When we think about prejudice and bias, we tend to think about stupid and evil people doing stupid and evil things. And this idea is nicely summarized by the British critic William Hazlitt, who wrote, "Prejudice is the child of ignorance." I want to try to convince you here that this is mistaken. I want to try to convince you that prejudice and bias are natural, they're often rational, and they're often even moral, and I think that once we understand this, we're in a better position to make sense of them when they go wrong, when they have horrible consequences, and we're in a better position to know what to do when this happens.
Kad razmišljamo o predrasudama i pristranostima, obično nam na pamet padnu glupi, zli ljudi koji rade glupe i zlonamjerne stvari. Ovu je ideju lijepo sažeo britanski kritičar William Hazlitt koji je napisao: "Predrasuda je plod neznanja." Ja vas želim uvjeriti da je ova ideja pogrešna. Želim vas uvjeriti da su predrasude i pristranosti prirodne, često racionalne, pa čak i moralne. Kad to jednom shvatimo, bolje ćemo ih razumjeti kada pođu krivo, kada počnu imati užasne posljedice i znat ćemo se bolje snaći kada se to dogodi.
So, start with stereotypes. You look at me, you know my name, you know certain facts about me, and you could make certain judgments. You could make guesses about my ethnicity, my political affiliation, my religious beliefs. And the thing is, these judgments tend to be accurate. We're very good at this sort of thing. And we're very good at this sort of thing because our ability to stereotype people is not some sort of arbitrary quirk of the mind, but rather it's a specific instance of a more general process, which is that we have experience with things and people in the world that fall into categories, and we can use our experience to make generalizations about novel instances of these categories. So everybody here has a lot of experience with chairs and apples and dogs, and based on this, you could see unfamiliar examples and you could guess, you could sit on the chair, you could eat the apple, the dog will bark. Now we might be wrong. The chair could collapse if you sit on it, the apple might be poison, the dog might not bark, and in fact, this is my dog Tessie, who doesn't bark. But for the most part, we're good at this. For the most part, we make good guesses both in the social domain and the non-social domain, and if we weren't able to do so, if we weren't able to make guesses about new instances that we encounter, we wouldn't survive. And in fact, Hazlitt later on in his wonderful essay concedes this. He writes, "Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way my across the room; nor know how to conduct myself in any circumstances, nor what to feel in any relation of life." Or take bias. Now sometimes, we break the world up into us versus them, into in-group versus out-group, and sometimes when we do this, we know we're doing something wrong, and we're kind of ashamed of it. But other times we're proud of it. We openly acknowledge it. And my favorite example of this is a question that came from the audience in a Republican debate prior to the last election.
Krenimo sa stereotipima. Pogledate me, znate mi ime, znate određene stvari o meni i možete donositi određene zaključke. Možete nagađati moju etničku pripadnost, političku opredijeljenost, vjerska uvjerenja. Ovi su zaključci često i ispravni. Dobri smo u takvim stvarima, a to je zbog toga što naša sposobnost stereotipiziranja ljudi nije neki proizvoljni hir uma, već specifičan primjer jednog općenitijeg procesa, a to su naša iskustva sa stvarima i ljudima u svijetu koja spadaju u kategorije i svoje iskustvo možemo koristiti za generaliziranje o novim primjerima ovih kategorija. Svi mi imamo puno iskustva sa stolicama, jabukama i psima i na temelju toga, možete vidjeti nepoznate primjere i možete pretpostavljati, možete sjesti na stolicu, jesti jabuku, pas će zalajati. Mogli bismo biti u krivu. Stolica bi se mogla urušiti pod nama, jabuka može biti otrovna, pas ne mora zalajati. U biti, ovo je Tessie, moj pas koji ne laje. Ali u većini slučajeva ovo nam ide. Uglavnom radimo dobre pretpostavke i na društvenom i na nedruštvenom području, a da nismo u stanju stvarati pretpostavke o novim primjerima na koje nailazimo, ne bismo preživjeli. U biti, Hazlitt se kasnije u svom krasnom eseju složio s ovim. Napisao je: "Bez pomoći predrasuda i običaja ne bih se mogao snaći u sobi, niti se znati ponašati u bilo kakvim okolnostima, niti znati kako se osjećati u bilo kakvom životnom odnosu. Promotrimo sad pristranosti. Nekada svijet podijelimo na "nas" i "njih", jedna grupa protiv druge i nekada kada to činimo, znamo da radimo nešto krivo i sramimo se toga. Ali nekada se i ponosimo time. Otvoreno to priznajemo. Moj omiljeni primjer ovoga odnosi se na pitanje iz publike na republikanskoj debati prije prošlih izbora.
