I have long been a fan of TED. A TED talk distracts you for 18 minutes with a cool “idea worth spreading,” satisfying the yen for a distraction but somehow alleviating the guilt associated with procrastination: like a particularly toothsome snack unaccompanied by the guilt of empty calories. Like many of you, I’ve watched my share over the years, admiring the interlocutory skill, the messaging and the clarity of thought they often represent. And, while I have a few favorites, the one I have watched and recommended more often than any other is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Danger of a Single Story.
Adichie is a skilled writer, whose book Americanah numbers among my recent favorites. In The Danger of a Single Story, Adichie shares a cautionary tale – the negative power of literature (and in particular, the traditional Western canon) to weave uniform narratives about other cultures that distort and promote dangerous cultural misunderstanding. Through this “single story” tradition, literature can “open up new worlds” but can also concurrently “rob people of dignity,” dangerously emphasizing “how we are different rather than how we are similar.”
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In his recent TED Talk, Princeton professor Uri Hasson investigates what he calls “a device that can record my memories, my dreams, my ideas, and transmit them to your brain.” Drawing on his research, Hasson argues that this “game-changing technology” already exists—that it has existed for thousands of years, though we are only now learning to understand how it works.
The technology is “human communication” and, most important, “effective storytelling.”
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We are all taught the classics in school, so what’s the problem with reading only canonical literature? What is the value in going outside of your comfort zone, literary or otherwise? And why might moving outside that zone be necessary to understanding the world in all its fullness and complexity? On stories and power, and how that power shapes us . . .
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