WEBVTT 00:00:00.911 --> 00:00:03.019 So, we all have bad seasons in life. 00:00:03.754 --> 00:00:05.674 And I had one in 2013. 00:00:06.373 --> 00:00:07.719 My marriage had just ended, 00:00:07.743 --> 00:00:10.395 and I was humiliated by that failed commitment. 00:00:10.419 --> 00:00:13.221 My kids had left home for college or were leaving. 00:00:14.045 --> 00:00:16.368 I grew up mostly in the conservative movement, 00:00:16.392 --> 00:00:17.992 but conservatism had changed, 00:00:18.016 --> 00:00:20.008 so I lost a lot of those friends, too. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:20.441 --> 00:00:23.430 And so what I did is, I lived alone in an apartment, 00:00:23.454 --> 00:00:24.654 and I just worked. 00:00:25.417 --> 00:00:28.830 If you opened the kitchen drawers where there should have been utensils, 00:00:28.854 --> 00:00:30.377 there were Post-it notes. 00:00:30.916 --> 00:00:34.131 If you opened the other drawers where there should have been plates, 00:00:34.155 --> 00:00:35.305 I had envelopes. 00:00:35.885 --> 00:00:39.282 I had work friends, weekday friends, but I didn't have weekend friends. 00:00:39.942 --> 00:00:43.542 And so my weekends were these long, howling silences. 00:00:44.268 --> 00:00:45.640 And I was lonely. 00:00:46.395 --> 00:00:49.968 And loneliness, unexpectedly, came to me in the form of -- 00:00:50.399 --> 00:00:53.248 it felt like fear, a burning in my stomach. 00:00:53.272 --> 00:00:55.953 And it felt a little like drunkenness, 00:00:55.977 --> 00:01:00.907 just making bad decisions, just fluidity, lack of solidity. 00:01:01.911 --> 00:01:05.177 And the painful part of that moment was the awareness 00:01:05.201 --> 00:01:08.604 that the emptiness in my apartment was just reflective of the emptiness 00:01:08.628 --> 00:01:10.227 in myself, 00:01:10.251 --> 00:01:13.978 and that I had fallen for some of the lies that our culture tells us. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:15.196 --> 00:01:18.605 The first lie is that career success is fulfilling. 00:01:18.629 --> 00:01:20.466 I've had a fair bit of career success, 00:01:20.490 --> 00:01:23.328 and I've found that it helps me avoid the shame I would feel 00:01:23.352 --> 00:01:25.026 if I felt myself a failure, 00:01:25.050 --> 00:01:27.581 but it hasn't given me any positive good. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:28.201 --> 00:01:31.797 The second lie is I can make myself happy, 00:01:32.484 --> 00:01:34.564 that if I just win one more victory, 00:01:34.588 --> 00:01:38.079 lose 15 pounds, do a little more yoga, 00:01:38.103 --> 00:01:39.253 I'll get happy. 00:01:39.743 --> 00:01:42.061 And that's the lie of self-sufficiency. 00:01:42.419 --> 00:01:45.101 But as anybody on their deathbed will tell you, 00:01:45.125 --> 00:01:48.389 the things that make people happy is the deep relationships of life, 00:01:48.413 --> 00:01:50.480 the losing of self-sufficiency. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:51.804 --> 00:01:54.471 The third lie is the lie of the meritocracy. 00:01:55.591 --> 00:01:58.790 The message of the meritocracy is you are what you accomplish. 00:01:59.133 --> 00:02:01.600 The myth of the meritocracy is you can earn dignity 00:02:01.624 --> 00:02:04.234 by attaching yourself to prestigious brands. 00:02:04.258 --> 00:02:07.063 The emotion of the meritocracy is conditional love, 00:02:07.087 --> 00:02:08.942 you can "earn" your way to love. 00:02:08.966 --> 00:02:12.387 The anthropology of the meritocracy is you're not a soul to be purified, 00:02:12.411 --> 00:02:14.879 you're a set of skills to be maximized. 