Krista Tippett
Beauty, civility, and our lives with technology
The careful contemplation of what makes us human and how we can thrive, is a question at the core of Empathy Lab’s DNA. We welcome wise voices to inform our assessment, and give shape to our concept of what is deeply true and universal.
“We’re now having this kind of reckoning, culturally, with the civilizational effect of the work you do, the work that happens in this industry.” This charge from our friend, Krista Tippett, inspired a conversation about the potential of technology to transform and bolster civility and understanding in human society.
As a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster, National Humanities medalist, and host of the deeply-loved On Being podcast, Krista is an expert at giving thoughtful reflection on the movements and moments of our time and society. Empathy Lab invited Krista to sit down with Lab founder Danielle Krettek Cobb and discuss what it might look like to create and use technology as a tool for human flourishing, an innovation that can hold us and help us shift into a more vibrant society.
This is our second conversation with Krista. You can find our conversation on generous listening. Also explore our candid Q&A.
Krista, you’re someone who gives careful consideration to the movements and moments of our human collective. Here in Silicon Valley, connected technology is the water we swim in, but it hasn’t always been that way. What is one thing you’ve observed as technology has become a part of the day-to-day and hour-to-hour of the human experience?
Krista: I have a fair number of conversations about our lives with technology, and do think about this a great deal. These technologies are so much in their infancy, and I think one of the messages that’s come through so clearly with wise people in my conversations is that we forget that all of this is in its infancy because it is so powerful.
We forget that all of this is in its infancy because it is so powerful.
And it has. so quickly it feels like, taken over our lives. And the challenge is to shape our lives with technology and the technologies to human purpose.
That’s a beautiful challenge. We hear a lot of criticism on the impact of technology and how it’s ruining our lives. Why do you think that’s a dominant message?
Krista: Culturally, we’re so much more skilled at sophisticated analysis and criticism of what is flawed and failing and destructive and terrifying and catastrophic. We’re not as sophisticated at seeing and analyzing and working with and, thereby, nurturing what is generative and beautiful and humane. And I think that there’s so much that is human and beautiful, humane and generative, in our lives with technology as well.
There’s so much that is human and beautiful, humane and generative, in our lives with technology.
We think so too! What is an example you’ve seen of this generative side of technology?
Krista: One of the things that’s so clear to me in the sphere I’m in is the abundance of poetry that has this whole new life online and how people are making poetry and putting it up there and sharing it. And I think this is also a civilizational move. I mean, poetry does, in human societies, rise up when we are in these moments of cultural and political disarray. It’s something we are turning to as our official forms of language and discourse are so broken and failing us so badly. And it gives us ways to give voice to the best of ourselves. And actually, also, it gives us ways to put questions into the room — and I mean “the room” in a very expansive sense, the public room — that are there for us to live rather than answer or fight about.
You’ve had the opportunity to be with and interview many of our great poets. Would you share with us just one example of how poetry can capture what our more official language cannot?
Krista: I’m sure many of you are aware that Mary Oliver died last week. And I was so privileged to have the last big interview she gave in 2015. A question she put out into the world that is now rippling through it again — and it’s one of these transformative questions we can live — was “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
The thing that touched me the most in that interview with Mary was how she talked about her poetry being a moving thing — that she would walk to have the poetry coming through her and then she’d have to run home and get it — and what I loved about that was that it was living the questions. It’s all inquiry into that thing at the core of something that you’re going to bring out and make felt. And when I look at design or journalism, I think about this deep curiosity that rises up into us. Do we want to just look for the problems we want to solve, the itchy seams that drive us crazy, or the things that feel like they’re not right? Or is there actually something even deeper than that that’s more unifying, that is this place of beauty?
Krista: John O’Donohue, who is another poet and theologian and philosopher, he and I were talking about how a lot of the words that we need the most and love the most also get ruined. Sometimes we have to put them to one side, and use them less, and say what we’re saying, and not expect those words to do the work for us.
But sometimes we just really have to claim a word and say, no, we’re not going to let this die. He [John] used the word “beauty,” and I said to him beauty is another one of those words. If you just threw the word “beauty” into many conversations, maybe where my mind would go is to the flawless face on the cover of a magazine, right? And he said, “No, no. That’s glamor.” And he said, “Beauty is that, in the presence of which, we feel more alive.”
What do we want to amplify because it is good for us?
And what you just said about the inquiry — if we’re focused on solving the problems, do we then end up orienting towards the problems? I don’t think we have to do one or the other. We do, to some extent, need to focus on the problems, and it’s also just as serious and robust a question to ask, what do we want to amplify because it is good for us?
It speaks to and elicits the best of which our species is capable.
