INTERVIEW Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, with Guy Kawasaki | TEDxPaloAltoSalon

this does anybody ever begin one of these conversations with you by not saying it's an honor to be here with you know very few sir please don't say it okay and who are our friends here well I'm going to introduce them at the point in our conversation when it's relevant but this is cow this is mr. H and this is Rati okay and the appropriate points as we talk I hope there'll be an opportunity to tell you why they're sitting here okay and also me guy Eugene tossin I've read the books I've watched the film jeans and one thing that struck me was that apparently dr. leekie didn't want a so-called trained biologists so when you first met him and began this saga what were your qualifications zero except that I was born loving animals when I was a child I just watched animals and there weren't so many where I grew up in England you know there were worms and snails there were all kinds of birds and occasionally there was our Fox and I watched them as much as I could and I did well at school and we didn't have money for university so I had to do a secretarial I got a job in London and how that ended up for me studying chimps maybe that comes later all right you know at the time that you began studying the chimps scientists were not supposed to name them not supposed to attribute human qualities to them attribute tool making capabilities attribute empathy and yet you did all these things so what's the lesson there about defying wisdom defiant vention define what's right well I think to answer that question I sort of have to go back a bit and say that when I eventually saved up money to get to Africa to follow my childhood dream which actually began when I read Tarzan of the Apes that's why I said Tarzan and fell in love with him and was very jealous because he married the wrong Jane and that's where my dream began I will go to Africa we'll live with animals write books about them and everybody laughed at me but I was incredibly lucky in having an incredibly supportive mother who said if you really want this thing you're going to have to work really hard take advantage of all opportunities and never give up so left school no one every University did a boring awful secretarial course opportunity when a school friend invited me to Africa and to get the money I had to leave my job in London where you couldn't save go home to Bournemouth and work as a waitress which is very hard work by the way have you ever been a waiter no no no if you had you would know it's really hard work anyway I eventually got the fare go to Africa heard about Louis Leakey and he offered me this opportunity to go and study the chimps and now we can get on to your question at first the chimps ran away from me they'd never seen a white ape before you are an ape emerge of you're white I'm a white ape there's some people out here who have different colored skin but we're all the fifth grade ape that's what we biologically aha but they'd never seen a white one and so they ran away and eventually they got used to me and I was able to observe them and I observed this chimpanzee reaching out picking stems of grass using them to fish termites from their nests picked them off and I observed him picking a leafy twig and stripping off the leaves in other words he was using tools he was making tools and at that time it was supposed to be according to science only humans that use their made tools so Louis Leakey my sponsor was extremely excited that enabled him to ask the National Geographic to step in to fund the future research and they not only agreed to do that but they sent her photographer and filmmaker hugo van Loic to record what I was observing about the chimps so I was learning more and more about the chimps as they became used to me and then Louis Leakey said you have to get a degree you can't get money when I'm dead if you don't have a degree but he said we haven't got time to mess with the BA I find you I find you a way of going to Cambridge University in England to do a PhD in ethology and I didn't know what a fellow g-man but you you skipped the bachelor's and master's and went straight yes yes yes it was nothing to do with me guide nothing to do with me it was Leakey and it was a huge responsibility for me and so I'd been 2 years with the chimps and I got to Cambridge and imagine how I felt when I was told by these erudite professors you've done everything wrong you shouldn't have given the chimps names it's not scientific they should have had numbers you can't talk about their personalities or their minds capable of thought or their emotions I was scared of those professors but fortunately when I was a child I had an amazing teacher who taught me that wise though these professors may have been in learning in this respect they were wrong you know what that teacher was my dog your doggie you I'm sure out there in the audience do you understand we can't share our lives with a dog a cat a rat rabbit a horse a pig a bird whatever and not know the professors were wrong of course we are not the only beings with personalities minds and emotions and so I stuck to my conviction and eventually the professor's came around and I truly believe I honestly believe that we have to thank the chimps a lot because it now turns out they're so like us biologically so that we differ from them in the composition of DNA by only just over 1% and the similarities in the immune system the composition of the blood the anatomy of the brain that combined with Hugo's film of their postures and gestures of communication kissing embracing holding hands patting one another swaggering shaking their fists throwing rocks using tools they had to believe that we are not the only beings with personalities minds and emotions so that's how it happened ok I was to my dog I you're killing me Jane um why am i killing you you're killing me because yesterday my daughter brings home a puppy and I said we are not keeping that dog and now she's grinning ear-to-ear right here I can anticipate this conversation well dr. Goodall said you can learn so much from a dog we