(Video) Anderson Cooper: Gets to your question, the question in the hall, on foreign aid? Yes, ma'am.
(Video) Anderson Cooper: Odgovara na pitanja, pitanje u dvorani, za inozemnu pomoć? Da, gospođo?
Woman: The American people are suffering in our country right now. Why do we continue to send foreign aid to other countries when we need all the help we can get for ourselves?
Žena: Amerikanci trenutno pate u našoj zemlji. Zašto uporno šaljemo inozemnu pomoć drugim državama kad i mi sami trebamo svu moguću pomoć?
AC: Governor Perry, what about that?
AC: Guverneru Perry, zašto?
(Applause) Rick Perry: Absolutely, I think it's—
(Pljesak) Rick Perry: Apsolutno, mislim da je —
Paul Bloom: Each of the people onstage agreed with the premise of her question, which is as Americans, we should care more about Americans than about other people. And in fact, in general, people are often swayed by feelings of solidarity, loyalty, pride, patriotism, towards their country or towards their ethnic group. Regardless of your politics, many people feel proud to be American, and they favor Americans over other countries. Residents of other countries feel the same about their nation, and we feel the same about our ethnicities.
Paul Bloom: Svatko od ljudi na pozornici složio se s premisom njenog pitanja, a to je da kao Amerikanci trebamo više brinuti o nama nego o drugima. Općenito, ljude često ponesu osjećaji solidarnosti, vjernosti, ponosa, domoljublja prema vlastitoj zemlji ili etničkoj skupini. Bez obzira na vaša politička uvjerenja, mnogi su ponosni što su Amerikanci i preferiraju Ameriku. Stanovnici drugih država isto to misle o svojoj naciji, a ista je stvar i s nacionalnostima.
Now some of you may reject this. Some of you may be so cosmopolitan that you think that ethnicity and nationality should hold no moral sway. But even you sophisticates accept that there should be some pull towards the in-group in the domain of friends and family, of people you're close to, and so even you make a distinction between us versus them.
Neki od vas se možda ne slažu. Neki su možda toliki kozmopoliti da misle da etnička pripadnost i nacionalnost nemaju utjecaja na moral. Ali čak i vi sofisticirani prihvaćate da bi trebalo biti nekog povlačenja prema vlastitoj grupi u domeni prijatelja i obitelji, prema bliskim ljudima, čak i vi pravite razlike između vas i njih.
Now, this distinction is natural enough and often moral enough, but it can go awry, and this was part of the research of the great social psychologist Henri Tajfel. Tajfel was born in Poland in 1919. He left to go to university in France, because as a Jew, he couldn't go to university in Poland, and then he enlisted in the French military in World War II. He was captured and ended up in a prisoner of war camp, and it was a terrifying time for him, because if it was discovered that he was a Jew, he could have been moved to a concentration camp, where he most likely would not have survived. And in fact, when the war ended and he was released, most of his friends and family were dead. He got involved in different pursuits. He helped out the war orphans. But he had a long-lasting interest in the science of prejudice, and so when a prestigious British scholarship on stereotypes opened up, he applied for it, and he won it, and then he began this amazing career. And what started his career is an insight that the way most people were thinking about the Holocaust was wrong. Many people, most people at the time, viewed the Holocaust as sort of representing some tragic flaw on the part of the Germans, some genetic taint, some authoritarian personality. And Tajfel rejected this. Tajfel said what we see in the Holocaust is just an exaggeration of normal psychological processes that exist in every one of us. And to explore this, he did a series of classic studies with British adolescents. And in one of his studies, what he did was he asked the British adolescents all sorts of questions, and then based on their answers, he said, "I've looked at your answers, and based on the answers, I have determined that you are either" — he told half of them — "a Kandinsky lover, you love the work of Kandinsky, or a Klee lover, you love the work of Klee." It was entirely bogus. Their answers had nothing to do with Kandinsky or Klee. They probably hadn't heard of the artists. He just arbitrarily divided them up. But what he found was, these categories mattered, so when he later gave the subjects money, they would prefer to give the money to members of their own group than members of the other group. Worse, they were actually most interested in establishing a difference between their group and other groups, so they would give up money for their own group if by doing so they could give the other group even less.
