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So if you've been following the news,

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you've heard that there's a pack of giant asteroids

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headed for the United States,

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all scheduled to strike within the next 50 years.

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Now I don't mean actual asteroids made of rock and metal.

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That actually wouldn't be such a problem,

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because if we were really all going to die,

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we would put aside our differences, we'd spend whatever it took,

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and we'd find a way to deflect them.

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I'm talking instead about threats that are headed our way,

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but they're wrapped in a special energy field

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that polarizes us, and therefore paralyzes us.

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Last March, I went to the TED conference,

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and I saw Jim Hansen speak, the NASA scientist

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who first raised the alarm about global warming in the 1980s,

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and it seems that the predictions he made back then

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are coming true.

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This is where we're headed in terms of global temperature rises,

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and if we keep on going the way we're going,

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we get a four- or five-degree-Centigrade temperature rise

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by the end of this century.

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Hansen says we can expect about a five-meter rise in sea levels.

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This is what a five-meter rise in sea levels would look like.

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Low-lying cities all around the world will disappear

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within the lifetime of children born today.

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Hansen closed his talk by saying,

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"Imagine a giant asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

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That is the equivalent of what we face now.

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Yet we dither, taking no action to deflect the asteroid,

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even though the longer we wait,

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the more difficult and expensive it becomes."

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Of course, the left wants to take action,

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but the right denies that there's any problem.

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All right, so I go back from TED,

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and then the following week, I'm invited to a dinner party

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in Washington, D.C., where I know that I'll be meeting

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a number of conservative intellectuals, including Yuval Levin,

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and to prepare for the meeting, I read this article by Levin

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in National Affairs called "Beyond the Welfare State."

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Levin writes that all over the world,

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nations are coming to terms with the fact

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that the social democratic welfare state

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is turning out to be untenable and unaffordable,

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dependent upon dubious economics

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and the demographic model of a bygone era.

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All right, now this might not sound as scary as an asteroid,

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but look at these graphs that Levin showed.

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This graph shows the national debt

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as a percentage of America's GDP, and as you see,

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if you go all the way back to the founding,

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we borrowed a lot of money to fight the Revolutionary War.

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Wars are expensive. But then we'd pay it off, pay it off, pay it off,

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and then, oh, what's this? The Civil War. Even more expensive.

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Borrow a lot of money, pay it off, pay it off, pay it off,

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get down to near zero, and bang! -- World War I.

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Once again, the same process repeats.

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Now then we get the Great Depression and World War II.

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We rise to an astronomical level, around 118 percent of GDP,

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really unsustainable, really dangerous.

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But we pay it off, pay it off, pay it off, and then, what's this?

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Why has it been rising since the '70s?

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It's partly due to tax cuts that were unfunded,

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but it's due primarily to the rise of entitlement spending,

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especially Medicare.

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We're approaching the levels of indebtedness we had at World War II,

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and the baby boomers haven't even retired yet,

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and when they do, this is what will happen.

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This is data from the Congressional Budget Office

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showing its most realistic forecast of what would happen

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if current situations and expectations and trends are extended.

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All right, now what you might notice is that these two graphs

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are actually identical, not in terms of the x- and y-axes,

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or in terms of the data they present,

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but in terms of their moral and political implications, they say the same thing.

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Let me translate for you.

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"We are doomed unless we start acting now.

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What's wrong with you people on the other side in the other party?

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Can't you see reality? If you won't help, then get the hell out of the way."

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We can deflect both of these asteroids.

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These problems are both technically solvable.

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Our problem and our tragedy is that in these hyper-partisan times,

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the mere fact that one side says, "Look, there's an asteroid,"

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means that the other side's going to say, "Huh? What?

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No, I'm not even going to look up. No."

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To understand why this is happening to us,

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and what we can do about it, we need to learn more about moral psychology.

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So I'm a social psychologist, and I study morality,

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and one of the most important principles of morality

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is that morality binds and blinds.

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It binds us into teams that circle around sacred values

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but thereby makes us go blind to objective reality.

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Think of it like this.

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Large-scale cooperation is extremely rare on this planet.

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There are only a few species that can do it.

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That's a beehive. That's a termite mound, a giant termite mound.

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And when you find this in other animals, it's always the same story.

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They're always all siblings who are children of a single queen,

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so they're all in the same boat.

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They rise or fall, they live or die, as one.

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There's only one species on the planet that can do this

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without kinship, and that, of course, is us.

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This is a reconstruction of ancient Babylon,

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and this is Tenochtitlan.

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Now how did we do this? How did we go

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from being hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago

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to building these gigantic cities in just a few thousand years?

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It's miraculous, and part of the explanation

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is this ability to circle around sacred values.

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As you see, temples and gods play a big role in all ancient civilizations.

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This is an image of Muslims circling the Kaaba in Mecca.

