I want to introduce you to an amazing woman. Her name is Davinia. Davinia was born in Jamaica,emigrated to the US at the age of 18,and now lives just outside of Washington,DC. She's not a high-powered political staffer,nor a lobbyist. She'd probably tell you she's quite unremarkable,but she's having the most remarkable impact. What's incredible about Davinia is that she's willing to spend time every single week focused on people who are not her: people not her in her neighborhood,her state,nor even in her country -- people she'd likely never meet.
Davinia's impact started a few years ago when she reached out to all of her friends on Facebook,and asked them to donate their pennies so she could fund girls' education. She wasn't expecting a huge response,but 700,000 pennies later,she's now sent over 120 girls to school. When we spoke last week,she told me she's become a little infamous at the local bank every time she rocks up with a shopping cart full of pennies.
Now -- Davinia is not alone. Far from it. She's part of a growing movement. And there's a name for people like Davinia: global citizens. A global citizen is someone who self-identifies first and foremost not as a member of a state,a tribe or a nation,but as a member of the human race,and someone who is prepared to act on that belief,to tackle our world's greatest challenges. Our work is focused on finding,supporting and activating global citizens. They exist in every country and among every demographic.
I want to make the case to you today that the world's future depends on global citizens. I'm convinced that if we had more global citizens active in our world,then every single one of the major challenges we face -- from poverty,climate change,gender inequality -- these issues become solvable. They are ultimately global issues,and they can ultimately only be solved by global citizens demanding global solutions from their leaders.
Now,some people's immediate reaction to this idea is that it's either a bit utopian or even threatening. So I'd like to share with you a little of my story today,how I ended up here,how it connects with Daviniaand,hopefully,with you.
Growing up in Melbourne,Australia,I was one of those seriously irritating little kids that never,ever stopped asking,'Why?' You might have been one yourself. I used to ask my mum the most annoying questions. I'd ask her questions like,'Mum,why I can't I dress up and play with puppets all day?' 'Why do you want fries with that?' 'What is a shrimp,and why do we have to keep throwing them on the barbie?'
(Laughter)
'And mum -- this haircut. Why?'
(Laughter)
The worst haircut,I think. Still terrible.
As a 'why' kid,I thought I could change the world,and it was impossible to convince me otherwise. And when I was 12 and in my first year of high school,I started raising money for communities in the developing world. We were a really enthusiastic group of kids,and we raised more money than any other school in Australia. And so I was awarded the chance to go to the Philippines to learn more. It was 1998. We were taken into a slum in the outskirts of Manila. It was there I became friends with Sonny Boy,who lived on what was literally a pile of steaming garbage. 'Smoky Mountain' was what they called it. But don't let the romance of that name fool you,because it was nothing more than a rancid landfill that kids like Sonny Boy spent hours rummaging through every single day to find something,anything of value.
That night with Sonny Boy and his family changed my life forever,because when it came time to go to sleep,we simply laid down on this concrete slab the size of half my bedroom with myself,Sonny Boy,and the rest of his family,seven of us in this long line,with the smell of rubbish all around us and cockroaches crawling all around. And I didn't sleep a wink,but I lay awake thinking to myself,'Why should anyone have to live like this when I have so much? Why should Sonny Boy's ability to live out his dreams be determined by where he's born,or what Warren Buffett called 'the ovarian lottery?'' I just didn't get it,and I needed to understand why.
Now,I only later came to understand that the poverty I'd seen in the Philippines was the result of decisions made or not made,man-made,by a succession of colonial powers and corrupt governments who had anything but the interests of Sonny Boy at heart. Sure,they didn't create Smoky Mountain,but they may as well have. And if we're to try to help kids like Sonny Boy,it wouldn't work just to try to send him a few dollars or to try to clean up the garbage dump on which he lived,because the core of the problem lay elsewhere. And as I worked on community development projects over the coming years trying to help build schools,train teachers,and tackle HIV and AIDS,I came to see that community development should be driven by communities themselves,and that although charity isnecessary,it's not sufficient. We need to confront these challenges on a global scale and in a systemic way. And the best thing I could do is try to mobilize a large group of citizens back home to insist that our leaders engage in that systemic change.
That's why,a few years later,I joined with a group of college friends in bringing the Make Poverty History campaign to Australia. We had this dream of staging this small concert around the time of the G20 with local Aussie artists,and it suddenly exploded one day when we got a phone call from Bono,the Edge and Pearl Jam,who all agreed to headline our concert. I got a little bit excited that day,as you can see.