Ova je distinkcija prirodna i često i moralna, ali može poći krivo i upravo je to bio dio istraživanja velikog socijalnog psihologa Henrija Tajfela. Tajfel je rođen u Poljskoj 1919. Studirao je u Francuskoj jer mu nije bilo dozvoljeno studirati u Poljskoj jer je bio Židov. Tada se pridružio francuskoj vojsci u Drugom svjetskom ratu. Zarobljen je i završio je kao zatočenik u ratnom kampu i bilo je to užasno razdoblje za njega jer da se otkrilo da je Židov, premjestili bi ga u koncentracijski logor, a tamo vrlo vjerojatno ne bi preživio. Kad je rat završio, a on oslobođen, većina njegovih prijatelja i obitelji bila je mrtva. Uključio se u različite aktivnosti. Pomagao je ratnoj siročadi, no imao je trajni interes za znanost o predrasudama. Kad je otvoren natječaj za prestižnu britansku stipendiju o stereotipima, prijavio se i dobio ju je, i započeo svoju sjajnu karijeru. Njegovu je karijeru pokrenula spoznaja da većina ljudi o Holokaustu razmišlja na pogrešan način. Mnogi ljudi, većina njih u to vrijeme, na Holokaust je gledalo kao na nešto što predstavlja tragičnu manu Nijemaca, neku genetičku mrlju, neku autoritarnu osobnost. Tajfel je to odbacio. Rekao je da on Holokaust vidi kao tek preuveličavanje normalnih psiholoških procesa koji postoje u svima nama. Kako bi to istražio, proveo je serije klasičnih studija na britanskim adolescentima. U jednoj od njegovih studija pitao ih je svakvakva pitanja i na osnovu njihovih odgovora, rekao: "Proučio sam tvoje odgovore i na osnovu njih utvrdio sam da si ti ili" -- polovici je rekao -- "obožavatelj Kandinskyja, voliš njegov rad ili obožavatelj Kleeja i njegovog rada." Bilo je to posve lažno. Njihovi odgovori nisu imali nikakve veze s njima. Vjerojatno nikad nisu ni čuli za njih. On ih je samo proizvoljno podijelio. No otkrio je da su ove kategorije važne, pa kad je kasnije ispitanicima davao novac, radije su davali taj novac članovima vlastite grupe nego članovima one druge. Čak su bili voljni uspostavljati razliku između svoje i drugih grupa, pa bi odbijali novac za vlastitu grupu ako bi na taj način druga grupa dobila još manje.
This bias seems to show up very early. So my colleague and wife, Karen Wynn, at Yale has done a series of studies with babies where she exposes babies to puppets, and the puppets have certain food preferences. So one of the puppets might like green beans. The other puppet might like graham crackers. They test the babies own food preferences, and babies typically prefer the graham crackers. But the question is, does this matter to babies in how they treat the puppets? And it matters a lot. They tend to prefer the puppet who has the same food tastes that they have, and worse, they actually prefer puppets who punish the puppet with the different food taste. (Laughter)
Ova se pristranost vrlo rano pojavljuje. Moja kolegica i supruga Karen Wynn na Yaleu odradila je serije studija s bebama gdje ih je izložila igračkama koje su imale određene hranidbene preferencije. Jedna je možda voljela mahune. Druga petit-kekse. Testirali su bebine hranidbene preferencije i one obično preferiraju petit-kekse. Pitanje je, ima li to veze s načinom na koji se bebe odnose prema igračkama? Da, i to velike. Preferirale su igračke s istim ukusom u hrani, pa i gore, preferirale su igračke koje bi kažnjavale one s drugačijim ukusom. (Smijeh)
We see this sort of in-group, out-group psychology all the time. We see it in political clashes within groups with different ideologies. We see it in its extreme in cases of war, where the out-group isn't merely given less, but dehumanized, as in the Nazi perspective of Jews as vermin or lice, or the American perspective of Japanese as rats.
