The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Source: www.youtube.com
In this blog, teachers, students and all those who have some kind of interest in the English language will find useful, interesting, curious and funny things to be used in their classes or for their personal enjoyment.
Saturday, June 8, 2013
Friday, June 7, 2013
GralInt-Five myths about legalizing marijuana
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Five myths about legalizing marijuana
By Doug Fine
Friday, June 7,2013
Doug Fine is the author of “Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution,” in which he followed one legal medicinal cannabis plant from farm to patient.
With 16 states having decriminalized or legalized cannabis for non-medical use and eight more heading toward some kind of legalization, federal prohibition’s days seem numbered. You might wonder what America will look like when marijuana is in the corner store and at the farmers market. In three years spent researching that question, I found some ideas about the plant that just don’t hold up.
1. If pot is legal, more people will use it.
As drug policy undergoes big changes, I’ve been watching rates of youth cannabis use with interest. As it is for most fathers, the well-being of my family is the most important thing in my life. Whether you like the plant or not, as with alcohol, only adults should be allowed to partake of intoxicating substances. But youth cannabis use is near its highest level ever in the United States. When I spoke at a California high school recently and asked, “Who thinks cannabis is easier to obtain than alcohol?,” nearly every hand shot up.
In Portugal, by contrast, youth rates fell from 2002 to 2006, after all drugs were legalized there in 2001. Similarly, a 2011 Brown University-led study of middle and high school students in Rhode Island found no increases in adolescent use after the state legalized medical marijuana in 2006.
As for adult use, the numbers are mixed. A 2011 University of California at Berkeley study, for example, showed a slight increase in adult use with de facto legalization in the Netherlands (though the rate was still lower than in the United States). Yet that study and one in 2009 found Dutch rates to be slightly lower than the European average. When the United States’ 40-year-long war on marijuana ends, the country is not going to turn into a Cheech and Chong movie. It is, however, going to see the transfer of as much as 50 percent of cartel profits to the taxable economy.
2. Law enforcement officials oppose legalization.
It is true that many law enforcement lobby groups don’t want to end America’s most expensive war (which has cost $1 trillion and counting), but that’s because they’re the reason it’s so expensive. In 2010, two-thirds of federal spending on the drug war, $10 billion, went toward law enforcement and interdiction.
But law enforcement rank and file know the truth about the drug war’s profligate and ineffective spending, says former Los Angeles deputy police chief Stephen Downing, one of 5,000 public safety professionals who make up the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. “Most law enforcers find it difficult not to recognize the many harms caused by our current drug laws,” he wrote to me in an e-mail. Those harms include, according to a new ACLU report, marijuana-possession arrests that are skewed heavily toward minorities.
Since marijuana prohibition drives the drug war, these huge costs would end when federal cannabis law changed. Sheriff Tom Allman in Mendocino County, Calif., helped permit, inspect and protect local cannabis farmers in 2010 and 2011. When I asked him why, he said: “This county has problems: domestic violence, meth, poverty. Marijuana isn’t even in the top 10. I want it off the front pages so I can deal with the real issues.”
3. Getting high would be the top revenue generator for the cannabis plant.
I called both of my U.S. senators’ offices to support inserting a provision into this year’s farm bill to legalize hemp for domestic cultivation. Based on my research on industrial cannabis, commonly called hemp, I’m staggered by the potential of this plant, which is not the variety you smoke.
In Canada, where 90 percent of the crop is bought by U.S. consumers, the government researches the best varieties for its hemp farmers, rather than refusing to issue them permits, as the United States tends to do. In a research facility in Manitoba, I saw a tractor whose body was made entirely of hemp fiber and binding. BMW and Dodgeuse hemp fibers in their door panels, and homes whose insulation and wall paneling are made partially of hemp represent a fast-growing trend in the European construction industry.
Jack Noel, who co-authored a 2012 industrial hemp task force report for the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, says that “within 10 years of the end of the war on drugs, we’ll see a $50 billion domestic hemp industry.” That’s bigger than the $40 billion some economists predict smoked cannabis would bring in.
Foods such as cereal and salad dressing are the biggest U.S. markets for hemp today, but industrial cannabis has the brightest future in the energy sector, where a Kentucky utility is planning to grow hemp for biomass energy.
4. Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol would control the legal cannabis industry.
In 1978, the Carter administration changed alcohol regulations to allow for microbreweries. Today the craft-beer market is worth $10.2 billion annually. The top-shelf cannabis farmers in California’s Emerald Triangle realize this potential. “We’re creating an international brand, like champagne and Parmigiano cheese,” says Tomas Balogh, co-founder of the Emerald Growers Association in Humboldt, Calif. Get ready for the bud and breakfast.
When America’s 100 million cannabis aficionados (17 million regular partakers) are freed from dealers, some are going to pick up a six-pack of joints at the corner store before heading to a barbecue, and others are going to seek out organically grown heirloom strains for their vegetable dip.
As Balogh puts it: “When people ask me if the small farmer or the big corporation will benefit from the end of prohibition, I say, ‘Both.’ The cannabis industry is already decentralized and farmer-owned. It’s up to consumers to keep it that way.” So Big Alcohol might control the corner store, but not the fine-wine shop or the farmers’ market.
5. In the heartland, legalization is a political nonstarter.
President Obama, in an interview last December, for the first time took seriously a question about the legalization of cannabis. He said that he didn’t yet support it but that he had “bigger fish to fry” than harassing Colorado and Washington.
In Colorado in 2012, 40 percent of Republican voters chose to legalize cannabis, and a greater share of Coloradans voted for legalization than voted for Obama.
In Arizona, a pretty conservative and silver state, 56 percent of those in a poll last month supported regulating cannabis for personal use. Maybe fiscal conservatives know about the $35 billion in annual nationwide tax savings that ending prohibition would bring. In Illinois, 63 percent of voters support medicinal marijuana, and they’re likely to get it. Even 60 percent of Kentuckians favor medical cannabis.
I’m not surprised. I live in a conservative valley in New Mexico. Yet as a woman in line at the post office recently told me: “It’s pills that killed my cousin. Fightin’ pot just keeps those dang cartels in business.”
fine@well.com
Source: www.washingtonpost.com
Five myths about legalizing marijuana
By Doug Fine
Friday, June 7,2013
Doug Fine is the author of “Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution,” in which he followed one legal medicinal cannabis plant from farm to patient.
With 16 states having decriminalized or legalized cannabis for non-medical use and eight more heading toward some kind of legalization, federal prohibition’s days seem numbered. You might wonder what America will look like when marijuana is in the corner store and at the farmers market. In three years spent researching that question, I found some ideas about the plant that just don’t hold up.
1. If pot is legal, more people will use it.
As drug policy undergoes big changes, I’ve been watching rates of youth cannabis use with interest. As it is for most fathers, the well-being of my family is the most important thing in my life. Whether you like the plant or not, as with alcohol, only adults should be allowed to partake of intoxicating substances. But youth cannabis use is near its highest level ever in the United States. When I spoke at a California high school recently and asked, “Who thinks cannabis is easier to obtain than alcohol?,” nearly every hand shot up.
In Portugal, by contrast, youth rates fell from 2002 to 2006, after all drugs were legalized there in 2001. Similarly, a 2011 Brown University-led study of middle and high school students in Rhode Island found no increases in adolescent use after the state legalized medical marijuana in 2006.
As for adult use, the numbers are mixed. A 2011 University of California at Berkeley study, for example, showed a slight increase in adult use with de facto legalization in the Netherlands (though the rate was still lower than in the United States). Yet that study and one in 2009 found Dutch rates to be slightly lower than the European average. When the United States’ 40-year-long war on marijuana ends, the country is not going to turn into a Cheech and Chong movie. It is, however, going to see the transfer of as much as 50 percent of cartel profits to the taxable economy.
2. Law enforcement officials oppose legalization.
It is true that many law enforcement lobby groups don’t want to end America’s most expensive war (which has cost $1 trillion and counting), but that’s because they’re the reason it’s so expensive. In 2010, two-thirds of federal spending on the drug war, $10 billion, went toward law enforcement and interdiction.
But law enforcement rank and file know the truth about the drug war’s profligate and ineffective spending, says former Los Angeles deputy police chief Stephen Downing, one of 5,000 public safety professionals who make up the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. “Most law enforcers find it difficult not to recognize the many harms caused by our current drug laws,” he wrote to me in an e-mail. Those harms include, according to a new ACLU report, marijuana-possession arrests that are skewed heavily toward minorities.
Since marijuana prohibition drives the drug war, these huge costs would end when federal cannabis law changed. Sheriff Tom Allman in Mendocino County, Calif., helped permit, inspect and protect local cannabis farmers in 2010 and 2011. When I asked him why, he said: “This county has problems: domestic violence, meth, poverty. Marijuana isn’t even in the top 10. I want it off the front pages so I can deal with the real issues.”
3. Getting high would be the top revenue generator for the cannabis plant.
I called both of my U.S. senators’ offices to support inserting a provision into this year’s farm bill to legalize hemp for domestic cultivation. Based on my research on industrial cannabis, commonly called hemp, I’m staggered by the potential of this plant, which is not the variety you smoke.
In Canada, where 90 percent of the crop is bought by U.S. consumers, the government researches the best varieties for its hemp farmers, rather than refusing to issue them permits, as the United States tends to do. In a research facility in Manitoba, I saw a tractor whose body was made entirely of hemp fiber and binding. BMW and Dodgeuse hemp fibers in their door panels, and homes whose insulation and wall paneling are made partially of hemp represent a fast-growing trend in the European construction industry.
Jack Noel, who co-authored a 2012 industrial hemp task force report for the New Mexico Department of Agriculture, says that “within 10 years of the end of the war on drugs, we’ll see a $50 billion domestic hemp industry.” That’s bigger than the $40 billion some economists predict smoked cannabis would bring in.
Foods such as cereal and salad dressing are the biggest U.S. markets for hemp today, but industrial cannabis has the brightest future in the energy sector, where a Kentucky utility is planning to grow hemp for biomass energy.
4. Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol would control the legal cannabis industry.
In 1978, the Carter administration changed alcohol regulations to allow for microbreweries. Today the craft-beer market is worth $10.2 billion annually. The top-shelf cannabis farmers in California’s Emerald Triangle realize this potential. “We’re creating an international brand, like champagne and Parmigiano cheese,” says Tomas Balogh, co-founder of the Emerald Growers Association in Humboldt, Calif. Get ready for the bud and breakfast.
