Happy birthday mama ??

October 24, 2019: On the occasion of my mama’s 1st birthday in heaven (she would have been 67 years old today), sharing the speech I delivered at the French Chamber of Commerce last May. I love you so much mama ?? I miss you every day ??

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First of all, I would like to thank the French Chamber of Commerce for giving me this great opportunity and privilege to speak before you today about something that I care deeply about. This passion and advocacy of mine is driven by something deeply personal. You see just a few days ago, my mother, Elizabeth del Barrio Bernal, embarked on her journey to heaven. She was 66 years old. She was an English teacher and speech and drama adviser for 35 years at the Philippine Science High School where she spent her best years teaching some of our country’s best minds the beauty and grandeur of the humanities - literature, culture, art, particularly, the performing arts. She believed in the dream of a more enlightened world and she worked towards this dream through her own brand of advocacy, and by nurturing the minds and hearts of 35 batches of our nation’s future scientists and leaders. She was a firm believer in the liberating power of art - that humans, when they are allowed to be at their best, when they are able to access and express their innermost thoughts and feelings, when they are able to develop their full emotional potential and truly self-actualize, are capable of doing the most amazing things.

Art, whether it be prose or poetry, music or dance, language or code, play or sport, painting or performance, is the highest and purest form of human expression. Art has the power to educate the learner, disturb the complacent, console the hurting, and emancipate the powerless. And this liberation can be personal, political, social and spiritual. For it is only when we can truly express ourselves that we can be truly free and truly human. Art is primal and primordial, and inherently intimate and inclusive - it invites you and draws you in, it summons both the artist and the spectator to commune in a special and personal way. It really is a ‘conversation’ - the artist shares her story and the observer contributes her own experience to the narrative, making the insights unique and personal for every individual, while also being innately communal.

As my mother lay unconscious in the hospital bed, I talked to her about my dream of continuing these ‘conversations’. While her conversations through art were sometimes lively and animated through discussions in the classroom or performance art, they could also sometimes be silent and contemplative, the way a good read can hit you with a flash of inspiration or insight - but both ways, loudly and unapologetically, remove barriers to thought and open the mind. And so I thought, if I could create something analogous to my mother’s advocacy, by building a forum for the open exchange of ideas, where people can freely speak their mind and safely share themselves through reflection and conversation, then maybe that could help break down the barriers that keep individuals and organizations from fully realizing their potential and truly actualizing themselves, the same way my mother sought to liberate ideas and emotions through art. Through dialectic and dialogue, which one philosopher refers to as the art of being human, we can free our minds from the bondage of traditional thinking and collectively unleash ideas beyond what each of us can individually imagine. She seemed to like the idea - while she was unconscious and immobile for 4 days, she nodded her head softly and reassuringly after I shared with her my dream. Then shortly afterwards, she went to heaven.

And so that was the inspiration behind The Human Intelligence Network or THINK. It is really the embodiment of my mother’s dream of a more woke world, but in a different form. THINK is a community of independent thinkers who believe in the limitless creative power of the human mind, the boundless caring capacity of the human heart, and the infinite collective power of diverse minds working together. Backed by advances in technology and information science, THINKers believe that human beings working together are capable of solving the world’s most important problems and unleashing innovation beyond the world’s wildest imagination. THINKers believe in helping people tap into their individual and collective intelligence, by leveraging the power of analytics and rational thinking, and the collective strength of diverse minds working inclusively together, to overcome prejudices, biases, tribalism, silos, politics, bureaucracy, egos, self interest, and other hindrances to freedom of thought and collaboration. That is the dream - a diverse and inclusive community, free from the tyranny of age-old barriers built on a social taxonomy that divides instead of unites - race, gender, class, power, and other social constructs are unnecessary encumbrances to truly being human. By understanding our common humanity and truly seeing the ties that unite instead of the fractures that divide, we can surface ideas that build up individuals and organizations, and unleash all manner of innovation, whether it be technological, social, or cultural, that truly uplift the human condition. Diversity, whether it be along the lines of gender, race, class, power, or other stratifications, necessarily imply cognitive diversity - with each of us having a unique and independent perspective on things allowing us to look at any given problem through different lenses. Inclusion is about creating a safe environment that allows diverse individuals, each with their own abilities and inclinations, and shaped by different pasts and experiences, to contribute to the conversation, without fear of judgment, ridicule or retaliation, to enable true collaboration without the politics of power and control, to ensure that the best ideas emerge and win.

The potential is huge and compelling. Think about it - there are over 7 billion people in the world today - that means 7 billion thinkers - if each of us had at least one brilliant idea in our lifetime, and each of us felt free to share those ideas within our spheres, and each of us felt safe to contribute and build on each other’s ideas, and if each of us could somehow use those ideas to make things within our own influence a little better, wouldn’t that help make a better world?

The challenge is here and upon us. If we all work together, we can make this dream a reality. I humbly invite all of you to join us in this journey.

Thank you very much.