should would you would you like to share custody with well I could provide some parental support so you're a dog biscuit okay thank you I appreciate your concern there are many young people in the audience and who are watching this so in today's setting where everybody you know believes they have to get this undergraduate education then you have to go and get a PhD and all that what's your take on the necessity of formal education today for a young person it depends on what the young person wants to do and what what upsets me is that does this you know if you don't get a degree of some sort in some kind of college or university or useless and that's rubbish I mean you you can think thank you it it really depends on what the young person wants to do the problem is in science that it's very difficult to get a job if you don't have a degree so that you know even Louis Leakey told me I would have to eventually get a degree so I would urge young people who want to want to become scientists I didn't want to become a scientist because when I was growing up was that awful long time ago women didn't become scientists now they do so women now who want to become scientists will probably need to get a degree if they just want to work with animals and help animals they don't need a degree and the main thing is for a young person to know exactly what they want to do to be really determined in what they want to do and then my mother used to say to me when I have this crazy dream if you really want this you have to work extremely hard take advantage of all opportunities but don't give up so that's my advice to young people today it sounds like your mom was the original tiger mom she was utterly amazing and if if I hadn't had that kind of mother I might have not have done what I've done I mean I don't know but girl she supported my dream she didn't get mad when I took earthworms to bed when I was bringing poppies home and no I didn't find puppies but I found mice and injured animals and she never got mad at me okay you said in the movie that you when you were young you had dreams and in those dreams you were a man hmm can you explain that and is that still necessary in today's world no I don't think it is but when I was young you know girls were supposed to well they got the sort of thing in UK is you got married you looked after your children you were a good wife you cooked for your husband and you didn't become a scientist you might become a secretary or a nurse or perhaps you might become a missionary's wife and so those were the expectations for women and I remember that I went to Buckingham Palace and for some bizarre reason I was proposed by somebody to get a DBE a dame of the British Empire and all these women was a palace yes to get this degree okay see yeah well anyway they said to me I I heard them talking and they said to me don't you want to be you know working in Buckingham Palace don't you want to be a maid of honor to the Queen don't you want to be Aldi and I said no I want to go to Africa and live with animals and they looked and they kind of shunned me like they went over there I was left on my own so I was considered to be peculiar but I had a mother who believed in me and supported me look what's happened amen we've already touched a lot about your mother and motherhood I also found it very interesting that when you had your son didn't you essentially pause your career yeah and what are your hindsight's on that was that the right thing to do was it no I believe you know I get I get very upset when women who can some women can't some women have to continue with their careers to bring in the money to survive but some women maybe their husband brings in a lot of money like like you and if they decide they want to take time off and be a mother and people say well that's you know that's like going back to the old days and tying yourself with your apron strings to the kitchen it's incredibly important if you can to spend time with your young child and be there for them and be supportive so it's it's it's it's a job and it's a very hard job but I think it's tremendously important on the other hand there are some women who won't cut out to be good mothers they just don't want to be good mother so then the answer is to try and find it an alternative so I truly believe for a human child it doesn't have to be the biological mother but that child needs needs to feel secure needs to feel wanted needs to feel there is at least one and preferably two or three adults who are there to support that child I've read your theories of the stages of life would you explain those stages and tell people about the stage are currently in my stages of life you mean like Shakespeare five agents of man okay well the stage I'm in now is my last stage I don't suppose there'll be many more stages you know I'm nearly 85 and when you get to 85 you know you're closer to wherever the end is might be here there or there but you're closer than you were when you were born and the stage I'm in now is a stage of of increasing my activity because I will less time to get out a message which is an incredibly important message and so I have to work harder and longer hours and travel 300 days a year which I hate and spread a message of awareness because we're running out of time and what I've learned from the chimpanzees is the way not only the ways we're similar to them but the way that we're different and to me the key difference is the explosive development of our intellect so the chimpanzees are way more intelligent than we used to think but so are so many other animals we're learning that you know we're not so different and yet in this respect we are because we've designed for example well I guess you could talk about Apple computers if you would but I'm going to talk about that rocket that went out to Mars and a little robot crawled off and took photos of the surface of Mars the planet that we once thought maybe he had some kind of life but you look at those photos I'm sure you have you don't want to go and live there do you know so here we are this most intellectual species to ever walk the planet and yet we're destroying