I’d like to share with you three simple
truths that I’ve sort of uncovered in
the last eight years trying to awaken
elders lost in dementia and young people
lost in a world that kind of seems to
meant it as well three truths that I
hope will have lessened my loneliness
and I hope I hope will can lessen yours
first truth life is short
that gentleman just told us how short
life can be you know we fight this we
dye our hair we lift our faces we take
our elders and we banish them so we
don’t have to see them you know guys are
like death no I’m not worried about
death you know it’s just a tech problem
you know Google’s on it they’re gonna
solve it you know um and like if they
don’t you know I’ll just upload my mind
to the web and I’ll live forever in the
cloud you know okay but last year David
Bowie Leonard Cohen Prince left us three
weeks ago my mom suffered a massive
stroke and fell into a coma I was afraid
she was gonna die each day billions of
us pass each other with very little
empathy that each and every one of us
will lose absolutely everything we love
I started thinking about that you know
is there a silver lining to this death
thing that we all have to experience and
and I decided yes there is there is
something beautiful about death and I’ll
tell you what it is it shows us how rich
we are okay so let me illustrate this um
okay this is gonna be the Oprah show now
I’m Oprah okay and what I’d like all of
you to do
is reach underneath your seats okay come
on pull out my present for you all it’s
under there come on drink it pull it out
below 1 million dollars cash is this not
the best Oprah show ever
okay but hold on shows not over
see now robbers come up behind all of
you and they put a gun to your head and
they say your money or your life now
raise your hand if this is your answer
oh all right my final answer um I’m
gonna stay with the money I’m gonna
stick with the money Oh none of you Oh
so you see what this means it means each
and every one of you already has
something worth more than a million
dollars you’re all millionaires you know
he understands what it’s like to be a
millionaire you know you might say maybe
but think about it Leonard Cohen Prince
Michael Jackson Andrew Carnot Andrew
Carnegie Abraham Lincoln my mother they
would give everything they had for just
one more day of what you have beating
inside of you the greatest treasure the
heartbeat of the planet life the
capacity to feel this treasure life I
think is the key to ending loneliness
which brings me to my second role again
one you’ll probably say is obvious but
we are the living the only living in
this most critical of times if that’s
true and we you know we all know this
why do we so many of us live lives half
alive
you know you know what do we do we say
things like I won’t care anymore
I’ll stay angry you know I’ll win I’ll
succeed oh and then no one can hurt me
anymore again
you know so here’s the thing I was
incredibly lonely when I was on younger
incredibly lonely but I thought it was
just my story you know my brother when I
was 2 got ratina blastoma eye cancer and
my mother looked in his fate his I
rushed we rushed to the hospital
the doctor said you’ve got one hour to
decide do we take out both his eyes and
he lives or do we take out one eye and
there’s this new thing which we haven’t
really tried but it’s called radiation
and we could shoot radiation into his
eye and maybe we could save the eye you
got one hour to make this decision my
dad and mom talked it over they go for
the radiation miraculously my brother
lives but he’s blind basically and so
what happens to my family you can
probably guess you know in these
situations is pretty normal they you
know they get divorced you know it’s too
much for a family to deal with almost
death of a child and I guess that would
have been okay but you know this was
people were ignorant when I was growing
up you know my my parents like tore our
hearts apart in their you know their
tug-of-war divorce you know and I and I
had to live with never having a mother
you know III don’t know what it’s like
to have a mother because I went with my
dad and I didn’t have a grandmother I
didn’t have a village you know people to
help raise me and heal my Mike my
sorrows all I had was a violent and
abusive stepmother and I that was very
very hard it broke my heart
I was crumpled I was crumpled for years
it took me years to raise my chest out
of its hole you know this way of
achieving safety of like hiding inside
of yourself and running away from pain
and from death um you know what David
Bowie trade his fortune for that kind of
life you know how many of you have known
great loneliness in your life just show
of hands
don’t mind how many of you have wasted
decades of your life in self-hate or or
or in in anger in places like that yeah
I see some nodding heads you’ve kind of