When America’s 100 million cannabis aficionados (17 million regular partakers) are freed from dealers, some are going to pick up a six-pack of joints at the corner store before heading to a barbecue, and others are going to seek out organically grown heirloom strains for their vegetable dip.
As Balogh puts it: “When people ask me if the small farmer or the big corporation will benefit from the end of prohibition, I say, ‘Both.’ The cannabis industry is already decentralized and farmer-owned. It’s up to consumers to keep it that way.” So Big Alcohol might control the corner store, but not the fine-wine shop or the farmers’ market.
5. In the heartland, legalization is a political nonstarter.
President Obama, in an interview last December, for the first time took seriously a question about the legalization of cannabis. He said that he didn’t yet support it but that he had “bigger fish to fry” than harassing Colorado and Washington.
In Colorado in 2012, 40 percent of Republican voters chose to legalize cannabis, and a greater share of Coloradans voted for legalization than voted for Obama.
In Arizona, a pretty conservative and silver state, 56 percent of those in a poll last month supported regulating cannabis for personal use. Maybe fiscal conservatives know about the $35 billion in annual nationwide tax savings that ending prohibition would bring. In Illinois, 63 percent of voters support medicinal marijuana, and they’re likely to get it. Even 60 percent of Kentuckians favor medical cannabis.
I’m not surprised. I live in a conservative valley in New Mexico. Yet as a woman in line at the post office recently told me: “It’s pills that killed my cousin. Fightin’ pot just keeps those dang cartels in business.”
fine@well.com
Source: www.washingtonpost.com
7 de Junio-Día del Periodista-¡Feliz Día del Periodista!
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
"Si los pueblos no se ilustran, si no se divulgan sus derechos, si cada hombre no conoce lo que puede, vale, debe, nuevas ilusiones sucederán a las antiguas y será tal vez nuestra suerte cambiar de tiranos sin destruir la tiranía"
Mariano Moreno
¿Por qué se conmemora el Día del Periodista?
El Día del Periodista fue establecido en 1938 por el Primer Congreso Nacional de Periodistas celebrado en Córdoba, en recuerdo del primer medio de prensa con ideas patrióticas. El 7 de junio de 1810 Mariano Moreno fundó la "Gazeta de Buenos Ayres", primer periódico de la etapa independentista argentina. La Primera Junta indicó por decreto su fundación por ser necesario anunciar al público los actos oficiales y las noticias exteriores y locales. Sus primeros redactores fueron Mariano Moreno, Manuel Belgrano y Juan José Castelli.
En el primer número, Mariano Moreno escribió: “El pueblo tiene derecho a saber la conducta de sus representantes, y el honor de éstos se interesa en que todos conozcan la execración con quien miran aquellas reservas y misterios inventados por el poder para cubrir sus delitos. El pueblo no debe contentarse con que sus jefes obren bien, debe aspirar a que nunca puedan obrar mal. Para logro de tan justos deseos ha resulto la Junta que salga a la luz un nuevo periódico semanal con el título de Gazeta de Buenos Aires”.
DEFINICIONES DE PERIODISMO:
Periodismo
1. m. Actividad que consiste en la recogida,clasificación y elaboración de la información,especialmente la que refiere a las noticias de actualidad,para difundirla en los diferentes medios de comunicación,prensa,radio y televisión principalmente:
periodismo radiofónico,televisivo.
2. Carrera destinada a formar a los profesionales dedicados a esta actividad:
escuela de periodismo.
Fuente:wordreference
Periodismo
Significa análisis de un periodo. El periodismo es una actividad que consiste en recolectar, sintetizar, jerarquizar y publicar información relativa a la actualidad. Para obtener dicha información, el periodista debe recurrir obligatoriamente a fuentes verificables o a su propio testimonio. La base del periodismo es la noticia, pero comprende otros géneros, muchos de los cuales se interrelacionan, como la entrevista, el reportaje, la crónica, el documental y la opinión. El periodismo puede ser informativo, interpretativo o de opinión. La información es difundida por medios o soportes técnicos, lo que da lugar al periodismo gráfico, la prensa escrita, el periodismo radiofónico, el audiovisual (mediante televisión y el cine) y el periodismo digital o multimedia.
Dada la evidente influencia del periodismo en sociedad se ha desarrollado una deontología profesional constituida por una serie de normas y deberes éticos -ética periodística-, que guían la actividad del periodista. Dichos códigos deontológicos son emitidos generalmente por los colegios profesionales en los países en que éstos existen. En general, estos códigos postulan la independencia de los medios respecto a los poderes políticos y económicos. El periodista queda sujeto a su obligación de actuar con la mayor diligencia posible en el acceso a las fuentes y en el contraste de opiniones confrontadas. Como disciplina el periodismo se ubica en algunos países dentro de la sociología y en otros entre las Ciencias de la Comunicación.
La ciencia social del periodismo persigue crear una metodología adecuada para poder presentar cualquier tipo de noticia, ser objetivo, buscar fuentes seguras y por tanto verificables.
Fuente: www.26noticias.com.ar
"Si los pueblos no se ilustran, si no se divulgan sus derechos, si cada hombre no conoce lo que puede, vale, debe, nuevas ilusiones sucederán a las antiguas y será tal vez nuestra suerte cambiar de tiranos sin destruir la tiranía"
Mariano Moreno
¿Por qué se conmemora el Día del Periodista?
El Día del Periodista fue establecido en 1938 por el Primer Congreso Nacional de Periodistas celebrado en Córdoba, en recuerdo del primer medio de prensa con ideas patrióticas. El 7 de junio de 1810 Mariano Moreno fundó la "Gazeta de Buenos Ayres", primer periódico de la etapa independentista argentina. La Primera Junta indicó por decreto su fundación por ser necesario anunciar al público los actos oficiales y las noticias exteriores y locales. Sus primeros redactores fueron Mariano Moreno, Manuel Belgrano y Juan José Castelli.
En el primer número, Mariano Moreno escribió: “El pueblo tiene derecho a saber la conducta de sus representantes, y el honor de éstos se interesa en que todos conozcan la execración con quien miran aquellas reservas y misterios inventados por el poder para cubrir sus delitos. El pueblo no debe contentarse con que sus jefes obren bien, debe aspirar a que nunca puedan obrar mal. Para logro de tan justos deseos ha resulto la Junta que salga a la luz un nuevo periódico semanal con el título de Gazeta de Buenos Aires”.
DEFINICIONES DE PERIODISMO:
Periodismo
1. m. Actividad que consiste en la recogida,clasificación y elaboración de la información,especialmente la que refiere a las noticias de actualidad,para difundirla en los diferentes medios de comunicación,prensa,radio y televisión principalmente:
periodismo radiofónico,televisivo.
2. Carrera destinada a formar a los profesionales dedicados a esta actividad:
escuela de periodismo.
Fuente:wordreference
Periodismo
Significa análisis de un periodo. El periodismo es una actividad que consiste en recolectar, sintetizar, jerarquizar y publicar información relativa a la actualidad. Para obtener dicha información, el periodista debe recurrir obligatoriamente a fuentes verificables o a su propio testimonio. La base del periodismo es la noticia, pero comprende otros géneros, muchos de los cuales se interrelacionan, como la entrevista, el reportaje, la crónica, el documental y la opinión. El periodismo puede ser informativo, interpretativo o de opinión. La información es difundida por medios o soportes técnicos, lo que da lugar al periodismo gráfico, la prensa escrita, el periodismo radiofónico, el audiovisual (mediante televisión y el cine) y el periodismo digital o multimedia.
Dada la evidente influencia del periodismo en sociedad se ha desarrollado una deontología profesional constituida por una serie de normas y deberes éticos -ética periodística-, que guían la actividad del periodista. Dichos códigos deontológicos son emitidos generalmente por los colegios profesionales en los países en que éstos existen. En general, estos códigos postulan la independencia de los medios respecto a los poderes políticos y económicos. El periodista queda sujeto a su obligación de actuar con la mayor diligencia posible en el acceso a las fuentes y en el contraste de opiniones confrontadas. Como disciplina el periodismo se ubica en algunos países dentro de la sociología y en otros entre las Ciencias de la Comunicación.
La ciencia social del periodismo persigue crear una metodología adecuada para poder presentar cualquier tipo de noticia, ser objetivo, buscar fuentes seguras y por tanto verificables.
Fuente: www.26noticias.com.ar
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Saturday, June 1, 2013
GralInt/DSGN/Art-TED Talks-Paola Antonelli: Why I brought Pac-Man to MoMA
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Transcript:
I'm almost like a crazy evangelical.I've always known that the age of design is upon us,almost like a rapture.If the day is sunny, I think,"Ooh, the gods have had a good design day."Or, I go to a show and I see a beautiful piece by an artist,particularly beautiful, I say he's so good because he clearly looked to design to understand what he needed to do.
So I really do believe that design is the highest form of creative expression.That's why I'm talking to you today about the age of design,and the age of design is the age in which design is still cute furniture, is still posters,is still fast cars, what you see at MoMA today.But in truth, what I really would like to explain to the public and to the audiences of MoMA is that the most interesting chairs are the ones that are actually made by a robot,like this beautiful chair by Dirk Vander Kooij,where a robot deposits a toothpaste-like slur of recycled refrigerator parts,as if he were a big candy, and makes a chair out of it.Or good design is digital fonts that we use all the time and that become part of our identity.I want people to understand that design is so much more than cute chairs,that it is first and foremost everything that is around us in our life.
And it's interesting how so much of what we're talking about tonight is not simply design but interaction design.And in fact, interaction design is what I've been trying to insert in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art for a few years, starting not very timidly but just pointedly with works, for instance,by Martin Wattenberg -- the way a machine plays chess with itself, that you see here,or Lisa Strausfeld and her partners, the Sugar interface for One Laptop Per Child,Toshio Iwai's Tenori-On musical instruments,and Philip Worthington's Shadow Monsters,and John Maeda's Reactive Books,and also Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar's I Want You To Want Me.These were some of the first acquisitions that really introduced the idea of interaction design to the public.
But more recently, I've been trying really to go even deeper into interaction design with examples that are emotionally really suggestive and that really explain interaction design at a level that is almost undeniable.The Wind Map, by Wattenberg and Fernanda Viégas,I don't know if you've ever seen it -- it's really fantastic.It looks at the territory of the United States as if it were a wheat field that is procured by the winds and that is really giving you a pictorial image of what's going on with the winds in the United States.
