TED Talks Daily - Why the world needs more builders — and less "us vs. them" | Daniel Lubetzky

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

We're programmed to think every issue is binary: "us vs. them." But Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of KIND Snacks, says the real enemy isn't a person but a mindset. He introduces a new initiative that aims to bring together "builders" from around the world to replace extremism with practical problem-solving — and shows how you can join the movement.

TED Audio Collective world divided. But social entrepreneur Daniel Lubezki says the enemy is actually a mindset, a mindset where we're too quick to think of issues as binary. He proposes a different way. And after the talk, stick around for my one-on-one conversation with Daniel, recorded at TED 2024. We'll dive into this talk right after a break. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs,

I pictured my own home sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do, and with the extra income, I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. and Sonia Sinek from Creative Destruction Lab as they ask bold questions like, why is Canada lagging in AI adoption and how to catch up? Don't get left behind. Listen to Disruptors, the innovation era,

and stay ahead of the game in this fast-changing world. Follow Disruptors on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. And now, our TED Talk of the day. Everywhere we look today, we see the same picture, a world divided into us versus them, left versus right, black versus white, Jew versus Muslim, victim versus oppressor. We're being programmed to think that every issue is binary, and our communities are increasingly infected by hate and dehumanization. It's easy to nod, but the problem is far more entrenched than any of us realize.

Everyone here clearly sees the problem on the other side, but none of us see it happening to us. By blaming the other for all of society's ills, we abdicate our responsibility for fixing the problem and the opportunity to work together on actual solutions. I don't want to undermine the importance of standing up for what you believe in. I'm a confused Mexican Jew with a lot of Latin Yiddish passion.

But we're going to be more effective in advancing our causes once we frame things differently. Instead of us versus them, what if we understood it as all of us versus extremism? The overwhelming majority on all sides of almost any issue who are not hateful, who do not deal in absolutes, who recognize the dignity of all, versus those who fall prey to extremist thinking

that hijacks the agenda and our lives along with it. Note that the enemy here is a mindset, not a person. Once we're able to unlock this insight, we can expand our horizons and replace eternal conflict with practical problem solving. But the challenge today is that those with extremist views, every day wake up in the morning and they think, how can I advance my cause? While moderates wake up in the morning and they think, what can I have for breakfast? We don't vote in the primaries. We don't post passionate manifestos advocating nuanced thinking.

We don't run for office. And that's how extremism hijacks the agenda. A person with extremist views that takes action to divide, demolish, and diminish is a destroyer. A human being who takes action to unite, to create, and to bring light to the world is a builder. Common sense problem solvers need to get up in the morning, have their breakfast, it's the most important meal of the day, and then start building. And this is what I've been working on,

creating a community and a network of builders. Some of you may know me from founding and building Kind, the healthy snack company. Few people know that Kind grew out of an idea that I had to use free market forces to foster cooperation among neighbors striving to coexist in conflict regions. PeaceWorks brought together Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians and Turks

to trade with one another, to craft a line of Mediterranean spreads, shattering stereotypes, cementing economic relationships and helping them discover each other's humanity. You may have heard of the iconically succinct brand we launched, Moshe Pupik and Ali Mishmunkim's world-famous gourmet foods. I know you're like, man, this guy's a marketing genius with such an easy-to-remember brand. But the trauma from that experience

is what made it just stick to kind next time around. PeaceWorks was my first attempt to transform us versus them into a constructive framework to help neighbors, former enemies, advance common goals. A couple decades ago, I recognized the need to build a human infrastructure to overcome extremism in the Middle East, and I started partnering with Israelis and Palestinians to build such an infrastructure. And more recently, I started

noticing similar patterns and needs in the United States. But we all now know that this is a global epidemic, which requires a global response. So we've launched a platform to elevate builders as an aspirational identity across the world, and to equip citizens with the mindset and toolkit to seize back the agenda. We have thus far assembled over 250 extraordinary leaders across a broad spectrum of politics that are committed to help us build this network. And over 3 million citizens have joined us by either pledging to become builders in their own communities and start chapters in the neighborhoods,

or by joining us on social media. We have several initiatives to counteract the leading forces contributing to toxic polarization. Let me share a couple of examples. The way we absorb social media and cable news, we tend to be fed all that we want to hear rather than what we may need to hear. And we only see the worst from the other side, leading us to assume evil intent on the part of the other. To counteract that, builders' media produces content thus far in English, Arabic, and Hebrew,

not so much to tell you what to think, but to strengthen how you think, to equip you with tools to navigate differences and absorb information in a way that will actually help you solve problems. Another initiative we've launched is called Citizen Solutions, to replace political stagnation with constructive common sense proposals from engaged citizens. Our secret is that there's enormous hidden consensus on most of the seemingly intractable issues, but we wouldn't know it because forces of division that profit from that division try to distort those issues. Take gun rights and gun safety in Tennessee, for example. Citizen Solutions brought together a group of local citizens

with diverse viewpoints, from a firearms instructor to an inner-city school teacher. And it gave them tools and methodologies to learn the art of negotiation. After six months, the Tennessee 11, as they began to call themselves, had forged eight proposals, which were then presented to 30,000 Tennesseans to vote on. And five of those proposals received majority consensus. They're now in the process of propelling their elected representatives to follow the will of the people. The challenges are real.

