We Are Not Enemies, But Friends

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I have always taken a keen interest in Chinese culture and the Chinese people. It probably began watching martial arts movies late at night on television, the classic ones that told stories based in old imperial China. As I got into reading more, I found that many aspects of Eastern philosophy appealed to me, and I saw many things that I respected and admired in Asian culture generally, but particularly in the Chinese.

Today, the United States is in a trade war with China, and while it is highly unlikely to happen between two heavily armed nuclear powers, trade wars always present a risk that they will escalate into actual military conflict. As we all know, this would be suicidal for both sides, as the trade war will be if we drag it on long enough.  My fellow Americans, it will be a bad day if you show up to Wal-Mart and its empty.  Hell, a lot of stores would be empty if China said, "You don't want our goods? Ok, fine."  Just like we should have learned in Vietnam, people from historically impoverished and oppressed nations can take tough times longer than we can.  We can't go on this way.

But we might go on this way without an intervention, because we as humans have a long history of self-sabotage, so we can never think that a global nuclear war can't happen, or that some little gray aliens will step in and stop us. They would probably just say, “We tried to tell them. What do they say in that little country blowing up right there? Que sera sera.”

While some wars are true contests between incompatible value systems, I believe the conflict between the United States and China is largely a misunderstanding. And I believe it is mostly—mostly—our fault here in America. I feel this way because of a rather unique experience that I have had.

My work has brought me in contact with a great many Chinese nationals who have come to America to work as scientists. Because of my interest in China, I've had conversations with some of these people, particularly about some of the things that the Chinese government does that appear troublesome to me and to most Americans. These conversations were enlightening and I want to talk about a few of them.

One of China's most controversial policies in the West is the One-Child policy. It feels highly objectionable to Westerners that the state should try to control the reproductive decisions of individuals. But while I still would like to see a different policy, my view about it changed once I understood its origins. Most Americans don't know this, so I will explain.

China has never been a militarily aggressive nation. Throughout its history, China has been a victim of military aggression from its neighbors. There is no reason to blame the modern Japanese as they have moved on from their belligerent imperial past, but for decades, maybe centuries, Japan did China like the United States did Latin America in the 19^th and early 20^th century. Worse than that, probably. Closer to how Spain did Latin America in the 16^th century.

Americans have so quickly forgotten that China was our ally in World War II, and it would have been much more difficult to prosecute the war against Japan without China's support. But in the Cold War years, American leaders, including my hero John F Kennedy, were constantly making the most aggressive anti-Communist statements you can imagine, and launching military forays all over the world.

Now, for a country like China that had been overrun by Japan so many times, and we had just vanquished them, and helped to defeat the fearsome Nazi war machine, how would you expect them to feel when American leaders, now possessing nuclear weapons, are saying that they will not allow the form of government that they have established to exist, and we are showing that we mean it in nearby Vietnam?

Now, I knew all of this, but what I did not know is why China's population exploded to the size that it is. Mao Tse-Tung, fearing a US invasion and knowing that the US had far superior military technology, asked or ordered the people of China to have as many children as they could so that China would have a manpower advantage that might be able to successfully repel a US invasion that he (logically based on American behavior) felt was inevitable. I mean, what was China, or any Communist or socialist country, supposed to do? Just say “Okay America” and disband their government because we don't like the way they run things? It's absurd.

So the Chinese population exploded in response to Chairman Mao's request. But when Richard Nixon secured a detente with China, this freight train of population growth had to be stopped somehow, because even if the Chinese had just returned to their normal reproduction rate, there would be two billion of them or more by now, and back then, before China industrialized, we would have seen the greatest mass starvation that the world has ever known.

So I don't endorse Chairman Mao. I don't like Communism as a form of government. But we as Americans have to step back and admit that we were acting crazy during the Cold War and nations that differed with us ideologically were justified in being afraid after seeing Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed. Hell, our military and intelligence services were interfering in the affairs of DEMOCRACIES in Iran and The Congo!  But we as Americans don't want to own this.

Hell, we killed far over a million civilians in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and an estimated three million CIVILIANS in North Korea during the Korean War.  It was so bad in North Korea that Douglas MacArthur, hardly a pacifist with a weak stomach, saw the devastation and came to Congress to beg them to stop the bombing campaign  But yet, Americans are so uneducated in history and global affairs that they don't even know why North Korea is mad at us.  