But also, more recently, we started acquiring video games,and that's where all hell broke loose in a really interesting way. (Laughter)There are still people that believe that there's a high and there's a low.And that's really what I find so intriguing about the reactions that we've had to the annointment of video games in the MoMA collection.We've -- No, first of all, New York Magazine always gets it.I love them. So we are in the right quadrant.We are in the Highbrow -- that's daring, that's courageous --and Brilliant, which is great.Timidly, we've been higher on the diagonal in other situations,but it's okay. It's good. It's good. It's good. (Laughter)
But here comes the art critic. Oh, that was fantastic.
So the first was Jonathan Jones from The Guardian."Sorry, MoMA, video games are not art."Did I ever say they were art? I was talking about interaction design. Excuse me."Exhibiting Pac-Man and Tetris alongside Picasso and Van Gogh" --They're two floors away. (Laughter) —"will mean game over for any real understanding of art."I'm bringing in the end of the world. You know?We were talking about the rapture? It's coming.And Jonathan Jones is making it happen.
So the same Guardian rebuts,"Are video games art: the debate that shouldn't be.Last week, Guardian art critic blah blah suggested that games cannot qualify as art. But is he right?And does it matter?" Thank you. Does it matter?
You know, it's like once again there's this whole problem of design being often misunderstood for art,or the idea that is so diffuse that designers want to aspire to, would like to be called, artists.No. Designers aspire to be really great designers.Thank you very much. And that's more than enough.
So my knight in shining armor, John Maeda,without any prompt, came out with this big declaration on why video games belong in the MoMA.And that was fantastic. And I thought that was it.
But then there was another wonderfully pretentious article that came out in The New Republic, so pretentious,by Liel Leibovitz, and it said, "MoMA has mistaken video games for art." Again."The museum is putting Pac-Man alongside Picasso." Again."That misses the point."Excuse me. You're missing the point.And here, look, the above question is put bluntly:"Are video games art? No. Video games aren't art because they are quite thoroughly something else: code."Oh, so Picasso is not art because it's oil paint. Right?
So it's so fantastic to see how these feathers that were ruffled,and these reactions, were so vehement.And you know what?The International Cat Video Film Festival didn't have that much of a reaction. (Laughter)I think this was truly fantastic.We were talking about dancing ponies, but I was really jealous of the Walker Arts Center for putting up this festival,because it's very, very wonderful.And there's this Flaubert quote that I love:"I have always tried to live in an ivory tower,but a tide of shit is beating at its walls,threatening to undermine it."I consider myself the tide of shit.
(Laughter) (Applause)
You know, we have to go through that.Even in the 1930s, my colleagues that were trying to put together an abstract art show had all of these works stopped by the customs officers that decided they were not art.So it's happened before, and it will happen in the future,but right now I can tell you that I am so, so proud to be able to call Pac-Man part of the MoMA collection.And the same with, for instance, Tetris, original version, the Soviet one.And you know, the amount of work --yeah, Alexey Pajitnov was working for the Soviet government and that's how he developed Tetris,and Alexey himself reconstructed the whole game and even gave us a simulation of the cathode ray tube that makes it look slightly bombed.And it's fantastic.
So behind these acquisitions is an enormous amount of work,because we're still the Museum of Modern Art,so even when we tackle popular culture,we tackle it as a form of interaction design and as something that has to go into the collection at MoMA,therefore, has to be researched.So to get to choosing Eric Chahi'swonderful Another World, amongst others,we put together a panel of experts,and we worked on this acquisition,and it's mostly myself and Kate Carmody and Paul Galloway.We worked on it for a year and a half.So many people helped us — designers of games,you might know Jamin Warrenand his collaborators at Kill Screen magazine,and you know, Kevin Slavin. You name it.We bugged everybody, because we knew that we were ignorant.We were not real gamers enough,so we had to really talk to them.And so we decided, of course, to have Sim City 2000,not the other Sim City, that one in particular,so the criteria that we developed along the way were really strong, and were not only criteria of selection.They were also criteria of exhibition and of preservation.That's what makes this acquisition more than a little game or a little joke. It's truly a way to think of how to preserve and show artifacts that will more and more become part of our lives in the future.We live today, as you know very well, not in the digital,not in the physical, but in the kind of minestrone that our mind makes of the two.
And that's really where interaction lies,and that's the importance of interaction.And in order to explain interaction, we need to really bring people in and make them realize how interaction is part of their lives.So when I talk about it, I don't talk only about video games,which are in a way the purest form of interaction,unadulterated by any kind of function or finality.I also talk about the MetroCard vending machine,which I consider a masterpiece of interaction.I mean, that interface is beautiful.It looks like a burly MTA guy coming out of the tunnel.You know, with your mitt you can actually paw the MetroCard, and I talk about how bad ATM machines usually are.So I let people understand that it's up to them to know how to judge interaction so as to know when it's good or when it's bad.So when I show The Sims,I try to make people really feel what it meant to have an interaction with The Sims,not only the fun but also the responsibility that came with the Tamagotchi.
You know, video games can be truly deep even when they're completely mindless.I'm sure that all of you know Katamari Damacy.It's about rolling a ball and picking up as many objects as you can in a finite amount of time and hopefully you'll be able to make it into a planet.I've never made it into a planet, but that's it.Or, you know, Vib-Ribbon was not distributed here in the United States.It was a PlayStation game, but mostly for Japan.And it was one of the first video games in which you could choose your own music.So you would put into the PlayStation,you would put your own CD,and then the game would change alongside your music. So really fantastic.
Not to mention Eve Online.Eve Online is an artificial universe, if you wish,but one of the diplomats that was killed in Benghazi,not Ambassador Stevens, but one of his collaborators,was a really big shot in Eve Online,so here you have a diplomat in the real world that spends his time in Eve Onlineto kind of test, maybe, all of his ideas about diplomacy and about universe-building, and to the point that the first announcement of the bombing was actually given on Eve Online,and after his death, several parts of the universe were named after him.And I was just recently at the Eve Online fan festival in Reykjavík that was quite amazing.I mean, we're talking about an experience that of course can seem weird to many,but that is very educational.Of course, there are games that are even more educational.
Dwarf Fortress is like the holy grail of this kind of massive multiplayer online game,and in fact the two Adams brothers were in Reykjavík,and they were greeted by a standing ovation by all the Eve Online fans.It was amazing to see. And it's a beautiful game.So you start seeing here that the aesthetics that are so importantto a museum collection like MoMA's are kept alive also by the selection of these games.
And you know, Valve -- you know, Portal --is an example of a video game in which you have a certain type of violence which also leads me to talk about one of the biggest issues that we had to discuss when we acquired the video games, what to do with violence.Right? We had to make decisions.At MoMA, interestingly, there's a lot of violence depicted in the art part of the collection,but when I came to MoMA 19 years ago, and as an Italian,I said, "You know what, we need a Beretta."And I was told, "No. No guns in the design collection."And I was like, "Why?"Interestingly, I learned that it's considered that in design and in the design collection,what you see is what you get.So when you see a gun, it's an instrument for killing in the design collection.If it's in the art collection,it might be a critique of the killing instrument.So it's very interesting.But we are acquiring our critical dimension also in design,so maybe one day we'll be able to acquire also the guns.But here, in this particular case, we decided,you know, with Kate and Paul,that we would have no gratuitous violence.So we have Portal because you shoot walls in order to create new spaces.We have Street Fighter II, because martial arts are good.(Laughter)But we don't have GTA because,maybe it's my own reflection,I've never been able to do anything but crashing cars and shooting prostitutes and pimps.So it was not very constructive. (Laughter)So, I'm making fun of it, but we discussed this for so many days. You have no idea.And to this day, I am ambivalent,but when you have instead games like Flow, there's no doubt.It's like, it's about serenity and it's about sublime.It's about experiencing what it means to be a sea creature.Then we have a few also side-scrollers -- classical ones.So it's quite a hefty collection.
And right now, we started with the first 14,but we have several that are coming up,and the reason why we haven't acquired them yet is because you don't acquire just the game.You acquire the relationship with the company.What we want, what we aspire to, is the code.It's very hard to get, of course.But that's what would enable us to preserve the video games for a really long time,and that's what museums do.They also preserve artifacts for posterity.In absence of the code, because, you know,video game companies are not very forthcoming in some cases,in absence of that, we acquire the relationship with the company.We're going to stay with them forever.They're not going to get rid of us.And one day, we'll get that code. (Laughter)
But I want to explain to you the criteria that we chose for interaction design. Aesthetics are really important.And I'm showing you Core War here,which is an early game that takes advantage aesthetically of the limitations of the processor.So the kind of interferences that you see here that look like beautiful barriers in the game are actually a consequence of the processor's limitedness,which is fantastic. So aesthetics is always important.
And so is space, the spatial aspect of games.You know, I feel that the best video games are the ones that have really savvy architects that are behind them, and if they're not architects,bona fide trained in architecture, they have that feeling.But the spatial evolution in video games is extremely important.
Time. The way we experience time in video games,as in other forms of interaction design,is really quite amazing.It can be real time or it can be the time within the game,as is in Animal Crossing, where seasons follow each other at their own pace.
So time, space, aesthetics,and then, most important, behavior.The real core issue of interaction design is behavior.Designers that deal with interaction design behaviors that go to influence the rest of our lives.They're not just limited to our interaction with the screen.In this case, I'm showing you Marble Madness,which is a beautiful game in which the controller is a big sphere that vibrates with you,so you have a sphere that's moving in this landscape,and the sphere, the controller itself, gives you a sense of the movement.In a way, you can see how video games are the purest aspect of interaction design and are very useful to explain what interaction is.
We don't want to show the video games with the paraphernalia. No arcade nostalgia.If anything, we want to show the code,and here you see Ben Fry's distell a map of Pac-Man,of the Pac-Man code.
So the way we acquired the games is very interesting and very unorthodox. You see them here displayed alongside other examples of design,furniture and other parts,but there's no paraphernalia, no nostalagia,only the screen and a little shelf with the controllers.The controllers are, of course, part of the experience,so you cannot do away with it.But interestingly, this choice was not condemned too vehemently by gamers.I was afraid that they would kill us,and instead they understood, especially when I told them that I was trying to apply the same MoMA galleries he put them on white pedestals against white walls, as if they were Brancusi sculptures.He created this strange distance, this shock,that made people realize how gorgeous formally,and also important functionally, design pieces were.I would like to do the same with video games.By getting rid of the sticky carpets and the cigarette butts and everything else that we might remember from our childhood,I want people to understand that those are important forms of design.And in a way, the video games, the fonts and everything else lead us to make people understand a wider meaning for design.
