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  • In an era of extreme polarization,

  • it's really dangerous to talk about right and wrong.

  • You can be targeted, judged for something you said 10 years ago, 10 months ago,

  • 10 hours ago, 10 seconds ago.

  • And that means that those who think you're wrong

  • may burn you at the stake

  • or those who are on your side

  • that think you're not sufficiently orthodox

  • may try and cancel you.

  • As you're thinking about right and wrong, I want you to consider three ideas.

  • What if right and wrong is something that changes over time.

  • What if right and wrong is something that can change because of technology.

  • What if technology is moving exponentially?

  • So as you're thinking about this concept,

  • remember human sacrifice used to be normal and natural.

  • It was a way of appeasing the gods.

  • Otherwise the rain wouldn't come,

  • the sun wouldn't shine.

  • Public executions.

  • They were common, normal, legal.

  • You used to take your kids to watch beheadings in the streets of Paris.

  • One of the greatest wrongs, slavery,

  • indentured servitude,

  • that was something that was practiced for millennia.

  • It was practiced across the Incas, the Mayas, the Chinese,

  • the Indians in North and South America.

  • And as you're thinking about this,

  • one question is why did something so wrong last for so long?

  • And a second question is: why did it go away?

  • And why did it go away in a few short decades in legal terms?

  • Certainly there was a work

  • by extraordinary abolitionists who risked their lives,

  • but there may be something else happening alongside these brave abolitionists.

  • Consider energy and the industrial revolution.

  • A single barrel of oil contains the energy equivalent

  • of the work of five to 10 people.

  • Add that to machines,

  • and suddenly you've got millions of people's equivalent labor

  • at your disposal.

  • You can quit oppressing people and have a doubling in lifespan

  • after a flattened lifespan for millennia.

  • The world economy, which had been flat for millennia,

  • all of a sudden explodes.

  • And you get enormous amounts of wealth and food and other things

  • produced by far fewer hands.

  • Technology changes the way we interact with each other in fundamental ways.

  • New technologies like the machine gun

  • completely changed the nature of warfare in World War I.

  • It drove people into trenches.

  • You were in the British trench, or you were in the German trench.

  • Anything in between was no man's land.

  • You entered no man's land.

  • You were shot. You were killed.

  • You tried to leave the trench in the other direction.

  • Then your own side would shoot you

  • because you were a deserter.

  • In a weird way, today's machine guns are narrowcast social media.

  • We're shooting at each other.

  • We're shooting at those we think are wrong

  • with posts, with tweets, with photographs, with accusations, with comments.

  • And what it's done is it's created these two trenches

  • where you have to be either in this trench or that trench.

  • And there's almost no middle ground to meet each other,

  • to try and find some sort of a discussion between right and wrong.

  • As you drive around the United States, you see signs on lawns.

  • Some say, "Black Lives Matter."

  • Others say, "We support the police."

  • You very rarely see both signs on the same lawn.

  • And yet if you ask people,

  • most people would probably support Black Lives Matter

  • and they would also support their police.

  • So as you think of these polarized times,

  • as you think of right and wrong,

  • you have to understand that right and wrong changes

  • and is now changing in exponential ways.

  • Take the issue of gay marriage.

  • In 1996, two-thirds of the US population was against gay marriage.

  • Today two-thirds is for.

  • It's almost 180-degree shift in the opinion.

  • In part, this is because of protests,

  • because people came out of the closet,

  • because of AIDS,

  • but a great deal of it has to do with social media.

  • A great deal of it has to do with people out in our homes,

  • in our living rooms, through television, through film, through posts,

  • through people being comfortable enough,

  • our friends, our neighbors, our family,

  • to say, "I'm gay."

  • And this has shifted opinion

  • even in some of the most conservative of places.

  • Take the Pope.

  • As Cardinal in 2010,

  • he was completely against gay marriage.

  • He becomes Pope.

  • And three years after the last sentence

  • he comes out with "Who am I to judge?"

  • And then today, he's in favor of civil unions.

  • As you're thinking about technology changing ethics,

  • you also have to consider that technology is now moving exponentially.

  • As right and wrong changes,

  • if you take the position, "I know right.

  • And if you completely disagree with me, if you partially disagree with me,

  • if you even quibble with me, then you're wrong,"

  • then there's no discussion,

  • no tolerance, no evolution, and certainly no learning.

  • Most of us are not vegetarians yet.

  • Then again, we haven't had

  • a whole lot of faster, better, cheaper alternatives to meat.

  • But now that we're getting synthetic meats,

  • as the price drops from 380,000 dollars in 2013

  • to 9 dollars today,

  • a great big chunk of people

  • are going to start becoming vegetarian or quasi-vegetarian.

  • And then in retrospect, these pictures

  • of walking into the fanciest, most expensive restaurants in town

  • and walking past racks of bloody steaks

  • is going to look very different in 10 years, in 20 years and 30 years.

  • In these polarized times,

  • I'd like to revive two words you rarely hear today:

  • humility and forgiveness.

  • When you judge the past, your ancestors, your forefathers,

  • do so with a little bit more humility,

  • because perhaps if you'd been educated in that time,

  • if you'd lived in that time,

  • you would've done a lot of things wrong.

  • Not because they're right.

  • Not because we don't see they're wrong today,

  • but simply because our notions,

  • our understanding of right and wrong change across time.

  • The second word, forgiveness.

  • Forgiveness is incredibly important these days.

  • You cannot cancel somebody for saying the wrong word,

  • for having done something 10 years ago,

  • for having triggered you and not being a hundred percent right.

  • To build a community, you have to build it and talk to people

  • and learn from people

  • who may have very different points of view from yours.

  • You have to allow them a space

  • instead of creating a no man's land.

  • A middle ground, a ??? and a space of empathy.

  • This is a time to build community.

  • This is not a time to continue ripping nations apart.

  • Thank you very much.

In an era of extreme polarization,

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