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It's a sacred rock, and when people circle something together,

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they unite, they can trust each other, they become one.

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It's as though you're moving an electrical wire

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through a magnetic field that generates current.

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When people circle together, they generate a current.

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We love to circle around things.

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We circle around flags, and then we can trust each other.

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We can fight as a team, as a unit.

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But even as morality binds people together into a unit,

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into a team, the circling blinds them.

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It causes them to distort reality.

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We begin separating everything into good versus evil.

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Now that process feels great. It feels really satisfying.

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But it is a gross distortion of reality.

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You can see the moral electromagnet operating in the U.S. Congress.

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This is a graph that shows the degree to which voting

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in Congress falls strictly along the left-right axis,

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so that if you know how liberal or conservative someone is,

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you know exactly how they voted on all the major issues.

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And what you can see is that,

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in the decades after the Civil War,

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Congress was extraordinarily polarized,

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as you would expect, about as high as can be.

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But then, after World War I, things dropped,

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and we get this historically low level of polarization.

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This was a golden age of bipartisanship,

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at least in terms of the parties' ability to work together

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and solve grand national problems.

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But in the 1980s and '90s, the electromagnet turns back on.

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Polarization rises.

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It used to be that conservatives and moderates and liberals

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could all work together in Congress.

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They could rearrange themselves, form bipartisan committees,

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but as the moral electromagnet got cranked up,

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the force field increased,

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Democrats and Republicans were pulled apart.

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It became much harder for them to socialize,

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much harder for them to cooperate.

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Retiring members nowadays say that it's become like gang warfare.

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Did anybody notice that in two of the three debates,

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Obama wore a blue tie and Romney wore a red tie?

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Do you know why they do this?

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It's so that the Bloods and the Crips will know which side to vote for. (Laughter)

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The polarization is strongest among our political elites.

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Nobody doubts that this is happening in Washington.

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But for a while, there was some doubt as to whether it was happening among the people.

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Well, in the last 12 years it's become

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much more apparent that it is.

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So look at this data. This is from the American National Elections Survey.

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And what they do on that survey is they ask

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what's called a feeling thermometer rating.

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So, how warm or cold do you feel about, you know,

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Native Americans, or the military, the Republican Party,

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the Democratic Party, all sorts of groups in American life.

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The blue line shows how warmly Democrats feel

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about Democrats, and they like them.

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You know, ratings in the 70s on a 100-point scale.

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Republicans like Republicans. That's not a surprise.

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But when you look at cross-party ratings,

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you find, well, that it's lower, but actually,

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when I first saw this data, I was surprised.

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That's actually not so bad. If you go back to the Carter and even Reagan administrations,

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they were rating the other party 43, 45. It's not terrible.

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It drifts downwards very slightly,

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but now look what happens under George W. Bush and Obama.

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It plummets. Something is going on here.

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The moral electromagnet is turning back on,

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and nowadays, just very recently,

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Democrats really dislike Republicans.

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Republicans really dislike the Democrats. We're changing.

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It's as though the moral electromagnet is affecting us too.

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It's like put out in the two oceans and it's pulling the whole country apart,

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pulling left and right into their own territories

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like the Bloods and the Crips.

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Now, there are many reasons why this is happening to us,

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and many of them we cannot reverse.

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We will never again have a political class

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that was forged by the experience of fighting together

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in World War II against a common enemy.

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We will never again have just three television networks,

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all of which are relatively centrist.

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And we will never again have a large group of conservative southern Democrats

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and liberal northern Republicans making it easy,

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making there be a lot of overlap for bipartisan cooperation.

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So for a lot of reasons, those decades after the Second World War

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were an historically anomalous time.

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We will never get back to those low levels of polarization, I believe.

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But there's a lot that we can do. There are dozens

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and dozens of reforms we can do that will make things better,

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because a lot of our dysfunction can be traced directly

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to things that Congress did to itself in the 1990s

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that created a much more polarized and dysfunctional institution.

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These changes are detailed in many books.

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These are two that I strongly recommend,

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and they list a whole bunch of reforms.

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I'm just going to group them into three broad classes here.

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So if you think about this as the problem of a dysfunctional,

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hyper-polarized institution, well, the first step is,

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do what you can so that fewer hyper-partisans get elected in the first place,

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and when you have closed party primaries,

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and only the most committed Republicans and Democrats are voting,

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you're nominating and selecting the most extreme hyper-partisans.

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So open primaries would make that problem much, much less severe.

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But the problem isn't primarily that we're electing bad people to Congress.

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From my experience, and from what I've heard from Congressional insiders,

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most of the people going to Congress are good, hard-working,

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intelligent people who really want to solve problems,

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but once they get there, they find that they are forced

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to play a game that rewards hyper-partisanship

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and that punishes independent thinking.

