Name: 【TED】Chetan Bhatt: Dare to refuse the origin myths that claim who you are (Dare to refuse the origin myths that claim who you are | Chetan Bhatt)
Uploaded: 2017-09-15T16:02:04.000Z
Duration: 19 min 16 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

and when I give my name, I'm often asked, "Where are you from?"

But of course, I know what they're really asking,

"Well, my grandparents and my mum were born in India,

"Ah, you're a Kenyan Asian. I've worked with one of those."

And from my name they probably assume that I'm a Hindu.

vegetable sellers, factory workers, cooks, car mechanics --

Maybe that's why I find it hard to respond to questions about identity

And it's not just a sort of teenage refusal to be labeled.

And it's about how we apprehend ourselves

And it's about identities we just assume that we have

But our responses to questions of identity and origin

have substantial social and political importance.

We see the wars, the rages of identity going on all around us.

We see violent religious, national and ethnic disputes.

And often the conflict is based on old stories of identity

typically about ancient, primordial origins.

or about the supremacy of a caste or gender

or about the past glories of an empire or civilization

that origin stories and identity myths make us feel secure.

and it can make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Do we really need identity myths to feel safe?

Because I see religious, national, ethnic disputes

What if we reject every single primordial origin myth

and develop a deeper sense of personhood,

poverty, the worldwide oppression of women and girls,

and of course massive, accelerating inequalities?

Now, origin myths are closely linked to tradition,

and the word tradition points to something old

and people assume tradition is just history,

simply the past condensed into a nice story.

But let's not confuse tradition with history.

Origin stories are usually recently created fictions of ancient belonging,

and our vastly interconnected, even if very unequal world.

I was brought up in the 1970s near Wembley

with Asian, English, Caribbean, Irish families living in our street,

and the neo-Nazi National Front was massive then

and often a frequent reality of violence against us

typically by neo-Nazis and other racists.

And I remember during a general election a leaflet came through our letter box

with a picture of the National Front candidate for our area.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

【TED】Chetan Bhatt: Dare to refuse the origin myths that claim who you are (Dare to refuse the origin myths that claim who you are | Chetan Bhatt)

authentic

assume

massive

journey