grown out of those spaces you’ve disk at
you know discarded it I’m a filmmaker
and I sort of investigated like well how
does our culture you know deal with
loneliness especially in our elders
especially elders with dementia
I met a 94 year old man named Henry who
had been sitting in a nursing home in a
hallway like this for 10 years 10 years
10 years and the day I met him we
brought him his music music from his
childhood music that he hadn’t heard in
like 30 years and this this man he like
went I feel the band the dreams you know
I think everyone should come into music
right now I’m a holy man the Lord gave
me this music when he when he woke up
like that it changed my life in one
minute I realized that millions of
elders living like this man could at
least in their life not in utter despair
and loneliness making a live inside I
learned like really incredible things I
learned like 69 percent of our nursing
homes are for-profit institutions that
means the more they care the less they
make okay I learned antipsychotic drugs
like Haldol are actually profitable
because the more drugs you give somebody
the less care you need and it also
boosts your bottom line from selling the
drugs you know the more I watched these
sweet elders attempt to adapt to the
boxes they were being asked to live in
the more I started to see them as
Canaries in the coal mine the more I
started to see them as that they were
teaching us what it’s like for a living
being to
asked to be a thing how does it feel
when you get attacked how does it feel
when you get attacked when you get
treated like a thing we fade and die
that’s what happens to these elders and
nursing homes I’ve seen it over and over
again they come in and they start to
decline and then looking around I
started to see our kids and they are in
some sort of box as well and a lot of
them are starting to fall into
loneliness some turn to opioids some
turn to guns some just plod along how
about you guys
any of you guys kind of feel sometimes
like you’re just phoning it in like like
the world isn’t exactly as rich as it
should be that’s where truth number
three comes in life is relationship
divorce any of us from our relationships
and we begin to fade and die we live in
relationship that is what music has been
trying to teach us ever since we
invented it it’s been saying you know
you are vibratory beings you live in
harmony with all that lives and you move
through time in relationship we are not
what we own we are not our fancy jobs
and our fancy cars I’ll tell you what we
are weird is all the energy in your body
come from anybody anybody where’s the
energy in your body come from the the
spark that lights your that fires your
mind that beats your heart your brain
huh universal life force of Chi nobody
ever said that one my answer my oh
you’re probably actually right but my my
answer isn’t the fuel for 99% of all
that lives comes from one single source
and it’s interesting nobody said it it
comes from the Sun comes from the Sun
every time you eat um where is she every
time you eat vegetables or greens or or
you know you’re eating processed
sunshine even meat you’re eating
processed sunshine and what do we do
with that sunshine where do we put it we
put it in our bodies made primarily of
what what kind of water salt water salt
water the exact same percentage of salt
that’s found in the ocean so um you know
basically this is where my friend would
always say to me same whoa – do you mean
like we’re like walking oceans filled
with sunshine oh man that’s beautiful
and I’d be like yes it is you know but
how does it make sense that such a being
would feel alone and disconnected from
life especially since we’ve won we’ve
every terror that every human has ever
felt we basically solved the darkness we
fixed it with light bulbs slavery we
fixed it with robots
oh wait that’s a couple years in the
future germs medicine hunger agriculture
language money my brother’s blindness
when he was 13 years old he had a simple
operation and his sight returned to
20/20 the United Nations has recently
determined that ending poverty and
hunger is morally right politically
beneficial and financially possible
today today I think we could also end
oppression violence you know
and lastly loneliness my buddy would say
yes finally a hopeful message you know
loneliness is what happens to networked
beings which is what we are
we are networked beings you know thank
goodness we have you know laid fiber
between every single human being on this
planet right now which is pretty amazing
so about two-and-a-half weeks ago my
mother woke up I was there I was holding
her hand and I didn’t get to know her
till I was 20 years old and I’m holding
her hand and she’s looking at me and in
that moment I discard I realize I have
to do it and I discard all of my anger
at her for leaving me that I’ve held all
these years I just discarded it because
