Translator: Reiko Bovee Reviewer: Denise RQ
As we look around the world today,
we see horrendous violence in the Middle East,
we see Russia invading Ukraine and threatening its neighbors,
and we see a growing desire by many to identify by set
ethnicity and ideology over any shared sense of nationhood.
We wonder: is this just the worst instincts of human nature
that we repeat generation after generation?
Or can we change our behavior?
Can we move away from these destructive mindsets
to live more peacefully with our communities and ourselves?
I've spent the last 25 years
working on conflict and reconciliation around the world,
and I want to tell you about two incredible individuals who did change.
Roelf Meyer was the Minister of Defense during apartheid in South Africa.
David Ervine was a loyalist or a protestant paramilitary
in Northern Ireland.
These two men experienced a profound transformation
that not only liberated them from destructive mindsets and behaviors
but through their transformation
help liberate millions from violence and repression.
And through their story we'll see that profound change is indeed possible.
I met Roelf in 1994 when I invited him to Belfast
to help share his experience and help end apartheid
with leaders there who were struggling with change.
Roelf was the senior politician in South Africa.
Everybody thought he would be the next president.
He actually grew up thinking
that apartheid was not only good for whites but for blacks as well.
He built his entire career in the service of the apartheid state.
But along the way, something happened to him.
He came to realize
that the system he served and defended was corrupt and immoral and had to end.
David Ervine spent a decade in prison; many people called him a terrorist.
I later came to call him a friend.
He joined the UBF paramilitaries when, as a young teenager,
another teenager of the same age and same last name was killed
by an air-raid bomb.
David felt that everything that he and his community stood for
was under a mortal threat.
He felt that the best defense was a good offense.
But like Roelf, something happened to David.
He came to realize that the grievance and fear
that justified the use of violence against his neighbors
had become a vicious trap.
He had gone from killing to live to living to kill
and had to find a way to break out of that.
How did David and Roelf get to that point?
When Roelf was Minister of Defense, he interviewed a young ANC combatant,
and asked him: "Why did you join the gorilla movement?"
The young man told him that when he was a young child,
his family worked for an Africano farmer.
One day, while sitting in the back of the farmer's pickup truck
with the farmer's dog, it started to rain heavily.
The farmer got out of the car, went into the back, took the dog,
put it in the cabin, and left the young child in the downpour.
This unbelievable disregard for an another human being, a young child,
so shocked Roelf that it began to question the very system he served and defended.
David Ervine told me
that he and his other loyalist prisoners learned Irish in prison
so that they could understand what the IRA prisoners were saying.
In time, he came to understand that he had more in common
with these working class Catholics than many in his own community.
He felt that their shared experience of exclusion was a far deeper bond
that what divided them as Catholics and Protestants.
David and Roelf shared a journey
in which they realized they were stuck in mindsets that had to end.
Roelf went on to convince F. W. de Klerk to release Nelson Mandela from prison,
and he led the negotiations to end apartheid.
David Ervine became a principal negotiator,
and as former senator, George Mitchell said:
"Helped bring the loyalist paramilitaries out of the Dark Ages into peace."
Is their story unusual?
Over these 25 years, I've come to believe that while every country will have
its own unique experience with conflict and repression,
people respond to those experiences as humans.
It's the same around the world.
I know from my own experience
what fear, rejection, and humiliation feels like.
These emotions know no geographic boundaries.
Being bullied by your schoolmates is biologically, and fundamentally,
no different than being humiliated in Belfast or Johannesburg.
In fact, neuroscience is now showing us that we are deeply emotional beings
that we need to feel safe and acknowledged to engage fully in the world.
Our brain processes are deeply unconscious;
they blend emotion and cognition in the service of survival.
Our brains are plastic; they can change,
and we can overcome deep-seated fear, bias, and trauma
to live more peacefully within ourselves and within our own communities.
This is a universal experience.
Some recent findings in neuroscience help illustrate this very powerfully.
And I believe that we can begin to take what we're finding,
match it with experience
and begin to address the challenges we face in the world.
A number of years ago,
some social scientists discovered the concept of sacred values.
Those values that help shape our core identity;
they are really important to who we are.
For some it could be a deep religious belief,
the protection of one's child, or a deep love of country.
Neuroimaging is now showing us that we process sacred values
in different regions of the brain than cost-benefit calculations;
that we respond with moral outrage,
show aggression, and hold on more deeply to those sacred values
when we feel that we're under threat.
To millions of Americans,
the Second Amendment is a deeply felt sacred value;
it's core to their identity; it helps shape who they are in the world.
It's not just about the right to be armed;
it's tied to notions of freedom, heritage,
and the ability to protect what's really important to them.
Let's look what happened after Sandy Hook.
Rather than seeing an increase in gun control across the country,
we've been seeing a loosening of gun legislation.
And many believers in the Second Amendment responded with outrage.
They became aggressive, and they held onto their sacred beliefs more deeply,
and with what we know about sacred values, this shouldn't be a surprise.
It was a core threat to their identity.
We are more polarized on this issue than ever.
And the question is: can we apply
what neuroscience is telling us about sacred values to this issue?
What research shows us is that sacred values have to be recognized.
We have to let somebody know
that we acknowledge how important this is to them.
We don't have to share those sacred values,
but we do have to acknowledge
that they exist and are important to that individual.
Only then can we get to common ground; only then can that individual not feel
that what's sacred to them is under threat,
and we can begin to have a conversation about one of these most difficult issues.
When we look at the world around us
and we wonder if we can change,
we can look at other insights that neuroscience is providing us.
When we look at the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, we wonder
how did this small group of fanatics rise so quickly
and take over so many large segments of this country of Iraq, and in Syria?
They could not have gotten there on their own;
they could not have done that
unless they tapped into the humiliation, explotion, and exclusion
that many Sunnis felt
under the Shia-dominated government of Prime Minister al-Maliki.
I know from my own experience
that exclusion is the main driver of conflict.
When we feel excluded, we don't feel safe.
When we feel excluded, we feel that we can't really engage
to do what's normal to us, for ourselves or for our communities.
Now we have a biological basis for exclusion.
Some recent neuroimaging shows
that we experience social rejection as physical pain,
that that part of our brain that registers trauma
can not fully differentiate between emotional and physical trauma.
We share that with other mammals.
Think of that animal that's pulled from the safety of the herd by a predator.
That's a direct threat to their survival, and we experience that the same way.
Our capacity to think rationally is depended on feeling safe.
So, when we think of these challenges in the world,
it's important to remember
that we have to recognize what drives us as behavior.
When I think of David Ervine, he said to me:
"Terrorists have to come from somewhere,
and exclusion and injustice is a powerful place to come from."
David went on to say that he felt that his capacity
to protect what is sacred to him and his community
- his religion and being British - could only be fully realized
in a country that recognized what was sacred to those around him.
Roelf Meyer came to see
that a system built on exclusion would never last.
What this tells us is
that we have to build relationships and governments of inclusion.
Without that, we will drive
more and more of our communities into violence and division.
As we look around the world,
and we see deepening conflict, increasing division,
and we make disappear,
I think it's important to keep in mind that people can change;
that people can fundamentally change,
and to see someone like David, and to see someone like Roelf
is empowering and liberating.
We now know that we can rewire our brains, that change is possible,
and that by combing what we know of these insights, and with practice,
we can begin to reframe the challenges we face in the world.
And I believe, to begin to live in a more peaceful world.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)