Student Speaker Alexandra Chirinos; Convocation Speaker Max Kash Agro, Plan II '83; Plan II Director, Professor Paul Woodruff	MKA and Darling Wife with Professor Paul Woodruff

Last time I stood in front of crowd this big was about 20 years ago at a free concert we called Hankstock. We wanted a student body president who wouldn’t be tempted by the darker angels of the human heart. So we nominated Hank the Hallucination, a cartoon character. Hank was the brainchild of another P2 graduate, Sam Hurt. Sam painted Hank on my chest and back and I got to be Hank, pretending to be a rock star: "People try to put Hank d-d-ddown, just because he cant be f-f-f-found. Not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation, jus talkin bout my luc-c-ccination..." It was great fun.

Hank’s mortal opponent was Paul Begala. You may know Begala today as the cheerfully liberal brawler on Crossfire. Everytime I hear Paul crab about Bush robbing the election from Gore, I have to laugh. Begala got beaten by a 3 to 1 margin right here, literally, by a dream candidate. And then he had the audacity to challenge the results. Begala’s crack team of politicos proved that the de facto winner was not eligible to serve, because to serve, you had to be sworn in, which Hank couldn’t do, not being blessed with a right hand. I learned early on that politics is a blood sport with little tolerance for vision or visionaries.

Good to be here with Liberal arts students, alumni and faculty. As you, I’m proud to be a liberal arts graduate. We have the skills to question and evaluate, free from the tyranny of dogma. We understand that questionning and a wide open imagination can cause discomfort to those who are content with the status quo. We know that converting our ideals into something real isn’t easy, and the road ahead is fraught with peril, but we embrace the challenge.

At my own graduation in 1983, I listened to Walter Cronkite deliver a very sobering prophecy about "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse." He warned us that War, Pollution, Overpopulation and Famine were coming at us and gathering speed. Unless we changed our ways, he said, our Garden would soon turn to Ash.

Well, 20 years later, I’m happy to report Austin remains a small sleepy college town. War’s been abolished. The air over central Texas has never been fresher or cleaner, and hunger is simply a state of mind.

I am not going to talk about the world going to hell in a handbasket. If nobody listened to Walter Cronkite, the oracle of truth, I’m not sure many will listen to me. I can’t even convince my 7 year old that he won’t grow up to be lean and serene on a diet of Scooby Snacks, Cheetos, and Cocoa Puffs.

I’m going to talk to you this morning about putting your Plan II degree to work so you can achieve a few of your dreams, live well and have plenty of time left over to play. What I call the "Do well, Get well, Raise Hell and Get to Heaven" speech.

All of you have got brains, the smarts. You’ve got the numbers, the GPA, the LSATs, the GMATs. You’ve read the dead poets. You’ve studied Darwin, Einstein, Moby Dick, all the paradigm busters, legends and pioneers. Your braincases are virtual gold minds, waiting to be harvested.

You’ve got heart. You get tingly when the underdog wins, you feel outraged at injustice. You love children and puppies. You were disgusted by the senseless carnage at Omaha Beach and you cannot watch "Shindler’s List" twice. You may have even vowed once to cut back on eating beef after reading Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

You’ve got intestines. But do you have the Guts? Will you defend the principles you espouse? Are you willing to suffer a little embarrasment, even failure? Can you change one heart and one mind, one at a time--starting with your own?

In short, academically, you’re all fairly well rounded graduates, but will you challenge yourself to earn the privilege to call yourself a human being? In my view, we can’t take being human for granted. I think being a human is an honor we have to earn.

I have a cartoon picture hanging in my office. A doctor planet is delivering the bad news to his patient, a worried looking Planet Earth. The doctor planet says: "I’m afraid you have humans." As if we were cancer.

Something’s wrong here. Humans are supposed to be the wise and intelligent mammal, the highest and best life form. But if the Universe had a perspective, it would probably agree that if the Earth is slouching towards sickness it’s because of the unwise conduct of it’s most powerful stewards: we humans.

