I spent the past three years talking to some of the worst people on the internet. Now, if you've been online recently, you may have noticed that there's a lot of toxic garbage out there: racist memes, misogynist propaganda, viral misinformation. So I wanted to know who was making this stuff. I wanted to understand how they were spreading it. Ultimately, I wanted to know what kind of impact it might be having on our society. So in 2016, I started tracing some of these memes back to their source, back to the people who were making them or who were making them go viral. I'd approach those people and say, "Hey, I'm a journalist. Can I come watch you do what you do?" Now, often the response would be, "Why in hell would I want to talk to some low-t soy-boy Brooklyn globalist Jew cuck who's in cahoots with the Democrat Party?"
Proveo sam protekle tri godine pričajući s nekim od najgorih ljudi na internetu. Ukoliko ste nedavno bili na internetu, možda ste primijetili mnogo toksičnog smeća: rasističkih memeova, ženomrzačke propagande, viralnih dezinformacija. Htio sam saznati tko stoji iza toga. Htio sam razumjeti kako su to proširili. Na kraju krajeva, želio sam saznati kakav bi mogao biti utjecaj tog sadržaja na naše društvo. Tako sam 2016. počeo pratiti neke od memeova do njihovog izvora, natrag do ljudi koji su ih stvarali ili koji su ih lansirali na internet. Prilazio sam tim ljudima i rekao, "Hej, ja sam novinar. Mogu li vas promatrati dok radite?" Često bi odgovor bio nešto poput, "Zašto bi, dovraga, želio pričati s nekim soja dečkom, globalistom iz Brooklyna koji je židovski sluga i podržava Demokratsku stranku?"
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
To which my response would be, "Look, man, that's only 57 percent true."
Na što bi moj odgovor bio, "Čuj stari, samo si 57% u pravu."
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
But often I got the opposite response. "Yeah, sure, come on by." So that's how I ended up in the living room of a social media propagandist in Southern California. He was a married white guy in his late 30s. He had a table in front of him with a mug of coffee, a laptop for tweeting, a phone for texting and an iPad for livestreaming to Periscope and YouTube. That was it. And yet, with those tools, he was able to propel his fringe, noxious talking points into the heart of the American conversation.
No, često bih dobio suprotan odgovor. "Da, svakako, samo navrati." Tako sam završio u dnevnoj sobi propagandista s društvenih mreža u Južnoj Kaliforniji. Bio je to oženjen frajer u kasnim 30-ima. Pred sobom je imao stol sa šalicom kave, laptop za postanje na Tweeteru, mobitel za poruke, iPad za emitiranje na Periscopeu i YouTubeu. I to je bilo to. Ipak, sa svim tim alatima mogao je lansirati svoja otrovna, ekstremna stajališta ravno u srce američkog razgovora.
For example, one of the days I was there, a bomb had just exploded in New York, and the guy accused of planting the bomb had a Muslim-sounding name. Now, to the propagandist in California, this seemed like an opportunity, because one of the things he wanted was for the US to cut off almost all immigration, especially from Muslim-majority countries. So he started livestreaming, getting his followers worked up into a frenzy about how the open borders agenda was going to kill us all and asking them to tweet about this, and use specific hashtags, trying to get those hashtags trending. And tweet they did -- hundreds and hundreds of tweets, a lot of them featuring images like this one.
Primjerice, jednog dana dok sam bio tamo, bomba je eksplodirala u New Yorku, za što je optužen čovjek imena koje je zvučalo muslimanski. Za ovog propagandista u Kaliforniji to je bila odlična prilika, jer se, između ostalog, zalagao za to da SAD ukinu gotovo svo useljavanje, osobito iz muslimanskih zemalja. Radi toga je počeo emitirati livestream, dok su njegovi pratitelji postajali sve bjesniji zbog toga što će nas politika otvorenih granica sve poubijati, i tražio je od njih da tvitaju o tome, koriste određene hashtagove, i pokušao postići da ti hashtagovi dođu na Twitter trending listu. Oni su zaista i tvitali, stotine i stotine postova. Mnogi od njih objavili su i slike poput ove.
So that's George Soros. He's a Hungarian billionaire and philanthropist, and in the minds of some conspiracists online, George Soros is like a globalist bogeyman, one of a few elites who is secretly manipulating all of global affairs. Now, just to pause here: if this idea sounds familiar to you, that there are a few elites who control the world and a lot of them happen to be rich Jews, that's because it is one of the most anti-Semitic tropes in existence. I should also mention that the guy in New York who planted that bomb, he was an American citizen. So whatever else was going on there, immigration was not the main issue.
