0:00:00.000,0:00:05.000
You know, I am so bad at tech

0:00:05.000,0:00:07.000
that my daughter -- who is now 41 --

0:00:07.000,0:00:10.000
when she was five, was overheard by me

0:00:10.000,0:00:12.000
to say to a friend of hers,

0:00:12.000,0:00:14.000
If it doesn't bleed when you cut it,

0:00:14.000,0:00:16.000
my daddy doesn't understand it.

0:00:16.000,0:00:17.000
(Laughter)

0:00:17.000,0:00:19.000
So, the assignment I've been given [br]

0:00:19.000,0:00:21.000
may be an insuperable obstacle for me,

0:00:21.000,0:00:24.000
but I'm certainly going to try.

0:00:24.000,0:00:26.000
What have I heard

0:00:26.000,0:00:29.000
during these last four days?

0:00:29.000,0:00:31.000
This is my third visit to TED.

0:00:31.000,0:00:33.000
One was to TEDMED, and one, as you've heard,

0:00:33.000,0:00:35.000
was a regular TED two years ago.

0:00:35.000,0:00:38.000
I've heard what I consider an extraordinary thing

0:00:38.000,0:00:42.000
that I've only heard a little bit in the two previous TEDs,

0:00:42.000,0:00:45.000
and what that is is an interweaving

0:00:45.000,0:00:48.000
and an interlarding, an intermixing,

0:00:48.000,0:00:51.000
of a sense of social responsibility

0:00:51.000,0:00:54.000
in so many of the talks --

0:00:54.000,0:00:57.000
global responsibility, in fact,

0:00:57.000,0:01:01.000
appealing to enlightened self-interest,

0:01:01.000,0:01:05.000
but it goes far beyond enlightened self-interest.

0:01:05.000,0:01:07.000
One of the most impressive things

0:01:07.000,0:01:10.000
about what some, perhaps 10,

0:01:10.000,0:01:13.000
of the speakers have been talking about

0:01:13.000,0:01:16.000
is the realization, as you listen to them carefully, that they're not saying:

0:01:16.000,0:01:19.000
Well, this is what we should do; this is what I would like you to do.

0:01:19.000,0:01:21.000
It's: This is what I have done

0:01:21.000,0:01:23.000
because I'm excited by it,

0:01:23.000,0:01:26.000
because it's a wonderful thing, and it's done something for me

0:01:26.000,0:01:29.000
and, of course, it's accomplished a great deal.

0:01:29.000,0:01:32.000
It's the old concept, the real Greek concept,

0:01:32.000,0:01:36.000
of philanthropy in its original sense:

0:01:36.000,0:01:39.000
phil-anthropy, the love of humankind.

0:01:39.000,0:01:41.000
And the only explanation I can have

0:01:41.000,0:01:44.000
for some of what you've been hearing in the last four days

0:01:44.000,0:01:48.000
is that it arises, in fact, out of a form of love.

0:01:48.000,0:01:51.000
And this gives me enormous hope.

0:01:51.000,0:01:53.000
And hope, of course, is the topic

0:01:53.000,0:01:55.000
that I'm supposed to be speaking about,

0:01:55.000,0:01:59.000
which I'd completely forgotten about until I arrived.

0:01:59.000,0:02:01.000
And when I did, I thought,

0:02:01.000,0:02:04.000
well, I'd better look this word up in the dictionary.

0:02:04.000,0:02:07.000
So, Sarah and I -- my wife -- walked over to the public library,

0:02:07.000,0:02:11.000
which is four blocks away, on Pacific Street, and we got the OED,

0:02:11.000,0:02:15.000
and we looked in there, and there are 14 definitions of hope,

0:02:15.000,0:02:18.000
none of which really hits you

0:02:18.000,0:02:21.000
between the eyes as being the appropriate one.

0:02:21.000,0:02:23.000
And, of course, that makes sense,

0:02:23.000,0:02:26.000
because hope is an abstract phenomenon; it's an abstract idea,

0:02:26.000,0:02:29.000
it's not a concrete word.

0:02:29.000,0:02:32.000
Well, it reminds me a little bit of surgery.

0:02:32.000,0:02:36.000
If there's one operation for a disease, you know it works.

0:02:36.000,0:02:38.000
If there are 15 operations, you know that none of them work.

0:02:38.000,0:02:41.000
And that's the way it is with definitions of words.

