Speaker Robert Kurzban

Duration: 2 minutes and 49 seconds

Country: United States

Language: English

License: Public Domain

Genre: None

Views: 321 (133 embedded)

Posted by: pangea on May 14, 2008

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[Applause and music]
Dr. Robert Kurzban. Psychologist.
Today we know more than ever what it means to be human.
There is a human nature, but it is not one that leaves us fixed
and immutable in our thoughts.
More than any other species, humans have the capacity to learn, to change.
We learn a language, we learn about life
we even learn about learning.
Far from being empty vessels to be filled by our experiences
we are active participants in the construction of our world views.
Even children, in some ways especially children
choose from the ideas around them
making decisions about what to believe
what to doubt, and what to reject.
An important part of this is learning about the people in the world around us.
No one is born into the world loving some and hating others.
Instead, we are born with the capacity to love
the capacity to hate, along with other capacities like fear and hope.
Who we love, what we fear, and what we dare to hope
are choices that we make.
We also have the capacity, indeed the tendency
to separate us from them.
People will use even the smallest of differences to form this divide
and, once established, people are more tolerant
respectful, and kind to those who they see as "Us"
rather than "Them".
Furthermore, the conventional wisdom has traditionally been
that once learned, the boundaries between "Us" and "Them"
are nearly impervious to revision.
My research however, began by questioning
this somewhat pessimistic outlook.
We now know that how people perceive "Us" and "Them"
is nearly limitless in its flexibility.
Recent laboratory work has even shown
that seemingly obvious features, like the color of others' skin
is sometimes completely ignored.
When people observe others cooperating with one another
they notice not what sets them apart but rather what connects them.
The social world is complex and dynamic.
Yesterday's foes become today's friends
as the causes which unite us become more important
than the matters which seemed to divide us.
Every day research in biology and genetics is showing that
beneath superficial differences lie deep similarities.
Our very essence makes us deeply, indelibly
united in our common humanity.
So my message today is this:
There's nothing that stops anyone from changing
who they see as "Them" and who they see as "Us".
Each moment, each of us decide how we will see others
and these decisions are important today as they never have been before.
We, as members of the same species
share the same planet, share the same problems.
Today, science reveals that may be no limit to who we see as "Us".
It is within our human nature to see that there is an "Us"
to work for "Us", and together to make "Us" better off.
Eventually, some day, there might not be any more "Thems".
[Applause]

Speaker Robert Kurzban

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