our only home how come is it because there's a disconnect between this clever brain and the human heart just love and compassion what do you think well the the lesson that I drew from the movie and the book was when that four-year war took place so it seems like in the DNA there's this inherent tribalism and violence and I think we're seeing that now so I was going to ask you about that so you know I had no idea that that war happened until I you know did the research for this presentation and I always thought it was you know kumbaya among the chimps and such is not the case so can you explain that and the ramifications upon society yeah well the reason Louis Leakey sent me to study the chimps was because you know he was searching for the fossils of early man and from the fossils you can tell a lot about what the creature looked like and what it had from his tooth oops tooth wear and things but you can't tell about the behavior so he knowing that the great apes are our closest living relatives thought well if Jane finds behavior that similar even the same between chimpanzees today and humans today maybe that behavior was in a common ape-like human-like ancestor about 6 million years ago and maybe just maybe that behavior has come with the human line and the ape line and that would help him he said to understand a little bit better or to imagine how early humans might have behaved so I think he was right and I think that we've had a great insight into how our earliest ancestors behaved because of the information about chimps but you know aggression do we have inherent aggressive tendencies I think so that was a political issue in the early 70s and when I talked about the fact that chimps had the equivalent of a primitive warfare that I should suppress that and not talk about it because that might imply that humans had innate aggressive tendencies and it was a whole movement then I don't know if you remember it but that we were human babies were born with a clean slate and all aggression was learned and I couldn't believe that I could not believe that anyway I did talk about it but ok so we do have I think innate aggressive attendance tendencies but we have this superior brain we are capable if we so wish of suppressing those aggressive tendencies and most of the time we do our language says differently we I mean you say oh I could kill him but you don't actually go and kill it you say it and maybe you think it will be nice but you don't actually mean it so we can suppress our aggressive tendencies but unfortunately aggressive tendencies that become political they're different that is not the primitive chimpanzee aggression where you fight members of a neighboring community over territory this is something different it's all tied in with our materialistic lifestyle today and politics gets so far away from who we really are doesn't it so so what's your vision or idea for how to improve this well we have a program called roots and shoots and I began this program because as I was traveling around the world trying to raise money for everything we were doing in Africa which was not only protecting chimpanzees in their forests but improving the lives of people living in and around the forests in poverty to find ways that they could make livelihoods without destroying the forest and that's worked so we're in six different African countries helping to protect the chimps by the people becoming our partners but I had to get money for that it's expensive and so I was traveling around the world and every single continent that I went to there were young people high school students University students who seem to have lost hope in the future who were mostly just a pathetic not seeming to care but there were those who were angry even violent and those who were deeply depressed and I began talking to them and they all said more or less the same thing we feel this way because you've compromised our future and there's nothing we can do about it and you've heard they're saying by one of the Native American Chiefs like can't remember which one we haven't inherited this planet from our parents we've borrowed it from our children but we haven't borrowed their future have we we've stolen it and we're still stealing it thanks to our materialistic greedy lifestyle and we forget what Mahatma Gandhi said the planet can provide for human need but not human greed so I understood why the children were feeling that way these young people but is it too late and you know as well as I know and many people out here will know there are scientists who tell us that we've gone so far in damaging the natural world that we're on a downward trajectory and there's nothing much we can do well if you feel that why do anything worth it and that's what these young people were feeling but and you may disagree guy but I think we have a window of time and if we get together if we get together then we can start to heal some of the scars that we've inflicted you know the deforestation the pollution of air water and land the pollution of the oceans the plastic that's floating around we now are faced with climate change where you know that not only we just had the hottest summer ever recorded in Europe and in but we have hurricanes more frequent and more violent and that's that's threatening the East Coast today as we speak and climate change is a nightmare that we have to face so roots and shoots is about young people coming together choosing projects to make the world better one for people one for animals one for the environment and the main message is every single individual and that means you and me and everybody out here every single day we make some impact on the planet and if we start thinking about the consequences of the small choices we make or do we buy how was it made where did they come from did it cause suffering to animals did it harm the environment is it cheap because it was child slave labor or sweatshops in some other country and we start making ethical choices in what we buy that's going to start moving towards a better world so this was the kind of basis of roots and shoots but you know I will I was at the