(Laughter)
But to our amazement,the Australian government heard our collective voices,and they agreed to double investment into global health and development -- an additional 6.2 billion dollars. It felt like --
(Applause)
It felt like this incredible validation. By rallying citizens together,we helped persuade our government to do the unthinkable,and act to fix a problem miles outside of our borders.
But here's the thing: it didn't last. See,there was a change in government,and six years later,all that new money disappeared. What did we learn? We learned that one-off spikes are not enough. We needed a sustainable movement,not one that is susceptible to the fluctuating moods of a politician or the hint of an economic downturn. And it needed to happen everywhere;otherwise,every individual government would have this built-in excuse mechanism that they couldn't possibly carry the burden of global action alone.
And so this is what we embarked upon. And as we embarked upon this challenge,we asked ourselves,how do we gain enough pressure and build a broad enough army to win these fights for the long term?We could only think of one way. We needed to somehow turn that short-term excitement of people involved with the Make Poverty History campaign into long-term passion. It had to be part of their identity. So in 2012,we cofounded an organization that had exactly that as its goal. And there was only one name for it: Global Citizen.
But this is not about any one organization. This is about citizens taking action. And research data tells us that of the total population who even care about global issues,only 18 percent have done anything about it. It's not that people don't want to act. It's often that they don't know how to take action,or that they believe that their actions will have no effect. So we had to somehow recruit and activate millions of citizens in dozens of countries to put pressure on their leaders to behave altruistically.
And as we did so,we discovered something really thrilling,that when you make global citizenship your mission,you suddenly find yourself with some extraordinary allies. See,extreme poverty isn't the only issue that's fundamentally global. So,too,is climate change,human rights,gender equality,even conflict. We found ourselves shoulder to shoulder with people who are passionate about targeting all these interrelated issues.
But how did we actually go about recruiting and engaging those global citizens? Well,we used the universal language: music. We launched the Global Citizen Festival in the heart of New York City in Central Park,and we persuaded some of the world's biggest artists to participate. We made sure that these festivals coincided with the UN General Assembly meeting,so that leaders who need to hear our voices couldn't possible ignore them.
But there was a twist: you couldn't buy a ticket. You had to earn it. You had to take action on behalf of a global cause,and only once you'd done that could you earn enough points to qualify. Activism is the currency. I had no interest in citizenship purely as some sort of feel-good thing. For me,citizenship means you have to act,and that's what we required. And amazingly,it worked. Last year,more than 155,000 citizens in the New Yorkarea alone earned enough points to qualify. Globally,we've now signed up citizens in over 150 countries around the world. And last year,we signed up more than 100,000 new members each and every week of the whole year.
See,we don't need to create global citizens from nothing. We're already everywhere. We just need to be organized and motivated to start acting. And this is where I believe we can learn a lot from Davinia,who started taking action as a global citizen back in 2012. Here's what she did. It wasn't rocket science. She started writing letters,emailing politicians' offices. She volunteered her time in her local community. That's when she got active on social media and started to collect pennies -- a lot of pennies.
Now,maybe that doesn't sound like a lot to you. How will that achieve anything? Well,it achieved a lot because she wasn't alone. Her actions,alongside 142,000 other global citizens',led the US government to double their investment into global partnership for education. And here's Dr. Raj Shah,the head of USAID,making that announcement. See,when thousands of global citizens find inspiration from each other,it's amazing to see their collective power. Global citizens like Davinia helped persuade the World Bank to boost their investment into water and sanitation. Here's the Bank's president Jim Kim announcing 15 billion dollars onstage at Global Citizen,and Prime Minister Modi of India affirmed his commitment to put a toilet in every household and school across India by 2019. Global citizens encouraged by the late-night host Stephen Colbert launched a Twitter invasion on Norway. Erna Solberg,the country's Prime Minister,got the message,committing to double investment into girls' education. Global citizens together with Rotarians called on the Canadian,UK,and Australian governments to boost their investment into polio eradication. They got together and committed 665 million dollars.
But despite all of this momentum,we face some huge challenges. See,you might be thinking to yourself,how can we possibly persuade world leaders to sustain a focus on global issues? Indeed,the powerful American politician Tip O'Neill once said,'All politics is local.' That's what always got politicians elected: to seek,gain and hold onto power through the pursuit of local or at very best national interests.