Ovu psihologiju pripadnosti i nepripadnosti grupi stalno viđamo. U političkim sukobima unutar grupa s različitim ideologijama. U ekstremnim slučajevima ratova u kojima se onima koji su izvan grupe ne daje samo manje nego ih se i dehumanizira, kao u nacističkom viđenju Židova kao štetočine ili ušiju ili američko viđenje Japanaca kao štakora.
Stereotypes can also go awry. So often they're rational and useful, but sometimes they're irrational, they give the wrong answers, and other times they lead to plainly immoral consequences. And the case that's been most studied is the case of race. There was a fascinating study prior to the 2008 election where social psychologists looked at the extent to which the candidates were associated with America, as in an unconscious association with the American flag. And in one of their studies they compared Obama and McCain, and they found McCain is thought of as more American than Obama, and to some extent, people aren't that surprised by hearing that. McCain is a celebrated war hero, and many people would explicitly say he has more of an American story than Obama. But they also compared Obama to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and they found that Blair was also thought of as more American than Obama, even though subjects explicitly understood that he's not American at all. But they were responding, of course, to the color of his skin.
I stereotipi mogu poći krivo. Često su racionalni i korisni, ali nekad su iracionalni, daju nam krive odgovore, a nekada jednostavno vode do nemoralnih posljedica. Po tom pitanju najčešće se proučava rasa. U fascinantnoj studiji koja je prethodila izborima 2008. socijalni psiholozi proučavali su razine do kojih kandidati asociraju na Ameriku, baš kao što nam to nesvjesno čini američka zastava. U jednoj od studija uspoređivali su Obamu i McCaina i otkrili da McCaina smatraju "američkijim" od Obame i do određene razine, ljude to ne iznenađuje. McCain je slavljeni ratni heroj i mnogi bi izravno rekli da je njegova priča "američkija" od Obamine. No uspoređivali su Obamu i s britanskim premijerom Tonyjem Blairom i otkrili da i Blaira smatraju "američkijim" od Obame, čak i unatoč tome što su ispitanici bili svjesni činjenice da on uopće nije Amerikanac. Naravno, njihovi su odgovori bili uvjetovani njegovom bojom kože.
These stereotypes and biases have real-world consequences, both subtle and very important. In one recent study, researchers put ads on eBay for the sale of baseball cards. Some of them were held by white hands, others by black hands. They were the same baseball cards. The ones held by black hands got substantially smaller bids than the ones held by white hands. In research done at Stanford, psychologists explored the case of people sentenced for the murder of a white person. It turns out, holding everything else constant, you are considerably more likely to be executed if you look like the man on the right than the man on the left, and this is in large part because the man on the right looks more prototypically black, more prototypically African-American, and this apparently influences people's decisions over what to do about him.
Ovi stereotipi i pristranosti imaju posljedice u stvarnom svijetu, i suptilne i važne. U jednoj novijoj studiji istraživači su postavili reklame na eBay za prodaju baseball karata. Neke od karata držale su bjelačke ruke, a druge crnačke. Radilo se o istim kartama. One koje su držale crnačke ruke licitirane su za značajno manje novca od onih koje su držale bjelačke ruke. U istraživanju na Stanfordu psiholozi su proučavali slučajeve ljudi osuđene za ubojstvo bijelca. Ispada da, ukoliko je sve ostalo isto, prije će vas pogubiti ukoliko izgledate poput čovjeka na desnoj strani nego ovoga na lijevoj. Razlog za to je što čovjek na desnoj strani izgleda kao prototipni crnac, odnosno kao Afroamerikanac, a to utječe na naše odlučivanje o tome što ćemo s njim.