school this morning and there's a routine shoots group there and that they're already beginning to learn that what they do is making a difference roots and shoots which began with 12 high school students in Tanzania in 1991 is now in nearly 80 countries we have about a hundred and fifty thousand active groups and a group can be a whole school and we have members in preschool not too many but kindergarten University everything in between and you know it's one of my greatest reasons for her so you you just mentioned one but are there any other simple things that you know all of us can go home and tonight or starting tomorrow that will just help like practical things yeah I mean first of all do what I just said think about the consequences of the small choices you make which means probably learning a bit very often parents can ask their kids because they hear a lot better what's going on what's in the food if it's palm oil you know that that sort of thing and I don't know what you think about this because we don't know each other very well but one thing that really will make a difference is eating less meat less meat less and the reason is one these intensive factory farms and the Cruelty to Animals well maybe people don't maybe people think that animals like cow that's why I carry cow I'll just just sort of you know machines they're not they have personalities they feel pain and fear and they are in these in horrible films that maybe you don't care about the animal ok fine but what about the impact of those billions of animals that are now being bred in factory farms to supply the meat for the more and more people around the world who have more wealth today and to feed them you have to clear the environment to grow the grain and the soy and then you have to use masses of fossil fuel to get the grain to the animals the animals that the abbatoirs and the meat to the table and then it's a huge waste of water and don't ask me for figures there there but I can't give them to you to change a vegetable protein to animal protein and then if you don't care about any of that environmental stuff maybe you care that to keep these poor animals alive they're given all these antibiotics not because they're sick but just to keep them alive so the bacteria are building up resistance and people are dying from a scratch and a finger from superbugs and I heard the Surgeon General of England about four years ago say you know it's possible that the era of the antibiotic is ending and a huge part of that is due to intensive animal agriculture think of what a world would be like today without antibiotics and there's one final thing we talked about climate change all these billions of animals when they digest their food they produce gas we all do you do I do I know what the polite word is but food in gas out you know and belching - and that's methane and that is a more virulent gas in the the greenhouse gases even than co2 co2 is more frequent more that makes up a larger percentage of greenhouse gases but methane is much more virulent and it's these greenhouse gases that are caused by burning fossil fuels by cutting down rainforests by changing the ocean so that there's all these dead areas that's what's causing climate change trapping the heat of the Sun is like a blanket okay so all the little things stopped eating meat was one good thing and think about the consequences of what you do and you know one thing that would move us towards a better world have respect for people of other cultures other religions people with different colored skin - you people who might wear different clothes have respect for them have respect for cow have respect for rati these little guys are so intelligent and in Africa the giant forest rats are being taught to detect landmines and they're working in Mozambique in Cambodia and and have respect for people and keep your mind open I think one thing really important today is to keep your mind open to thinking out of the box and another thing which I would urge every parent to do is to let your children spend time in nature take them off their cell phones and their share because it's it's actually been proved by science that children need the green spaces and the green things for good psychological development that's proved what do you think of surfing then you must love the concept of surfing there's no cell life I've never served but I have dived in the coral reefs would you like to learn how to surf no not at 85 or because I'm so busy I don't have so much time left and learning surfing isn't something that I feel is desperately important take my message around the world if it was desperately important and if it would really make a difference I take you up on it okay well arguably the world's best surfboard shaper is sitting in this audience but if you ever change your mind okay we will know you know okay okay can I get a little tricky here I really like to hear your opinion on two things one is animal testing total cruelty shouldn't be done at all necessary evil well these are the guys the rats and the mice who've borne the brunt of animal testing first of all most of the tests that are done on animals like in pharmaceutical are totally unnecessary today and should be stopped they're very cruel testing that's done medicinally people used to believe it was desperately important but we've now found that even chimpanzees who are the most like us of any animal even they don't respond the way humans do to a lot of to a lot of the experiments that are done the other thing which is more in your court is the development of technology is finding ways of alternative ways of testing drugs and looking for cures that don't involve living animals so let's say one the use of animals in these these medical labs is incredibly cruel I mean I've been in the labs I had to go and learn about what was happening to the chimpanzee so that I could talk about it it gave me nightmares for weeks our closest living relatives in five foot by five foot cages with just bear bars all around when I seen them in the forests of Africa it was shocking and I knew I had to fight to stop it and chimps are now all the