I experienced this for the first time when I was 21 years old. I took a meeting with a then-Australian Foreign Minister who shall remain nameless --
[Alexander Downer]
(Laughter)
And behind closed doors,I shared with him my passion to end extreme poverty. I said,'Minister -- Australia has this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help achieve the Millennium Development Goals. We can do this.' And he paused,looked down on me with cold,dismissive eyes,and he said,'Hugh,no one gives a funk about foreign aid.' Except he didn't use the word 'funk.' He went on. He said we need to look after our own backyard first.
This is,I believe,outdated,even dangerous thinking. Or as my late grandfather would say,complete BS. Parochialism offers this false dichotomy because it pits the poor in one country against the poor in another. It pretends we can isolate ourselves and our nations from one another. The whole world is our backyard,and we ignore it at our peril. See,look what happened when we ignored Rwanda,when we ignore Syria,when we ignore climate change. Political leaders ought to give a 'funk' because the impact of climate change and extreme poverty comes right to our shore.
Now,global citizens -- they understand this. We live in a time that favors the global citizen,in an age where every single voice can be heard. See,do you remember when the Millennium Development Goals were signed back in the year 2000? The most we could do in those days was fire off a letter and wait for the next election. There was no social media. Today,billions of citizens have more tools,more access to information,more capacity to influence than ever before. Both the problems and the tools to solve them are right before us. The world has changed,and those of us who look beyond our borders are on the right side of history.
So where are we? So we run this amazing festival,we've scored some big policy wins,and citizens are signing up all over the world. But have we achieved our mission? No. We have such a long way to go.
14:43But this is the opportunity that I see. The concept of global citizenship,self-evident in its logic but until now impractical in many ways,has coincided with this particular moment in which we are privileged to live. We,as global citizens,now have a unique opportunity to accelerate large-scale positive change around the world. So in the months and years ahead,global citizens will hold world leaders accountable to ensure that the new Global Goals for Sustainable Development are tracked and implemented. Global citizens will partner with the world'sleading NGOs to end diseases like polio and malaria. Global citizens will sign up in every corner of this globe,increasing the frequency,quality and impact of their actions. These dreams are within reach. Imagine an army of millions growing into tens of millions,connected,informed,engaged and unwilling to take no for an answer.
Over all these years,I've tried to reconnect with Sonny Boy. Sadly,I've been unable to. We met long before social media,and his address has now been relocated by the authorities,as often happens with slums. I'd love to sit down with him,wherever he is,and share with him how much the time I spent on Smoky Mountain inspired me. Thanks to him and so many others,I came to understand the importance of being part of a movement of people -- the kids willing to look up from their screens and out to the world,the global citizens. Global citizens who stand together,who ask the question 'Why?,' who reject the naysayers,and embrace the amazing possibilities of the world we share.
I'm a global citizen.
Are you?
Thank you.
Today I'm going to talk to you about the problem of other minds. And the problem I'm going to talk about is not the familiar one from philosophy,which is,"How can we know whether other people have minds?" That is,maybe you have a mind,and everyone else is just a really convincing robot. So that's a problem in philosophy,but for today's purposes I'm going to assume that many people in this audience have a mind,and that I don't have to worry about this. There is a second problem that is maybe even more familiar to us as parents and teachers and spouses and novelists,which is,"Why is it so hard to know what somebody else wants or believes?" Or perhaps,more relevantly,"Why is it so hard to change what somebody else wants or believes?" I think novelists put this best. Like Philip Roth,who said,"And yet,what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people? So ill equipped are we all,to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims."
So as a teacher and as a spouse,this is,of course,a problem I confront every day. But as a scientist,I'm interested in a different problem of other minds,and that is the one I'm going to introduce to you today. And that problem is,"How is it so easy to know other minds?" So to start with an illustration,you need almost no information,one snapshot of a stranger,to guess what this woman is thinking,or what this man is. And put another way,the crux of the problem is the machine that we use for thinking about other minds,our brain,is made up of pieces,brain cells,that we share with all other animals,with monkeys and mice and even sea slugs. And yet,you put them together in a particular network,and what you get is the capacity to write Romeo and Juliet. Or to say,as Alan Greenspan did,"I know you think you understand what you thought I said,but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."(Laughter)
So,the job of my field of cognitive neuroscience is to stand with these ideas,one in each hand. And to try to understand how you can put together simple units,simple messages over space and time,in a network,and get this amazing human capacity to think about minds. So I'm going to tell you three things about this today. Obviously the whole project here is huge. And I'm going to tell you just our first few steps about the discovery of a special brain region for thinking about other people's thoughts. Some observations on the slow development of this system as we learn how to do this difficult job. And then finally,to show that some of the differences between people,in how we judge others,can be explained by differences in this brain system. So first,the first thing I want to tell you is that there is a brain region in the human brain,in your brains,whose job it is to think about other people's thoughts. This is a picture of it. It's called the Right Temporo-Parietal Junction. It's above and behind your right ear. And this is the brain region you used when you saw the pictures I showed you,or when you read Romeo and Juliet or when you tried to understand Alan Greenspan. And you don't use it for solving any other kinds of logical problems. So this brain region is called the Right TPJ. And this picture shows the average activation in a group of what we call typical human adults. They're MIT undergraduates.(Laughter)
The second thing I want to say about this brain system is that although we human adults are really good at understanding other minds,we weren't always that way. It takes children a long time to break into the system. I'm going to show you a little bit of that long,extended process. The first thing I'm going to show you is a change between age three and five,as kids learn to understand that somebody else can have beliefs that are different from their own. So I'm going to show you a five-year-old who is getting a standard kind of puzzle that we call the false belief task.