So now that we know about this, how do we combat it? And there are different avenues. One avenue is to appeal to people's emotional responses, to appeal to people's empathy, and we often do that through stories. So if you are a liberal parent and you want to encourage your children to believe in the merits of nontraditional families, you might give them a book like this. ["Heather Has Two Mommies"] If you are conservative and have a different attitude, you might give them a book like this. (Laughter) ["Help! Mom! There Are Liberals under My Bed!"] But in general, stories can turn anonymous strangers into people who matter, and the idea that we care about people when we focus on them as individuals is an idea which has shown up across history. So Stalin apocryphally said, "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic," and Mother Teresa said, "If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will." Psychologists have explored this. For instance, in one study, people were given a list of facts about a crisis, and it was seen how much they would donate to solve this crisis, and another group was given no facts at all but they were told of an individual and given a name and given a face, and it turns out that they gave far more. None of this I think is a secret to the people who are engaged in charity work. People don't tend to deluge people with facts and statistics. Rather, you show them faces, you show them people. It's possible that by extending our sympathies to an individual, they can spread to the group that the individual belongs to.
Sada kad to znamo, kako se boriti s tim? Imamo različite načine. Jedan od njih nalaže da se pozivamo na emocionalne reakcije ljudi, na njihovu empatiju, a to često činimo kroz priče. Ukoliko ste liberalan roditelj i želite da vaša djeca vjeruju u vrijednosti nekonvencionalnih obitelji, dat ćete im npr. ovo: ["Heather ima dvije mame".] Ako ste konzervativni i imate drukčije stavove, dat ćete im ovo: (Smijeh) ["Upomoć! Liberalci pod krevetom!"] Uglavnom, priče mogu pretvoriti anonimne strance u ljude koji su bitni, a ideja da marimo za ljude kad se na njih usredotočimo kao na pojedince ideja je koja se dokazala tijekom povijesti. Staljin je navodno izjavio: „Smrt jednog čovjeka je tragedija, smrt milijuna je statistika." Majka Terezija rekla je "Pogledam li mnoštvo, nikad se neću pokrenuti. Pogledam li pojedinca, hoću!" Psiholozi su ovo istraživali. Npr., u jednoj studiji ljudima je dan popis činjenica o krizi i pratilo se koliko bi donirali da riješe krizu, a drugoj grupi nisu dane nikakve činjenice, već im je ispričana priča o pojedincu, dano im je ime i lice i ispada da su oni donirali puno više. Ne mislim da je ovo tajna za ljude uključene u dobrotvorni rad. Oni ne zamaraju ljude činjenicama i statistikama. Pokazujete im lica, pokazujete im ljude. Moguće je da se povećanjem naših simpatija prema pojedincu, one mogu proširiti na cijelu grupu kojoj pojedinac pripada.
This is Harriet Beecher Stowe. The story, perhaps apocryphal, is that President Lincoln invited her to the White House in the middle of the Civil War and said to her, "So you're the little lady who started this great war." And he was talking about "Uncle Tom's Cabin." "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is not a great book of philosophy or of theology or perhaps not even literature, but it does a great job of getting people to put themselves in the shoes of people they wouldn't otherwise be in the shoes of, put themselves in the shoes of slaves. And that could well have been a catalyst for great social change.
Ovo je Harriet Beecher Stowe. Priča, možda lažna, kaže da ju je predsjednik Lincoln pozvao u Bijelu kuću usred Građanskog rata i rekao joj: "Ti si djevojka koja je započela ovaj ogroman rat." Govorio je o "Čiča Tominoj kolibi." "Čiča Tomina koliba" nije neka sjajna filozofska ili teološka knjige, a čak ni književna, ali sjajno omogućava ljudima da se zamisle u koži onih ljudi u čijoj koži ne bi inače bili: u koži robova. To je možda i bio katalizator za veliku društvenu promjenu.
More recently, looking at America in the last several decades, there's some reason to believe that shows like "The Cosby Show" radically changed American attitudes towards African-Americans, while shows like "Will and Grace" and "Modern Family" changed American attitudes towards gay men and women. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the major catalyst in America for moral change has been a situation comedy.
Nedavno, gledajući Ameriku u zadnjih nekoliko desetljeća, imamo razloga vjerovati da su serije poput "Cosby showa" radikalno promijenili stavove Amerikanaca prema Afroamerikancima, a serije poput "Will i Grace" i "Moderne obitelji" promijenili su stavove prema homoseksualcima. Mislim da ne pretjerujem kad kažem da su ogroman katalizator američke promjene moralnosti bili sitcomi.