National Institute of Health chimps are out of the labs in the sanctuaries taking a long time but we've done it why yes the reason that that's happened isn't because of ethical reasons although that should be important and to me is but it's because a team of from the National Institutes of Health itself went round all of the five are there are four hundred there were four hundred chimps in medical research and the questions this team was asked is go and look at all the experiments done in these labs and ask is it relevant to human health is it potentially relevant to human health and after 18 months zero not one single experiment was either relevant or beneficial to or potentially beneficial to human health so the director who's my great friend Francis Collins said right chimps out to sanctuaries and it's happening and they're going to Chimp Haven taking a long time yeah but the point is that even if even chimpanzees are not like enough that experiments done on them can really be sure to be useful for us and so I think our amazing intellect should be capable understanding that these experiments are horribly cruel we should be capable and we are beginning to find ways of doing these tests that don't involve live animals okay I don't even know if I want to ask you this but zoos well zoos um when I first began you know doing my research way back then nineteen sixty I'd spent time in London Zoo 1957 and 58 and it was awful it was so bad and there were chimps there in this awful condition and zoos around the world or all similar and there's still some very bad news today but there were those people who sort of point fingers at zoos and say we got to let all the animals out and not understanding that a loose have really improved a Sousa funder stood animals need to be occupied to be engaged they don't want to be bored they need the right kind of food the right kind of social environment the right kind of space and the right kind of keepers who understand about them and care about them that's happened it hasn't happened to also is but the good zoos are like that but what people are not understanding is that the wild should be people say animals should be in the world and the world should be wonderful but I know chimp habitats across Africa this is why I left you know it started traveling around the world to talk about what's happening to the chimps it's not nice chimps hear the trains approaching chimps are being caught in wire snares and losing arms or legs or dying of of infection chimps are being shot for food chimps mothers are being shot to steal their babies the live animal trade so many many chimps in the wild are living lives of fear and very often if they hear the chainsaws coming they move away but they go into the territory of other chimps who are protecting their territory will kill them so when I watch a group of chimps in a good zoo and I think I'd rather be here so so let me get this straight so you do believe there are such things as good Jews I do and the other reason I think there's such things as good Sue's is the number of people I've met who said well you know when I was young I went into a zoo I looked into the eyes of a chimpanzee a gorilla an elephant and I understood that these are beings with their own personalities minds and emotions and I want to help them and I want to save them and that the good zoos put a lot of the money that they make into protecting the animals in the world to protecting them protecting their environments just can you name some good zoo so we know which ones to go to okay well no deer must die well yeah okay all right well I mean the zoos that are really trying to do at the San Diego Zoo I've known them for a long time and yeah very good the Los Angeles Zoo when I first went there the chimps had a terrible conditions now it's much better lion country safari in in Florida it's fantastic probably one of the best zoos in the United States is Disney's Animal Kingdom really yes it's amazing I was there right from the beginning when they got all this flak was all these animals had died it was five animals that died and I know why they died and the animals have huge space they have great caretakers they have lots of enrichment and they're helping many many many young people understand what these animals are beings they're not just they're not just machines they're beings they look in their eyes and they understand and they want to help them okay switching gears to something very pragmatic for any of those who of us who are in the not-for-profit world can you give us your tips about fundraising because you've been extremely successful in raising fun you know I haven't why do you think I've been so successful it looks to me like you are so okay well then tell us what not to do well know first of all it's extremely hard work you have to be able to convince people that what you're doing is actually a sustainable way of moving forward you have to find the right people who believe in your in your goals and your ethics and all the rest of it and it doesn't isn't actually easy you have to find corporations you can't just go to any corporation and say well it would be lovely if you gave us money if they're doing things that are ethically you believe or not or not good because then your name is linked with them and people think that you're hypocritical so raising money is hard traveling around the world the way I do is hard we have 34 Jane Goodall Institute's we have our roots and shoots programs to sustain in nearly 80 countries you have to be able to convince people that what you're doing is a good thing to do you have to build up an organization filled with the right kind of staff and volunteers and interns we have finally done that in the US and in fact us there's two people from the Jane Goodall Institute here tonight which is common in zoos alive and and Chris and Christian I don't know where they are gone see how they're the right but anyway there they are and we have many others in Virginia facing the hurricane right now probably battening down their houses and their windows and whatever you do when you approach by a hurricane this is pretty