Fwd: Amazing Commencement Speechby Paul Hawkin
Edward Schreiber
edwschreiber at earthlink.net
Sun May 31 09:41:49 CDT 2009
> Sociatry is the application of the method to face the reality - of
> our lives and the future generations. This speech gives the
> sociatric context Moreno wrote about in Autobiography of a Genius
> (to be published in 2011). Best, Edward Schreiber
>
> Powerful Commencement Speech!
> Hello Planetary Partner!
>
>
> A friend just forwarded this... quite beautiful and inspiring...
>
>
> Unforgettable Commencement Address by Paul Hawken to the Class of
> 2009, University of Portland
>
> When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could
> give a simple short talk that was "direct, neked, 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 one peer-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't afford 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 see everywhere 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, refugee 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, fisher folk, 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 in history. The
> living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What
> do 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 be quested 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.
>
>
>
> <http://www.planetarypartners.com/joe+mark+bimini-05-09.htm>
>
>
> Thank you for being a Planetary Partner!
>
>
>
>
> Namaste!
>
> Joe
>
>
>
> Thanks for forwarding this info @ our Hawaii & Bahamas 5 day Wild
> Dolphin trips! (click photo below)
> <http://www.planetarypartners.com/joe+mark+bimini-05-09.htm>
>
> <http://www.planetarypartners.com>
> "Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God."
> -Teilhard de Chardin
> <http://www.planetarypartners.com/your_divine_abundance.htm>
>
>
>
> PS: Your love is transforming our world!
> <http://www.planetarypartners.com/your_divine_abundance.htm>
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