One of my dream acquisitions,which has been on hold for a few years but now will come back on the front burner,is a 747.I would like to acquire it, but without owning it.I don't want it to be at MoMA and possessed by MoMA.I want it to keep flying.So it's an acquisition where MoMA makes an arrangement with an airline and keeps the Boeing 747 flying.
And the same with the "@" sign that we acquired a few years ago.It was the first example of an acquisition of something that is in the public domain.And what I say to people, it's almost as if a butterfly were flying by and we captured the shadow on the wall,and just we're showing the shadow.So in a way, we're showing a manifestation of something that is truly important and that is part of our identity but that nobody can have.And it's too long to explain the acquisition,but if you want to go on the MoMA blog,there's a long post where I explain why it's such a great example of design.
Along the way, I've had to burn a few chairs. You know?I've had to do away with a few concepts of design past.But I see that people are coming along,that the audiences, paradoxically,are much more responsive and much more understanding of this expansion of design than some of my colleagues are.Design is truly everywhere,and design is as important as anything,and I'm so glad that, because of its diversity and because of its centrality to our lives,many more people are coming to it as a profession, as a passion,and as, very simply, part of their own culture.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
Transcript:
I'm almost like a crazy evangelical.I've always known that the age of design is upon us,almost like a rapture.If the day is sunny, I think,"Ooh, the gods have had a good design day."Or, I go to a show and I see a beautiful piece by an artist,particularly beautiful, I say he's so good because he clearly looked to design to understand what he needed to do.
So I really do believe that design is the highest form of creative expression.That's why I'm talking to you today about the age of design,and the age of design is the age in which design is still cute furniture, is still posters,is still fast cars, what you see at MoMA today.But in truth, what I really would like to explain to the public and to the audiences of MoMA is that the most interesting chairs are the ones that are actually made by a robot,like this beautiful chair by Dirk Vander Kooij,where a robot deposits a toothpaste-like slur of recycled refrigerator parts,as if he were a big candy, and makes a chair out of it.Or good design is digital fonts that we use all the time and that become part of our identity.I want people to understand that design is so much more than cute chairs,that it is first and foremost everything that is around us in our life.
And it's interesting how so much of what we're talking about tonight is not simply design but interaction design.And in fact, interaction design is what I've been trying to insert in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art for a few years, starting not very timidly but just pointedly with works, for instance,by Martin Wattenberg -- the way a machine plays chess with itself, that you see here,or Lisa Strausfeld and her partners, the Sugar interface for One Laptop Per Child,Toshio Iwai's Tenori-On musical instruments,and Philip Worthington's Shadow Monsters,and John Maeda's Reactive Books,and also Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar's I Want You To Want Me.These were some of the first acquisitions that really introduced the idea of interaction design to the public.
But more recently, I've been trying really to go even deeper into interaction design with examples that are emotionally really suggestive and that really explain interaction design at a level that is almost undeniable.The Wind Map, by Wattenberg and Fernanda Viégas,I don't know if you've ever seen it -- it's really fantastic.It looks at the territory of the United States as if it were a wheat field that is procured by the winds and that is really giving you a pictorial image of what's going on with the winds in the United States.
But also, more recently, we started acquiring video games,and that's where all hell broke loose in a really interesting way. (Laughter)There are still people that believe that there's a high and there's a low.And that's really what I find so intriguing about the reactions that we've had to the annointment of video games in the MoMA collection.We've -- No, first of all, New York Magazine always gets it.I love them. So we are in the right quadrant.We are in the Highbrow -- that's daring, that's courageous --and Brilliant, which is great.Timidly, we've been higher on the diagonal in other situations,but it's okay. It's good. It's good. It's good. (Laughter)
But here comes the art critic. Oh, that was fantastic.
So the first was Jonathan Jones from The Guardian."Sorry, MoMA, video games are not art."Did I ever say they were art? I was talking about interaction design. Excuse me."Exhibiting Pac-Man and Tetris alongside Picasso and Van Gogh" --They're two floors away. (Laughter) —"will mean game over for any real understanding of art."I'm bringing in the end of the world. You know?We were talking about the rapture? It's coming.And Jonathan Jones is making it happen.
So the same Guardian rebuts,"Are video games art: the debate that shouldn't be.Last week, Guardian art critic blah blah suggested that games cannot qualify as art. But is he right?And does it matter?" Thank you. Does it matter?
You know, it's like once again there's this whole problem of design being often misunderstood for art,or the idea that is so diffuse that designers want to aspire to, would like to be called, artists.No. Designers aspire to be really great designers.Thank you very much. And that's more than enough.
So my knight in shining armor, John Maeda,without any prompt, came out with this big declaration on why video games belong in the MoMA.And that was fantastic. And I thought that was it.
But then there was another wonderfully pretentious article that came out in The New Republic, so pretentious,by Liel Leibovitz, and it said, "MoMA has mistaken video games for art." Again."The museum is putting Pac-Man alongside Picasso." Again."That misses the point."Excuse me. You're missing the point.And here, look, the above question is put bluntly:"Are video games art? No. Video games aren't art because they are quite thoroughly something else: code."Oh, so Picasso is not art because it's oil paint. Right?
So it's so fantastic to see how these feathers that were ruffled,and these reactions, were so vehement.And you know what?The International Cat Video Film Festival didn't have that much of a reaction. (Laughter)I think this was truly fantastic.We were talking about dancing ponies, but I was really jealous of the Walker Arts Center for putting up this festival,because it's very, very wonderful.And there's this Flaubert quote that I love:"I have always tried to live in an ivory tower,but a tide of shit is beating at its walls,threatening to undermine it."I consider myself the tide of shit.
(Laughter) (Applause)
You know, we have to go through that.Even in the 1930s, my colleagues that were trying to put together an abstract art show had all of these works stopped by the customs officers that decided they were not art.So it's happened before, and it will happen in the future,but right now I can tell you that I am so, so proud to be able to call Pac-Man part of the MoMA collection.And the same with, for instance, Tetris, original version, the Soviet one.And you know, the amount of work --yeah, Alexey Pajitnov was working for the Soviet government and that's how he developed Tetris,and Alexey himself reconstructed the whole game and even gave us a simulation of the cathode ray tube that makes it look slightly bombed.And it's fantastic.
So behind these acquisitions is an enormous amount of work,because we're still the Museum of Modern Art,so even when we tackle popular culture,we tackle it as a form of interaction design and as something that has to go into the collection at MoMA,therefore, has to be researched.So to get to choosing Eric Chahi'swonderful Another World, amongst others,we put together a panel of experts,and we worked on this acquisition,and it's mostly myself and Kate Carmody and Paul Galloway.We worked on it for a year and a half.So many people helped us — designers of games,you might know Jamin Warrenand his collaborators at Kill Screen magazine,and you know, Kevin Slavin. You name it.We bugged everybody, because we knew that we were ignorant.We were not real gamers enough,so we had to really talk to them.And so we decided, of course, to have Sim City 2000,not the other Sim City, that one in particular,so the criteria that we developed along the way were really strong, and were not only criteria of selection.They were also criteria of exhibition and of preservation.That's what makes this acquisition more than a little game or a little joke. It's truly a way to think of how to preserve and show artifacts that will more and more become part of our lives in the future.We live today, as you know very well, not in the digital,not in the physical, but in the kind of minestrone that our mind makes of the two.
And that's really where interaction lies,and that's the importance of interaction.And in order to explain interaction, we need to really bring people in and make them realize how interaction is part of their lives.So when I talk about it, I don't talk only about video games,which are in a way the purest form of interaction,unadulterated by any kind of function or finality.I also talk about the MetroCard vending machine,which I consider a masterpiece of interaction.I mean, that interface is beautiful.It looks like a burly MTA guy coming out of the tunnel.You know, with your mitt you can actually paw the MetroCard, and I talk about how bad ATM machines usually are.So I let people understand that it's up to them to know how to judge interaction so as to know when it's good or when it's bad.So when I show The Sims,I try to make people really feel what it meant to have an interaction with The Sims,not only the fun but also the responsibility that came with the Tamagotchi.
You know, video games can be truly deep even when they're completely mindless.I'm sure that all of you know Katamari Damacy.It's about rolling a ball and picking up as many objects as you can in a finite amount of time and hopefully you'll be able to make it into a planet.I've never made it into a planet, but that's it.Or, you know, Vib-Ribbon was not distributed here in the United States.It was a PlayStation game, but mostly for Japan.And it was one of the first video games in which you could choose your own music.So you would put into the PlayStation,you would put your own CD,and then the game would change alongside your music. So really fantastic.
Not to mention Eve Online.Eve Online is an artificial universe, if you wish,but one of the diplomats that was killed in Benghazi,not Ambassador Stevens, but one of his collaborators,was a really big shot in Eve Online,so here you have a diplomat in the real world that spends his time in Eve Onlineto kind of test, maybe, all of his ideas about diplomacy and about universe-building, and to the point that the first announcement of the bombing was actually given on Eve Online,and after his death, several parts of the universe were named after him.And I was just recently at the Eve Online fan festival in Reykjavík that was quite amazing.I mean, we're talking about an experience that of course can seem weird to many,but that is very educational.Of course, there are games that are even more educational.
Dwarf Fortress is like the holy grail of this kind of massive multiplayer online game,and in fact the two Adams brothers were in Reykjavík,and they were greeted by a standing ovation by all the Eve Online fans.It was amazing to see. And it's a beautiful game.So you start seeing here that the aesthetics that are so importantto a museum collection like MoMA's are kept alive also by the selection of these games.
