Finding Humanity Through Storytelling with Author & Filmmaker ETGAR KERET

I know that I talk a lot, but can I tell an anecdote? A few years ago, I was in Boston and I spoke in one of the biggest universities there.

I won't maybe mention the name.

I don't know.

Maybe the story will get me into trouble, so it's good to be vague.

But I spoke to a group of students and there was a super intelligent young student there.

And at some stage, this student said to me, listen, I'm a lesbian and I won't stop fighting.

until the place that I live will become a safe space where I can go hand in hand in the shopping mall to buy myself an ice cream and kiss my partner on the lips without anyone looking at me.

And I won't fight until this happens.

And I told her, there is no such thing as a safe space.

We are living in a jungle.

There are safer spaces.

If the words that you wish for would be realized, it would mean that your Catholic, homophobic, elderly neighbor, when he'll go to a shopping mall, he won't live in a safe space because it's totally unsafe to him to see two girls kissing.

So this idea that there is the right way to live, that we should push it down the throat of everyone, is wrong and it's totally indoctrinated by social media because you know Mia when you and me we used to live in a village and I was your neighbor then you say people ask you what do you think about Edgar and they say you said he talks too much I go I want to buy something the grocery store he catches me start talking to me about AI and what would happen if you would be born in it but Whenever I go overseas, he waters my plants and he takes care of everything.

So in the end, you have some kind of a complex view of myself.

And in this view, if I say a sentence that is wrong, you say, Edgar told me this dumb sentence, but...

He's very good with dogs, you know, and it will be this complexity.

But in this kind of world where we were living, where we just meet people on a sentence, on an incident, it's very similar to some kind of a global road rage scenario where, you know, in the US, people can get out of the car and shoot somebody because he cuts them.

Now, if this guy that cuts them went to high school with them, they would never shoot him.

Because they know he's funny and that he's generous and that even in high school, they didn't know how to drive.

And there is this kind of package that is human.

But the moment that you just meet people on one thing, it becomes monstrous.

It becomes an inquisition, a McCarthy kind of witch hunt kind of feeling.

Yeah, and it's so this snap judgment, there's no room for due process.

And it's bad for democracy, of course, but it's bad for society.

And it's, of course, bad for art.