We excoriate the Nazis constantly, and rightly so, for the ten million civilians (and probably more than that) who died at their hand, but including Korea, southeast Asia, Iraq and Afghanistan, America has killed at least five million civilians since the end of World War II.  China didn't have a right to be scared?

So this is just one example. Americans hear about the One-Child policy and some of its unfortunate effects and think that the Chinese government is just evil and hates children, when the problem that the One Child policy was intended to fix was precipitated by America's belligerent anti-Communist rhetoric.

Another example is China's restrictions on free speech and censorship of the internet. I was talking with a young woman from China who was a patent lawyer and, I believe a chemist. Perhaps she was a biologist. She was excellent at her job, one of those people that had all the most challenging projects land on her desk. She didn't talk much because I think she felt insecure about her English, and seemed to be probably just shy on top of that.

But I engaged her one day in a conversation about China, because I was interested in how she felt about it, given that she had come to America. She loved her country and intended to return. This was one thing that I've noticed over the years. So many Chinese nationals come to America to work and to study, but most of them want to go home at some point. Americans think this is because of some threat levied against their family members by the Chinese government, but that is preposterous.

That may have been the case decades ago before the US and China had the close trade relationship that we do. But the Chinese government would never murder or imprison the family of an educated professional who moved to America. The US government would put so much pressure on them over that, it would make their head spin, and it would crush their relationships with American corporations.

The fact is, Chinese people by and large love their country just like Americans do. And I bet, if you took comprehensive polls in both nations, administered by an objective country like say France, I bet the Chinese are collectively happier with their government than we Americans are. Americans think this is because they are “brainwashed”. I've spent a lot of time talking to Chinese people, and even more time talking to Americans, and the Americans sound more brainwashed to me.

It just that Chinese people are more practical. This girl explained to me, in a nation with so many people, censorship is practical, because the kinds of social divisions that arise in America because of all the voices in the public discourse, in a nation like China, which has over four times our population, it would be chaos and would tear the country apart. Which is exactly what many in the West would like to see.

A basic principle of government that we say believe in here in the West is “consent of the governed”, but I believe that today this is being practiced more in China than it is here. What percentage of Americans consent to Donald Trump as president? Most Chinese submit voluntarily to the things that their government does because they recognize that a nation with over a billion people has unique problems that a nation with three hundred million does not have.

Most of the Chinese nationals I have met and talked to here in America support their government, even if they don't agree with everything it does. America has often fallen victim to a particular phenomenon where we listen too much to radical factions from countries that we are at odds with, particularly Communist countries. We bring these radical right-wing ex-patriots from China, Cuba, Russia and Iran and they tell stories about horrors that are taking place in those countries that distort the reality.  We listen to Christian missionaries who believe it is their right to preach the gospel to the entire planet, but they wouldn't accept it if the Iranian mullahs dispatched people in a large organized campaign to recruit Americans to radical Islam.

Again, everybody who knows anything knows that the last form of government that I like is central planning Communism. I can point to many things that the governments of those countries I just named have done that I find abhorrent. But America's view of these nations is distorted and irrational because of our ideological dogmatism and our pathological Islamophobia and anti-Communism. 

One thing that China has been doing that I think is great and that I believe we should emulate here in America is the construction of purpose-built cities. China is doing this for their own reasons, to try to move their large poor rural populations into cities to work better jobs for better pay and to keep up with the growing demand for Chinese products. But here in America, we could do this to help solve some of our own problems.

The biggest social problem in America today is that we are so polarized. Really, not polarized but Balkanized. We got evangelicals, the LGBTQ community, anarcho-capitalist neoconservatives, White nationalist militias, Black Power wannabe revolutionaries, feminists, throwback cavemen, Latino immigrants, isolationist xenophobes, new age hippie communists, the rich, the poor, all at one another's throats.

Most of this stems from genuine disagreements about values, not just simply hate. It turns into hate because people feel so strongly that they are right. I would propose a national project where we construct about a dozen brand new cities as China has done, and let some of these competing groups build exemplar societies to show their values in action, with the freedom to make laws autonomously to some degree, as China has done in certain of their territories.