And you know, Valve -- you know, Portal --is an example of a video game in which you have a certain type of violence which also leads me to talk about one of the biggest issues that we had to discuss when we acquired the video games, what to do with violence.Right? We had to make decisions.At MoMA, interestingly, there's a lot of violence depicted in the art part of the collection,but when I came to MoMA 19 years ago, and as an Italian,I said, "You know what, we need a Beretta."And I was told, "No. No guns in the design collection."And I was like, "Why?"Interestingly, I learned that it's considered that in design and in the design collection,what you see is what you get.So when you see a gun, it's an instrument for killing in the design collection.If it's in the art collection,it might be a critique of the killing instrument.So it's very interesting.But we are acquiring our critical dimension also in design,so maybe one day we'll be able to acquire also the guns.But here, in this particular case, we decided,you know, with Kate and Paul,that we would have no gratuitous violence.So we have Portal because you shoot walls in order to create new spaces.We have Street Fighter II, because martial arts are good.(Laughter)But we don't have GTA because,maybe it's my own reflection,I've never been able to do anything but crashing cars and shooting prostitutes and pimps.So it was not very constructive. (Laughter)So, I'm making fun of it, but we discussed this for so many days. You have no idea.And to this day, I am ambivalent,but when you have instead games like Flow, there's no doubt.It's like, it's about serenity and it's about sublime.It's about experiencing what it means to be a sea creature.Then we have a few also side-scrollers -- classical ones.So it's quite a hefty collection.
And right now, we started with the first 14,but we have several that are coming up,and the reason why we haven't acquired them yet is because you don't acquire just the game.You acquire the relationship with the company.What we want, what we aspire to, is the code.It's very hard to get, of course.But that's what would enable us to preserve the video games for a really long time,and that's what museums do.They also preserve artifacts for posterity.In absence of the code, because, you know,video game companies are not very forthcoming in some cases,in absence of that, we acquire the relationship with the company.We're going to stay with them forever.They're not going to get rid of us.And one day, we'll get that code. (Laughter)
But I want to explain to you the criteria that we chose for interaction design. Aesthetics are really important.And I'm showing you Core War here,which is an early game that takes advantage aesthetically of the limitations of the processor.So the kind of interferences that you see here that look like beautiful barriers in the game are actually a consequence of the processor's limitedness,which is fantastic. So aesthetics is always important.
And so is space, the spatial aspect of games.You know, I feel that the best video games are the ones that have really savvy architects that are behind them, and if they're not architects,bona fide trained in architecture, they have that feeling.But the spatial evolution in video games is extremely important.
Time. The way we experience time in video games,as in other forms of interaction design,is really quite amazing.It can be real time or it can be the time within the game,as is in Animal Crossing, where seasons follow each other at their own pace.
So time, space, aesthetics,and then, most important, behavior.The real core issue of interaction design is behavior.Designers that deal with interaction design behaviors that go to influence the rest of our lives.They're not just limited to our interaction with the screen.In this case, I'm showing you Marble Madness,which is a beautiful game in which the controller is a big sphere that vibrates with you,so you have a sphere that's moving in this landscape,and the sphere, the controller itself, gives you a sense of the movement.In a way, you can see how video games are the purest aspect of interaction design and are very useful to explain what interaction is.
We don't want to show the video games with the paraphernalia. No arcade nostalgia.If anything, we want to show the code,and here you see Ben Fry's distell a map of Pac-Man,of the Pac-Man code.
So the way we acquired the games is very interesting and very unorthodox. You see them here displayed alongside other examples of design,furniture and other parts,but there's no paraphernalia, no nostalagia,only the screen and a little shelf with the controllers.The controllers are, of course, part of the experience,so you cannot do away with it.But interestingly, this choice was not condemned too vehemently by gamers.I was afraid that they would kill us,and instead they understood, especially when I told them that I was trying to apply the same MoMA galleries he put them on white pedestals against white walls, as if they were Brancusi sculptures.He created this strange distance, this shock,that made people realize how gorgeous formally,and also important functionally, design pieces were.I would like to do the same with video games.By getting rid of the sticky carpets and the cigarette butts and everything else that we might remember from our childhood,I want people to understand that those are important forms of design.And in a way, the video games, the fonts and everything else lead us to make people understand a wider meaning for design.
One of my dream acquisitions,which has been on hold for a few years but now will come back on the front burner,is a 747.I would like to acquire it, but without owning it.I don't want it to be at MoMA and possessed by MoMA.I want it to keep flying.So it's an acquisition where MoMA makes an arrangement with an airline and keeps the Boeing 747 flying.
And the same with the "@" sign that we acquired a few years ago.It was the first example of an acquisition of something that is in the public domain.And what I say to people, it's almost as if a butterfly were flying by and we captured the shadow on the wall,and just we're showing the shadow.So in a way, we're showing a manifestation of something that is truly important and that is part of our identity but that nobody can have.And it's too long to explain the acquisition,but if you want to go on the MoMA blog,there's a long post where I explain why it's such a great example of design.
Along the way, I've had to burn a few chairs. You know?I've had to do away with a few concepts of design past.But I see that people are coming along,that the audiences, paradoxically,are much more responsive and much more understanding of this expansion of design than some of my colleagues are.Design is truly everywhere,and design is as important as anything,and I'm so glad that, because of its diversity and because of its centrality to our lives,many more people are coming to it as a profession, as a passion,and as, very simply, part of their own culture.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
GralInt/DomViolence-TED Talks-Jackson Katz: Violence against women-it´s a men´s issue
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Transcript:
I'm going to share with you a paradigm-shifting perspective on the issues of gender violence --sexual assault, domestic violence, relationship abuse,sexual harassment, sexual abuse of children.That whole range of issues that I'll refer to in shorthand as "gender violence issues,"they've been seen as women's issues that some good men help out with, but I have a problem with that frame and I don't accept it.I don't see these as women's issues that some good men help out with.In fact, I'm going to argue that these are men's issues,first and foremost.
(Applause)
Now obviously, they're also women's issues,so I appreciate that, but calling gender violence a women's issue is part of the problem,for a number of reasons.
The first is that it gives men an excuse not to pay attention.Right? A lot of men hear the term "women's issues"and we tend to tune it out, and we think,"Hey, I'm a guy. That's for the girls," or "That's for the women."And a lot of men literally don't get beyond the first sentence as a result.It's almost like a chip in our brain is activated,and the neural pathways take our attention in a different direction when we hear the term "women's issues."This is also true, by the way, of the word "gender,"because a lot of people hear the word "gender"and they think it means "women."So they think that gender issues is synonymous with women's issues.There's some confusion about the term gender.
And actually, let me illustrate that confusion by way of analogy.So let's talk for a moment about race.In the U.S., when we hear the word "race,"a lot of people think that means African-American,Latino, Asian-American, Native American,South Asian, Pacific Islander, on and on.A lot of people, when they hear the word "sexual orientation"think it means gay, lesbian, bisexual.And a lot of people, when they hear the word "gender,"think it means women. In each case,the dominant group doesn't get paid attention to.Right? As if white people don't have some sort of racial identity or belong to some racial category or construct,as if heterosexual people don't have a sexual orientation,as if men don't have a gender.This is one of the ways that dominant systems maintain and reproduce themselves, which is to say the dominant group is rarely challenged to even think about its dominance,because that's one of the key characteristics of power and privilege, the ability to go unexamined,lacking introspection, in fact being rendered invisible in large measure in the discourse about issues that are primarily about us.And this is amazing how this works in domestic and sexual violence,how men have been largely erased from so much of the conversation about a subject that is centrally about men.
And I'm going to illustrate what I'm talking about by using the old tech.I'm old school on some fundamental regards.I work with -- I make films -- and I work with high tech,but I'm still old school as an educator,and I want to share with you this exercise that illustrates on the sentence structure level how the way that we think,literally the way that we use language,conspires to keep our attention off of men.This is about domestic violence in particular,but you can plug in other analogues.This comes from the work of the feminist linguist Julia Penelope.
It starts with a very basic English sentence:"John beat Mary."That's a good English sentence.John is the subject. Beat is the verb.Mary is the object. Good sentence.Now we're going to move to the second sentence,which says the same thing in the passive voice."Mary was beaten by John."And now a whole lot has happened in one sentence.We've gone from "John beat Mary"to "Mary was beaten by John."We've shifted our focus in one sentence from John to Mary,and you can see John is very close to the end of the sentence,well, close to dropping off the map of our psychic plain.The third sentence, John is dropped,and we have, "Mary was beaten,"and now it's all about Mary.We're not even thinking about John. It's totally focused on Mary.Over the past generation, the term we've used synonymous with "beaten" is "battered,"so we have "Mary was battered."And the final sentence in this sequence,flowing from the others, is,"Mary is a battered woman."So now Mary's very identity -- Mary is a battered woman --is what was done to her by John in the first instance.But we've demonstrated that John has long ago left the conversation.
Now, those of us who work in the domestic and sexual violence field know that victim-blaming is pervasive in this realm,which is to say, blaming the person to whom something was done rather than the person who did it.And we say things like, why do these women go out with these men?Why are they attracted to these men?Why do they keep going back? What was she wearing at that party?What a stupid thing to do. Why was she drinking with that group of guys in that hotel room?This is victim blaming, and there are numerous reasons for it,but one of them is that our whole cognitive structure is set up to blame victims. This is all unconscious.Our whole cognitive structure is set up to ask questions about women and women's choices and what they're doing,thinking, and wearing.And I'm not going to shout down people who ask questions about women, okay? It's a legitimate thing to ask.But's let's be clear: Asking questions about Mary is not going to get us anywhere in terms of preventing violence.
We have to ask a different set of questions.You can see where I'm going with this, right?The questions are not about Mary. They're about John.The questions include things like, why does John beat Mary?Why is domestic violence still a big problem in the United States and all over the world?What's going on? Why do so many men abuse,physically, emotionally, verbally, and other ways,the women and girls, and the men and boys,that they claim to love? What's going on with men?Why do so many adult men sexually abuse little girls and little boys?Why is that a common problem in our society and all over the world today?Why do we hear over and over again about new scandals erupting in major institutions like the Catholic Church or the Penn State football program or the Boy Scouts of America, on and on and on?And then local communities all over the country and all over the world, right? We hear about it all the time.The sexual abuse of children.What's going on with men? Why do so many men rape women in our society and around the world?Why do so many men rape other men?What is going on with men?And then what is the role of the various institutions in our society that are helping to produce abusive menat pandemic rates?
Because this isn't about individual perpetrators.That's a naive way to understanding what is a much deeper and more systematic social problem.You know, the perpetrators aren't these monsters who crawl out of the swamp and come into town and do their nasty business and then retreat into the darkness.That's a very naive notion, right?Perpetrators are much more normal than that,and everyday than that.So the question is, what are we doing here in our society and in the world?What are the roles of various institutions in helping to produce abusive men?What's the role of religious belief systems,the sports culture, the pornography culture,the family structure, economics, and how that intersects,and race and ethnicity and how that intersects?How does all this work?
