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[APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER: Thank you.
It's wonderful to be here at Zeitgeist.
Today I'm going to talk about these four topics, the
millennium development goals, global dignity, cultural
freedom, and some challenges.
So I thought to get in the right mood, it would be good to
start with some music, since it's after lunch
and everything.
So I'll do that.
[RAGE___AGAINST_ __THE___MACHINE' S______"KNO
W___YOUR___ENEMY "___PLAYING]
SPEAKER: That was fun, right?
AUDIENCE: [APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER: I went to Berkeley, what can I say?
All right, there's a slight point to this.
There's three types of people, right?
You have the activist, the pragmatist, and
the philosopher.
The activist, represented here by Zack.
He gets in your face, is loud, right?
Then you have the pragmatist, who might be a politician, a
CEO, something of that nature, who looks more to the end.
How do we actually deliver, right?
And then you have the philosopher, who takes one
step back and analyzes but doesn't really get down and
dirty with the content.
So too often, we find that these three groups fight
amongst each other.
So we need to make sure that we actually pull in the same
end of the rope, right?
And the other thing is that, of course, we have all these
three in us, depending on the situation.
We're an activist, we're a pragmatist, and a philosopher.
And the last thing, of course, is that, you know, I'm
most of those things.
So even though I might like Zack, that doesn't mean
that Zack likes me, right?
All right, here are the happy campers.
I'd like to tell you a story about Cedric.
I was traveling in South Africa a couple of years ago.
And we were visiting ***/AIDS related initiatives.
And I went to a township outside of Capetown.
And we met with a young man, more or less my own age.
And I remember thinking when I met him that if I lived here,
I would have liked to have been his friend.
He seemed like a very nice guy.
He invited me into his house, which was is more like
a shack, but smaller.
About half this stage, right?
Here he lived with his three children, his
wife, who was disabled.
She was in a wheelchair.
And he told me that he was *** positive, and also that
his wife was *** positive.
And that he was very-- that he was worried about the future.
He was worried, because he didn't know who would take care
of his children, who would take care of his sister, because in
this area they didn't have access to medication.
And then he looked me in the eye and he said, "Please
do everything you can for people like me, because
it's hard."
And I thought that that was a message not really only to me.
It was a message to all of us.
So that's why I try to tell that story and bring
Cedric's message to as many people as possible.
All right, how many people here have heard of the Millennium
Development Goals?
Raise the hands.
See, I usually go to high schools and junior high
schools to do a similar talk.
How many have heard of the Millennium Development Goals?
Quite a lot of people.
How many people are a bit fed up, tired of the Millennium
Development Goals?
There's a couple.
That's very courageous.
I think that MDGs are basically too important for us
to be tired of them.
We need to keep at it and deliver.
About a year ago, it looked like this.
Where you have the green at the top are on track, and we should
be able to reach them by 2015.
And the yellow shows that we are a bit behind schedule,
but making good progress.
And the red is that we're falling behind schedule.
Whereas, now, if you look at the World Bank figures,
it's more like this.
We're falling behind schedule on most of the goals.
And this doesn't work well if we want to create a
stable and just world.
This is not helpful to create a peaceful world.
Ending extreme poverty is something we need to focus on.
We need to make the system more just, because if we're able to
end extreme poverty, that is good obviously for the poor,
but it is also good for the rich.
And it's good for you, and it's good for me, because it creates
a more secure and a better world.
All right, I'm going to show you this graph.
You might recognize the dots a little bit, because
Hans Rosling has been my teacher for a few years.
I've been using his graphs for like, four years.
And this is the world as it was in 2007, right,
with GDP per capita.
So we're rich at this end.
And child mortality on this axis, where low child
mortality is good, right?
So I'm going to go through and show you Norway through history
compared to today's world.
So this is Norway in 2004, when my daughter was born, Ingrid.
Then Norway was more or less like Singapore when it
comes to GDP per capita and child mortality.