Hyper-partisan politicians spend more time sowing division to raise money than trying to address their constituents' needs. Cronism, special interests, political parties that care more about amassing power and scoring points against the other than actually solving problems. The challenges are real. That means we're only going to be successful if we all recognize the responsibility

to transcend hyper-partisan affiliations and start supporting builders and the reforms necessary to help strengthen those voices, regardless of partisan affiliations. Most of us are uniters, not dividers. And because politics tends to be a dirty game of division, we just stay away from it. One of the hardest things for builders is to stay in the game,

to develop a thick skin while retaining our values. When others are dividing, for us to unite. When others are self-righteous, for us to be self-reflective. When others demonize, for us to remain compassionate and stay focused on the goal at hand, which is to solve problems for our communities. To do so, we need to bring a builder's mindset to all conversations by relying on curiosity, compassion, creativity, and courage,

the four Cs of a builder's mindset. And we understand that there's no chance we're going to change things in a community, let alone across the world, with a centralized model. We need a distributable model where everyone, everyone here is empowered to bring change to their own communities. And so we're in the process of creating a builder's toolkit to help people take that into their communities, into their high schools, into their universities, into their workplaces, into their houses of faith, to try to help them replace rigid ideologies

with critical thinking and critical listening, to provide best practices for how to replace cancel culture with respectful, hearty debate. Not just because we want to get along, not just because we want the best ideas to emanate, but because we need to mold builders of social enterprises, of bridges, of jobs, of actual societal change to become protagonists in our own lives

rather than products of recrimination and mutual resentment. By now I've told you a lot, but I haven't told you why I do what I do. My father was a Holocaust survivor, and ever since I was a kid, I promised myself to try to prevent what happened to him from happening again to other human beings. One of the most difficult stories he shared with me

involved his superintendent. When he was 11 years old, in Lithuania and the war had started the super approached him and said are you hungry my dad said yes come I'll show you where you can get some food he walked him down to the ground floor

he pointed to a dead body and said there that's a Jew you can take a bite of him. A few months later, the German paramilitary forces rounded up all of the Jewish families. The super pointed them out one by one. They eliminated 16 Jewish families. My family was the last one standing.

They brought them to the ground floor. And then the super whispered something into the ear of the head of the paramilitary forces. And they left. And the super turned to my grandfather and said, Mr. Lubetzky, I told them to leave, and I spared you because you were always kind to me. You always looked at my eyes, you shook my hand, you treated me with respect, but leave now before I change my mind. That night, they packed a couple bags and they went to the Kovno ghetto,

and eventually they were all sent to a concentration camp. But they survived. Because at the greatest moment of darkness, a man who had so much darkness in him saw a little bit of light. And the thought that I stand here today, that I exist because of that act of humanity that a person that was not a very good human being haunts me, but it also arms me with hope and conviction that every human being can turn away from hate. Some of you may disagree,

and that does not worry me. What worries me is that many of you will agree, but will do nothing about it. If builders do not step up, destroyers will step in, and some of the worst chapters that we've witnessed in history will repeat themselves. But if all of us recognize the power that every one of us has, every single day, with every human interaction,

to look at each other in the eyes, to look at each other in the eyes, to give each other the blessing of kindness and the assumption of positive intent, not only are we going to break the shackles that hate has placed on humanity, we're going to prevail in writing one of the most beautiful chapters

that have ever been built in human history. We are going to get there because when society is falling apart, the only way out is for all of us, all of us to build together. Thank you. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs, I pictured my own home sitting empty.

Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do, and with the extra income, I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca slash host. Now I'm so excited to share my interview with Daniel with you. We sat down to flesh out some of the ideas he brought up and the policy ideas worth getting behind. You mentioned in your talk that we are battling a mindset and not a specific individual. What does that mean? It means that extremist thinking is not an immutable characteristic

of any human being. Anybody can evolve from that to be a flexible thinker. Now, it's not easy. Once people have extremist, rigid ideologies, it's extraordinarily hard to get them to be more open-minded, but it's not impossible. Now, there's techniques for how to do it. We can talk about those techniques, but every human being can ultimately become a builder. Is there a certain kind of education or kind of parenting or kind of ecosystem that we grow up in that leads to more rigidity versus more openness and flexibility in our thinking? our beliefs rather than informs our beliefs, like social media, the algorithms just feed you what you want to hear rather than what you should hear. And a lot of the recent ideologies, they're very rigid. They're like, this is right, this is wrong, this is binary, rather than like having the curiosity to question. I think society will be much better off if we teach our kids to be critical

thinkers and questioners. And when I was raising my young kids, I learned some techniques where you're holding a glass right here and you tell your children, isn't this elephant really cool? And they're like, no, that's a glass. I'm like, no, no, no, it's an elephant because it's hard. I can touch it.

