The Personal Responsibility Vortex: Bret Weinstein at TEDxTheEvergreenStateCollege

Bret Weinstein is an evolutionary theorist and member of the faculty at The Evergreen State College. In "Natural Selection and the Evolution of Climate Change" he considers how the choices individuals make trying to do right, can often be ineffective or even harmful.

On April 16, 2012, speakers and attendees gathered at TEDxTheEvergreenStateCollege: Hello Climate Change to reflect on the ability -- and responsibility -- of formal and informal education to inspire and empower action in this era of climate change.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

[CloudStrife]

This is what a progressive is supposed to sound like. Reasoning instead of name calling and threats will get you a lot farther in the long term. It's too bad the MSM insists on calling anarchists, "progressives". The two aren't the same.

[Manny-yj]

Honestly, the SJW debacle at Evergreen may have been a blessing in disguise. Not only did it expose that school for the joke that it is for allowing such nonsense to take place, but it also catapulted Bret into the limelight some and dramatically increased his exposure. Given how truly brilliant and reasonable the man is, even relative to other university professors, we should all be thankful in a way that the debacle took place. Bret is so much bigger and better than Evergreen, and now the world knows. The twerps who tried to get him fired will never be known as anything more than the little twerps they are. Props to Bret and his wife, Heather, for rising above and becoming something bigger and better.

[ordinaryman]

This talk is so underrated
It should have had at least a few millions of views in these 8 years

[tiaanfourie]

Listen to the Dark Horse Podcast... Bret Weinstein and his wife regularly discuss recent issues, phenomena, feedback thereof, and solutions. A must listen.

[kristinmudra]

It's so strange to hear the nervousness in his voice here considering what a confident speaker he has become.

[michaelsage]

Most important podcast on the internet for current conditions.

Dark horse podcast.

Gratitude

[IndigoHazelnut]

What a gift it is to have Bret Weinstein so eloquently vocal about issues and possible solutions.

[brianjoyce]

Watching this again, Go Bret!! And he certainly has with Heather. UNITY2020, get on board!!

[strickter]

I like Bret, he makes for a great liberal. I think I disagree with the founder part, in such that, its not that they missed and couldn't foresee the growth of technology and more so that they already saw the mechanism that was in place that created a balance. What Bret is essentially preaching here is that morality is missing from the system.

He points out that you have Market and Government and that they should be isolated from each other and that there is a third system needed. Morality fits that gap and to the founders religion was the vehicle in which morality was delivered. Religion in that time was the guiding hand that instructed you to do the right thing. Its what told you to help your neighbor, ration yourself, not take more than what was needed, etc. I think what the founders didn't expect was the severe decline in that third balancing factor.

This forces people to discover morality on their own and I would argue that this has failed largely. Evidence of this is in the growth of government. Morality is a system that depends entirely on the individual. You must make the decision of right or wrong, it can not be dictated to you. I'll use healthcare as an example. If you think that your personal health and the health of the people close to you is the governments responsibility what you are doing is removing responsibility from yourself and asking others to subsidize that responsibility. The moral thing to do would be to take care of your health, and help those close to you as much as you can. In a church, if someone is sick or in a bind the community gets together to help raise money to lift these people back up. If a family member were to lose their home the moral thing would be to help them with lodging, finances, and provide emotional support.

When you put this role on government it introduces regulations which cause instability in the market. New rules can require complete restructurings in companies which can costs vasts amounts of moneys and jobs. This probably has the greatest effect for the people at the bottom of pyramid. Lower pay, less job availability, more hours of work needed. This then leads to a drop in an individuals charitable ability. Longer hours leaves less time to help other. Less expendable income means less to donate to those in need. And job loss means that instead of helping they're the ones that need help. Inevitably shrinking the moral system even further and driving even greater need to increase government to take care of the rising amount of those in need. And thus the spiral occurs.

I think California is a prime example of this(with Venezuela probably being the best) . The homeless rate there is soaring. They are quickly eliminating a middle class and growing their upper and lower classes. This should be a concern as the likely hood of jumping from lower to upper class is obviously low. In other words, their lower class is trapped.

To tie this back around to climate, advances in environment friendly technology and renewable resources is costly as its a relatively new industry. This means the products that might best help protect the environment are only readily available to the middle and upper classes. This makes its rather difficult for those that want to help, want to donate and want to protect the future of the planet difficult. Its easy for the rich to by that EV but the comparable alternative for the poor might be to walk or bike to work assuming its even feasible given the distance, weather and time available to do so.

The important thing here being, that Morality is essential and implies a level of individual responsibility. Much like how our republic is designed upon three branches that provide checks and balances so does the greater system that sits above it. An imbalance in one branch leads to instability in the others. And in a world in which the religion vehicle has declined we must take a greater step towards instilling proper values in ourselves and our children.

I expect no one to read this :)

[americancitizen]

Now the Evergreen students are trying to get rid of him because they reject the concept of personal responsibility.

[chrisnicholson]

The is basically an argument for using the Coase Theorem to formulate climate policy. Everyone agrees with this framework. The issue is pricing the negative externalities of, say, carbon emissions. This exercise quickly leads to the *real* climate debate that we should be having: estimating the timing of global warming, putting a price tag on the future positive and negative consequences and picking a discount factor to express the NPV of these future impacts.

[adamdonovan]

"Risk Society" by Ulrich Beck. injustice is the result of the separation of Risk and Reward. when a power company creates pollution risk, but the shareholders are not exposed to it, they reap the profit without the risk exposure. it's an interesting lens, but does have it's limitations, like what if the risks are unknown?

[disitinerant]

No surprise that business-as-usual interests would oppose this message.

[armchairtin-kicker]

A perfect example of a positive feed-back loop is the indemnification of the vaccine cartel, the stripping of product liability, all the while mandating/coercing the administration of ineffective and unsafe products to a younger and younger group of individuals, individuals for which the products provide no discernable benefit, only harm.

[acetate]

I came here because I thought I was going to get a TED talk about how awesome racism is. I'm confused.

[Bragison]

"the individual in the market, by spending more for more responsible products, is reducing their influence on the system and causing the system to evolve more quickly in the direction of ruthlessness"
How can that possibly be the case? I don't think he explained that at all.

[formulaic]

Never seen Brett so nervous before... Even during the Evergreen struggle sessions!

[dannyclaydenchambers]

Thank goodness we have people like Bret.

[schmoborama]

Probably the most important Ted talk I've ever seen.

[TheMilwaukeeProtocol]

It's weird seeing him nervous here but totally relaxed on Rogan. Is it the venue, increased years of speaking to the media, or both?