00:02:14.903 --> 00:02:16.752 And the evil of the meritocracy 00:02:16.776 --> 00:02:19.434 is that people who've achieved a little more than others 00:02:19.458 --> 00:02:21.744 are actually worth a little more than others. 00:02:22.141 --> 00:02:24.004 And so the wages of sin are sin. 00:02:24.815 --> 00:02:26.699 And my sins were the sins of omission-- 00:02:26.723 --> 00:02:29.191 not reaching out, failing to show up for my friends, 00:02:29.215 --> 00:02:30.730 evasion, avoiding conflict. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:31.560 --> 00:02:34.688 And the weird thing was that as I was falling into the valley -- 00:02:34.712 --> 00:02:36.416 it was a valley of disconnection -- 00:02:36.440 --> 00:02:38.474 a lot of other people were doing that, too. 00:02:39.014 --> 00:02:41.023 And that's sort of the secret to my career; 00:02:41.047 --> 00:02:42.820 a lot of the things that happen to me 00:02:42.844 --> 00:02:45.002 are always happening to a lot of other people. 00:02:45.026 --> 00:02:48.220 I'm a very average person with above average communication skills. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:48.244 --> 00:02:49.347 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:02:49.371 --> 00:02:50.837 And so I was detached. 00:02:51.252 --> 00:02:54.514 And at the same time, a lot of other people were detached 00:02:54.538 --> 00:02:57.053 and isolated and fragmented from each other. 00:02:57.077 --> 00:03:00.157 Thirty-five percent of Americans over 45 are chronically lonely. 00:03:00.181 --> 00:03:03.522 Only eight percent of Americans report having meaningful conversation 00:03:03.546 --> 00:03:04.696 with their neighbors. 00:03:04.720 --> 00:03:07.545 Only 32 percent of Americans say they trust their neighbors, 00:03:07.569 --> 00:03:09.823 and only 18 percent of millennials. 00:03:09.847 --> 00:03:12.288 The fastest-growing political party is unaffiliated. 00:03:12.312 --> 00:03:14.899 The fastest-growing religious movement is unaffiliated. 00:03:14.923 --> 00:03:17.899 Depression rates are rising, mental health problems are rising. 00:03:17.923 --> 00:03:21.164 The suicide rate has risen 30 percent since 1999. 00:03:21.188 --> 00:03:23.364 For teen suicides over the last several years, 00:03:23.388 --> 00:03:26.047 the suicide rate has risen by 70 percent. 00:03:27.249 --> 00:03:29.924 Forty-five thousand Americans kill themselves every year; 00:03:29.948 --> 00:03:32.178 72,000 die from opioid addictions; 00:03:32.202 --> 00:03:35.551 life expectancy is falling, not rising. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:36.985 --> 00:03:39.572 So what I mean to tell you, I flew out here to say 00:03:39.596 --> 00:03:42.524 that we have an economic crisis, we have environmental crisis, 00:03:42.548 --> 00:03:43.913 we have a political crisis. 00:03:43.937 --> 00:03:46.016 We also have a social and relational crisis; 00:03:46.040 --> 00:03:47.379 we're in the valley. 00:03:47.403 --> 00:03:49.006 We're fragmented from each other, 00:03:49.030 --> 00:03:51.622 we've got cascades of lies coming out of Washington ... 00:03:51.646 --> 00:03:52.979 We're in the valley. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:53.466 --> 00:03:55.443 And so I've spent the last five years -- 00:03:55.467 --> 00:03:56.981 how do you get out of a valley? 00:03:57.356 --> 00:04:00.469 The Greeks used to say, "You suffer your way to wisdom." 00:04:01.006 --> 00:04:04.666 And from that dark period where I started, I've had a few realizations. 00:04:05.228 --> 00:04:08.149 The first is, freedom sucks. 00:04:08.998 --> 00:04:11.672 Economic freedom is OK, political freedom is great, 00:04:11.696 --> 00:04:13.497 social freedom sucks. 