How common threats can make common (political) ground
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0:01 - 0:02So if you've been following the news,
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0:02 - 0:05you've heard that there's a pack of giant asteroids
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0:05 - 0:06headed for the United States,
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0:06 - 0:09all scheduled to strike within the next 50 years.
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0:09 - 0:13Now I don't mean actual asteroids made of rock and metal.
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0:13 - 0:14That actually wouldn't be such a problem,
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0:14 - 0:16because if we were really all going to die,
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0:16 - 0:19we would put aside our differences, we'd spend whatever it took,
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0:19 - 0:21and we'd find a way to deflect them.
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0:21 - 0:24I'm talking instead about threats that are headed our way,
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0:24 - 0:26but they're wrapped in a special energy field
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0:26 - 0:31that polarizes us, and therefore paralyzes us.
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0:31 - 0:32Last March, I went to the TED conference,
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0:32 - 0:35and I saw Jim Hansen speak, the NASA scientist
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0:35 - 0:38who first raised the alarm about global warming in the 1980s,
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0:38 - 0:41and it seems that the predictions he made back then
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0:41 - 0:42are coming true.
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0:42 - 0:46This is where we're headed in terms of global temperature rises,
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0:46 - 0:48and if we keep on going the way we're going,
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0:48 - 0:51we get a four- or five-degree-Centigrade temperature rise
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0:51 - 0:52by the end of this century.
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0:52 - 0:56Hansen says we can expect about a five-meter rise in sea levels.
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0:56 - 0:59This is what a five-meter rise in sea levels would look like.
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0:59 - 1:02Low-lying cities all around the world will disappear
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1:02 - 1:06within the lifetime of children born today.
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1:06 - 1:09Hansen closed his talk by saying,
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1:09 - 1:13"Imagine a giant asteroid on a collision course with Earth.
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1:13 - 1:15That is the equivalent of what we face now.
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1:15 - 1:19Yet we dither, taking no action to deflect the asteroid,
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1:19 - 1:20even though the longer we wait,
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1:20 - 1:24the more difficult and expensive it becomes."
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1:24 - 1:25Of course, the left wants to take action,
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1:25 - 1:29but the right denies that there's any problem.
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1:29 - 1:30All right, so I go back from TED,
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1:30 - 1:33and then the following week, I'm invited to a dinner party
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1:33 - 1:36in Washington, D.C., where I know that I'll be meeting
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1:36 - 1:38a number of conservative intellectuals, including Yuval Levin,
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1:38 - 1:42and to prepare for the meeting, I read this article by Levin
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1:42 - 1:45in National Affairs called "Beyond the Welfare State."
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1:45 - 1:49Levin writes that all over the world,
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1:49 - 1:51nations are coming to terms with the fact
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1:51 - 1:53that the social democratic welfare state
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1:53 - 1:57is turning out to be untenable and unaffordable,
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1:57 - 1:59dependent upon dubious economics
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1:59 - 2:03and the demographic model of a bygone era.
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2:03 - 2:05All right, now this might not sound as scary as an asteroid,
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2:05 - 2:08but look at these graphs that Levin showed.
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2:08 - 2:11This graph shows the national debt
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2:11 - 2:14as a percentage of America's GDP, and as you see,
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2:14 - 2:16if you go all the way back to the founding,
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2:16 - 2:18we borrowed a lot of money to fight the Revolutionary War.
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2:18 - 2:21Wars are expensive. But then we'd pay it off, pay it off, pay it off,
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2:21 - 2:24and then, oh, what's this? The Civil War. Even more expensive.
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2:24 - 2:27Borrow a lot of money, pay it off, pay it off, pay it off,
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2:27 - 2:30get down to near zero, and bang! -- World War I.
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2:30 - 2:31Once again, the same process repeats.
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2:31 - 2:33Now then we get the Great Depression and World War II.
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2:33 - 2:38We rise to an astronomical level, around 118 percent of GDP,
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2:38 - 2:41really unsustainable, really dangerous.