And then, once we start making those kinds of connections and asking those important and big questions,then we can talk about how we can be transformative,in other words, how can we do something differently?How can we change the practices?How can we change the socialization of boys and the definitions of manhood that lead to these current outcomes?These are the kind of questions that we need to be asking and the kind of work that we need to be doing,but if we're endlessly focused on what women are doing and thinking in relationships or elsewhere,we're not going to get to that piece.
Now, I understand that a lot of women who have been trying to speaking out about these issues,today and yesterday and for years and years,often get shouted down for their efforts.They get called nasty names like "male-basher"and "man-hater,"and the disgusting and offensive "feminazi." Right?And you know what all this is about?It's called kill the messenger.It's because the women who are standing upand speaking out for themselves and for other women as well as for men and boys, it's a statement to them to sit down and shut up, keep the current system in place,because we don't like it when people rock the boat.We don't like it when people challenge our power.You'd better sit down and shut up, basically.And thank goodness that women haven't done that.Thank goodness that we live in a world where there's so much women's leadership that can counteract that.
But one of the powerful roles that men can play in this workis that we can say some things that sometimes women can't say,or, better yet, we can be heard saying some things that women often can't be heard saying.Now, I appreciate that that's a problem. It's sexism.But it's the truth. And so one of the things that I say to men,and my colleagues and I always say this,is we need more men who have the courage and the strength to start standing up and saying some of this stuff,and standing with women and not against them and pretending that somehow this is a battle between the sexes and other kinds of nonsense.We live in the world together.
And by the way, one of the things that really bothers me about some of the rhetoric against feminists and others who have built the battered women'sand rape crisis movements around the world is that somehow, like I said, that they're anti-male.What about all the boys who are profoundly affected in a negative way by what some adult man is doing against their mother, themselves, their sisters?What about all those boys?What about all the young men and boys who have been traumatized by adult men's violence?You know what? The same system that produces men who abuse women produces men who abuse other men.And if we want to talk about male victims,let's talk about male victims.Most male victims of violence are the victims of other men's violence.So that's something that both women and men have in common.We are both victims of men's violence.So we have it in our direct self-interest,not to mention the fact that most men that I know have women and girls that we care deeply about,in our families and our friendship circles and every other way.So there's so many reasons why we need men to speak out.It seems obvious saying it out loud. Doesn't it?Now, the nature of the work that I do and my colleagues doin the sports culture and the U.S. military, in schools,we pioneered this approach called the bystander approach to gender violence prevention.
And I just want to give you the highlights of the bystander approach,because it's a big thematic shift,although there's lots of particulars,but the heart of it is, instead of seeing men as perpetrators and women as victims,or women as perpetrators, men as victims,or any combination in there.I'm using the gender binary. I know there's more than men and women, there's more than male and female.And there are women who are perpetrators,and of course there are men who are victims.There's a whole spectrum.But instead of seeing it in the binary fashion,we focus on all of us as what we call bystanders,and a bystander is defined as anybody who is not a perpetrator or a victim in a given situation,so in other words friends, teammates, colleagues,coworkers, family members, those of us who are not directly involved in a dyad of abuse,but we are embedded in social, family, work, school,and other peer culture relationships with people who might be in that situation. What do we do?How do we speak up? How do we challenge our friends?How do we support our friends? But how do we not remain silent in the face of abuse?
Now, when it comes to men and male culture,the goal is to get men who are not abusive to challenge men who are.And when I say abusive, I don't mean just men who are beating women.We're not just saying a man whose friend is abusing his girlfriend needs to stop the guy at the moment of attack.That's a naive way of creating a social change.It's along a continuum, we're trying to get men to interrupt each other.So, for example, if you're a guy and you're in a group of guys playing poker, talking, hanging out, no women present,and another guy says something sexist or degrading or harassing about women,instead of laughing along or pretending you didn't hear it,we need men to say, "Hey, that's not funny.You know, that could be my sister you're talking about,and could you joke about something else?Or could you talk about something else?I don't appreciate that kind of talk."Just like if you're a white person and another white person makes a racist comment, you'd hope, I hope,that white people would interrupt that racist enactment by a fellow white person.Just like with heterosexism, if you're a heterosexual person and you yourself don't enact harassing or abusive behaviors towards people of varying sexual orientations,if you don't say something in the face of other heterosexual people doing that,then, in a sense, isn't your silence a form of consent and complicity?
Well, the bystander approach is trying to give people tools to interrupt that process and to speak up and to create a peer culture climate where the abusive behavior will be seen as unacceptable,not just because it's illegal, but because it's wrong and unacceptable in the peer culture.And if we can get to the place where men who act out in sexist ways will lose status,young men and boys who act out in sexist and harassing ways towards girls and women,as well as towards other boys and men,will lose status as a result of it, guess what?We'll see a radical diminution of the abuse.Because the typical perpetrator is not sick and twisted.He's a normal guy in every other way. Isn't he?
Now, among the many great things that Martin Luther Kingsaid in his short life was,"In the end, what will hurt the mostis not the words of our enemiesbut the silence of our friends."In the end, what will hurt the most is not the wordsof our enemies but the silence of our friends.There's been an awful lot of silence in male cultureabout this ongoing tragedy of men's violenceagainst women and children, hasn't there?There's been an awful lot of silence.And all I'm saying is that we need to break that silence,and we need more men to do that.
Now, it's easier said than done,because I'm saying it now, but I'm telling you it's not easy in male culture for guys to challenge each other,which is one of the reasons why part of the paradigm shift that has to happen is not just understanding these issues as men's issues,but they're also leadership issues for men.Because ultimately, the responsibility for taking a stand on these issues should not fall on the shoulders of little boys or teenage boys in high school or college men. It should be on adult men with power.Adult men with power are the ones we need to be holding accountable for being leaders on these issues,because when somebody speaks up in a peer culture and challenges and interrupts, he or she is being a leader, really, right?But on a big scale, we need more adult men with power to start prioritizing these issues,and we haven't seen that yet, have we?
Now, I was at a dinner a number of years ago,and I work extensively with the U.S. military, all the services.And I was at this dinner and this woman said to me --I think she thought she was a little clever -- she said,"So how long have you been doing sensitivity training with the Marines?"
And I said, "With all due respect,I don't do sensitivity training with the Marines.I run a leadership program in the Marine Corps."
Now, I know it's a bit pompous, my response,but it's an important distinction, because I don't believe that what we need is sensitivity training.We need leadership training, because, for example,when a professional coach or a manager of a baseball team or a football team -- and I work extensively in that realm as well --makes a sexist comment, makes a homophobic statement,makes a racist comment, there will be discussions on the sports blogs and in sports talk radio.And some people will say, "Well, he needs sensitivity training."And other people will say, "Well get off it.You know, that's political correctness run amok,and he made a stupid statement. Move on."My argument is, he doesn't need sensitivity training.He needs leadership training,because he's being a bad leader, because in a society with gender diversity and sexual diversity --(Applause) —and racial and ethnic diversity, you make those kind of comments, you're failing at your leadership.If we can make this point that I'm making to powerful men and women in our society at all levels of institutional authority and power,it's going to change, it's going to change the paradigm of people's thinking.
You know, for example, I work a lot in college and university athletics throughout North America.We know so much about how to prevent domestic and sexual violence, right?There's no excuse for a college or university to not have domestic and sexual violence prevention training mandated for all student athletes, coaches, administrators,as part of their educational process.We know enough to know that we can easily do that.But you know what's missing? The leadership.But it's not the leadership of student athletes.It's the leadership of the athletic director,the president of the university, the people in charge who make decisions about resources and who make decisions about priorities in the institutional settings.That's a failure, in most cases, of men's leadership.
Look at Penn State. Penn State is the mother of all teachable moments for the bystander approach.You had so many situations in that realm where men in powerful positions failed to act to protect children, in this case, boys.It's unbelievable, really. But when you get into it,you realize there are pressures on men.There are constraints within peer cultures on men,which is why we need to encourage men to break through those pressures.
And one of the ways to do that is to say there's an awful lot of men who care deeply about these issues.I know this. I work with men,and I've been working with tens of thousands,hundreds of thousands of men for many, many decades now.It's scary, when you think about it, how many years.But there's so many men who care deeply about these issues,but caring deeply is not enough.We need more men with the guts,with the courage, with the strength, with the moral integrity to break our complicit silence and challenge each other and stand with women and not against them.
By the way, we owe it to women.There's no question about it.But we also owe it to our sons.We also owe it to young men who are growing up all over the world in situations where they didn't make the choice to be a man in a culture that tells them that manhood is a certain way.They didn't make the choice.We that have a choice have an opportunity and a responsibility to them as well.
I hope that, going forward, men and women,working together, can begin the change and the transformation that will happen so that future generations won't have the level of tragedy that we deal with on a daily basis.
I know we can do it. We can do better.
Thank you very much. (Applause)
Transcript:
I'm going to share with you a paradigm-shifting perspective on the issues of gender violence --sexual assault, domestic violence, relationship abuse,sexual harassment, sexual abuse of children.That whole range of issues that I'll refer to in shorthand as "gender violence issues,"they've been seen as women's issues that some good men help out with, but I have a problem with that frame and I don't accept it.I don't see these as women's issues that some good men help out with.In fact, I'm going to argue that these are men's issues,first and foremost.
(Applause)
Now obviously, they're also women's issues,so I appreciate that, but calling gender violence a women's issue is part of the problem,for a number of reasons.
The first is that it gives men an excuse not to pay attention.Right? A lot of men hear the term "women's issues"and we tend to tune it out, and we think,"Hey, I'm a guy. That's for the girls," or "That's for the women."And a lot of men literally don't get beyond the first sentence as a result.It's almost like a chip in our brain is activated,and the neural pathways take our attention in a different direction when we hear the term "women's issues."This is also true, by the way, of the word "gender,"because a lot of people hear the word "gender"and they think it means "women."So they think that gender issues is synonymous with women's issues.There's some confusion about the term gender.
