Belonging in its truest sense means that people in any system or container have the right to not only be included within it, but to make demands on that system and even change the structure of that system itself. In an ideal form, democracy grants everyone the opportunity to change the nature of how our system functions—a critical component of belonging at the structural level.
And yet, democratic systems have so often generated the opposite of belonging– prioritizing majority interests over minority needs, reinforcing structural racism and economic inequality, and facilitating the election of “democratic” leaders opposed to the ideal of democracy itself. In the Global South, democracy has also been wielded as a colonial weapon, offered as a system made “for the people” but never truly “by the people.”
In this opening conversation, OBI Director john a. powell and Ece Temelkuran will grapple with the real failures of democracy—including the ways that its imperfections have contributed to deeply unjust power structures and toxic “us vs. them” binarism—but also the promise and necessity of democratic systems in sharing power and resources in pursuit of belonging. They will further grapple with the sometimes-competing demands of de-fragmentation and bridging—necessary for functioning diverse democracies—and the demands of social justice, which sometimes requires breaking with power structures and other groups to enact critical change. They will ultimately seek to envision what democracy would look like if it were rooted in radical belonging, which includes all people and the earth itself, and chart the collective path that would take us towards that vision—one built through bridging, solidarity across identity lines, and hope for what is possible when we come together.
I’m excited to introduce the first main stage session here called Reimagining What’s Possible, where we’ll hear first from Ece Temelkuran and then she’s going to be in conversation with John Powell. Back here on stage. Ece is an award-winning novelist in political thinker from
Turkey, who is strongly engaged in democratic issues and known to raise her voice for the oppressed. She’s the author of a number of internationally acclaimed books, including How to Lose a Country in which she investigates the Trends of Authoritarianism and her latest
One that is called Together, a Manifesto against the Heartless World in which instead of asking the question who’s to blame, which would be I guess the story of breaking instead of bridging, she’s centering on what are we to do now? Please welcome with me Ece Temelkuran.
Hello everyone. How are you doing? I brought too many things on the stage. It’s a lovely day. It’s great to be here among you guys. It feels like home. It’s a beautiful autumn day. Germans do not appreciate Autumn because famous winter comes very swiftly. They’re
Already mourning for future in autumn. I don’t know how you feel today. I feel a little bit exhausted. I’m always overworked, but that’s not the reason. It is more like how Hannah Arendt once put it, “I’m not tired, but I’m exhausted.” It’s been a very difficult last
Two weeks, 20 days, it’s been too difficult, too much death, too much blood, too many lies, too much hypocrisy. And I’m very aware of the difficulties of talking about what’s happening there, here in this country. And this has been exhausting me, to be honest.
Since I feel at home, I’m going to speak honestly and from the heart. There was too much othering in the last 20 days. There was the othering of Palestinians, there was the othering of Israelis, but here it was the othering of the voices for peace. There have been so many cancellations,
There have been too many firing, there have been too many shh. And this has been exhausting for me. While I was going through my timeline, seeing all the horrors and the brutality on social media, I was also reading a PhD thesis by Stella Fry. A beautiful PhD thesis, which is going
To be published as a book as well. This thesis begins with a code from a holocaust survivor, a very young man, and he asks in his diary at the time, after surviving Holocaust, he asks a very important question. He doesn’t say who is going to understand us. He doesn’t
Say who’s going to hear us. He says, he asks who’s going to feel with us? Who is going to feel with us? And I thought last 20 days have been difficult because of this, because both sides have been in a race. It was a competition asking the same question,
Who is going to feel with us? But it’s a very strange competition because it is not only asking who’s going to feel with us or demanding feel with us, but also it was don’t feel for them. And the othering happened because of this question. They are actually correct because there is
A scarcity. We are in the age of scarcity. I also watched Naomi Klein the other day. She was talking about the scarcity and how we sacrifice part of the world, part of the humanity to get going, to continue our luxuries here, to keep on with our privileges in this part of the
World. She was talking about how we sacrifice humans in global south to live comfortably in the North or in the West. She was talking about the material sacrifice, the resources, material resources we sacrifice to continue our luxuries here in the West or the North.
But then I thought it is not only material or physically human sacrifice that we are doing to survive, we are making to survive, but it is also a moral sacrifice. We are sacrificing our moral resources as well. We sacrifice democracy for security. We sacrifice our need for freedom,
For order. We sacrifice our basic human urge to feel for the others, to keep our lives together. Not to crack. And we sacrifice human dignity. We sacrifice our very natural remorse when witnessing cruelty to keep out of trouble. So we, “Shh.” One of the words that I wanted to tell you
About today was sacrifice. And the other one is survival. And there are three other words or four other words which are anger, fear, fascism, and faith in humanity. The funny thing about moral sacrifice is there are two impossibilities. One, we will not have the … soon,
It’s very soon, we will not have the luxury of the sacrifice in this part of the world because we will not have the luxury to keep our distance to reality. That brutal, horrifying reality is creeping towards where we are right now. And it is already there, that’s why we felt so exhausted,
So squeezed in the last 20 days. And the second problem is, if we keep on with moral sacrifices, yes, we are going to survive maybe, we’ll protect ourselves from the madness, but then we will not survive as humans, we will survive as barbarians. The fact will become very clear,
And very soon, the result of survival through moral sacrifice will be barbarity. And now fascism. It’s a funny word to use in this country because unfairly, I think a little bit, it is a German brand. It has been made into a German brand. It is not a German brand. It was all over
The world. And there are people who are expecting the second coming of fascism with military boots, parading. And they can only recognize fascism when they see the funny mustache. And they want us, many people want us to believe that fascism was buried in the battlegrounds
Of second World War. Well, it is not. First of all, it is very much inherent in the definition of human being by neoliberalism. Neoliberalism tells us humans that we are selfish, self-centered, egotistical beings who can survive without making meaning. Who can survive with the
Lead of the God, the prophet. And it is in fact inherent in our system because it starts with othering and rejection of right to belong for all of us. It begins with the belief that some humans
As a group are not beautiful as the others. It begins with a calling group of a people human animals that we heard a lot during the last 20 days. It begins with the sacrifice of the human animals for humanity. Fascism is the ambition for an unrealistic purification of humankind.
Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, fascism is not buried in the battlefields of the second World War, we are living with it, and it is still killing children. And as it did once, the world is still dexterously, turning a blind eye on the atrocities of fascism. And every day,
Even if you’re not there, if you’re not killed or your child is okay, healthy, every day it shreds into pieces one thing which is very important, that is our faith in humankind. Because fascism, in its heart of hearts, is the loss of faith in humanity, not believing anymore that human is
Beautiful. It is a selfish, self-centered, egotistical being whose only ambition is to survive and survive. And that’s it. That’s why in the hearts of hearts of fascism lies two emotions, what John already mentioned, anger and fear. Last week I had
The privilege of listening to a very famous German author who has tendencies of fascism and racism. He’s one of those who thinks that immigrants should not be welcomed in this country, refugees should be selected very carefully, and also he’s very angry with women. No,
He said that. He was very angry with the quotas for women. And he was really afraid. But then the problem with these people is that their fears terrify us and their anger make me sad. And once again, I saw how easy for political leaders to exploit this exploit such anger
And fear. But then I know what he feels. John mentioned briefly, and I’m calling it loss of home. He’s so afraid that he’s losing his home. He’s so angry there are people coming, taking over his home. For those of us who can comprehend these problems, the current problems of the world,
Even for those of us who can comprehend, it’s too complex. And for many people it is incomprehensible the size and the depth of it. And scientists and political people have been telling us that we have to get rid of this anger, we have to get rid of this fear, we have to come
Together. The problems of the world can only be solved with the biggest togetherness and so on. But then they say, in order to survive, we have to come together. But the one thing that they
Don’t tell enough, and I want to stress today is that we don’t want to survive, we want to survive beautifully. We want to stay human at the end of the story. The humanity, especially in this part of the world, is about to make a choice. They’re about to make that choice whether to
Survive beautifully or to survive as barbarians. So what we do, John mentioned already the amygdala and the fears come from there, anger comes from there. We need to find a story, a new story, and
We should tell it enough times to reach that part of the brain. And we have to believe in humanity. We have to believe that that part of the brain does not only accommodate the word fear and anger,
But also love and compassion. I’m coming from the harsh part of the world, I’m from Turkey, and I lived in Middle East for several years. It is not easy for me to talk about human love without a smirk. I cannot stop myself from scoffing. “What love? Get serious. Get real.”
And when I entered this building today, I thought, “Oh God, everybody’s smiling.” I was angry. I’m serious. I was angry like, “Oh God, all these lo, lo, love people.” You know why I’m angry? It’s not really different from the guy, the writer guy who was angry and full of fears.
I’m afraid. I’m afraid something will happen to you. Because all things of value, all things of beauty are fragile. And I am scoffing. And I want to hold you and say, “Be hard. Be hard. I mean,
Toughen up. Don’t smile that much. They’re going to break you.” But then at the end of the day, it all boils down to human love. And we have to find the words for human love in politics
In these harsh times when blood is spilled. And today with John, we are going to do that in about 50 minutes. Thank you for listening. You stole my water. Oh yeah, there’s water. You want this one or this one? No, it’s okay. Welcome. Thank you. Don’t you think
There were too many smiles in the room? Well, there’s a lot going on, as you said, but first of all, thank you. Thank you. It’s such a pleasure meeting you. So I don’t know if you’ve had the opportunity to read Ece’s work, and I’m sorry for mispronouncing your name. No, it’s okay.
But it’s challenging because she’s talking about, you’re talking about really hard things and you do it in such a beautiful way. And it’s like so emotion’s like should I be depressed? Should I be elated? And I think you’re embracing, one of the things you embrace, that we have to the we right?
The I cannot do this. And I think that’s where a lot of the despair comes from because we’ve broken off into small things and we don’t believe, not only do we not believe in our humanity, we don’t
Believe in our connectedness. We don’t believe in our togetherness. So I guess I would maybe asked you to help us think about this next story. What is this next story? What’s the structure of this next story? Who are the protagonists in this next story? How do we tell this next story?
Many people think that, and Sarah, one of the organizers, and thank you Sarah, for organizing this beautiful thing, this convention, we were talking with Sarah, and I’ve been talking about politics a lot, not human love, but hardcore politics, and many people,
I came to notice all around the world, think that if we fix few things here and there in democracy, all will be perfect. It will be back to business, back to normality. No. We have to write the story
From the very beginning and we have to go back to the basics. Human dignity, which inherently encompasses the oneness of humanity Or our faith in humankind because many of us, we are going to these meetings, our work is mostly about words. We talk, we listen, we talk, we listen.
And then I am not sure how many of the people who say that we can build a better future, do really believe in that sentence. Do we really believe in that sentence? I’m not sure. And what
I am trying to do and what you are trying to do as well, I think, we are looking into politics of emotions because there’s a simple reason for that. I keep seeing all around the world that fascist leaders are actually the masters of politics, of emotions, whereas when
It comes to our part, progressives, let’s call them or advocates and so on, we think that we can solve the entire thing with rationality. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. I have to address that fear because that, and as you know, fear doesn’t work. I’m like,
You’ve been telling fear doesn’t work as like don’t be afraid. I’m afraid of threats and it doesn’t make any sense. But then don’t feel fear doesn’t work either. So we have to address those emotions to go through a radical change. And this is
Very much about writing a new story. And the new story begins with, I think, faith in humankind. Let’s just do this. Let us choose to believe in humans. Faith is a funny thing, and I’m sure you’re going to talk about this beautifully. It doesn’t need proof. Faith doesn’t need proof,
But it needs miracles. And I’m sure in this room there are many people who are creating miracles every day for others to believe in humans. And this is our job. Yes, writing a story but also creating miracles such as this one, like everybody’s smiling each other. Everybody smile as
If they know each other, they belong and so on. Those miracles, I think will change the world. Not few fixes in political mechanisms and so on. I don’t know. What do you think? I mean we’ve been
Talking with John earlier, two days ago, and I told you it’s not easy for me to talk about love, faith and all these things, and you said some beautiful things. What do you think? I’m here with people from OBI, some wonderful staff. You are creating miracles, tell about that. No, seriously.
