The world changers we shape: Stephen Rankin at TEDxSMU
[Applause] thank you to Ramon and I guess to Devon I should say bonjo or maybe Bon it's really great to be here good to see you World Changers shaped here what a bracing vision and I've been thinking about that slogan that motto since the first time I saw it on the billboard over by Central Expressway I love that Vision because it prompts two questions how do we see the world that we're seeking to change what what ideas do we use what concepts what terms what categories do we use to think about the world that we want to change and secondly what kind of people do we need to be to be the change we'd like to see what kind of people do we need to be to change the world that we see so what kind of categories first question how do we see the world that we would like to change well Time Magazine has provided a very nice integrative Interactive uh graphic online called the 200 moments that change the world these are the categories that they use politics and Society economics and Industry Science and Technology culture and sports of course so we see the world through these categories and if you go to that website it's really interesting you'll find a lot of the uh events and people and situations and uh that you you would imagine seeing there Charles Darwin's Origin of the species the Emancipation Proclamation uh relativity Theory first human flight by the Wright brothers World War I World War II the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki the first moon landing in 1969 a lot of those things we would know there are some pop culture icons too and I couldn't resist mentioning a couple of those does anyone remember when Barbie first hit the market 1959 and one of my favorites The Beatles and the British Invasion in in 1964 or Michael Jackson's Thriller video 1982 13 minutes 47 seconds long if you check on YouTube and by the way would could I see a show of hands of the people who actually tried to learn the dance from that video aha quite a few people that's that's really good so these are the categories and we would get lots of the things we would expect to see with regard to World change but maybe it's worth thinking about what the 200 moments graphic doesn't show for example there are lots of these but for example take something like the growth of the Christian church in China now at one time Western observers said that the church in China was effectively eliminated starting with uh the cultural revolution in the 1950s and for a long time time we thought the the Christian Church didn't exist in China and then in the 1980s when China began to open up to the West again we began to realize oh there are still Christians there according to the Chinese government today they number approximately 24 million Christian in China now that's not a huge number compared to the population of course but it's also not insignificant other OB observers think that there might be a 100 million or more Christians in China what does the world look like when we start to Think Through other categories or coming closer to home in 1965 Congress passed a much more liberal immigration law and we began to see an influx of people in 1950 will herberg could write a book intitled Protestant Catholic Jew a religious sociology of America and with those three categories pretty much Cover the Waterfront with regard to religious demographics in the United States obviously that wouldn't work today we would need to add Muslims Hindus Buddhists bahis and a number of other religious groupings just to get a feel for what's going on in America when I was going to graduate school now a few years ago our neighbors to the West were Jewish our neighbors to the east our next door neighbors to the east were Chinese Buddhists and just a few houses down the street was a Muslim family and our kids went to school with their kids the world has changed a lot but we wouldn't know that by looking at the time graphic and of course no piece of information can give us everything we need but when we start to think of the world a little bit differently in those terms it brings us back to the second question that I'm asking today what kind of people do we need to be to change the world that we see this was Illustrated so well a couple of weeks ago you may have seen this 60 Minutes segment um Michael Lewis has written another Blockbuster in entitled Flash Boys he Chronicles the story of a group of Wall Street Traders who began to realize that something was wrong uh in the very high volume very rapid trading system that's now all computerized it's digitized maybe some of you saw this segment and they began to realize that some really high volume firms had invested in the highest speed fiber optic cable and because they were using that cable they were actually getting a little bit of a jump on their competitors and so they could digitally see what their competitors were doing with regard to what stocks they wanted to buy those people would put in an order these really high volume really fast Traders could see that could jump ahead of them in line purchase the same same stock and then in a matter of a few seconds sell it back to those Traders at a little bit of a profit now if you're talking per unit price it's just a matter of a few cents but if you're talking about millions and millions of shares that they sell quickly it's a lot of money multiplied millions of dollars so a a group of those Traders decided that they were going to start their own Stock Exchange the investors exchange and the the man inter interviewed in the 60-minute segment that stood out to me the most is Brad katsuyama who left a very good job with the Royal Bank of Canada in order to get involved in this business and so the uh 60 Minutes interviewing interviewer was asking him about the success of the company why is this startup Stock Exchange working so well this is what he said we're selling trust we're selling trans parency what kind of people do we need to be to change the world that we see now technology is of course very important but we do tend to think of world change primarily through technological change and advance but here in the midst of very high technology business we have an example of someone who says let's pay attention to the people Factor to the people dimension of this situation Jeffrey D saaks is a name you may recognize he's a an award-winning Economist a couple years ago he wrote a book entitled the price of civilization Reawakening American virtue and prosperity now he knows the technology and the and the technical aspects of the economy but this book is actually a moral Vision in which he us uses the Buddhist concept of mindfulness to sketch a vision for how we could actually help improve economic conditions for people around the world the concept of mindfulness he says mindfulness makes us aware of the suffering of others and that awareness evokes compassion and compassion leads to action so the book reads a little bit like an extended sermon a strong moral Vision that grapples with real life economic problems but from a different perspective more recently I saw the interview of another Economist who teaches at NYU this economist William easterly is a Christian Economist and he too is worried about the effects of the way things are going on the most vulnerable and marginalized and so he has written a book entitled The Tyranny of the experts economists dictators and the Forgotten rights of the poor again paying attention to technology he also says this the idea that we can have a purely technical approach to resolving the problems of poverty without any moral implications is an illusion what kind of people do we need to be in order to change the world we see now you know I'm the chaplain here so I have a vested interest in religion but I think one of the beautiful characteristics of SMU what gives us a singular opportunity to engage these questions is our religious affiliation we can combine the technical knowhow of the experts and the students who are coming here to gain that expertise we can combine that with a robust conversation about how we see the world about what people are made of and about what kind of people we need to be to change that world it's an exciting Vision that's why World Changers shaped here is such a good slogan Jesus said to his disciples to whom much is given much is required I actually hear that statement made around campus we are aware those of us who work here ATU we are aware that we've been given much we know the responsibility we have we've been given much in terms of Financial Resources but we've also been given much in terms of people resources and we can think of our faculty they are definitely resources but today I want us to think particularly of the students who are our resources we are being given much they come to us from all across the country indeed from around the world they come here to study so that they can go change the world what kind of people will they be what kind of change will they affect that's a question we need to answer thank you