00:04:14.036 --> 00:04:16.363 The unrooted man is the adrift man. 00:04:16.387 --> 00:04:20.370 The unrooted man is the unremembered man, because he's uncommitted to things. 00:04:20.776 --> 00:04:24.310 Freedom is not an ocean you want to swim in, 00:04:24.334 --> 00:04:26.064 it's a river you want to get across, 00:04:26.088 --> 00:04:28.754 so you can commit and plant yourself on the other side. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:29.270 --> 00:04:30.929 The second thing I learned 00:04:30.953 --> 00:04:33.549 is that when you have one of those bad moments in life, 00:04:33.573 --> 00:04:34.868 you can either be broken, 00:04:34.892 --> 00:04:36.431 or you can be broken open. 00:04:36.905 --> 00:04:38.731 And we all know people who are broken. 00:04:38.755 --> 00:04:41.271 They've endured some pain or grief, they get smaller, 00:04:41.295 --> 00:04:43.675 they get angrier, resentful, they lash out. 00:04:43.699 --> 00:04:44.854 As the saying is, 00:04:44.878 --> 00:04:47.576 "Pain that is not transformed gets transmitted." 00:04:47.927 --> 00:04:49.756 But other people are broken open. 00:04:51.125 --> 00:04:54.226 Suffering's great power is that it's an interruption of life. 00:04:54.250 --> 00:04:57.019 It reminds you you're not the person you thought you were. 00:04:57.043 --> 00:04:58.580 The theologian Paul Tillich said 00:04:58.604 --> 00:05:02.021 what suffering does is it carves through what you thought was the floor 00:05:02.045 --> 00:05:03.428 of the basement of your soul, 00:05:03.452 --> 00:05:05.962 and it carves through that, revealing a cavity below, 00:05:05.986 --> 00:05:08.478 and it carves through that, revealing a cavity below. 00:05:08.502 --> 00:05:11.511 You realize there are depths of yourself you never anticipated, 00:05:11.535 --> 00:05:14.486 and only spiritual and relational food will fill those depths. 00:05:16.173 --> 00:05:19.141 And when you get down there, you get out of the head of the ego 00:05:19.165 --> 00:05:20.847 and you get into the heart, 00:05:20.871 --> 00:05:22.633 the desiring heart. 00:05:22.657 --> 00:05:26.288 The idea that what we really yearn for is longing and love for another, 00:05:26.312 --> 00:05:29.358 the kind of thing that Louis de Bernières described in his book, 00:05:29.382 --> 00:05:31.280 "Captain Corelli's Mandolin." 00:05:31.304 --> 00:05:33.283 He had an old guy talking to his daughter 00:05:33.307 --> 00:05:35.325 about his relationship with his late wife, 00:05:35.349 --> 00:05:36.736 and the old guy says, 00:05:36.760 --> 00:05:40.458 "Love itself is whatever is leftover when being in love is burned away. 00:05:40.482 --> 00:05:43.339 And this is both an art and a fortunate accident. 00:05:43.704 --> 00:05:45.387 Your mother and I had it. 00:05:45.411 --> 00:05:47.950 We had roots that grew towards each other underground, 00:05:47.974 --> 00:05:50.903 and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches, 00:05:50.927 --> 00:05:53.379 we discovered that we are one tree and not two." 00:05:53.696 --> 00:05:55.569 That's what the heart yearns for. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:55.593 --> 00:05:58.354 The second thing you discover is your soul. 00:05:58.932 --> 00:06:01.810 Now, I don't ask you to believe in God or not believe in God, 00:06:01.834 --> 00:06:04.421 but I do ask you to believe that there's a piece of you 00:06:04.445 --> 00:06:06.421 that has no shape, size, color or weight, 00:06:06.445 --> 00:06:09.371 but that gives you infinite dignity and value. 00:06:09.395 --> 00:06:11.752 Rich and successful people don't have more of this 00:06:11.776 --> 00:06:13.141 than less successful people. 