One Four Letter Word
Posted on June 11, 2004 in thoughts.
Everytime I spend some time with Larry Brilliant, I hear all kinds of interesting stories. Most recently, he gave a commencement speech at Knox College in Illinois and it was no surprise that he got a ten minute standing ovation!
The only thing that will prevent terrorism, if I may use a four letter word, is love.
I’m not speaking metaphysically about brotherly love. I am speaking practically. The Al Qaedas of the world cannot recruit and plot in secret in villages far away if half the people love America or, better still, what America stands for. That is why it is so important for America to stand for something worthy of love.
Terrorism is like an epidemic. Hatred is a virus, love is the vaccine. A community immunized by love and tolerance can ward off occasional preachers of a message of violent hatred. When there is no one in the village who loves America, we lack eyes and ears and friends and the Al Qaeda’s of the world have found fertile breeding and recruiting grounds.
"You will survive. You will thrive "
Knox College Commencement Speech
June 5, 2004
Dr. Larry Brilliant
President and Mrs. Taylor, Trustees, Professor Dower, Professor Schulz, faculty, alumni and most of all, Graduating Class of 2004!
Thank you so much for the honor of inviting me to talk to you today.
As Professor Schulz has just told you, by training I am an epidemiologist, which means that I deal with epidemics of some pretty awful diseases such as smallpox and blindness in some very difficult places. In my profession, you have to have a sense of perspective in the midst of some tough times or you won't survive.
I first started to work for the United Nations World Health Organization when I was only 28 years old I had been living in a Himalayan Monastery when I was hired to work for the World Health Organization smallpox program in New Delhi. My first day on the job coincided with an annual "statistics day" when all the countries in the South Asian Region reported on their progress.
In the WHO conference room, which looked a bit like an old British men's club, there were doctors from all over the world with faces of every imaginable color.
There was a tall blond Swede, a ruddy-faced Czech, a petite pale woman doctor from Malaysia, Health Ministers from Bangladesh and North Korea. Staff members from Africa, France, Indonesia, the Ukraine. Two other American doctors. The Minister of Health from Mongolia. We sat around a horseshoe shaped table. It seemed to me that an artist had done the seating arrangements for the doctors to make the hues of their faces, their color tones, look like the colors in a rainbow. For me, coming out of the idealism of the sixties, this rainbow of human faces was an overwhelmingly beautiful affirmation of what the United Nations could stand for.
The Regional Director was Dr. Gunaratne, a tall looming Sri Lankan. He went around the room and each Health Minister reported on the birth, death, and growth rates in their countries.
In parts of South Asia at that time, 50% of children died by the age of 5. That year, 1973, smallpox claimed more than half a million victims. Poor parents stood by watching their children die of diseases that hold no mystery for modern medicine.
We went around the room, with gut wrenching statistics from each country. Nepal, North Korea, Bangladesh, Thailand, Burma, Each health minister reported a number, a death rate, each seemingly worse than the other.
The second to the last minister to speak was from China. "Mr. Chairman, the People's Republic of China has had tremendous success and our death rate has gone down from 35 deaths per 1000 population in China to 17 deaths per 1000."
Next was the Health Minister from Mongolia. He stood up and said, "Mr. Chairman, the death rate in Mongolia is precisely the same as that in China." And he sat down. There was a buzz around the room. Everyone knew that Mongolia was caught in a political tug of war between China and Russia, on the map it looked like a ball bearing easing the friction between the two giant powers. There were strategic games of geopolitical reality afoot. The representative from Burma was very nervous about this. The same for Nepal.
Dr. Gunaratne stood up and thundered, "Mr. Minister, please, we need a number."
"Mr. Chairman, I repeat that the death rate in Mongolia is precisely the same as that in China. And even more, it is precisely the same as it is in the Soviet Union." He sat down. There was a louder buzz. More chattering.
Dr. Gunaratne again demanded: "Whatever the politics are, we must have a number to put in our annual report. What is the death rate in the People's Republic of Mongolia. Give me a number!"
The Mongolian Health Minister stood and said: "Mr. Chairman, the death rate in the People's Republic of Mongolia is precisely and exactly the same as the death rate in the People's Republic of China. Or, for that matter, the United States of America.
We have, in Mongolia...... precisely and exactly one death per person."
To this day I don't know if it was a spoof. But the Mongolians in the U.N. seemed to have a great sense of perspective.
