Late last week, in the first installment of our series intended to better get to know the TED Translators who will attend TEDWomen 2017 and what this year’s conference theme, Bridges, means to them, we featured Brazilian Portuguese TED Translator Raissa Mendes’s response to the following questions:
What’s the most pressing issue, either on a global or local scale, that comes to mind for you when you think of this year’s TEDWomen theme, Bridges? What bridge-building effort(s) do you believe ought to address this issue?
The next answer comes to us from Turkish TED Translator Cihan Ekmekçi*, whose response homes in on one of bridge-building’s fundamental elements: unity—between all people, regardless of race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, etc. Even as humanity seems to fracture more and more every day, Cihan, as you’ll discover below, is steadfast in his belief that the bridges of diversity, empathy and unity won’t weaken; if anything, they’ll grow stronger.
*(Unfortunately, due to the current visa crisis between the U.S. and Turkey, Cihan and his fellow Turkish TEDWomen invitee, Selda Yener, have been unable to obtain their visas to travel to the conference. Urdu TED Translator Raana Irfan, who lives in Pakistan, has also met with a similar bureaucratic obstruction. We, of course, are extremely disappointed by these developments, not least of all because these three translators would have enriched the already dynamic panel and presence of TED Translators at TEDWomen 2017.)
When I consider TEDWomen 2017’s theme, Bridges, I immediately find myself contemplating a frighteningly pervasive global problem: Human beings’ lack of empathy and respect for each other. Despite ever-increasing globalization that’s seen our world’s myriad cultures and nations set aside their differences in favor of more engagement (or bridges, if you will) between themselves, examples of our enmity and violence toward one another abound. It seems humans have become adept at, perhaps even resigned to, burning the bridges they’ve worked so long and hard to build.
However, I believe we haven’t yet passed the point of no return: The ability to both rebuild the bridges we’ve burned and construct new ones remains well within us. The key is that we must embrace and nurture human diversity rather than fear it. Fear is ultimately destructive, and especially so when it manifests irrationally as racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, misogyny… I’ll be the first to admit that we still have a long way to go before humanity transcends such fears; but with each successive generation, it’s quite clear that most folks prefer to live in a world where equality flourishes, where the bridges between us are preserved and fortified, where new bridges are built all the time. If we do as much as we can to keep this momentum going, I think we’ll face far better prospects for a more peaceful and sustainable world in the future.