Embracing Plurality in Action | Manmeet Singh | TEDxKhaitanPublicSchool

Hello everyone, so my time to this, embracing duality in action, okay?

We will keep this apart for a few seconds, and I will tell you that I have a secret to share

the truth.

Now, before I go on to my secret, I have a question for you.

How many of you have heard the following sayings in Hindi or English?

That the white bulldoze, too many boats, does not go across the shore, or, you know, some

break any of you, don't be attacked or fall at a master of land.

How many of you have heard that?

Do these things out of the way?

Yes, great, I can't see many of you, but I trust you.

Second, this is for those of you who take note of this, they have, how many of you have

heard or experienced people assigning you labels, you know, you are like this or you are

like that.

Sure, I am going to sincere to honest, how many of you have experienced other people assigning

you labels?

Sure, for those of you who take note of this, maybe you are the ones assigning labels

for the people throughout the day, but that's a thing.

So, why is it important to know this, it's important because this shows us one thing, it shows

us the obsession of a society where it can singularity.

Now, what does singularity mean?

It means the idea of linearity, one thing could exist only in one paradigm, only in one

play, and in flexible approach, you see, so that's the idea of singularity.

Most of us have grown up, you know, for example, if you have taken sciences, stick to

sciences, issue our good approach, stick to speech, you see.

So, the entire idea of singularity, linearity, just being one thing at a time has always been

present in our society, right, and it has attained to the things, it's not a very good

thing.

Because this is first of all, we all have the possibility of being more than one thing

at a time, being more than a person at a time, and as somebody who has worked extensive

of the notion of identity, I can tell you that we never have just singular identities,

identities exist in plural matrices, so that's a very important concept.

The good news here is that text change.

Now, for those of you who have studied clever dynamics, you know that the entropy of

the system, entropy means the randomness, increases the time.

Now, same logic, more or less, applied here, means that we across centuries as a world

as societies have learned to step back from the extremities, the polarities of what

could just exist as binary, and we have found our ways to more multiple existence of phenomena.

For example, you know, the very central example would be that of diet, decay is a

girl, or you're going to be sent to this girl, the only possible diet or diet that you

could hear of, were vegetarian on the children.

Today, you have a whole wide range of touch, you know, vegetarians, go go lap to vegetarians

and vegans and whatnot.

Another example of the same thing would be this.

Now, in Europe, for a very many long time, you'll need two kinds of people that we see

with a pure race, proton, to pure race, the whites, and the impure race anybody who was

enabled to, right, but they've changed, with all the mixed marriages, mixed couples, people

adapting, everything changed, and now we have people who are neither put up or pure, nor put

in pure in the race because they have hybrid teams, right?

The same thing that we see with the relationships now, some of you, at the most

issue would be to just understand this, but in terms of relationships, what you have

many decades ago was just a simple notion of malignant, unmarried, single relationship,

and mixed relationships have something new, we have complicated, which is in between

the two extremes.

They have also been fined by the malignant people who are polyamorous, polygamous and

whatnot.

You see?

So, going from the extremities of black and white and finding, you know, something

that goes in between, and something that stays on, to both the sides of the spectrum,

right?

Another example is that of sexualities, between heterosexual and homosexuality, you

will have fancy sexuality, dark and amorous, dimmy sexuality, sexuality, sexuality, and

whatnot.

And then the most relatable example from you with the latter word, you know, between all

like an off-hand you have today hybrid known or heard it.

So why did I spend my time listening all these examples, is to tend that there is a social

phenomenon, when society takes to blow from all that's extreme, all that's polar, and

no fine, in a way, a middleback.

Now, before we just too quickly and get on to this hasty conclusion of calling all this

a Western influence, the thing is to understand that it is not, these are not Western notions

because it is something that is also very, very prominent in the Indian culture, or in the

eastern culture broadly, extremarily, so justified the worries, but not, right?

So the wise Buddha spoke of the middle part, and that middle part, for me, is what is

essential in this notion of embracing plurality.

Now, before we move on to the idea of plurality, it's important on the same, what happens

if I don't embrace plurality, there are advantages, and of course the answer is yes, there

are advantages.

But what do they just might be, well, it starts with you, now I don't know how many

if you believe in the idea of manifesting your destiny, do you, and they have heard

of this concept, yes, and you believe in it, yes, if you don't believe in the idea

of manifesting destiny, you at least believe in the idea of perm up, putting things into

action, which will decide that the later goes social life.

Now, I think it's how you put something into action, how you fully manifest something,

if you go to the sea that is from blinded by the labels, right?

So first danger is for you, and for us in general, and this danger is also there because

restricting yourself to the singularity of labels blocks your perspective and it gives

you a limiting and limited mindset.

Now, how do you put things into action, and you just go to see the field clearly, and

you can't see the entire edge of the bank field.

So when you don't see the entire edge of the bank, maybe just restrict yourself to a narrow

place on an impact, I think the first danger that you all risk suffering if you do not

embrace the notion of plurality, right?

The second level of danger comes in the inter-person relationships, because with this singularity

of ideas, this restricted mindset, what we do is that we tend to put people in boxes,

right?

An example, it would be that of immigration.

Why do you think there is so much racism?

Just because we see the other person and we tell ourselves, oh, peaceful activity, we must

be in a certain way.

Oh, look, he's from a certain letter, you know, he must be acting in a certain way.

So what I mean by this is that boxing people based on those labels and based on that

narrow perception of what people can be leads to what we call stereotypes, and these stereotypes

in turn leads to rejection, right?

And protection, as you know, is a dangerous thing, because it's a slightly behalf, already

very conflicting, positions, media, politicians, and different ideologies, we do not

make more of conflict, so that's a certain thing, right?

So not a basic plurality leads you to the risk of rejection of the other, but it doesn't

stop there.