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2:41 - 2:46But we pay it off, pay it off, pay it off, and then, what's this?
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2:46 - 2:49Why has it been rising since the '70s?
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2:49 - 2:52It's partly due to tax cuts that were unfunded,
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2:52 - 2:54but it's due primarily to the rise of entitlement spending,
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2:54 - 2:57especially Medicare.
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2:57 - 3:00We're approaching the levels of indebtedness we had at World War II,
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3:00 - 3:03and the baby boomers haven't even retired yet,
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3:03 - 3:06and when they do, this is what will happen.
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3:06 - 3:08This is data from the Congressional Budget Office
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3:08 - 3:11showing its most realistic forecast of what would happen
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3:11 - 3:15if current situations and expectations and trends are extended.
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3:15 - 3:18All right, now what you might notice is that these two graphs
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3:18 - 3:22are actually identical, not in terms of the x- and y-axes,
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3:22 - 3:23or in terms of the data they present,
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3:23 - 3:28but in terms of their moral and political implications, they say the same thing.
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3:28 - 3:30Let me translate for you.
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3:30 - 3:33"We are doomed unless we start acting now.
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3:33 - 3:36What's wrong with you people on the other side in the other party?
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3:36 - 3:41Can't you see reality? If you won't help, then get the hell out of the way."
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3:41 - 3:43We can deflect both of these asteroids.
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3:43 - 3:46These problems are both technically solvable.
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3:46 - 3:49Our problem and our tragedy is that in these hyper-partisan times,
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3:49 - 3:52the mere fact that one side says, "Look, there's an asteroid,"
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3:52 - 3:54means that the other side's going to say, "Huh? What?
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3:54 - 3:57No, I'm not even going to look up. No."
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3:57 - 4:00To understand why this is happening to us,
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4:00 - 4:04and what we can do about it, we need to learn more about moral psychology.
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4:04 - 4:07So I'm a social psychologist, and I study morality,
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4:07 - 4:09and one of the most important principles of morality
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4:09 - 4:12is that morality binds and blinds.
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4:12 - 4:15It binds us into teams that circle around sacred values
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4:15 - 4:19but thereby makes us go blind to objective reality.
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4:19 - 4:20Think of it like this.
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4:20 - 4:24Large-scale cooperation is extremely rare on this planet.
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4:24 - 4:26There are only a few species that can do it.
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4:26 - 4:29That's a beehive. That's a termite mound, a giant termite mound.
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4:29 - 4:32And when you find this in other animals, it's always the same story.
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4:32 - 4:37They're always all siblings who are children of a single queen,
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4:37 - 4:39so they're all in the same boat.
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4:39 - 4:42They rise or fall, they live or die, as one.
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4:42 - 4:45There's only one species on the planet that can do this
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4:45 - 4:47without kinship, and that, of course, is us.
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4:47 - 4:49This is a reconstruction of ancient Babylon,
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4:49 - 4:52and this is Tenochtitlan.
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4:52 - 4:54Now how did we do this? How did we go
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4:54 - 4:57from being hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago
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4:57 - 5:01to building these gigantic cities in just a few thousand years?
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5:01 - 5:04It's miraculous, and part of the explanation
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5:04 - 5:08is this ability to circle around sacred values.
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5:08 - 5:12As you see, temples and gods play a big role in all ancient civilizations.
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5:12 - 5:16This is an image of Muslims circling the Kaaba in Mecca.
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5:16 - 5:19It's a sacred rock, and when people circle something together,
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5:19 - 5:23they unite, they can trust each other, they become one.
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5:23 - 5:26It's as though you're moving an electrical wire
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5:26 - 5:28through a magnetic field that generates current.
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5:28 - 5:31When people circle together, they generate a current.
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5:31 - 5:32We love to circle around things.
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5:32 - 5:36We circle around flags, and then we can trust each other.