Rebecca Saxe(Video): This is the first pirate. His name is Ivan. And you know what pirates really like? Child: What? RS: Pirates really like cheese sandwiches. Child: Cheese? I love cheese! RS: Yeah. So Ivan has this cheese sandwich,and he says,"Yum yum yum yum yum! I really love cheese sandwiches." And Ivan puts his sandwich over here,on top of the pirate chest. And Ivan says,"You know what? I need a drink with my lunch." And so Ivan goes to get a drink. And while Ivan is away the wind comes,and it blows the sandwich down onto the grass. And now,here comes the other pirate. This pirate is called Joshua. And Joshua also really loves cheese sandwiches. So Joshua has a cheese sandwich and he says,"Yum yum yum yum yum! I love cheese sandwiches." And he puts his cheese sandwich over here on top of the pirate chest. Child: So,that one is his. RS: That one is Joshua's. That's right. Child: And then his went on the ground. RS: That's exactly right. Child: So he won't know which one is his. RS: Oh. So now Joshua goes off to get a drink. Ivan comes back and he says,"I want my cheese sandwich." So which one do you think Ivan is going to take? Child: I think he is going to take that one. RS: Yeah,you think he's going to take that one? All right. Let's see. Oh yeah,you were right. He took that one.
So that's a five-year-old who clearly understands that other people can have false beliefs and what the consequences are for their actions. Now I'm going to show you a three-year-old who got the same puzzle. RS: And Ivan says,"I want my cheese sandwich." Which sandwich is he going to take? Do you think he's going to take that one? Let's see what happens. Let's see what he does. Here comes Ivan. And he says,"I want my cheese sandwich." And he takes this one. Uh-oh. Why did he take that one? Child: His was on the grass. So the three-year-old does two things differently. First,he predicts Ivan will take the sandwich that's really his. And second,when he sees Ivan taking the sandwich where he left his,where we would say he's taking that one because he thinks it's his,the three-year-old comes up with another explanation: He's not taking his own sandwich because he doesn't want it,because now it's dirty,on the ground. So that's why he's taking the other sandwich. Now of course,development doesn't end at five. And we can see the continuation of this process of learning to think about other people's thoughts by upping the ante and asking children now,not for an action prediction,but for a moral judgment. So first I'm going to show you the three-year-old again.
RS.: So is Ivan being mean and naughty for taking Joshua's sandwich? Child: Yeah. RS: Should Ivan get in trouble for taking Joshua's sandwich? Child: Yeah. So it's maybe not surprising he thinks it was mean of Ivan to take Joshua's sandwich,since he thinks Ivan only took Joshua's sandwich to avoid having to eat his own dirty sandwich. But now I'm going to show you the five-year-old. Remember the five-year-old completely understood why Ivan took Joshua's sandwich. RS: Was Ivan being mean and naughty for taking Joshua's sandwich? Child: Um,yeah. And so,it is not until age seven that we get what looks more like an adult response. RS: Should Ivan get in trouble for taking Joshua's sandwich? Child: No,because the wind should get in trouble. He says the wind should get in trouble for switching the sandwiches.(Laughter)
And now what we've started to do in my lab is to put children into the brain scanner and ask what's going on in their brain as they develop this ability to think about other people's thoughts. So the first thing is that in children we see this same brain region,the Right TPJ,being used while children are thinking about other people. But it's not quite like the adult brain. So whereas in the adults,as I told you,this brain region is almost completely specialized -- it does almost nothing else except for thinking about other people's thoughts -- in children it's much less so,when they are age five to eight,the age range of the children I just showed you. And actually if we even look at eight to 11-year-olds,getting into early adolescence,they still don't have quite an adult-like brain region. And so,what we can see is that over the course of childhood and even into adolescence,both the cognitive system,our mind's ability to think about other minds,and the brain system that supports it are continuing,slowly,to develop. But of course,as you're probably aware,even in adulthood,people differ from one another in how good they are at thinking of other minds,how often they do it and how accurately. And so what we wanted to know was,could differences among adults in how they think about other people's thoughts be explained in terms of differences in this brain region? So,the first thing that we did is we gave adults a version of the pirate problem that we gave to the kids. And I'm going to give that to you now.
