A Commencement Speech of Terror and Beauty

I hate to sound all gloom and doom, but as the speaker below says, "If you look at the science ... and aren't pessimistic, you don't understand the data." More and more, as I study ancient Near Eastern religions of Babylonia, and especially Israel and Roman Christianity - Near Eastern in mind if not in space - I find myself noticing that science has taken the mantle of prophecy from religion, and that its jeremiads seem to have as little effect on society as those of its pre-modern predecessors. Today's Cassandra wears a lab coat.

If there's any hope at all, it's in education. For the sake of the world, I can only hope Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, and Eli Broad stop talking about education as a set of skills to dumbly read a "no insurance" contract at WalMart and to make change at its cash registers, and start talking about it in the more momentous terms the times demand.

But with businessmen leading our education policy, I can't say I'm too hopeful that will happen.

Call that a preface to the following. Thanks to Anand Thakker on Twitter for tweeting me this University of Portland commencement speech - "Healing or Stealing?" - by Paul Hawken, co-author of Natural Capitalism. It speaks of things we tend not to speak of to our young, when our only hope seems to be that they do hear these things, and make the changes in the near future that our own and previous generations were too weak to make.

Here's the beginning. Click through for the whole thing - and show it to the young.

Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. (Read the rest....)

photo of Malaysia by Shutterhack