00:06:13.974 --> 00:06:17.156 Slavery is wrong because it's an obliteration of another soul. 00:06:17.180 --> 00:06:20.014 Rape is not just an attack on a bunch of physical molecules, 00:06:20.038 --> 00:06:22.966 it's an attempt to insult another person's soul. 00:06:22.990 --> 00:06:26.036 And what the soul does is it yearns for righteousness. 00:06:26.060 --> 00:06:29.639 The heart yearns for fusion with another, the soul yearns for righteousness. 00:06:29.663 --> 00:06:32.948 And that led to my third realization, which I borrowed from Einstein: 00:06:33.655 --> 00:06:36.141 "The problem you have is not going to be solved 00:06:36.165 --> 00:06:38.879 at the level of consciousness on which you created it. 00:06:38.903 --> 00:06:42.776 You have to expand to a different level of consciousness." NOTE Paragraph 00:06:42.800 --> 00:06:44.014 So what do you do? 00:06:44.038 --> 00:06:47.148 Well, the first thing you do is you throw yourself on your friends 00:06:47.172 --> 00:06:50.133 and you have deeper conversations that you ever had before. 00:06:50.157 --> 00:06:51.514 But the second thing you do, 00:06:51.538 --> 00:06:53.672 you have to go out alone into the wilderness. 00:06:53.696 --> 00:06:56.768 You go out into that place where there's nobody there to perform, 00:06:56.792 --> 00:06:59.172 and the ego has nothing to do, and it crumbles, 00:06:59.196 --> 00:07:01.355 and only then are you capable of being loved. 00:07:01.712 --> 00:07:05.049 I have a friend who said that when her daughter was born, 00:07:05.073 --> 00:07:08.676 she realized that she loved her more than evolution required. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:09.041 --> 00:07:10.184 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:07:10.208 --> 00:07:11.613 And I've always loved that. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:11.637 --> 00:07:12.779 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:07:12.803 --> 00:07:15.760 Because it talks about the peace that's at the deep of ourself, 00:07:15.784 --> 00:07:18.489 our inexplicable care for one another. 00:07:18.513 --> 00:07:21.457 And when you touch that spot, you're ready to be rescued. 00:07:21.815 --> 00:07:24.131 The hard thing about when you're in the valley 00:07:25.300 --> 00:07:26.648 is that you can't climb out; 00:07:26.672 --> 00:07:28.829 somebody has to reach in and pull you out. 00:07:29.331 --> 00:07:30.486 It happened to me. 00:07:30.510 --> 00:07:34.037 I got, luckily, invited over to a house by a couple named Kathy and David, 00:07:34.061 --> 00:07:35.466 and they were -- 00:07:36.196 --> 00:07:38.871 They had a kid in the DC public school, his name's Santi. 00:07:38.895 --> 00:07:40.997 Santi had a friend who needed a place to stay 00:07:41.021 --> 00:07:42.887 because his mom had some health issues. 00:07:42.911 --> 00:07:45.593 And then that kid had a friend and that kid had a friend. 00:07:45.617 --> 00:07:47.625 When I went to their house six years ago, 00:07:47.649 --> 00:07:50.546 I walk in the door, there's like 25 around the kitchen table, 00:07:50.570 --> 00:07:52.919 a whole bunch sleeping downstairs in the basement. 00:07:52.943 --> 00:07:55.006 I reach out to introduce myself to a kid, 00:07:55.030 --> 00:07:57.634 and he says, "We don't really shake hands here. 00:07:58.331 --> 00:07:59.779 We just hug here." 00:08:00.323 --> 00:08:03.299 And I'm not the huggiest guy on the face of the earth, 00:08:03.323 --> 00:08:06.902 but I've been going back to that home every Thursday night when I'm in town, 00:08:06.926 --> 00:08:08.470 and just hugging all those kids. 00:08:08.494 --> 00:08:10.379 They demand intimacy. 