I would propose an LGBTQ city, an evangelical Christian city, a laissez faire capitalist city, a female city, a “bro” city, a families-only city, a child-free city, a sex, drugs and rock'n'roll hippie city, a Black city, a White nationalist city, a Latino city, and a Jewish city. I'd also like to see a real territory for Native Americans, large enough to let them try to restore their original way of life.  I mean, seriously, is it really that big a hassle for the few White people in the Dakotas to leave and let the Native Americans have just that much back?  I'm sure they would trade ownership of all their casinos for that, if we gave them a permanent treaty of autonomy before the United Nations.

Now, I would not expect these cities to be totally segregated, but rather, that the controlling group will be allowed to set their own rules, even in contravention of Federal law, within reason. These White nationalists don't want to be around people of color? Let's build them a big sparkling new city in Idaho and let them do their thing. The White nationalists may want to exclude everybody non-White, butt the LGBTQ city might welcome any straight people who are comfortable living in a city where LGBTQ people are the majority and set the laws and the way of life. The Evangelical city can require prayer in school, and prohibit homosexuality if they want to. The laissez-faire capitalist city can be free of federal taxes...but if you want to travel or do business outside of the city you are going to be hit with HEAVY taxes.

After all Black people have been through in this country, I don't think a city of their own where they can set the rules would be too much to ask. We as Black people complain about the police and drug laws and so much else, let's see how we do when its ALL our responsibility and we don't have any excuses. I say we, but I'm not interested in that city. I want to go to Girl City or LGBTQ city as long as there are plenty of girls there.

I love children, but a lot of people find them annoying. Let's allow people who don't want kids to have their own city where kids are not allowed, but you have to be certified infertile before you go in, so we don't get a horrible infanticide situation. And for those who value family life and don't like single or childless people, build a city where you have to have a family to live there.

Let's let the macho man bros have their own city, and if there are girls who actually enjoy getting gang-raped at frat parties and catcalled on the street, you can go live there too.  I'm sure they would welcome you.  After all that Latinos have contributed as the workers over the past few decades in this society, I think they deserve a city too, an oasis protected from America's hypocritical hatred for them.

And Jews gave us Hollywood, nuclear power, and innumerable contributions to literature and the arts. Jews have been a big part of making America great. They deserve a city, and no, New York is not it. Just as San Francisco is a lot less gay than you think if you haven't been there, New York is a lot less Jewish than you think. A Jewish model city in America would do a lot to help vanquish the scourge of antisemitism.

We don't have to stop at twelve. There are other ideas that I think would be interesting. I'd like to see a large city built in western Kansas or Nebraska. Why? I think it is a real problem how we have become so disconnected from the way our food is produced, and I think this is a part of the coastal/middle America divide. Midwesterners see coastal people as out of touch, and are probably right that we wouldn't even be able to figure out how to feed ourselves without them. But we see their way of life as antiquated and exclusionary because they so often seem unwilling to embrace diversity.

I think there are a lot of people who might enjoy working on a farm or a ranch, but they just don't want to live in a small town. Imagine if you built a city like San Francisco (minus the water) in the middle of Western Kansas such that people could live in the city and commute to work on a farm or ranch. I think a lot of people would sign up for this, and I think that city would develop a unique and interesting culture. Work on the farm all day, and dress up and go out to a fine restaurant and symphony at night.  The city should have fixed boundaries and only be allowed to grow upward, so it does not overrun the small towns and change the way of life in the region.

I think this would be a great initiative to allow the communities that are so divided in America to showcase their values, and I also think it would be a learning experience for everyone. In each city, they would discover that there are some things that they thought would work that don't. Let's take away the excuse that the government or other people are interfering and, within reason, let people try putting their values into practice. Obviously, we wouldn't let people legalize human sacrifice, but anything that is a topic of division and debate between reasonable people, let's let them try their way.

I know that some are already thinking of various problems that might be presented. How do you handle children that are born in a city and don't want to stay? The fact is, we too often reject new initiatives because of problems we foresee when these problems are not anything that doesn't already exist. We already have kids born in less than ideal circumstances, in various places throughout the world. Yes, there would be challenges in such an ambitious project. But if it is done right, the benefits would far outweigh the downsides.

The most immediate benefit is that it would be a massive jobs project that would get our economy rolling. Construction work is sporadic and there are always people with construction skills ready to work. We could begin to resolve our differences over immigration with Mexico by saying offering to them that if they teach would-be migrants basic reading and math skills, and train them in a construction trade, we will give them and their family a two-year work visa and if they prove themselves a good hand, we will give them permanent resident status after that time.

