TED Six: Got Hope?

And here it is: the light at the end of the tunnel...

Maybe.

Today, for the last planned video in this series, I bring you Robert Wright -- author, thinker, sardonic Oklahoman, cynic and possibly optimist in chief of this little endeavor. Though he's speaking from TED 2006 and the talk has a couple of anti-Bush potshots in it and predates the financial apocalypse that did of course happen just two years later, it's still a poignant and relevant talk to end the project with. But be warned: this is not "hopey-changey" smiles and rainbows. As Wright's about to tell you, "the sense in which [his] worldview is upbeat has always been kind of subtle -- sometimes even elusive," and by no means does he foresee a quick, easy or automatic evolution into the future. Yes, we have to change our game, but more than many of the other speakers you've met this week, Wright will emphasize that changing our game will mean, well, changing our game. Here's your "grim inspiration:"

"On Optimism"

A bit more subtle and elusive than "hope & change," isn't it? Perhaps, but I also think it's eminently realistic. Though politics and politicians are in the business of over-promising and allowing the rest of us to project all sorts of hopes and dreams onto others, there would probably be a lot less resentment and disappointment amongst the one-time legions of Obama if his platform had sounded more like Wright's speech. I'm not sure that Wright could necessarily get elected on that "stump speech" -- imagine how that would play in the Iowa straw poll! -- but that seems all the more reason to start re-thinking the ways in which we look at the world, our politics and our politicians, and start nominating and voting for people who have concrete if difficult plans and the explanatory ability to sell them and roll-up-your-sleeves tenacity to implement them. A far cry from the "not Bush or the Tea Party" Obama-Biden ticket vs. the Perry-Bachmann "Satan sandwich" ticket in 2012. Election fever. Catch it!

Harangue over, let's break down this last talk. It should be pretty clear why I chose to end on this note, but I'll try and draw out the biggest and most relevant points from Wright's talk -- and how they aptly sum up the sort of meta-message I've been trying to draw out of all these presentations.

1) Non-zero-sumness: voila -- the Darwinism I've been preaching all week distilled into a couple of minutes' worth of precise and imperative description. Wright also somewhat rehabilitates capitalism with his idea of "business class morality" and the wry note that we can't bomb Japan because they build our cars. Though our ways of doing business will have to fundamentally transformed and fast (cf. Jackson, Lovins and Rockstrom), there is a future for self-interest and regulated capitalism in the world. It looks like increased trade, globalization and inter-dependence are the way forward to increase welfare, happiness and security; know-nothingism and isolationism are counter-productive. And as Ann Coulter would be loath to admit, we do have to start understanding our enemies' viewpoints and offering them a squarer deal: even Rumsfeld admitted we couldn't kill or capture them fast enough; if we seek to understand their viewpoints, we can take huge strides in the direction of offering them the kinds of economic ways forward they need while killing only those who are so opposed to progress that they can't possibly be won over. By all means send the special operators after the real no-goodniks at the top of al Qaeda, but imagine what the world would look like if we got the people at the bottom of the terrorist totem pole to build us windmills or something. Sounds crazy, but think about it: jobs, clean tech and inter-dependence all in one go. Much harder to carpet-bomb that version of the Middle East back to the stone age...

2) History seems to have a non-zero-sum vector, but there's no real guarantee that the world is set up to produce positive-sum outcomes more than negative-sum ones. Human history to date has largely been a story of increased co-operation and interaction, which have in turn produced positive-sum outcomes, but we've yet to determine whether the unprecedented inter-connectedness of today's "flat" world will produce positive results or a death spiral of negativity. Though Wright doesn't get into all of this, I would say (and I think I have the thinkers to back me up on this) that our food, ecological, energy, political and financial systems (to name a few) are currently operating in death spirals more than in positive-sum ways. Wright gets to the crux, and it's almost a throwaway line: "global governance is essential, but it won't be enough." That's the hard, game-changing teleology of this globalization stuff: if we're all so inter-connected, we need to stop pretending that it's the West on one side of the net vs. the Rest on the other, locked in a zero-sum game of singles tennis. What's really going on is that all of humanity is on the same side of the net playing non-zero-sum doubles against the enormous challenges we face. Global solutions require a global society that starts moving in the direction of global governance. Time to figure out not how to avoid it, but how to do it best.

