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the task I've taken on for myself is
either incredibly Brave or incredibly
stupid but I have four children and I am
accustomed to being incredibly Brave and
Incredibly
stupid if I am successful in
in capturing the shadow of my thoughts I
hope to introduce a beautifully simple
and Sublime concept to the Mosaic of
ideas that we're sharing here today and
that concept is Hope if we can Infuse
that overlooked idea because hope in and
of itself is so incredibly rich and
imaginative and intractably human
because we just want to believe that we
can improve our Human
Condition very few countries are as
burdened by the weight of their ancient
and contemporary history in quite the
same way that Greece is and if our
history teaches us anything it teaches
us that we've seen considerable crises
and crucibles before and we have risen
with nobility and dignity against
profound odds so let's all chill a
little bit and remember we've been here
before everywhere we look we're told to
be very very afraid and this was the
scariest cover I could have possibly
found but the economist tells us to be
scared of two things short-term
austerity measures and lack of real
honesty among our global leaders I'd
like to make that a troa and suggest
that an even deeper more resonant fear
is failure to believe in ourselves not
just through the prism of Economics but
through the stuff that really fuels our
imaginations the spiritual the emotional
the collective because when we all go
none of us are worried about what the
Euro note had on its symol or how much
money we had in our bank accounts is it
did we raise moral courageous and
curious kids and leave a legacy for them
that we're proud of at least that's how
I've lived and loved and parented and
and worked all my life because I stand
on the S shoulders of Hope to some great
extent I am very very excited about this
moment of History I've waited for this
shift in lifestyle values very long time
we've been given a gift I think a
sanctuary briming with the opportunity
to re-evaluate our priorities what's
important what we value
because Fear and Loathing and anger and
provocation and despair are nothing more
than antithetic they dull our senses and
leave our immune system paralyzed to
enact meaningful change but aesthetic
experiences that really have us all
excited working on adrenaline whether
it's optimism or positive energy or
courage fuels our
dreams and are the underpinnings of
hope so when we embark on this journey
looking forward we might take homage and
I can't even believe I'm using n in a in
a quote but man one of the most inured
to trouble does not deny suffering per
se we actually seek it out provided it
can give us meaning I find that very
prolific and rather appropriate at this
moment because crisis can be
regenerative crisis can serve as a
renewal it's all a function of how we
filter the information and through what
prism because hope is the belief that we
can improve our condition and it can be
self-fulfilling if we take the positive
change and the actions and the choice to
improve our condition why hope one of my
cocky teenagers would tell me why
not but hope can be incredibly useful if
it influences our future like any
emotion hope can change our appraisal if
we can meet our goals and ultimately
hope requires Champions to give voice to
the ambivalence and rise to the progress
so it should come to no surprise to
those in the audience that know me that
immediately upon arriving here in June
with all for yaka I set out for
simma and I was really powerfully
powerfully inspired and very proud
because this was our taher Square
moment and whether they were Furious or
curious young or old they all showed up
to speak truth to power and I bathed in
it I felt this was gre's moment and I
was woefully disillusioned when I
realized the protests ended right when
the August holidays
began there was something really surreal
about that so maybe surreal is the new
real and maybe just maybe if we're
really really smart enough to be lucky
we found ourselves at a moment we can
begin to understand the distinction
between goods and the goods of life and
the good life because I've been part of
this engine for 25 years as a marketer
and I was part of the Machinery that
convinced us all to climb the ladder of
Abraham maso's hierarchy so we could
reach these personal Awakenings and yet
in doing so we sacrificed far more
important Investments and ventures in
how we would improve education energy
sustainability agriculture all the
brilliant ideas that have been shared
here already today I get it and I get
where fear anger and Loathing is a
logical reaction but this isn't the
right
sensibility this is the politics of pmic
that only fuels the flame of indignation
and outrage even more and I hate to tell
you this is not an answer this is a
taunt so whether or not we like the
Esperanto of a unified European currency
or not this back and forth of taunting
is childish disillusioning and serves no
grander
purpose if we look however at the
anatomy of Crisis and this beautiful
quiet book by Rebecca snet a Paradise
built in hell where she rigorously
examines what can be spawned from crisis
and she tells us that crisis reveals
what else the world can be like reveals
what hope generosity solidarity can
produce while operating in the wings
when absent from the stage and while
there's an enormous Myriad and dubious
Pantheon of crises we can
examine Rebecca's book introduced me to
the London Blitz as launch for this few
minutes A young US Army Captain by the
name of Charles Fritz arrived in England
during the height of the blitz expecting
to find despondent war-weary and
baguer Britains who had faced years of
sacrifice death and disillusionment
instead what he found fascinated him he
found gay Happ happy enthused people
living life to the fullest planting
their Victory Gardens sleeping together
in the tube because they didn't know
what tomorrow would bring and they had
to live today to its fullest and when he
returned to America he began the first
and earliest studies at the University
of Chicago in human behavior and
reaction to crisis and disasters and he
extrapolated his conclusions which are
beautifully simple and revolutionary
that everyday life is already a disaster
and that actual disasters liberate us
and provide us societal shock which
disrupts our habitual institutionalized
patterns of behavior and make us more
amable to personal and societal
change of all the images and I owe a Deb
of thanks to Eric O Connell for allowing
me to use this this is the most haunting
and evocative from 9911 for me that's
the small quiet St Nicholas Greek
Orthodox Church against the Behemoth
Goliath Towers which both ended up in
the rubble of that day but in America
sadly we acted as if a whole new world
had been born that
day and we blew it because instead of
investing in long-term challenges like
globalization and energy Independence
education we invested all our energies
into short-term losing battles like Iraq
Pakistan and Al-Qaeda leaving us ill
equipped and ill-prepared when this
Domino fell in
2008 America sneezed and the whole world
is still on antibiotics but the beauty
here the beauty is in that same year we
elected a charismatic and remarkable
Agent of Change and I was there that
night in Grant Park with my 17-year-old
daughter and there are no words to
describe the electricity and that's the
type of energy that I hope we can
recreate and reinvent as we Forge ahead
and fight the challenges and the
crucibles that we face because we wept
with joy the day Obama was elected and
we wept with profound sorrow and I have
been in awe of the dignity and
discipline of the Japanese people in the
wake of the horrific horrific events of
March of this year and the government in
tandem with McKenzie has crafted a
20-year road map and I strongly
encourage you all to seek this out on
the internet and read it because there
are profound similarities between what
the Japanese are proposing to resurrect
their enormous economic and cultural
engine what Greece indeed the United
States and all the world's market
economies need to do we need to take
Brave bold action make unpopular
decisions and resurrect our Civic and
individual Grassroots involvement
because the government should be afraid
of us we shouldn't be afraid of the
government anywhere we
are and ultimately I believe if we
unleash our imagination and stay curious
we'll be able to do all of this and I'm
not being some naive Americana when I
say this I really fully believe it it's
how I've tried to raise my own children
because aah statistics are very for
boing because there was another young
vibrant American president by the name
of John F Kennedy who asked us all to
rise up and meet the challenge of a new
frontier and in 1969 this now famous
photograph called Earth rise was beamed
back to us and it was that one moment
where we all realized we were in this
together and that we saw this rock we
call the Earth and it connected all the
tribes because we were curious we
weren't anti-intellectual we weren't
anti-science we weren't anti- Big Ideas
and that is my hope for this moment at
this time that we all remain hopeful
optimistic but above all that we all
stay curious thank you
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