In '73 when I was born, we were more or less like Malaysia.
In '37 when my mother was born, we were like Peru.
And when my grandmother was born in 1898, we were
more or less like Uganda.
When my great grandmother was born, we were like Mozambique.
And when my great great grandmother was born,
we were like Burundi.
And this is one of, you know, the best success stories in
development, where Norway has moved from a state like Burundi
to what we are today on income and child mortality.
Now when Hans made this graph, he thought it was great because
you have the Norwegian flags all the way up, but then before
1905, when we were in union with Sweden, he put a little
Swedish-- this Swedish mark, which was on our flag.
And he thought that was great fun, you know, because
he left his Swedish mark on the Norwegian graph.
But if you look at it, it becomes very apparent that our
development was kind of slow and it really took
off after 1905.
So--
AUDIENCE: [APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER: I don't know whether that was actually intentional.
Now I've been working with the United Nations Development
Program for the last few years promoting the MDGs.
When you get into the field, you see that these goals are
not abstract or theoretical.
They become very concrete and understandable.
And the work that I have seen has been both
useful and important.
So this picture is from Mongolia.
This is from Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia.
Actually, the waste disposal site.
If we look at the middle of the picture there, there's
a traditional tent.
Inside that tent we have kids that go to school.
Now this is to show Millennium Development
Goal 2, educational-- education for all.
These kids are part of the people that live off of
collecting goods from the waste disposal site.
And the UNDP and their local partners have gone in and
actually asked kids to come into school, go everyday,
and try to create a learning environment.
So these kids have a tough life.
But if you ask them, like I did when I was there, what do you
want to be when you grow up?
What are your hopes?
What are your aspirations?
Well, they started like, one wanted to be a police officer,
another wanted to be a doctor, a third wanted to
be a politician.
So it goes to show that they have the same dreams and
aspirations as the rest of us, even though they live in a very
difficult economic environment.
And also, if we want innovation, like I know lot of
you are interested in in this room, the best way of doing
that is to get everyone to innovate and not be hampered
by poverty every day.
If we can get all people to innovate, we will get
much more out of it.
Not to mention, the market, which will open up, if we
actually are able to pull up the poor people of the world
to a better life quality.
This is in Bujumbura in Burundi.
This is from a microcredit company, [? aMill. ?]
And I'm talking here to the CEO of the microcredit.
This is an example of MDG 3, right?
Gender equality.
She told me that she had seven kids.
The oldest was now in university, and the six
others all went to school.
All because she was able to do this at her mill.
That she was able to work at the mill and make some money.
So including women is good for at least two reasons.
There's plenty of others.
But it's good economics that we use 100% of the
workforce instead of 50%.
And they invest in the future.
Women are very good at investing in the future,
in education, in healthcare, et cetera.
But what are the MDGs really about?
Well, they're about freedom to make decisions
on one's own life.
They are about access to more dignified life for all.
So a couple of people got together and started
talking about this.
This is John Bryant of Operation HOPE in the U.S.,
and [? Peca Hemon, ?]
who's a philosopher.
He did his Ph.D the at 21 and has now given out his 14th book
and I think he's 33 years old.
And we're at this meeting with the world economic forum for--
they have this group of younger people called the YGL.
And we started talking about this, because we were making
timelines and everything for, you know, what we were to do
about the problems of the world.
But no one was really talking about why, what's our ethical,
sort of, direction for this, right?
So we said that the one word that sort of makes sense to all
of us to focus on is dignity.
So we want to do three things in global dignity.
We want to engage the world economic forum
in this conversation.
We want a global conversation with as many people as possible
taking part in focusing on dignity-centered leadership.
And we want to engage youth.
which is the most tangible part of this.
Because dignity is a source of strength and
a source of direction.
Last year we did a Global Dignity Day in more than 20
countries all across the world, on all continents.
And what we'd do is we go into classes or into schools, and we
asked the kids to define dignity in their own word-- in
their own words, to define what they are for.