But it's not all emotions, and I want to end by appealing to the power of reason. At some point in his wonderful book "The Better Angels of Our Nature," Steven Pinker says, the Old Testament says love thy neighbor, and the New Testament says love thy enemy, but I don't love either one of them, not really, but I don't want to kill them. I know I have obligations to them, but my moral feelings to them, my moral beliefs about how I should behave towards them, aren't grounded in love. What they're grounded in is the understanding of human rights, a belief that their life is as valuable to them as my life is to me, and to support this, he tells a story by the great philosopher Adam Smith, and I want to tell this story too, though I'm going to modify it a little bit for modern times.
Ali nije sve na emocijama i želim završiti apelom na moć razuma. U određenom trenutku u svojoj sjajnoj knjizi "Bolji anđeli naše prirode" Steven Plinker tvrdi da Stari Zavjet kaže "voli susjeda svoga", a Novi "voli neprijatelja svoga", ali zapravo ne volim nijednog, ali ne želim ih ni ubiti. Znam da imam obveze prema njima, ali moji moralni osjećaji, moralna uvjerenja o tome kako bih se trebao odnositi prema njima nisu utemeljeni na ljubavi. Utemeljeni su na razumijevanju ljudskih prava uvjerenja da je njihov život jednako vrijedan njima kao meni moj, a kako bi podržao ovu tezu, priča priču značajnog filozofa Adama Smitha, a i ja je želim ispričati, iako ću je malo modificirati za moderno vrijeme.
So Adam Smith starts by asking you to imagine the death of thousands of people, and imagine that the thousands of people are in a country you are not familiar with. It could be China or India or a country in Africa. And Smith says, how would you respond? And you would say, well that's too bad, and you'd go on to the rest of your life. If you were to open up The New York Times online or something, and discover this, and in fact this happens to us all the time, we go about our lives. But imagine instead, Smith says, you were to learn that tomorrow you were to have your little finger chopped off. Smith says, that would matter a lot. You would not sleep that night wondering about that. So this raises the question: Would you sacrifice thousands of lives to save your little finger? Now answer this in the privacy of your own head, but Smith says, absolutely not, what a horrid thought. And so this raises the question, and so, as Smith puts it, "When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble?" And Smith's answer is, "It is reason, principle, conscience. [This] calls to us, with a voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions, that we are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it."
Adam Smith počinje tako što od vas traži da zamislite smrt tisuća ljudi i zamislite da su te tisuće ljudi u zemlji koja vam nije poznata. Mogla bi to biti Kina ili Indija ili neka zemlja u Africi. Smith pita, kako biste reagirali? Vi biste rekli da je to baš šsteta, i nastavili sa svojim životima. Ukoliko to pročitamo online na stranici New York Timesa i otkrijemo to, a to nam se zapravo i događa cijelo vrijeme. nastavljamo sa svojim životima. Ali zamislite ovo, kaže Smith, saznate li da će vam sutra odsjeći mali prst. Smith kaže da bi vam to bilo jako bitno. Ne biste spavali tu noć razmišljajući o tome. Postavlja se pitanje: Biste li žrtvovali tisuće života da spasite svoj mali prst? Sami sebi odgovorite na ovo pitanje, ali Smith kaže: Nikako, kakva užasna pomisao. Postavlja se još jedno pitanje, kako to Smith kaže: "Kad su naši pasivni osjećaji gotovo uvijek tako nepošteni i sebični, kako to da bi naši aktivni principi često trebali biti velikodušni i plemeniti? Smithov odgovor glasi: "Razum, principi, savjest. Oni nam govore, glasom sposobnim zadiviti naše najoholije strasti, da smo mi tek pojedinac u gomili, koji ni po čemu nije bolji od svih drugih."
And this last part is what is often described as the principle of impartiality. And this principle of impartiality manifests itself in all of the world's religions, in all of the different versions of the golden rule, and in all of the world's moral philosophies, which differ in many ways but share the presupposition that we should judge morality from sort of an impartial point of view.