There was much more to learn from the Mongolians. Having finished four years of college I'm sure you had to take lots of notes. Fast notes. Short Hand. Speed writing. Did you know that the first speedwriting was invented by the Mongols who served Ghengis Khan? That is the story. Khan ruled his vast empire by sending out written orders. He would dictate a letter, and he spoke very fast, there was no email or text messaging, and if the scribe failed to get it all down right, Khan would have his hands cut off.
And you thought you had trouble taking note in history class! Necessity is the mother of invention.
Mongolians are also pretty wise. They have a curse in Mongolia:
"May you live in interesting times."
Remember: it is a dreadful curse.
And that brings me to you, class of 2004. You live in interesting times, my friends. Perhaps you may have found these four years to be a bit too interesting.
-Most of you arrived here at college as freshman in a time of peace and unprecedented prosperity- the world felt wealthy and safe
- You were just returning to campus for your sophomore year when the horrors of September 11th occurred;
-You were juniors when the corporate scandals of Enron and Worldcom were front page news and when, of course, America invaded Iraq;
-And in this your senior year you have seen young Americans ---who are the same age as you and look like you--- betray the honor of our nation in the Abu Gharib prison.
And during your four years in college, thousands of Americans, Afghanis, Iraqis, Australians, Balinese, and Spanish and Palestinians and Israelis and others have been killed.
No TV reality show could ever have as much "reality" as your last four years. Your college counselor may have told you that World History would figure prominently in your classes in college, but I doubt they told you that your four years in college would figure so prominently in World History. .
I feel I should apologize on behalf of my generation for the mess we have made of your inheritance.
Please know that we have been in dark times like this before and we have survived,
We have survived.
We have survived.
We have survived as individuals and as a nation, and for those who learned the lessons of history we have even grown stronger for the testing. We survived the divisions of the Civil War. We survived the World Wars. We survived the divisions of the Viet Nam war, and although the nation is more divided today than at any time since, we will survive.
I, too, have lived in interesting times.
40 years ago, I spent my freshman year marching for Civil Rights, my sophomore year at Teach Ins against the War in Vietnam. The University of Michigan had scheduled John F. Kennedy as the commencement speaker but of course JFK had been assassinated a half year earlier and Lyndon Baines Johnson gave that commencement speech instead. LBJ used the occasion to defend the war in Viet Nam and he urged us, as President Bush has done, to "stay the course" in another increasingly disastrous war.
I'm sure you have heard that everyone vividly remember exactly where they were when Kennedy was shot. I was racing to biochemistry class, when I turned a corner and saw hundreds of students sitting on the lawn, in the rain, crying, in shock, mourning the loss of what? Of innocence? Of hope? Until the day I die, I will remember the look in all of their eyes, the empty fear, and a look of "what do we do now?"
I am sure each of you knows exactly where you were at that moment those two passenger jets crashed into the Twin Towers, on September 11, 2001. Time stood still, didn't it? And at your deepest level, in your bones, your blood, your cells, your DNA: you knew your world had changed forever. You looked around and your classmates had that same look in their eyes: "what do we do now?"
When I saw the pictures of those brave young New York city firemen running up the stairs at the World Trade Center risking their own lives to help, while everyone else was running down the stairs to escape, their heroism triggered something in me. I resigned from all my corporate boards and flew down to Atlanta where the Center for Disease Control was in charge of bio-terrorism. I offered to become a smallpox doctor again, after more than two decades. In the 1970's when I had help run the United Nations campaign to eradicate smallpox we had the largest UN program in history with 150,000 smallpox workers who searched every house in India---150 million houses-- every month for two years to find every last case of smallpox... We actually made over 2 billion house calls.
Ask your doctor when he last made a house call!
Because of this immense and unprecedented effort, we eradicated smallpox from the world----the only time in history a disease has been eradicated.
I have seen over 5000 little babies die of smallpox. Some died in my arms. Once, in the city of Tatanagar, in India, I was in charge of an epidemic of smallpox so severe that thousands died in the open streets from the disease and the river stopped running, blocked by dead bodies from this terrible scourge.
But we did finally eradicate smallpox, a disease which killed over 500 million people in the last century, more than all the wars combined... We had some very dark days, floods, famines, transportation strikes, three wars and the awful disease itself but we succeeded putting the demon of smallpox away, I thought, for good.
I was part of the global commission to certify the world free of smallpox. Ironically, as part of the commission, I was the last United Nations smallpox "inspector" to visit Iran to search for hidden stores of smallpox in 1978, although we didn't think of that way at the time. .