Ovo je George Soros. On je mađarski milijarder i filantrop, i prema ljubiteljima teorija zavjera na internetu, George Soros je neka vrsta globalista babaroge, jedan od malobrojne elite koja upravlja svjetskim događajima. Sad, samo da napravim pauzu, ukoliko vam se ova ideja čini poznatom, da postoji malobrojna elita koja kontrolira svijet i koja se sastoji uglavnom od bogatih Židova, to je zato jer je to jedan od najčešćih antisemitskih motiva. Još bih samo napomenuo da je čovjek koji je postavio tu bombu u New Yorku bio američki državljanin. Dakle, o čemu god da se radilo u tom slučaju, imigracija nije bila glavni problem.
And the propagandist in California, he understood all this. He was a well-read guy. He was actually a lawyer. He knew the underlying facts, but he also knew that facts do not drive conversation online. What drives conversation online is emotion.
Propagandist u Kaliforniji je sve to vrlo dobro razumio. Bio je to načitan čovjek. Zapravo je bio odvjetnik. Znao je sve činjenice, ali je također znao da činjenice nisu bitne za dijalog na internetu. Ono što je bitno na internetu su emocije.
See, the original premise of social media was that it was going to bring us all together, make the world more open and tolerant and fair ... And it did some of that. But the social media algorithms have never been built to distinguish between what's true or false, what's good or bad for society, what's prosocial and what's antisocial. That's just not what those algorithms do. A lot of what they do is measure engagement: clicks, comments, shares, retweets, that kind of thing. And if you want your content to get engagement, it has to spark emotion, specifically, what behavioral scientists call "high-arousal emotion."
Originalna ideja društvenih mreža bila je da nas sve poveže i stvori otvoreniji, tolerantniji i pravedniji svijet. To se donekle ostvarilo. Ali, algoritmi društvenih mreža nisu nikad bili stvoreni da razlikuju što je točno, a što ne, što je dobro ili loše za društvo, što prosocijalno, a što antisocijalno. Algoritmi to ne rade. Ono što oni rade jest da mjere aktivnost korisnika: klikove, komentare, podjele sadržaja, takve stvari. Ukoliko želite da vaš sadržaj dobije takvu aktivnost, morate izazvati emocije. Točnije, ono što znanstvenici nazivaju "emocije visoke uzbuđenosti".
Now, "high arousal" doesn't only mean sexual arousal, although it's the internet, obviously that works. It means anything, positive or negative, that gets people's hearts pumping. So I would sit with these propagandists, not just the guy in California, but dozens of them, and I would watch as they did this again and again successfully, not because they were Russian hackers, not because they were tech prodigies, not because they had unique political insights -- just because they understood how social media worked, and they were willing to exploit it to their advantage.
Visoka uzbuđenost ne znači samo seksualno uzbuđenje, iako je očito internet ono što je izaziva. To znači bilo što, pozitivno ili negativno što ubrzava rad vašeg srca. Tako bih ja sjedio s tim propagandistima, ne samo s onim u Kaliforniji, nego i drugima, i gledao bih kako to rade, svaki put uspješno, ne zato jer su ruski hakeri, ne zato jer su tehnološki geniji, ne zato jer imaju jedinstvene političke poglede - samo zato jer su razumjeli kako rade društvene mreže i bili su spremni iskoristiti ih za svoje ciljeve.
Now, at first I was able to tell myself this was a fringe phenomenon, something that was relegated to the internet. But there's really no separation anymore between the internet and everything else. This is an ad that ran on multiple TV stations during the 2018 congressional elections, alleging with very little evidence that one of the candidates was in the pocket of international manipulator George Soros, who is awkwardly photoshopped here next to stacks of cash. This is a tweet from the President of the United States, alleging, again with no evidence, that American politics is being manipulated by George Soros. This stuff that once seemed so shocking and marginal and, frankly, just ignorable, it's now so normalized that we hardly even notice it.