It says, no, but it does. And you force your children, even from an early age, to have fun with you playing around but learn how to question what you're saying and to not think that everything you say is right and not think that anything any authority says is right and to learn how to think critically through every step of their upbringing. And I assume this is the approach to the builder's media content. Well, a little bit more than that. More than holding up a glass. a little bit more than a three-year-old telling him about the glass at the end of the day. But yes, one of the lines I shared is that we're trying not to tell you what to think,

but how to strengthen your ability to think. How do you process information that you might disagree with? And a couple simple exercises are, if you're used to listening to these particular sources, whatever they may be from the left, from the right, from the center, try to expand your diet of sources. When you get nutrition, if you only eat one type of nutrients, it's really bad for you. Anything in moderation is important. And so similarly, don't just go to one source of news.

Don't go to just one ideology. Look for other ideologies for you to understand. And then if you're going to uncomfortable places, try to find something that you can actually agree on, that it might be a fair point. And by the inverse, if there's a traditional source that you trust, try to review that with a little bit more skepticism. Like try to think, what are they saying that is not fair to the other side? Only if you understand the other side, you have a chance at actually solving problems. What do you feel have been the primary challenges to convincing folks about this framework? So you're essentially saying in the talk, right, that a way to look at the world is not left versus right or progressive versus conservative, but this all of us versus extremism.

The biggest weakness to what I do is what my wife spotted last night when I practiced this on her. And I said, what do you think? She's like, yeah, yeah. I'm like, come on, Michelle, what did you think? He's like, no, you did okay, but I don't know that people that are not extremists are actually going to do something about it. Like moderates wake up in the morning and they think, what can I have for breakfast? They don't think, how can I advance the cause of common sense problem-solving moderation? Only extremist views, people with extremist views that are passionate do that. And so long as that happens, they will hijack the agenda.

But where Michelle, my loving wife, is wrong is I don't need to convince 100% of moderates to join the fight. All I need is 5% or 10%. If 5% to 10% of your listeners, which I think is absolutely within our grasp, just increase their activism, we will transform society. We will seize back the agenda. We will break the shackles of extremism. So it's not an excuse for anybody that's listening today to say, well, because somebody else is not going to do it, I might as well not do it. Every one of you matters. And if you take the lead, we will make a change.

How do you advance an agenda in, at least in the United States, it's a two-party system, right? So how do you get over the obvious problems of extremists getting nominated on either side? This is a very complex question that is going to require a ton of work on so many fronts. There has to be legislation that changes. We need to do more open primary systems, more rank choice voting, more changes of this gerrymandering stupidity that's just giving power to this duopoly. But first and foremost,

it starts with citizens focusing on transcending their hyper-partisan affiliations and looking for who are actually people that are here to solve my problems rather than to incite hate. Because you see the coverage from the media. You see the people that are getting so much more attention are the ones that are like showing division.

And the people that are actually driving change barely get any attention. That has to change with citizens demanding from their media and media being responsible and spotlighting people that are actually driving for solutions and us voting for them regardless of the political party. In the long term, personally, I think there needs to be a third party. What do you think is necessary then to reinvigorate folks who are not participating in the system at all because they are feeling like it's futile or they're feeling helpless? I think partly it's demonstrating that they do have the power because once they taste that, then they recognize not just their responsibility to exert their power, but then they see a way to do it. So Citizen Solutions is a model that I think has enormous

potential, and we're going to make it available to people in any city or state for them to then Citizens Solutions is a model that I think has enormous potential. And we're going to make it available to people in any city or state for them to then use that methodology for engaged citizens to demand that their political representatives follow the issues or reproductive rights, if people care about immigration, show them how they cannot just creating a toolkit for the people to be able to break the deadlock that special interests or hyper-partisan politicians place on preventing some of the solutions. What do you say to listeners who are persuaded and want to get involved? Join us.

I think the easiest thing right now is to just go to the Builders website and give us your contact info. Go to Starts With Us us your contact info. Go to Starts With Us in the United States. Go to my social media handle at Daniel Lubetzky on any of your preferred social media or all. If you sign up, you'll get all the information as it comes through. All right. You heard him, Daniel Lubetzky. Thank you so much. That was social entrepreneur Daniel Lububezki at TED 2024.

If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Autumn Thompson, and Alejandra Salazar. It was mixed by Christopher Fazey-Bogan.

Additional support from Emma Taubner, Daniela Balarezo, and Will Hennessey. I'm Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. Looking for a fun challenge to share with your friends and family? Today, TED now has games designed to keep your mind sharp while having fun. Visit ted.com slash games to explore the joy and wonder of TED Games.