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5:36 - 5:39We can fight as a team, as a unit.
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5:39 - 5:42But even as morality binds people together into a unit,
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5:42 - 5:46into a team, the circling blinds them.
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5:46 - 5:48It causes them to distort reality.
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5:48 - 5:52We begin separating everything into good versus evil.
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5:52 - 5:56Now that process feels great. It feels really satisfying.
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5:56 - 6:00But it is a gross distortion of reality.
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6:00 - 6:03You can see the moral electromagnet operating in the U.S. Congress.
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6:03 - 6:05This is a graph that shows the degree to which voting
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6:05 - 6:08in Congress falls strictly along the left-right axis,
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6:08 - 6:11so that if you know how liberal or conservative someone is,
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6:11 - 6:14you know exactly how they voted on all the major issues.
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6:14 - 6:16And what you can see is that,
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6:16 - 6:19in the decades after the Civil War,
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6:19 - 6:21Congress was extraordinarily polarized,
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6:21 - 6:24as you would expect, about as high as can be.
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6:24 - 6:27But then, after World War I, things dropped,
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6:27 - 6:30and we get this historically low level of polarization.
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6:30 - 6:31This was a golden age of bipartisanship,
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6:31 - 6:35at least in terms of the parties' ability to work together
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6:35 - 6:38and solve grand national problems.
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6:38 - 6:42But in the 1980s and '90s, the electromagnet turns back on.
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6:42 - 6:45Polarization rises.
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6:45 - 6:48It used to be that conservatives and moderates and liberals
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6:48 - 6:50could all work together in Congress.
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6:50 - 6:52They could rearrange themselves, form bipartisan committees,
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6:52 - 6:56but as the moral electromagnet got cranked up,
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6:56 - 6:58the force field increased,
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6:58 - 7:01Democrats and Republicans were pulled apart.
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7:01 - 7:03It became much harder for them to socialize,
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7:03 - 7:04much harder for them to cooperate.
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7:04 - 7:09Retiring members nowadays say that it's become like gang warfare.
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7:09 - 7:13Did anybody notice that in two of the three debates,
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7:13 - 7:16Obama wore a blue tie and Romney wore a red tie?
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7:16 - 7:18Do you know why they do this?
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7:18 - 7:22It's so that the Bloods and the Crips will know which side to vote for. (Laughter)
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7:22 - 7:25The polarization is strongest among our political elites.
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7:25 - 7:27Nobody doubts that this is happening in Washington.
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7:27 - 7:31But for a while, there was some doubt as to whether it was happening among the people.
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7:31 - 7:32Well, in the last 12 years it's become
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7:32 - 7:34much more apparent that it is.
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7:34 - 7:37So look at this data. This is from the American National Elections Survey.
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7:37 - 7:40And what they do on that survey is they ask
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7:40 - 7:42what's called a feeling thermometer rating.
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7:42 - 7:46So, how warm or cold do you feel about, you know,
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7:46 - 7:49Native Americans, or the military, the Republican Party,
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7:49 - 7:52the Democratic Party, all sorts of groups in American life.
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7:52 - 7:54The blue line shows how warmly Democrats feel
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7:54 - 7:57about Democrats, and they like them.
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7:57 - 8:00You know, ratings in the 70s on a 100-point scale.
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8:00 - 8:03Republicans like Republicans. That's not a surprise.
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8:03 - 8:05But when you look at cross-party ratings,
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8:05 - 8:07you find, well, that it's lower, but actually,
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8:07 - 8:09when I first saw this data, I was surprised.
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8:09 - 8:13That's actually not so bad. If you go back to the Carter and even Reagan administrations,
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8:13 - 8:17they were rating the other party 43, 45. It's not terrible.
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8:17 - 8:19It drifts downwards very slightly,
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8:19 - 8:23but now look what happens under George W. Bush and Obama.
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8:23 - 8:26It plummets. Something is going on here.