Well, it’s hard not to … I’ll tell two quick stories. One, I’ll have to talk to Rochelle about it. It’s like is it the journey or is it the destination? And we say it’s the company you keep. So what sustains us is not belief necessarily that we’re going to get there,
Or even the journey itself, it’s that you’re in relationship with really, let’s just say, incredible people who are making miracles every day. And they don’t have to be big miracles. And I feel so lucky, I told you about the breach from my family, but I feel so lucky and I would even
Say blessed to have my family as my family. I don’t know if any of you watched the movie about the fight between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. The interesting part of that movie to me is that Muhammad Ali was not supposed to win. He had been stripped of his title because
He refused to go into the military. He had not been boxing for four years, almost four years, which in the life of a boxer is like forever and three days. And so people actually said, and Foreman was just so strong, and they thought, “There’s no way that you’re going to win. You
May not even survive this.” And you know this story, Muhammad Ali won, and someone asked them, “How did you win? He is younger than you. He’s stronger than you. He’s faster than you. How did you win? What kept you going?” And for those of you who don’t like sports,
And I don’t particularly like boxing, but this is not about boxing. What he did, when he won in the ring, he stayed on the ropes and let George Foreman hit him. They call it Rope-a-Dope. And this manager kept saying, “Get off the ropes, get off the ropes.” And he let George Foreman
Hit him until George Foreman got tired. It’s true story. George Foreman got exhausted from hitting Muhammad Ali, and when he got exhausted, Muhammad Ali knocked him out. The point is this, when he said, “How did you do that? What kept you going?” He said, “It wasn’t about
Me. I was fighting for a billion people in Africa. He said Africa was holding me up.” So to me, that’s our salvation. We hold each other up. If we are doing it alone, we say at the institute, oftentimes when people in the United States say, “Well,
Take care of yourself, at the institute, we say, “Take care of each other.” No one can take care of themselves. No one but no one. And so we take care of each other. And you say you feel like at home,
You are at home, and we’re here to take care of you and we know you’re here to take care of us. And so that’s the story, that we’re in it together, that this is our story, that we’re
Taking care of each other. So I think if that becomes our story and if we live that story, we’ll be okay. Not even because we’ll necessarily win, but because we’ll be human. And so the
Company you keep and how we take care of each other to me is the heart of it. And the heart of taking care of each other, one definition of love is to attend, to be present with. So if we
Can attend to and be present with each other and care for each other, that’s the real deal. For those of us who do not have the endurance of Muhammad Ali, and I think we are not a few.
Anyway, I’m going to ask you something else. Is there room in human heart for everybody? Because many people talk about this compassion fatigue, exhaustion of caring for others, and so on. And you cannot all the time feel the pain of the world. And also there is the scarcity of the room
In Europe and in United States as well, or the sense of scarcity. There’s not enough room for us. Is there enough room for everybody to belong? And without othering, is there really physical and emotional room for that? Because it boils down to that when you’re talking to a terrified
Person of losing home, how are we going to convince him that his home will be intact when he welcomes the others? How are we going to cheat him to believing that it’s okay? It’s okay. You used the term cheating, and I would like you to say more about that, how you shared that
With us two days ago. So if I think about giving compassion attention, and then I can think about also exhaustion, right? It’s like I’m a finite person, but that’s what you teach us so much
About is that this feeble concept of I. That’s not strong enough to get out of bed in the morning. I mean, let alone change the world. No. But we have a different concept of we. I mention my father a lot, and he and my mother, man, wow,
So lucky. I was in my twenties and I was getting exhausted doing some version of this work even then, in between playing marbles. And my dad looked at me and he said, “What’s going on John?
You look exhausted.” And I said, “I can’t do this alone.” And at the time I was hanging out with the Panthers and there was a lot of police violence against blacks then as it is now. And I said,
“I just can’t do this alone.” And he said, “You never are alone. God is always with you.” And I’m not a theist, but that helped me immeasurably that we’re not alone. So if we think of what we can do, it’s already exhausting. When I think of what I can do, it’s already exhausting.
When I think of what we can do, it’s like, “Whoa.” But I would say this, so let’s do it. But in doing it, let’s make time to party. Let’s make time for joy. Let’s make time for love. Let’s make time
For fun, that we don’t wait til after the world is someplace else, something else to enjoy, we enjoy right now. We love each other right now, today. And that doesn’t take energy, that gives energy. And is that energy limited? No, that energy is bountiful. We just have to open up and claim it.