I think that’s part of what’s so fascinating about this sort of awkward adolescent moment we are in with technology right now. The power is what has brought us along so far, so fast, but there’s so much more to be done. It’s easy to focus on the fear part of it because that’s real, and that’s happening, but there’s so much potential if you focus on asking what are the things that we want to expand in people? What are the ways we can support? How do we reclaim the art of generous listening and integrate that — and our whole selves — into these places that we all create in?
Krista: This industry and these companies are the superpowers of this century. And that’s huge. We’re all now aware of the perils of that and all the pieces that need to be in place for that to be true and to be good for humanity, but every generation, every century has had its life-altering technologies. In other generations, the pace of those things was equally completely disorienting.
These technologies…have actually given us the tools…to think and act as a species.
It is the intimacy [that’s different]. Our technologies are woven into the fabric of our days, into the fabric of our lives. They are shifting the way we make and lead and learn and love. They are woven into the human enterprise. These technologies, and the interconnected world and economies they’ve given us, have actually given us the tools, for the first time as a species, to think and act as a species.
We are not anywhere living up to that right now. That’s not the picture. But this is the reality. This is the potential.
I love that articulation of it, and I want to imagine, what if everything we designed was designed as an act of beauty and service. The idea that we can repair the parts of the world that we see and touch is a pretty incredible fabric when we think about what filament is at our fingers here at Google.
Krista: And you know what? It’s audacious and it’s doable. So much damage has been done in the name of “saving the world.” But to “repair the world” it’s weaving, stitching, mending. It’s a big picture, but it’s one relationship at a time. “Repair the world” is the highest human calling, but you start with what you can see and touch. That’s what you’re called to
“Repair the world” is the highest human calling, but you start with what you can see and touch.
I love that pragmatism. There is this really beautiful intention we have in the Valley and in technology to solve these audacious human problems. When you speak about intentionality and hospitality and this whole space that we’ve started to unroll in our conversation, what’s your advice for us with that?
Krista: Culturally, we really privilege the “what” and the “when” questions and not the “how” and the “why.” If you rush to a solution, you often waste time. You often end up setting something loose that didn’t have the intentionality that it needed, that you then spend time rolling back and dismantling and solving for.
I believe that if we are going to wrap our arms around these intimate and civilizational challenges, it would behoove us — and I mean, in every aspect of our lives and in everything we do — to really invest our time, our creativity, our attention, and the sophistication we would give to solving a problem to the why and the how of it.
That means you spend a lot more time on something that doesn’t look like you’re being busy. So there’s a culture shift that has to happen. These industries you’re in are all about innovation. Innovation is not, in itself, good. Innovation is not necessarily progress. And that’s something to ponder. If our technologies and our lives with them are in our adolescence, I think…in the next stage, [we need to start] asking, will it be good for the world? Will it be good for humanity? And that’s going to look like wasting time, being discerning.
You mentioned that civility is a word that means a lot to you now. I love talking about these as civilization-level problems because it includes the humanity and the culture of the humans involved. How do you define civility?
Krista: I always add other adjectives, like “adventurous civility” or “muscular civility”. I think we have to get past the idea that it’s not being nice, kind, polite, and tame. Those aren’t big enough qualities to meet this moment. That’s not what civility is about. The intentionality behind it is this repair of our life together.
I think of the questions that have animated us at our best. The technologies you’ve created make that question of who will we be to each other inextricable now from the question of what it means to be human and how we want to live.
There are so many ways that we’re understanding the fullness of what it means to be human…and also, gaining a sense of the fullness of inclusion. We want the full array of humanity in the room to have its place.
Civility…is about knowing that we walk into the room…with deep, profound differences that are meaningful and important to us.
These intimate civilizational questions of how we’re going to live, we all have a stake in them. So to me, civility, in this generation, is about knowing that we walk into the room or into the discussion with deep, profound differences that are meaningful and important to us.
And the point is not agreeing. The point is getting into a relationship. The point is coming to know each other…not letting those things we disagree on define what is possible between us, opening up a new space where, perhaps, what we have in common are our questions.
That opening of the space that’s bigger than the differences allows for all of the questions, all of the voices. I’m curious, in this listening and allowing of all things for this greater sense of civility, how does one navigate that?
Krista: We’re going to have to innovate some new forms for that, right? Because we don’t reward the time or the energy. We reward what comes from the mind and not from the heart. Right now, all the structures we have, they’re inadequate. And I mean that in all of our workplaces and all of our institutions. They’re behind on what we’re learning. And they’re behind on how the world really works and how change really happens and on the difference between what is innovative and transformative, generatively transformative.
So that’s part of the task. The repair is going to have to be everybody starting very close to home — what you know, what you touch, the immediate people and structures around you. How do you make space for that to be rewarded?