00:08:10.403 --> 00:08:14.013 They demand that you behave in a way where you're showing all the way up. 00:08:14.442 --> 00:08:16.236 And they teach you a new way to live, 00:08:16.260 --> 00:08:18.561 which is the cure for all the ills of our culture 00:08:18.585 --> 00:08:21.531 which is a way of direct -- really putting relationship first, 00:08:21.555 --> 00:08:24.725 not just as a word, but as a reality. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:25.557 --> 00:08:29.628 And the beautiful thing is, these communities are everywhere. 00:08:29.652 --> 00:08:33.299 I started something at the Aspen Institute called "Weave: The Social Fabric." 00:08:33.323 --> 00:08:34.479 This is our logo here. 00:08:34.503 --> 00:08:38.236 And we plop into a place and we find weavers anywhere, everywhere. 00:08:38.761 --> 00:08:41.278 We find people like Asiaha Butler, who grew up in -- 00:08:42.056 --> 00:08:44.873 who lived in Chicago, in Englewood, in a tough neighborhood. 00:08:44.897 --> 00:08:47.850 And she was about to move because it was so dangerous, 00:08:48.173 --> 00:08:51.041 and she looked across the street and she saw two little girls 00:08:51.065 --> 00:08:53.141 playing in an empty lot with broken bottles, 00:08:53.165 --> 00:08:56.347 and she turned to her husband and she said, "We're not leaving. 00:08:56.371 --> 00:08:59.347 We're not going to be just another family that abandon that." 00:08:59.371 --> 00:09:02.579 And she Googled "volunteer in Englewood," and now she runs R.A.G.E., 00:09:02.603 --> 00:09:04.400 the big community organization there. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:04.424 --> 00:09:07.403 Some of these people have had tough valleys. 00:09:07.427 --> 00:09:11.132 I met a woman named Sarah in Ohio who came home from an antiquing trip 00:09:11.156 --> 00:09:14.918 and found that her husband had killed himself and their two kids. 00:09:15.815 --> 00:09:19.195 She now runs a free pharmacy, she volunteers in the community, 00:09:19.219 --> 00:09:22.211 she helps women cope with violence, she teaches. 00:09:22.235 --> 00:09:25.299 She told me, "I grew from this experience because I was angry. 00:09:25.323 --> 00:09:28.093 I was going to fight back against what he tried to do to me 00:09:28.117 --> 00:09:29.863 by making a difference in the world. 00:09:29.887 --> 00:09:31.942 See, he didn't kill me. 00:09:31.966 --> 00:09:33.151 My response to him is, 00:09:33.175 --> 00:09:37.371 'Whatever you meant to do to me, screw you, you're not going to do it.'" NOTE Paragraph 00:09:38.029 --> 00:09:41.402 These weavers are not living an individualistic life, 00:09:41.426 --> 00:09:44.799 they're living a relationist life, they have a different set of values. 00:09:44.823 --> 00:09:46.243 They have moral motivations. 00:09:46.267 --> 00:09:49.395 They have vocational certitude, they have planted themselves down. 00:09:49.419 --> 00:09:51.006 I met a guy in Youngstown, Ohio, 00:09:51.030 --> 00:09:53.061 who just held up a sign in the town square, 00:09:53.085 --> 00:09:54.236 "Defend Youngstown." 00:09:54.260 --> 00:09:56.133 They have radical mutuality, 00:09:56.157 --> 00:09:58.690 and they are geniuses at relationship. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:59.180 --> 00:10:00.855 There's a woman named Mary Gordon 00:10:00.879 --> 00:10:03.002 who runs something called Roots of Empathy. 00:10:03.026 --> 00:10:06.291 And what they do is they take a bunch of kids, an eighth grade class, 00:10:06.315 --> 00:10:08.054 they put a mom and an infant, 00:10:08.078 --> 00:10:11.102 and then the students have to guess what the infant is thinking, 00:10:11.126 --> 00:10:12.277 to teach empathy. 