So Grace and her friend are on a tour of a chemical factory,and they take a break for coffee. And Grace's friend asks for some sugar in her coffee. Grace goes to make the coffee and finds by the coffee a pot containing a white powder,which is sugar. But the powder is labeled "Deadly Poison," so Grace thinks that the powder is a deadly poison. And she puts it in her friend's coffee. And her friend drinks the coffee,and is fine. How many people think it was morally permissible for Grace to put the powder in the coffee? Okay. Good.(Laughter)So we ask people,how much should Grace be blamed in this case,which we call a failed attempt to harm? And we can compare that to another case,where everything in the real world is the same. The powder is still sugar,but what's different is what Grace thinks. Now she thinks the powder is sugar. And perhaps unsurprisingly,if Grace thinks the powder is sugar and puts it in her friend's coffee,people say she deserves no blame at all. Whereas if she thinks the powder was poison,even though it's really sugar,now people say she deserves a lot of blame,even though what happened in the real world was exactly the same. And in fact,they say she deserves more blame in this case,the failed attempt to harm,than in another case,which we call an accident. Where Grace thought the powder was sugar,because it was labeled "sugar" and by the coffee machine,but actually the powder was poison. So even though when the powder was poison,the friend drank the coffee and died,people say Grace deserves less blame in that case,when she innocently thought it was sugar,than in the other case,where she thought it was poison and no harm occurred.
People,though,disagree a little bit about exactly how much blame Grace should get in the accident case. Some people think she should deserve more blame,and other people less. And what I'm going to show you is what happened when we look inside the brains of people while they're making that judgment. So what I'm showing you,from left to right,is how much activity there was in this brain region,and from top to bottom,how much blame people said that Grace deserved. And what you can see is,on the left when there was very little activity in this brain region,people paid little attention to her innocent belief and said she deserved a lot of blame for the accident. Whereas on the right,where there was a lot of activity,people paid a lot more attention to her innocent belief,and said she deserved a lot less blame for causing the accident. So that's good,but of course what we'd rather is have a way to interfere with function in this brain region,and see if we could change people's moral judgment. And we do have such a tool. It's called Trans-Cranial Magnetic Stimulation,or TMS. This is a tool that lets us pass a magnetic pulse through somebody's skull,into a small region of their brain,and temporarily disorganize the function of the neurons in that region. So I'm going to show you a demo of this.
First,I'm going to show you that this is a magnetic pulse. I'm going to show you what happens when you put a quarter on the machine. When you hear clicks,we're turning the machine on. So now I'm going to apply that same pulse to my brain,to the part of my brain that controls my hand. So there is no physical force,just a magnetic pulse. Woman(Video): Ready,Rebecca? RS: Yes. Okay,so it causes a small involuntary contraction in my hand by putting a magnetic pulse in my brain. And we can use that same pulse,now applied to the RTPJ,to ask if we can change people's moral judgments. So these are the judgments I showed you before,people's normal moral judgments. And then we can apply TMS to the RTPJ and ask how people's judgments change. And the first thing is,people can still do this task overall. So their judgments of the case when everything was fine remain the same. They say she deserves no blame. But in the case of a failed attempt to harm,where Grace thought that it was poison,although it was really sugar,people now say it was more okay,she deserves less blame for putting the powder in the coffee. And in the case of the accident,where she thought that it was sugar,but it was really poison and so she caused a death,people say that it was less okay,she deserves more blame. So what I've told you today is that people come,actually,especially well equipped to think about other people's thoughts. We have a special brain system that lets us think about what other people are thinking.