bad so it's raising money is hard work okay let's take some audience questions okay were you ever afraid while observing the chimps of course I mean you're pretty stupid if you're not afraid when you when you hear buffalos who is supposed to be one of the most dangerous animals in Africa and there snorting behind you and charging towards you and you climb a tree that's when you get afraid that you get that extra adrenaline which makes you able to climb a tree that you actually can't climb was I afraid the chimps who've been afraid first decided that I should be treated like a predator and they should try and chase me away because they didn't like me at that time and they would sway and shake branches hit my head with the branches run up behind me and bash me there they're like 9 times 10 times stronger than me but I I just had this feeling when I was there that I was meant to be there and that nothing would actually hurt me which may have been stupid but they nothing he did hurt me so maybe it wasn't so stupid after all all right this is a great one my grandfather and I recently had an argument about whether or not animals have abstract thought as an expert do you think they are capable of abstract thought yes I think they are and we learn an awful lot about that kind of thing from animals who are actually in captivity and you know you can actually learn a lot more about the way that they're thinking in captivity but when we're talking about abstract thought let me tell you one story about a parrot I know a parrot in the Bronx in New York and he was born in captivity and he lived with this woman since he was 3 months old and she felt well if you have a shot humans your baby you don't pick up and say rat rat rat and reward the baby when he says right you just talk to the baby so she talked to this parrot Golden Key see she gave him toys to play with you know little battery toys that run along and then kiss he loved to chase them and little little things where you press a which says a for Apple um he now today he knows 1,700 words and she rescued an iguana from a pet shop it died anyway so she got this if you wanna laid out in the ground he's got a box to bury him in a often she's very spiritual she's burning candles she's got smoke you know incense burning and she's crying in kisi who's by this time twelve years old comes flying down and looks at this situation and says try a new battery it's hard to top that one don't need a better example do you what was your most surprising discovery that chimpanzees like us have this dark and brutal side and a capable of primitive warfare I was shocked saddened but I suppose not really surprised ok I am a teacher how do I introduce the concept of global community to my students get your students whoever you are involved in roots and shoots and they will immediately be a part of the global community in 80 countries and if you want to know about recent youth lookup roots and shoots dot o-r-g and you can find out all about it ok you are a good fundraiser it is look just look at the sheer beauty of this car you have to answer this question I don't care what the question is it's so beautiful what was your favorite part of living with the chimps and how do you plan to protect them well my favorite part about living out there was the time I got to spend in the rainforest because when you're in the rainforest you get to understand about the interconnection of all living things you get to understand that each little species even though it may seem insignificant has a role to play in this great magical tapestry of life and so I could spend time out in that rainforest and feel the great spiritual power all around and within that there were the chimpanzees and I could gradually get to learn about their personalities and their and their incredible lifestyle who was your inspiration Tarzan you know there weren't any people you have to realize when I dreamed it going to Africa when I was 10 years old that was in 1944 the one people out there I suppose I was I was fascinated by Jacques Cousteau but there weren't that many people out there that I could become inspired by so my inspiration came from books dr. Doolittle was number one if you haven't read dr. Doolittle you jolly well should okay who is more intelligent chimpanzees or American politicians actually that's my question I didn't read it off the card guys that's his question who's more intelligent chimpanzees or American politicians well I have to say it depends on the American politician it also depends on your definition of intelligence well there are chimpanzees who are more intelligent than others one of the aspects I've loved observing in chimpanzees is males competing for dominance and there are two ways one way is using your intellect finding your right allies and those chimpanzees turn out to be really good leaders and they lead by example and they once they get to the top they're very calm very relaxed and respected there are other chimpanzees who get to the top and don't last very long but they do a lot of posturing and a lot of gesturing and spitting out till they last less than four years they they seldom nice more than two [Laughter] [Applause] once again from your mouth to God's ears you know I heard that the French consider you a saint so and there's these rumors that you're going to start a church called Our Lady of Perpetual Chimps is that true I haven't heard it on late-night TV late night you put the hard fake news so on a more serious note now how do you you know in in the presence of so much evil and suffering and ignorance and yet there are you know many beautiful good things but how do you keep the faith well I keep the faith because you know as I travel around first of all I meet all these young people and roots and cute or similar programs and they come up to me with shining eyes and they want to tell me what they're doing to make this a better world and it's not that young people can make it better well they are there's no question and secondly there's this brain and you know all about how the human brain can create technology that will lead us into ways of better harmony with