00:10:12.301 --> 00:10:15.407 There was one kid in a class who was bigger than the rest 00:10:15.431 --> 00:10:19.014 because he'd been held back, been through the foster care system, 00:10:19.038 --> 00:10:20.664 seen his mom get killed. 00:10:20.688 --> 00:10:22.569 And he wanted to hold the baby. 00:10:22.593 --> 00:10:25.228 And the mom was nervous because he looked big and scary. 00:10:25.252 --> 00:10:27.847 But she let this kid, Darren, hold the baby. 00:10:27.871 --> 00:10:29.720 He held it, and he was great with it. 00:10:31.014 --> 00:10:34.500 He gave the baby back and started asking questions about parenthood. 00:10:35.015 --> 00:10:36.944 And his final question was, 00:10:36.968 --> 00:10:40.269 "If nobody has ever loved you, do you think you can be a good father?" 00:10:40.642 --> 00:10:42.309 And so what Roots of Empathy does 00:10:42.333 --> 00:10:45.053 is they reach down and they grab people out of the valley. 00:10:45.077 --> 00:10:46.930 And that's what weavers are doing. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:49.300 --> 00:10:51.487 Some of them switch jobs. 00:10:51.950 --> 00:10:54.481 Some of them stay in their same jobs. 00:10:54.982 --> 00:10:57.482 But one thing is, they have an intensity to them. 00:10:57.982 --> 00:10:59.365 I read this -- 00:10:59.389 --> 00:11:05.376 E.O. Wilson wrote a great book called "Naturalist," about his childhood. 00:11:05.712 --> 00:11:08.411 When he was seven, his parents were divorcing. 00:11:09.291 --> 00:11:12.458 And they sent him to Paradise Beach in North Florida. 00:11:12.482 --> 00:11:14.318 And he'd never seen the ocean before. 00:11:14.731 --> 00:11:17.062 And he'd never seen a jellyfish before. 00:11:17.086 --> 00:11:21.177 He wrote, "The creature was astonishing. It existed beyond my imagination." 00:11:21.596 --> 00:11:23.257 He was sitting on the dock one day 00:11:23.281 --> 00:11:26.018 and he saw a stingray float beneath his feet. 00:11:26.365 --> 00:11:30.445 And at that moment, a naturalist was born in the awe and wonder. 00:11:30.469 --> 00:11:32.614 And he makes this observation: 00:11:32.638 --> 00:11:33.855 that when you're a child, 00:11:33.879 --> 00:11:37.026 you see animals at twice the size as you do as an adult. 00:11:38.162 --> 00:11:39.936 And that has always impressed me, 00:11:39.960 --> 00:11:44.720 because what we want as kids is that moral intensity, 00:11:44.744 --> 00:11:47.688 to be totally given ourselves over to something 00:11:47.712 --> 00:11:50.046 and to find that level of vocation. 00:11:50.480 --> 00:11:52.449 And when you are around these weavers, 00:11:52.473 --> 00:11:55.441 they see other people at twice the size as normal people. 00:11:55.465 --> 00:11:57.198 They see deeper into them. 00:11:57.997 --> 00:12:00.155 And what they see is joy. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:01.315 --> 00:12:04.719 On the first mountain of our life, when we're shooting for our career, 00:12:04.743 --> 00:12:06.902 we shoot for happiness. 00:12:07.649 --> 00:12:10.696 And happiness is good, it's the expansion of self. 00:12:10.720 --> 00:12:12.466 You win a victory, 00:12:12.490 --> 00:12:16.483 you get a promotion, your team wins the Super Bowl, 00:12:16.507 --> 00:12:17.657 you're happy. 00:12:18.149 --> 00:12:21.870 Joy is not the expansion of self, it's the dissolving of self. 00:12:22.764 --> 00:12:27.002 It's the moment when the skin barrier disappears between a mother and her child, 00:12:27.026 --> 00:12:30.335 it's the moment when a naturalist feels just free in nature. 