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Among Brilliant's favorite
Окт 2 2009, 20:00
eradicate smallpox in India; in the Eighties, he led an effort to restore sight to blind people in the developing world and co-founded the Well, a pioneering online forum; in the Nineties, he flopped around as an entrepreneur and watched Star Tre\ reruns. Most of all, he knew suffering. During the smallpox scourge in India, babies died in his arms. He visited towns where the rivers were dammed up by dead bodies. That kind of experience changes your perspective on the world. Among Brilliant's favorite quotes is from Buddha: "Every person will suffer and die." JoomlaShack
Acute awareness of suffering and death, however, has not turned Brilliant into an-other disillusioned ex-hippie wondering where all the flowers have gone. Nor has it left him with a grudge against the cruel nature of the universe. Instead, it has turned him into a hard-bitten optimist. He's seen the worst the world can do, but he's also seen how mankind can tri¬umph. Global warming? No prob¬lem. Mass starvation? Let's figure out how to feed the world. In Bril¬liant's view, what the planet needs today is not simply the invention of a cleaner way to generate energy ^ or better schools in de-veloping nations but a transformation of human consciousness. Sketch "It's a matter of human will," he says. 'And that's where my optimism comes from, because I've seen awful things that were solved by the projection of a positive, and I would say loving, human will." But mankind's loving human will was not immediately apparent among the sharks at the Fortune round table. This was all business. Not long after the discus¬sion began, the assembled CEOs and VGs soon found themselves talking about what would happen to social-networking sites like Facebook if there were a widespread work stoppage due to, say, a natural disaster. Would people go to the sites to make connections, even if they weren't at work? Or would online revenues tank? After a few minutes of debate, the moderator turned to Brilliant and asked if he had any thoughts.
"This is stupid," Brilliant said bluntly. "If you want to talk about
Acute awareness of suffering and death, however, has not turned Brilliant into an-other disillusioned ex-hippie wondering where all the flowers have gone. Nor has it left him with a grudge against the cruel nature of the universe. Instead, it has turned him into a hard-bitten optimist. He's seen the worst the world can do, but he's also seen how mankind can tri¬umph. Global warming? No prob¬lem. Mass starvation? Let's figure out how to feed the world. In Bril¬liant's view, what the planet needs today is not simply the invention of a cleaner way to generate energy ^ or better schools in de-veloping nations but a transformation of human consciousness. Sketch "It's a matter of human will," he says. 'And that's where my optimism comes from, because I've seen awful things that were solved by the projection of a positive, and I would say loving, human will." But mankind's loving human will was not immediately apparent among the sharks at the Fortune round table. This was all business. Not long after the discus¬sion began, the assembled CEOs and VGs soon found themselves talking about what would happen to social-networking sites like Facebook if there were a widespread work stoppage due to, say, a natural disaster. Would people go to the sites to make connections, even if they weren't at work? Or would online revenues tank? After a few minutes of debate, the moderator turned to Brilliant and asked if he had any thoughts.
"This is stupid," Brilliant said bluntly. "If you want to talk about