This system takes a long time to develop,slowly throughout the course of childhood and into early adolescence. And even in adulthood,differences in this brain region can explain differences among adults in how we think about and judge other people. But I want to give the last word back to the novelists,and to Philip Roth,who ended by saying,"The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living. Getting them wrong and wrong and wrong,and then on careful reconsideration,getting them wrong again." Thank you.(Applause)Chris Anderson: So,I have a question. When you start talking about using magnetic pulses to change people's moral judgments,that sounds alarming.(Laughter)Please tell me that you're not taking phone calls from the Pentagon,say. RS: I'm not. I mean,they're calling,but I'm not taking the call.(Laughter)CA: They really are calling? So then seriously,you must lie awake at night sometimes wondering where this work leads. I mean,you're clearly an incredible human being,but someone could take this knowledge and in some future not-torture chamber,do acts that people here might be worried about. RS: Yeah,we worry about this. So,there's a couple of things to say about TMS.
One is that you can't be TMSed without knowing it. So it's not a surreptitious technology. It's quite hard,actually,to get those very small changes. The changes I showed you are impressive to me because of what they tell us about the function of the brain,but they're small on the scale of the moral judgments that we actually make. And what we changed was not people's moral judgments when they're deciding what to do,when they're making action choices. We changed their ability to judge other people's actions. And so,I think of what I'm doing not so much as studying the defendant in a criminal trial,but studying the jury.
CA: Is your work going to lead to any recommendations in education,to perhaps bring up a generation of kids able to make fairer moral judgments?
RS: That's one of the idealistic hopes. The whole research program here of studying the distinctive parts of the human brain is brand new. Until recently,what we knew about the brain were the things that any other animal's brain could do too,so we could study it in animal models. We knew how brains see,and how they control the body and how they hear and sense. And the whole project of understanding how brains do the uniquely human things -- learn language and abstract concepts,and thinking about other people's thoughts -- that's brand new. And we don't know yet what the implications will be of understanding it.
CA: So I've got one last question. There is this thing called the hard problem of consciousness,that puzzles a lot of people. The notion that you can understand why a brain works,perhaps. But why does anyone have to feel anything? Why does it seem to require these beings who sense things for us to operate? You're a brilliant young neuroscientist. I mean,what chances do you think there are that at some time in your career,someone,you or someone else,is going to come up with some paradigm shift in understanding what seems an impossible problem?
RS: I hope they do. And I think they probably won't.
CA: Why?
RS: It's not called the hard problem of consciousness for nothing.(Laughter)
CA: That's a great answer. Rebecca Saxe,thank you very much. That was fantastic.
So I wanted to tell a storythat really obsessed me when I was writing my new book,and it's a story of something that happened3,000 years ago,when the Kingdom of Israel was in its infancy.And it takes place in an area called the Shephelahin what is now Israel.And the reason the story obsessed me is thatI thought I understood it,and then I went back over itand I realized that I didn't understand it at all.
Ancient Palestine had a -- along its eastern border,there's a mountain range.Still same is true of Israel today.And in the mountain range are all of the ancient citiesof that region,so Jerusalem,Bethlehem,Hebron.And then there's a coastal plainalong the Mediterranean,where Tel Aviv is now.And connecting the mountain range with the coastal plainis an area called the Shephelah,which is a series of valleys and ridges that run east to west,and you can follow the Shephelah,go through the Shephelahto get from the coastal plain to the mountains.And the Shephelah,if you've been to Israel,you'll knowit's just about the most beautiful part of Israel.It's gorgeous,with forests of oakand wheat fields and vineyards.
But more importantly,though,in the history of that region,it's served,it's had a real strategic function,and that is,it is the means by which hostile armieson the coastal plain find their way,get up into the mountains and threaten those living in the mountains.And 3,000 years ago,that's exactly what happens.The Philistines,who are the biggest of enemiesof the Kingdom of Israel,are living in the coastal plain.They're originally from Crete. They're a seafaring people.And they may start to make their waythrough one of the valleys of the Shephelahup into the mountains,because what they want to do is occupy the highland arearight by Bethlehem and split the Kingdom of Israel in two.And the Kingdom of Israel,which is headed by King Saul,obviously catches wind of this,and Saul brings his army down from the mountainsand he confronts the Philistines in the Valley of Elah,one of the most beautiful of the valleys of the Shephelah.And the Israelites dig in along the northern ridge,and the Philistines dig in along the southern ridge,and the two armies just sit there for weeksand stare at each other,because they're deadlocked.Neither can attack the other,because to attack the other sideyou've got to come down the mountain into the valleyand then up the other side,and you're completely exposed.
So finally,to break the deadlock,the Philistines send their mightiest warriordown into the valley floor,and he calls outand he says to the Israelites,"Send your mightiest warrior down,and we'll have this out,just the two of us."