That’s why I encourage you to undo the stereotype of Humans as users, takers and destroyers. My Grandad was a decent and caring man. He referred to himself as a "New World Primate." He used to carry a card around that he would check at the end of the day to see if he had measured up as a homo sapien. He’d ask himself, Was I:

Was I Humorous ?	Did I generate laughter? (I am reminded of Twain's adage "No army can withstand the assault of laughter", although I'd prefer to storm the machine gun nest armedwith something more potent than a copy of Joseph Heller's "Catch 22" or Richard Hooker's "M*A*S*H").
Was I Creative ?	Did I cook up anything bizarre but useful?
Was I Romantic ?	Did I adore what’s beautiful? {single out lovely wife in front row}
Was I Rebellious ?	Did I rage mightily against the dimming of the light? Did I stand up to the forces of stupidity?
Was I Reverent ?	Did I honor the Enduring Forces in the Universe? Did I behave in a manner that leaves the world a little better off? Even while grateful for the advances of medicine, science and technology, did I act in a way that respects the fact that there are limits to both what the Earth can give and what It can take?

Hey, like I said, it’s a worthy goal, to be a human. All right. I’m a practical person -- In the spirit of not letting perfection be the enemy of good enough, it’s sufficient to ask: did I even get close? Maybe 2 out of 5 for the day but knock out all 5 in, say, a week or two.

As a liberal arts graduate, you’ve got a leg up on becoming a human being. Your education has given you the means to form and express ideas, and to constantly question. Together, with brains, hearts and guts, and a little luck, you have about all you need to succeed. 1

I know a lot of you are thinking, "yeah, that’s noble, but to get ahead and have any pull I’m going to need a whole lot of walk around money, a big house, and a respectable job." In my view, a human does not allow the lure of wealth and splendor to undermine his or her essence. Believe me folks, I’m not saying poor is better -- I’ve been both, and I prefer the means to have. But people in search of a life well lived have learned to go for the gold (figuratively) AND give something back.

My passion is to help people stricken with asbestos cancer. I’m a lawyer. I represent patients with malignant mesothelioma, a type of asbestos cancer that to date has defied conventional treatments. In the litigation world, the street says we’ve fulfilled our mission if we "get the money." And that’s important. However, in 15 years not a single client has ever told me he’d swap out his lungs for a million bucks, or any amount. They want more life. They want to see their grandchildren graduate from HS. They’re sick of being told by doctors that mesothelioma is "incurable" so "go home and tidy up your affairs" or "take a long cruise."

I’ve spent many years in union halls, trailer parks, and hospital rooms. I have been inside the OR and I have seen the surgeons cut, burn and yank out the tumors that had been squeezing the life out of my clients. I have been to their funerals. I have won millions of dollars for widows and their families. But, contrary to popular thought, winning the big bucks has never been very satisfying.

Yes, I’ve fulfilled my contract, but what about my larger duty as an "advocate?" An advocate is somebody "who pleads the cause of another." And so it came to pass that taking this role seriously required that I help find ways to give my clients more life. 2

So I reached out to the world’s top surgeons and scientists, who typically don’t work well in groups and hardly enjoy the company of trial lawyers. I set aside my disgust and reached out to "the enemy" and found two asbestos defense lawyers who were willing to do the right thing. Together, we formed a charitable foundation whose mission is to eradicate mesothelioma. My colleagues said I got in bed with the devil. But today, we’ve funded six major cutting edge research grants. We’ve given hope to thousands of otherwise abandoned and desparate patients. And, for the first time Congress is considering legislation to create a treatment program for this tragic and preventable disease that has taken such a heavy toll on our Navy veterans. (NOTE: you will need to view the document [.pdf] using Adobe Acrobat)

Plan II is an "interdisciplinary honors program." I helped build a coalition between doctors, industry, victims and their lawyers because that’s what I was trained to do. I was trained to bridge the gaps betweens disciplines. As Plan II graduates, we’ve been taught to bring warring factions together, to find the common ground, and unite against the common enemy. We know our time is best spent fixing the underlying problem.

