WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 You know, I am so bad at tech 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:07.000 that my daughter -- who is now 41 -- 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:10.000 when she was five, was overheard by me 00:00:10.000 --> 00:00:12.000 to say to a friend of hers, 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:14.000 If it doesn't bleed when you cut it, 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:16.000 my daddy doesn't understand it. 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:17.000 (Laughter) 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:19.000 So, the assignment I've been given 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:21.000 may be an insuperable obstacle for me, 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:24.000 but I'm certainly going to try. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:26.000 What have I heard 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:29.000 during these last four days? 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:31.000 This is my third visit to TED. 00:00:31.000 --> 00:00:33.000 One was to TEDMED, and one, as you've heard, 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:35.000 was a regular TED two years ago. 00:00:35.000 --> 00:00:38.000 I've heard what I consider an extraordinary thing 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:42.000 that I've only heard a little bit in the two previous TEDs, 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:45.000 and what that is is an interweaving 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:48.000 and an interlarding, an intermixing, 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:51.000 of a sense of social responsibility 00:00:51.000 --> 00:00:54.000 in so many of the talks -- 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:57.000 global responsibility, in fact, 00:00:57.000 --> 00:01:01.000 appealing to enlightened self-interest, 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:05.000 but it goes far beyond enlightened self-interest. 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:07.000 One of the most impressive things 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:10.000 about what some, perhaps 10, 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:13.000 of the speakers have been talking about 00:01:13.000 --> 00:01:16.000 is the realization, as you listen to them carefully, that they're not saying: 00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:19.000 Well, this is what we should do; this is what I would like you to do. 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:21.000 It's: This is what I have done 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:23.000 because I'm excited by it, 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:26.000 because it's a wonderful thing, and it's done something for me 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:29.000 and, of course, it's accomplished a great deal. 00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:32.000 It's the old concept, the real Greek concept, 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:36.000 of philanthropy in its original sense: 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:39.000 phil-anthropy, the love of humankind. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:41.000 And the only explanation I can have 00:01:41.000 --> 00:01:44.000 for some of what you've been hearing in the last four days 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:48.000 is that it arises, in fact, out of a form of love. 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:51.000 And this gives me enormous hope. 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:53.000 And hope, of course, is the topic 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:55.000 that I'm supposed to be speaking about, 00:01:55.000 --> 00:01:59.000 which I'd completely forgotten about until I arrived. 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:01.000 And when I did, I thought, 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:04.000 well, I'd better look this word up in the dictionary. 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:07.000 So, Sarah and I -- my wife -- walked over to the public library, 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:11.000 which is four blocks away, on Pacific Street, and we got the OED, 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:15.000 and we looked in there, and there are 14 definitions of hope, 00:02:15.000 --> 00:02:18.000 none of which really hits you 00:02:18.000 --> 00:02:21.000 between the eyes as being the appropriate one. 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:23.000 And, of course, that makes sense, 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:26.000 because hope is an abstract phenomenon; it's an abstract idea, 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:29.000 it's not a concrete word. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:29.000 --> 00:02:32.000 Well, it reminds me a little bit of surgery. 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:36.000 If there's one operation for a disease, you know it works. 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:38.000 If there are 15 operations, you know that none of them work. 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:41.000 And that's the way it is with definitions of words. 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:45.000 If you have appendicitis, they take your appendix out, and you're cured. 00:02:45.000 --> 00:02:48.000 If you've got reflux oesophagitis, there are 15 procedures, 00:02:48.000 --> 00:02:50.000 and Joe Schmo does it one way 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:52.000 and Will Blow does it another way, 00:02:52.000 --> 00:02:55.000 and none of them work, and that's the way it is with this word, hope. 00:02:55.000 --> 00:02:58.000 They all come down to the idea of an expectation 00:02:58.000 --> 00:03:01.000 of something good that is due to happen. 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:03.000 And you know what I found out? 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:06.000 The Indo-European root of the word hope 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:08.000 is a stem, K-E-U -- 00:03:08.000 --> 00:03:13.000 we would spell it K-E-U; it's pronounced koy -- 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:17.000 and it is the same root from which the word curve comes from. 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:21.000 But what it means in the original Indo-European 00:03:21.000 --> 00:03:25.000 is a change in direction, going in a different way. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:25.000 --> 00:03:28.000 And I find that very interesting and very provocative, 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:31.000 because what you've been hearing in the last couple of days 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:35.000 is the sense of going in different directions: 00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:38.000 directions that are specific and unique to problems. 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:40.000 There are different paradigms. 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:42.000 You've heard that word several times in the last four days, 00:03:42.000 --> 00:03:45.000 and everyone's familiar with Kuhnian paradigms. 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:47.000 So, when we think of hope now, 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:50.000 we have to think of looking in other directions 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:53.000 than we have been looking. 00:03:53.000 --> 00:03:56.000 There's another -- not definition, but description, of hope 00:03:56.000 --> 00:04:00.000 that has always appealed to me, and it was one by Václav Havel 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:04.000 in his perfectly spectacular book "Breaking the Peace," 00:04:04.000 --> 00:04:06.000 in which he says that hope 00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:09.000 does not consist of the expectation that things will 00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:11.000 come out exactly right, 00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:14.000 but the expectation that they will make sense 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:17.000 regardless of how they come out. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:17.000 --> 00:04:20.000 I can't tell you how reassured I was 00:04:20.000 --> 00:04:23.000 by the very last sentence 00:04:23.000 --> 00:04:28.000 in that glorious presentation by Dean Kamen a few days ago. 00:04:28.000 --> 00:04:30.000 I wasn't sure I heard it right, 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:34.000 so I found him in one of the inter-sessions. 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:37.000 He was talking to a very large man, but I didn't care. 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:39.000 I interrupted, and I said, "Did you say this?" 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:41.000 He said, "I think so." 00:04:41.000 --> 00:04:43.000 So, here's what it is: I'll repeat it. 00:04:43.000 --> 00:04:47.000 "The world will not be saved by the Internet." 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:51.000 It's wonderful. Do you know what the world will be saved by? 00:04:51.000 --> 00:04:53.000 I'll tell you. It'll be saved by the human spirit. 00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:56.000 And by the human spirit, I don't mean anything divine, 00:04:56.000 --> 00:04:58.000 I don't mean anything supernatural -- 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:02.000 certainly not coming from this skeptic. 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:04.000 What I mean is this ability 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:06.000 that each of us has 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:12.000 to be something greater than herself or himself; 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:16.000 to arise out of our ordinary selves and achieve something 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:20.000 that at the beginning we thought perhaps we were not capable of. 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:23.000 On an elemental level, we have all felt 00:05:23.000 --> 00:05:26.000 that spirituality at the time of childbirth. 00:05:26.000 --> 00:05:28.000 Some of you have felt it in laboratories; 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:30.000 some of you have felt it at the workbench. 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:32.000 We feel it at concerts. 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:35.000 I've felt it in the operating room, at the bedside. 00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:38.000 It is an elevation of us beyond ourselves. 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:42.000 And I think that it's going to be, in time, 00:05:42.000 --> 00:05:46.000 the elements of the human spirit that we've been hearing about 00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:51.000 bit by bit by bit from so many of the speakers in the last few days. 00:05:51.000 --> 00:05:55.000 And if there's anything that has permeated this room, 00:05:55.000 --> 00:05:58.000 it is precisely that. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:01.000 I'm intrigued by 00:06:01.000 --> 00:06:04.000 a concept that was brought to life 00:06:04.000 --> 00:06:06.000 in the early part of the 19th century -- 00:06:06.000 --> 00:06:10.000 actually, in the second decade of the 19th century -- 00:06:10.000 --> 00:06:13.000 by a 27-year-old poet 00:06:13.000 --> 00:06:15.000 whose name was Percy Shelley. 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:17.000 Now, we all think that Shelley 00:06:17.000 --> 00:06:20.000 obviously is the great romantic poet that he was; 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:25.000 many of us tend to forget that he wrote 00:06:25.000 --> 00:06:28.000 some perfectly wonderful essays, too, 00:06:28.000 --> 00:06:31.000 and the most well-remembered essay 00:06:31.000 --> 00:06:35.000 is one called "A Defence of Poetry." 00:06:35.000 --> 00:06:38.000 Now, it's about five, six, seven, eight pages long, 00:06:38.000 --> 00:06:41.000 and it gets kind of deep and difficult after about the third page, 00:06:41.000 --> 00:06:45.000 but somewhere on the second page 00:06:45.000 --> 00:06:49.000 he begins talking about the notion 00:06:49.000 --> 00:06:54.000 that he calls "moral imagination." 00:06:54.000 --> 00:06:59.000 And here's what he says, roughly translated: 00:06:59.000 --> 00:07:03.000 A man -- generic man -- 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:06.000 a man, to be greatly good, 00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:09.000 must imagine clearly. 00:07:09.000 --> 00:07:14.000 He must see himself and the world 00:07:14.000 --> 00:07:17.000 through the eyes of another, 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:20.000 and of many others. 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:28.000 See himself and the world -- not just the world, but see himself. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:31.000 What is it that is expected of us 00:07:31.000 --> 00:07:34.000 by the billions of people 00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:37.000 who live in what Laurie Garrett the other day 00:07:37.000 --> 00:07:39.000 so appropriately called 00:07:39.000 --> 00:07:41.000 despair and disparity? 