I’m being lazy with today’s post – in that I’m only writing this bit, but I want to share with you this excellent speech I was sent recently by a client. Have a read, and see if it makes you feel excited about the future – it did me!
Rob
The Unforgettable Commencement Address to the Class of 2009
University of Portland, May 3rd, 2009
By Paul Hawken
When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a
simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean,
shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.
But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going
to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time
when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is
accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation – but not onepeer-reviewed
paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement.
Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers,
and we need it within a few decades.
This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have
misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air,
and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat
have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so
ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying
through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for
seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food – but all that is
changing.
There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and
in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it
says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’tafford
to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets,
ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person
you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task
of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by
people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check
to see if it was impossible only after you are done.
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is
always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on
earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet
the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor,
and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I seeeverywhere
in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and
incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and
beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been
destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no
better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world,
and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages,
campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.
You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and
organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate
change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human
rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen.
Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives
to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the
scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of
this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people
in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of
teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers,
nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students,
incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors
without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of
the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would
say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.
There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the
Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true.
Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it
resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild,
recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had
to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad
advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane
toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.
Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening
news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers
has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century
roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global
movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time,
no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of
this movement were largely unknown – Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson,
Josiah Wedgwood – and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that
time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each
other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist
movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the
abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and
activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England
into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized
themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never
receive direct or indirect benefit.. And today tens of millions of people
do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society,
schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of
companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their
strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled
inhistory.
The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. Whatdo
we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates
the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto
for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without
people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have
failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets.
Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full
employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper
to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You
can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a
planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present,
and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an
economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can
either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One
is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit
the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the
earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.
The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and
its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are
breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother
Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable.
We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each
of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells.
Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would
perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting
millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular
activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one
moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body
has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe
– exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover
that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of
self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the
stars of heaven.”
So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop
for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on
simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it,
and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who is in
charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a
political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life
inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that
collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together
to heal the wounds and insults of the past.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out
once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The
world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious,
made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night,
and we watch television.
This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the
multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a
thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and
beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and
we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are
graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever
bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t
stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life
is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on
her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person
in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense
when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and
run as if your life depends on it.
–
Paul Hawken is a renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental activist,
and author of many books, most recently Blessed Unrest: How the Largest
Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. He was
presented with an honorary doctorate of humane letters by University
president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., in May, when he delivered this
superb speech. Our thanks especially to Erica Linson for her help making
that moment possible.
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