TED Community » Jeffrey Allen

More About Me

I'm passionate about

big changes and what causes them.

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• TEDCred score: +0.70 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A reply on Talk: Jacqueline Novogratz: Inspiring a life of immersion

  Mar 22 2011: Perhaps she would have been a little less maligned had she said "the adolescent male CAN BE the most dangerous animal on the planet." But that's just semantics—it was clearly what she meant. Regardless, as a 33-year-old male who was an adolescent not that long ago, and who had worked as a high school teacher, I think she's absolutely right on.
  
  Young men 1) are strong enough to by physically dominant over anyone else, and 2) they have the capacity for aggression—to use that strength or to pick up a weapon—to an extent that most older and younger men and women of all ages just don't have. This makes them dangerous—more dangerous than other demographic groups. But perhaps most importantly, combine those two traits with their high levels of emotional vulnerability, and you see why bad people have manipulated so many adolescent males to do so many bad things all over the world.
  
  The question we should be asking is, in countries like Rwanda & Morocco & Iraq & China & Colombia & Mexico—in every country for that matter—how can we make sure that every young person—male and female—grows up feeling that they have a shot to make what they want out of their life. An empowered young person can improve the world for everyone. An idle, disempowered young person is dangerous.
  
  I think of the young men who led the revolution in Tunisia—they were following the lead of a 25-year-old who set himself on fire to protest the lack of opportunity for regular people in his country. A similar story played out in Egypt, and it may well be brewing in Morocco and other countries too. Dictators get the headlines, but it's the frustration and anger of these young men—who are often well educated but still unable to find work to support themselves and move out of their parents' homes—that propels them into the streets. That same frustration can lead them to beat their wives and lash out in so many other ways. We have to find a way to give them hope—for their sake, and for everyone's sake.

• A comment on Talk: Jacqueline Novogratz: Inspiring a life of immersion

  Mar 22 2011: The story about the Pakistani community with only 1 mosque really struck me. Three different imams, preaching different sects of Islam, take turns to lead the prayers each week, but all the people of the community come each week, regardless of whether it's their imam leading the prayers or not.
  
  It makes me wonder, what would a society be like where there was only 1 religious building, and it was a church one week, a synagogue the next, a mosque the next... and on and on and on until all the religious communities had a chance to hold their service -- and then it all started again.
  
  On the one hand, it would probably be great for the regular people in the community, because they would get exposed to various different ways of looking at and living in the world. But it would probably also be great for the religions themselves, because the religious leaders would have to adapt their approaches and their "sermons" to an audience that isn't already converted. Maybe the best part of each religion -- the tolerance, the love, the sharing and general kindness -- would get emphasized, and all the divisiveness would have to be swept under the rug, until ultimately it was put aside for so long that the leaders realized they didn't need it anymore. That's a religious institution I think I could get behind.
  
  I wonder if, somewhere on the Earth, something like that already exists.

• A comment on Conversation: Where's that great place you think everyone should see?

  Feb 21 2011: I used to live near a mountainside rainforest in northeast Madagascar called Marojejy. It's a wonderful hike, you pass through several different vegetation zones as you head towards the summit, there are a couple well-maintained huts/campsites to stay in, the birds, lemurs, chameleons and plants are unique in this world, the local culture is fascinating and welcoming... seriously, there's nothing else like it on Earth. And there are beautiful semi-deserted beaches just an hour or so away.
  
  (Get in touch if you want details on where to stay, hiking guides, etc.)
• +5

  A comment on Conversation: Which relevant/important events currently unfolding around the world are being ignored by the media? Why are they relevant?

  Feb 20 2011: One of the issues that's really struck me over the years is the amount of people who continue to die from easily-solved water-related issues (see washinitiative.org/ for more on that). We can fly to the moon, yet 1 billion people -- that's 1 out of every 6 people on earth -- still don't have access to safe drinking water. It's incredible, and solvable. Yet we hear so little about it.
  
  Another critical yet under-reported story is how western consumption drives human rights abuses in poorer countries. We all know about blood diamonds (thanks to Leonardo di Caprio), but less heralded are the stories of major international oil companies like Exxon and Shell enabling militaries and paramilitaries who have destroyed villages in Indonesia and Nigeria. And the hundreds of communities across India rallying against Coca-Cola, whose bottling plants are drying up the groundwater that feeds their wells and fields. And the deadliest war since World War II -- the conflict in the Congo known as "Africa's World War" -- is fueled in large part by lucrative sales of coltan, the mineral needed to produce cell phones, laptops, and other electronics. And don't even get me started on how western farm subsidies destroy markets in Africa, keeping farmers there poorer than they otherwise would be!
  
  I guess the bottom line story is this: we are all connected now -- how can we ensure it's for better and not for worse?
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Which relevant/important events currently unfolding around the world are being ignored by the media? Why are they relevant?

  Feb 20 2011: A good place to start might be the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting (http://pulitzercenter.org/), which funds experienced journalists to cover under-reported stories worldwide. Right now they're highlighting a few stories on the situation in Sudan, where a momentous secession process has just taken place peacefully and democratically to form the first new country in Africa in decades, while the war in Darfur is quietly re-igniting (quietly, that is, as far as the rest of the world is concerned). They're also looking at the guerrilla war that's ramping up again in Russia's Caucasus Mountains, Malaysian forest destruction for palm oil production, the brutal war waged by the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, Haiti after the quake, and much more.
  
