Now first a moment of silence � stay seated – for the victims in London on the 7th of July and Sharm-al-Sheikh, and for the 500 who have been killed in Iraq since, the more than a million that have died of environmental degradation and hunger since.
___

Once we do have food —— to be free is humanity�s strongest drive.

I want to share with you an ecstatic moment of freedom. This is Sunday, the 12th of November 1989. Now let�s move into the concert hall of Berlin. Yesterday the Wall fell. Every seat, every aisle, every nook and cranny are filled with East Germans, for the first time in over 30 years. We enter the hall to listen to the final strains of Beethoven�s 7th Symphony�Barenboim whips the music. It�s being sculpted by this moment of transition from oppression to freedom. The music, the orchestra, the audience become one. A moment of truth�

�This was what Stefan Zweig would have called an immortal moment in the history of humanity.

�and for each and everyone of us, there come moments that matter.
That change and stay the course of our lives.

My father and mother brought the realities of the world into my life through their support of Lambar�n� and missionary work.

My father was not the best of preachers. But he was a brilliant practitioner. He chose to work among the worst-to-do; the poor, the aged, the blind, the prisoners, and for Africa.

His mentor and source of inspiration was Albert Schweitzer. As a student he became Schweitzer�s interpreter on his lecture and concert tours, to raise money for Lambar�n�, his hospital in Gabon.

Schweitzer integrated philosophy, the aesthetics of music with the practice of his medical work. For him, ethics was spelled reverence for life.

These two men � even if I never met Schweitzer � taught me the value of principled pragmatism.

Schweitzer sat in prison during World War I. He was a pacifist. On the table in his cell he drew an organ keyboard and practiced every single day. When he was freed from jail he went straight to a church and played Bach.

This music is created by Gabonese and French musicians, in homage to Schweitzer.
It integrates Bach with Gabonese traditional � without changing one single note in
either�s music. Here a few bars of: Jesus, Joy of Man�s Desiring.

Whether Dag Hammarskj�ld crashed in the Congo or was downed we don�t know. He was a man of principle and action. Hammarskj�ld was a role-model for us students. I had the honour to sing, as a member of the Student Choir of Uppsala University, at his funeral.

In his posthumous book Markings, he collected the insights he found on his way through his life:

�The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you,� he wrote, �the better you will

hear what is sounding outside. And only he who listens can speak�.

Martin Luther King spoke to an oppressed people of his dream that they would all be free. �Freedom now.� Not in 25 years. A powerful vision and the vision of power.

Franklin Roosevelt spoke to a terrified nation: �the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.�

Gandhi spoke up for the poor and voiceless. He chose to live their life in his struggle for freedom and independence. His way of life became his way of teaching.
His mark of authenticity. He walked his talk.

Gandhi spoke to the heart of everyone: �Dignity of human nature requires that we must face the storms of life.�

We all know this. It took a while before I had the courage to face the storms of my life. I still have many a mile to go. Don�t we all?

It�s those who choose to speak up, walk their talk who make the difference.
Taking this full risk, even with their lives, turn them into leaders – in the eyes of the beholder.

Leaders matter. Leadership matters.

That�s why we should celebrate outstanding leadership.

At this Forum we can put our leadership to test � visions and determination to walk our talk.

On Wednesday, we will celebrate leadership.

You � can make this Forum matter.

If you go away from here with new insights, you have also taken on new responsibilities.
It is not the venues like T�llberg Forum that change the world.
It�s you.

T�llberg Forum is not a lobby. We do not represent any national, economic or political interests. Those legitimate interests are yours!

T�llberg Foundation is the only organization I know of without a goal. But we have a vision. I am looking at it now. T�llberg�s business is to gather people, not as elites, but as people, as the equals that we are.

You are the do-gooders. And you can be proud of that. We do not invite do-worsers!

You now have in front of you � for the next days – a sm�rg�sbord of intellectual and cultural dishes.

Don�t overload your plate.

Allow yourself to listen to your inner voice, to meet all those people you had no idea you would run into. The Forum is only five days long.

We are the designers. But you are the operators.

You are on your own.

This tiny village of T�llberg—now more than 4 times its usual size—welcomes you. If Bob Marley were here I would have asked him to sing this song:

(Marley 50 seconds)

However, many of us are locked in by our responsibilities and job descriptions. They define our spheres of interests. They limit our spheres of influence. We act and we focus out of the perspectives to where reductionism has brought us. We act out of increasingly narrow perspectives upon increasingly reduced fields of focus. We are organized to deal with the parts of our vast Universe. But no man is an island.

T�llberg is designed to widen understanding of the whole and the behaviour of its parts.

The verdict that might come down from history is that this generation, we were better organized to live apart than living together. Our policies and strategies were designed to improve the productivity of the parts (a nation, a business, an NGO) – not – the efficacy of the whole.

We do need new innovative democratic orders that connect the local with the global. The concrete with the abstract. The parts with their systems.

Me, with you, with all of us. How on earth can we live together?

We are here to explore how to govern ourselves: What nation-building should be in a world of manifest market interdependencies.

Local actions � like driving one car in T�llberg, mismanaging one AIDS case in Calcutta, setting up one sweatshop in Dakka or committing one genocide in Darfur – start compounded effects.