Ovaj zadnji dio često se opisuje kao princip nepristranosti. Ovaj princip nepristranosti manifestira se u svim svjetskim religijama, u svim različitim verzijama zlatnog pravila i u svim drugim svjetskim moralnim filozofijama koje se u mnogome razlikuju, ali dijele istu pretpostavku da moralnost moramo ocjenjivati s istog nepristranog gledišta.
The best articulation of this view is actually, for me, it's not from a theologian or from a philosopher, but from Humphrey Bogart at the end of "Casablanca." So, spoiler alert, he's telling his lover that they have to separate for the more general good, and he says to her, and I won't do the accent, but he says to her, "It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."
Najbolja artikulacija ovog gledišta za mene nije ona teologova ili filozofova, već ona Humphreya Bogarta na kraju "Casablance". Otkrit ću vam detalje filma, govori svojoj ljubavnici da se moraju rastati za opće dobro i kaže joj, neću oponašati naglasak, ali kaže joj: "Ne treba puno da vidiš da problemi troje malih ljudi nisu ništa veći od brežuljka u ovom ludom svijetu."
Our reason could cause us to override our passions. Our reason could motivate us to extend our empathy, could motivate us to write a book like "Uncle Tom's Cabin," or read a book like "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and our reason can motivate us to create customs and taboos and laws that will constrain us from acting upon our impulses when, as rational beings, we feel we should be constrained. This is what a constitution is. A constitution is something which was set up in the past that applies now in the present, and what it says is, no matter how much we might to reelect a popular president for a third term, no matter how much white Americans might choose to feel that they want to reinstate the institution of slavery, we can't. We have bound ourselves.
Zbog razuma bismo mogli prijeći preko strasti. Razum bi nas mogao navesti da proširimo svoju empatiju, da pišemo knjige poput "Čiča Tomine kolibe" ili da pročitamo tu knjigu. Razum nas također može motivirati na stvaranje običaja i tabua i zakona koji će nas ograničavati u slijeđenju impulsa kad, kao razumna bića, osjećamo da nas treba ograničiti. To je Ustav. Ustav je nešto što je postavljeno u prošlosti, a može se primijeniti na sadašnjost, a ono što kaže jest, bez obzira na to koliko bismo željeli izabrati popularnog predsjednika i za treći mandat, ili na to koliko bi bijelih Amerikanaca moglo poželjeti obnoviti institut ropstva, ne možemo to učiniti. Ograničili smo se.
And we bind ourselves in other ways as well. We know that when it comes to choosing somebody for a job, for an award, we are strongly biased by their race, we are biased by their gender, we are biased by how attractive they are, and sometimes we might say, "Well fine, that's the way it should be." But other times we say, "This is wrong." And so to combat this, we don't just try harder, but rather what we do is we set up situations where these other sources of information can't bias us, which is why many orchestras audition musicians behind screens, so the only information they have is the information they believe should matter. I think prejudice and bias illustrate a fundamental duality of human nature. We have gut feelings, instincts, emotions, and they affect our judgments and our actions for good and for evil, but we are also capable of rational deliberation and intelligent planning, and we can use these to, in some cases, accelerate and nourish our emotions, and in other cases staunch them. And it's in this way that reason helps us create a better world.
Ograničavamo se i na druge načine. Znamo da kada biramo nekoga za posao, nagradu, snažno smo pristrani po pitanju njihove rase, spola, po stupnju privlačnosti i nekada kažemo: "Dobro, to tako mora biti." Ali nekada kažemo: "Ovo je pogrešno." Kako bismo se s time borili, mi ne samo da se više trudimo nego stvaramo situacije u kojima nas ovi drugi izvori informacija ne mogu navesti na pristranost, a zbog toga mnogi orkestri održavaju audicije iza zastora, pa je jedina informacija koju imaju ona za koju smatraju da treba biti bitna. Smatram da predrasude i pristranosti pokazuju osnovnu dualnost ljudske prirode. Imamo intuiciju, instinkte, emocije i oni uvjetuju naše prosudbe i akcije u svrhu dobra ili zla, ali sposobni smo i racionalno promišljati i inteligentno planirati, pa i to u nekim situacijama možemo koristiti kako bismo pospješili i njegovali svoje emocije a u drugima ih očvrsnuli. Na taj nam način razum pomaže stvoriti bolji svijet.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)