What's the biggest barrier to thriving? A philosopher and a space architect answer | Ariel Ekblaw and Meghan Sullivan

0:03Meghan Sullivan: You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Our original series, TED Intersections, is back for a fourth season. The show features unscripted conversations between experts navigating ideas shaping our world. In this first episode, a space architect and a philosopher sit down and discover they've been circling the same questions all along, just from very different places. Ariel Ekblah builds the architecture for how humans will one day live in space. Megan Sullivan studies moral philosophy from Aristotle to the present.

0:41Meghan Sullivan: Put them in a room, and what you get is a wide-ranging conversation about what we actually owe one another, and what astronauts floating in orbit might teach us about being better humans here on the ground.

0:53Ariel Ekblaw: What we owe another person is to be willing to look at them again. Oftentimes we meet people and we sort of form our assumptions and stereotypes about them. We put them in a little category in our brain and then we interact with them according to that category.

1:05Meghan Sullivan: In this conversation, Ariel and Megan trade ideas on the common good, on human thriving, and what it would take to design a better world from scratch. They keep landing in a surprising place. that some of the same principles guiding a crew in cramped space habitats might be exactly what the rest of us need down here. Before we go be a sci-fi spacefaring species, maybe we earn our right to go do that someday by showing that we can take really good care of our own planet first. That's coming up right after a short break.

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4:17Ariel Ekblaw: And now, our TED Conversation of the Day. It strikes me as somebody who's a huge space fangirl, is what I would say, is that having these really concrete and ambitious goals, like going to the moon or putting people on the space station, sometimes forces us to focus our attention on solving problems that then help us solve problems back here on Earth.

4:38Meghan Sullivan: This is exactly what we want to do in space.

4:59Off we go.

5:01Meghan Sullivan: What does the common good actually mean, and how do we build towards it?

5:06Ariel Ekblaw: I think a lot of people assume that the common good means finding the kind of least common denominator that we can agree in, like just splitting the difference or kind of finding like going down to the basics. I think that is a huge mistake. The philosophers that I study and love, the ancient Greeks like Aristotle, believe that the common good, the good itself is something that you're moving towards. It's a common goal and nobody is there yet. So when we talk about prioritizing the common good, I think we're not trying to figure out of all the things that we believe and care about now, how do we sort of settle?

5:44Ariel Ekblaw: And figure out what we already share. Exactly. Instead, we need to be having this conversation of where do we collectively want to move to, which presumably is very different from where we currently are, which is probably not that great.

5:56Meghan Sullivan: I think this is really compelling. In our field for space, we think about the space commons and try to define what is the public good in the context of a really broad geographical expanse, like the near-Earth cocoon of space. And we don't have a real space commons yet. It does exist as a space, but we haven't defined all the norms yet. And so I love this. This is a way that we can think about moving together towards the definition of maybe a future goal, an aspirational version of humanity's comments.

6:24Ariel Ekblaw: Maybe trying to figure out what it means to be an interplanetary species. We might kind of exercise our imagination about how to be a better planetary species in the process. Love that. What do we owe each other as humans? Hmm.

6:41Meghan Sullivan: I think we should owe each other the alternative to the Hobbesian view. The idea that human nature is fundamentally wrought at its base or somehow pegged to our lowest basis instinct. I think we should owe each other our highest version of ourselves or our more honorable version of ourselves.

7:02Ariel Ekblaw: Oh, I like that. So you disagree with Hobbes that life should be nasty, brutish, and short. That's pretty depressing.

7:10Meghan Sullivan: Should be elevated, you know, delightful and long.

7:13Ariel Ekblaw: One of my favorite 20th century philosophers is a philosopher named Iris Murdoch. And she has a good answer to this question. She says, what we owe another person is to be willing to look at them again. Which means like oftentimes we meet people and we sort of form our assumptions and stereotypes about them. We kind of put them in a little category in our brain and then we interact with them according to that category.

7:35Meghan Sullivan: We put them in a box too early.

