Re: Who are we?

Description: Religious zeal has cost us millions of lives.

Question: What forces have shaped humanity most?

Transcript: I would say religious and ethic conflicts have had an enormous force in a very negative sense. I’m a Christian, but if you look at how many wars have been fought over Christianity – and we see today in the Muslim world, and the Jewish world – I’m very, very concerned about this. And I think it’s had a very negative force. And I think it’s a tragedy that people of faith, and people who are people of belief tend to separate today rather than use that to bring people together. And the fact that we’ve gone off in so many different directions, and we look at people of difference belief sets as evil. And some of this you can see in an African tribal setting; you can see here in the United States in various groups proselytizing for their set of beliefs, and actually looking for enemies and setting people off almost like Satan and the devil. And I think this has been extremely damaging in society. And it’s cost us many, many wars and you know, millions of lives

Question: Do you see any solution?

Transcript: Yes. I think the solution to this is brining people together so that they understand each other. When I teach at Harvard, about 40% of the people are non-American passports; 70% of the executive education. But then there’s a whole cadre of recently immigrated Americans who are Americans just like anyone else. But this is a melting pot, and people come out of there . . . It’s very hard to have any kind of prejudice on the basis of sexual orientation, gender differences, racial or religious differences. Those are really ameliorated because of the interaction. And I think we’ve created organizations and bodies – whether they’re international bodies, global bodies, global corporation bodies, NGOs that can do this, we can lead to a much more peaceful world where we can turn our technology, and our talents, and our leadership not trying to solve problems of conflict, but trying to solve real problems of human life.

Recorded on: 7/6/07