I know this proposal might concern some environmentalists on its face, and I understand. But we can do this intelligently. Obviously, we don't want to go around chopping down forests or building on top of critical ecosystems. But we can find places to build. Look at Las Vegas. We built a thriving city in the middle of one of the world's harshest deserts, and it works. There are plenty of good places to build, and I'd like to see a green city as well, a city powered completely by wind and solar, constructed from sustainable materials, with no gasoline cars, urban farms, the world's best public transportation system and a mandated 50/50 ratio between developed space and open space.

It would be an inspirational endeavor as I think all Americans would be excited about at least one of these new cities. I'd actually be excited to see what would happen in all of them. It would create a domestic and foreign tourism boom. We could make all of these cities showcases to demonstrate the highest capabilities of American genius. And by building these cities from the ground up, we would be able to install new technologies that are not practical to retrofitted into an established city.

It would also say to China that we can learn from them. They have already learned much from us. While China's social policies remain Communist, their economy is essentially capitalist. China has conceded that argument to us, but we'll never concede any argument to them. China has allowed Western corporations to operate freely within their borders. And many Americans don't know, with all this talk of imports from China, that around half of the goods imported from China are products of an American parent company. So much of the money we spend on Chinese goods is still coming back to America.

If we complete this project, I would propose a final step to seal a renewal of our friendship with China: we would invite the Chinese to build a Chinese city in America, and China would invite us to build an American city there. It would be something more significant than the “sister cities” thing, which I always felt was somewhat empty.

These projects would do so much to bring our two countries together. We would need Chinese consultants to advise us on how to build a city from the ground up, the challenges and pitfalls that they encountered that we can learn from. Respect is a very important value in Chinese culture, and not so important in American culture. This would show the Chinese that we have the capacity to express genuine respect to them.

Some Americans would see me as a traitor for saying these things. I love America, but our biggest weakness as a country is that most of us think were perfect. Too many of us have bought into this idea of “American exceptionalism”, taking it beyond the extent to which it it true.

America is exceptional, though, and I think most of the world recognizes this, and still loves us despite some of the abhorrent things our government has done, often with our popular support. When you look at all the things that make the modern world, so many of them were invented in America, and it bears noting that a great many of the inventors were immigrants from other countries. This is what made America great, that it welcomed people. But now as the world is increasingly globalizing, too many Americans are becoming increasingly isolationist and xenophobic. This has to change.

Almost all Americans actually love Chinese culture, we just don't really think about it. Chinese martial arts have become a part of American culture. Women wear clothes made of fabrics printed in the Chinese style. We quote Sun-Tzu and the Tao. I see Mandarin characters everywhere. Though some of what we eat may be questionable in its authenticity, most Americans love Chinese cuisine. And all our homes are filled with goods made by Chinese hands.

When China first entered the world of industrial manufacturing, many Chinese products were of poor quality. This is true of anyone just starting out at anything. Americans have remembered this and it is stuck in our minds, but I have noticed that today, the majority of Chinese products are very well made. In the past, something would feel cheap and break, and we would turn over expecting to see it made in China, and it often was.

Today, more often I notice that things I own are very high quality, and I look and see that they are made in China. This makes sense, because Chinese culture emphasizes the connection with nature, the idea that materials too have a life. Chinese people are diligent and thorough, and take great pride in the work their do as a matter of family and cultural honor instead of simply personal ego and pride. It just took them a little while to learn how to manufacture industrial products, because they had never done it before.

I started to think differently as I looked at these “Made In...” labels on the things that I own. They are a connection to the world, a connection to some person who sat at a table or stood on a factory floor to make something for us, while we enjoy luxuries that they will never see. And all they ask is a few dollars, and a good meal and safe place to lay their head. I've thought that I'd like to go on a world tour and try to meet the people who made my favorite things, and tell them the places those things have been. One day when the world is at peace, not just between nations, but between all of us.

Right now, the US and China are the two most powerful countries on earth, and many in both countries consider the other to be an enemy. But only a few short years ago, we were friends. When the two most powerful entities in any arena come together, that is when miracles can happen. If we could form a partnership again, that would be an opportunity that has never existed in world history, an opportunity that could secure peace and prosperity, not just for this time, but for all time.