0:02:41.000,0:02:45.000
If you have appendicitis, they take your appendix out, and you're cured.

0:02:45.000,0:02:48.000
If you've got reflux oesophagitis, there are 15 procedures,

0:02:48.000,0:02:50.000
and Joe Schmo does it one way

0:02:50.000,0:02:52.000
and Will Blow does it another way,

0:02:52.000,0:02:55.000
and none of them work, and that's the way it is with this word, hope.

0:02:55.000,0:02:58.000
They all come down to the idea of an expectation

0:02:58.000,0:03:01.000
of something good that is due to happen.

0:03:01.000,0:03:03.000
And you know what I found out?

0:03:03.000,0:03:06.000
The Indo-European root of the word hope

0:03:06.000,0:03:08.000
is a stem, K-E-U --

0:03:08.000,0:03:13.000
we would spell it K-E-U; it's pronounced koy --

0:03:13.000,0:03:17.000
and it is the same root from which the word curve comes from.

0:03:17.000,0:03:21.000
But what it means in the original Indo-European

0:03:21.000,0:03:25.000
is a change in direction, going in a different way.

0:03:25.000,0:03:28.000
And I find that very interesting and very provocative,

0:03:28.000,0:03:31.000
because what you've been hearing in the last couple of days

0:03:31.000,0:03:35.000
is the sense of going in different directions:

0:03:35.000,0:03:38.000
directions that are specific and unique to problems.

0:03:38.000,0:03:40.000
There are different paradigms.

0:03:40.000,0:03:42.000
You've heard that word several times in the last four days,

0:03:42.000,0:03:45.000
and everyone's familiar with Kuhnian paradigms.

0:03:45.000,0:03:47.000
So, when we think of hope now,

0:03:47.000,0:03:50.000
we have to think of looking in other directions

0:03:50.000,0:03:53.000
than we have been looking.

0:03:53.000,0:03:56.000
There's another -- not definition, but description, of hope

0:03:56.000,0:04:00.000
that has always appealed to me, and it was one by Václav Havel

0:04:00.000,0:04:04.000
in his perfectly spectacular book "Breaking the Peace,"

0:04:04.000,0:04:06.000
in which he says that hope

0:04:06.000,0:04:09.000
does not consist of the expectation that things will

0:04:09.000,0:04:11.000
come out exactly right,

0:04:11.000,0:04:14.000
but the expectation that they will make sense

0:04:14.000,0:04:17.000
regardless of how they come out.

0:04:17.000,0:04:20.000
I can't tell you how reassured I was

0:04:20.000,0:04:23.000
by the very last sentence

0:04:23.000,0:04:28.000
in that glorious presentation by Dean Kamen a few days ago.

0:04:28.000,0:04:30.000
I wasn't sure I heard it right,

0:04:30.000,0:04:34.000
so I found him in one of the inter-sessions.

0:04:34.000,0:04:37.000
He was talking to a very large man, but I didn't care. [br]

0:04:37.000,0:04:39.000
I interrupted, and I said, "Did you say this?"

0:04:39.000,0:04:41.000
He said, "I think so."

0:04:41.000,0:04:43.000
So, here's what it is: I'll repeat it.

0:04:43.000,0:04:47.000
"The world will not be saved by the Internet."

0:04:47.000,0:04:51.000
It's wonderful. Do you know what the world will be saved by?

0:04:51.000,0:04:53.000
I'll tell you. It'll be saved by the human spirit.

0:04:53.000,0:04:56.000
And by the human spirit, I don't mean anything divine,

0:04:56.000,0:04:58.000
I don't mean anything supernatural --

0:04:58.000,0:05:02.000
certainly not coming from this skeptic.

0:05:02.000,0:05:04.000
What I mean is this ability

0:05:04.000,0:05:06.000
that each of us has

0:05:06.000,0:05:12.000
to be something greater than herself or himself;

0:05:12.000,0:05:16.000
to arise out of our ordinary selves and achieve something

0:05:16.000,0:05:20.000
that at the beginning we thought perhaps we were not capable of.

0:05:20.000,0:05:23.000
On an elemental level, we have all felt

0:05:23.000,0:05:26.000
that spirituality at the time of childbirth.

0:05:26.000,0:05:28.000
Some of you have felt it in laboratories;

0:05:28.000,0:05:30.000
some of you have felt it at the workbench.

0:05:30.000,0:05:32.000
We feel it at concerts.