If you can put your training to work like that, the Honor -- if not the Glory, and perhaps even the wealth -- will follow.

Look, it’s not going to be easy. The high road is a hard road and along the way you’ll make mistakes. We’re imperfect. Most of the time we dont even know who or what we are. Kurt Vonnegut said :

"We are who we Pretend to be,

So we must be Careful choosing

Who we Pretend to be."

This sounds cynical, the notion that we are simply opportunists, without a core set of values. Yet, it seems that in the span of a single day, I change personalities like a traffic light.

Somedays our ideals are subsumed by the seduction of raw power. One of my favorite movies is Glengarry Glen Ross, a story about salesmen. In the opening scene the "closer from downtown" is browbeating the staff, threatening to fire them if they don’t increase their sales volume. I’ve played this intoxicating yet shameful role. I’ve played the predator, caught up in the language of the slick Hollywood tough guy, driven by an angry force to close the deal, feed the hole, and win at any cost. This is a mask I wear when I’m careless. Yes, it’s fun to win, and nobody likes the thrill of the hunt better than I, but this sort of passion to "always be closing" is hardly becoming of a human, let alone a Plan II graduate.

But then there are the good days. Days when you get to wear the mask of a hero. You’ve put in the hours, you know your stuff, and you’re ready to roll. You want to help. You’ve got the energy to overcome ignorance, apathy and sloth. You realize you may have to go bonkers to get your point across but hey, that’s why they call it ENTHUSIASM -- the word itself means inspired by theos or god.

I spend a lot of time dreaming about those break-through moments. There’s an old Ute Indian saying:

When the Legends Die

The Dreams End

When the Dreams End

There is no more Greatness. 3

Why study so hard? Why suffer the risk of failure? Why strive for Greatness? The answer has to do with the profound satisfaction of pleasing the gods inside us, the gods who inspire us to pull off what’s thought to be impossible. I race bicycles. Here’s a picture of my alter ego, Max Kash Agro, attacking from the front on a long uphill sprint, motivated by the vision of Lance punching out his demons at the top of L’Alpe D’Huez.

Look, we can’t all wear the winner’s Jersey, but the Jersey, or the title, or the cash, does not measure the man. I know a lot sour "winners" and a lot of happy "losers." The difference is that one measures himself by conventional markers, the other by his own rigorous standards.

In the movie Raging Bull, Robert DeNiro’s character Jake Lamotta is beaten to a pulp by Sugar Ray Robinson. I often think about a battered and bloodied DeNiro happily heckling Robinson after the fight: "You never knocked me down Ray." Sometimes succeeding is simply a matter of stubbornly refusing to quit, of simply staying upright.

You don’t have to rage to deal with adversity. One of my clients took me aside after I rallied him to declare war on his tumor -- Slash the blood-sucking beast!, I ranted, Burn it! Posion it! Kill it!

He said:

"Roger, sometimes aggression is not the answer. Sometimes you just need to leave ‘er where Jesus flang it. Just let nature run its course. In some cases [he said] doing nothing is a way of ‘fighting back.’"

This brave and gentle man told me he was "living with the truth" that he couldn't eradicate his cancer with constant pressure, and that he was learning to "co-exist" with it. He lived with his tumor for 5 years. The average life span for asbestos cancer is about 9 months.

Bad things do happen to good people. Sometimes all the bravery, courage and foritude in the world won’t save a good person from his fate. We come to learn that we have a shelf life. Some of the best humans I have known have accepted this truth. They have tried to fill their days with honor, humor and humility. They know life’s imperfect and sometimes unfair but they don’t use that as an excuse for giving up or selling out.

In a similar way, sometimes good arguments founded on sound principles that really can make the world a better place simply won’t sell. It’s hard but we have to recognize that the best ideas don’t always win. When we get thrown for a loss, we have to dust ourselves off, set our jaw, and get back in the game, hopefully a little bit wiser for the wear.