with the natural world and also we can use our human brain to have better relationships between each other and between the the natural world and the way that we live each day and my third reason that you know that I get this hopeful feeling it's a resilience of nature so in 1990 when I flew over Gumby it was a little oasis of forest surrounded by completely bare hills when I began in 1960 it was part of this equatorial forest belt that stretched from East Africa right through the Congo Basin to West African coast and I looked down and there were clearly more people living there in the land could support too poor to buy food from elsewhere struggling to survive that's when we started our program to improve their lives if you fly over combi today you won't see bare hills it's trees and the trees have come back and we probably all can think of places that we have destroyed in our thoughtless way which given time and maybe some help and once again become beautiful and nature can be restored with the trees that absorb carbon dioxide and give us oxygen and clean water and animal species on the very brink of extinction can be given another chance I wrote a whole book about it called hope for animals in their world plant species almost extinct can be brought back there is one seed that was found from the days of King Herod and it had it was a date palm seed 2,000 years it sat there and it came back to life and produced a palm I mean isn't that magic isn't that magic 2,000 years the germ of life can once again produce life yes I think it's magic so my my next reason for hope is writing your court it's social media so that for the first time ever in human history we can bring people who care about some particular issue like climate change or the rights of apes to have a life free from danger like that the Great Ape project and we can bring them the voices together so that we are voices gradually can get stronger and stronger and stronger until we force big corporations to change their ways because we're not going to buy their beastly food that's made in an inhumane and non-environmental way and eventually because of that the politicians will change it's all a big cycle and so social media and then finally the indomitable human spirit and that's why I carry mr. H around with me so mr. H now he was given to me 28 years ago and he was given to me by one of these people who exemplify the indomitable human spirit the people who tackle what seems impossible and won't give up people who suffer from you know tremendous physical disabilities but they lead lives that are incredibly inspirational and before I talk about mr. H I met a Canadian who was born with no legs he just had one probably ever something like a foot coming out of his thigh and his arms water here and on one of the arms it was a little thing this wrong which I suppose was a like a thumb that's all he had he just went round Europe by himself on the skateboard he drives one of these 40,000 pounds tractors to help his family his friend on a farm when you meet him you know I felt like sitting on the ground with him but he hopped up on the sofa and sitting talking to him was like talking to you you're talking to this wonderful live person who says I was made this way for a reason and when I said to him have you ever thought of getting a you know some artificial legs something he said where they say they could do it but I'm not sure that I should do it because I think there's a reason that I was put together like this but I might take them up when I climb Mount Everest you know but anyway mr. H I've had for 28 years given to me by a man called Gary horn that's why he's mr. age and Gary went completely blind when he was 21 in the US Marines and for some bizarre reason decided has he learned to live in this new black world that he'd become a magician and everybody said him but Gary you can't be a magician you're blind and he said well I can try and I'm telling you if he was here where we are you wouldn't know he was blind because he sets out his things ahead of time and but he works with kids and at the end he'll tell them he's blind and say things may go wrong in your life we never know but don't give up there's always a way forward and he does cross-country skiing he's a skydiving I think it's personally think it's crazy to jump out of a plane but thinking of jumping out of a plane into blackness I mean well anyway crazy guy but he's just taught himself to paint and he does it by touch cause he has to have help with the color but he's painted this portrait of mr. H whom he thought was a chimpanzee and I took his hand and I said what is this Gary chimps don't have tails so he said never mind take him with you and you know I'm with you in spirit so if you get this book it's called blind artists by Gary Horne and I urge you to get it from Amazon he self printed it and it h aun like a fawn horn ha1 and he's got this portrait of this chimp this monkey that he's never seen and it's incredible I mean learning to paint for the first time when you're completely blind doesn't that blow your mind and so this is the indomitable human spirit and this is why I have hope for the future because of the energy and commitment of young people when they know the problems and they are empowered to take action because of this amazing brain and Silicon Valley I mean you see the example of this amazing brain and intellect all the time and because of the resilience of nature amazing because of the social media that can bring us together from all around the world and because of this indomitable human spirit you know clearly there's a reason why you're here too and it's been just a wonderful hour with you and I assure you from bottom my heart and I'm sure everyone here it was an honor for us to be here and we have learned so much so we all want to thank you thank you thank you thank you too [Applause]

Channel: Guy Kawasaki

Views: 37,764

Rating: 4.9669876 out of 5

Keywords: TED talks, TEDx, Jane Goodall, conservationist, Jane Goodall Institute, Guy Kawasaki

Id: -kq7vMrc9DU

Length: 59min 40sec (3580 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 14 2018