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i was ignorant
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oh boy
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it was a big one too
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and we've all had those moments right
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where
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someone comes along
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and exposes us to a new idea or a new
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concept or something in history we
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didn't know and it's
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the rugs pulled out from under us
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and then we have to make a decision
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don't we
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we have to decide if we want to move
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forward
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in a deeply uncomfortable
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and courageous way
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or if we want to retreat in fear and
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willful ignorance
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my first rug pulling moment of which of
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course there are many
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was when i was 11
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and i was visiting the garden of the
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gods which if you don't know is this
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amazing beautiful park uh south of here
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in colorado springs and it also happens
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to be a very sacred and important site
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to the indigenous people of this region
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now i grew up
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in a suburb south of philadelphia it was
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a very segregated area
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in fact i think maybe there was one
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student of color
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in our entire class and so my exposure
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to history and ideas were relatively
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limited
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i didn't really think about diversity at
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all being a white male
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and so when i walked into the garden of
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god's visitors center i had and i don't
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know how i got this idea but but somehow
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i had come to believe through my
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education and my experiences and the
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things i've watched on tv thus far
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that all indigenous people in this
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country were gone
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but they were a thing of a past
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and then here was this navajo woman
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standing in the visitor center and my
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little 11 year old brain was kind of
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like error error error does not compute
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and i didn't know what to do with this
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experience
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and so this planted a seed in me
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a seed that
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took a long time to take root really not
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until college
00:02:20
but that seed started to get me to ask
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questions
00:02:23
and i believe it's this seed that is the
00:02:25
reason i became an anthropologist
00:02:28
the reason i became a writer
00:02:31
see
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we live in the world of the imagination
00:02:36
we imagine
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the past
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because
00:02:42
a quick survey who in this audience has
00:02:44
a time machine does anyone have a time
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machine
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anyone
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i'm so disappointed
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no one ever has a time machine right so
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we have to imagine our past we have math
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to imagine history
00:02:58
and so we're told our lives what we're
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supposed to imagine
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by watching media
00:03:05
by reading history by hearing stories we
00:03:07
live in that imagination but it doesn't
00:03:09
just stop with history does it
00:03:13
you imagine that perfect person in your
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future the perfect career
00:03:18
you have so many hopes that you imagine
00:03:20
so many dreams you imagine but you also
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have fears and anxieties and worries
00:03:26
we live so deeply in our imagination
00:03:29
constantly
00:03:31
we never really leave it do we
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we're always living in the past or the
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future or imagining even you know what's
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for lunch
00:03:42
and this is why me and my co-author
00:03:44
kiera wellstrom
00:03:46
decided to write a book called build
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better worlds an introduction to
00:03:50
anthropology for game designers fiction
00:03:53
writers and filmmakers because we
00:03:55
started to see
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that it's really important how you build
00:03:58
that imagination
00:04:00
that it matters for the purposes of
00:04:02
diversity for the purposes of
00:04:04
communication for the purposes of
00:04:06
storytelling
00:04:08
how we imagine things
00:04:10
matters
00:04:11
so her being a biological anthropologist
00:04:14
and me being a cultural anthropologist
00:04:16
kind of joined forces because she knows
00:04:17
all like the icky body stuff way better
00:04:19
than i do
00:04:20
uh and we sat down and we looked at a
00:04:23
lot of these fictional worlds
00:04:26
and we realized if they just understood
