Turning Fear into Purpose | Marianna Fotaki | TEDxVlerickBusinessSchool

good evening and thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk to you about the elephant in the room the fear of the other there is not much choice when you find a boat full of frightened people in the middle of the night the sight of shivering scared people moved even those who didn't want them in the village in the first place this is how a middle-aged fishermen from Schuyler see Kamiya's a tiny village of 100 inhabitants on the inlet verse described to me why he decided to pull refugee boats to save him his village was a place when many people were many people crossing the Mediterranean in the latest wave of European migration arrived in 2015 and 2016 I started a research project on the Greek island of Lesbos and hills wanting to understand how the tiny communities coped with receiving a big number innumerable number of needy people I spoke to those who set up local charities and makeshift organizations to help refugees and migrants migrants were arriving day after day for many months many times during the night initially in their tents later on in turn hundreds of thousands I also interviewed locals who found caught themselves in dramatic situations they could have never imagined I realized the genuine compassion coexisted with fear in most cases what made the difference was whether individuals allowed themselves to respond to the natural fear and how communities collectively responded to the refugee arrivals this made me think that overcoming the fear of stranger for each of us is key but having policies that promote our inclination for compassion towards the helpless other is much more important going back to the fisherman helping haul the boats in he described that his decision to rescue people on the dingus many of whom have never seen the sea before and could not operate the engine was not a result of conscious deliberation it came rather from his urge to protect them from harm science explains this by our pre-programmed ability to participate in other people's shared emotions this works as follows seeing the other suffering activates regions in the brain which are involved in processing pain related emotions while the mirror neurons transmit this information the whole process happens by feeling rather than thinking put simply we be curious Lee experienced other people's harm as our own because it serves our own survival in other words we mirror people's feelings when there are in danger in order to save ourselves so to speak but the emotional connection I have described doesn't always happen on seeing other people's flight it's possible to have an emotional freezing to experience this and this happens when we all are too aware of our own vulnerability and are horrified literally of sharing that predicament we really feel it could be us in their place in those instances it is very important how our individual reaction is modified and how it is expressed socially this is why I consider it very important how local communities turned those initial actions of people into solidarity towards refugees and migrants and let me tell you it is not only people who lack empathy that do not help as was the case of a shopkeeper in the same village who refused to share to sell a bottle of water to the man coming of the lifeboat in the heat of a scorching Greek summer many well-meaning individuals can be frightened by the sheer human despair and needed Ness that such situations evoke this is why again it is so important how are our pre-programmed individual reactions are expressed in the social arena again the tiny village in lesbaz provides a useful lesson here and this is this the hostile shopkeeper had to change his waves because his neighbors shunned him I would like to post here a proposition that it is very important how communities and individuals react initially but these initial reactions cannot be sustained without adequate policies and support from the government after all even in lesbos fear and resentment replaced the initial welcomed by on the ground initiatives when some European governments began raising wild fences and walls to stop people moving this has left refugees in a limbo with the Greek government unable to meet their needs and with Islanders having no possibility to rise a wall over the sea they feel they share the faith of abandoned and stranded migrants and hopefully some politicians and media outlets in the EU affluent countries began comparing refugees to flood invasion and swarms of people such reaction is is both unbecoming and dangerous people leave their countries because they see no future in there and because they have no other choice this is why migration is synonymous with human history the current arrivals may feel big but Europe in the 20th century alone has seen much bigger population movements after the Second World War twelve million Germans fled or were expelled from Eastern Europe 100 thousands of Jews survivors of the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis along with war prisoners and forced laborers sought safety beyond the native lands but the traumatic experience of European history started perhaps after the end of the first world world war and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire Greece received more than 1 million refugees in few short months after the population exchange with Turkey in an impoverished country emerging from various wars every third person was a refugee in 1923 and the population of Athens comprised a fourth in 40% newcomers mostly Greek Orthodox Christians from Anatolia in western Turkey there were few other great facilities people were placed everywhere in public squares in theatres even in the ancient sites what this experience teaches us is very relevant to today's Jordan for example in Jordan today every third person is a Syrian refugees many argue that the asylum seeker reaching Europe today are very diverse and quite different in terms of their country of origin motivation and profile despite their diversity however the refugee experience then and now share some common crucial traits that is the refugee plight has been met with indifference and neglect on the part of those who can help them and now at the same time the historical parallels of previous displacements can teach us a valuable lesson how integration occurs in face of adversity of serving fear and hostility towards the immigrants the current lessons from lesbos for example tell us that helping refugees and migrants it's not about us just assisting them we gain by helping other people by giving to other people as an unemployed former salesman from Italy nee who set up a soup kitchen with other citizens told me when I lost my job I felt stigmatized I stayed in my house cooking and offering free meals to refugees help me gain my dignity and sense of self-worth while we all have a responsibility for the individual stances we take we need sustainable policy responses to support this for it is not the responsibility of individuals to taken the role of governments that fail to support the needs of the most vulnerable not just the forced migrants their own populations as well this then gives room to various xenophobic populist parties to successfully scapegoat refugees and migrants for failing public services low wages and unemployment one while untrue such accusations find find a fertile ground in each of us because they speak to over primary fear of survival it is an easy when we encounter strangers to give name to that nameless fear so when we meet many strangers who come uninvited to what we consider our own place with whom we have to share scarce resources who may feel we are lacking ourselves it is easy for opposition and even in Amity to occur however in doing so we actually ignore the past we share with today's savages and migrants in the last year's alone over 1 million of refugees and migrants mostly from Syria Iraq and Afghanistan reached Europe in their majority they fled war and persecution trying to reach Italy or Greece over 9,000 people are reported to have lost their lives in this journey activists in lesbos arranged for dignified burials for many of those who died at sea let me repeat we act compassionately because we identify with those who suffer but when the fear takes over we can easily distance ourselves from the plight of the other the most dangerous thing for me is when the government's propagate fear because it gives us permission to neglect the most vulnerable and to consider the essential human needs as somehow less worthy than our own sending refugees and migrants who made the perilous journey to Greece on Dinges back to Turkey is only possible because we decide enta fie with them completely otherwise it would be considered an act of utter cruelty we must not forget that not long ago Europeans fled war many of us today like myself live and work in different countries because they provide us with better opportunities over sixty million Europeans a number comparable to the entire population of displaced people around the globe have moved to America in search of a better future from the middle of 19th century only in some way many of us are descendants of migrants in that sense we are not native or stranger but a combination of both we are what I call hybrid subjects so what I have described in my academic work and other writing is an emotional ability to identify with the plight of the other is very important because it decides how we respond when we see the stranger but even more important is to consider that perhaps each of you in this room is one form of hybrid or another this is a good thing because it allows us to speak to the good fear the identification and compassion and this is also how we can vanquish fear by considering our shared riccati as living beings so let us accept that the fear of the other is a natural response as humans we are all wired for survival by either responding in through emotional attuning or distancing ourselves from the pain of the other but let us also consider whether we don't know what the future holds in store for each of us as a daughter of Greek political exiles from the Greek Civil War who was born in Albania and raised as a stateless person in Poland who now lives in the UK I'm acutely aware how the accidents of birth in geography have shaped our my own life so let us consider that fear is part of who we are but do not let fear take over at a collective and group level because as history shows by embracing the our other in ourselves we are all better off thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 1,374

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Belgium, Global Issues, Immigration, Refugee

Id: -aP_Ug11La4

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Wed May 24 2017