Living up to his surname, this physician, entrepreneur, and philanthropist talks about how the quality of compassion can motivate us to build a better world, cure disease, eradicate poverty, and—when we all pull together —to help the arc of history “bend towards justice.”
Dr. Brilliant should know – he worked on the team at the World Health Organization that helped eradicate small pox from the face of the earth, and the foundation he cofounded with his wife has helped give eyesight to millions in the developing world. Hear about how he and his collaborators made a huge difference in the world – and why.
The Meaning of Compassion
It’s an odd time to be talking about compassion, isn’t it? It doesn’t feel very compassionate out there in the outside world, in the presidential election. The airways are filled with hate and vitriol. So what do we do about that?… Outside in the world, who do I want to be? And what do I want to do?
Mahatma Gandhi, in the middle of a struggle for independence between India and England was asked, “How do I know that what I’m going to do is the right thing? I’m always faced with so many complex choices.” He said, “I’m going to give you a magic amulet, a talisman that will guarantee that you will never make a mistake.” He said, “This talisman is not a physical talisman that you will wear around your neck, but it is something to think about whenever you are faced with a decision: Consider the face of the poorest, the most vulnerable, the most destitute person that you have ever met in your life, and then ask yourself if the act that you are about to do will benefit that person or not. If it will benefit that person you are immunized, you are protected from ever doing anything wrong.” Gandhi’s talisman is a great gift to receive and to use.
In my life, I have been given so many gifts like that, meeting amazing people. When I was a kid and I was depressed, I was a junior in college at the University of Michigan – my dad had cancer and was dying and I had locked myself in my room in South Quad at the University of Michigan. I was eating burnt peanuts and reading comic books, and I had not been out of my room I think in days – I saw a little ad that Martin Luther King Jr. was coming to Michigan, and no one quite knew who Martin Luther King was yet, he hadn’t won his Nobel Prize, he hadn’t organized the Freedom Summer, he was just a hope, a whisper of a dream.
It was a very bad day and it was raining, and I somehow got myself out of my torpor and my self-indulgence, and I went to see him, but very few people came and the room that held three thousand people only had fifty or so students. And the president was really embarrassed that so few people came, Dr. King just started to laugh and said, “You all come on stage with me, there will be more of me to go around.” And we all sat around him for hours, six hours, and he talked about a world in which every child could be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin and he could dream of a day when the moral arc of the universe could, not on it’s own, but by our actions, be bent towards compassion and justice if we jumped up and pulled that arc and dragged it down. And none of us were the same again. I became an activist on that day…
– Larry Brilliant
This blog is a partial transcription from a talk given at Salesforce.com. For the full video Click Here.