So I think that’s part of the new story. And I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m not saying it’s without pain. I’m not saying … But as Rochelle and I talk about a lot, suffering is not the opposite
Of joy. Pain is not the opposite of joy. And part of joy, to me, is being connected and realizing we’re connected. I mean there’s so many wonderful stories about just people living their life and in one of your stories you talk about women who are struggling to get food on the table,
Struggling for clean water, but the thing that really is painful, in some ways, if I understood it correctly, is not being shown dignity. If that’s right, is there scarcity in dignity? If I recognize dignity in the dignity of life, the grievability of life of Palestinians,
Can I also recognize the grievability of life in Jews? Is there scarcity in our ability to have dignity of people? I don’t think so, but could you help us with that? Well, I’m thinking about, I have been thinking about talking about joy of dignity. So when you
Say joy, and in another sentence, dignity, I’m thinking about our exhaustion and where this exhaustion comes from. It is, in fact, many people think that if I distance myself from the madness of the world, from the mad reality of the world, from this brutality,
Then I will be at peace. I’ll be having fun or I’ll be happy, which is a very ambitious word. But then what they are giving up is the joy of dignity. Joy of dignity, meaning sharing the dignity together to recognize the oneness of humanity, which also means if somebody is
Not treated in a dignified manner, my dignity is hurt as well. I don’t even have to be the witness of it. That joy of dignity. Of course it is not entertaining, it’s not really partying, but it is an inner sense of being content, being joyous. I think we shouldn’t be afraid of borrowing
Words from the realm of spirituality. Joy as well as faith is attributed to spirituality, whereas I think we should bring all these human capabilities to politics, and that’s where we write the story with the words of joy of dignity, friendship and faith, especially, faith. Because
You mentioned God, I’m not a believer. That’s why when I read Karl Marx saying that religion is the opium of humanity, but in this heartless world that opium is needed, I’m paraphrasing it. So how can we kind of make that sentence whole, and if we remove God from it, there’s a lack of
Something. Can we bring faith to humanity as a belief system and trickle down the story, the new story from there, where there is room for everybody, where everybody is loved, so to speak? Yes. So we oftentimes, people left of center, I don’t know if you left of center, right of center,
Or center, maybe all of the above. We think of love in a very sentimental way. And we think of how you just described as people sort of, and I lived in India for a couple of years, and yes, I’m a meditator, so I believe in recharging my body and recharging my
Soul. But we think of love as being pure, not touched by the banality of pain or suffering. Maybe that’s one kind of love, but to me, that’s not how I think about love. Again, I’m reminded of the reverend, and I think it’s important to remember that he was a reverend, Dr. King.
He’s talked about righteous indignation. He was someone who spent his life trying to perfect the beloved community from his reading of Gandhi and others. And he talked about righteous indignation. So it wasn’t like, “Oh, I’m in love, so I can’t,” it’s like, “I’m pissed. I’m righteously pissed.”
So why are you righteously pissed? I thought you were about love.” That’s the reason that I’m righteously pissed, because I love humanity, because I love life. And when people violate that, when people violate, in his words, God’s creation, it pisses me off. You should be angry.
But it’s not the anger that cuts people off. It’s the anger that brings people in. And it’s not, as I said the other day, it’s not, “I’m angry because someone took my parking spot.” That’s not righteous indignation, that’s just indignation. That’s petty indignation. So he wasn’t lifting
Up petty indignation, but he was saying, “I’m angry,” through the voice of God. So I think if we are grounded in humanity, which I think you challenge us to be, and I think if you’re grounded
In humanity, you may not need opium or God, or maybe you need opium and no God, I don’t know. And I should say, I’m not one of those people who say, “No judgment,” I’m full of judgment, I’m just
Saying, but I’m hopefully full of love as well. But the point I’m making is this, that love does not mean you don’t get angry. It doesn’t mean you not get pissed. It doesn’t mean you don’t
Judge. But it means you do it in the sense of something larger. It’s not petty and it’s not rigid. It’s like when my kids do something, the example I give is I have a son who is a biter, and so he’s younger and he would bite his sister and I would say,
“You can’t do that.” Sometimes I’d literally pop him on his knuckles, “Stop biting your sister.” And he would say, “But she’s teasing me.” And I’d respond saying, “Life is not fair. Use your words even though she’s better at words than you.” That’s how she would get him, is,
“Let’s use words.” She would destroy him using words and he’d say, “Okay, I’m going to bite. That’s what I can do.” I didn’t stop loving either my kids. So when my son was biting, I didn’t not
Love him, but I was pissed that he was biting his sister. So it seems to me how do we hold all these things together? Not in oppositions, not in binaries, and give ourselves space to be-
Yeah. But then what do we do with the biters, let’s say? I wrote about anger as well, and I said, “Let’s not do anger. This is not sustainable for the world that we want to build.” I’m like,
“We cannot be always angry.” And you’re talking about petty anger. And I said, “We should replace it with attention,” because anger is a commodity now thanks to social media. But attention cannot be commodified. And anger is a item on companies’ or authoritarian regimes’ lists of expenditure.
They can calculate how long you can stay angry. For instance, you’re protesting a mining company, they put it on their list. They’re going to be angry for three months and then it will fade away, so let’s count this in. But attention, active attention, it cannot be commodified. But
Having said this, also my doctor said that my testosterone level is zero, so maybe it’s hormonal for me replacing attention with anger. You mentioned the ministerial cycle, and I’m sure there are many people who think that menopausal woman should not be anywhere
In the public life. Anyway, we should talk about these things as well, since we’re talking about buddy. Yeah, this is the ugly part. The question, not question, but I’m wondering what you think. What do we do when they bite, if we do not have the endurance of Muhammad
Ali? We are going to use our words. Of course. We are going to use the righteous indignation. But then what are we going to do when it bites? Maybe I’m asking the same question in different ways because this is where we are now. Fascism is on the rise, people are killing each other,
And so on, so forth. It’s horrible. So what do we do? What do we do? I mean, like with the exhaustion as well. Now I found you, I’m asking all the existential questions, of course, but I think many of us feel the same. So I’m like, it’s going nowhere.