3) Salvation is not only within our ken, but in our hands. Your spiritual salvation is between you and your deity of choice, but the kind of "original-sense," societal salvation Wright talks about is up to us as a species. That's one of the really really big themes of this week: salvation is up to us. Those who listened closely might remember Johann Rockstrom casually mentioning that we're probably in a new "anthropocene" geological era, in which humans are the primary drivers of the earth's geological destiny. Let that sink in for a minute. Never before has one species controlled the fate of the earth; this is a new and terrible power that we have gained for ourselves. Think through the implications -- the obvious one is that these are only the End Times if we want them to be and that if the end does come, it's way more likely to be from the realm of the "out there" theory of climate change than from the Old Testament "Jesus is coming -- convert the Jews!" claptrap of Perry, Bachmann and the FOX lot. Another obvious one might be that we've assumed a god-like moral burden: either we choose to fight for the salvation of humanity and the earth we live on by figuring out how to all get along, or we keep doing the same stuff we've always done and roll the dice in the face of all the warnings we're getting from the TED crowd and others. I'm reluctant to feed the ridiculous religification of politics, but on some level we need to start picking our prophets: Glenn Beck et al or Robert Wright et al -- whose version of "salvation" do you want to invest in?

4) "A massive round of moral progress needs to be made." Color me a blue & gray Georgetown student, but this stuff falls pretty heavily into the domain of morality. And morality is traditionally the realm of politics (God help us!). Yes, we'll need policies and investments and advances in science and technology, but in order to bring those about, we'll need political action. We know a fair amount about stem cells, green tech and all kinds of nifty TED things, but those things are generally funded and approved by governments. Wright's statement that we as a global society need to undertake a huge moral revolution is the closest thing to a one-sentence thesis statement that I have for this project. Most of the yelling and screaming in and at politic(ian)s all over the world is the rooted in a general recognition of a catastrophic dearth of moral courage and leadership in the world right now. I'll say it: our Conservative White Male-dominated global politics is morally bankrupt. And that covers all shades of CWMs, from the orangey John "Jersey Shore" Boehner to Michele "Queen of Rage" Bachmann to Barack Obama. Yep, I'll say that, too: our crazy-liberal black president is essentially a pre-Tea Party "compassionate conservative." FDR and Johnson were liberals. Obama is a very tepid conservative made to look liberal by falling on the left side of the Reagan-to-Reactionary ideological scale that holds sway in Washington now. It's time for a new New Deal and Great Society, and we got "No matter what some ratings agency may say, we always have been and always will be a triple-A country." Those are the words of a cowardly conservative, not the kind of hard-charging moral leader who will bring about the moral-political revolution we need. (And until worldwide conservatism proves itself anything other than the last fact-denying bastion of CWMs, the leaders of that revolution are by necessity going to be liberals.)

5) "We've come too far to screw it up now." I guess that's my alternative thesis statement. We innovated our way into industrialism, capitalism, financialism and all the other shit that's killing us, and we can innovate our way out. That's winning the future. Full stop. Either we figure out how to use that remarkable stuff (gray matter) that made us unique among complex organisms, or we get wiped out by one-celled organisms. (If we screw this up, the microbes will inherit what's left of the earth.) I think the choice is pretty clear: we either engage our brains and work like hell for salvation; or we let FOX lull us into complacent, obese stupidity, denying the facts and doing what we can to make life comfortable for the CWMs as long as possible. Let's evolve!

***

And that, in theory, is that. I hope you have enjoyed following this project as much as I've enjoyed producing it (easily the most fun I've had with this blog ever), and above all I hope that somewhere between my cajoling and the subliminal messaging of all those TED videos flashing the motto "ideas worth sharing" across your screen you'll choose to engage your brain and some of your friends' brains by sharing this blog, TED itself or some fact you've learned or insight you've gained this week. Seriously, pay it forward: it's like Amish friendship bread -- if you liked this enough to email it to three people and tell them to follow suit, who knows how far we'll get. You don't even have to agree with everything I've said or that my chosen speakers have said here, but if it helps spark conversation we're making progress! At least do the little guy a favor: FOX have much greater resources and they broadcast 24/7...

Thanks again for reading, and thanks a million in advance for sharing. If you're so moved, I always encourage you to comment on any or all post(s) and/or to send me an email if this made you think about something a little differently. Extra credit if you email me a talk you find on your own that you think is worth sharing! Think "Darwin-win-win," think non-zero-sumness, think morality and salvation and above all choose to evolve by joining the conversation. Change your game!

Finally, as a sort of post-postscript, I hope this changes in some small way the way in which you view and interact with the world. Read the news, but remember what you learned about what the news is actually telling you. Try to catch a TED talk of your own choosing a couple of times a week. Hopefully you've seen how easy it is to devote 18 minutes a day to it over the course of this week and have seen some payoffs from it. It's like mental push-ups, people! If there's interest, I'm happy to make TED talks a regular or semi-regular feature in this space, but with college starting in a few days I'd encourage you to strike out on your own as well (you won't even have to read all my writing around the talks that way). There's loads of ways to search talks to find people and topics that interest you, and they each recommend what to watch next. I find it's kind of addictive! The more you take ownership of it, the more you'll enjoy it -- and the more warriors for positive-sum-ness we'll create. Thanks again, now hurry up and evolve!