Transcriber: Translate TED Reviewer: Sigal Tifferet When I was asked to speak. . .
I'm usually asked to speak about either neurosurgery, I'm a professor of neurosurgery at Stanford, or the neuroscience of compassion. And when I was asked to speak by Kunal, I said, "Boy, that sounds fantastic, of course I want to speak! " And I looked at the layout of the program and I said, that's great, I will either be in "Being Human", or I'll be in "Ideas To Action".
And then I looked at the program later and I'm. . .
here. . .
in Women's Empowerment. So I called Kunal up and I said to him, I said, "Is there some mistake here? Because I know compassion but I really don't know if I can say much about women's empowerment.
" And what he said to me, which was very kind, and compassionate, was, he said, "You know Jim, sometimes it's good to step out of your comfort zone. " (Laughter) And I said, "Really! ?
" You know, it's interesting also, that here I am, a white professional male, from the first world, in front of you talking about women's empowerment. I can see some of you may even be sitting there with the same derision that I had when I saw white conservative male republicans testifying before the US Congress on women's reproductive rights. A topic they obviously knew little about and knew even less about women's anatomy and physiology.
But after thinking about this I realized it made perfect sense, and here is why: everyone of us has a backstory, and my backstory is that I grew up in poverty. My father was an alcoholic, my mother was an invalid, we were on public assistance my entire life. Neither of my parents went to college.
I had an older sister who was very bright, and because of her circumstance, actually because of our circumstance, she was not able to live up to her full potential and in fact died at an early age. I also had a brother, who because of our circumstance, and his sexuality, also did not live up to his potential and he died young as well. Poverty robs individuals of their dignity and institutionalized discrimination robs people of their spirit through despair and hopelessness.
Whether it be in regard to their gender, their sexuality, their race, their religion, or their ethnicity. So I have a personal and deep relationship with suffering, I understand it very very well. And I will tell you from that experience I am a feminist, but more importantly I'm a humanist.
Because I believe that every human has the right to flourish, to have dignity, and to thrive. You know, I want to tell you a little bit more about my backstory, and this is where compassion comes into play. Compassion is the recognition of another's suffering and the desire to alleviate that suffering.
When I was thirteen I also had despair and hopelessness and when you're in that situation you start engaging sometimes in negative behaviors, and I was doing so. But an extraordinary event happened to me when I was thirteen and that event was: I walked into a magic shop. Now, it wasn't so much that I walked into a magic shop, but it's what happened after I walked in.
The owner was not there, but his mother was there, and she was a woman I'm sure you've met, who by her very nature was kind, compassionate, and caring, and she said to me after talking to me for a few minutes, "You know, I'm here for the next six weeks and if you come in here every day I will teach you something that I think could change your life. " And frankly it wasn't because I had great insight that I showed up, it was because I had nothing else better to do. So I showed up and in that period of time she taught me a meditation practice, she taught me the power of positive thinking, she taught me a visualization technique, and I went from a perception of having little to no possibilities to one of having unlimited possibilities.
It is that single interaction that is in great part responsible for me going to college, to going to medical school, becoming a neurosurgeon, becoming a successful entrepreneur, and running a center at a major university that looks and examines the neuroscience of compassion and altruism. You know, everyone in this room has, is, or will suffer in their lives. It is part of our lot as human beings, but what is also a part of our lot is our capacity to care, to nurture and to soothe.
You know, when one looks at our evolution as a species, what we find is that for. . .
the ability to have what is called theory of mind, to have the ability to think abstractly, to have the ability to have complex language, it required us to increase the size of our cortex, to increase our frontal lobes, to increase our temporal lobes, but as a result there was a requirement that our gestational, and I say our, the imperial our, a woman's gestational period, was prolonged, the litter size was decreased, and there was an absolute requirement that our offspring took well over a decade before they could live independently. And as a result of that there developed extraordinarily strong bonding and nurturing pathways within our species. Additionally, as another requirement of our evolution we also developed roles of our sexes, women became the caregiver and men became the provider and the protector.
And in fact some people have argued that it is this that allowed our species to survive while Neanderthal did not. It is also what allowed us to go from the nuclear family to the hunter gatherer where we lived until ten thousand years ago in groups of 10 to 50, as a group. And it is the same evolution that has resulted in the creation of society, in the creation of culture, and in the creation of religion.
These are survival mechanisms that allowed us to respond to the unknown, to potential or real threat, and to create cohesion as a group. But it also had a horrible effect as well because those same survival strategies have resulted in hundreds of millions of lives being lost and destroyed. And it is this reality that in our modern society.
. . this type of survival strategy, no longer will work.
Over the last several decades we have learned a great deal about brain function, we have learned a great deal about human behavior, we have learned a great deal about psychology, and as a result of that we have realized that to flourish and thrive one must be compassionate. We know from the science that being compassionate increases longevity up to twofold. Being compassionate decreases your stress, decreases markers of inflammation.
We know that being compassionate is fundamentally what we were designed for. Over the last several decades, especially in the West, we have seen women though who are stepping out of their traditional roles and it is having a profound impact. What is not also mentioned though is the desire for men to step out of their traditional roles.
I submit to you that fundamentally it is when individuals step out of their traditional societal or gender roles - that is going to be the vehicle for our species to survive in the future. Because when you step out you're no longer constrained, you're allowed to be who you are, and you are allowed to thrive and to flourish. When people step out of those roles, you know, the Dalai Lama said, "women are going to save our humanity", and I agree with him.
Because when women step out of those roles do you know what happens? It also allows men to flourish and by doing so allows all of us to flourish. And it is going to be the survival strategy that will allow our species to survive far into the future.
Before I finish I just want to quote to you a poem that was written by a feminist in 1973 by the name of Nancy Smith. And she said, For every girl who acts weak even though she's strong, There is a boy who is acting strong even though he feels vulnerable. For every boy who feels the burden of always being knowledgeable about everything.
There is a girl who is tired of feeling that people do not trust her intelligence and judgement. For every girl who feels that she is tired of being called oversensitive. There is a boy who fears crying or showing his fear.
For every boy who feels he must demonstrate his masculinity through competition There is a girl who is tired of showing and being called unfeminine because she wishes to compete. And finally: For every girl who takes that first step for her own liberation, there is a boy who sees his own path to freedom. Thank you.