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You step out of line, you get punished.

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So there are a lot of reforms we could do

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that will counteract this.

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For example, this "Citizens United" ruling is a disaster,

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because it means there's like a money gun aimed at your head,

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and if you step out of line, if you try to reach across the aisle,

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there's a ton of money waiting to be given to your opponent

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to make everybody think that you are a terrible person through negative advertising.

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But the third class of reforms is that we've got to change

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the nature of social relationships in Congress.

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The politicians I've met are generally very extroverted,

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friendly, very socially skillful people,

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and that's the nature of politics. You've got to make relationships,

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make deals, you've got to cajole, please, flatter,

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you've got to use your personal skills,

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and that's the way politics has always worked.

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But beginning in the 1990s, first the House of Representatives

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changed its legislative calendar

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so that all business is basically done in the middle of the week.

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Nowadays, Congressmen fly in on Tuesday morning,

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they do battle for two days, then they fly home Thursday afternoon.

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They don't move their families to the District.

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They don't meet each other's spouses or children.

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There's no more relationship there.

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And trying to run Congress without human relationships

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is like trying to run a car without motor oil.

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Should we be surprised when the whole thing freezes up

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and descends into paralysis and polarization?

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A simple change to the legislative calendar,

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such as having business stretch out for three weeks

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and then they get a week off to go home,

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that would change the fundamental relationships in Congress.

253
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So there's a lot we can do, but who's going to push them to do it?

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There are a number of groups that are working on this.

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No Labels and Common Cause, I think,

256
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have very good ideas for changes we need to do

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to make our democracy more responsive and our Congress more effective.

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But I'd like to supplement their work

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with a little psychological trick, and the trick is this.

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Nothing pulls people together like a common threat

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or a common attack, especially an attack from a foreign enemy,

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unless of course that threat hits on our polarized psychology,

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in which case, as I said before, it can actually pull us apart.

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Sometimes a single threat can polarize us, as we saw.

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But what if the situation we face is not a single threat

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but is actually more like this,

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where there's just so much stuff coming in,

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it's just, "Start shooting, come on, everybody,

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we've got to just work together, just start shooting."

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Because actually, we do face this situation.

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This is where we are as a country.

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So here's another asteroid.

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We've all seen versions of this graph, right,

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which shows the changes in wealth since 1979,

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and as you can see, almost all the gains in wealth

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have gone to the top 20 percent, and especially the top one percent.

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Rising inequality like this is associated

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with so many problems for a democracy.

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Especially, it destroys our ability to trust each other,

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to feel that we're all in the same boat, because it's obvious we're not.

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Some of us are sitting there safe and sound in gigantic private yachts.

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Other people are clinging to a piece of driftwood.

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We're not all in the same boat, and that means

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nobody's willing to sacrifice for the common good.

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The left has been screaming about this asteroid for 30 years now,

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and the right says, "Huh, what? Hmm? No problem. No problem."

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Now,

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why is that happening to us? Why is the inequality rising?

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Well, one of the largest causes, after globalization,

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is actually this fourth asteroid,

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rising non-marital births.

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This graph shows the steady rise of out-of-wedlock births

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since the 1960s.

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Most Hispanic and black children are now born to unmarried mothers.

295
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Whites are headed that way too.

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Within a decade or two, most American children

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will be born into homes with no father.

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This means that there's much less money coming into the house.

299
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But it's not just money. It's also stability versus chaos.

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As I know from working with street children in Brazil,

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Mom's boyfriend is often a really, really dangerous person for kids.

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Now the right has been screaming about this asteroid since the 1960s,

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and the left has been saying, "It's not a problem. It's not a problem."

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The left has been very reluctant to say

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that marriage is actually good for women and for children.

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Now let me be clear. I'm not blaming the women here.

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I'm actually more critical of the men

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who won't take responsibility for their own children

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and of an economic system that makes it difficult

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for many men to earn enough money to support those children.

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But even if you blame nobody, it still is a national problem,

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and one side has been more concerned about it than the other.

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The New York Times finally noticed this asteroid

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with a front-page story last July

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showing how the decline of marriage contributes to inequality.

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We are becoming a nation of just two classes.

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When Americans go to college and marry each other,

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they have very low divorce rates.

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They earn a lot of money, they invest that money in their kids,

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some of them become tiger mothers,

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the kids rise to their full potential,

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and the kids go on to become

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the top two lines in this graph.

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And then there's everybody else:

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the children who don't benefit from a stable marriage,

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who don't have as much invested in them,

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who don't grow up in a stable environment,

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and who go on to become the bottom three lines in that graph.

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So once again, we see that these two graphs are actually saying the same thing.

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As before, we've got a problem, we've got to start working on this,

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we've got to do something,

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and what's wrong with you people that you don't see my threat?

