How love can help repair social inequality Chlo Valdary

my name

is chloe valderry and i’m going to be

talking to you today

about a concept i created called the

theory of enchantment

i’m going to tell you what it is how i

came to develop it

and why i think it’s necessary to help

us in this moment

as a country and to help heal our nation

so the theory of enchantment is really a

social emotional learning program

that teaches individuals how to develop

character

develop tools for resiliency to meet the

hardship of life

head on but more importantly to learn

how to love

oneself so that one can be able to love

others

in the process and the unique aspect of

the theory of enchantment is that it

uses

pop culture to teach a lot of these

ideas

so i use disney hip-hop pop music

broadly speaking and other

really fun and cool aspects found in pop

culture to teach it

but more on that later first i’m going

to tell you

how i developed this concept called the

theory of enchantment

so about five years ago i moved to new

york

from new orleans and i got a job at the

wall street journal

now my background is in international

studies

and diplomacy and i was really always

interested

in this concept of you know teaching

people how to combat conflict this is

what we study

within international relations but

once i got to the wall street journal i

decided to work on a thesis

that tackled the topic that was slightly

different not teaching people how to

combat conflict

but rather instead teaching people how

to love

now these two things are actually two

totally different things they are

interrelated but they are not the same

thing

so i wanted to teach people or figure

out how to teach people

how to love and in order to do this i

asked myself

well if i want to teach people how to

love maybe i have to ask

what are people already in love with and

how can i use that as a conduit to work

backwards

to get people to learn how to love and

the biggest source of content for me

that shows us what we love as a species

as a society

is pop culture so all of a sudden in the

middle of this

thesis paper that i was working on i

started studying pop culture

this means that i started studying

companies like nike

companies like disney singer-songwriters

like beyonce

i wanted to see if there was a common

denominator across

all these influencers and across all

these companies

that really demonstrated why we

gravitate toward them in the first place

and it turns out there is a common

denominator and it’s

very very simple these companies and

these influencers

create content where we as the audience

see ourselves and our potential

reflected in the content

and that’s why we gravitate toward it so

for example nike

nike puts out sports apparel and

attaches to it the brand

just do it and the idea that we have in

our minds is that once we put on this

apparel

we will be able to accomplish and

overcome any obstacle

that we have to meet very similarly

disney every almost every single disney

movie is a motif

is a metaphor for the human condition it

entails

a human being a flawed hero who is

imperfect

who’s met with some obstacle who has to

meet that obstacle head-on

and in doing so becomes transformed by

that obstacle

and emerges heroic and finally of course

there’s beyonce so i don’t know about

you but for me

and many other women around the world we

see ourselves and our potential

reflected in beyonce’s content so for

example when she says things like

who run the world girls we see our

potential reflected in that

so this is really the common denominator

of a lot of pop culture that we

gravitate towards

and i decided to call this phenomenon

enchantment

and i called it enchantment because guy

kawasaki the former marketing director

of apple

describes enchantment as the process by

which you

delight someone with a concept an idea

a personality or a thing and it dawned

on me that that’s really what we’re

trying to get at we’re really trying to

become

enchanted by one another to be full of

wonder when we encounter one another

and this is really the step the key to

learning how to love ourselves

and to love one another in the process

so after i wrote this thesis

at the wall street journal i worked for

a non-profit for two years

lectured on it refined it in colleges

across the united states

and around the world and came up with a

whole system

for teaching this now there are three

principles

that are really the guideposts for the

theory of enchantment

and it’s important to understand them

because i think that they will be useful

in helping us heal our nation in this

moment that we’re dealing with racism

and police brutality and really needing

to advance towards social justice and

social change

so the three principles are very simple

and they are as follows

number one treat people like human

beings

not like political abstractions number

two

if you want to criticize criticize to

uplift and empower

never to tear down never to destroy and

number three

try to root everything you do in love

and compassion

now you can imagine even if we as a

nation were to implement the first

principle to try to live

out that practice in our everyday lives

we would

come so far but we’re not doing that at

the moment at the moment we are

prejudging people and treating people

not like human beings

but instead like abstractions we’re

caricaturing one another

we’re stereotyping and reducing one

another and in the process we’re

stereotyping