Ispočetka sam govorio sam sebi da je ovo rubni fenomen, nešto što se samo preselilo na internet. No, više ne postoji razlika između interneta i svega ostalog. Ovo je oglas prikazan na više TV postaja tijekom izbora za kongres 2018. godine, u kojem se bez dokaza optužuje jednog od kandidata da je marioneta kojom upravlja manipulator George Soros, kojeg su na ovoj slici nevješto zalijepili pored brda love. Ovo je post na Twitteru predsjednika SAD-a, u kojem on, bez dokaza, tvrdi da američkom politikom manipulira upravo Soros. Ono što se nekad činilo šokantnim, marginalnim, ili iskreno, za ignoriranje, danas je toliko normalizirano da to uopće ne primjećujemo.
So I spent about three years in this world. I talked to a lot of people. Some of them seemed to have no core beliefs at all. They just seemed to be betting, perfectly rationally, that if they wanted to make some money online or get some attention online, they should just be as outrageous as possible. But I talked to other people who were true ideologues. And to be clear, their ideology was not traditional conservatism. These were people who wanted to revoke female suffrage. These were people who wanted to go back to racial segregation. Some of them wanted to do away with democracy altogether. Now, obviously these people were not born believing these things. They didn't pick them up in elementary school. A lot of them, before they went down some internet rabbit hole, they had been libertarian or they had been socialist or they had been something else entirely. So what was going on?
Proveo sam oko tri godine u ovom svijetu. Razgovarao sam s puno ljudi. Neki od njih nisu imali nekakva temeljna uvjerenja. Neki od njih posve su racionalno zaključili da ukoliko žele zaraditi na internetu ili dobiti nešto pozornosti, moraju biti što luđi. No, razgovarao sam i s drugima, koji su pravi ideolozi. Da budem jasan, njihova ideologija nije tradicionalni konzervativizam. To su ljudi koji bi željeli ukinuti ženama pravo glasa. To su ljudi koji bi se vratili u vremena rasnih podjela. Neki od njih u cijelosti bi ukinuli demokraciju. Ovi ljudi nisu rođeni vjerujući u takve stvari. Nisu ih naučili u osnovnoj školi. Mnogi od njih, prije negoli su kliznuli u zečju rupu interneta, bili su libertarijanci ili čak socijalisti, ili nešto posve drugačije. O čemu je bila riječ?
Well, I can't generalize about every case, but a lot of the people I spoke to, they seem to have a combination of a high IQ and a low EQ. They seem to take comfort in anonymous, online spaces rather than connecting in the real world. So often they would retreat to these message boards or these subreddits, where their worst impulses would be magnified. They might start out saying something just as a sick joke, and then they would get so much positive reinforcement for that joke, so many meaningless "internet points," as they called it, that they might start believing their own joke.
Ne mogu govoriti za svaki slučaj, ali mnogi ljudi s kojima sam pričao imali su kombinaciju visokog IQ-a i niskog EQ-a. Čini se da se dobro snalaze u anonimnim prostranstvima interneta, umjesto stvaranja odnosa u stvarnosti. Povlačili bi se na internet forume ili "subreddite", gdje su se njihovi najgori impulsi još povećavali. Možda bi započinjali razgovore neukusnim šalama, a onda bi ih netko ohrabrio zbog tih šala, beznačajnih "internet točki", kako ih nazivaju, da bi na kraju počeli vjerovati u te svoje šale.
I talked a lot with one young woman who grew up in New Jersey, and then after high school, she moved to a new place and suddenly she just felt alienated and cut off and started retreating into her phone. She found some of these spaces on the internet where people would post the most shocking, heinous things. And she found this stuff really off-putting but also kind of engrossing, kind of like she couldn't look away from it. She started interacting with people in these online spaces, and they made her feel smart, they made her feel validated. She started feeling a sense of community, started wondering if maybe some of these shocking memes might actually contain a kernel of truth. A few months later, she was in a car with some of her new internet friends headed to Charlottesville, Virginia, to march with torches in the name of the white race. She'd gone, in a few months, from Obama supporter to fully radicalized white supremacist.
Pričao sam s jednom mladom ženom koja je odrasla u New Jerseyu, nakon srednje škole odselila se u drugi grad i odjednom se osjećala usamljeno i izolirano, i utjehu pronašla u mobitelu. Pronašla je neke od ovih prostora na internetu gdje ljudi postaju šokantne, odvratne stvari. Sve joj je to bilo odbojno, ali u isto vrijeme ju je fasciniralo, toliko da nije mogla prestati čitati. Počela je komunicirati s ljudima na tim internet stranicama, zbog kojih se počela osjećati pametno i vrijedno. Počela je osjećati duh zajedništva i pitati se sadrže li neki od tih šokantnih postova ipak i mrvicu istine. Nekoliko mjeseci kasnije, s novim prijateljima s interneta vozila se u Charlottesville u Virginiji, kako bi stupala u paradi s bakljama, u ime bijele rase. U nekoliko mjeseci pretvorila se iz Obaminog birača u potpuno radikaliziranog bijelog supremacista.
