Finding the next Einstein
why philanthropy is a necessity, not a luxury
Do you know why Warren Buffett had pledged most of his fortune to philanthropy? There was a key defining moment in his life when he visited China for the first time, and saw some people tugging boats:
“There could have been another Bill Gates among those men pulling our boat. They were born here, and they were destined to spend their lives tugging those boats the way they did ours. They didn’t have a chance. It was pure luck that we had a shot at the brass ring.”
— The Snowball
Philanthropy is often perceived as a humanitarian desire. We all belong to the human race, so it is only right that we care about our fellow human beings who are living below the poverty line of $2 a day and have no access to basic necessities we often take for granted.
As a global whole we do have the resources to solve poverty. There is simply a lack of urgency and we are simply not caring enough. Most of us go on with our daily lives without thinking of the people few thousand miles away deprived of clean water, food or basic healthcare, much less the right to an education or the opportunity to participate in the global economy.
We are facing some of the most complex issues in human history, and the burden of solving them lies upon the elite of the first world countries. It is shortsighted to assume that the best minds of our generations will only come from the first world.
Warren Buffett could be right. There could have been another Bill Gates among those people tugging the boats, an Einstein out there going without food, or a Marie Curie deprived of access to education. What are we missing out on, by continuing to be so narrow in our assumptions?
Defying the odds
Once every now and then, there are stories of people who defied all odds against their socio-economic conditions — such as the four undocumented Mexican kids who beat competition from MIT, or the 15 year old who taught himself how to build a generator out of trash. No electricity? Not an issue, he would just teach himself how to reverse-engineer batteries and make them.
Justus Uwayesu lost both of his parents in the Rwandian genocide when he was only 3, now he is attending Harvard:
“He is an example of the potential buried even in humanity’s most hopeless haunts, and a sobering reminder of how seldom it is mined.” source
Similarly, there are some young women doing great work for their local communities, but the reality is, education is still a matter of life and death for them. We have had amazing women who changed the face of our history, imagine the impact if we could give more little girls access to books?
These stories demonstrate that tremendous talent can come from anywhere. If a kid in Sierra Lone can teach himself engineering even though he grew up without having access to electricity, what will it be like if more of them have access to basic infrastructure?
Diversity matters in problem-solving
The more people we can include in the global economy, the more diverse we are as a collective consciousness when it comes to solving the world’s greatest problems. Research has consistently shown that diverse groups of people out-perform homogeneous groups:
“It seems obvious that a group of people with diverse individual expertise would be better than a homogeneous group at solving complex, nonroutine problems. It is less obvious that social diversity should work in the same way — yet the science shows that it does.” source
History has proven us the same. Advances in science, technology and math came from multiple civilizations all over the world. The world as we know it would not exist, if innovation only came from one group of people.
Imagining the future
Giving every human being their basic human rights is not just for their dignity, it is crucial to our survival as a human race.
How many bright young minds are we missing out on? How many of them could be on their way to becoming scientists, engineers, inventors, like the kids above, if they have just a little bit more of the opportunities we take for granted?
Once again, we face tremendously complex issues in our future. The planet is heating up, and we are consuming resources as if they are infinite. We need more people working on solving the world’s sustainability issues than trying to create the next mobile social network. We have to understand the impact of having a grossly imbalanced economy with rising income inequality. We do not need to be economists to understand that the global economy is only sustainable with more people capable of spending on it, not less. We are all in the same game, but only some of us can play in it. It is not only massively unfair, it is economically inefficient.
What will it be like, if poverty no longer exists? What if every single one of us has access to all basic human rights, and instead of worrying about food on the table, we can think about what to learn and create instead? The more people we have solving diverse problems, the better off we are as a whole.
The capacity to solve problems should not be a privilege. It should not be determined by the virtue of our birth. Not everybody wants to change the world, but billions of people in this world do not even have the liberty to make that choice.
We are depriving ourselves of our own potential. We have to do better.