  As a former editor for OneWorld.net (full disclosure), I would be remiss if I didn't also mention that OneWorld continues to cover the global human rights and development stories others are ignoring. On the news page today, for example, are stories about Zimbabwe (Robert Mugabe turns 87 this week!), the notorious exploits of the Japanese Whaling Fleet in the South Pacific, and the murder of an indigenous leader in Brazil. More here: http://oneworldgroup.org/headlines

• A reply on Conversation: To what extent has social media contributed to the spreading of the People's revolutions and call for Freedom in Tunisia & Egypt?

  Feb 20 2011: Perhaps one of the positives of social media becoming a global information source is that people generally recognize each YouTube video, blog post, or tweet for what it is -- one person's unverified, raw experience.
  
  Conversely, while much mainstream media has degenerated in recent years into little more than one person's unsubstantiated raw opinions (with the tacit support of the companies producing the media), the regular people consuming those tv shows and web articles often don't recognize them for what they've become.
  
  Social media may sometimes be a wolf and sometimes a sheep, but at least it's not dressed up in the other's clothing.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Test Schools, Not Children

  Feb 19 2011: Broadly speaking, I think the goals of educations should be (1) to help young people choose a life path that gives them the most satisfaction, and (2) teach them the human and practical skills they need to excel at that path.
  
  I'm 33, Ivy-League-educated, and in a stable job that challenges me, enables me to travel and interact with great people, and develop new ideas to use emerging technologies to improve lives. I've also been a teacher and a journalist, and lived in the U.S., Africa, and Europe. By almost all definitions I have "succeeded." I'm happy, yes. But I also feel like I haven't discovered my true passion—a fulfilling life path. I look back at my standard, U.S. public-school education and don't recall being taught to think about what makes me happy and why.
  
  I think if our goal is to help young people grow into emotionally fulfilled adults (which are surprisingly rare in today's world) we have to do more to help young people learn to be introspective—to identify what makes them happy in life—and then give them the tools to go after those things.
  
  I'll leave it to the education experts to say what such a system might look like, but here are some of the insights that struck me from this conversation:
  - Pay teachers much more (to attract the best talent) and then require them to sit in each other's classes, both to learn from colleagues' approaches and to evaluate each other.
  - Group learners by interest/learning style (rather than by age) and with teachers passionate about that interest.
  - Find ways to individualize instruction more, by increasing money in the system to decrease class size, but also by pulling more of society into the role of teacher. Young people could spend more time learning from professionals, and more class activities can be guided automatically (computers, virtual reality).
  - We don't need to learn to recall most facts anymore (thanks, Google!). Since our educational needs have changed so much, it's a great time to rethink the system

• A reply on Conversation: If you don't consider human life "sacred," is there any moral reason not to have an abortion?

  Feb 18 2011: Very well put, Michael! But many of us who don't believe in any creator, still believe it's wrong to kill, wrong to steal, and, most importantly, right to do things to make other people happy even when "me" gets nothing from it -- in fact even when "me" has to suffer for it. Many non-religious "me"s would risk their own future existence to save a "you" they've never met before.
  
  If they're not doing it for some sort of god, then they must be doing it for a personal morality, right?

• A reply on Conversation: If you don't consider human life "sacred," is there any moral reason not to have an abortion?

  Feb 17 2011: Thanks for your thoughts, Harald and Revett. Indeed it's a minefield—one of the most dangerous!—but I don't think it has to be. I think many of those mines have been placed there by religious influences in our society, and they make it harder for non-religious people to come to grips with the non-religious ethical questions involved. But if we put aside religious arguments—which often cannot be logically proved or disproved anyway—I'm hoping maybe we can clarify some of the underlying moral issues.
  
  So maybe we should dive a little deeper into the question Harald raises—what is ethical/unethical and why?—but, like I said, leaving faith-based arguments aside.
  
  I would start with, maybe, it's unethical to do anything that physically or emotionally harms another living thing, or reduces that living thing's ability to choose how to live its own life, if you can reasonably avoid doing that harm without inflicting some greater harm to another living thing.
  
  Would you agree/disagree? Would you add anything else?
  
  And what would this precept mean for our question about abortion? I would suggest maybe it means abortion should be avoided, as it clearly harms the fetus, unless the baby's birth would be expected to inflict a greater harm on other living things (the parents, for example, or other children in the family).
  
  But of course that raises the question of if we can reasonably compare the relative size of the various "harms" involved?
  
  And though we can describe pretty clearly the potential harms (and benefits) to living adults, what exactly are the potential harms to the fetus? If its nervous system is not developed yet, it can't feel pain. But should we consider it a harm to the fetus that it doesn't get the opportunity to live the life it would have lived, even if it has no conception of itself as a being with a future? We don't seem to worry too much about the future life a cow would have had, presumably because it doesn't comprehend such things.
  
  Any thoughts?