And actually, let me illustrate that confusion by way of analogy.So let's talk for a moment about race.In the U.S., when we hear the word "race,"a lot of people think that means African-American,Latino, Asian-American, Native American,South Asian, Pacific Islander, on and on.A lot of people, when they hear the word "sexual orientation"think it means gay, lesbian, bisexual.And a lot of people, when they hear the word "gender,"think it means women. In each case,the dominant group doesn't get paid attention to.Right? As if white people don't have some sort of racial identity or belong to some racial category or construct,as if heterosexual people don't have a sexual orientation,as if men don't have a gender.This is one of the ways that dominant systems maintain and reproduce themselves, which is to say the dominant group is rarely challenged to even think about its dominance,because that's one of the key characteristics of power and privilege, the ability to go unexamined,lacking introspection, in fact being rendered invisible in large measure in the discourse about issues that are primarily about us.And this is amazing how this works in domestic and sexual violence,how men have been largely erased from so much of the conversation about a subject that is centrally about men.
And I'm going to illustrate what I'm talking about by using the old tech.I'm old school on some fundamental regards.I work with -- I make films -- and I work with high tech,but I'm still old school as an educator,and I want to share with you this exercise that illustrates on the sentence structure level how the way that we think,literally the way that we use language,conspires to keep our attention off of men.This is about domestic violence in particular,but you can plug in other analogues.This comes from the work of the feminist linguist Julia Penelope.
It starts with a very basic English sentence:"John beat Mary."That's a good English sentence.John is the subject. Beat is the verb.Mary is the object. Good sentence.Now we're going to move to the second sentence,which says the same thing in the passive voice."Mary was beaten by John."And now a whole lot has happened in one sentence.We've gone from "John beat Mary"to "Mary was beaten by John."We've shifted our focus in one sentence from John to Mary,and you can see John is very close to the end of the sentence,well, close to dropping off the map of our psychic plain.The third sentence, John is dropped,and we have, "Mary was beaten,"and now it's all about Mary.We're not even thinking about John. It's totally focused on Mary.Over the past generation, the term we've used synonymous with "beaten" is "battered,"so we have "Mary was battered."And the final sentence in this sequence,flowing from the others, is,"Mary is a battered woman."So now Mary's very identity -- Mary is a battered woman --is what was done to her by John in the first instance.But we've demonstrated that John has long ago left the conversation.
Now, those of us who work in the domestic and sexual violence field know that victim-blaming is pervasive in this realm,which is to say, blaming the person to whom something was done rather than the person who did it.And we say things like, why do these women go out with these men?Why are they attracted to these men?Why do they keep going back? What was she wearing at that party?What a stupid thing to do. Why was she drinking with that group of guys in that hotel room?This is victim blaming, and there are numerous reasons for it,but one of them is that our whole cognitive structure is set up to blame victims. This is all unconscious.Our whole cognitive structure is set up to ask questions about women and women's choices and what they're doing,thinking, and wearing.And I'm not going to shout down people who ask questions about women, okay? It's a legitimate thing to ask.But's let's be clear: Asking questions about Mary is not going to get us anywhere in terms of preventing violence.
We have to ask a different set of questions.You can see where I'm going with this, right?The questions are not about Mary. They're about John.The questions include things like, why does John beat Mary?Why is domestic violence still a big problem in the United States and all over the world?What's going on? Why do so many men abuse,physically, emotionally, verbally, and other ways,the women and girls, and the men and boys,that they claim to love? What's going on with men?Why do so many adult men sexually abuse little girls and little boys?Why is that a common problem in our society and all over the world today?Why do we hear over and over again about new scandals erupting in major institutions like the Catholic Church or the Penn State football program or the Boy Scouts of America, on and on and on?And then local communities all over the country and all over the world, right? We hear about it all the time.The sexual abuse of children.What's going on with men? Why do so many men rape women in our society and around the world?Why do so many men rape other men?What is going on with men?And then what is the role of the various institutions in our society that are helping to produce abusive menat pandemic rates?
Because this isn't about individual perpetrators.That's a naive way to understanding what is a much deeper and more systematic social problem.You know, the perpetrators aren't these monsters who crawl out of the swamp and come into town and do their nasty business and then retreat into the darkness.That's a very naive notion, right?Perpetrators are much more normal than that,and everyday than that.So the question is, what are we doing here in our society and in the world?What are the roles of various institutions in helping to produce abusive men?What's the role of religious belief systems,the sports culture, the pornography culture,the family structure, economics, and how that intersects,and race and ethnicity and how that intersects?How does all this work?
And then, once we start making those kinds of connections and asking those important and big questions,then we can talk about how we can be transformative,in other words, how can we do something differently?How can we change the practices?How can we change the socialization of boys and the definitions of manhood that lead to these current outcomes?These are the kind of questions that we need to be asking and the kind of work that we need to be doing,but if we're endlessly focused on what women are doing and thinking in relationships or elsewhere,we're not going to get to that piece.
Now, I understand that a lot of women who have been trying to speaking out about these issues,today and yesterday and for years and years,often get shouted down for their efforts.They get called nasty names like "male-basher"and "man-hater,"and the disgusting and offensive "feminazi." Right?And you know what all this is about?It's called kill the messenger.It's because the women who are standing upand speaking out for themselves and for other women as well as for men and boys, it's a statement to them to sit down and shut up, keep the current system in place,because we don't like it when people rock the boat.We don't like it when people challenge our power.You'd better sit down and shut up, basically.And thank goodness that women haven't done that.Thank goodness that we live in a world where there's so much women's leadership that can counteract that.
But one of the powerful roles that men can play in this workis that we can say some things that sometimes women can't say,or, better yet, we can be heard saying some things that women often can't be heard saying.Now, I appreciate that that's a problem. It's sexism.But it's the truth. And so one of the things that I say to men,and my colleagues and I always say this,is we need more men who have the courage and the strength to start standing up and saying some of this stuff,and standing with women and not against them and pretending that somehow this is a battle between the sexes and other kinds of nonsense.We live in the world together.
And by the way, one of the things that really bothers me about some of the rhetoric against feminists and others who have built the battered women'sand rape crisis movements around the world is that somehow, like I said, that they're anti-male.What about all the boys who are profoundly affected in a negative way by what some adult man is doing against their mother, themselves, their sisters?What about all those boys?What about all the young men and boys who have been traumatized by adult men's violence?You know what? The same system that produces men who abuse women produces men who abuse other men.And if we want to talk about male victims,let's talk about male victims.Most male victims of violence are the victims of other men's violence.So that's something that both women and men have in common.We are both victims of men's violence.So we have it in our direct self-interest,not to mention the fact that most men that I know have women and girls that we care deeply about,in our families and our friendship circles and every other way.So there's so many reasons why we need men to speak out.It seems obvious saying it out loud. Doesn't it?Now, the nature of the work that I do and my colleagues doin the sports culture and the U.S. military, in schools,we pioneered this approach called the bystander approach to gender violence prevention.
And I just want to give you the highlights of the bystander approach,because it's a big thematic shift,although there's lots of particulars,but the heart of it is, instead of seeing men as perpetrators and women as victims,or women as perpetrators, men as victims,or any combination in there.I'm using the gender binary. I know there's more than men and women, there's more than male and female.And there are women who are perpetrators,and of course there are men who are victims.There's a whole spectrum.But instead of seeing it in the binary fashion,we focus on all of us as what we call bystanders,and a bystander is defined as anybody who is not a perpetrator or a victim in a given situation,so in other words friends, teammates, colleagues,coworkers, family members, those of us who are not directly involved in a dyad of abuse,but we are embedded in social, family, work, school,and other peer culture relationships with people who might be in that situation. What do we do?How do we speak up? How do we challenge our friends?How do we support our friends? But how do we not remain silent in the face of abuse?
Now, when it comes to men and male culture,the goal is to get men who are not abusive to challenge men who are.And when I say abusive, I don't mean just men who are beating women.We're not just saying a man whose friend is abusing his girlfriend needs to stop the guy at the moment of attack.That's a naive way of creating a social change.It's along a continuum, we're trying to get men to interrupt each other.So, for example, if you're a guy and you're in a group of guys playing poker, talking, hanging out, no women present,and another guy says something sexist or degrading or harassing about women,instead of laughing along or pretending you didn't hear it,we need men to say, "Hey, that's not funny.You know, that could be my sister you're talking about,and could you joke about something else?Or could you talk about something else?I don't appreciate that kind of talk."Just like if you're a white person and another white person makes a racist comment, you'd hope, I hope,that white people would interrupt that racist enactment by a fellow white person.Just like with heterosexism, if you're a heterosexual person and you yourself don't enact harassing or abusive behaviors towards people of varying sexual orientations,if you don't say something in the face of other heterosexual people doing that,then, in a sense, isn't your silence a form of consent and complicity?
Well, the bystander approach is trying to give people tools to interrupt that process and to speak up and to create a peer culture climate where the abusive behavior will be seen as unacceptable,not just because it's illegal, but because it's wrong and unacceptable in the peer culture.And if we can get to the place where men who act out in sexist ways will lose status,young men and boys who act out in sexist and harassing ways towards girls and women,as well as towards other boys and men,will lose status as a result of it, guess what?We'll see a radical diminution of the abuse.Because the typical perpetrator is not sick and twisted.He's a normal guy in every other way. Isn't he?
Now, among the many great things that Martin Luther Kingsaid in his short life was,"In the end, what will hurt the mostis not the words of our enemiesbut the silence of our friends."In the end, what will hurt the most is not the wordsof our enemies but the silence of our friends.There's been an awful lot of silence in male cultureabout this ongoing tragedy of men's violenceagainst women and children, hasn't there?There's been an awful lot of silence.And all I'm saying is that we need to break that silence,and we need more men to do that.
Now, it's easier said than done,because I'm saying it now, but I'm telling you it's not easy in male culture for guys to challenge each other,which is one of the reasons why part of the paradigm shift that has to happen is not just understanding these issues as men's issues,but they're also leadership issues for men.Because ultimately, the responsibility for taking a stand on these issues should not fall on the shoulders of little boys or teenage boys in high school or college men. It should be on adult men with power.Adult men with power are the ones we need to be holding accountable for being leaders on these issues,because when somebody speaks up in a peer culture and challenges and interrupts, he or she is being a leader, really, right?But on a big scale, we need more adult men with power to start prioritizing these issues,and we haven't seen that yet, have we?
Now, I was at a dinner a number of years ago,and I work extensively with the U.S. military, all the services.And I was at this dinner and this woman said to me --I think she thought she was a little clever -- she said,"So how long have you been doing sensitivity training with the Marines?"