00:07:41.000 --> 00:07:45.000 What is it that they have every right 00:07:45.000 --> 00:07:47.000 to ask of us? 00:07:47.000 --> 00:07:51.000 What is it that we have every right to ask of ourselves, 00:07:51.000 --> 00:07:56.000 out of our shared humanity and out of the human spirit? 00:07:56.000 --> 00:07:59.000 Well, you know precisely what it is. 00:07:59.000 --> 00:08:01.000 There's a great deal of argument 00:08:01.000 --> 00:08:05.000 about whether we, as the great nation that we are, 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:08.000 should be the policeman of the world, 00:08:08.000 --> 00:08:11.000 the world's constabulary, 00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:15.000 but there should be virtually no argument 00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:20.000 about whether we should be the world's healer. 00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:23.000 There has certainly been no argument about that 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:27.000 in this room in the past four days. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:27.000 --> 00:08:30.000 So, if we are to be the world's healer, 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:33.000 every disadvantaged person in this world -- 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:38.000 including in the United States -- becomes our patient. 00:08:38.000 --> 00:08:42.000 Every disadvantaged nation, and perhaps our own nation, 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:45.000 becomes our patient. 00:08:45.000 --> 00:08:50.000 So, it's fun to think about the etymology of the word "patient." 00:08:50.000 --> 00:08:59.000 It comes initially from the Latin patior, to endure, or to suffer. 00:08:59.000 --> 00:09:02.000 So, you go back to the old Indo-European root again, 00:09:02.000 --> 00:09:06.000 and what do you find? The Indo-European stem is pronounced payen -- 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:11.000 we would spell it P-A-E-N -- and, lo and behold, mirabile dictu, 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:17.000 it is the same root as the word compassion comes from, P-A-E-N. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:22.000 So, the lesson is very clear. The lesson is that our patient -- 00:09:22.000 --> 00:09:26.000 the world, and the disadvantaged of the world -- 00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:31.000 that patient deserves our compassion. 00:09:31.000 --> 00:09:34.000 But beyond our compassion, and far greater than compassion, 00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:36.000 is our moral imagination 00:09:36.000 --> 00:09:40.000 and our identification with each individual 00:09:40.000 --> 00:09:43.000 who lives in that world, 00:09:43.000 --> 00:09:47.000 not to think of them as a huge forest, 00:09:47.000 --> 00:09:50.000 but as individual trees. 00:09:50.000 --> 00:09:54.000 Of course, in this day and age, the trick is not to let each tree 00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:58.000 be obscured by that Bush in Washington that can get -- 00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:00.000 can get in the way. 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:02.000 (Laughter) 00:10:02.000 --> 00:10:04.000 So, here we are. 00:10:04.000 --> 00:10:07.000 We are, should be, 00:10:07.000 --> 00:10:10.000 morally committed to 00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:14.000 being the healer of the world. 00:10:14.000 --> 00:10:18.000 And we have had examples over and over and over again -- 00:10:18.000 --> 00:10:22.000 you've just heard one in the last 15 minutes -- 00:10:22.000 --> 00:10:26.000 of people who have not only had that commitment, 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:28.000 but had the charisma, the brilliance -- 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:32.000 and I think in this room it's easy to use the word brilliant, my God -- 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:36.000 the brilliance to succeed at least at the beginning 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:38.000 of their quest, 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:41.000 and who no doubt will continue to succeed, 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:45.000 as long as more and more of us enlist ourselves in their cause. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:49.000 Now, if we're talking 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:51.000 about medicine, 00:10:51.000 --> 00:10:54.000 and we're talking about healing, 00:10:54.000 --> 00:10:58.000 I'd like to quote someone who hasn't been quoted. 00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:00.000 It seems to me everybody in the world's been quoted here: 00:11:00.000 --> 00:11:02.000 Pogo's been quoted; 00:11:02.000 --> 00:11:06.000 Shakespeare's been quoted backwards, forwards, inside out. 00:11:06.000 --> 00:11:09.000 I would like to quote one of my own household gods. 00:11:09.000 --> 00:11:12.000 I suspect he never really said this, 00:11:12.000 --> 00:11:15.000 because we don't know what Hippocrates really said, 00:11:15.000 --> 00:11:18.000 but we do know for sure that one of the great Greek physicians 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:21.000 said the following, 00:11:21.000 --> 00:11:24.000 and it has been recorded in one of the books attributed to Hippocrates, 00:11:24.000 --> 00:11:26.000 and the book is called "Precepts." 00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:29.000 And I'll read you what it is. 00:11:29.000 --> 00:11:32.000 Remember, I have been talking about, 00:11:32.000 --> 00:11:34.000 essentially philanthropy: 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:39.000 the love of humankind, the individual humankind 00:11:39.000 --> 00:11:41.000 and the individual humankind 00:11:41.000 --> 00:11:43.000 that can bring that kind of love 00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:46.000 translated into action, 00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:49.000 translated, in some cases, into enlightened self-interest. 00:11:49.000 --> 00:11:53.000 And here he is, 2,400 years ago: 00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:58.000 "Where there is love of humankind, 00:11:58.000 --> 00:12:01.000 there is love of healing." 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:04.000 We have seen that here today 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:06.000 with the sense, 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:09.000 with the sensitivity -- 00:12:09.000 --> 00:12:11.000 and in the last three days, 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:15.000 and with the power of the indomitable human spirit. 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:17.000 Thank you very much. 00:12:17.000 --> 00:12:19.000 (Applause)