I was sitting there and I realized I
couldn’t be with her fully and still
hold on to that anger so in one moment
as I did something I we can change us
humans we can change it’s really
interesting it’s only a lack of courage
that keeps us stuck in our outmoded ways
of thinking and our outmoded ways of
safety this year coca-cola said that
they’re going to increase their
production of throw away plastic bottles
by a billion bottles in 50 short years
we have inserted micro grains of plastic
in between every grain of sand in every
beach around the globe and into the
blood streams of animals including some
of us in this room that’s outmoded
thinking from the planets perspective
coca-cola Warren Buffett the
shareholders of coke anyone that wears
microfiber yoga pants or fleece jackets
might be some of the worst criminals
besides the meat eaters in the world our
emotional intelligence and our
worldviews are stuck in a past that is
no longer real it’s a it’s a past where
we believe in infinite frontiers where
we believe in the infinite filtration
capacity of the sky and the sea those
things no longer exist and what does
exist is shrinking
it teaches us that we are competing
beings that we are separate and not
connected to the biosphere or each other
and this was never true at all but it
was a harmless delusion until about a
hundred years ago when our technology
and our numbers started exponentially
rocketing okay so my buddy would say hey
whatever happened to that hopeful talk
you were giving I’m getting there okay
because there’s a teacher a new teacher
in the room trying to wake us up and
it’s the only teacher any species has
ever listened to and it is its own death
if everything is connected which is
what’s what both physicists and
biologists are telling us then when you
kill your system you are killing
yourself and we are simply killing our
system in 1850 humanity weighed 50
million tons today humanity weighs 300
million tons and our livestock and our
pets weigh 700 million tons and wild
nature weighs only a fraction of what it
weighed in 1850 looked at in this way
our cars our 401ks our bank accounts our
violence and our toys from China are
just a very very complicated form of
suicide dude man why would beings made
of ocean and and sunlight commit suicide
well here’s the thing we’re not going to
okay as we don’t believe that we’re
Network being but but we are when an
alcoholic hits rock bottom
that is the only time that he can
actually gain some wisdom and change you
know when I was young I needed some
wisdom I needed somebody to say
hey stop it stop believing in nonsense
anger and separation is not a way to
live life move
from complexity towards complexity and
relationship and you should too in 30
years we may have more plastic in the
ocean than fish what we are doing is
decreasing the biological complexity of
the planet Earth it’s not just our
president we are actually making the
planet stupider now here’s here’s the
interesting thing this change that’s
coming is inevitable for the first time
in human history we have to look at our
communal footprint we have to find
communal safety ok we can no longer
reach for our individual power and the
interesting thing is we have no choice
and this is new and this is good we need
to give our kids permission to hear the
call of the planet you know we could
wait till we hit rock bottom you know
it’s coming
we know this everybody knows it in their
guts it’s coming or we could end
disconnection now in my work with a live
inside what are we doing we’re taking
we’re taking young kids and we’re asking
them to sit in front of elders with
dementia and and wake them up to face
death with courage to to change
I’ve watched I’ve seen this a hundred
times I was in Mexico City yesterday I
saw elders there who were so depressed
and then these young kids came in and
gave them their music and sat with them
and they their health began to rise and
they they they died but instead of dying
in despair they died happy and I was
sitting there in my hotel room last
night and I’m like holy Wow hey
that’s something so
here’s here’s my little and last insight
is that loneliness I grew up thinking
loneliness was a condition that all of
us had to endure right well I don’t
think that anymore
I think loneliness is a disease a
disease of disconnection that we created
and we can cure how well I say follow
empathy and music or anything else that
you can find that goes back to the roots
of life you know and I say reject
separation and control move towards
complexity and relationship and become
the biosphere the it’s not the anther of
caen age it’s the biosphere age that we
have to create so if you can end your
own loneliness and the loneliness of the
planet I think that that is a proper
ambition for you for you walking oceans
filled with the light of the Sun thank
you
you