I never would have had the incredible good fortune to be part of the conquest of smallpox, if I had not lived in interesting times.
The year before Kennedy was killed; there was another visitor to the University of Michigan campus, Dr. Martin Luther King. He spoke on a day of torrential thunderstorms and tornados like Illinois had last week, and because of the terrible weather only a dozen students showed up for his talk in an auditorium that seated 3000. From the stage, he looked at all the empty seats in the huge hall, and laughed and laughed. He looked at the handfuls of us scattered in the room, and beckoned us onto the stage with him. There, in circle around him, we sat there in rapt attention for four hours as Dr. King told us about his dream of a world free of hate----- as if he were an old friend who had dropped by for lunch.
None of us who spent that day with him would ever be the same.
We all joined the civil rights movement. I marched with Dr. King in Chicago and Washington, built free medical clinics and joined an alphabet soup of civil rights organizations. I went to medical school the next year and got a summer job working for the federal government inspecting and integrating hospitals that segregated Black and White patients. I became a "civil rights specialist" for the Federal Government, the Office of Equal Health Opportunity.
By some magical fluke, the Federal Government transferred me to San Francisco smack dab in the middle of the Summer of Love in 1967.
Talk about interesting times!
By another fluke, I was offered a chance to play the part of a young doctor in a Warner Brothers movie about hippies living on buses and rock and roll concerts. I met Ken Kesey and Wavy Gravy and the Grateful Dead and my wife and on got "on the bus" and lived with 40 other hippies for two years, traveling overland from Europe through Iran and Afghanistan through the Khyber Pass to Pakistan and India and Nepal.
I wound up living and working in South Asia for 35 years. After we eradicated smallpox, my wife Girija and I started the Seva Foundation to work in the same communities on needless blindness. Seva's projects in India, Nepal, Tibet, Cambodia and Tanzania have restored sight to more than 2 million blind.
I have told you this much about my life only to tell you that in my interesting times, I have seen South Asia through the eyes of hippie, spiritual seeker, UN medical officer and a international foundation executive.
But South Asia has always seen me as an American. And every South Asian we met had nothing but love and respect for Americans----- until very recently.
When in India or Iran or Afghanistan or Pakistan I went to the smallest most remote villages, there would be a little religious shrine in each village in many homes. If it was a Hindu home, a picture of Ram or Shiva or Krishna. In a Muslim home, a photo of Mecca. Buddhist, an image of Buddha. But as often as not, whether Buddhist or Muslim or Hindu, ---on that same shrine side by side with what they held sacred, there would be a picture of President John F Kennedy.
JFK was loved as the symbol of an America that cared about poor people, justice and democracy, equality and fairness. American was a symbol of what was good in the world. A friend. Of course, not everywhere, and not every time. There was Vietnam. Cambodia. Central America. There was America's callous indifference to HIV AIDS in Africa. And resentment over US government support for corrupt dictators, corrupt regimes. But on balance America was loved. So different from today.
It is going to be a long long time before there will be a picture of another American President in those villages. And certainly not a picture of this American President. Whatever you may feel about President Bush, he has changed our relationship with the rest of the world--- for the worse.
I am more sad than angry that this current President, George W. Bush, has become the most hated man in Asia and the Middle East, perhaps in the world. Even in Europe, where after World War II, America the Liberator was cherished, the Gallop Poll has found that most European think that the greatest threat to freedom and liberty and safety is the behavior of our President.
It is very important that you understand how much it matters if America is loved or hated in the rest of the world. Before 911, we had the illusion that our participation in the rest of the world was optional or voluntary. We thought that in the end our oceans or our military protected "the Homeland" from harm.
But it was not the oceans or the army that protected us from the Al Qaedas of previous years. Al Qaeda is not the first terrorist group, and it is certainly not the first religious cult to hate America. We will always have people who hate us as long as we are the richest country in the world. And their ability to do harm will only increase with technology. Epidemiologist know, and fear, that for a few hundred dollars, an internet search of public research, and a small lab bench, a terrorist could make weapons of such destructive power that no army could prevent it.
The only thing that will prevent terrorism, if I may use a four letter word, is love.
I'm not speaking metaphysically about brotherly love. I am speaking practically. The Al Qaedas of the world cannot recruit and plot in secret in villages far away if half the people love America or, better still, what America stands for. That is why it is so important for America to stand for something worthy of love.