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8:26 - 8:28The moral electromagnet is turning back on,
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8:28 - 8:31and nowadays, just very recently,
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8:31 - 8:33Democrats really dislike Republicans.
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8:33 - 8:36Republicans really dislike the Democrats. We're changing.
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8:36 - 8:39It's as though the moral electromagnet is affecting us too.
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8:39 - 8:43It's like put out in the two oceans and it's pulling the whole country apart,
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8:43 - 8:47pulling left and right into their own territories
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8:47 - 8:50like the Bloods and the Crips.
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8:50 - 8:53Now, there are many reasons why this is happening to us,
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8:53 - 8:56and many of them we cannot reverse.
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8:56 - 8:58We will never again have a political class
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8:58 - 9:02that was forged by the experience of fighting together
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9:02 - 9:04in World War II against a common enemy.
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9:04 - 9:08We will never again have just three television networks,
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9:08 - 9:11all of which are relatively centrist.
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9:11 - 9:16And we will never again have a large group of conservative southern Democrats
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9:16 - 9:20and liberal northern Republicans making it easy,
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9:20 - 9:24making there be a lot of overlap for bipartisan cooperation.
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9:24 - 9:27So for a lot of reasons, those decades after the Second World War
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9:27 - 9:29were an historically anomalous time.
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9:29 - 9:32We will never get back to those low levels of polarization, I believe.
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9:32 - 9:35But there's a lot that we can do. There are dozens
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9:35 - 9:38and dozens of reforms we can do that will make things better,
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9:38 - 9:40because a lot of our dysfunction can be traced directly
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9:40 - 9:44to things that Congress did to itself in the 1990s
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9:44 - 9:49that created a much more polarized and dysfunctional institution.
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9:49 - 9:51These changes are detailed in many books.
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9:51 - 9:54These are two that I strongly recommend,
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9:54 - 9:56and they list a whole bunch of reforms.
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9:56 - 9:59I'm just going to group them into three broad classes here.
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9:59 - 10:02So if you think about this as the problem of a dysfunctional,
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10:02 - 10:05hyper-polarized institution, well, the first step is,
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10:05 - 10:10do what you can so that fewer hyper-partisans get elected in the first place,
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10:10 - 10:12and when you have closed party primaries,
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10:12 - 10:15and only the most committed Republicans and Democrats are voting,
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10:15 - 10:19you're nominating and selecting the most extreme hyper-partisans.
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10:19 - 10:22So open primaries would make that problem much, much less severe.
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10:22 - 10:27But the problem isn't primarily that we're electing bad people to Congress.
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10:27 - 10:30From my experience, and from what I've heard from Congressional insiders,
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10:30 - 10:33most of the people going to Congress are good, hard-working,
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10:33 - 10:36intelligent people who really want to solve problems,
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10:36 - 10:39but once they get there, they find that they are forced
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10:39 - 10:42to play a game that rewards hyper-partisanship
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10:42 - 10:43and that punishes independent thinking.
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10:43 - 10:46You step out of line, you get punished.
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10:46 - 10:48So there are a lot of reforms we could do
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10:48 - 10:49that will counteract this.
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10:49 - 10:52For example, this "Citizens United" ruling is a disaster,
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10:52 - 10:54because it means there's like a money gun aimed at your head,
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10:54 - 10:57and if you step out of line, if you try to reach across the aisle,
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10:57 - 10:59there's a ton of money waiting to be given to your opponent
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10:59 - 11:05to make everybody think that you are a terrible person through negative advertising.
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11:05 - 11:07But the third class of reforms is that we've got to change
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11:07 - 11:10the nature of social relationships in Congress.
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11:10 - 11:15The politicians I've met are generally very extroverted,
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11:15 - 11:18friendly, very socially skillful people,
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11:18 - 11:21and that's the nature of politics. You've got to make relationships,
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11:21 - 11:24make deals, you've got to cajole, please, flatter,
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11:24 - 11:27you've got to use your personal skills,
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11:27 - 11:29and that's the way politics has always worked.