truths that I’ve sort of uncovered in
the last eight years trying to awaken
elders lost in dementia and young people
lost in a world that kind of seems to
meant it as well three truths that I
hope will have lessened my loneliness
and I hope I hope will can lessen yours
first truth life is short
that gentleman just told us how short
life can be you know we fight this we
dye our hair we lift our faces we take
our elders and we banish them so we
don’t have to see them you know guys are
like death no I’m not worried about
death you know it’s just a tech problem
you know Google’s on it they’re gonna
solve it you know um and like if they
don’t you know I’ll just upload my mind
to the web and I’ll live forever in the
cloud you know okay but last year David
Bowie Leonard Cohen Prince left us three
weeks ago my mom suffered a massive
stroke and fell into a coma I was afraid
she was gonna die each day billions of
us pass each other with very little
empathy that each and every one of us
will lose absolutely everything we love
I started thinking about that you know
is there a silver lining to this death
thing that we all have to experience and
and I decided yes there is there is
something beautiful about death and I’ll
tell you what it is it shows us how rich
we are okay so let me illustrate this um
okay this is gonna be the Oprah show now
I’m Oprah okay and what I’d like all of
you to do
is reach underneath your seats okay come
on pull out my present for you all it’s
under there come on drink it pull it out
below 1 million dollars cash is this not
the best Oprah show ever
okay but hold on shows not over
see now robbers come up behind all of
you and they put a gun to your head and
they say your money or your life now
raise your hand if this is your answer
oh all right my final answer um I’m
gonna stay with the money I’m gonna
stick with the money Oh none of you Oh
so you see what this means it means each
and every one of you already has
something worth more than a million
dollars you’re all millionaires you know
he understands what it’s like to be a
millionaire you know you might say maybe
but think about it Leonard Cohen Prince
Michael Jackson Andrew Carnot Andrew
Carnegie Abraham Lincoln my mother they
would give everything they had for just
one more day of what you have beating
inside of you the greatest treasure the
heartbeat of the planet life the
capacity to feel this treasure life I
think is the key to ending loneliness
which brings me to my second role again
one you’ll probably say is obvious but
we are the living the only living in
this most critical of times if that’s
true and we you know we all know this
why do we so many of us live lives half
alive
you know you know what do we do we say
things like I won’t care anymore
I’ll stay angry you know I’ll win I’ll
succeed oh and then no one can hurt me
anymore again
you know so here’s the thing I was
incredibly lonely when I was on younger
incredibly lonely but I thought it was
just my story you know my brother when I
was 2 got ratina blastoma eye cancer and
my mother looked in his fate his I
rushed we rushed to the hospital
the doctor said you’ve got one hour to
decide do we take out both his eyes and
he lives or do we take out one eye and
there’s this new thing which we haven’t
really tried but it’s called radiation
and we could shoot radiation into his
eye and maybe we could save the eye you
got one hour to make this decision my
dad and mom talked it over they go for
the radiation miraculously my brother
lives but he’s blind basically and so
what happens to my family you can
probably guess you know in these
situations is pretty normal they you
know they get divorced you know it’s too
much for a family to deal with almost
death of a child and I guess that would
have been okay but you know this was
people were ignorant when I was growing
up you know my my parents like tore our
hearts apart in their you know their
tug-of-war divorce you know and I and I
had to live with never having a mother
you know III don’t know what it’s like
to have a mother because I went with my
dad and I didn’t have a grandmother I
didn’t have a village you know people to
help raise me and heal my Mike my
sorrows all I had was a violent and
abusive stepmother and I that was very
very hard it broke my heart
I was crumpled I was crumpled for years
it took me years to raise my chest out
of its hole you know this way of
achieving safety of like hiding inside
of yourself and running away from pain
and from death um you know what David
Bowie trade his fortune for that kind of
life you know how many of you have known
great loneliness in your life just show
of hands
don’t mind how many of you have wasted
decades of your life in self-hate or or
or in in anger in places like that yeah
I see some nodding heads you’ve kind of
grown out of those spaces you’ve disk at
you know discarded it I’m a filmmaker