I feel like you mentioned something like that about the future, the zombies and everything. I don’t imagine a future like that, but I feel like I am mourning in future tense. I think many of you feel that as well. When we look at the sea, we know that we are the last
Generation to see the sea like this. Mountains, rivers, anything beautiful. When I look at it, I immediately think of we’re going to lose it. So we are all in sort of mourning as well. Yeah. Well, there’s a lot there. People oftentimes, and I love your discussion of hope,
Right? So in Ece’s work, she talks about, people keep asking me, “Do you have any hope?” Yeah, I hate it. I get really angry. Just in case, don’t ask that. Or ask it against hear what I … I don’t know. And like you, you’re saying about anger and
Attention instead of anger, we can’t know. We can’t know how things will turn out. I think of hope as nostalgia for the future. We’re wanting a certain future and we’re missing it, right? That’s fine. But that’s not our job. Our job, from my perspective, is to be engaged, is
To be in relationship. It’s to do the work. And to your point, doing the work with faith, because we can’t know. So how do we keep going if things look bad, we can’t know. My job is to do what I can do.
I’ve been given certain talents, certain gifts. There’s this expression, which is your talent and gifts is God’s gift or present to you, your skills, your gifts, your abilities is God’s gift to you. You didn’t earn them. What you do with those is your gift to God. So when you use them,
When you give them back … Now, yeah, I mean the oceans, I grew up in Detroit, the city still looked like it’s been bombed. I’ve lost too many people, including relatives, that was killed by … my mother, I’ll go even further back, my grandmother, my great-grandmother was in the
South. She got a, you said five minutes. That was two minutes ago. My great-grandmother, she got a- I’m the only one who follows you. Your warnings. She got an infection on her foot, and because she
Was a black woman in the South, no doctor would treat her. By the time we got her out of the South, up to Detroit, it turned into gangrene and it had spread throughout her body. They
Amputated both of her legs and then she died. I was so pissed. I was ready to get a gun and kill all the white doctors. Of course, I was 12 years old, so I didn’t even know how to get
A gun. But it didn’t matter, the rage was there. What I’m saying is that the system sort of churns people up. It does destructive things. But that’s why, from my perspective, we have to be so clear,
Have to be so non-wavering that we insist upon a world where all life matters. Life matters. So anything that’s life denying, we stand in opposition to, but more than the standing opposition to, we stand for life. We stand for life. And in that, we don’t know how it’s
Going to play out. We don’t if the oceans will survive. And if the oceans don’t survive, we won’t survive. We don’t know if the winds will … we don’t know if the fires will keep happening. But we know that we are alive now and we’ve been given certain talents and we can use
Those talents and live our best life today, with each other. Learn, love, and tell a new story. Tell people that there’s no reason to fear someone because they speak a different language, because they look different, because they have a different religion. And when we say to people,
“Yes, you have a right to be here, but so do other people. It is not your earth. It is not my earth. The earth belongs to all of us and all of us belong to the earth.” That’s what we’re saying.
That’s the new story. And in that story, and I know Sarah is saying we’re done in that story, I think we do have to have joy. We do have to have fun. We do have to party.
We do have to have an OBI conference in Berlin. One last sentence. Sometimes I’m in ground zero about humanity, as any faith, there is doubt in faith in humanity as well. And I’m thinking, what
Keeps me going or why should I go on being this? I think of the choices we make in life. Actually, we always make the choice that we can pay the price for. Every kind of choice, ideological,
Moral choices, we are calculating which price can I pay. So I’m thinking I cannot pay the price of being silent or being on the other side. I only can pay the price of getting hit in the face
Until so many rounds that the evil exhausts itself. I can pay that price. So that’s why I am who I am and doing what I do, what I do, and so on. And I think you are like that too, because the other price of being indifferent, living that joyless life is too much.
It is too much. It’s too much. It’s too disgusting. So we are choosing this,. And that should give us strength, not power, but strength. Because I think Muhammad Ali was strong. He wasn’t powerful, but he was strong. Yeah. And he had, from his perspective, a billion Africans behind him.
Exactly. That makes him strong. Thank you so much for listening. And now I think it is the Q&A. Yep. And I leave the word to the masters. I have the wonderful job of … yes, we already have questions. Please, here. Yeah. Thank you. I’m Lucy from Philadelphia,
And I’m a proud postmenopausal woman. They say that it is heaven out there. It is. On the other side. Right. I want to try my hand at telling a little of the new story and then ask you a question about
It. I have been to Gaza twice. The first time in 2014, and the second time in 2017. In 2014, I met some amazing young people that were trying to build from there. What you’re talking about, what you’re talking about. And when I returned, I went … we visited in May,
I was there for Knock the Day, and I was returned to the United States, and the 51 Day War began. And so I would wake up every morning during the 51 Day War and try to
Find out if one of my friends had been killed. And one of them was killed during that war. And also, and then Mike Brown was murdered in the middle of that. And my friends would offer solidarity posts on Instagram about how to deal with tear gas in Ferguson. And I was like, “Oh,
This is the same thing. This is the wages of colonialism.” And that’s what took me to fight like hell for reparations here, because that’s the undoing of this mess to me. So the story is that, when I went in 2014, I went to Belene. And Belene is distinct in
That they had a court case and they got the separation wall moved back. It’s amazing. And they gave me a tour of the olive trees that they were growing, and one of their friends had been martyred recently. And they told us the story about him. And that evening we had dinner and we
Sat around in the yard of Iad Burnot, who is the head of the Belene Popular Resistance Movement. And he had Ahed Tamimi … I mean, not Ahed, but Badam Tamimi, I had Tamimi’s father there,
And Emma and Emad Burnot, who was the director of Five Broken Cameras. And they sat in a circle and they told us stories of people being tortured, their friends being tortured and murdered and tortured and murdered. And then they said what we’re doing every Friday, when we do our protest
With Israelis there and the internationals there, and us there, is we’re practicing the one state solution. That they believed, in their whole heart, that living together with those who had oppressed them was the way, was the answer. And that finding a way to do that was the answer. And
So now when Hamas, the Hamas’ attack, when several Palestinian solidarity activists were murdered, Sorry, could we … I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m going to just- The question. Tell it and I’ll ask the question. Is coming, I know. I apologize. Sorry. But- I understand. And the bombs drop, I think, “Oh, that political
Imagination is being bombed.” So my question is how do we keep that political imagination alive? Shall I go first? Sure. From day one, it is so ridiculous, but I kept thinking about this one man in Gaza
That I watched in the news somehow years ago. This one man, young man painted a donkey in black and white for the kids in Gaza to see what a zebra looks like. That is in my head, is the person who creates beauty, thus refreshing our faith in humanity, my faith in humanity.