Now, in her particular case, she actually was able to find her way out of the cult of white supremacy. But a lot of the people I spoke to were not. And just to be clear: I was never so convinced that I had to find common ground with every single person I spoke to that I was willing to say, "You know what, man, you're a fascist propagandist, I'm not, whatever, let's just hug it out, all our differences will melt away." No, absolutely not. But I did become convinced that we cannot just look away from this stuff. We have to try to understand it, because only by understanding it can we even start to inoculate ourselves against it.
U njenom slučaju, ona se uspjela osloboditi iz kulta bjelačkog supremacizma. Ali mnogi s kojima sam razgovarao nisu. Samo da pojasnim: nikad nisam bio uvjeren da moram pronaći nešto zajedničko sa svakom osobom s kojom sam komunicirao, tako da bih mogao reći, "Znaš stari, ti si fašist, ja nisam, dođi da se zagrlimo i sve naše razlike će nestati." Ne, apsolutno ne. Ali uvjerio sam se da ne možemo ignorirati ovakve stvari. Moramo ih pokušati razumjeti, zato jer jedino kroz razumijevanje možemo uopće početi štititi se od takvih stvari.
In my three years in this world, I got a few nasty phone calls, even some threats, but it wasn't a fraction of what female journalists get on this beat. And yeah, I am Jewish, although, weirdly, a lot of the Nazis couldn't tell I was Jewish, which I frankly just found kind of disappointing.
U ove tri godine, primio sam nekoliko gadnih poziva, čak i nekoliko prijetnji, ali to nije ni dio onog što proživljavaju novinarke. I da, ja sam Židov, iako, začudo, mnogi nacisti nisu prepoznali da sam Židov, što me, iskreno, pomalo razočaralo.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
Seriously, like, your whole job is being a professional anti-Semite. Nothing about me is tipping you off at all? Nothing?
Ozbiljno, a oni su profesionalni antisemiti. Zar me ništa na meni nije odalo? Baš ništa?
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
This is not a secret. My name is Andrew Marantz, I write for "The New Yorker," my personality type is like if a Seinfeld episode was taped at the Park Slope Food Coop. Nothing?
Ovo nije tajna. Zovem se Andrew Marantz, pišem za "The New Yorker", imam osobnost kao lik iz epizode Seinfelda snimljene u Park Slope trgovini. Ništa?
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
Anyway, look -- ultimately, it would be nice if there were, like, a simple formula: smartphone plus alienated kid equals 12 percent chance of Nazi. It's obviously not that simple. And in my writing, I'm much more comfortable being descriptive, not prescriptive. But this is TED, so let's get practical. I want to share a few suggestions of things that citizens of the internet like you and I might be able to do to make things a little bit less toxic.
Na kraju krajeva, bilo bi lijepo da postoji jednostavna formula: mobitel plus usamljeni klinac jednako je 12% šanse da postane nacist. Jasno, to nije tako jednostavno. U mojim tekstovima lakše mi je opisivati, nego govoriti što je ispravno. Ali ovo je TED pa budimo praktični. Želim dati nekoliko prijedloga što građani interneta poput vas i mene mogu učiniti da stvari postanu malo manje toksične.
So the first one is to be a smart skeptic. So, I think there are two kinds of skepticism. And I don't want to drown you in technical epistemological information here, but I call them smart and dumb skepticism. So, smart skepticism: thinking for yourself, questioning every claim, demanding evidence -- great, that's real skepticism.
Prva je da budete pametni skeptik. Mislim da postoje dvije vrste skepticizma. I ne želim vas udaviti definicijama, ali ja ih zovem pametnim i glupim skepticizmom. Dakle, pametni skepticizam: misliti svojom glavom, preispitati činjenice, tražiti dokaze, sve je to zdravi skepticizam.