So plug away, exercise passion, but try not to become a fanatic. I’m sure many of you feel a burning desire to do something real big and real important right now. Please pace yourself. Unbridled passion, untempered by cool and calm reason, can lead to burn out or worse. 4 Plus nobody likes to be around a zealot.

Myself, I have a clinical fascination of those who aren’t cursed with naked ambition or an overworked conscience. I sometimes dream about the merits of slacking, of "taking her easy for all us sinners" like my favorite anti-hero, The Dude in the Big Lebowski, reputed to be the laziest man in Los Angeles. And I’m sure one day I will learn to relax, just about the time my snack-happy son learns to love broccoli. 5

Finally, consider this: there’s no amount of rhetoric or poetry quite as eloquent as a good example. You are the cream of the crop. You are the best hope for humanity. Lead by example. Don’t delegate the role of being a human to somebody else. Figure out for yourself what a human should be and then have the guts to measure up to your own ideal.

Thank you and Go Further!

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Footnotes:

Left on Cutting Room Floor in Interests of Time

1. By the way, I mean no disrespect to the late great Professor Chad Oliver, who exhorted us to acknowledge if not revel in our animalhood. [Prior speaker, Dr. Alan Friedman, was recipient of Chad Oliver Teaching Award]. I’m not suggesting that being an animal is always vulgar. In fact, back in my High School football days I enjoyed my role as the wedge buster on the kick -off team. It felt gooood to abandon what little reason I had and sprint head long into the grill of the charging Beast. But I was 17 years old, and I’d like to think there’s more to life than the primal joy of shattering my opponent’s face-mask.

2. Since the 1940's, corporate America has known about asbestos cancer. Since the 1960s about $56 billion has been spent on litigation, half of which has been drained by transaction costs. I said this is nonsense. Not a dime has been spent on a cure. Why not put trial lawyers like me out of business? Invest in a cure.

3. I like this poem. It says that our best experiences live on in our memories like legends. We like the way we felt when we scored our first winning goal, or discovered our first arrowhead, or when the girl of our dreams said "yes" when we popped the question. We want more experiences like that. We dream of recapturing those feelings and building new or better ones. The peak memories spur us to daydream about what it’s like to be our favorite singer, or playwright, or statesman, or athlete.

4. I’m reminded of that 20 year old dreamer Chris McCandless. He read a lot of Emerson, Thoreau and Dostoyevski. He had bona fide romantic passion. The day after his college graduation, he gave away all his money, abandoned his car in the Mojave desert, hitched a ride up to Alaska, and walked into the wilderness with a bag of rice and no exit strategy. He was found several months later inside an old school bus, dead by starvation. A good kid with a good heart on his way to becoming a human. Done in by bad judgment, bad luck and a bad berry from a plant that turned out to be toxic.

5. Whatever mask you choose to wear, please try not to be a phony. You’re being phony when you say or believe one thing but do another -- chronically. It’s like exposure to asbestos fibers-- every little bit of Phonyism adds up and accumulates like scar tissue until it dries out the soul and turns you into a corporate tool, a hypocrite, a hollow man, all dead inside. And if you remember one thing today, remember this: Don’t ever do something despicable for pay and then plead you were "Just Doing your Job, Just Following Orders". The Nuremberg defense was a loser after WW II and it’s a loser today. You have choices, make them count, and take responsibility. It's popular today to knock idealism -- In the movie Platoon, Sgt. Barnes, a blood thirsty killer who called himself "Reality" mocked his counterpart, Elias, as a "water walker." Elias was a warrior and a human. You too will face pressures to cave in to what's expedient. But you will be remembered if not honored for your idealism, not the times you surrendered to the herd mentality.

MKA gives special thanks to my editor, counselor and mold romover Reverend Billy Stone who like a good friend refused to allow me to make a fool of myself.