Yes, 19 people can cause terrible suffering, but a million men working together, aggregating their individual acts of kindness into a global movement for social good, is infinitely more powerful.
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This past Sunday, as I was preparing to travel to Kenya to meet with leaders in family planning, I got word about the horrible tragedy unfolding in Orlando. It’s impossible to find words that make sense of the pain and suffering caused, or the ideas that motivate such hatred and anger, but with each new occurrence of violence—and they come as regularly and predictably as waves—I am reminded that World Vasectomy Day, the event I dreamt up to engage men in family planning, was the result of a journey that started in the days after the 9/11 attacks.
At the time of 9/11 I asked myself, “If 19 men in a single morning can set off a chain of violence that, not only takes down buildings and kills 2,977 innocent people, but leads to wars that destroy entire countries—what would it take to do the opposite?”
I had always made films with a social purpose, but simply revealing wrong doing on the planet was no longer sufficient. Instead of reporting on what was wrong or even documenting positive responses to negative behavior, I wanted to figure out how to use media to help create the change I wanted to see.
As I traveled the world, making films, I had become increasingly compelled by what I called The People Paradox: that the same species, and even the same person, capable of extraordinary acts of kindness, was equally capable of intense cruelty. As the storyteller I had the power to choose which end of the behavioral spectrum to highlight, and for the next decade while traveling to war zones, slums, prisons, and death row, I committed to highlighting the best in people even in the worst of circumstances.
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In 2010, while working on a film about population on the planet, I met Dr. Doug Stein, one of the world’s leading providers of vasectomies. It wasn’t long before I noted that regardless of culture, country or class, on the day men get their vasectomy, they are unusually kind and generous. Maybe having our pants down and our scrotum in the hands of a doctor with sharp instruments makes us particularly vulnerable, but on the day we voluntarily choose to exit the gene pool, we are quick to acknowledge the love we feel for our partners, our children, and even the wellbeing of the planet.
In Kenya, on May 9th, 2011, a man named George Mbogah told me that he had traveled 26 hours by bus to get a vasectomy out of love for his wife who had, as he said, “suffered enough in giving birth to our family”. He also emphasized that he earned just enough to provide for his two children. “Anymore (children)”, he said, “and I will not be able to provide for any of them as we would like”.
That night, for reasons I cannot recall, I googled World Vasectomy Day, claimed the URL and set an intention to inspire 100 doctors in 25 countries to do 1,000 vasectomies in 24 hours. The following day I would ask every man who got his vasectomy to declare ‘I support World Vasectomy Day’.
In the first year, we focused on bringing together committed and compassionate doctors. In the second year, we reached out to the major family planning organizations. This year we expand our movement further to build an army of vasectomy acceptors that become champions for the cause. Today we have grown to almost 1,000 doctors from more than 40 countries participating in what is now the largest male oriented family planning event in the world.
From the beginning, the goal was not to lower population or to dictate how many children any person should choose to have. We don’t think that numbers alone determine our destiny. That said, we do believe that every single social challenge we face is made more difficult to resolve with a larger population, and that providing choices that inspire men to participate in the most important conversation of our lives (to have or not to have more children) makes for a healthier society.
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This week again, the world is focused on the horrible things men do (and I mean men). It’s easy to assign blame, yet fear has a way of over simplifying otherwise complex matters. In the rush to protect ourselves, we must not forget that the violence we have witnessed in Paris, Beirut, Baghdad, the Russian plane, and now Orlando, and the misery that both accompanies and creates it, is not due to a single faith or the inherent evil of a given culture or nation.
Was this caused by homophobia, a closeted gay man who hated his own sexual orientation? Was it due to lack of any coherent gun control policy that made it possible for a mentally ill man to purchase high powered weapons? Or was it inspired by an ideology that preys on people’s faith while manipulating them towards violence? Or, as I believe most likely, caused by a combination of all of the above?
People who participate or perpetrate this wanton violence aren’t born to be bad, but over time, lives dominated by alienation, hopelessness, purposelessness and self-hatred can turn to rage and eventually acts of extreme violence. If there was just a single cause, we’d have no trouble preventing future incidents, but it turns out the perpetrators are not some evil other coming to our own communities to hurt us, but as it happened in Orlando, our own neighbors.
At a time in history when noble warriors no longer exist, when hunting for wild game is no longer an option and frankly, getting a decent job is not even guaranteed, we believe that a vasectomy offers men a positive and heroic public role to play. A vasectomy gives men the power to determine family size so that our children and our children’s children can live a good quality life. World Vasectomy Day is about promoting good stewards of the earth while encouraging the kind of dialogue that leads to a more loving home and a more peaceful world. We serve to inspire and honor the men who rise up in support of their partners, their children, their communities, and our collective future.
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Yes, 19 people can cause terrible suffering, but a million men working together, aggregating their individual acts of kindness into a global movement for social good, is infinitely more powerful. We cannot rebuild the towers in a day, let alone restore life to 49 young men and women who were in joyous celebration when one man chose to inflict his misery on them. But today, I am more resolute than ever in my commitment to grow our movement. Today we are thousands. Soon we will be millions.
Preparations for this year’s World Vasectomy Day celebration, set for November 18, 2016, to be headquartered in Nairobi, have officially begun.
Photo: Getty Images