The speaker begins by asking the audience to identify significant global problems such as nuclear war and inequality. They refer to the alarming state of the world highlighted by the United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights and explore how inequality, financial instability, and climate change are pressing issues. They cite statistics, such as the World Bank's categorization of 2023 as the year of inequality and the vast disparities in global wealth distribution, to underline their point.
The talk emphasizes the challenge of empathy and motivation for individuals to engage in global problem-solving. The speaker suggests that the labeling and dehumanization of people contribute to a lack of empathy and understanding, which results in inaction. They give examples like the photo of Alan Kurdi that captured global attention and argue for putting human stories at the center to evoke emotional responses and compel collective action.
Main takeaways from the video:
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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:
1. alarming [əˈlɑːrmɪŋ] - (adj.) - Causing fear or worry. - Synonyms: (frightening, distressing, concerning)
Ms. Nada Al Sharif, the world is at an alarming state of the world.
2. civic space [ˈsɪvɪk speɪs] - (n.) - The public domain where citizens engage in dialogue and express ideas. - Synonyms: (public sphere, social environment, communal forum)
The overall rise in inequalities, financial instability, shrinking civic space and of course climate change.
3. deprived [dɪˈpraɪvd] - (adj.) - Suffering from a lack of the essential things in life. - Synonyms: (disadvantaged, impoverished, underprivileged)
Bottom 50% are almost entirely deprived of wealth.
4. marginalized [ˈmɑːrdʒɪnəlaɪzd] - (adj.) - Treated as insignificant or peripheral. - Synonyms: (alienated, sidelined, disenfranchised)
Sadly, marginalized people can also look for more marginalized people.
5. internalization [ɪnˌtɜrnlˌaɪˈzeɪʃən] - (n.) - The process of integrating beliefs or values into one's own internal value system. - Synonyms: (assimilation, incorporation, integration)
But I think that's the extent of internalization of the categorization we are given.
6. outrage [ˈaʊtreɪdʒ] - (n.) - A strong reaction of anger or shock. - Synonyms: (indignation, fury, wrath)
In 1991, there was a Santa Cruz massacre that was reported and outraged the international community.
7. masquerade [ˌmæskəˈreɪd] - (verb) - Pretend to be someone one is not. - Synonyms: (pretend, disguise, cover-up)
They said, 'of course madam, we torture.' How else can we keep our jobs?
8. embrace [ɪmˈbreɪs] - (verb) - To accept or support a belief, theory, or change willingly and enthusiastically. - Synonyms: (accept, welcome, adopt)
Isn't it better to just embrace who you are and by that search for flexible solutions?
9. affiliation [əˌfɪliˈeɪʃən] - (n.) - The state of being closely connected with a larger organization. - Synonyms: (association, connection, alliance)
Having open mindedness and not to judge people with affiliation.
10. peopleness [ˈpiːpəlːnəs] - (n.) - Relating to or characteristic of human beings or humanity. - Synonyms: (humanity, humanness, mankind)
If you see peopleness in professors then you would understand that this happens.
Bringing Back People Into Understanding the World - Ai Kihara-Hunt - TEDxWasedaU
Thank you very much for having me in this event. I used to work in the United Nations in post-conflict countries like Timor Leste and Nepal in the area of human rights and security forces. So today I would like to start this talk with a question. So can you think of a big problem in the modern world? Would you think of one? Somebody want to shout out a problem? Nuclear war, that is a big problem. Inequality, that is a big problem as well.
Now if everybody can think of a big problem and remember that until the end of my talk, that would be great. So every day you'll see devastating news. These countries are at war. The United Nations is defunct. Maybe in that country, the law has been reformed to further restrict people's freedoms. So according to the United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Nada Al Sharif, the world is at an alarming state of the world. The overall rise in inequalities, financial instability, shrinking civic space and of course climate change. So most of you are aware of these problems arising.
