TED Talk: Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

these are the times said Thomas Payne the try men's souls and they're trying ours now this is a fateful moment in the history of the West we've seen divisive elections and divided societies we've seen a growth of extremism in politics and religion all of it fueled by anxiety uncertainty and fear of a world that's changing almost faster than we can bear and the Shore knowledge that it's going to change faster still I have a friend in Washington I asked Morty was it like being in America during the recent presidential election he said to me well it was like the man sitting on the deck of the Titanic with a glass of whiskey in his hand and he's saying I know I asked for ice but this is ridiculous so is there something we can do each of us to be able to face the future without fear I think there is and one way into it is to see that perhaps the most simple way into a culture and into an age is to ask what do people worship people worship so many different things that some the styles the storm some people worship many gods someone some nun in the 19th and 20th centuries people worshipped the nation the Aryan race the communist state what do we worship I think future anthropologists will take a look at the books we read on self-help self-realization self-esteem they look at the way we talk about morality as being true to oneself the way we talk about politics is a matter of individual rights and they'll look at this wonderful new religious ritual we have created you know the one called the selfie and I think they'll conclude that what we worship in our time is the self for me the eye and this is great it's liberating it's empowering it's wonderful but don't forget that biologically were social animals we spent most of our evolutionary history in small groups we need those face-to-face interactions where we learn the choreography of altruism and where we create those spiritual goods like friendship and trust and loyalty and love that redeem our solitude when we have too much of the eye and too little of the we we can find ourselves vulnerable fearful and alone it was no accident that sherry Turkle of MIT called the book she wrote on the impact of social media alone together so I think the simplest way of safeguarding the future you is to strengthen the future us in three dimensions the arts of relationship the earth of identity and the us of a responsibility so let me first take the us of a relationship and here forgive me if I get personal once upon a time a very long time ago I was a twenty-year-old undergraduate studying philosophy I was into Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and Sartre and Camus I was full of ontological uncertainty and existential angst it was terrific I was self-obsessed and thoroughly unpleasant to know until one day I saw across the courtyard a girl who is everything that I wasn't she radiated sunshine she emanated joy I found out her name was Elaine we met we talked we married and 47 years three children and eight grandchildren later I can safely say was the best decision I ever took in my life because it's the people not like us that make us grow and that is why I think we have to do just that the trouble with Google filters Facebook friends and reading the news by narrowcasting rather than broadcasting means that we're surrounded almost entirely by people like us whose views whose opinions whose prejudices even are just like ours and Cass Sunstein of Harvard is shown that if we surround ourselves with people with the same views as us we get more extreme I think we need to renew those face-to-face encounters with the not like us I think we need to do that in order to realize that we can disagree strongly and yet still stay friends it's in those face-to-face encounters that we discover that the people not like us are just people like us and actually every time we hold out the hand of friendship that what somebody not like us who's class or creed or color a different from ours we heal one of the fractures of our wounded world that is the us of relationship second is the us of identity let me give you a thought experiment have you been to Washington have you seen the memorials absolutely fascinating there's the Lincoln Memorial Gettysburg Address on one side second inaugural on the other you go to the Jefferson Memorial screeds of text Martin Luther King memorial more than a dozen quotes from his speeches I didn't realize in America you read memorials now go to the equivalent in London in Parliament Square and you will see that the monument to David Lloyd George contains three words David Lloyd George Nelson Mandela gets to charge you'll get just one Churchill why the difference I'll tell you why the difference because America was from the outset a nation of wave after wave of immigrants so it had to create an identity which he did by telling a story which you learnt at school you read on memorials knew heard repeated in presidential inaugural addresses Britain until recently wasn't the nation of immigrants so it could take identity for granted the trouble is now the two things have happened which shouldn't have happened together the first thing is in the West we've stopped telling the story of who we are and why even in America and at the same time immigration is higher than it's ever been before so when you tell the story and your identity is strong you can welcome the stranger but when you stop telling the story your identity gets weak and you feel threatened by the stranger and that's bad I tell you Jews have been scattered and dispersed and exiled for 2,000 years we never lost our identity why because at least once a year on the festival of Passover we told our story and we taught it to our children and we at the unleavened bread of affliction then tasted the bitter herbs of slavery so we never lost our identity I think collectively we've got to get back to telling our story who we are where we came from what ideals by which we live and if that happens we are will become strong enough to welcome the stranger and say come and share our lives share our stories share our aspirations and dreams that is the us of identity and finally the us of responsibility do you know something my favorite phrase in all of politics very American phrase is We the People why we the people because it says that we all share collective responsibility for our collective future and that's how things really are and should be have you noticed how magical thinking has taken over our politics so we say all you got to do is elect this strong leader and he or she will solve all our problems for us believe me that is magical thinking and then we get the extremes the far right the far left extreme religious and the extreme anti religious the far right dreaming of a golden age that never was the far-left dreaming of a utopia that never will be and the religious and anti religious equally convinced that all it takes is God or the absence of God to save us from ourselves that too is magical thinking because the only people who will save us from ourselves is we the people all of us together and when we do that and when we move from the posix of me to the politics of all of us together we rediscover those beautiful counterintuitive truths the nation is strong when it cares for the weak that it becomes rich when it cares for the form it becomes invulnerable when it cares about the vulnerable that is what makes great nation so here is my simple suggestion it might just change your life and it might just help to begin to change the world do a search and replace operation on the text of your mind and wherever you encounter the word self substitute the word other so instead of self help other help instead of self esteem other esteem and if you do that you will begin to feel the power of what for me is one of the most moving sentences in all of religious literature though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for you are with me we can face any future without fear so long as we know we will not face it alone so for the sake of the future you together let us strengthen the future us thank you [Applause]

Channel: The Jewish Chronicle

Views: 54,972

Keywords: Ted talks, Lord Sacks, Rabbi, Rabbi Sacks, Philosophy

Id: F-QFwhWmC3U

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 13 2017