First day back from TED – thinking about all the truly remarkable people I just spent four days with. I’m so tempted to “name names” and ventures, but what’s important is that the connections were made and will continue to thrive. That’s the reason for TED – individuals focused on positive world change coming together to syn-ergize their talents and resources. This has been one of the most incredible weeks of my life.

Day four began with a long morning walk around the streets of Aspen. Once TED starts, you’re pretty much hanging with the family from breakfast until late evening. Get exercise when you can. And, yes, after four days among TEDsters, it begins to feel like a big family. And not the dysfunctional kind..

After my first day among this gifted company, I realized an incredible sense of empowerment – that just about everyone around me shared a passion for world changing action – all of us working together towards common dreams. The singing of Beethoven’s 9th with this gathering of souls is an experience I will treasure for a lifetime. Keep moving BTFI (ask!).

As usual, too many highlights to list. Perhaps the TED event that went deepest into my mind and heart was Jonathan Haidt, author of the Happiness Hypothesis. I’m about 1/2 way into the book. Jonathan summarized the dynamics which help us “transcend moralistic divisions towards better interpersonal understanding.” We need this.

Haidt encourages us to understand the processes that exist underneath our moral abstractions and offers convincing statistical / test data to back up his work. Haidt asked for a show of hands on TEDster’s political leanings. I would guess about 90% liberal. Haidt then said “If you think half of America votes badly because they are stupid or religious, you are trapped in a matrix … Take the red pill, learn some moral psychology and step outside the moral matrix.”

He shares five key traits that define the moral mind: Harm / Fairness / Ingrouping / Authority / Purity. You can test yourself HERE to see where you fall on the moral continuum wrt political persuasion. Here’s my result:

What this shows (green bar) is a strong tendency to judge morality on the level of harm (physical and otherwise) I/we cause to others. Moreover, I tend to downplay the importance of “authority” and ingroup loyalties – traits that would be considered “liberal” (blue bar).

Haidt explores millennia of great philosophical minds and finds near unanimity on a sense of moral center – the ability to step out of this moral polarization and into a place of moral humility. He cites Chinese (yin-yang) texts and Buddhist (middle way) texts, but missed a great opportunity to cite Jewish tradition.

The metaphor of Adam and Eve presents a pure state of being, of clear mind and heart. This “ground of being” is said by the writer of Genesis to transcend notions of both evil and good. Beyond duality. Beyond moral distinctions. Haidt is convinced, as I am, that we can connect in a place beyond dualistic thinking. Not farther left or right, but deeper.

Neuro-scientist Jill Taylor expressed a similar experience of compassionate unity during her stroke (TED Day One). She relates,

So who are we? We are the life horsepower of the universe, and we have the power to choose moment by moment who we want to be in the world, we can choose the consciousnesses of our right hemisphere or that of our left hemisphere. These are the “we” inside of me. Which would you choose? Which do you choose? And when? I believe the more time we spend choosing the peace of our right hemisphere, the most peace we will project into the world and more peaceful our planet will be.

As an engineer, I was in awe of Johnny Lee’s invention that transformed a Nintendo Wii into a high quality interactive white board – for about $40 in parts (commercial units start at $3k). His $10 head-tracking device for 3D simulation was equally impressive.

Paul Collier reminded us that the last time we (USA) got serious about helping build nations was post-WWII Europe. He showed us realistic, workable strategies for bringing sustainable economic development to the “bottom billion” (and more) of world population.

How do we give credible hope to the billion poorest people in the world? It requires compassion to get ourselves started, and enlightened self-interest to get serious… If economic divergence continues, combined with global integration, it will build a nightmare for our children.

TED2008 was all about the hardest questions. When answers to human issues were offered, compassion was often at the center.

Al Gore concluded that democracy is in crisis; that we are cultivating a culture of distraction, largely oblivious to the most urgent problems. He asks the question Buckminster Fuller asked of himself,

who would I be if the survival of the world depended on my decisions?

With encouragement and irony, he reminded us that we are not prisoners in our country. He prodded us to raise new generations of heroes and foster generational mission. He confided in TEDsters that he is “praying to be the change” he wants to see in the world.

Musician Nellie McKay wowed us with irreverent talent that took no prisoners. With equal opportunity critique of everything from feminism to genetic engineering, she has made many new fans, including me.

Bob Geldof hinted that we sometimes confuse science with progress and concluded that true human progress depends upon unreasonable people. Indeed, “TED is the Olympics of unreasonable people.”

Goodbye TED2008. What an amazing gathering of people and ideas. See you next year.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 12:47 am and is filed under Art & Creativity, Aspire, Awe & Mystery, TED. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.