I am mostly thinking about beautiful and ugly as a superior form of morality, as aesthetic concepts. So he’s a beautiful man. So I keep thinking about this man, what happened to this man? Is he alive? What is he doing? But then one thing I know, and this is an
Answer to your question, in my will, there is no ultimate wick tree, but there is no ultimate defeat for those people who create beauty, thus refresh our faith in humanity. People are killed and horrible things are happening. It’s too devastating even to think about them. But then,
Since I have faith, I chose to believe in humanity. I have to say that the beauty, the beautiful people, the people who will create beauty to make us believe in humanity will survive too. So there is no ultimate defeat. And that is what should keep us going at this point, I think.
Thank you, Ece. So quickly, because I know there are other questions, and we’re probably running out of time. But two things. One, you asked about what do you do about the biting? You stop it. I didn’t allow my son
To bite his sister. Loving him does not, in fact, loving him in a sense means I demand of him that he acknowledges his sister. And so when we see horrendous acts, it’s not we should be indifferent. And we’ve been talking largely at a personal level, but these
Things are structural. These things are, I mean, think about this, nation states are 400 years old. Yeah, very, very young. That’s not very long. And yet right now, when we think about problems in the Middle East, for example, we think almost entirely in terms of
Nation states. The Enlightenment, which is my next book, The Enlightenment involved 200 people. There are more than 200 people at this conference. 200 people, 250-300 years ago, gave us a hope, for the West, gave a whole new paradigm that we’re living today. Democracy, individualism,
This, that, and I’m not saying good, bad, or indifferent, but some people came together and dreamt of something that was not there. You talked about faith, and I don’t want to make obviously the US thing, but Thomas Jefferson, after hanging out with his friends in France,
Came back to the United States, and the United States and France, at that time with the two First nation states to embrace the concept of equality. Now, they didn’t really do it. And I could do a whole critique as what … But think about this, for thousands of years, there had been
Slaves and serfs and peasants with no dignity in their life. And what Jefferson said after his visit to France was, we hold certain truths to be self-evident. We don’t have to prove it, we don’t have to analyze it. We hold these truths to be self-evident. And then he screwed up. All
Men are created equal. All men are created equal. But even in this tortured way, that was a radical statement. And so what we’re saying, new story an old story, we hold certain truths to be self-evident, that everyone belongs, that every life is grievable, that everyone deserves
Dignity. And people will push back and say, “Well, yeah,” but we have to say it. We have to believe him. We have to tell him. And then we have to say, my son’s name is Fawn, “Fawn, you can’t bite your
Sister.” Now, who’s Fawn in this story? There are a lot of Fawns. There are a lot of people biting their sister. We have to say, “No, that’s not allowed. But you’re still part of the family. You’re still part of the family.” We’ll give you something else, okay, words are not fair because
Your sister are better at words than you, but let’s figure out something other than biting.” Questions, yeah. And we really appreciate you keeping it succinct so we can have a few more of you maybe in the back with the blue. Yes. Yes, you. Beautiful, what you’re wearing.
Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us. I have a question about using our gifts. I really like this notion of using our gifts, being a present back to God or the universe, or
Whatever. And I would like to know if you have any advice for those of us who are scared to use our gifts and are maybe scared to bring this new world that we want to live in into the present moment. That’s you. Okay. Thank you for your question. As you can
Tell, I tell stories. So here’s the story. I’m out camp mountain climbing, and there are 12 of us, and we have to repel down this mountain. And I don’t have fear of heights. So I repel down, and whatever, other people repel down. Then there’s this woman who has tremendous fear of heights,
And she starts repelling down with ropes, and she gets a third of the way down, she freezes, and we’re sort of like coaching her on, “You can do this, you can do it.” I repel down in like three
Minutes, it took her half an hour to repel down. And when she gets to the bottom of this mountain, her whole body’s trembling. She’s shaking, and she turns to me and she says, “You’re so brave. You just came down that mountain and you didn’t even think about it.” And I said,
“You’re wrong. I’m not brave. I did think about it. It didn’t challenge me. I was not afraid. You’re the one who’s brave because, despite being afraid, despite having fear, you did it anyway.” So that’s what I would say. But I also say sometimes you don’t have to do it. We don’t
Have to be Muhammad Ali. Sometimes we can just say, “You know what? I’m taking a day off. I can’t do that today, I’m going to do something else.” And the last thing I say is that go with your friends. Ece basically said, when she’s afraid, if there are other people, and I’m paraphrasing
Your words, you’re less afraid, right? It’s like if you’re doing this by yourself, that’s hard. If you’re doing it with your posse, that’s quite different. So think of what you do. Don’t be, in this sense, reckless. Life is precious. Life is fragile. And for all of us, it will end.
But so give yourself some space. It’s okay to be afraid. It’s okay to be scared. There are terrible things out there. There are terrible things happening. But when we come together with our friends, with our brothers and sisters, we are strong and powerful. And
It doesn’t mean that the fear will go away. That’s one of the things. I don’t have time to go into it, but I work with people with fear. And one of the big mistakes that people who is first to say, “Get rid of the fear, and then you can do it.” It’s like,
“No, the fear is there. It’s trying to tell you something, hold onto it, but invite it in with other things, with hope, with love, with possibility.” And now fear is just one among many, and it doesn’t dominate the whole scene. No. We will have to befriend fear. This
Is what I argue. Fear is there, and there’ll be a lot of more fears in coming years, new fears. And the only way is to befriend them. Fear is your friend. And also Middle Eastern humor helps.
