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2014 May 27. In front of undergraduates and families, John

delivers the Columbia University commencement address.

JOHN

Dear Graduates,

On this special day, with friends and family and news crews

about, you may be hungover and bouting with a bit of anxiety.

Anxiety about your strengths, your weaknesses, your passions,

your obligations, your origins, your prospective domain in the

world. You've spent so much time excelling and meeting the

expectations of your guardians and old, tenured institutions, of

being told to jump and jump higher in a simulated but

pressurized environment, at the price of--well, indentured

reimbursement--that you forget you have experienced only a small

fraction of your life, that you have the whole thing ahead of

you yet. You wonder if you have what it takes to thrive, or just

to survive, to create your own expectations, to make a place of

belonging for yourself. I don't hope to answer all of your

questions.

Irrepressible laughter from the graduates and attendees.

JOHN

But I was invited here, so Ill share a few observations that my

own life and work have afforded me.

We live in a world transforming at an exponential rate. Truly,

we all are fortunate enough to witness an industrial revolution,

what I believe to be the most pivotal moment in history for

humankind since the Western Enlightenment. The internet

permeates much of the world on all manner of devices, people are

able to form and nurture meaningful relationships across borders

and oceans, biomedical innovation is seeing a zenith at the

intersection of big data and genetic intervention, and we are

exploring the boundaries between human and technological

intelligence as much as between worlds in the solar system. We

can also say pizza to our phone and see it appear at our doorin 20-40 minutes. Sorcery, really.

Limitless imagination, there seems to be, and proliferating

capital as well. The world is becoming wealthier and more equal.

Don't take my word for it. Data from the world's leading

development organizations tell us this. Still, skeptics among

you are currently asking yourselves what illusion I'm painting.

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If the world is becoming more prosperous and equal, why does

every piece of media we see show us such an unhappy, violent

reality?

Many historians argue that the most peaceful times in history

belong to ubiquitous reign, when a single monarch has conqueredeverything around. There is peace because power is centralized,

and there aren't competing states to blow each other up. That

may be true, but proponents of democracy have always rebutted

that such a system creates a monochromatic experience for

people, that one overarching regime under any family name or

ideology renders the day-to-day of being a human being

flavorless and stagnant. If that's the case as well, and we are

currently approaching a point of strife because there is an

America and a China and a Russia to contend with each other in

the same weight class, each with leaders bearing arms to protect

their own culture and way of life as much as their overlapping

claims to territory and resources... we reach the crux of my

historical quandary. Where, then, does leadership for peace come

from? If not from heads of state and captains of industry, who

is to lead the charge, to set the example for a global society,

one that respects differences and places the safety and

happiness of children before more distant goals abstracted from

our hubris?

The answer, I believe, is that it comes from everyone else. You,

Class of 2014, are the leaders of everyone else. A group of

brilliant young minds from a hundred countries, who are born

from vastly different backgrounds but have spent four years in

the utopia of college, studying, researching, organizing,

sporting, wining, dining, hugging, whatever-rhymes-with-hugging,

philosophizing, playing, being, coexisting in a sphere of

youthful passion and intellectual energy. You are the hope for

keeping us all on the boat heading toward a new horizon.

Together, you have the distilled potential and humility to be

everyday heroes. To innovate, to put each other before

yourselves, to watch each other and each other's communities

grow because you wish to see it. To fear ideology, and bedpragmatism. Altruistic pragmatism. Show us a solidarity the

world has never seen before. Do it with your colors and accents

and shapes and notions held brightly in one another's eyes, do

it now, and do it loudly. If you accept this responsibility...

Im happy to give you a job!

The audience erupts in applause.

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JOHN

Wow, I guess thats what you wanted to hear! Thank you for

inspiring us all to be better. Now go forward, and distribute

the future.