A Response to Welcome — 2026

Sisters and brothers of the world,

I thank you in the name of the most connected generation the earth has ever known. I thank you in the name of a species that carries the sum of its knowledge in its pocket. I thank you in the name of billions who can now speak to one another in an instant — – and who now, in that same instant, choose so often not to listen.

We have built machines that carry our voices to every corner of the earth. We have not yet built the wisdom to know what is worth saying.

We have mistaken connection for understanding.

We have mistaken information for wisdom.

We have mistaken engagement for truth.

We have mistaken the algorithm's certainty for our own conviction.

Our ancestors divided themselves by tribe and temple and throne. We have inherited every one of those divisions, and we have built new machinery to sharpen them. Today a human being can be reduced to a label before a single sentence is finished — – and a system built to hold our attention has learned that the label holds it better than the person ever could. It does not do this out of malice. It does this because we told it, in ten thousand small choices, that this is what we wanted.

This is the oldest trick of fanaticism, wearing the newest clothes.

I come from a tradition that does not require me to diminish another man's search for truth in order to strengthen my own. The river does not become less sacred because another river reaches the ocean by a different path. And no network, however vast, has yet found a way to make one truth smaller by letting another exist beside it.

Faith should not require insecurity.

Love of one's country should not require hatred of another's.

Conviction should not require an enemy.

And a feed that shows us only our own reflection should not be mistaken for the world.

We must learn again the difference between acceptance and surrender. To grant another person dignity is not to surrender your beliefs. To listen is not to agree. To let an algorithm show you an argument is not to adopt it. And to defend a stranger's right to be heard costs you nothing of your own voice.

Pluralism is not the absence of conviction. It is the discipline of holding yours steady while the machine, tuned only to hold your attention, keeps offering you the comfort of an enemy instead.

That discipline is the great test of this age. Because the instruments through which we now meet one another were not built to be neutral, and were never asked to be wise. Every insult can circle the globe before truth has put its shoes on. Every grievance can find its crowd by morning. Every frightened person can find, within seconds, someone paid in attention to tell them whom to blame. And every ideology, sooner or later, will find a version of itself, amplified and rewarded, that mistakes cruelty for virtue.

So the fanaticism we face cannot be named by one religion, one nation, one platform, or one politics.

It begins wherever a person becomes less real to us than an idea.

It begins wherever belonging requires an enemy.

It begins wherever we are no longer permitted to question our own side.

It begins wherever a system, built to maximize our attention, quietly teaches us that outrage is understanding.

No nation is immune to this. No religion is immune to this. No platform, no model, no feed is immune to this. And no technology, however capable, will absolve us of the responsibility to choose otherwise. That work remains, as it always has, entirely human.

More than a century ago, a bell rang in Chicago to open a Parliament of Religions. A young monk hoped its sound might announce the end of fanaticism. It did not.

So let another bell ring — not through a speaker built by any of our machines, but in whatever conscience each of us has left to ring it with.

Let it not announce the victory of one nation, one faith, one ideology, or one platform over the rest.

Let it announce something harder: the end of the idea that another human being must become less human, or less real, in order for us to feel more certain of ourselves.

We have run that experiment long enough — first with swords, then with speeches, and now with software.

September 11 does not have to carry only one memory. In 2001, the world saw what fanaticism, given a weapon, can destroy. In 1893, the world was told what might yet answer it.

One gave us a wound.

The other gave us a warning.

We now hold, in our hands, the most powerful instrument either fanaticism or its answer has ever been given.

Perhaps it is still an open question which one we will use it for.