When good news comes out of Orthopaedics.

[Guest guest]

Paul Hawken is a renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmentalactivist, and author of many books, most recently Blessed Unrest: Howthe Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One SawIt Coming. He was presented with an honorary doctorate of humaneletters by University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., in May,when he delivered this superb speech. Our thanks especially to EricaLinson for her help making that moment possible.“You are brilliant, and the earth is hiring…”The Unforgettable Commencement Address to the Class of 2009,University of Portland, May 3rd, 2009By Paul HawkenWhen I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give asimple 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 aregoing to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earthat a time when every living system is declining, and the rate ofdecline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation – but notone peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refutethat statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, youare the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem tohave misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water,soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded,and don’t touchthe thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said thatspaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a cluethat we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles perhour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and reallygood food – but all that is changing.There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you willreceive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I cantell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. Theearth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school.It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, andthat unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. Andhere’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is notpossible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who knowwhat is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if itwas impossible only after you are done.When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, myanswer is always the same: If you look at the science about what ishappening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data.But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth andthe lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got apulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willingto confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restoresome semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poetAdrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lotwith those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinarypower, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description.Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the actionis 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 groupsand 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 theworld has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Ratherthan dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. LikeMercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Largeas it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provideshope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Itsclout 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, thePresident of the United States of America, and as the writer DavidJames Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in sucha huge way.There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending andthe Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story istrue. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befallus; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform,rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knewwhat you had to do, and began, though the voices around you keptshouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of movingaway from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to theliving world.Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if theevening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness ofstrangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specificeighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people tocreate a national and global movement to defend the rights of thosethey did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievanceexcept on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largelyunknown – Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood – andtheir goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out offour people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was whathuman beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement wasgreeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed theabolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, andactivists. They were told they would ruin the economy and driveEngland into poverty. But for the first time in history a group ofpeople organized themselves to help people they would never know, fromwhom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit.. And todaytens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the worldof non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, andnon-governmental organizations, of companies who place social andenvironmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scopeand scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. Whatdo we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, lifecreates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of nobetter motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands ofabandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandonedpeople without homes. We have failed bankers advising failedregulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are theonly species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. Wehave an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth inreal time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print moneyto bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. Atpresent we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, andcalling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have aneconomy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. Wecan either create assets for the future or take the assets of thefuture. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. Andwhenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untoldsuffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a wayto be rich.The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago,and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literallyyou are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled byMoses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Ourfates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell isto become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, andwithout those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Eachhuman cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processesbetween trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one humanbody is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a onewith twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body hasundergone ten times more processes than there are stars in theuniverse – exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said sciencewould discover that each living creature was a “little universe,formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minuteand 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 onsimultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignoreit, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: whois in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefullynot a political party. Life is creating the conditions that areconducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I wantyou to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innatewisdom 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 cameout once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, ofcourse. The world would become religious overnight. We would beecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead thestars come out every night, and we watch television.This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other andthe multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened,not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is ascomplex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have donegreat things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoringcreation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging,stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generationsbefore you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distractedand lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of yourexistence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask fora better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic,not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t makesense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if yourlife depends on it._-- Dear Friends,Sending this mail keeping you in mind. If you do not want to receivesuch mails let me know.Please consider the environment before printing this message.Sincerely,Dr. Vispi JokhiMS (Orthopedics)660/6 S. Palamkote Road, Parsi Colony,Dadar, Mumbai-400014.91 22 324407109323351529e mail: vhjokhi