I was privileged this past week to deliver commencement addresses for Bastyr University on their campuses in San Diego, and Seattle, to a combined audience of several thousand, celebrating the graduation of hundreds of students receiving various bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in the health professions.

My job was not just to celebrate and congratulate the graduates, pleasant though that might have been for us both. My job as commencement speaker was to provoke and harangue, goad and attempt to inspire. I had only faint hope of achieving all that, but in accepting the invitation, I had pledged my best effort.

Accordingly, and in service to that mission, I asked them to consider these lines from the famous poem If, by Rudyard Kipling: If you can bear to hear the truth youve spoken, Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools ...

Theres a lot there to ponder, I noted, in a post-truth world of alternative facts. There is a lot to those lines in a world where every opinion mistakes itself for expertise; every voice can access the megaphone of cyberspace; and every assertion can amplify itself in echo chambers populated by those attending carefully only to the opinions they already own, drowning out all else.

Advertisement

We all presume that Kipling is speaking to us, and thus that the truth is our truth. But if everyone is the person to whom Kipling is speaking if each of us owns the truth then who is the knave, who twists the truth? Who is the fool taken in by such willful distortion? Recall the precautionary lyrics, courtesy of The Main Ingredient: everybody plays the fool, some time

Sometimes our view of the truth can be too narrow. Those of us who embrace and espouse holism see just that liability in staunch conventionalists who refute any truths that reside outside the bounds of their comfortable conventions.

Sometimes, though, our view of truth can be too broad. Not all that glitters is gold; not every therapeutic modality with intrinsic appeal and vocal proponents actually works. In the pursuit of truth, we must keep open minds but not ever so open our brains flop out!

We can all too readily believe what isnt true, and play the fool. In our fervor, we can pass along that misguided conviction, playing the knave- and making fools of others.

Sometimes, our view of truth is too proprietary. Many of us try on our own to be that source of truth that rises above the shouts of the knaves, and reorients the gullible fools. But in this age of incessant din and endless echoes of every opinion no one voice can reliably deliver the signal of truth; no one voice can overmaster the din. Only in our unity is there sufficient strength to try.

That, in turn, brought me to the one truth of my own I presumed to share with the graduates and their loved ones, reflecting on my own efforts to do good in the world. I believe the best measure of our worth is not how much better we can be than average, but how much we do to make the average better.

What difference does it make if you know that health care should be a right, but society treats it as a privilege? What difference does it make if you know that access to care should be universal, but it remains privileged? What difference does it make if you know that holistic models of care can be kinder and gentler and highly effective, but the system is unreformed? What difference does it make if you know that climate change is real, and we are complicit in it, but our culture remains committed to doing far too little far too late? What difference does it make if you know that multicolored marshmallows are no part of a 6-year-olds complete breakfast, but Madison Avenue doesnt give a damn?

Gertrude Stein famously said: a difference, to be a difference, must make a difference. To make a difference, we must make the mean different. We must raise the average. Society does not do the bidding of outliers; it heeds the tolling at the center of the bell curve. Society, and culture, regress to the mean. They are governed by the popular imperatives, not the best informed.

Like John Donnes famous church bell, the bell curve tolls for us all. We will rise or fall together.

The true measure of our worth is not how much better we can be than average, but how much we can do to make the average better. So I called upon these new graduates to put their shoulders to the unyielding line drawn through the mean and lift but to start tomorrow. The challenges will be there, waiting for them. Today, I suggested they simply honor the milestone and their personal triumph with family and friends.

Their youth and energy and idealism renewed my own hopes for the future. I was privileged to be there to say to them: we need you, welcome, and congratulations.

Dr. David L. Katz;www.davidkatzmd.com; founder, True Health Initiative

More here:

Dr. David Katz, Preventive Medicine: Truth about the bell curve and health - New Haven Register