[MUSIC] Hi, I'm an astronaut. I'm an American. I'm a fighter pilot. I'm a career military officer. I'm a middle-aged, baby boomer, white male, legal resident of the state of Arizona, and I want to talk to you today about labels. The labels others place on us and those labels we place on ourselves. Now, we live in a very complicated world. Our planet contains suffering, injustice, crime, terrorism, natural disasters, war, and a long of list of other woes. But the world also is characterized by love, charity, forgiveness, interconnectedness, creativity, innovation, and many, many other wonderful things. The complexity of the world, the enormity of its problems, and the sheer terror that can be inspired by world events are so great that there is a strong propensity to construct the simpler framework or worldview. But it tends to incorporate all those factors into something more understandable and palatable. In this process of simplification, we tend to lump situations people, groups, and nations into categories and place them in the cubby holes of our constructed framework. One of the biggest drivers that leads us to construct a simplified framework is fear. But the mindset of the only thing we have to fear is fear itself is as true now as it was when Franklin Delano Roosevelt first spoke those words in his inaugural address in 1933. Anything that divides us makes us weaker, less secure and less productive, and fear may be the most destructive and divisive force on the planet. Now fear is a natural response to real danger, but beyond its evolutionary importance, fear can also be counterproductive to peace and security. Fear drives us to label an entire group of people rather than dealing with the mirrored complex factors that can lead people and groups to do things that we don't understand. By placing people and groups into cozy halls, we build walls and boundaries that separate us from others. We separate ourselves from the value that others can bring to a situation, we separate ourselves from the potential source of the solution. To the promise that we all face. Amazingly we even acknowledge and become the labels that others put on us or worst yet we label ourselves. And put ourselves into groups. There's nothing wrong with being identified with a particular group as long as we do not let that define who we are, who we will speak with and who we will work with. Labels confine us, they box us in. They are like barriers to collaboration and cooperation. Even right now while I'm speaking, some of you may be trying to put me in a box. Is he liberal? Is he conservative? Is he religious? What religion is he? What denomination is he? Is he like me? Are we in the same group? Can I trust his words because we're cut from the same cloth? Now this mind-set is really when the pieces of the puzzle that we allow onto our playing board and limits the possible solutions to our share problems. Simplified frameworks and the labels they correct can re-defaults, empathize with the history and expectations of others. Such a framework listed hatred, racism and discrimination, violence, and war It can lead us to ignore anything of merit on the other side's opinion. Or even just attempt to discredit that merit. If I acknowledge merit in their position, they will gain and therefore, I will lose. The building of a simplified framework leads to simplified world view or nation view, or community view, or society view, or even self view. And it has lead to sharp divisions in the global community and within many countries and communities. It replaces empathy and understanding with generalizations and egotism. And it represents an impediments to global cooperation an individual cooperation perhaps a main impediments. This mindset is probably in many political systems and a certainly probably in the present US political discord. At least a two dimensional mindset in us versus them mentality Fear dictates that we establish a group to flee from or lash out against. In the two dimensional us versus them world we've constructed, we are quick to find a them to assign blame but the world doesn't flitch, trust me I've seen it from space. We don't live in a two dimensional world. To start solving real problems, we need to approach them in a context of the real world, with all its multidimensional complexity. The orbital perspective attempts to communicate the reality of the world that we live in and declares that we do not have to accept that the suffering and the conflict on our planet as inescapable. This perspective acknowledges that if we can learn to work together We can overcome the challenges facing our world, but putting this perspective into practice requires us to first acknowledge the framework that we have constructed through which we view the world. Which it forms our opinions about events, situations and people. We must attempt to employ elevated empathy and seek a deeper understanding of the situation before making critical decisions or sending out inflammatory tweets. Acknowledging the personal framework that we've each constructed through which we view the world is a necessary first step before we can begin to solve our shared challenges. We have proven again and again that in the long run, we are most successful when we replace fear with calculated reason, patience, compassion, and a well-thought out plan that includes consideration of the long term implications of any decision or course of action. We are most successful When we overcome fear and have the courage to shake off the false and limited mindset of separations. Step into to the real world with all it's interconnected complexity and uncertainty. We are most successful when we have the wisdom, patience and humility to realize that in order to succeed and progress we need to incorporate the ethics of. Everyone, not just those that we've deemed worthy to be members of our tribe. So in this next video, this next lesson which will be the last video of this course, we will put all of these ideas and concepts into the context of our hundred year journey through space on the Earth Rise 2068 mission, so see you next lesson.
