"The danger of the single story" - compelling TED talk.

Stories shape the worlds that we create in our heads. Photographs, newspapers, books, movies, magazines, and oral stories themselves -- they suggest to us how things are. They are like brush-strokes, slathered together, overlapping, coalescing into pictures with meaning. Helpful as they are to informing us, though, we are particularly vulnerable to stories. More exactly, we are vulnerable to giving too much credence to single stories; calling a picture meaningful when it is only a single brush-stroke. This is the subject of Chimamanda Adichie's talk below. In a world as complex as ours, Adichie reminds us that we must be mindful of The Single Story, and be humble enough to know when we don't know enough.

WATCH "The Danger of the Single Story" (~19 minutes)

Talk page

includes transcript, podcast, and more!

--

Haven't heard of TED yet?

You've been missing a lot of incredible stuff. Here's the skinny:

"We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.

...

The TED Conference, held annually in Long Beach, is still the heart of TED. More than a thousand people now attend -- indeed, the event sells out a year in advance -- and the content has expanded to include science, business, the arts and the global issues facing our world. Over four days, 50 speakers each take an 18-minute slot, and there are many shorter pieces of content, including music, performance and comedy. There are no breakout groups. Everyone shares the same experience. It shouldn't work, but it does. It works because all of knowledge is connected. Every so often it makes sense to emerge from the trenches we dig for a living, and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole." ("About Ted", Ted.com)