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11:29 - 11:32But beginning in the 1990s, first the House of Representatives
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11:32 - 11:34changed its legislative calendar
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11:34 - 11:38so that all business is basically done in the middle of the week.
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11:38 - 11:40Nowadays, Congressmen fly in on Tuesday morning,
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11:40 - 11:43they do battle for two days, then they fly home Thursday afternoon.
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11:43 - 11:45They don't move their families to the District.
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11:45 - 11:47They don't meet each other's spouses or children.
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11:47 - 11:50There's no more relationship there.
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11:50 - 11:54And trying to run Congress without human relationships
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11:54 - 11:57is like trying to run a car without motor oil.
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11:57 - 11:59Should we be surprised when the whole thing freezes up
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11:59 - 12:03and descends into paralysis and polarization?
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12:03 - 12:05A simple change to the legislative calendar,
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12:05 - 12:07such as having business stretch out for three weeks
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12:07 - 12:09and then they get a week off to go home,
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12:09 - 12:12that would change the fundamental relationships in Congress.
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12:12 - 12:15So there's a lot we can do, but who's going to push them to do it?
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12:15 - 12:18There are a number of groups that are working on this.
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12:18 - 12:20No Labels and Common Cause, I think,
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12:20 - 12:22have very good ideas for changes we need to do
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12:22 - 12:25to make our democracy more responsive and our Congress more effective.
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12:25 - 12:27But I'd like to supplement their work
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12:27 - 12:31with a little psychological trick, and the trick is this.
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12:31 - 12:34Nothing pulls people together like a common threat
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12:34 - 12:38or a common attack, especially an attack from a foreign enemy,
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12:38 - 12:43unless of course that threat hits on our polarized psychology,
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12:43 - 12:46in which case, as I said before, it can actually pull us apart.
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12:46 - 12:49Sometimes a single threat can polarize us, as we saw.
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12:49 - 12:52But what if the situation we face is not a single threat
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12:52 - 12:54but is actually more like this,
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12:54 - 12:55where there's just so much stuff coming in,
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12:55 - 12:58it's just, "Start shooting, come on, everybody,
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12:58 - 13:00we've got to just work together, just start shooting."
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13:00 - 13:02Because actually, we do face this situation.
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13:02 - 13:05This is where we are as a country.
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13:05 - 13:07So here's another asteroid.
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13:07 - 13:09We've all seen versions of this graph, right,
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13:09 - 13:13which shows the changes in wealth since 1979,
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13:13 - 13:15and as you can see, almost all the gains in wealth
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13:15 - 13:20have gone to the top 20 percent, and especially the top one percent.
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13:20 - 13:22Rising inequality like this is associated
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13:22 - 13:25with so many problems for a democracy.
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13:25 - 13:28Especially, it destroys our ability to trust each other,
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13:28 - 13:31to feel that we're all in the same boat, because it's obvious we're not.
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13:31 - 13:34Some of us are sitting there safe and sound in gigantic private yachts.
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13:34 - 13:36Other people are clinging to a piece of driftwood.
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13:36 - 13:38We're not all in the same boat, and that means
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13:38 - 13:43nobody's willing to sacrifice for the common good.
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13:43 - 13:46The left has been screaming about this asteroid for 30 years now,
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13:46 - 13:51and the right says, "Huh, what? Hmm? No problem. No problem."
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13:51 - 13:53Now,
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13:53 - 13:56why is that happening to us? Why is the inequality rising?
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13:56 - 13:59Well, one of the largest causes, after globalization,
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13:59 - 14:02is actually this fourth asteroid,
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14:02 - 14:04rising non-marital births.
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14:04 - 14:07This graph shows the steady rise of out-of-wedlock births
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14:07 - 14:09since the 1960s.
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14:09 - 14:12Most Hispanic and black children are now born to unmarried mothers.
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14:12 - 14:15Whites are headed that way too.
