Again, we need new ideas and contrary to our chauvinistic opinion, we don’t know where the new ideas will come from. We have to keep our ears, eyes, and minds open.
The paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould was once asked a silly question about the biological difference between Einstein’s brain and the rest of our brains. His answer, however, is relevant now. He said: "I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."
I’m guessing most of us here in this room have opportunities to use our talents. Are we? And if so, are we also working to free others and give them the same chance?
I believe the changes we need could start by bringing everything down to its most basic and human level. To explain what I mean, I’d like to share a lesson I’m still learning, a lesson that came at the end of my mother’s life.
My mother passed away on January 12, after a long illness. She was nearly 72 and had been very ill since mid-2005. Intellectually, one might think that perhaps I had time to “come to terms” with a sense of inevitably…yet I remain brokenhearted. Despite having almost three years to “prepare” for this reality, her death is teaching me previously unimaginable lessons about grief, sorrow, and loss.
Amidst my mourning, I can’t help but visualize the feelings of grief, sorrow, and loss being experienced in places directly and indirectly impacted by US foreign and economic policies. Imagine if you will, a mother in Iraq. She walks to the market as an American bomb levels her home. Her parents, her husband, her children (none of whom were affiliated with the “insurgency”): all killed. What of her grief, sorrow, and loss? I had nearly three years to “prepare” and I remain inconsolable. Can we imagine how this woman feels? And why do we relate more to the men and women who volunteer to drop the bombs than those under the bombs? When was it decided that their lives matter less than ours? Where did we get the balls to feel so superior?
And it’s not just military murders. As I said at the beginning, every two seconds, a human starves to death. That’s more grief, sorrow, loss—more anger and frustration, too. There's a line in the song, "Middle of the Road" by the Pretenders: "When you own a big chunk of the bloody Third World...the babies just come with the scenery."
Speaking of babies, UNICEF tells us: One in six of the planet’s children are severely hungry; one in seven have no access to health care; one in five have no safe water; one in three have no toilet or sanitation facilities at home.
29,158 children under 5 dying from mostly preventable causes every day.
The next time you're at a sporting event or rock concert, glance around and get a feel for what 29,158 looks like. Then try your best to conceive of the feelings of grief, sorrow, and loss inspired by those 29,158…each and every day. These are humans, not statistics. They feel as much as you or I. They cry, they mourn, they miss loved ones, and they ask why when the UN says the basic nutrition and health needs of the world's poorest people would cost only $13 billion a year (a mere fraction of what the US spends on war).
The question of this millennium so far is this: “Why do they hate us?”
I’d say we give them an excellent reason every 2 seconds and a million more reasons every single minute. Ask yourself this: How much of our tax money was spent on war while I stood up here blabbing away and how many children did we lose…tonight?
The historian Howard Zinn said: "I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own."
Here’s a novel idea: Instead of blowing up babies in the Third World, let’s start feeding them, and respecting them, and loving them? Yes…loving them. Che Guevara tells us that the “true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.” If Che was right, comrades, it’s high time we start showing the world some revolutionary love.
Remember, the most powerful force in the world is not the US military or economy or culture, it’s you. That’s why they’re working so damn hard to pacify you and working so damn hard to take away your rights. But if they want to take away our rights, I say we take away theirs: Their right to pollute, their right to exploit, to wage war, to steal, and to treat all living things as if they were expendable.
The author Derrick Jensen said: “One of the good things about everything being so fucked up—about the culture being so ubiquitously destructive—is that no matter where you look—no matter what your gifts, no matter where your heart lies—there’s good and desperately important work to be done.”
This is much more than most of us have been willing to do so far, but we need this commitment. We need the type of commitment displayed by Bob Marley back in 1973. There was a politically motivated assassination attempt on his life and two days later, there he was, up on stage at a giant outdoor concert. He was asked how he could get back on stage just two days after nearly being killed. His answer: “The bad people trying to make the world worse never take a day off, so why should I?”
The paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould was once asked a silly question about the biological difference between Einstein’s brain and the rest of our brains. His answer, however, is relevant now. He said: "I am somehow less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops."
I’m guessing most of us here in this room have opportunities to use our talents. Are we? And if so, are we also working to free others and give them the same chance?
I believe the changes we need could start by bringing everything down to its most basic and human level. To explain what I mean, I’d like to share a lesson I’m still learning, a lesson that came at the end of my mother’s life.
Amidst my mourning, I can’t help but visualize the feelings of grief, sorrow, and loss being experienced in places directly and indirectly impacted by US foreign and economic policies. Imagine if you will, a mother in Iraq. She walks to the market as an American bomb levels her home. Her parents, her husband, her children (none of whom were affiliated with the “insurgency”): all killed. What of her grief, sorrow, and loss? I had nearly three years to “prepare” and I remain inconsolable. Can we imagine how this woman feels? And why do we relate more to the men and women who volunteer to drop the bombs than those under the bombs? When was it decided that their lives matter less than ours? Where did we get the balls to feel so superior?
And it’s not just military murders. As I said at the beginning, every two seconds, a human starves to death. That’s more grief, sorrow, loss—more anger and frustration, too. There's a line in the song, "Middle of the Road" by the Pretenders: "When you own a big chunk of the bloody Third World...the babies just come with the scenery."
Speaking of babies, UNICEF tells us: One in six of the planet’s children are severely hungry; one in seven have no access to health care; one in five have no safe water; one in three have no toilet or sanitation facilities at home.
29,158 children under 5 dying from mostly preventable causes every day.
The next time you're at a sporting event or rock concert, glance around and get a feel for what 29,158 looks like. Then try your best to conceive of the feelings of grief, sorrow, and loss inspired by those 29,158…each and every day. These are humans, not statistics. They feel as much as you or I. They cry, they mourn, they miss loved ones, and they ask why when the UN says the basic nutrition and health needs of the world's poorest people would cost only $13 billion a year (a mere fraction of what the US spends on war).
The question of this millennium so far is this: “Why do they hate us?”
I’d say we give them an excellent reason every 2 seconds and a million more reasons every single minute. Ask yourself this: How much of our tax money was spent on war while I stood up here blabbing away and how many children did we lose…tonight?
The historian Howard Zinn said: "I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own."
Here’s a novel idea: Instead of blowing up babies in the Third World, let’s start feeding them, and respecting them, and loving them? Yes…loving them. Che Guevara tells us that the “true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.” If Che was right, comrades, it’s high time we start showing the world some revolutionary love.
Remember, the most powerful force in the world is not the US military or economy or culture, it’s you. That’s why they’re working so damn hard to pacify you and working so damn hard to take away your rights. But if they want to take away our rights, I say we take away theirs: Their right to pollute, their right to exploit, to wage war, to steal, and to treat all living things as if they were expendable.
The author Derrick Jensen said: “One of the good things about everything being so fucked up—about the culture being so ubiquitously destructive—is that no matter where you look—no matter what your gifts, no matter where your heart lies—there’s good and desperately important work to be done.”
This is much more than most of us have been willing to do so far, but we need this commitment. We need the type of commitment displayed by Bob Marley back in 1973. There was a politically motivated assassination attempt on his life and two days later, there he was, up on stage at a giant outdoor concert. He was asked how he could get back on stage just two days after nearly being killed. His answer: “The bad people trying to make the world worse never take a day off, so why should I?”
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