Dumb skepticism: it sounds like skepticism, but it's actually closer to knee-jerk contrarianism. Everyone says the earth is round, you say it's flat. Everyone says racism is bad, you say, "I dunno, I'm skeptical about that." I cannot tell you how many young white men I have spoken to in the last few years who have said, "You know, the media, my teachers, they're all trying to indoctrinate me into believing in male privilege and white privilege, but I don't know about that, man, I don't think so." Guys -- contrarian white teens of the world -- look: if you are being a round earth skeptic and a male privilege skeptic and a racism is bad skeptic, you're not being a skeptic, you're being a jerk.
Glupi skepticizam: zvuči kao skepticizam, ali je zapravo bliže refleksnom kontriranju. Svi kažu da je Zemlja okrugla, ti kažeš da je ravna. Svi kažu da je rasizam loš, ti kažeš, "Ne znam, skeptik sam u vezi s tim." Ne mogu vam reći s koliko sam mladih bijelih muškaraca pričao koji su mi rekli, "Znaš, mediji, moji nastavnici, svi me pokušavaju indoktrinirati da povjerujem u privilegije muškaraca i bijelaca, ali ja nisam baš uvjeren da je to tako." Dečki, kontrirajući bijeli tinejdžeri svijeta, gledajte, ukoliko ne vjerujete da je Zemlja okrugla, muškarci privilegirani i da je rasizam loš, vi niste skeptik, nego budala.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)
It's great to be independent-minded, we all should be independent-minded, but just be smart about it.
Odlično je biti nezavisni mislilac, svi bismo trebali biti takvi, ali trebamo to raditi pametno.
So this next one is about free speech. You will hear smart, accomplished people who will say, "Well, I'm pro-free speech," and they say it in this way that it's like they're settling a debate, when actually, that is the very beginning of any meaningful conversation. All the interesting stuff happens after that point. OK, you're pro-free speech. What does that mean? Does it mean that David Duke and Richard Spencer need to have active Twitter accounts? Does it mean that anyone can harass anyone else online for any reason? You know, I looked through the entire list of TED speakers this year. I didn't find a single round earth skeptic. Is that a violation of free speech norms? Look, we're all pro-free speech, it's wonderful to be pro-free speech, but if that's all you know how to say again and again, you're standing in the way of a more productive conversation.
Sad bih se osvrnuo na slobodu govora. Često čujemo pametne, uspješne ljude koji kažu da se zalažu za slobodu govora, i to kažu na način kao da je to kraj rasprave o ovakvim temama. Zapravo, to je tek početak bilo kojeg značajnog razgovora. Sve zanimljivo događa se nakon te izjave. OK, zalažete se za slobodu govora. Što to znači? Znači li to da David Duke i Richard Spencer moraju imati aktivne profile na Twitteru? Znači li to da bilo tko ima pravo uznemiravati druge iz bilo kojeg razloga? Pregledao sam sve govornike na TED događanjima ove godine. Nisam našao nijednog ravnozemljaša. Znači li to da su prekršene slobode govora? Svi smo mi za slobodu govora, divno je biti za slobodu govora, ali ako je to sve što znate i neprestano ponavljate, sprječavate mogućnost korisnijeg razgovora.
Making decency cool again, so ... Great!
Vratimo uljudnost u modu. Sjajno!
(Applause)
(Pljesak)
Yeah. I don't even need to explain it. So in my research, I would go to Reddit or YouTube or Facebook, and I would search for "sharia law" or I would search for "the Holocaust," and you might be able to guess what the algorithms showed me, right? "Is sharia law sweeping across the United States?" "Did the Holocaust really happen?" Dumb skepticism. So we've ended up in this bizarre dynamic online, where some people see bigoted propaganda as being edgy or being dangerous and cool, and people see basic truth and human decency as pearl-clutching or virtue-signaling or just boring. And the social media algorithms, whether intentionally or not, they have incentivized this, because bigoted propaganda is great for engagement. Everyone clicks on it, everyone comments on it, whether they love it or they hate it. So the number one thing that has to happen here is social networks need to fix their platforms.