00:12:31.232 --> 00:12:34.177 It's the moment where you're so lost in your work or a cause, 00:12:34.201 --> 00:12:36.201 you have totally self-forgotten. 00:12:36.649 --> 00:12:39.535 And joy is a better thing to aim for than happiness. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:39.559 --> 00:12:42.600 I collect passages of joy, of people when they lose it. 00:12:42.624 --> 00:12:44.871 One of my favorite is from Zadie Smith. 00:12:44.895 --> 00:12:48.205 In 1999, she was in a London nightclub, 00:12:48.229 --> 00:12:51.324 looking for her friends, wondering where her handbag was. 00:12:51.348 --> 00:12:53.451 And suddenly, as she writes, 00:12:53.475 --> 00:12:56.797 "... a rail-thin man with enormous eyes reached across a sea of bodies 00:12:56.821 --> 00:12:57.997 for my hand. 00:12:58.021 --> 00:13:01.760 He kept asking me the same thing over and over, 'Are you feeling it?' 00:13:01.784 --> 00:13:05.633 My ridiculous heels were killing me, I was terrified that I might die, 00:13:05.657 --> 00:13:08.105 yet I felt simultaneously overwhelmed with delight 00:13:08.129 --> 00:13:10.440 that 'Can I Kick It?' should happen to be playing 00:13:10.464 --> 00:13:12.810 on this precise moment in the history of the world 00:13:12.834 --> 00:13:13.989 on the sound system, 00:13:14.013 --> 00:13:16.141 and it was now morphing into 'Teen Spirit.' 00:13:16.165 --> 00:13:19.323 I took the man's hand, the top of my head blew away, 00:13:19.347 --> 00:13:22.747 we danced, we danced, we gave ourselves up to joy." NOTE Paragraph 00:13:23.680 --> 00:13:27.486 And so what I'm trying to describe is two different life mindsets. 00:13:27.998 --> 00:13:32.466 The first mountain mindset, which is about individual happiness and career success. 00:13:32.490 --> 00:13:35.053 And it's a good mindset, I have nothing against it. 00:13:35.077 --> 00:13:37.371 But we're in a national valley, 00:13:37.395 --> 00:13:40.228 because we don't have the other mindset to balance it. 00:13:40.252 --> 00:13:42.815 We no longer feel good about ourselves as a people, 00:13:42.839 --> 00:13:45.529 we've lost our defining faith in our future, 00:13:45.553 --> 00:13:48.935 we don't see each other deeply, we don't treat each other as well. 00:13:49.538 --> 00:13:51.529 And we need a lot of changes. 00:13:51.553 --> 00:13:54.259 We need an economic change and environmental change. 00:13:54.902 --> 00:13:57.847 But we also need a cultural and relational revolution. 00:13:57.871 --> 00:14:02.141 We need to name the language of a recovered society. 00:14:02.553 --> 00:14:05.291 And to me, the weavers have found that language. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:05.593 --> 00:14:08.694 My theory of social change is that society changes 00:14:08.718 --> 00:14:11.363 when a small group of people find a better way to live, 00:14:11.387 --> 00:14:13.062 and the rest of us copy them. 00:14:13.765 --> 00:14:16.403 And these weavers have found a better way to live. 00:14:16.427 --> 00:14:18.380 And you don't have to theorize about it. 00:14:18.404 --> 00:14:21.633 They are out there as community builders all around the country. 00:14:22.277 --> 00:14:24.554 We just have to shift our lives a little, 00:14:24.578 --> 00:14:27.309 so we can say, "I'm a weaver, we're a weaver." 00:14:27.999 --> 00:14:29.365 And if we do that, 00:14:30.079 --> 00:14:32.428 the hole inside ourselves gets filled, 00:14:32.452 --> 00:14:35.277 but more important, the social unity gets repaired. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:35.301 --> 00:14:36.468 Thank you very much. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:36.492 --> 00:14:40.557 (Applause)