The World Bank has categorized the year 2023 as the year of inequality amidst challenges of recovering from COVID 19 related damages. World Inequality Report reported that the top 10% of the population owns 75% of the world wealth. Bottom 50% are almost entirely deprived of wealth.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs or OCHA, reported that in the war in Ukraine there were 14 million people who are in need of humanitarian assistance. 3.7 million people are internally displaced. 1,143 civilians were killed just between January and March 2024. The same office OCHA reported over 35,000 lives were lost in the hostilities in Gaza and in Israel by the end of April 2024.
So does this immediately appeal to us? Do you see the problem and do you feel like participating in solving these problems? Sadly, probably not. How can we move the emotion of these people to solve the problems together? I think it is important to put people in the picture. So putting people in the picture is better. If we can put pictures of these people or sound of rough seas of a Mediterranean Sea, voices of people, video footages of people. Maybe even better if we see those people similar to you.
So in 2015, the sad picture of a two-year-old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi. His picture moved many people's emotions. He together with his mother and brother had drowned in the Mediterranean Sea while seeking a better life in Europe. The picture made a lot of reactions and one charity migrant offshore aid station reported a 15 times rise in donation within 24 hours from the release of the picture so we can do it. But did we have to wait until this sad two-year-old picture until we move?
Actually, if you think about it, we have so much in common. Can we not put these people in the center of these stories to solve these problems? I would say that there are few hurdles. So the first hurdle that I see is that we are so easily divided by labels. People with African origin, Anglo-Saxon people, Japanese Muslims, female children, engineers, married or migrants.
It's so easy to be divided by these labels and easy to stop thinking, thinking about new people that we meet or new people that we see in the news. We label them illegal migrants and then disassociate from them immediately. Now their problems are not ours. Now if somebody is dying while fleeing from war, that's not our problem because they are not our peers. Our brain justifies that in that way.
In a similar way, we look for some people responsible. Sometimes when we see a problem by doing so, it is not our problem, but somebody else's problem. We label them, we put them outside of our mind, and now it's not our problem. We never revisit that categorization. Then we are falling into this trap. They versus we, outsiders versus insiders.
That is how we feel safe being inside, being protected. To belong automatically to a group and to give up understanding others. Sadly, as Sawako Ariyoshi reveals in her novel "Hishoku," that is translated as not because of color. It is people's instinct to feel better about themselves by putting them above others. But the opposite happens too. Presidents, ambassadors, directors, professors, people worship titles. Suddenly people listen to those people, agree with those people, and follow them blindly.
Once I was in an embassy to get my child's documents. An embassy staff talked to me in a clearly aggressive way. He must have thought that, oh, this small little reckless girl who gave birth abroad and troubling his time. Well, he asked for my passport and visa, so I gave it to him. And then he suddenly knelt down and put my passport above his head, because my passport was at the time a UN official document, blue passport. And then he started talking to me in such an honorific tone.
I felt, how quickly do people change to look at people and not look at who actually he is facing. Sadly, marginalized people can also look for more marginalized people. When I was in Sri Lanka, we had a female staff who came from an outcast group that is located under the four castes. She once told me, oh, you know about Ms. A who lives nearby? She behaved so badly because she belongs to a lower social strata than me. I could not believe it.
I knew that she had a very difficult time because for example, if she goes to a market, she had to go to the market so early in the morning. Because if somebody comes from a higher social strata than hers, then she had to queue behind the person. So how could she use the same hierarchical system to judge others? But I think that's the extent of internalization of the categorization we are given.
So we label people by the categories we are given and then we stop caring about them. So in that way, when people are killed, they are just numbers. We can not know about them. They become invisible unless those groups are relatable groups or groups higher than us. But if you think about it, these groups that we belong to are not by our own choice, by birth. We belong to a group automatically, in fact, in multiple groups. And also if you think about it, those people within a group are so different.