800 million vehicles, 50 million AIDS cases, one billion underpaid workers, millions of oppressed transform local actions into global consequences: climate change, pandemics, economic disruption, outsourcing or terrorism. We turn them into abstractions. We lose touch with them. They become media blips.

Local action is in the concrete � global is in the abstract.

T�llberg is a place you can touch, smell, where you can hate, where you can love.

Global is not. It is a metaphor for our being increasingly interdependent, interconnected. The emissions from 800 million vehicles, a billion homes and factories spread out like a chemical internet. They connect us. Your emission is my emission. Your health is my health. That�s also ubuntu.

Globalization is the process of reducing costs of friction and barriers to make systems work more efficiently. The basic trigger is this. Our drive for more of wealth, for more of welfare, for more of security � for ourselves in competition with others.

Globalization is an economic process, not a moral or ethical one. It is not a political project. Globalization is a market project. But we are very badly prepared to deal with its political fallouts.

The resources that go into speeding up globalization of business and markets probably outcompetes � my guess -, by nine to one, what we invest in renewing constitutions, systems of law, and political institutions.

Some of us do have good systems to manage the local and national commons. In Sweden, we do. But we all suffer from the weakening of institutions for our global commons. Many suffer from bad management on all levels.

All this hands down to us the paradox of our time that we have never had such a long list of well-defined systems threats to our present order and existence – and at the same time never had weaker global decision-making systems to deal with them.

�The European Union is in a constitutional mess
�The legitimacies of the institutions like the World Bank and WTO are in question
�The UN is only six weeks away from the summit that must bring much-needed reform
�The G8 has scant popular democratic support throughout the world

So, which are the threats? I will give you some bullet-points.

�Climate Change
�Poverty
�Pandemics
�Security

Do I need to go on? You know them all.
In plenary sessions, workshops, conversations � even walks in the woods � we take up all of these issues and more for discussion.

Most of these threats are of our own making. Then we should be able to un-make them.

If these factors act like low-pressure systems that converge, peak, come together at precisely the same moment, we will find ourselves In The Eye of The Perfect Storm.

(This is Grace, back in 1991.)
We cannot tackle the Avian flu as we failed with AIDS.
We cannot turn our back to others� right to Human Rights
We cannot tolerate Poverty and ask for security.
We cannot abide by past principles of sovereignty if we are to govern a future in common.
The fallout of the Perfect Storm I call �Apocalypse Now�.
One billion people live in this scenario today. For them, this future is not a looming threat. It�s here, in Haiti, in Darfur, in West Africa, in Congo, in Iraq, in the Flatlands, Favelas. In the camps of Pakistan, Gaza and Kenya. In New York. Bali. Madrid. In London.

But the majority of us live in a scenario I call �Per Aspera ad Astra.�
Groping along – Towards a better life.

We can see innovation in almost every field of human activity. At this Forum many �promising practices� will be presented and discussed. New levels of energy efficiencies, quantum computing, health therapies, food production. Leapfrogging advances are made in enhancing human capacity, maybe human nature itself.
Globalization brings more people into the market economy � 3B2M, I called this vision a decade ago. This is the most powerful economic growth-engine of our time. If this engine hits full throttle everything will change. Power structures will be transformed.

The Millennium Development Goals tell the direction. They are radical!

Two years ago at a T�llberg Workshop, we discussed �The Futures we want!
Can they be reconciled?� The We�s were: China, India, the South, Europe and the USA.

The conclusion from that workshop was: – hardly.

The question confronting this Forum – came to mind.

Kofi Annan wrote me a note a month ago as he re-confirmed his coming to T�llberg � sadly he had to undergo some surgery and could not come. He said:
�The importance of your question has only risen since.�
We would have welcomed him back to T�llberg.
Now we welcome Shashi Tharoor.

Now here we are to explore the new frameworks to govern and deal with our increasing interdependencies, turn them sustainable.

As markets integrate to bring more value for more people, we also have to develop our capacity for solidarity and empathy with others than just our own kind, community and culture.

We need universal languages.

We find them in philosophy, science, the arts and the law. This is the reason why the T�llberg conversations deal with philosophy, are embedded in nature and studded with creative expressions of who we are and what we are.

No wisdom will be discovered without the support of philosophy, the foundation for our cognition � the aesthetics of logic. We should strive for clarity of mind, beauty and harmony in everything we do.

And we have so much to do.

The paradox of stronger threats and weakening governance is real. The storm systems are real. They might be converging. But they also help us see how interconnected we have become. This insight brings a responsibility. That�s why we are here in T�llberg today.

Time will tell whether we had the dignity to face the storms of our time. Not out of fear. But because we have the freedom and power to do so. Because we choose to face them � as individuals, as communities.

Each step counts when you walk the talk.

When you listen to your own true voice, then you speak a universal language. We all share a dream, a beautiful dream. Of common purpose for a better life. For ourselves, for generations to come. A reverence for all life on this planet.

This is the simple basis of our morality.

Leadership without morality equals destruction.
And isn�t it strange that one always knows when morality is amiss?

There is no truth without beauty.
There is no beauty without truth.

(Music 30 seconds)

In my end is my beginning. That was ïnto Africa,the music of hope.