0:05:32.000,0:05:35.000
I've felt it in the operating room, at the bedside.

0:05:35.000,0:05:38.000
It is an elevation of us beyond ourselves.

0:05:38.000,0:05:42.000
And I think that it's going to be, in time,

0:05:42.000,0:05:46.000
the elements of the human spirit that we've been hearing about

0:05:46.000,0:05:51.000
bit by bit by bit from so many of the speakers in the last few days.

0:05:51.000,0:05:55.000
And if there's anything that has permeated this room,

0:05:55.000,0:05:58.000
it is precisely that.

0:05:58.000,0:06:01.000
I'm intrigued by

0:06:01.000,0:06:04.000
a concept that was brought to life

0:06:04.000,0:06:06.000
in the early part of the 19th century --

0:06:06.000,0:06:10.000
actually, in the second decade of the 19th century --

0:06:10.000,0:06:13.000
by a 27-year-old poet

0:06:13.000,0:06:15.000
whose name was Percy Shelley.

0:06:15.000,0:06:17.000
Now, we all think that Shelley

0:06:17.000,0:06:20.000
obviously is the great romantic poet that he was; [br]

0:06:20.000,0:06:25.000
many of us tend to forget that he wrote

0:06:25.000,0:06:28.000
some perfectly wonderful essays, too,

0:06:28.000,0:06:31.000
and the most well-remembered essay

0:06:31.000,0:06:35.000
is one called "A Defence of Poetry."

0:06:35.000,0:06:38.000
Now, it's about five, six, seven, eight pages long,

0:06:38.000,0:06:41.000
and it gets kind of deep and difficult after about the third page,

0:06:41.000,0:06:45.000
but somewhere on the second page

0:06:45.000,0:06:49.000
he begins talking about the notion

0:06:49.000,0:06:54.000
that he calls "moral imagination."

0:06:54.000,0:06:59.000
And here's what he says, roughly translated:

0:06:59.000,0:07:03.000
A man -- generic man --

0:07:03.000,0:07:06.000
a man, to be greatly good,

0:07:06.000,0:07:09.000
must imagine clearly.

0:07:09.000,0:07:14.000
He must see himself and the world

0:07:14.000,0:07:17.000
through the eyes of another,

0:07:17.000,0:07:20.000
and of many others.

0:07:22.000,0:07:28.000
See himself and the world -- not just the world, but see himself.

0:07:28.000,0:07:31.000
What is it that is expected of us

0:07:31.000,0:07:34.000
by the billions of people

0:07:34.000,0:07:37.000
who live in what Laurie Garrett the other day

0:07:37.000,0:07:39.000
so appropriately called

0:07:39.000,0:07:41.000
despair and disparity?

0:07:41.000,0:07:45.000
What is it that they have every right

0:07:45.000,0:07:47.000
to ask of us?

0:07:47.000,0:07:51.000
What is it that we have every right to ask of ourselves,

0:07:51.000,0:07:56.000
out of our shared humanity and out of the human spirit?

0:07:56.000,0:07:59.000
Well, you know precisely what it is.

0:07:59.000,0:08:01.000
There's a great deal of argument

0:08:01.000,0:08:05.000
about whether we, as the great nation that we are,

0:08:05.000,0:08:08.000
should be the policeman of the world,

0:08:08.000,0:08:11.000
the world's constabulary,

0:08:11.000,0:08:15.000
but there should be virtually no argument

0:08:15.000,0:08:20.000
about whether we should be the world's healer.

0:08:20.000,0:08:23.000
There has certainly been no argument about that

0:08:23.000,0:08:27.000
in this room in the past four days.

0:08:27.000,0:08:30.000
So, if we are to be the world's healer,

0:08:30.000,0:08:33.000
every disadvantaged person in this world --

0:08:33.000,0:08:38.000
including in the United States -- becomes our patient.

0:08:38.000,0:08:42.000
Every disadvantaged nation, and perhaps our own nation,

0:08:42.000,0:08:45.000
becomes our patient.

0:08:45.000,0:08:50.000
So, it's fun to think about the etymology of the word "patient."

0:08:50.000,0:08:59.000
It comes initially from the Latin patior, to endure, or to suffer.