It's not allowed to be against, you have to be for
something, say what that is.
You need to come up with a way you can increase other people's
dignity the next year, what you concretely want to do.
And then, we also asked for their dignity stories.
Stories where people, either they or someone else, where
they have been lifted by someone else, a story about
how someone increases someone else's dignity.
So this is a leadership course, an ethics course, and
motivational seminar in an hour and fifty minutes for the kids.
And this is Jon Tetzchner here, teaching-- talking to the
kids in Norway on Global Dignity Day last year.
He's here, right?
Somewhere.
He is the head of corporation Opera software.
Now this is Richard Garriott.
We're going to hear more from him tomorrow at the
New Frontiers session.
And he was kind enough to convey a message to
the kids from space.
[AUDIO PLAYBACK]
RICHARD GARRIOTT: Greetings, this is Richard Garriott flying
aboard the International Space Station.
I have a message to all the participants of
Global Dignity Day.
The view is spectacular from here in orbit.
And in one day I can look down on all of you without seeing
the borders that separate you.
It really becomes apparent that we are all in this together.
We really do have much more in common than what separates us.
By focusing on dignity, the powerful source of positive
change, you are bringing the world forward.
The next steps are up to you.
Goodbye from me on the ISS.
And I wish you the very best.
SPEAKER: Well done, Richard.
[APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER: Thank you for that.
I thought that was very cool for the kids to
get that message.
So the NDGs are about dignity.
Cultural freedom is a prerequisite for a quote,
for quality of life and for a life with dignity.
Culture freedom is to have the opportunity to live one's own
culture and religion, and at the same time being considerate
to others and accepting that others have the same freedom.
I'll give you some examples.
This is from Guatemala.
This is Pedro and [? Filena. ?]
They are spiritual guides, and they taught me a lot
about cultural freedom.
They took me through a traditional ceremony for the
Maya indians in Guatemala.
The whole ceremony really made me understand how important
corn is to the Maya culture.
Because they actually burn corn in the ceremony.
The smoke goes up and they talk to their ancestors, connect
with them through the smoke.
They say that they are people of the corn.
So to understand how ingrained corn is to their own identity
is vital if you want to do land reform, or if you want to do
innovations in agriculture to make it more profitable.
You need to understand that before you set up your
ways of diversifying.
So to handle cultural diversity in today's world is one of the
central challenges of our time.
And we see that, I think, all across the world.
Most of you or probably all of you have thought a lot
about this already, We have this in Norway, as well.
We used to think that we had to travel to see the world.
Now we can stay in Norway and actually talk to
our fellow Norwegians.
And they have this tremendous resource and knowledge about
different parts of the world where they have their roots.
But sometimes it's difficult.
Difference can be difficult and challenging.
And even positive things can be-- new things that are, you
know, very positive can be difficult.
So I thought I'd show you an example of that.
This is from the 17th of May, a couple of years back,
our national day.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[PLAYBACK ENDS]
You can see mayor that I was standing beside.
He got it down, right?
He really got it down.
So the point is that we need to work this out
in a positive way.
Now when we look at the world.
we have an economic downturn, right?
We have a climate crisis.
One way to look at this is that we used to be standing on the
shoulders of giants, but now we are standing on the shoulders
of our children, it seems.
That's our challenge.
We need to raise to this challenge.
I think when we are at the retirement home, our grandkids
are going to come and they're going to visit us.
And they going to ask us, "So, Grandmother or Grandfather,
what did you do to the major challenges of your time?
What did you do when it came to extreme poverty?
What did you do when it came to climate change?
What role did you play?"
And that's what we need to think about.
Our generation's challenge is to produce human development
in sustainable fashion.
We can do this.
We have a window of opportunity, I think,
in today's world.
We've never been able to actually reach as far as
we can in today's world.
So I just wanted to leave you with Cedric's words.
He looked me in the eye and he said, "Please do everything you
can for people like me, because it's hard."
Thank you for your attention.