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1.22.2005
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Emerson always brings tears to my eyes - he gives words to the unutterable language of the heart. This is from his famous essay, "Self-Reliance:"
"...To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, that is genius, Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, - and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment...
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse as [his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried...
Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is as sacred as the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world..."
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Saturday, January 22, 2005
A friend sent this to me in response to yesterday's post. It is from "The Lord of the Rings:"
Sam:
"It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?"
"But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer."
"Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. Because they were holding on to something."
Frodo:
"What are we holding on to, Sam?"
Sam:
"That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it's worth fighting for."
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1.21.2005
Friday, January 21, 2005
Franklin Roosevelt rode down Pennsylvania Avenue in an open car on his inauguration. Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter walked in the street. Yesterday, President Bush had to stay inside a darkened armored limousine. A sign of how much the world has changed over the last fifty years. It sure doesn't seem to me that the world is getting safer. "The evidence of our eyes," about which the President spoke yesterday, tells me the world is a whole lot less safe. I can see the day when the President won't even be able to take an armored limousine down Pennsylvania Avenue, but will instead have to hold the entire inaugural indoors.
That's not the world I intend to live in. And I don't believe it's the world President Bush or anyone else wants to live in either. We are struggling to find our way right now to a world of great color and imagination and joy. Things always seem the darkest before the sun rises. Despite the way the world seems to be trending, I have a deep faith that we can and that we will turn things around. There are too many people holding on to a vision of a bright future for it to evade us. For all our failings, human beings are remarkable, and I believe that some day soon we will rise up to the true promise of our being. Remember, human beings created the airplane, in defiance of gravity, we ended slavery, in defiance of tyranny, we cured polio, in defiance of the odds. We will overcome this period of self-destruction too. We will find a way to joy. So do not lose hope. The story is not nearly over yet.
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1.20.2005
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Inauguration day today, and I know many people are sickened and upset and depressed. It feels as if the sun is setting on America and on hope itself.
It is time for a radical new optimism, and neither the Republicans or the Democrats are offering anything like that to us. The Republicans are of the mind that we cannot have a strong economy and take care of the social needs of the poor in America and around the world all at the same time. The Democrats are of the mind that we cannot take care of the needs of the poor and give incentives to business at the same time. Neither party has a bold vision for industrial progress, and only the Democrats seem to have a concern for social progress, and even then, you wouldn't call it a vision.
We need a party that stands for our ability to have it all. We need a party of true optimism.
How would you feel if we were inaugurating a President today who was committed to the following five impossible dreams? :
1) The end of hunger and hunger-related disease in America and around the world by 2010;
2) The end of the global AIDS epidemic through massive protease inhibitor distribution by 2010;
3) A cure for cancer by 2010;
4) The development of a new class of sub-orbital, supersonic commercial airliner that could get us from Los Angeles to New York in less than thirty minutes, by the year 2010;
5) The conversion of the entire U.S. automobile fleet to hydrogen power by 2010, with government assitance and investment to make it happen;
Such a platform would give us massive job growth, peace, and, most important, a new enthusiasm and hope for achievement and for life.
This is the kind of radical optimism I am talking about.
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1.18.2005
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
We ought not seek wealth for wealth's sake. We ought not seek fame for fame's sake. We ought to seek innovation for innovation's sake. Wealth and fame may well come with this, but if they do not, innovation will satisfy the soul in and of itself in a way that no amount of wealth or fame ever could. There is no greater cause than to show the world a new way of doing things - a new way of perception - of thinking about things, in whatever field of endeavor it is that you specialize. You need not feed the poor directly in order to contribute to the end of poverty. You need not heal the sick directly in order to contribute to the end of disease. Show the world a new way to travel, a new way to communicate, a new way to listen to music, a new way to be charitable, and you will be contributing to the end of poverty and disease and to the betterment of humanity.
The innovator is the ultimate humanitarian. How much good has come, in ways we will never be able to calculate, from the internet? How many ways will the internet end up contributing to the end of poverty? I could not be writing about poverty to each of you were it not for the internet. How many jobs can the new Airbus unveiled today in Europe create, and how will that contribute to the advancement of humanity? Martin Luther King was an innovator. Jesus was. Einstein was. They all pointed the world to a new way. All our problems come from old ways of doing things. By seeking the new frontier, and by exercising the courage to go there, we offer the greatest hope to the world.
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Tuesday, January 18, 2005
I took this picture in Mexico through a telescope. I love to look at the moon and fill my heart and hopes and imaginations up with the fact that we have been there - that we set an impossible goal on an impossible timeline and we compelled ourselves to meet it and we did and for one day in 1969 most of humanity saw what humanity is really capable of when it sets its mind to something.
There are some 2.7 billion people who live at or below the $2.15-a-day poverty line as of 2001.
Today in the L.A. Times there is a page three headline that says, "Ending Extreme Poverty is Realistic, Economist Tells U.N." It goes on to say that, "The world could end extreme poverty within a decade if wealthy nations fulfilled their pledges to increase development aid, Columbia University economist Jeffrey D. Sachs said Monday as he presented a plan to the United nations for achieving that goal."
We have to begin to set impossible goals once again, not just for the end of poverty, but for the development of the most exciting new industries and the achievement of great human harmony. An impossible goal can make the most unreasonable things reality. In this lies the great hope of humanity.
There is no mystery here. This is what we must begin to do.
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Monday, January 17, 2005
This has always been my favorite Martin Luther King sentiment. It speaks to his ability to perceive beauty, from which all of his greatness came:
"Occasionally, in life, there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by inaudible language of the heart." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Saturday/Sunday, January 15 & 16, 2005
"I can truthfully say that I am slow to see the blemishes of fellow human beings, being myself full of them. Therefore, being in need of their charity, I have learnt not to judge anyone harshly and to make allowances for defects that I may detect." - Gandhi
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