7:37Ariel Ekblaw: Oh, my gosh. And she's like, you know, 80 % of the time your first impression is pretty dumb.

7:42Meghan Sullivan: This is something I have learned in my life. I think for the last 10 years I thought I was great at first impressions and then judging people in a positive sense but quickly and decisively. And I think I have learned recently that I really do need to give people a second look. I love this comment.

7:56Ariel Ekblaw: And just being able to like say, all right, I've got a vibe on you. I'm going to just put this on the shelf and just take it. And she's like really look at the person. Just make yourself see like there's a person there. So I think if we did that, maybe things would start to go better.

8:11Meghan Sullivan: If you could design a better world for humans from scratch, what's the first rule?

8:16Ariel Ekblaw: You know, I come at philosophy from a Catholic perspective. and in the Jewish tradition and the Christian tradition, there was a fundamental rule that was laid down in the beginning that then we just promptly disregarded, which is you will love your neighbor as another self, like as yourself. Like you're going to put love at the basis of all the rest of your decision making. And pretty much as soon as that kind of fundamental operating principle was laid down, we all started ignoring it and like revising it. So I don't know if I would revise the original code, but I would maybe enforce it a little bit harder.

8:57Ariel Ekblaw: I don't know if that's allowed as an answer. What would you do?

8:59Meghan Sullivan: I love this. I think in the context of space environments, we're often in isolated, confined environments, tiny, constrained little spaces. So if I was going to start with a new rule for humanity, I love the idea of an oldie-ba-goody, the golden rule, treat others how you would like to be treated. And I think that that actually would play out very well in a constrained space where the what goes around comes around happens very quickly with kind of a small, you know, proto group of humans in a space habitat. It's like almost a tiny little, you know, maybe not a civilization, but a tiny little society in its own right.

9:32Meghan Sullivan: So, yeah, something like recommitting to the golden rule and this sense of really treating other people in the way in which you would like to be received and seen and treated. I love it.

9:44Ariel Ekblaw: You're going to love this one. Oh, great. What is a hope you have for humans in the next 10 years?

9:51Meghan Sullivan: I have an aspiration for humans that more people get to experience the overview effect, which really means democratizing access to space so that more humans can fly up to low-Earth orbit, look back down at the Earth and see the Earth from space. And even really serious military astronauts, very impeccably well-trained, brave people, they start to cry when they see the Earth from space. They lose control over their own emotions because it is so moving. And I would love to share that experience with more people. That's a hope I would have.

10:24Ariel Ekblaw: I think on my end, similar hope that, you know, we'd have a kind of realization. I'm very excited about the AI decade finally taking root. And I consider myself kind of pragmatic optimist about artificial intelligence. But my biggest hope is that we would use this powerful technology that we now have at our disposal to help a whole lot more folks realize what it means to be genuinely human, that kind of humans be the star.

10:53Meghan Sullivan: That it heightens the difference.

10:54Ariel Ekblaw: Heightens the difference. And also there's so much about our lives pre-AI that are dehumanizing. So many ways in which we learn, in which we work that have never enabled us to really express what's special about being a human being. And I'd love to think that now we have this technology, we would choose to develop it in a way that we're humans and our capabilities and virtues would be the star of the show. I don't know that that's going to happen. I'm kind of afraid it's not going to happen. But maybe if we had the chance to see where we stand in the perspective of the universe, it would go better.

11:27Meghan Sullivan: What is the biggest barrier to human thriving?

11:30Ariel Ekblaw: The biggest barrier to human thriving, there are some really big barriers. but I think probably the biggest one is our inattention. We, you know, we're rational animals. We have extraordinarily great capabilities in us, but the only way that we realize them, unlike most animals, which kind of mature and develop their powers no matter what, a squirrel becomes a good squirrel with that very little effort. Humans require a great deal of effort to become good versions of what we're supposed to be. And it requires a lot of attention, not just to ourselves, but attention on the part of our parents and teachers.