and I sort of investigated like well how
does our culture you know deal with
loneliness especially in our elders
especially elders with dementia
I met a 94 year old man named Henry who
had been sitting in a nursing home in a
hallway like this for 10 years 10 years
10 years and the day I met him we
brought him his music music from his
childhood music that he hadn’t heard in
like 30 years and this this man he like
went I feel the band the dreams you know
I think everyone should come into music
right now I’m a holy man the Lord gave
me this music when he when he woke up
like that it changed my life in one
minute I realized that millions of
elders living like this man could at
least in their life not in utter despair
and loneliness making a live inside I
learned like really incredible things I
learned like 69 percent of our nursing
homes are for-profit institutions that
means the more they care the less they
make okay I learned antipsychotic drugs
like Haldol are actually profitable
because the more drugs you give somebody
the less care you need and it also
boosts your bottom line from selling the
drugs you know the more I watched these
sweet elders attempt to adapt to the
boxes they were being asked to live in
the more I started to see them as
Canaries in the coal mine the more I
started to see them as that they were
teaching us what it’s like for a living
being to
asked to be a thing how does it feel
when you get attacked how does it feel
when you get attacked when you get
treated like a thing we fade and die
that’s what happens to these elders and
nursing homes I’ve seen it over and over
again they come in and they start to
decline and then looking around I
started to see our kids and they are in
some sort of box as well and a lot of
them are starting to fall into
loneliness some turn to opioids some
turn to guns some just plod along how
about you guys
any of you guys kind of feel sometimes
like you’re just phoning it in like like
the world isn’t exactly as rich as it
should be that’s where truth number
three comes in life is relationship
divorce any of us from our relationships
and we begin to fade and die we live in
relationship that is what music has been
trying to teach us ever since we
invented it it’s been saying you know
you are vibratory beings you live in
harmony with all that lives and you move
through time in relationship we are not
what we own we are not our fancy jobs
and our fancy cars I’ll tell you what we
are weird is all the energy in your body
come from anybody anybody where’s the
energy in your body come from the the
spark that lights your that fires your
mind that beats your heart your brain
huh universal life force of Chi nobody
ever said that one my answer my oh
you’re probably actually right but my my
answer isn’t the fuel for 99% of all
that lives comes from one single source
and it’s interesting nobody said it it
comes from the Sun comes from the Sun
every time you eat um where is she every
time you eat vegetables or greens or or
you know you’re eating processed
sunshine even meat you’re eating
processed sunshine and what do we do
with that sunshine where do we put it we
put it in our bodies made primarily of
what what kind of water salt water salt
water the exact same percentage of salt
that’s found in the ocean so um you know
basically this is where my friend would
always say to me same whoa – do you mean
like we’re like walking oceans filled
with sunshine oh man that’s beautiful
and I’d be like yes it is you know but
how does it make sense that such a being
would feel alone and disconnected from
life especially since we’ve won we’ve
every terror that every human has ever
felt we basically solved the darkness we
fixed it with light bulbs slavery we
fixed it with robots
oh wait that’s a couple years in the
future germs medicine hunger agriculture
language money my brother’s blindness
when he was 13 years old he had a simple
operation and his sight returned to
20/20 the United Nations has recently
determined that ending poverty and
hunger is morally right politically
beneficial and financially possible
today today I think we could also end
oppression violence you know
and lastly loneliness my buddy would say
yes finally a hopeful message you know
loneliness is what happens to networked
beings which is what we are
we are networked beings you know thank
goodness we have you know laid fiber
between every single human being on this
planet right now which is pretty amazing
so about two-and-a-half weeks ago my
mother woke up I was there I was holding
her hand and I didn’t get to know her
till I was 20 years old and I’m holding
her hand and she’s looking at me and in
that moment I discard I realize I have
to do it and I discard all of my anger
at her for leaving me that I’ve held all
these years I just discarded it because
I was sitting there and I realized I