0:08:59.000,0:09:02.000
So, you go back to the old Indo-European root again,

0:09:02.000,0:09:06.000
and what do you find? The Indo-European stem is pronounced payen --

0:09:06.000,0:09:11.000
we would spell it P-A-E-N -- and, lo and behold, mirabile dictu,

0:09:11.000,0:09:17.000
it is the same root as the word compassion comes from, P-A-E-N.

0:09:17.000,0:09:22.000
So, the lesson is very clear. The lesson is that our patient --

0:09:22.000,0:09:26.000
the world, and the disadvantaged of the world --

0:09:26.000,0:09:31.000
that patient deserves our compassion.

0:09:31.000,0:09:34.000
But beyond our compassion, and far greater than compassion,

0:09:34.000,0:09:36.000
is our moral imagination

0:09:36.000,0:09:40.000
and our identification with each individual

0:09:40.000,0:09:43.000
who lives in that world,

0:09:43.000,0:09:47.000
not to think of them as a huge forest,

0:09:47.000,0:09:50.000
but as individual trees.

0:09:50.000,0:09:54.000
Of course, in this day and age, the trick is not to let each tree

0:09:54.000,0:09:58.000
be obscured by that Bush in Washington that can get --

0:09:58.000,0:10:00.000
can get in the way.

0:10:00.000,0:10:02.000
(Laughter)

0:10:02.000,0:10:04.000
So, here we are.

0:10:04.000,0:10:07.000
We are, should be,

0:10:07.000,0:10:10.000
morally committed to

0:10:10.000,0:10:14.000
being the healer of the world.

0:10:14.000,0:10:18.000
And we have had examples over and over and over again --

0:10:18.000,0:10:22.000
you've just heard one in the last 15 minutes --

0:10:22.000,0:10:26.000
of people who have not only had that commitment,

0:10:26.000,0:10:28.000
but had the charisma, the brilliance --

0:10:28.000,0:10:32.000
and I think in this room it's easy to use the word brilliant, my God --

0:10:32.000,0:10:36.000
the brilliance to succeed at least at the beginning

0:10:36.000,0:10:38.000
of their quest,

0:10:38.000,0:10:41.000
and who no doubt will continue to succeed,

0:10:41.000,0:10:45.000
as long as more and more of us enlist ourselves in their cause.

0:10:46.000,0:10:49.000
Now, if we're talking

0:10:49.000,0:10:51.000
about medicine,

0:10:51.000,0:10:54.000
and we're talking about healing,

0:10:54.000,0:10:58.000
I'd like to quote someone who hasn't been quoted.

0:10:58.000,0:11:00.000
It seems to me everybody in the world's been quoted here:

0:11:00.000,0:11:02.000
Pogo's been quoted;

0:11:02.000,0:11:06.000
Shakespeare's been quoted backwards, forwards, inside out.

0:11:06.000,0:11:09.000
I would like to quote one of my own household gods.

0:11:09.000,0:11:12.000
I suspect he never really said this,

0:11:12.000,0:11:15.000
because we don't know what Hippocrates really said,

0:11:15.000,0:11:18.000
but we do know for sure that one of the great Greek physicians

0:11:18.000,0:11:21.000
said the following,

0:11:21.000,0:11:24.000
and it has been recorded in one of the books attributed to Hippocrates,

0:11:24.000,0:11:26.000
and the book is called "Precepts."

0:11:26.000,0:11:29.000
And I'll read you what it is.

0:11:29.000,0:11:32.000
Remember, I have been talking about,

0:11:32.000,0:11:34.000
essentially philanthropy:

0:11:34.000,0:11:39.000
the love of humankind, the individual humankind

0:11:39.000,0:11:41.000
and the individual humankind [br]

0:11:41.000,0:11:43.000
that can bring that kind of love

0:11:43.000,0:11:46.000
translated into action,

0:11:46.000,0:11:49.000
translated, in some cases, into enlightened self-interest.

0:11:49.000,0:11:53.000
And here he is, 2,400 years ago:

0:11:54.000,0:11:58.000
"Where there is love of humankind,

0:11:58.000,0:12:01.000
there is love of healing."

0:12:01.000,0:12:04.000
We have seen that here today

0:12:04.000,0:12:06.000
with the sense,

0:12:06.000,0:12:09.000
with the sensitivity --

0:12:09.000,0:12:11.000
and in the last three days,

0:12:11.000,0:12:15.000
and with the power of the indomitable human spirit.

0:12:15.000,0:12:17.000
Thank you very much.

0:12:17.000,0:12:19.000
(Applause)