Somebody asked me how, we were talking about panic attacks, and I found a way to beat them. I mock it. Say, “Oh, Ece, it’s a great time for panic attack now. Yeah, brilliant. Brilliant idea. Go have one.” No, this is how we are friends in Middle East as well. This is a little
Bit harsh for Western countries, but we mock our friends, and that’s how you build the fraternity, so to speak. So build the fraternity with your fears. That’s how I think about fears, because I have many of them. And I’m friending with these fears. They’re not enemies, right? Yeah. Like, “Ah.”
Yes, you in the front, please. I think you … yeah. Thank you. Hello. I do believe in love and hope. I’m sorry about that. So I wanted to talk to you, ask about the, I’ve got a lovely bit of context, but I’ll say that for later. Come
And ask me about it. I wanted to ask you about the political love. Taking love from the sign on your toilet to the political realm, taking it up to that level. What level does it stop? And you
Mentioned 250 people to make a change. What can we do now to bring love to this political level, to bring love as a kind of action? Yeah. Can I give a very practical example from Turkey? Sure. Probably many of you know about Turkey. If you don’t, there has been a man, imagine Trump,
Put a lot of political ability to Trump. A lot of luck. Less structured democracy to hold the center. And for the last 20 years, we’ve been dealing with this. The most important city politically, in Turkey, is Istanbul, where I come from. And after 20 years, this one man came up and
Took over the municipality from the regime’s representatives. So he was from a position. He didn’t come up with the idea, maybe. There were many other people surrounding him, but what he used was radical love in politics, in a country like Turkey, it’s a very harsh
Country. So what he did, in a very, very, very polarized country, in a very polarized society, was to love the other side. Obviously, he didn’t go and hug them, but he talked about the topics outside the polarizing topics. This is where we start in politics,
Bringing radical love to politics is that. It is not, well, this was the last elections sign. It didn’t work. I don’t won the elections. But this is, in reality, in the harsh reality, this is how you do it. You go beyond and above the polarizing topics and tell them that they
Are welcomed as well. Those of us who want to bite us are welcomed as well. We are not going to bite you back. That is the underlining theme and sentiment, political sentiment that rule the elections, local elections that got the opposition party, all the big cities in Turkey.
So it works. That’s what I mean. It sounds naive, it works on the ground, but also it can work on a much different, much higher level as well, which needs a lot of work. Thinkers and activists should
Come together and really think and test each other in terms of how to bring radical love into politics, against rise of fascism, how to bring faith in humanity. You have to have the faith in each other against fascism, because fascism is not only bad guys coming overnight, taking over,
Beating up the good guys. It is this deep rotten, getting rotten inside. It affects us as well. We are not immune. When something happens, we turn on each other on social media, canceling out those who have the shortest bridge to us. We are infected as well in that sense. Yeah.
So … Why do you [inaudible 01:07:13]. Why what? Because I love what you’re saying. I want to give one practical example, and also a caution. So this is a brilliant human being that’s sharing the stage with me. Thank you. Thank you. And I used to have some chops myself,
But we don’t have the answers. The answer is in us all. We’re talking about co-creating, and there’s some things we’ve learned, and there’s some things we don’t know. But there’s a friend of mine who’s here, and I’m going to call him out, all of you are friends, but I’m not going to call
All of you out. Paloma’s here. She’s a friend, I’m not going to call her out. I’m going to call out DeAngelo. DeAngelo Buster. And if DeAngelo is here, if you could stand up DeAngelo. He is not here. Not there. Okay. Okay. Why did I call it DeAngelo? Well,
He’s a friend, but that’s not why I’m calling him out. So in the United States, we have this project that we started, we call it the Long Bridging Project. The Long Bridges. DeAngelo is one of the
Best organizers in the United States. He works in a city that’s known for being tough and corrupt, Chicago. And he’s been organizing the black community in Chicago for decades. And I’ve been pushing DeAngelo and he’s been pushing me, but I’ve been saying, “DeAngelo,
You need to get out of Chicago and get out into the rural areas,” which he’s done. Not because I said it, although we love each other, so maybe it has some influence. I’m saying, “DeAngelo, you need to go to Wisconsin, not Milwaukee, but to the rural Wisconsin, where
All those Trump voters are, and talk to them. To put this in context, when organizers from urban areas go to rural United States, literally they get guns pulled on them. This is not a small thing, it’s a big thing. And I don’t want anyone to get shot, but what I’m saying is,
Can you build a long bridge? Can you bring love into politics in a practical way? And the short answer is yes. And what they found, and it’s still early on, is that long bridging, talking to people who are very different than you is largely about listening to people who are very
Different than you. The power of talking is great. The power of listening is phenomenal. Yep. So the basic, I can’t do it all here, but the technique is not a technique. It’s like I’m paying attention to you. I’m listening to
You. You matter. And that’s transformative in some powerful ways. Careful, right? Because it’s not a technique. Tell me what you are afraid of. Tell me how you think of the future. Tell me why you’re angry. Be curious about the other. Listen. And again, even though we’re at the very beginning
Of this, they just had an incredible election where they pulled a number of Trump people, and they don’t always win. And it’s not even all about winning. It’s saying, “I care about you as a human being.” To really give that message to people who are very different than you is so powerful.