and reducing ourselves so i think that

if we were

able to internalize and implement all

three principles

of the theory of enchantment we could

foster better conversations

that can help heal our nation and help

us move forward

thanks so much

thank you so much for that chloe um

let’s dig in

and uh talk about an example so

as you said you use pop culture as a way

to connect to your audience with your

principles but it’s there’s a larger

message as you said

within those references um can you sort

of

share a thread with us from a movie like

moana or a kendrick lamar lyric

and link that to you know how we resolve

conflict

sure absolutely so i teach both kendrick

lamar

and moana in the theory of enchantment

uh course

i teach kendrick lamar in the context of

really

teaching people the first principle

treat people like human beings not like

political abstractions

and the first question that comes to the

to the front of that

of that principle is well what does it

actually mean to be a human being

and one of the things that i teach is

that well to be a human being is to be

imperfect and complex and multifaceted

and multi-dimensional

and in kendrick lamar’s song dna he says

i got power poison pain and joy inside

my dna

and when he says that he’s really

articulating a capacity to be self-aware

to understand that he’s capable of

producing good

and of produce and of producing harm he

understands that he’s capable of both of

these things as a human being

so i use that song and that lyric

specifically to introduce students

to this concept of the complexity of the

human condition

when it comes to moana i think that

moana is the best

uh contemporary disney movie ever made

and what’s brilliant about moana is that

it’s actually incredibly restorative

moana is all about a young warrior

princess

who lives on this island who’s dying and

the reason why the island is dying is

because it used to be ruled over by a

good goddess named te fiti

and then her heart was taken from her

and then it was replaced by an evil

rageful goddess named taka

and i’m going to give it away but i

think we’re we’re at that point uh

right now but um the aha moment that

moana has

in the end is that te fiti and taka are

actually the same being

and once the heart was removed from te

fiti she descended into rage

and became taka which again as i said

earlier every disney movie is a motif

for the human condition

i mean this is reflective of how we are

as a species

if you remove love if you remove nurture

from us we tend to descend

into rage so really that film um i think

teaches

both the first principle remember that

we are human beings and capable of

love and rage but also the third

principle the importance of rooting

everything we do in love and compassion

so that we can restore

each other and ourselves to our higher

selves

it makes so much sense to to use these

examples to recognize value in ourselves

and

others but how do you see it fitting in

with dismantling

structural and systemic issues

so i don’t think that one can really

tackle systemic issues

without centering the individual without

understanding that the individual has to

first

be able to love themselves right and it

takes a lot to teach a person to love

themselves it’s not something that’s

necessarily

uh true for a lot of people we deal with

emotional baggage we deal with

insecurities

this is true of every human being and we

don’t have the skill set

to love ourselves we’re not going to be

able to love each other

if we don’t have the skill set to

develop a sense of inner contentment

and a sense of self-worth then what

we’re going to end up doing is we’re

going to project

that insecurity onto other people and

then the

systemic inequality that we’re seeing

today

will continue to exist so in order to

change that in a long-term

fashion and in a sustainable way we have

to first renew ourselves and make sure

that we’re healthy

and we come into the place in society in

a healthy way

it seems hard to value another person

who has tried to suppress you

um at a larger level how do you think

about that

so that’s a great question and i teach a

lot of uh

influential and inspiring work from

individuals who

have been hosted in the ted community

folks like daryl davis for example who

has

successfully i mean talk about treating

people who treat you badly with grace

um daryl davis is someone whose claim to

fame in addition to being a famous

musician

he actually has gotten hundreds of

former kkk members to leave the kkk to

give up their roads in the process

and he did this simply by showing um

grace and empathy to these individuals

and showing them where they were wrong

of course but not treating them like

they were less than

and not treating them like they were

abstractions but still treating them

as human beings and we saw that he was

able to change

the lives of these individuals in the

process and i asked him once you know

did you not get insulted or offended

when these guys were saying really

insulting things

to you when you were speaking to them

and he said to me something i’ll never

forget he said

well actually what i thought to myself

was what does that have to do with me

i know who i am i know that my

self-worth

i understand what they’re saying is

absolutely absurd

so i was able to de-personalize it and

not take it personally and as a result

it didn’t bother me and i thought to

myself yeah well that takes a very

strong composition and a strong sense of

