For the first time in my life I watched a documentary for fun. The Netflix docuseries called Inside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill Gates was incredibly insightful in helping understand the non-profit work that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done and the reasons behind the work.
The documentary was split into three different episodes that focused on three specific efforts that the foundation has worked on:
1) Diarrhea in third-world countries kills millions and millions of children every single year. Bill isolated the reason for this problem to be the lack of a sanitation system that many villages and cities had. His solution for it was toilets that worked without water or power combined with a sanitation system that would burn human waste and convert it into power and its byproduct of steam into drinkable water.
2) After the eradication of smallpox, most people considered polio to be the next disease that needed to be eradicated. The eradication of polio has been a massive combined effort of multiple organizations throughout the globe yet it has proven incredibly difficult to destroy. A big reason for this is that vaccinations throughout every town are necessary to prevent it from occurring and political conflicts often come in the way of efforts by global organizations.
3) Climate change is the largest environmental problem that our world faces yet no single government or organization is willing to take drastic steps to slow it down. Bill understands that the largest cause for climate change is the CO2 that gets released into our atmosphere. The causes for this are many yet the largest offenders remain automobiles, manufacturing, and coal plants. Coal plants are the only way that we can currently generate massive amounts of electricity, but they prove to be a hazard for our world. The alternative that Bill Gates had thought of was switching to nuclear power plants to harness electrical energy. Yet, the public stigma against nuclear power plants has hindered progress and Terraform (a startup that Bill helped found) has found a way to improve the aging nuclear power plant designs with a new one that was meant to remain intact throughout a natural disaster.
Integrated within each one of these episodes was a gateway into Gates' life as well. Whether it was his rocky relationship with his mother, his unconditional love and mutual respect for Melinda, or his obsession with scaling Microsoft into a conglomerate.
There are many notable successes that Bill Gate's has achieved, yet there are some ideals that he cherishes and these are what separate him from the world.
1) Bill's love for Melinda is absolute and his respect for her is above all. His obvious respect for his wife his awe-inspiring and validates his love for her. They are both equal in every matter, whether it be leading their foundation hand in hand or leading meetings with the world's most powerful leaders.
2) His regret for not listening to his mother more often is crucial to the efforts that he makes to help the world. Although Bill and his mother didn't have the greatest relationship, he learned to respect and eventually follow the ideals that she attempted to engrain within him.
3) He enjoys life and enjoys what he does. Although the documentary contains moments where Bill seems defeated, these moments are only temporary. Even at 63 years he is playing an active role in helping accomplish the goals he's set for himself and The Foundation. He gives no hints of retirement because he genuinely enjoys solving the world's problems and carries that burden on his shoulders everyday.
This documentary proves to be incredibly powerful and inspirational because it shows what a single man with purpose can do. Purpose and a couple billions dollars at your disposable of course. Digging deeper into the documentary and The Foundation's various successes it's also possible to see how ineffective larger bureaucracies are at solving difficult problems, even with large amounts of resources. Even further we can make the conclusion that although our world has evolved quite a bit within the past few decades, many other parts of the globe are facing problems that we might not even have heard of.
We can hope that Bill and Melinda's stories can inspire a new generation of innovators that care for the world just as much as they do and can create positive change just as they have.
Integrated within each one of these episodes was a gateway into Gates' life as well. Whether it was his rocky relationship with his mother, his unconditional love and mutual respect for Melinda, or his obsession with scaling Microsoft into a conglomerate.
There are many notable successes that Bill Gate's has achieved, yet there are some ideals that he cherishes and these are what separate him from the world.
1) Bill's love for Melinda is absolute and his respect for her is above all. His obvious respect for his wife his awe-inspiring and validates his love for her. They are both equal in every matter, whether it be leading their foundation hand in hand or leading meetings with the world's most powerful leaders.
2) His regret for not listening to his mother more often is crucial to the efforts that he makes to help the world. Although Bill and his mother didn't have the greatest relationship, he learned to respect and eventually follow the ideals that she attempted to engrain within him.
3) He enjoys life and enjoys what he does. Although the documentary contains moments where Bill seems defeated, these moments are only temporary. Even at 63 years he is playing an active role in helping accomplish the goals he's set for himself and The Foundation. He gives no hints of retirement because he genuinely enjoys solving the world's problems and carries that burden on his shoulders everyday.
This documentary proves to be incredibly powerful and inspirational because it shows what a single man with purpose can do. Purpose and a couple billions dollars at your disposable of course. Digging deeper into the documentary and The Foundation's various successes it's also possible to see how ineffective larger bureaucracies are at solving difficult problems, even with large amounts of resources. Even further we can make the conclusion that although our world has evolved quite a bit within the past few decades, many other parts of the globe are facing problems that we might not even have heard of.
We can hope that Bill and Melinda's stories can inspire a new generation of innovators that care for the world just as much as they do and can create positive change just as they have.
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