The only way to “build a wall” without destroying the U.S. | Jared Diamond | Big Think

The only way to “build a wall” without destroying the U.S.
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In times of crisis, we often 'build a wall' that separates the part of our lives that feels out of control from the parts that are more in control.

This is healthy and can help us maintain perspective.

Nations, too, build walls during times of crisis. But those walls can't be designed to isolate ourselves from others; rather, they need to delineate what is working and what isn't.
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JARED DIAMOND

Jared Diamond, a noted polymath, is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among his many awards are the U.S. National Medal of Science, Japan's Cosmos Prize, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of the international best-selling books Guns, Germs, and Steel; Collapse; Why Is Sex Fun?; The World Until Yesterday; and The Third Chimpanzee, and is the presenter of TV documentary series based on three of those books.
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TRANSCRIPT:

JARED DIAMOND: In a crisis, both a personal crisis and a national crisis, there's the issue that's called building the wall, which like many things, can be healthy or unhealthy. When we have a personal crisis, for example, a marital crisis or a career crisis, often we feel everything in my life has gone wrong. I'm overwhelmed. My life is in a total mess. And when you feel that way, there's no way that you can attack the problem, because you feel that everything is messed up. You have to build a wall, and you have to delineate -- within the wall is the thing: Your life has gone wrong. You messed up your marriage. But outside that wall, your relationships with your friends and your job, they're perfectly OK.

Similarly with nations -- nations, when they encounter a crisis, they have to build a wall -- in a good sense. They have to recognize what is not working and recognize what is working. The United States has problems today. But there are wonderful things about the United States. We have a long history of democracy. We have a federal system, which is a great system of government. We profit from this wonderful geography. We've been able to use immigration throughout our history creatively, more creatively than any other country that I know of. And so, outside the wall are all these things that are working well in the United States. Inside the wall, we've got problems. We should not feel overwhelmed with a sense that everything is messed up with the United States. No, it's not that messed up.

That's a good form of isolation, building a wall. A bad form of building a wall is cutting yourself off from the outside world. That's no longer possible for the United States or any other first world country, because in this globalized world, they, out there, can do things. They can reach us. They can send immigrants. They can send terrorists, unintentionally, diseases spreading from tropical countries can reach temperate zone countries. In the 1920s and 1930s, the United States had an isolationist foreign policy. And that meant postponing the day of reckoning when we had to deal with Germany and Japan. In short, isolation can be harmful. But isolation is also necessary, isolating what works from what doesn't work.
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[McLKeith]

Diamond didn't explain how to build a wall without destroying America. It would have been a mean feat since this video is only 2:30 long.

[importantname]

hard to find the title of the clip in the clip

[theKurtAnderson]

Great message
Terrible, misleading title

[alexbc]

People thought he was going to talk about a literal wall.. lol.

[moroteseoinage]

Build the emotional wall! Keep the world out of your life, thoughts, and heart.

[tomkelly]

The only wall we need is between church and state

[kevinmacdonald]

Other countries have walls to protect from invaders and yet when we try an build one, people have a problem.

[chevchelios]

Big think should be renamed to Big stink

[gordonsirek]

Change the name of this channel to Small Brains Thinking Big

[remoreacts]

Pointless and misleading video. Didnt even talk about the wall.

[Russel_at_whatever]

Awesome! now can you pay for the countries you bombed illegally, and the slave labor of 400 years + compounded interest! "No"?!, alright, thanks for telling us about the beautiful walls and openness!

[atypical_moto]

How is building a literal wall to keep out disease, low IQ, hatred for America, drugs etc considered a bad wall? That's a good wall. More importantly, a policy that allows us to immediately send them to the other side of said wall, is imperative to the US isolating the problem and fixing it.

[scottsmith]

you know I bet none of you that are complaining have you ever been to the separation barrier between Israel and the West Bank. I have even been inside the barrier in between the two wire fences. I have had Israeli Defense Force guns pointed at me. Never been treated so politely by troops trying to figure out who we were. The wall has kept terrorist from sneaking across that border for how many years now? It's an amazing success story and it shows what we may need to do

[migfed]

Very interesting he never mentioned slavery or the stolen land to native Americans. So it's just Disneys version of America's history.

[Drew_McTygue]

There's already a completed wall along the entire mexican border. Its border with Guatemalamala

[Yowzoe]

A lot of these Big Think vids have interesting-sounding titles and feature fascinating people. But the videos are actually dissapointingly boring. Get it together, Big Think. Learn how to edit.

[markkravitz]

👌 Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. A dude by the name of @evenkingsfall (his insta) always stresses you have to THINK BIG to WIN BIG! Always keep that attitude! Looking forward to your next video ✌️

[Tychoxi]

1:16 yeah slavery, very "creative" immigration

[fntime]

This man is on the cutting edge of the 1960's.
He probably goes over big on Campus where no one has discernment
or discrimination. Tired old solutions and tired old attitude.
If he is the 'answer' I'd hate to know the question. :)

[suncat]

Come on Big Think, stop misleading people with ridiculous, misleading titles. This was a rambling, illogical, waste of time.