From Bill Gates' marvelous commencement address at Harvard:
The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.
To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.
Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. ... The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century – which is to surrender to complexity and quit.
The Wall Street Journal reports on a milestone in Gates' drafting of the speech. It came when, while at the State Department to meet with Condoleeza Rice, he saw a framed copy of George Marshall's famous Harvard commencement address of exactly 60 years ago, in which the then-secretary of state proposed what is known to history as the Marshall Plan:
The word complexity struck him, Mr. Gates said, because he had been talking with his friend the billionaire investor Warren Buffett about how the complexity of certain things in society -- the tax system and the federal budget, for instance -- hinders people from fully grasping them, and ultimately impedes change.
In spreading the word about inequalities and what to do about them, Mr. Gates found that time and again among friends and in groups he found people who wanted to get more involved helping but didn't understand how to do something about a complicated disease or poverty in distant lands.
(Paragraphing added.)
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