couldn’t be with her fully and still
hold on to that anger so in one moment
as I did something I we can change us
humans we can change it’s really
interesting it’s only a lack of courage
that keeps us stuck in our outmoded ways
of thinking and our outmoded ways of
safety this year coca-cola said that
they’re going to increase their
production of throw away plastic bottles
by a billion bottles in 50 short years
we have inserted micro grains of plastic
in between every grain of sand in every
beach around the globe and into the
blood streams of animals including some
of us in this room that’s outmoded
thinking from the planets perspective
coca-cola Warren Buffett the
shareholders of coke anyone that wears
microfiber yoga pants or fleece jackets
might be some of the worst criminals
besides the meat eaters in the world our
emotional intelligence and our
worldviews are stuck in a past that is
no longer real it’s a it’s a past where
we believe in infinite frontiers where
we believe in the infinite filtration
capacity of the sky and the sea those
things no longer exist and what does
exist is shrinking
it teaches us that we are competing
beings that we are separate and not
connected to the biosphere or each other
and this was never true at all but it
was a harmless delusion until about a
hundred years ago when our technology
and our numbers started exponentially
rocketing okay so my buddy would say hey
whatever happened to that hopeful talk
you were giving I’m getting there okay
because there’s a teacher a new teacher
in the room trying to wake us up and
it’s the only teacher any species has
ever listened to and it is its own death
if everything is connected which is
what’s what both physicists and
biologists are telling us then when you
kill your system you are killing
yourself and we are simply killing our
system in 1850 humanity weighed 50
million tons today humanity weighs 300
million tons and our livestock and our
pets weigh 700 million tons and wild
nature weighs only a fraction of what it
weighed in 1850 looked at in this way
our cars our 401ks our bank accounts our
violence and our toys from China are
just a very very complicated form of
suicide dude man why would beings made
of ocean and and sunlight commit suicide
well here’s the thing we’re not going to
okay as we don’t believe that we’re
Network being but but we are when an
alcoholic hits rock bottom
that is the only time that he can
actually gain some wisdom and change you
know when I was young I needed some
wisdom I needed somebody to say
hey stop it stop believing in nonsense
anger and separation is not a way to
live life move
from complexity towards complexity and
relationship and you should too in 30
years we may have more plastic in the
ocean than fish what we are doing is
decreasing the biological complexity of
the planet Earth it’s not just our
president we are actually making the
planet stupider now here’s here’s the
interesting thing this change that’s
coming is inevitable for the first time
in human history we have to look at our
communal footprint we have to find
communal safety ok we can no longer
reach for our individual power and the
interesting thing is we have no choice
and this is new and this is good we need
to give our kids permission to hear the
call of the planet you know we could
wait till we hit rock bottom you know
it’s coming
we know this everybody knows it in their
guts it’s coming or we could end
disconnection now in my work with a live
inside what are we doing we’re taking
we’re taking young kids and we’re asking
them to sit in front of elders with
dementia and and wake them up to face
death with courage to to change
I’ve watched I’ve seen this a hundred
times I was in Mexico City yesterday I
saw elders there who were so depressed
and then these young kids came in and
gave them their music and sat with them
and they their health began to rise and
they they they died but instead of dying
in despair they died happy and I was
sitting there in my hotel room last
night and I’m like holy Wow hey
that’s something so
here’s here’s my little and last insight
is that loneliness I grew up thinking
loneliness was a condition that all of
us had to endure right well I don’t
think that anymore
I think loneliness is a disease a
disease of disconnection that we created
and we can cure how well I say follow
empathy and music or anything else that
you can find that goes back to the roots
of life you know and I say reject
separation and control move towards
complexity and relationship and become
the biosphere the it’s not the anther of
caen age it’s the biosphere age that we
have to create so if you can end your
own loneliness and the loneliness of the
planet I think that that is a proper
ambition for you for you walking oceans
filled with the light of the Sun thank
you
you
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