This was a tradition in ancient warfare called single combat.It was a way of settling disputeswithout incurring the bloodshed of a major battle.And the Philistine who is sent down,their mighty warrior,is a giant.He's 6 foot 9.He's outfitted head to toe in this glittering bronze armor,and he's got a sword and he's got a javelinand he's got his spear. He is absolutely terrifying.And he's so terrifying that none of the Israelite soldiers want to fight him.It's a death wish,right? There's no way they think they can take him.
And finally the only person who will come forwardis this young shepherd boy,and he goes up to Saul and he says,"I'll fight him."
And Saul says,"You can't fight him. That's ridiculous.You're this kid. This is this mighty warrior."
But the shepherd is adamant. He says,"No,no,no,you don't understand,I have been defending my flockagainst lions and wolves for years. I think I can do it."
And Saul has no choice. He's got no one else who's come forward.So he says,"All right."And then he turns to the kid,and he says,"But you've got to wear this armor. You can't go as you are."
So he tries to give the shepherd his armor,and the shepherd says,"No."He says,"I can't wear this stuff."The Biblical verse is,"I cannot wear this for I have not proved it,"meaning,"I've never worn armor before. You've got to be crazy."
So he reaches down instead on the groundand picks up five stonesand puts them in his shepherd's bagand starts to walk down the mountainside to meet the giant.And the giant sees this figure approaching,and calls out,"Come to me so I can feed your fleshto the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the field."He issues this kind of taunt towards this personcoming to fight him.And the shepherd draws closer and closer,and the giant sees that he's carrying a staff.That's all he's carrying.Instead of a weapon,just this shepherd's staff,and he says -- he's insulted --"Am I a dog that you would come to me with sticks?"
And the shepherd boy takes one of his stonesout of his pocket,puts it in his slingand rolls it around and lets it flyand it hits the giant right between the eyes --right here,in his most vulnerable spot --and he falls down either dead or unconscious,and the shepherd boy runs up and takes his swordand cuts off his head,and the Philistines see this and they turn and they just run.
And of course,the name of the giant is Goliathand the name of the shepherd boy is David,and the reason that story has obsessed meover the course of writing my bookis that everything I thought I knew about that storyturned out to be wrong.
So David,in that story,is supposed to be the underdog,right?In fact,that term,David and Goliath,has entered our language as a metaphor forimprobable victoriesby some weak party over someone far stronger.Now why do we call David an underdog?Well,we call him an underdog because he's a kid,a little kid,and Goliath is this big,strong giant.We also call him an underdogbecause Goliath is an experienced warrior,and David is just a shepherd.But most importantly,we call him an underdogbecause all he has is -- it's that Goliath is outfitted withall of this modern weaponry,this glittering coat of armorand a sword and a javelin and a spear,and all David has is this sling.
Well,let's start there with the phrase"All David has is this sling,"because that's the first mistake that we make.In ancient warfare,there are three kinds of warriors.There's cavalry,men on horseback and with chariots.There's heavy infantry,which are foot soldiers,armed foot soldiers with swords and shieldsand some kind of armor.And there's artillery,and artillery are archers,but,more importantly,slingers.And a slinger is someone who has a leather pouchwith two long cords attached to it,and they put a projectile,either a rock or a lead ball,inside the pouch,and they whirl it around like thisand they let one of the cords go,and the effect is to send the projectile forwardtowards its target.That's what David has,and it's important to understandthat that sling is not a slingshot.It's not this,right? It's not a child's toy.It's in fact an incredibly devastating weapon.When David rolls it around like this,he's turning the sling around probablyat six or seven revolutions per second,and that means that when the rock is released,it's going forward really fast,probably 35 meters per second.That's substantially faster than a baseballthrown by even the finest of baseball pitchers.More than that,the stones in the Valley of Elahwere not normal rocks. They were barium sulphate,which are rocks twice the density of normal stones.If you do the calculations on the ballistics,on the stopping power of the rock fired from David's sling,it's roughly equal to the stopping powerof a[.45 caliber]handgun.This is an incredibly devastating weapon.Accuracy,we know from historical recordsthat slingers -- experienced slingers could hitand maim or even kill a target at distances of up to 200 yards.From medieval tapestries,we know that slingerswere capable of hitting birds in flight.They were incredibly accurate.When David lines up -- and he's not 200 yards away from Goliath,he's quite close to Goliath --when he lines up and fires that thing at Goliath,he has every intention and every expectationof being able to hit Goliath at his most vulnerable spotbetween his eyes.If you go back over the history of ancient warfare,you will find time and time againthat slingers were the decisive factor against infantryin one kind of battle or another.