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14:15 - 14:17Within a decade or two, most American children
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14:17 - 14:20will be born into homes with no father.
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14:20 - 14:22This means that there's much less money coming into the house.
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14:22 - 14:26But it's not just money. It's also stability versus chaos.
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14:26 - 14:28As I know from working with street children in Brazil,
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14:28 - 14:34Mom's boyfriend is often a really, really dangerous person for kids.
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14:34 - 14:38Now the right has been screaming about this asteroid since the 1960s,
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14:38 - 14:41and the left has been saying, "It's not a problem. It's not a problem."
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14:41 - 14:43The left has been very reluctant to say
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14:43 - 14:47that marriage is actually good for women and for children.
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14:47 - 14:49Now let me be clear. I'm not blaming the women here.
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14:49 - 14:50I'm actually more critical of the men
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14:50 - 14:52who won't take responsibility for their own children
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14:52 - 14:55and of an economic system that makes it difficult
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14:55 - 14:58for many men to earn enough money to support those children.
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14:58 - 15:03But even if you blame nobody, it still is a national problem,
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15:03 - 15:06and one side has been more concerned about it than the other.
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15:06 - 15:09The New York Times finally noticed this asteroid
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15:09 - 15:11with a front-page story last July
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15:11 - 15:15showing how the decline of marriage contributes to inequality.
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15:15 - 15:19We are becoming a nation of just two classes.
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15:19 - 15:21When Americans go to college and marry each other,
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15:21 - 15:24they have very low divorce rates.
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15:24 - 15:27They earn a lot of money, they invest that money in their kids,
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15:27 - 15:29some of them become tiger mothers,
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15:29 - 15:30the kids rise to their full potential,
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15:30 - 15:33and the kids go on to become
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15:33 - 15:37the top two lines in this graph.
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15:37 - 15:40And then there's everybody else:
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15:40 - 15:43the children who don't benefit from a stable marriage,
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15:43 - 15:45who don't have as much invested in them,
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15:45 - 15:46who don't grow up in a stable environment,
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15:46 - 15:51and who go on to become the bottom three lines in that graph.
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15:51 - 15:55So once again, we see that these two graphs are actually saying the same thing.
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15:55 - 15:58As before, we've got a problem, we've got to start working on this,
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15:58 - 16:00we've got to do something,
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16:00 - 16:03and what's wrong with you people that you don't see my threat?
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16:03 - 16:06But if everybody could just take off their partisan blinders,
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16:06 - 16:09we'd see that these two problems actually
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16:09 - 16:12are best addressed together.
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16:12 - 16:14Because if you really care about income inequality,
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16:14 - 16:16you might want to talk to some evangelical Christian groups
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16:16 - 16:19that are working on ways to promote marriage.
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16:19 - 16:21But then you're going to run smack into the problem
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16:21 - 16:24that women don't generally want to marry someone
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16:24 - 16:26who doesn't have a job.
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16:26 - 16:28So if you really care about strengthening families,
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16:28 - 16:30you might want to talk to some liberal groups
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16:30 - 16:33who are working on promoting educational equality,
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16:33 - 16:35who are working on raising the minimum wage,
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16:35 - 16:38who are working on finding ways to stop so many men
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16:38 - 16:40from being sucked into the criminal justice system and
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16:40 - 16:43taken out of the marriage market for their whole lives.
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16:43 - 16:49So to conclude, there are at least four asteroids headed our way.
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16:49 - 16:52How many of you can see all four?
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16:52 - 16:54Please raise your hand right now if you're willing to admit
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16:54 - 16:57that all four of these are national problems.
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16:57 - 16:59Please raise your hands.
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16:59 - 17:01Okay, almost all of you.
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17:01 - 17:04Well, congratulations, you guys are the inaugural members
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17:04 - 17:07of the Asteroids Club, which is a club
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17:07 - 17:10for all Americans who are willing to admit
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17:10 - 17:13that the other side actually might have a point.