12:11Ariel Ekblaw: And I think when we fail to flourish, it's not typically because we've had like some malicious plan that screwed up our lives, but really we just never had the opportunity to focus on the good plans. So I would think distraction. How about you?

12:29Meghan Sullivan: That's a great response. Like we are really high intensity creatures in the sense we need a lot of attention. We need a lot of explicit, yeah, care and development to become maybe the best version of ourselves. For me, it's interesting. I think of this sometimes in the context of why do we spend so much money on space exploration? If some of the barriers to human thriving are things like poverty, war, climate change, there's a lot of things at a societal scale that might be keeping us from thriving in the way that we really could. And then there raises the question, why would we spend money on space at all in that context.

13:02Meghan Sullivan: And I think one of the things we could do to help human thriving is we can use space for the benefit of life on Earth. So before we go be a sci-fi space faring species, maybe we earn our right to go do that someday by showing that we can take really good care of our own planet first. So try to do things in space that would help with human thriving. And my latest favorite one is biology. It turns out biology is really different when you're floating in orbit than when you're on the ground. And so we might be able to do things like cancer cures, Alzheimer's, organoids testing, all kinds of interesting things that would maybe help humans thrive in a more concrete, immediate way on Earth, but leveraging space technology.

13:42Ariel Ekblaw: It strikes me as somebody who's a huge space fangirl is what I would say, is that having these really concrete and ambitious goals like going to the moon or putting people on the space station sometimes forces us to focus our attention on solving problems that then help us solve problems back here on Earth. And having a big vision like that, sometimes exactly the kick in the pants you need to feel motivated to take on something that in your ordinary life might not feel like it deserves your attention.

14:10Meghan Sullivan: This is exactly what we want to do in space.

14:13Ariel Ekblaw: How do we build systems that influence the good in each other?

14:17Meghan Sullivan: Systems that influence the good in each other also have to assume good intentions at the base. And so being able to think about what is the architecture of policy that comes out of the U.S. government or ways that we could unify people to get them there. And I've recently become really passionate about something completely outside of my domain. So maybe I'm a little over my skis, which is the idea of a national service, not necessarily a military draft. My parents are both ex-military. I'm very supportive of the military. but something that would be like every young person does something for a year when they're 18 and it really unites red and blue state kids and urban and rural kids and it could be Teach for America.

14:56Meghan Sullivan: It could be something that's service oriented also maybe you know military service oriented but something like that I think once you get to know the people of your community and your village and your society and your civilization a little bit better I think you can do a better job of finding the good in them and then maybe building good systems around them. I love that.

15:15Ariel Ekblaw: I think on my end, there are a few institutions that really roll up their sleeves and do this work of forming people's characters. One is education. Another would be like church and religious organizations. And a third is the media. And everybody likes to talk about how awful, you know, whatever fill in the blank social media is. But, you know, genuinely print media, the news and various sources still very much forms people's outlook and what they hope for and what they view as their sort of purpose in life. And I think we have sorely neglected those institutions. And a lot of people are really on the brink of nihilism, I think, right now about whether we could still imagine amazing schools, whether we could still imagine on the weekends you going and being with other humans and doing some kind of collective activity and I think if we really want to design systems that will bring out the good in people we've got to recognize that we are social animals and that these human level institutions need to remain strong and need our investment and our attending so I would love to see just you know a renaissance of hope in what we're able to build in those kinds of institutions.

16:28Meghan Sullivan: I love this and just a reinvesting and bringing humans together through these different institutions and the ways that we used to come together and to convene and gather more religious and non-religious. I would love to do that with you. Let's start it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Thank you so much. It was a delight talking to you and getting to learn more about your work. Thanks. I had so much fun.

16:51Meghan Sullivan: That was a conversation between Ariel Ekblah and Megan Sullivan for our original series, TED Intersections. Visit TED.com to watch this conversation and others from the series. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tanzika Sungmarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Banban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott.

17:33Meghan Sullivan: Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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