So what's Goliath? He's heavy infantry,and his expectation when he challenges the Israelites to a duelis that he's going to be fighting another heavy infantryman.When he says,"Come to me that I mightfeed your flesh to the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the field,"the key phrase is "Come to me."Come up to me because we're going to fight,hand to hand,like this.Saul has the same expectation.David says,"I want to fight Goliath,"and Saul tries to give him his armor,because Saul is thinking,"Oh,when you say 'fight Goliath,'you mean 'fight him in hand-to-hand combat,'infantry on infantry."
But David has absolutely no expectation.He's not going to fight him that way. Why would he?He's a shepherd. He's spent his entire careerusing a sling to defend his flock against lions and wolves.That's where his strength lies.So here he is,this shepherd,experiencedin the use of a devastating weapon,up against this lumbering giantweighed down by a hundred pounds of armorand these incredibly heavy weaponsthat are useful only in short-range combat.Goliath is a sitting duck. He doesn't have a chance.So why do we keep calling David an underdog,and why do we keep referring to his victory as improbable?
There's a second piece of this that's important.It's not just that we misunderstand Davidand his choice of weaponry.It's also that we profoundly misunderstand Goliath.Goliath is not what he seems to be.There's all kinds of hints of this in the Biblical text,things that are in retrospect quite puzzlingand don't square with his image as this mighty warrior.So to begin with,the Bible says that Goliathis led onto the valley floor by an attendant.Now that is weird,right?Here is this mighty warriorchallenging the Israelites to one-on-one combat.Why is he being led by the handby some young boy,presumably,to the point of combat?Secondly,the Bible story makes special noteof how slowly Goliath moves,another odd thing to say when you're describingthe mightiest warrior known to man at that point.And then there's this whole weird thingabout how long it takes Goliath to reactto the sight of David.So David's coming down the mountain,and he's clearly not preparing for hand-to-hand combat.There is nothing about him that says,"I am about to fight you like this."He's not even carrying a sword.Why does Goliath not react to that?It's as if he's oblivious to what's going on that day.And then there's that strange comment he makes to David:"Am I a dog that you should come to me with sticks?"Sticks? David only has one stick.
Well,it turns out that there's been a great dealof speculation within the medical community over the yearsabout whether there is somethingfundamentally wrong with Goliath,an attempt to make sense of all of those apparent anomalies.There have been many articles written.The first one was in 1960 in the Indiana Medical Journal,and it started a chain of speculationthat starts with an explanation for Goliath's height.So Goliath is head and shoulders aboveall of his peers in that era,and usually when someone is that far out of the norm,there's an explanation for it.So the most common form of giantismis a condition called acromegaly,and acromegaly is caused by a benign tumoron your pituitary glandthat causes an overproduction of human growth hormone.And throughout history,many of the most famous giantshave all had acromegaly.So the tallest person of all timewas a guy named Robert Wadlowwho was still growing when he died at the age of 24and he was 8 foot 11.He had acromegaly.Do you remember the wrestler André the Giant?Famous. He had acromegaly.There's even speculation that Abraham Lincoln had acromegaly.Anyone who's unusually tall,that's the first explanation we come up with.And acromegaly has a very distinct set of side effectsassociated with it,principally having to do with vision.The pituitary tumor,as it grows,often starts to compress the visual nerves in your brain,with the result that people with acromegalyhave either double vision or they are profoundly nearsighted.
So when people have started to speculateabout what might have been wrong with Goliath,they've said,"Wait a minute,he looks and sounds an awful lot like someonewho has acromegaly."And that would also explain so much of what was strangeabout his behavior that day.Why does he move so slowlyand have to be escorted down into the valley floorby an attendant?Because he can't make his way on his own.Why is he so strangely oblivious to Davidthat he doesn't understand that David's not going to fight himuntil the very last moment?Because he can't see him.When he says,"Come to me that I might feed your fleshto the birds of the heavens and the beasts of the field,"the phrase "come to me" is a hint also of his vulnerability.Come to me because I can't see you.And then there's,"Am I a dog that you should come to me with sticks?"He sees two sticks when David has only one.
So the Israelites up on the mountain ridgelooking down on him thought he wasthis extraordinarily powerful foe.What they didn't understand was thatthe very thing that was the source of his apparent strengthwas also the source of his greatest weakness.
And there is,I think,in that,a very important lesson for all of us.Giants are not as strong and powerful as they seem.And sometimes the shepherd boy has a sling in his pocket.
Thank you.
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