so I didn’t limp out here in some ploy
for your empathy nor am I going to make
any kind of ridiculous claim that says
if you need to understand me you must
walk a mile in my surgical boot rather
what I want to do is I want to focus on
ways in which we can add new
perspectives and in this case 14 billion
years of time in order for you to see
more clearly the present now I love the
title of this TEDx conference because I
was really impressed with the part after
the : this exploring perspective and
problem solving the reason for that is
I’ve been involved in a project the big
history project an attempt to bring 14
billion years of time to high school
students across the globe that is
centered around exploring perspective
and so I’m going to get to empathy but
going through the : part of it the
afterwards that sounds awful going
through the : by exploring perspectives
the ways in which the big history
project does so first we look at things
that are close up and far away and by
that I’m going to give you some examples
of things that I can show you a close up
or far away for example here’s a
close-up look at something you recognize
it that gives you a very different
perspective of something that I’m sure
you’re quite familiar with let me show
you a little further away perspective of
it so the idea behind shifting
perspective is it gives you a different
understanding of an object that’s quite
familiar so on the left you can see how
the girder holds up the Eiffel Tower and
on the right you can begin to see if you
can see it that where the Eiffel Tower
is located in Paris let me give you
three other looks at the Eiffel Tower
all of these are different perspectives
that give you a slightly different
understanding of something that might be
familiar to you let me show you another
one so I’m going to give you a
perspective of this gentleman there’s
actually a woman that he’s the
picnicking with but let me show you a
close-up and far away look at him now
you’re still looking at the same person
and with each move away
it shifts your understanding or shut
about what you can see about that person
let me give you another one one that
actually is familiar Gerry would you go
ahead and roll this one yep that’s it
whoa now that’s exactly the experience
that I want to give you Wow and what I
want to do is also then take you through
another perspective that we do in the
big history project which is long ago in
the present but here what we’re doing is
we’re looking at time huge perspectives
of time actually some going back 13.8 to
billion years of time now let me give
you just a quick sideline to this what
is big history what’s the big history
project big history uses different
perspectives to take a look at the
present by using over fourteen billion
years of time from the Big Bang to the
history of the future all in one course
for high school students secondly the
project the big history project is
providing this course free for students
all across the globe and teachers all
across the globe we’re in at least 35
different countries and almost 1,600
schools in the United States alone the
idea for big history was created by this
gentleman David Christian a really good
friend of mine who teaches at Macquarie
University he wrote this book maps of
time which tells the whole story of
human history of history he did a
teaching company set of videos what’s
interesting about gates is about David
Christians perspective is it’s one
cosmic story so that what you’re doing
is you’re going through 14 billion years
of time but it’s all about this idea of
how it is that we’ve increased
complexity and complexity is interesting
because complex things are far more
interesting than less complex things but
they’re also far more fragile so the
story that we’re teaching students in
the David’s going through is a
perspective on how increasing complexity
has occurred over time both making
things more interesting but also more
fragile now the key piece to this story
is the fact that that man Bill Gates you
probably have heard of him
he watches teaching company set of
videos when he’s jogging on his
treadmill and he watched my friends
David’s Teaching Company video on big
history fell in love with it and said
why isn’t this course offered in why
isn’t offered in high schools all across
the globe and so he reached out to Bill
to do a bill reached out to David and
said can we create a project that will
offer this course
free to high school students and since
I’ve been friends with David for an
awful long time a University of Michigan
and I became actively involved in this
project now what the project is doing is
exploring perspectives but it’s doing it
through problem solving so we’re
engaging in authentic legitimate
problems let me give you some of them
why would you look at things from close
up and far away why would I take a look
at my life from huge distances
why would I look at the Big Bang how has
our understanding of the universe
evolved and change as a human species
how did Stars emerge and what did they
give us by the way the Stars gave us all
the elements after hydrogen helium and
lithium you know that old Jodi Mitchell
Junie John Mitchell song Joni Mitchell
song that says we are Stardust we are
Stardust stars gave us all the elements
how did the Sun in the earth and the
planets form how do you define life and
what do you know about it how did our
ancestors evolve and live how did
farming change the way human beings
lived and how and why has the rate of
change accelerated and then we take
students through the last half of the
part of the courses so what’s coming
next what’s the future like all of these
things are involving perspective we also
have big problems and here’s one that
I’m going to come back to how and why
