The revolutionary power of diverse thought | Elif Shafak | Day 51 of 100 Days 100 Thoughts

Hello Folks !!

Diverse thoughts, the term itself a beauty on its own. The diverse thoughts have huge power and they can be harvested if we nurture them in each and every one of us. This TED Talk by Elif Shafak is a wonderful and much-needed talk. Watch this talk by Elif Shafak on the topic “The revolutionary power of diverse thought” in the link below.

Welcome Back !!!

In this talk, Elif Shafak talks about one incident with an American scholar which sparked how people see things in binary. And then also discusses how things change over a period of time and how history always repeats itself. These are the points we know very well, these are the scary facts we come in terms and these are the signs we can see from a mile ahead, yet it makes me think what are we doing for that?

Another incident she mentions is she visits the primary schools in Turkey to promote her children’s book and she sees a lot of hope, promise, and wide imagination. Girls and boys have no inhibition in voicing out their opinion, but when she visits high school she sees a lot of conditioned people trying to give conservative responses.

This is the key point I wanted to discuss in this post. None of the kids were nationalists, none of the kids are restricted by thoughts fed to them, none of the kids had any inhibition to voice out their thoughts. But as time progressed the society fed its conservative thoughts to the kids, society fed the thought that everything is black and white. One person’s black is another person’s white which is also not communicated. By clearly marking the lines people are pushed to the extremes and not allowed to explore. Once you clearly mark the lines and not letting the person explore then the future generation won’t evolve. There will be no diversity in thoughts. The next generation just replicates the previously conditioned society and it goes nowhere. This not only restricts your thoughts but stops you from empathising with the other side. When you can’t empathise with anyone who doesn’t accept your ideology, then as a society it is a dangerous thing.

You need to let diverse thoughts come in and explore more. Only by having diverse thoughts you can form your opinion rather than a conditioned opinion. This can help you understand that there is no Black and white in the universe, it is a spectrum of colours and you have a choice. And you can empathise with people who prefer different colours than you, and understand their choice.