And in fact, that’s really the secret sauce of fascism, where the fascist leader says, “The elite don’t care about you. I do.” And they believe it. And we know the leader does not care about them. But what if someone went to them and says, “I care about you,” and actually believed
It. They actually cared about them. And we believe that that’s one of the ways you bring love into politics, is to really, in a very organized and deliberate way, engage with people and let them know that you care, and listen. Although I have to add something here.
You what? I’m coming from a country that has been experiencing hardcore authoritarian regime. And I know the spin doctors of this regime and talking to them is like playing chess with a pigeon. Even though you play very well, the
Pigeon scatters the pieces, and then she shits on the chessboard, and then flies away victoriously. Don’t ever forget that. So when we were talking the other day, you were saying there’s this 20%, there’s this 20%, but what we have to look at the 60% in between. So these words for 60%-
These words for the 60%. And this work is done a lot by more in common, which I think is also here. We don’t, so no, we try not to play chess with pigeons. So sometimes, again, you have to be thoughtful, deliberate. But 60% of people in America, and by more in commons account,
That’s true of most of the Europe. You have people, 20% who are considered far right, or 20% far left. You’re not going to convince those people. They’re ideological, they’re strategic. But 60% is just all over the place. They don’t know what to believe. There’s the spin doctors.
There’s the false news. And they’re just basically trying to get through life. We don’t talk to them. Those are the people who we try to engage, the 60%. And eventually, maybe we’ll talk to the other 20%, but we start with that 60%, and we tell the pigeons, “We’re not playing chess with you.”
All right. Time for one short one. Yes, you in the middle. I think [inaudible 01:13:28]. Yeah. Okay. I’m thinking how to make it short. When you say we try not to play chess with pigeons,
I’m like, I’m a clown. I’m an empathic clown, and I love to play chess, and I love to play chess with pigeons. And I do believe it makes a difference. And same thing, like for the biters,
When you said the bite, we will sell the bite, just like the biters are welcome too. We will tell them we will not bite. And I’m like, you think you’re not human? You think you don’t have a crocodile in you? You bite too, and be honest about it. And that’s how we will
Talk in belonging and not in the ones who have learned not to bite and the ones who still bite. And how come I have these ideas? I am raised in a very rational, non-religious enlightenment, blah, blah, blah, liberal family, let’s say,
Or at least the side of my mom. So I was not able to feel a lot of emotions. And when I realized it, I thought, “Okay, emotion that I started doing mindful,” I’m not taking it short now. No. Sorry. And the question is? You can do it. But I want
To say one word about anger. Anger is the feeling I’m most easily connected to. And I learned from the biters, let’s say, I learned in a class together with people in prison about, and the name of the class was anger-preneurship. And so I would like us to also, the question is,
I would like us to also recognize that we also have a reptile in us. And if her mouth is open, the other parts of the brain that can be the horse and the man on top, well not be able to do a lot,
And let’s just admit that, and start from there. We are also pigeons. [Inaudible 01:15:47] understand it. We are also pigeons playing chess. It’s not that we’re not pigeons, that’s the issue. It’s becoming a thing. So sometimes, I’ll say this, in the United States context, things get very tense
Along the racial axis sometimes in the United States. And I’ll make the comment that not any one people is all angels or all devils. We’re complicated. We need a more complicated story. We need to be able to embrace the fact that we are, yes pigeons, but we’re also angels.
There’s a lot of literature about people being afraid of each other, about people hating each other, but there’s as much in the literature to suggest that we’re also organized to love each other. And so when we tell a complex story that all those complexities come in, what we’re
Trying to do is say, “You’re not just a pigeon.” That’s what we’re rejecting to. I’m not saying I’m not just a pigeon. And what we’re saying over and over again is, “Yes, you will be angry sometime, but that’s not the only thing that’s defining you. You will be traumatized sometime,
But that’s not the only thing that’s defining you. You’re more than that. It’s not that you’re that, but you’re more than that.” And if we can actually tell this complex story, we’re not trying to squeeze humanity into just being all goodness, that’s not very human.
And if we’re trying to open up and let all of humanity in, and when someone bites another person to say, “Stop biting.” Not because I’m not a biter too. And when I bite my friends, now Ece will say,
“John, that was great but you got to stop biting. Stop shitting on the chess board.” It’s not that I can, I’ll go shit someplace else. There are too many biters and pigeons in the [inaudible 01:17:53] now. I’m not a biter. Since we are talking about family things,
My mother kept telling me this story, so it shaped me probably. I have a brother three years younger than me, and when he was growing up, when he was a baby, he was pulling my hair,
And then he was looking victoriously to his hand, like this much hair. And my mother, after a while, her sense of justice probably was damaged. And she says to me, “Okay, hit him back.” And that is when
I start crying, “But I cannot hit him back.” Earlier I said we are like this because this is the price we can pay. The other way of being, being absolutely distanced from reality, protecting ourselves is not a price that we can pay. That’s why we are choosing this. So I grew up
To learn words to theorize, but I cannot hit back. But this just doesn’t change the fact that I cannot be otherwise, I mean, like the words did not blur the fact, it just made it clearer. So
Many of you, I think, or all of you probably, are like this. So let’s stop feeling, yes, we are exhausted and it’s a hard life and it’s difficult times and it is horrible, horrible things happening. But this is who we are and how much we get bitten, it doesn’t change the fact.
They’re not going to wipe us from the face of the earth. We are here and we are going to be here. That is not about hope, that is about determination. That’s about not giving up. Not because we are super, super faithful, because we cannot be otherwise. We cannot be like them,
Like these bloody pigeons. I have to stop with the pigeons. Ece Temelkuran and John Powell. Thank you so much. Thank you. Also, let me tell you how honored I’m to be with John. Thank you, John. Thank you.
1 Comment
I really appreciate this duo 🙂 The honesty is tangible and relatable. I appreciate John's sharings of being pissed and I will now be learning more thanks to the introduction to Ece. Thanks to you all for the fun and scary conversation.