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Foreign I do a lot of speaking in front of Groups and I usually ask people do you Feel like this is the worst you know Most dangerous time that you have ever Been alive and most people will say yes This things are just getting worse by Every metric Everything is actually getting better I Mean it may not feel like that I think It doesn't feel like that for people Because unlike previous generations we See it on television we see it on our Devices we have instant access to it but You know literacy I think in the 60s 85 Of the world's population of adults was Illiterate today it's only 15 percent Um poverty uh every day 250 000 people Leave extreme poverty Um which is you know not having access To water clean Drinking Water Shelter The basics Um Wars don't last as long unless people Die of violent death any of us in this Room are much less likely to violate die Of violent death than ever before by Every single metric the world gets Better and yet I feel like we don't feel that way at All Yo this is The Cutting Edge of the Unknown future Uh you know so historians will say you Know well if you if you go back to why
My Weimar Germany I mean it feels just Like this there are a lot of people who Are doing stuff that is very reminiscent Of the kind of othering that winds up With uh concentration camps and uh Genocide and there's a long history of It's not just the Nazis I mean you know It's like goes on you know back to Columbus the Native Americans 400 years Of slavery in this country that we've Never really taken you know sort of our Responsibility for in a certain Collective way and what the long-term Sort of implications of that are in our Society so I think in the sort of very Brief time we have what I would say Anderson is that in having brought Mindfulness into medicine for the past Almost 40 years into the mainstream of Medicine uh where you know the idea that You could bring medicine and meditation Into medicine 40 years ago was like Insane and now it's like people realize It's absolute critical part of it what We've learned through the new science of Neuroplasticity the new science of Epigenetics a new science of telomeres And aging and so forth is that the human Being not just the human body or the Brain is unbelievably the word that they Use is plastic in other words how we Intend to cultivate ourselves influences Every conceivable biological and Psychological and social interactive
Function that we have so in terms of the Potential directing of not biological But cultural Evolution we have an insanely unique and Precious Moment an opportunity to do This and in the sense all of the horror That we might feel is part of this is Also a tremendous opportunity and yes We've never been quite here before Because of the digital age and how we're You know completely caught up in you Know the imprisonment of our devices and So forth and distracted perpetually but There's also a deep interior Connectivity that if we can have it with Ourselves and have it with each other Non-digitally as well as digitally then In fact we've already changed the world Even if it doesn't seem that way and if We keep that practice up Moment by Moment day by day week by week month by Month year by year decade by a decade my Own sense is that If I saw some other Doorway to the Beauty and freedom of humanity it's Expressing itself in its fullness and Not the toxicity that's going to in some Sense destroy it I would be doing that But I've never found anything more Powerful than mindfulness and it starts Here if if you're not practicing then It's just blah blah blah about Mindfulness it's like turning it into One more thing one more product one more
Commodity it's too deep for that and With the show of hands that Anderson Asked for That's really extraordinary if we were Having this meeting 30 years ago or even 10 years ago almost nobody would have Raised the hand that they were Meditating this is actually a social Phenomenon it's not just me doing a Little stress reduction for myself do You worry about the spread of it in that Way about it it's sort of morphing into Either another should or that it becomes A commodity you know that gets marketed Like I worry about that a lot it's Happening because it's inevitable that Some people whenever anything becomes Hot or you know sort of people talking About it a lot then people want to Exploit it or you know get on the Bandwagon by the way I'm marketing Anderson Cooper mindful t-shirts outside So I tried but there you go But you know I My uh optimism really stems from the Fact that the feeling tone in this room The feeling tone in all of the places That I wind up going where people care About this in a deep way including two Weeks ago in the parliament in Ottawa uh The Canadian Parliament uh next week I'll be in the parliament in the UK Where hundreds of parliamentarians are
Practicing mindfulness never ever Happened before on the planet and They're inviting parliamentarians from 30 different countries to come to London On that day to talk about how this could Actually be leveraged in ways that get Beyond the kind of dualism that so much A part of the political process and that So much what I was saying is that we've Learned in medicine something that Applies not just to the body but I think Metaphorically at least it needs to be Applied to the body politic if we begin To look at ourselves as all cells in the One body of the planet then you you know Things like say um The levels of income inequality that We've driven in the past 30 or 40 years It's like a heart saying like you know We like the way we look and we are like Really important we pump all the blood So screw you brain and liver we're not Going to give you enough blood to Actually just even do your thing You know we wouldn't last very long if The body were operating on that kind of Capitalistic greed hatred and delusion Principle and I think we need to look at That whether it's Bankers whether it's The economy whether whatever it is that We need some kind of redistribution of Blood In the society so everybody is Fundamentally healthy enough to do the
Interior work that leads to A Healthy Planet a healthy World a healthy climate I don't see any alternative to that Everything else is kind of a quick fix And medicine has demonstrated very very Few cures in medicine very few quick Fixes but healing is always possible Right up into the moment you go and that Itself is not necessarily a failure it's Just part of the way uh Things Are