Terrorism is like an epidemic. Hatred is a virus, love is the vaccine. A community immunized by love and tolerance can ward off occasional preachers of a message of violent hatred. When there is no one in the village who loves America, we lack eyes and ears and friends and the Al Qaeda's of the world have found fertile breeding and recruiting grounds.
And it is not just for security that it is important if our President or America is loved or hated around the world. When communities love America, they show their love by sending their best and brightest to our country - their children come here to be educated, just as 10% of your class at Knox have come from abroad. Some will relocate, become citizens, enrich our lives and fortunes. 40% of Silicon Valley start ups have a native of South Asia as either CTO or CEO.
Communities which love us show their love by buying our music and our movies and our Coca Cola drinks and IBM computers. .They learn English, study democracy and the free market.
They exchange their rupees and ruples and marks and pounts for our dollars, making our currency the strongest in the world. They buy our T Bills and Government securities to finance our deficit and in so doing cause our interest rates to drop.
When you receive your diploma, you are receiving a share of stock, equity in a great brand called America, opportunity that comes to you in part because of your own effort and in large part -a gift from your biological parents and your political parents, the founders of the Republic, the founders of this dream called America, that from today on you are custodians. .
And because you are about to graduate from a college that was founded by courageous thinkers who fought slavery, a college which was the site of some of Abraham Lincoln's most lofty moral speechmaking and a college that has a tradition of social justice, I want to tell you--- who love social justice--- that we are again in a war against hate and intolerance and violence coming from outside-- and just as important we are in a war against our own ignorance and our own arrogance right here, inside America.
Yes. You live in interesting times.
But you will survive.
You will survive.
Today, when you receive your diploma, when you become a Trustee of the American Dream, when you get your share of stock in this great and noble brand, here are some words of advice from a fellow traveler from other interesting times.
1. Love your country. America, with all our flaws, is still a beautiful place and a magnificent dream. But our great experiment cannot survive into the next generation without your dedication, because you are its trustee. There will always be people who show us our faults and perhaps worse, there will be blind patriots who cannot see any fault nor any need for improvement. It is well to remember what Carl Shurz, a US Senator from Wisconsin said in 1872 during a Senate debate on patriotism; "My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right and if wrong, to be made right." If you feel that our country is right, that it is going in the right direction today, support it and support this President with all your heart.
If you feel that our country is going in the wrong direction, make it right, dedicate yourself to the task of replacing this President and this administration and fixing the country that we all love so much.
2. As custodian of the American Dream, choose wisely what you do with it. You have a duty to pass it on to your children more valuable than it was when it was passed to you.. Ken Kesey, who wrote "One Flew Over the Kuckoos Nest" always told people that when they face a choice about what to do next to "put your good where it will do the most". To paraphrase President Kennedy: "Ask how you can put your good in service to your country".
3. Travel and see this wonderful world of ours. Europe. Asia. Africa. Kurt Vonnegut once said "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God". You need travel as you need a mirror. The best mirror to see yourself as an American is to see yourself as others see you. Seen through the eyes of others, you will find you have a beauty you did not know you have; and you will surely see warts. Less than one in five Americans has a passport and travels outside of the US-do not judge them too harshly for what they have not seen, for what they do not know. But 75% of our congressmen, elected to govern, do not own passports and do not travel outside of the US. They must think our oceans still protect us.
4. If by chance you ever do "get on the bus" or live in any other small place, pack carefully and carry only what you need, you can usually buy everything you need in your next port of call, except one thing that does not take up much space in your suitcase. Always carry with you your personal integrity. If you lose it, there is no place to buy a replacement.
5. Work on your sense of humor. Water it and feed it. Take it out to movies and comedies and protect it. As my friend, the clown Wavy Gravy says: "Without a sense of humor, it's just not very funny any more".
6. Remember: You will survive. The Grateful Dead sing a song "Touch of Grey" which has Robert Hunter lyrics that strike a chord with my generation, but might with you as well:
I know the rent is in arrears The dog has not been fed in years It's even worse than it appears But it's alright Cows are giving kerosene The kid can't read at seventeen The words he knows are all obscene But it's alright We will get by We will get by We will survive We will survive
Class of 2004, you will survive.
But because you live in interesting times, because you have been strengthened by these times, you will not only survive.
Class of 2004. You ----will -----not only survive. You....will........thrive.
Thank you very much for inviting me today.
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