It goes farther than that, and when it goes in, that it also leads to jaw or rejection,

a self-infected rejection, if I may.

How many times you've sought somebody in a bar, or in your classrooms, on the playground,

on a dating app, and in touch yourself, you see, I run for the top of this person,

there, you may out of my league, in there, but you won't ever do this, because it teaches

that ever right now.

So yes, most of the time, we just, you know, self-infected these kind of projections

on ourselves, thinking that, oh, you see, maybe I'm not pretty enough, maybe I'm not pretty

enough, not interesting enough, and why should I even bother talking to this person,

given that they're out of my league, and this, again, this rejection is something dangerous

for our own self, right?

So given all these dangers, what's important here is to understand different mental notions

that I'm trying to affect here.

Now, first of all, I am not up to against labels.

I'm really not against labels, because labels is something that in the society have allowed

us to navigate to the world, right?

Because with every label, there is a social contract, and a simple example, how do you know

that you love for your feelings is different from your love for your boyfriend, how do

you know that you love for your cousin is different from the love that you have for your

mother, because with these labels, comes the social contract, and that's what makes the

socialization easier, that makes the social navigation possible, right?

How do you know, you don't have to do certain things at all?

How do you know, you don't have to do certain things at all?

Ex, because there's a label, and the label carries a social contract, and allows you to

navigate to it.

So yeah, it is not, I'm not sure to blame labels, but what I'm here to do is, I'm here

to turn out the idea of embracing a multiplicity of labels, that's one, and they are

of choosing your own labels, and maybe not let others define what those labels should

be for you, take control of those labels for yourself, that's the fun, fun, and I think

I would like to focus on, and second thing is, reassarning new meanings, redefining

those labels is something very, very important, so if you see them reassign meanings to

your existing labels, and this in turn will give you a binder perspective to view things,

right?

And I would want to ask, but then how do you know that it works, how do you know that

it's going to be successful thing to do?

Well, because it's not just me, it's all these people who have been on the same journeys.

So Dermitchi, think of inventor, Folly Mark, great friend in Europe, known for all he did

you, you're an esoph speeder, so he, who all those labels with elegance, and then he

made the most of it.

Now more closely to who is developer, or even a talk, or if I use the non-colonized

pronunciation, I might as well start a capability you know about, poet, writer, musician,

artist, philosopher, and a social reformer, right?

So you see, we have had people in the history who have embraced plurality in all that

they could be, and have gone forward with it, and that's what led to a better word, right?

And again, the most part, for example, in this context would be that of this lady there,

Helen Keller, right?

Who is Helen Keller?

She was born in America, and when she was 19 months old, she lost her sight, and she lost

her ability to hear.

Now, you see, as a child, she must have been subjected to a lot of labels, right?

But then she chose to get rid of all the negative ones, and she chose to redefine it

for herself.

Now, the important question you know I'll ask is, but what additional benefit do I get

are of every single plurality, and well, there is a list.

Now, let's go to these benefits one by one.

The very first one is being your authentic self.

The most of the times you must have heard, when people come and tell you, or you know,

we are all different.

I don't know, question is, yeah, are we, I think, we all carry the same trauma, we all

carry more or less the same self, we all carry more or less the same struggle, so aren't

we very, very similar of those lines.

So, it has been disconnected between establishing a differentiated individual I get for

everyone, but not finding a conflict substantial now to prove it.

But embracing plurality allows you to reen that yourself and be the most authentic version

of yourself that you can ever be.

And how does that work?

It simply works because once you have a multi-ficit of labels, your attachment to each

one of those labels would be varying, and even if two people have exactly the same labels,

the level of attachment, the level of identification to each label would be different.

And that's what says two people cannot have the exact same degree of a line, and sort of

like identification to the label, no two people can be the same in a given society.

So, it allows you to be the most authentic self and re-inventage your creative and your

identity.

Right?

Second, as it allows you to reduce interpersonal conflict, most of the conflict happens

because we see the other person, we fit that person in a box, and we are not ready to accept

anything that goes beyond that label, anything that goes beyond that box, right?

And that's what leads to conflict.

And in recent plurality helps you understand, okay, this is the person, he comes from

selects a culture, he comes from selects a background, but there is a possibility that

he may not exactly turn out to be what I think he's going to turn out to be.

So in a way, entirely it still is more trust in your relationships, that's why.

So, it's better learning, better education, I mean, this is unnecessary to say, because

clearly we have the emphasis, I think, a lot on interdisciplinary programs, right?

We understand that more than the problems require more than the solution, and that

you only have, and through couriers, which embrace plurality.

And one of the examples of that, you've already seen, that's the example of slashes you

love.

And engineer slashes, lots of this, about the slashes work, a teacher slashes fashion designer,

and what not?

You see, some future problems won't be solved in today's solution, that means it has

to be something more, it has to be something more plural, more diverse, and I think

embracing plurality helps us solve to more of challenges better, because it integrates

all the important factors, right?

So, and the last thing is that it allows you to be more adaptive, right?

Because once you have redefined the meaning, and redefined new meaning to the pre-existing

labels, all of what's have taken up new labels, it allows you to adapt to certain senses

that are to newer situations like that.

And as I leave you, I would like to leave you with an exercise, and this is what I would

like to do.

When you go back home, take some time, set them, take a few deep breaths, and observe, observe,

what are the labels that you can.

Listen up, and observe, which of these labels are self-attributed?

Next, observe, which of these labels were given to you by others, and then find a step,

well, one of the final steps, decide which are the labels that you're going to keep, and

which are the labels that you're going to discard, right?

And for the labels that you are going to keep, I would request you to reassign a new meaning

to them, so that your labels do not become a limiting factor.

This is a very, very complex for you, thank you.