have our ideas and the practice of human
rights changed over time and this is all
of us as a human species now the idea
behind here is that we’re reconnecting
learners to the things that they were
curious about from the beginning and
learners are curious about the cosmos we
connect it to the concept that they’re
doing in the high school and back to
their curiosity we have an amazing
faculty because part of the perspective
is different disciplinary perspectives
so all these people offer courses to
little sections lectures in our in our
course including a physicist cosmologist
the character down there with the beret
Walter Alvarez is a Berkeley professor
he and his father proved that the
asteroids wiped out the an asteroid
white in the Yucatan Peninsula pout the
dinosaurs there’s even those old
historians we also involved people from
across time so the students are looking
at perspectives
from a whole cast of human characters to
explain how things have changed we also
have a perspective that we call claim
testers so one perspective is how is it
that you know what you know how much of
it comes from intuition one claim tester
how much of what you know comes from an
authority another claim tester how much
of it comes from logic a third claim
tester and how much of it comes from
evidence empirical evidence and to help
our students understand it we’ve
invented the claim tester comic books
with has all these claim testers who are
fighting for truth and justice let’s go
back to this question that I that our
students pose because this now comes
back to the question of empathy so what
I want you to do is to puzzle over with
me this problem it’s an interesting
historical problem how and why has the
idea of human rights changed over time
how is it different for us than it was
for our ancestors well let me take you
through a very quick twelve thousand
year history of human rights Human
Rights begins in origin stories and if
you look up they’re all communities had
their own origin stories the zulus
Iroquois judeo-christian those all
origin stories explains something about
human beings and all of them are bounded
to the community that they live in so
they are making claims about humans but
because most of them didn’t know about
other places they were bounded of course
that then moves into moral codes moral
codes from religions or philosophy again
something profound here all of these
places had moral codes that make claims
about human beings but again they’re
bounded to either the region that they
lived in or a participant of that
religion or that faith or that
philosophy this eventually evolves into
political documents for citizens so I
pointed up a couple Magna Carta the
English Bill of Rights the American Bill
of Rights the Declaration of the Rights
of Man and citizens in France and the
one that’s a little more difficult to
see is the Haitian Constitution which is
one of the first constitutions that
eliminated slavery but again there’s
something intriguing in these even
though they are talking about human
rights all of them have some limitation
on it so for example most only apply to
a citizen of that country or often all
of these enact
things that don’t treat women is exactly
the same fairly or some of them
including our own Declaration of
Independence and our own bill of rights
included slavery so these people weren’t
exactly thinking about the universality
of human rights that changes though in
the 20th century and so in the 20th
century we now have an idea that human
rights are for everybody
they are universal now here’s the puzzle
why what caused that change for
approximately twelve thousand years in
human history human beings bounded
rights to either their own groups of
people their own region or particular
types of people like them like men or
like free people some people argue that
the big difference between this the
movement from bounded rights to
Universal was empathy well what caused a
change in empathy what might cause me as
a master to see the slave as human or as
a male to understand that a woman has
exactly the same rights or the same
emotions as I do or a child well an
interesting argument has to do with the
time period from about 1700 really
through the present that has to do with
novels novels think about this novels
become a new phenomenon of reading
literacy rates increase the printing
presses invented and what novels begin
to do is they begin to teach people
about people other than themselves
Rousseau for example wrote about women
and gave women an emotional life that
appealed to men that they understood or
Dickens all those books by Dickens so
that people would begin to understand
children have the same kind of rights
and emotional feelings as adults the two
books up there aqueon Oh a freed slave
and became an incredibly popular book in
both the United States and in England
began to treat the slave as having an
emotional life the same thing is true of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin so the argument is
that a new perspective because people
began to read about the emotional lives
of others they began to see and feel the
other as human now that is a large
perspect
on empathy and empathy that helps
explain why it is you and I live in a
world where we believe everyone has a
universal human
right so empathy was a new perspective
that encouraged to see the human in
human rights I just added 14 billion
years of time to your understanding of
the present our hope by the way is that
this idea of shifting perspectives
bigger perspectives can inspire and
engage our students your children your
friends throughout the world to prepare
them for the challenges they face if
you’re interested visit us in the big
history project and thank you [Applause]