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17:13 - 17:16In the Asteroids Club, we don't start by looking for common ground.
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17:16 - 17:18Common ground is often very hard to find.
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17:18 - 17:20No, we start by looking for common threats
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17:20 - 17:24because common threats make common ground.
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17:24 - 17:28Now, am I being naive? Is it naive to think
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17:28 - 17:29that people could ever lay down their swords,
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17:29 - 17:33and left and right could actually work together?
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17:33 - 17:35I don't think so, because it happens,
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17:35 - 17:39not all that often, but there are a variety of examples that point the way.
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17:39 - 17:40This is something we can do.
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17:40 - 17:44Because Americans on both sides care about the decline in civility,
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17:44 - 17:46and they've formed dozens of organizations,
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17:46 - 17:48at the national level, such as this one,
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17:48 - 17:50down to many local organizations,
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17:50 - 17:52such as To The Village Square in Tallahassee, Florida,
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17:52 - 17:55which tries to bring state leaders together to help facilitate
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17:55 - 17:58that sort of working together human relationship
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17:58 - 18:01that's necessary to solve Florida's problems.
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18:01 - 18:06Americans on both sides care about global poverty and AIDS,
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18:06 - 18:09and on so many humanitarian issues,
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18:09 - 18:12liberals and evangelicals are actually natural allies,
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18:12 - 18:13and at times they really have worked together
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18:13 - 18:15to solve these problems.
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18:15 - 18:18And most surprisingly to me, they sometimes can even see
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18:18 - 18:20eye to eye on criminal justice.
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18:20 - 18:24For example, the incarceration rate, the prison population
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18:24 - 18:28in this country has quadrupled since 1980.
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18:28 - 18:31Now this is a social disaster,
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18:31 - 18:33and liberals are very concerned about this.
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18:33 - 18:35The Southern Poverty Law Center is often fighting
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18:35 - 18:38the prison-industrial complex, fighting to prevent a system
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18:38 - 18:41that's just sucking in more and more poor young men.
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18:41 - 18:43But are conservatives happy about this?
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18:43 - 18:46Well, Grover Norquist isn't, because this system
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18:46 - 18:50costs an unbelievable amount of money.
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18:50 - 18:52And so, because the prison-industrial complex
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18:52 - 18:56is bankrupting our states and corroding our souls,
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18:56 - 19:00groups of fiscal conservatives and Christian conservatives
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19:00 - 19:04have come together to form a group called Right on Crime.
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19:04 - 19:07And at times they have worked with the Southern Poverty Law Center
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19:07 - 19:09to oppose the building of new prisons
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19:09 - 19:12and to work for reforms that will make the justice system
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19:12 - 19:15more efficient and more humane.
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19:15 - 19:18So this is possible. We can do it.
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19:18 - 19:21Let us therefore go to battle stations,
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19:21 - 19:23not to fight each other,
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19:23 - 19:26but to begin deflecting these incoming asteroids.
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19:26 - 19:29And let our first mission be to press Congress
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19:29 - 19:33to reform itself, before it's too late for our nation.
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19:33 - 19:37Thank you. (Applause)
- Title:
- How common threats can make common (political) ground
- Speaker:
- Jonathan Haidt
- Description:
-
If an asteroid were headed for Earth, we'd all band together and figure out how to stop it, just like in the movies, right? And yet, when faced with major, data-supported, end-of-the-world problems in real life, too often we retreat into partisan shouting and stalemate. Jonathan Haidt shows us a few of the very real asteroids headed our way -- some pet causes of the left wing, some of the right -- and suggests how both wings could work together productively to benefit humanity as a whole.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 20:01
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for How common threats can make common (political) ground | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for How common threats can make common (political) ground | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for How common threats can make common (political) ground | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for How common threats can make common (political) ground | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for How common threats can make common (political) ground | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for How common threats can make common (political) ground | ||
Joseph Geni added a translation |