00:04:30
a little bit about cultural systems a
00:04:32
little bit about how difference works
00:04:34
then maybe the stories told in the
00:04:36
future can be even better
00:04:39
and our imagination
00:04:41
can run wild
00:04:42
and maybe we can solve more problems in
00:04:44
the world because we're thinking
00:04:47
with our imagination in a better way
00:04:51
so in this book of course
00:04:53
we do you know the standard intro to
00:04:55
cultural anthropology stuff where you
00:04:56
learn about race class gender evolution
00:05:00
you know religion all of these different
00:05:02
aspects of our identities and cultures
00:05:04
and how they form and how they change
00:05:06
and move but another thing we did was we
00:05:08
built a model and this model was
00:05:10
specifically and originally created for
00:05:13
building better characters and this
00:05:15
model is called the three c's
00:05:17
context
00:05:18
conditions
00:05:20
and choices
00:05:23
so using this model
00:05:25
understanding a character's context
00:05:27
their conditions and their choices you
00:05:28
can build really interesting
00:05:30
three-dimensional characters and then
00:05:32
you can pit them against another
00:05:33
character who's really well constructed
00:05:34
and it's just a great it's really
00:05:36
interesting but we realized very quickly
00:05:38
that this was also a model for
00:05:40
understanding one another
00:05:43
context what is context
00:05:46
context is the cultural system into
00:05:49
which you're born it includes all the
00:05:51
different religions all the languages
00:05:54
and dialects all the ways that we tell
00:05:56
stories of the past and the present and
00:05:58
how we imagine the future it is
00:06:00
everything in your cultural sphere
00:06:02
including the time you're born in
00:06:04
history
00:06:06
because you are a contextual being
00:06:09
you're born in a specific moment in a
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specific time in a specific place and
00:06:14
those things matter because they shape
00:06:16
the way we think
00:06:18
so we're going to use a metaphor a
00:06:20
context would be a neighborhood it would
00:06:22
be an entire neighborhood full of
00:06:23
different people with different ideas
00:06:25
and experiences
00:06:26
and then if we move on to conditions
00:06:29
it's your house
00:06:30
in the neighborhood
00:06:32
your specific gender your specific
00:06:34
sexuality your specific religion and
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dialect
00:06:38
and class status
00:06:41
so within the neighborhood you have a
00:06:43
house of your own experience
00:06:46
and that house of course includes your
00:06:48
happiest memories
00:06:50
and your worst tragedies
00:06:53
and if you take these two things context
00:06:56
and conditions
00:06:58
you can then begin to understand the
00:07:00
choices that someone makes you're never
00:07:03
going to understand all those choices of
00:07:04
course not but you can understand a
00:07:07
great deal of these choices
00:07:10
and you can use this
00:07:12
to do things
00:07:13
like understand that jerk at work you
00:07:15
know the one right right oh i see yeah
00:07:17
yeah you know the one i'm talking about
00:07:19
right right and if you don't
00:07:21
know a jerk at work you might be the
00:07:23
jerk at work so you might need to use
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this model anyway
00:07:27
so
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you can use this model understand those
00:07:30
difficult people at work but you can use
00:07:32
it to understand immigrants you can use
00:07:34
it to understand refugees you can use it
00:07:37
to understand people who have political
00:07:38
differences than you or maybe a
00:07:40
different gender identity to you you can
00:07:43
use this model of context conditions and
00:07:46
choices to try to make some space
00:07:49
to understand difference
00:07:52
now
00:07:52
you might be asking yourself
00:07:54
why should you care
00:07:56
why does it matter to reach out to
00:07:58
people and try to understand or why is
00:08:00
this diversity thing you always hear
00:08:01
this push for this diversity thing
00:08:03
diversity is important diversity is
00:08:04
important right why
00:08:06
and the answer is
00:08:08
because diversity is the greatest tool
00:08:11
that humans have
00:08:14
if you don't believe me
00:08:15
use that imagination again go back into
00:08:18
history
00:08:19
and look at the times of the greatest
00:08:21
medical developments scientific
00:08:24
developments the greatest poetry
00:08:26
literature artwork everything all the
00:08:29
things that humans do best
00:08:32
rose the greatest
00:08:34
in times when different populations were
00:08:37
in different places
00:08:39
and we're open to discussing with one
00:08:41
another
00:08:43
and right now
00:08:45
we face some of the greatest problems
00:08:47
humanity has ever encountered
00:08:50
and so we need each other we need to
00:08:52
blend our imaginations
00:08:55
we need to build
00:08:57
better and more interesting universes in
00:09:00
fiction
00:09:02
but also we need to bring all those
00:09:04
ideas to the present so
00:09:06
two things for you to take away from
00:09:08
this
00:09:09
the first
00:09:10
is practicing empathy and this has two
00:09:12
parts so you get kind of like a two and
00:09:14
two here right so two parts
00:09:16
practicing empathy
00:09:18
begins by reading
00:09:20
by listening by playing
00:09:23
and by consuming things that are made by
00:09:25
people who are different than you
00:09:28
whether that be a different race a
00:09:30
different religion a different gender
00:09:32
a different location
00:09:34
wherever it might be
00:09:36
if they're different than you their
00:09:38
imagination will be different
00:09:40
and maybe you can source those ideas
00:09:44
for problem solving
00:09:46
and the other part of this of course is
00:09:47
use the three c's right context
00:09:49
conditions
00:09:50
and choices
00:09:52
and you can do that even while you're
00:09:54
reading or consuming fiction you can say
00:09:55
look
00:09:56
what's this person's context
00:09:58
it's actually much more easy in some
00:10:00
ways to do it with the villains of
00:10:02
stories for some reason i don't know why
00:10:04
but it is
00:10:05
because then you can say
00:10:07
how do you understand what this person's
00:10:08
doing what were the conditions of their
00:10:10
life and now why are they trying to take
00:10:12
over the world and you know dominate
00:10:13
everything right
00:10:14
so you can use that and the second thing
00:10:18
you should do
00:10:20
is take a breath once in a while so
00:10:22
everybody take a breath with me really
00:10:23
quick you ready
00:10:29
that breath is really important when
00:10:31
you're dealing with someone
00:10:33
who is different than you and especially
00:10:35
if they're difficult
00:10:36
that breath can give you just enough
00:10:39
space so that you can listen
00:10:41
not to respond or inject your opinion
00:10:43
but listen to understand
00:10:47
you have to find an opening with people
00:10:49
who are different than you and listening
00:10:51
to understand
00:10:53
can give you that one space
00:10:55
that one breath
00:10:57
to try and create a doorway for better
00:11:00
understanding one another
00:11:02
and hopefully
00:11:03
with that space
00:11:06
we can work together to build a better
00:11:08
world
00:11:10
thank you
00:11:15
[Music]
00:11:27
you