The world is always coming together to lament tragedies—hurricanes, terrorist attacks, tsunamis, earthquakes, famines—but we never have anything to celebrate. What if we did something beautiful together, and then could celebrate the light, instead of weeping in the darkness? That has been my dream, a global celebration of an achievement in which we all share.

I believe the only way we will survive is if we become one human family. That doesn't mean that we all like each other. That doesn't mean that we all agree with each other. But it means, as is the case in good families, that we all love and support one another, but let the others be free to live their own lives. There is room enough on this planet for all of us. The entire world population could stand in a crowd in the US state of Rhode Island. The entire world population could live in the US state of Texas, if each person had the same amount of space that the average resident of Tokyo has. The world isn't overcrowded; we're just living the wrong way.

I can't say that I have traveled the entire world.  I've only been to seven countries, while a great many people have been to dozens.   But what I do feel is unique about my experience is that I have had personal relationships with people from a wider variety of backgrounds than all but a few people.  I've had professional or personal relationships with Black people from inner city projects, and White multimillionaires whose last names are probably on products in your house or driveway.  I went to school with poor White kids from rural communities who were suffering as bad as inner city kids.  I know athletes and entertainers, and the homeless people in my neighborhood.  I know people from at least 50 countries around the world.

And what I have learned in all of this is that despite the external differences, fundamentally, the human condition is the same.  Like JFK said, we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal.  Wherever I've been, and whoever I've been with, people laugh and cry, work and play, feel sadness, anger and joy, live, love, and die.  So why do we let these ultimately trivial ideological and cultural differences divide us so?  It isn't that ideas are unimportant. But no idea matters in a world ravaged by hate, conflict and division.  There would be no ideological differences that matter in a world with no food, no clean water, and skies turned purple from radioactivity.  

I know there is a lot of optimism right now. It seems to many that the bad guys are on the run, when people are coming out and expressing their true selves for the first time, when women and men who have been abused are able to speak up and be heard, when a teenage girl stands in front of the leaders of the world and issues them their righteous condemnation for betraying the planet. But I would remind you all, it felt the same way for a while in the Sixties, but then, like Hunter S. Thompson wrote, the wave broke, and rolled back.

Eight years after we elected John F. Kennedy, we elected Richard Nixon. And even after the fiasco that the Nixon administration was, seven years after he was gone, we elected Ronald Reagan and let a lot of the same actors from the Nixon administration back into power. We must not forget how quickly things can change. We cannot get lazy, or complacent or frightened and let this happen again. This time we must finish the job. There may not be another chance. Forever we've been talking about moving forward into the future. It's time we go.

What we need that we've never had before is a project. A project that has a coherent, detailed plan that we can all believe in. Not a edict, forced upon one side by the other, or a compromise that leaves both sides feeling unsatisfied. We must work together to find a path forward that will make all of our opposing factions say, “Hmm, this is even better than what I had in mind.”

I think this has been the central failure of the past. The ethically and morally right side has won most of the world's conflicts. That is why we keep making progress. The arc of history does bend toward justice. But when we win, we always try to shut out or destroy the losing side, and this wound festered, and eventually reemerges so that it always seems that we are taking, not one step forward and two steps back, but two steps forward and one step back, such that progress is painfully slow. But when we all embrace each other, that is when we leap forward at light speed.

There are two people that embody my ethics of how we should treat one another. Each of them, I have seen only once in my life. When I was in Africa, in a town called Bobo-Dialassou, while waiting for a transport bus I saw a mother holding a young boy who was starving and appeared to be on the verge of death. Burkina Faso is poor, but most people are eating, though perhaps not well. I had never seen anything like that except on television during the East African famines of the 80s and 90s. I pointed it out to my friend, a Peace Corps volunteer who I had come there to visit. She casually said to me, “There is nothing we can do.”

I followed her lead in that as I did in just about all things. Aside from the fact that she was the smartest person I'd met at that point in my life, she had been in the country for a year and I didn't know the landscape, so I didn't object, and we went on. But I never forgot about it, and as the years went on, I grew to feel bitterly disappointed in her and myself.  Of course, we could do something. I was a kid who went to college with the daughter of the sitting president and the founders of Google. She was working for the Peace Corps. We could have taken that kid to the hospital, gone to the US consulate and brought him back to America for medical treatment. We couldn't have saved Africa, just the two of us, but we could have saved him, and we didn't.