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But if everybody could just take off their partisan blinders,

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we'd see that these two problems actually

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are best addressed together.

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Because if you really care about income inequality,

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you might want to talk to some evangelical Christian groups

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that are working on ways to promote marriage.

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But then you're going to run smack into the problem

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that women don't generally want to marry someone

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who doesn't have a job.

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So if you really care about strengthening families,

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you might want to talk to some liberal groups

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who are working on promoting educational equality,

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00:16:32,942 --> 00:16:34,702
who are working on raising the minimum wage,

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who are working on finding ways to stop so many men

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from being sucked into the criminal justice system and

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taken out of the marriage market for their whole lives.

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So to conclude, there are at least four asteroids headed our way.

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How many of you can see all four?

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Please raise your hand right now if you're willing to admit

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that all four of these are national problems.

353
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Please raise your hands.

354
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Okay, almost all of you.

355
00:17:00,687 --> 00:17:03,529
Well, congratulations, you guys are the inaugural members

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of the Asteroids Club, which is a club

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for all Americans who are willing to admit

358
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that the other side actually might have a point.

359
00:17:12,936 --> 00:17:15,967
In the Asteroids Club, we don't start by looking for common ground.

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Common ground is often very hard to find.

361
00:17:17,861 --> 00:17:20,045
No, we start by looking for common threats

362
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because common threats make common ground.

363
00:17:23,714 --> 00:17:27,538
Now, am I being naive? Is it naive to think

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that people could ever lay down their swords,

365
00:17:28,909 --> 00:17:32,515
and left and right could actually work together?

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00:17:32,515 --> 00:17:35,002
I don't think so, because it happens,

367
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not all that often, but there are a variety of examples that point the way.

368
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This is something we can do.

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Because Americans on both sides care about the decline in civility,

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and they've formed dozens of organizations,

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at the national level, such as this one,

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down to many local organizations,

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such as To The Village Square in Tallahassee, Florida,

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which tries to bring state leaders together to help facilitate

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that sort of working together human relationship

376
00:17:58,191 --> 00:18:01,231
that's necessary to solve Florida's problems.

377
00:18:01,231 --> 00:18:05,626
Americans on both sides care about global poverty and AIDS,

378
00:18:05,626 --> 00:18:08,522
and on so many humanitarian issues,

379
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liberals and evangelicals are actually natural allies,

380
00:18:11,546 --> 00:18:13,429
and at times they really have worked together

381
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to solve these problems.

382
00:18:15,346 --> 00:18:18,069
And most surprisingly to me, they sometimes can even see

383
00:18:18,069 --> 00:18:20,065
eye to eye on criminal justice.

384
00:18:20,065 --> 00:18:24,018
For example, the incarceration rate, the prison population

385
00:18:24,018 --> 00:18:27,971
in this country has quadrupled since 1980.

386
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Now this is a social disaster,

387
00:18:30,555 --> 00:18:32,607
and liberals are very concerned about this.

388
00:18:32,607 --> 00:18:35,394
The Southern Poverty Law Center is often fighting

389
00:18:35,394 --> 00:18:38,266
the prison-industrial complex, fighting to prevent a system

390
00:18:38,266 --> 00:18:41,044
that's just sucking in more and more poor young men.

391
00:18:41,044 --> 00:18:43,377
But are conservatives happy about this?

392
00:18:43,377 --> 00:18:46,459
Well, Grover Norquist isn't, because this system

393
00:18:46,459 --> 00:18:49,531
costs an unbelievable amount of money.

394
00:18:49,531 --> 00:18:52,110
And so, because the prison-industrial complex

395
00:18:52,110 --> 00:18:56,347
is bankrupting our states and corroding our souls,

396
00:18:56,347 --> 00:19:00,079
groups of fiscal conservatives and Christian conservatives

397
00:19:00,079 --> 00:19:03,911
have come together to form a group called Right on Crime.

398
00:19:03,911 --> 00:19:06,567
And at times they have worked with the Southern Poverty Law Center

399
00:19:06,567 --> 00:19:08,545
to oppose the building of new prisons

400
00:19:08,545 --> 00:19:11,886
and to work for reforms that will make the justice system

401
00:19:11,886 --> 00:19:15,007
more efficient and more humane.

402
00:19:15,007 --> 00:19:18,302
So this is possible. We can do it.

403
00:19:18,302 --> 00:19:21,383
Let us therefore go to battle stations,

404
00:19:21,383 --> 00:19:22,642
not to fight each other,

405
00:19:22,642 --> 00:19:25,968
but to begin deflecting these incoming asteroids.

406
00:19:25,968 --> 00:19:29,039
And let our first mission be to press Congress

407
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to reform itself, before it's too late for our nation.

408
00:19:32,982 --> 00:19:36,982
Thank you. (Applause)