And I said, "With all due respect,I don't do sensitivity training with the Marines.I run a leadership program in the Marine Corps."
Now, I know it's a bit pompous, my response,but it's an important distinction, because I don't believe that what we need is sensitivity training.We need leadership training, because, for example,when a professional coach or a manager of a baseball team or a football team -- and I work extensively in that realm as well --makes a sexist comment, makes a homophobic statement,makes a racist comment, there will be discussions on the sports blogs and in sports talk radio.And some people will say, "Well, he needs sensitivity training."And other people will say, "Well get off it.You know, that's political correctness run amok,and he made a stupid statement. Move on."My argument is, he doesn't need sensitivity training.He needs leadership training,because he's being a bad leader, because in a society with gender diversity and sexual diversity --(Applause) —and racial and ethnic diversity, you make those kind of comments, you're failing at your leadership.If we can make this point that I'm making to powerful men and women in our society at all levels of institutional authority and power,it's going to change, it's going to change the paradigm of people's thinking.
You know, for example, I work a lot in college and university athletics throughout North America.We know so much about how to prevent domestic and sexual violence, right?There's no excuse for a college or university to not have domestic and sexual violence prevention training mandated for all student athletes, coaches, administrators,as part of their educational process.We know enough to know that we can easily do that.But you know what's missing? The leadership.But it's not the leadership of student athletes.It's the leadership of the athletic director,the president of the university, the people in charge who make decisions about resources and who make decisions about priorities in the institutional settings.That's a failure, in most cases, of men's leadership.
Look at Penn State. Penn State is the mother of all teachable moments for the bystander approach.You had so many situations in that realm where men in powerful positions failed to act to protect children, in this case, boys.It's unbelievable, really. But when you get into it,you realize there are pressures on men.There are constraints within peer cultures on men,which is why we need to encourage men to break through those pressures.
And one of the ways to do that is to say there's an awful lot of men who care deeply about these issues.I know this. I work with men,and I've been working with tens of thousands,hundreds of thousands of men for many, many decades now.It's scary, when you think about it, how many years.But there's so many men who care deeply about these issues,but caring deeply is not enough.We need more men with the guts,with the courage, with the strength, with the moral integrity to break our complicit silence and challenge each other and stand with women and not against them.
By the way, we owe it to women.There's no question about it.But we also owe it to our sons.We also owe it to young men who are growing up all over the world in situations where they didn't make the choice to be a man in a culture that tells them that manhood is a certain way.They didn't make the choice.We that have a choice have an opportunity and a responsibility to them as well.
I hope that, going forward, men and women,working together, can begin the change and the transformation that will happen so that future generations won't have the level of tragedy that we deal with on a daily basis.
I know we can do it. We can do better.
Thank you very much. (Applause)
GRalInt/Read-TED Talks-Lisa Bu: How books can open your mind
The following information is used for educational purposes only.
Transcript:
So I was trained to become a gymnast for two years in Hunan, China in the 1970s.When I was in the first grade, the government wanted to transfer me to a school for athletes,all expenses paid.But my tiger mother said, "No."My parents wanted me to become an engineer like them.After surviving the Cultural Revolution,they firmly believed there's only one sure way to happiness:a safe and well-paid job.It is not important if I like the job or not.
But my dream was to become a Chinese opera singer.That is me playing my imaginary piano.An opera singer must start training young to learn acrobatics,so I tried everything I could to go to opera school.I even wrote to the school principal and the host of a radio show.But no adults liked the idea.No adults believed I was serious.Only my friends supported me, but they were kids,just as powerless as I was.So at age 15, I knew I was too old to be trained.My dream would never come true.I was afraid that for the rest of my life some second-class happiness would be the best I could hope for.
But that's so unfair.So I was determined to find another calling.Nobody around to teach me? Fine.I turned to books.
I satisfied my hunger for parental advice from this book by a family of writers and musicians. ["Correspondence in the Family of Fou Lei"]
I found my role model of an independent woman when Confucian tradition requires obedience. ["Jane Eyre"]
And I learned to be efficient from this book. ["Cheaper by the Dozen"]
And I was inspired to study abroad after reading these.
["Complete Works of Sanmao" (aka Echo Chan)] ["Lessons From History" by Nan Huaijin]
I came to the U.S. in 1995,so which books did I read here first?Books banned in China, of course."The Good Earth" is about Chinese peasant life.That's just not convenient for propaganda. Got it.The Bible is interesting, but strange.(Laughter)That's a topic for a different day.But the fifth commandment gave me an epiphany:"You shall honor your father and mother.""Honor," I said. "That's so different,and better, than obey."So it becomes my tool to climb out of this Confucian guilt trap and to restart my relationship with my parents.
Encountering a new culture also started my habit of comparative reading.It offers many insights.For example, I found this map out of place at first because this is what Chinese students grew up with.It had never occurred to me,China doesn't have to be at the center of the world.A map actually carries somebody's view.Comparative reading actually is nothing new.It's a standard practice in the academic world.There are even research fields such as comparative religion and comparative literature.
Compare and contrast gives scholarsa more complete understanding of a topic.So I thought, well, if comparative reading works for research, why not do it in daily life too?So I started reading books in pairs.So they can be about people --["Benjamin Franklin" by Walter Isaacson] ["John Adams" by David McCullough] --who are involved in the same event,or friends with shared experiences.["Personal History" by Katharine Graham] ["The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life," by Alice Schroeder]I also compare the same stories in different genres -- (Laughter)[Holy Bible: King James Version] ["Lamb" by Chrisopher Moore] --or similar stories from different cultures,as Joseph Campbell did in his wonderful book. ["The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell]For example, both the Christ and the Buddha went through three temptations.For the Christ, the temptations are economic, political and spiritual.For the Buddha, they are all psychological:lust, fear and social duty -- interesting.
So if you know a foreign language, it's also fun to read your favorite books in two languages.["The Way of Chuang Tzu" Thomas Merton] ["Tao: The Watercourse Way" Alan Watts]Instead of lost in translation, I found there is much to gain.For example, it's through translation that I realized"happiness" in Chinese literally means "fast joy." Huh!"Bride" in Chinese literally means "new mother." Uh-oh.(Laughter)
Books have given me a magic portal to connect with people of the past and the present.I know I shall never feel lonely or powerless again.Having a dream shattered really is nothing compared to what many others have suffered.I have come to believe that coming true is not the only purpose of a dream.Its most important purpose is to get us in touch with where dreams come from,where passion comes from, where happiness comes from.Even a shattered dream can do that for you.
So because of books, I'm here today,happy, living again with a purpose and a clarity,most of the time.So may books be always with you.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Thank you. (Applause)
Thank you. (Applause)
Transcript:
So I was trained to become a gymnast for two years in Hunan, China in the 1970s.When I was in the first grade, the government wanted to transfer me to a school for athletes,all expenses paid.But my tiger mother said, "No."My parents wanted me to become an engineer like them.After surviving the Cultural Revolution,they firmly believed there's only one sure way to happiness:a safe and well-paid job.It is not important if I like the job or not.
But my dream was to become a Chinese opera singer.That is me playing my imaginary piano.An opera singer must start training young to learn acrobatics,so I tried everything I could to go to opera school.I even wrote to the school principal and the host of a radio show.But no adults liked the idea.No adults believed I was serious.Only my friends supported me, but they were kids,just as powerless as I was.So at age 15, I knew I was too old to be trained.My dream would never come true.I was afraid that for the rest of my life some second-class happiness would be the best I could hope for.
But that's so unfair.So I was determined to find another calling.Nobody around to teach me? Fine.I turned to books.
I satisfied my hunger for parental advice from this book by a family of writers and musicians. ["Correspondence in the Family of Fou Lei"]
I found my role model of an independent woman when Confucian tradition requires obedience. ["Jane Eyre"]
And I learned to be efficient from this book. ["Cheaper by the Dozen"]
And I was inspired to study abroad after reading these.
["Complete Works of Sanmao" (aka Echo Chan)] ["Lessons From History" by Nan Huaijin]
I came to the U.S. in 1995,so which books did I read here first?Books banned in China, of course."The Good Earth" is about Chinese peasant life.That's just not convenient for propaganda. Got it.The Bible is interesting, but strange.(Laughter)That's a topic for a different day.But the fifth commandment gave me an epiphany:"You shall honor your father and mother.""Honor," I said. "That's so different,and better, than obey."So it becomes my tool to climb out of this Confucian guilt trap and to restart my relationship with my parents.
Encountering a new culture also started my habit of comparative reading.It offers many insights.For example, I found this map out of place at first because this is what Chinese students grew up with.It had never occurred to me,China doesn't have to be at the center of the world.A map actually carries somebody's view.Comparative reading actually is nothing new.It's a standard practice in the academic world.There are even research fields such as comparative religion and comparative literature.
Compare and contrast gives scholarsa more complete understanding of a topic.So I thought, well, if comparative reading works for research, why not do it in daily life too?So I started reading books in pairs.So they can be about people --["Benjamin Franklin" by Walter Isaacson] ["John Adams" by David McCullough] --who are involved in the same event,or friends with shared experiences.["Personal History" by Katharine Graham] ["The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life," by Alice Schroeder]I also compare the same stories in different genres -- (Laughter)[Holy Bible: King James Version] ["Lamb" by Chrisopher Moore] --or similar stories from different cultures,as Joseph Campbell did in his wonderful book. ["The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell]For example, both the Christ and the Buddha went through three temptations.For the Christ, the temptations are economic, political and spiritual.For the Buddha, they are all psychological:lust, fear and social duty -- interesting.
So if you know a foreign language, it's also fun to read your favorite books in two languages.["The Way of Chuang Tzu" Thomas Merton] ["Tao: The Watercourse Way" Alan Watts]Instead of lost in translation, I found there is much to gain.For example, it's through translation that I realized"happiness" in Chinese literally means "fast joy." Huh!"Bride" in Chinese literally means "new mother." Uh-oh.(Laughter)
Books have given me a magic portal to connect with people of the past and the present.I know I shall never feel lonely or powerless again.Having a dream shattered really is nothing compared to what many others have suffered.I have come to believe that coming true is not the only purpose of a dream.Its most important purpose is to get us in touch with where dreams come from,where passion comes from, where happiness comes from.Even a shattered dream can do that for you.
So because of books, I'm here today,happy, living again with a purpose and a clarity,most of the time.So may books be always with you.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Thank you. (Applause)
Thank you. (Applause)
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