I don't know what became of that boy, if he lived or died. I don't like to think about it because I know that his chances weren't good. But I often find myself wondering if he somehow made it, and where he is, what he is doing. I've told the story many times to let people know what is going on in other parts of the world, from someone who has been there and has seen it. That boy could have been the next Albert Einstein, the next Steve Jobs. It was this girl who talked to me about the need to preserve human capital only a few years before that.

But I can't and don't blame her. I'm older. I went to a better college. I grew up with a stronger support network, corrupted though it was. But my instinct to follow a smart woman, especially one that I loved, was so strong, that the one time I should have said, “No, this is what we are going to do”, I didn't. And it might have cost someone their life. Perhaps I was put there to save that boy, and I failed in my mission.

But I can make excuses for myself, sure. It's not my responsibility...I was only 23...the geopolitical forces creates this reality...I don't have any money or power, blah blah blah blah blah. But go look at the list of names of people were going to Stanford right around then in 2000, when I was still on campus most days even though I wasn't taking classes anymore, and my excuse that I didn't have power falls flat.

I can make other, more emotional excuses. That was the same day, on the truck ride to Bobo-Dialassou, that she had told me that she didn't love me, and was going to marry someone else, after I'd come literally around the world to see her, expecting that we were going to embark on a romance. But if that's my excuse, my priorities would be all messed up, wouldn't they?

So I think about that boy, and then I think about the night I passed Jane Galt in Las Vegas, two people whose names at the time I didn't know and I walked by both of them when I should have stopped. A poor starving African boy in one of the darkest corners of the world, and I, the descendant of kidnapped Africans enjoying a luxurious life in the West, walked by him. And a beautiful rich “White” Jewish girl under the sky of a city with a light so bright that it reaches into the heavens, and I, a screenwriter with a script that was perfect for her and a single man looking for a wife, I walked by her too. I can say I didn't know who she was, but I surely would have recognized her if I had stopped to talk.

Everyone thinks, she's rich, she's famous, she'll be fine. Marilyn Monroe wasn't fine. Robin Williams wasn't fine. Chris Cornell wasn't fine. We all look at a poor kid in Africa, and think he doesn't matter. But Steve Jobs was a kid that someone gave away and another family embraced him. We all need love, help and support.

It's been hard for a lot of people to understand the way I've lived by life, because I've seemed to pass up so much opportunity to join the elite caste, but yet I've never committed to a life working only for the underprivileged. That is because I am committed to the belief that every human being has something to give that we need, and that every human being, no matter how high or how low in society, is entitled to love, peace justice and a voice in how society operates. If someone cannot speak, there should be someone else who will stand in the breach for them and say, “I will speak up for this person.”. No matter the sacrifice it requires of me, I will not sell out that African boy for Jane Galt, nor sell out Jane Galt for him. I just hope I can find them both again.

I never wanted to be a leader, because I never wanted to shut others out of their credit. Other people made me what I am. Almost everything I know, I learned from others, whether it was words left in a book by someone long dead, or a 66 year old mentally disabled man named Danny who taught me that I need to marry the woman that I love. I've never wanted to be able to say, “I did it”. I want to be able to say: We did it.

When we learn to work together and value one another, we'll see that all our lives get better, whether we're at the bottom or at the top, or anywhere in between. There is so much talk of sacrifice, but the sacrifice we need to make is not the material sacrifice that so many people fear, but the ego sacrifice of admitting, none of us have all the answers and we are all wrong sometimes. When we realize that we all need each other, and that both the poorest kid in a third world slum and the crotchety old billionaire cloistered in his mansion have pieces to the puzzle that we need, then we can really begin the project of making this planet a place that we can all be proud of. And then, we can have our first global human celebration.

When we have finished this project, and can proudly say that we have established a new world that embraces everyone and provides opportunity for all, we should erect a monument, and inscribe upon it the names of all the people who lived from the start of it to the end. We should even dispatch envoys to isolated tribes to tell them about the project, ask for their ideas, and when we have finished, ask them how they would like to be identified on the monument.

We must build this out of something strong, something that we hope can stand for centuries...millennia. It will be a monument that we can all visit to remind ourselves, when tough times inevitably come again, that we can solve anything together. And if some tragedy should befall us, and we vanish, we can leave word of what we've done to anyone would might wander by, and read the inscription above our names:

Dedicated to the 7,328,282,173 leaders of the 21^st Century Project, who by working together, at long last brought civilization to Earth.

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