They are Japanese Buddhists, women professors, victims or even perpetrators of serious crimes. When I was working in the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, we used to talk to the police all the time. And partly in an attempt to stop them torturing people, we continued talking and in the beginning they all said, well, we don't torture madam. And they would not admit that they would torture.
But eventually when we continued speaking with them, some mid-ranking officers started to admit that they actually torture. They said, of course madam, we torture. How else can we keep our jobs? One of them said that, well, of course we torture madam, because without getting a confession in an interrogation, we would not be able to be promoted or we might be demoted or maybe we will lose the job. How else can we support our family? But if we can do our job without torturing, we would like to be nice to people and keep our job.
So that was an eye-opening moment for me because I learned that even amongst torturers, they are different, they are just not all bad. So they shared their human stories and as soon as they shared a little part of their human story, we could then think about a way forward not to torture. So the moral of this story was to think about the people within the category without shutting them out automatically.
So how can we avoid getting into this trap of categorizing people? So I think it is important that we be aware of the tendency that people blindly follow this categorization. By doing so, we will stop curiosity about others. Once we categorize people, it is also useful to know that everyone has discriminatory tendencies. There are so many discrimination and profiling, like racial profiling or gender profiling. It's just important to know that it happens and check once in a while by trying to know more about people that you have already signed off.
I know it is easier said than done. Sometimes some groups have so much hatred between themselves, sometimes people are just there to win and conquer against another group. Probably it happens in an ongoing war as well. So in some of these situations, people-centered approach does not work. But if the time is correct, if there's a historic leader, or if the situation gets better, even for a short while, then maybe there is a small window of opportunity that can make people-centered approach work.
So my example from my experience is the case of Timor Leste. So for decades, the Timorese people were under Indonesian occupation and the world ignored them. In 1991, there was a Santa Cruz massacre that was reported and outraged the international community. After the president changed in 1999, things moved quite quickly and the Timorese people grabbed this small window of opportunity and that led the country of Timor Leste to independence.
I think sometimes this people-centered view will take some time. It takes some time to get people to think about people who they have already decided not to care. Well, at the end of the day, I think people are people. Most things are common amongst people. Nationality, religion, sex or economic status. They are all very small, minor differences. I think categorizing people by these differences ignore actual interesting part of people thinking about common paths amongst humanity and trying to see how to solve the problems.
I think you can see some new solutions. I think this approach can also help, for example, interpreting international law. So let's take a practical question of who should be protected in international law. If you don't see people in this question, then you may think that, well, the state should protect only its nationals and ignore enemy nationals. But if you see people in this picture, then you will see that children who have nothing to do with fighting, nursing mothers who need safe space to nurse babies, or medical staff who are busily taking care of sick and injured people, they are the people who need protection.
Maybe you think that it is not useful for everyday life. Well, I would say it does help. So let's say in a university setting that you submitted your masterpiece to your professor on Friday. You want comments by Monday because you need to submit it. No comments over the weekend. You think professors are those people who should be always interested in your academic achievements.
I would say professors are just titles. So maybe on the weekend they are on the beach, maybe they are out shopping, maybe they are relaxing. If you see peopleness in professors then you would understand that this happens and it is just that any of your very well-written papers may not be as attractive as his or her family time.
Okay, this seems to be related to putting yourself in the shoes of others. So it is related to having an imagination about how others are feeling, how others are doing, avoiding hasty judgments, keeping curiosity, having feelings and care about those feelings, having open-mindedness and not to judge people with affiliation. At the end of the day, as Brenny Brown says in her bestseller Dare to Lead, it is people, people, people are just people, people, people.
So I think by looking at people just as people and nothing but people, you will have a better solution. By just following the categorization you will lose your power to meet people. You are letting other people for your judgment. Isn't it better to just embrace who you are and by that search for flexible solutions?
So does this help by any chance in solving the problems that you identified in the beginning of my talk? Thank you very much.
HUMAN RIGHTS, GLOBAL, EDUCATION, EMPATHY, INEQUALITY, SOCIAL JUSTICE, TEDX TALKS