To ne moram ni objašnjavati. U svom istraživanju išao sam na Reddit, YouTube i Facebook i tražio sam "šerijatsko pravo" ili npr. "Holokaust", i možete naslutiti što su mi algoritmi pokazali, zar ne? "Je li šerijatsko pravo zavladalo SAD-om?" "Je li se Holokaust uopće dogodio?" Glupi skepticizam. Tako smo završili u ovoj bizarnoj online dinamici, u kojoj neki vide netrpeljivu propagandu kao nešto izazovno, opasno i privlačno, a obične istine i uljudnost se percipiraju kao prenemaganje, glumatanje ili jednostavno nešto dosadno. Algoritmi društvenih mreža su, namjerno ili nenamjerno pripomogli ovakvoj situaciji, zato što netrpeljiva propaganda potiče reakcije drugih. Svi na to klikaju, svi komentiraju, bilo da to vole ili mrze. Prva stvar koja se treba dogoditi jest da društvene mreže porade na svojim platformama.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)
So if you're listening to my voice and you work at a social media company or you invest in one or, I don't know, own one, this tip is for you. If you have been optimizing for maximum emotional engagement and maximum emotional engagement turns out to be actively harming the world, it's time to optimize for something else.
Ukoliko me sada slušate i radite za neku od društvenih mreža ili ste njihov investitor ili vlasnik, ovo je savjet za vas. Ukoliko ste optimizirali za maksimalan emotivni angažman i to se pokazalo destruktivnim za ovaj svijet, vrijeme je da optimiziramo za nešto drugo.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)
But in addition to putting pressure on them to do that and waiting for them and hoping that they'll do that, there's some stuff that the rest of us can do, too. So, we can create some better pathways or suggest some better pathways for angsty teens to go down. If you see something that you think is really creative and thoughtful and you want to share that thing, you can share that thing, even if it's not flooding you with high arousal emotion. Now that is a very small step, I realize, but in the aggregate, this stuff does matter, because these algorithms, as powerful as they are, they are taking their behavioral cues from us.
Osim što ćemo izvršiti pritisak da se društvene mreže promijene, čekati i nadati se da će se promijeniti, postoji još nešto što svi možemo učiniti. Možemo stvoriti ili sugerirati alternative za otuđene tinejdžere. Ako vidite nešto kreativno ili duboko, podijelite to na svojim profilima, čak i ako niste preplavljeni intenzivnim osjećajima. Jasno mi je da je to mali korak, ali ako to svi učinimo, onda to postaje važno, jer bez obzira na moć algoritama, oni se oblikuju prema našem ponašanju.
So let me leave you with this. You know, a few years ago it was really fashionable to say that the internet was a revolutionary tool that was going to bring us all together. It's now more fashionable to say that the internet is a huge, irredeemable dumpster fire. Neither caricature is really true. We know the internet is just too vast and complex to be all good or all bad. And the danger with these ways of thinking, whether it's the utopian view that the internet will inevitably save us or the dystopian view that it will inevitably destroy us, either way, we're letting ourselves off the hook. There is nothing inevitable about our future. The internet is made of people. People make decisions at social media companies. People make hashtags trend or not trend. People make societies progress or regress. When we internalize that fact, we can stop waiting for some inevitable future to arrive and actually get to work now.
Dozvolite mi da kažem još ovo. Prije nekoliko godina bilo je zaista moderno reći da je internet revolucionaran alat koji će nas sve povezati. Sad je moderno govoriti da je internet jedan golemi kontejner pun smeća koje gori. Nijedna od ovih karikatura nije točna. Svi znamo da je internet prevelik i prekompleksan da bi bio "dobar" ili "loš". Ovakav način razmišljanja je opasan, bilo da je utopijski, da će nas internet spasiti, ili distopijski, da će nas neminovno uništiti, u svakom slučaju - gubimo kontrolu. Ništa nije sigurno o našoj budućnosti. Internet čine ljudi. Ljudi donose odluke u tvrtkama koje posjeduju društvene mreže. Ljudi odlučuju koji će hashtagovi biti popularni. Ljudi čine da društva napreduju ili se vraćaju unatrag. Kad to shvatimo, možemo prestati čekati nekakvu neizvjesnu budućnost da se ostvari i početi stvarati sada.
You know, we've all been taught that the arc of the moral universe is long but that it bends toward justice. Maybe. Maybe it will. But that has always been an aspiration. It is not a guarantee. The arc doesn't bend itself. It's not bent inevitably by some mysterious force. The real truth, which is scarier and also more liberating, is that we bend it.
Uče nas da je luk moralnog svemira dug, ali da se ipak savija prema pravdi. Možda. Možda je to uistinu tako. Ali to je samo aspiracija, nije garancija. Luk se neće saviti sam. Neće ga saviti neka nevidljiva sila. Stvarna istina, koja je strašnija, ali i oslobađajuća, jest da ga mi savijamo.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)