character to be able to do that

and that’s really what i’m trying to

help teach like how can we develop that

strong sense of character

so that when someone comes at us in an

insulting way

we can de-personalize it and still meet

them with grace and with love

um one of the things you’ve critiqued in

the current anti-racism discussions is

the idea

of white fragility you feel it can be

harmful to our progress

why do you think that why do you feel

that way sure so i think that the

concept of white fragility

basically breaks the first rule of the

principle of the theory of enchantment

it treats

white people as though they were a

monolithic being or entity

um it treats white people sort of like a

conglomerate instead of treating white

people as people as complex

individuals who are multifaceted um and

if we treat any human being or any group

of people

as though they were a conglomerate we

run the risk of stereotyping them

reducing them

in our words and in our actions and

turning them into an abstraction

and that’s not going to be very helpful

or sustainable

for the long run we have to treat each

other like family we have to treat each

other like brothers and sisters

and only by doing that will we be able

to create what dr king called the

beloved community

um and have compassion for ourselves and

for each other even as we’re trying to

you know advance reconciliation

and correct some of the things that

we’re seeing that have been unjust in

our society

well speaking of community let’s take a

couple of questions from our community

sure thing um

so you believe that privilege exists for

individuals in different ways but

isn’t society waiting privilege for some

more than others in in kind of an

overwhelming way

i would say yes in general but the way i

think of privilege is actually

i think far more multifaceted in the way

we sort of discuss it in our

in our common lingo i think that at all

times there are an existing number of

infinite privileges that people carry

with them so

for example a white person may not be

followed in a store

right where as i may be followed in a

store prejudged because of my skin color

that’s an example of what we call white

privilege

but at the same time another white

person might come

from a single parent family who may have

experienced

uh abuse in the family and maybe

treated a certain way in society as a

result of that whereas i come from a

two-parent family a healthy family

and i may be treated differently as a

result of that so there are always at

all times a different number of

privileges that we bring to the

forefront of the

social spaces that we enter and so the

question

is very simply how do we treat each

other equally at all times

and actually i think more importantly

how do we treat

all of us with compassion and with love

despite

the privileges or lack thereof that we

bring into society

okay we’re gonna take one more question

from the community

from jediah i really love these

principles

but i’m hoping to hear about bad actors

aka villains if i understand this

framework properly

what happens if and when people reject

these principles

yeah that’s a great question um and i do

think that when people

reject these principles they do sort of

become bad actors and they do sort of

become

villains one of the things that i teach

in the course which i

alluded to earlier is disney um and one

of the things we study when

studying the disney pantheon is some of

the villains so we study ursula for

example

from the little mermaid and we study a

couple others

a lot so bear from the toy story 3 for

example and there’s a common denominator

amongst many of these villains

especially for ursula in the little

mermaid

through the song poor unfortunate souls

so if you study that song

poor unfortunate souls you’ll discover

is actually a textbook example

of how people villains tend to exploit

the insecurities

of folks in order to sort of get them to

do their bidding that’s what the song

poor unfortunate souls

is all about and i think that if you

don’t practice these principles and if

you don’t understand

the importance of loving yourself and

loving others you’re

more prone to descend into rage and to

ma

into madness and become that bad actor

and to treat people

unfairly unkindly and as a result that

will of course contribute

to a lot of the systemic injustice that

we’re seeing today

thank you i’m gonna ask one more

question and then we’re gonna hand it

off to whitney and sandy

um what makes you oh we have sorry okay

uh um i’m not sure if we wanna

anyways okay uh back to us uh what makes

you feel hopeful right now

well i think that’s i think we’re seeing

the

one of the most diverse coalitions right

now

outside in the streets protesting for

racial justice

um you know we’re seeing people of all

colors and from all socioeconomic

backgrounds and even across the

political spectrum

um i certainly can say that for here in

brooklyn where i am

um and that’s something i’ve never seen

before that’s not something i’ve never

really read of in american history and i

think it is a testament to

the just you know notion of this moment

that just idea that is really

moving this moment and pushing this

moment forward

um and i hope that it’s sustained and i

hope that it keeps going

and again i’m also really excited that

it’s uh a lot of millennials i’m a

millennial

um at the forefront of this movement i’m

encouraged by seeing my generation step

up and really try to advance social

justice