
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6:18 - 6:21if the rotation of the Earth suddenly began to slow down.
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6:21 - 6:24What would happen to our days? What would happen to our crops?
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6:24 - 6:26What would happen to our minds?
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6:26 - 6:29And then it was only later that I realized how very similar
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6:29 - 6:31these questions were to the ones I used to ask myself
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6:31 - 6:33as a child frightened in the night.
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6:33 - 6:36If an earthquake strikes tonight, I used to worry,
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6:36 - 6:40what will happen to our house? What will happen to my family?
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6:40 - 6:45And the answer to those questions always took the form of a story.
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6:45 - 6:47So if we think of our fears as more than just fears
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6:47 - 6:50but as stories, we should think of ourselves
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6:50 - 6:52as the authors of those stories.
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6:52 - 6:54But just as importantly, we need to think of ourselves
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6:54 - 6:57as the readers of our fears, and how we choose
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6:57 - 7:01to read our fears can have a profound effect on our lives.
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7:01 - 7:04Now, some of us naturally read our fears more closely than others.
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7:04 - 7:07I read about a study recently of successful entrepreneurs,
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7:07 - 7:10and the author found that these people shared a habit
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7:10 - 7:13that he called "productive paranoia," which meant that
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7:13 - 7:15these people, instead of dismissing their fears,
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7:15 - 7:18these people read them closely, they studied them,
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7:18 - 7:22and then they translated that fear into preparation and action.
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7:22 - 7:24So that way, if their worst fears came true,
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7:24 - 7:26their businesses were ready.
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7:26 - 7:30And sometimes, of course, our worst fears do come true.
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7:30 - 7:33That's one of the things that is so extraordinary about fear.
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7:33 - 7:38Once in a while, our fears can predict the future.
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7:38 - 7:42But we can't possibly prepare for all of the fears
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7:42 - 7:44that our imaginations concoct.
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7:44 - 7:46So how can we tell the difference between
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7:46 - 7:50the fears worth listening to and all the others?
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7:50 - 7:52I think the end of the story of the whaleship Essex
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7:52 - 7:56offers an illuminating, if tragic, example.
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7:56 - 8:01After much deliberation, the men finally made a decision.
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8:01 - 8:05Terrified of cannibals, they decided to forgo the closest islands
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8:05 - 8:07and instead embarked on the longer
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8:07 - 8:11and much more difficult route to South America.
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8:11 - 8:14After more than two months at sea, the men ran out of food
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8:14 - 8:15as they knew they might,
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8:15 - 8:18and they were still quite far from land.
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8:18 - 8:21When the last of the survivors were finally picked up
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8:21 - 8:25by two passing ships, less than half of the men were left alive,
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8:25 - 8:30and some of them had resorted to their own form of cannibalism.
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8:30 - 8:33Herman Melville, who used this story as research for "Moby Dick,"
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8:33 - 8:37wrote years later, and from dry land, quote,
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8:37 - 8:40"All the sufferings of these miserable men of the Essex
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8:40 - 8:43might in all human probability have been avoided
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8:43 - 8:45had they, immediately after leaving the wreck,
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8:45 - 8:47steered straight for Tahiti.
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8:47 - 8:52But," as Melville put it, "they dreaded cannibals."
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8:52 - 8:55So the question is, why did these men dread cannibals
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8:55 - 8:59so much more than the extreme likelihood of starvation?
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8:59 - 9:01Why were they swayed by one story
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9:01 - 9:03so much more than the other?
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9:03 - 9:05Looked at from this angle,
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9:05 - 9:08theirs becomes a story about reading.
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9:08 - 9:11The novelist Vladimir Nabokov said that the best reader
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9:11 - 9:14has a combination of two very different temperaments,
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9:14 - 9:16the artistic and the scientific.
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9:16 - 9:19A good reader has an artist's passion,
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9:19 - 9:21a willingness to get caught up in the story,
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9:21 - 9:24but just as importantly, the readers also needs
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9:24 - 9:27the coolness of judgment of a scientist,
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9:27 - 9:28which acts to temper and complicate
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9:28 - 9:32the reader's intuitive reactions to the story.
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9:32 - 9:35As we've seen, the men of the Essex had no trouble with the artistic part.
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9:35 - 9:38They dreamed up a variety of horrifying scenarios.
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9:38 - 9:42The problem was that they listened to the wrong story.
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9:42 - 9:45Of all the narratives their fears wrote,
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9:45 - 9:48they responded only to the most lurid, the most vivid,
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9:48 - 9:51the one that was easiest for their imaginations to picture:
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9:51 - 9:53cannibals.
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9:53 - 9:56But perhaps if they'd been able to read their fears
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9:56 - 9:59more like a scientist, with more coolness of judgment,
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9:59 - 10:02they would have listened instead to the less violent
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10:02 - 10:05but the more likely tale, the story of starvation,
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10:05 - 10:11and headed for Tahiti, just as Melville's sad commentary suggests.
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10:11 - 10:14And maybe if we all tried to read our fears,
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10:14 - 10:16we too would be less often swayed
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10:16 - 10:18by the most salacious among them.
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10:18 - 10:19Maybe then we'd spend less time worrying about
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10:19 - 10:21serial killers and plane crashes,
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10:21 - 10:23and more time concerned with the subtler
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10:23 - 10:25and slower disasters we face:
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10:25 - 10:28the silent buildup of plaque in our arteries,
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10:28 - 10:31the gradual changes in our climate.
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10:31 - 10:34Just as the most nuanced stories in literature are often the richest,
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10:34 - 10:39so too might our subtlest fears be the truest.
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10:39 - 10:42Read in the right way, our fears are an amazing gift
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10:42 - 10:45of the imagination, a kind of everyday clairvoyance,
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10:45 - 10:47a way of glimpsing what might be the future
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10:47 - 10:50when there's still time to influence how that future will play out.
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10:50 - 10:54Properly read, our fears can offer us something as precious
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10:54 - 10:56as our favorite works of literature:
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10:56 - 10:59a little wisdom, a bit of insight
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10:59 - 11:01and a version of that most elusive thing --
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11:01 - 11:03the truth.
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11:03 - 11:08Thank you. (Applause)
- Title:
- What fear can teach us
- Speaker:
- Karen Thompson Walker
- Description:
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Imagine you're a shipwrecked sailor adrift in the enormous Pacific. You can choose one of three directions and save yourself and your shipmates -- but each choice comes with a fearful consequence too. How do you choose? In telling the story of the whaleship Essex, novelist Karen Thompson Walker shows how fear propels imagination, as it forces us to imagine the possible futures and how to cope with them.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 11:30
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for What fear can teach us | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for What fear can teach us | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for What fear can teach us | ||
Thu-Huong Ha accepted English subtitles for What fear can teach us | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for What fear can teach us | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for What fear can teach us | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for What fear can teach us | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for What fear can teach us |