Tonight's theme is how do we build a better world? How can each of us contribute to creating a society that is more just, compassionate, and united?
Tonight, we have the opportunity to hear from someone who has explored this question through his work and his faith and who will share insights on practical ways we can help build a better world together. We are honored to welcome Steve Sowitz. Steve is the founder of Paylocity and Wayfarer Studios. He also served as executive producer of The Gate: Dawn of the Baha'i Faith, a documentary film. As a member of the Baha'i faith, Steve has long been inspired by the principle of the oneness of humanity and the belief that lasting social progress requires both material and spiritual solutions. For those who may be unfamiliar with the Baha'i faith, it's a worldwide religion that teaches the belief in one God, the unity of all people, the harmony of science and religion, the equality of women and men, and the importance of working together to build a more peaceful and just world. These principles have helped shape Steve's commitment to service and his efforts to contribute to the betterment of society. Tonight he'll share some thoughts and perspectives related to this theme. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to Steve Sowitz.
If you guys like, I could take the night off and just have them sing.
So, thank you so much for that lovely introduction. Oh, okay, much better. I have a little hype problem. So, anything stationary is bad. And the songs were wonderful. Those are perfect. And I love them both.
So, when we think of the world today, what kind of world do we live in? Do we live in a world that's at peace? Do we live in a world where there's no problems? Do we live in a world where people get along, where there's no political problems, no economic problems? Or do we live in a world that feels very tense? That feels very uncertain. There's a lot of pressure. There's a lot of stress. Am I too loud? There's a lot of stress in this world. Why? When we think about people, do we think about their political party, their country, their race, their gender, their religion? How do you think of other people? Obviously, not too well. Get out of my way. You're driving too slow.
I'll tell you a little bit first of all about myself and then a little bit more about the faith. I was raised Reform Jewish and I was a happy Reform Jew for 49 years. I still love the Jewish faith. Along the way when I was in my mid-20s I started studying Christianity and after studying Christianity for just a few months I had a pastor friend actually at a Chinese delivery restaurant. Not one of my more successful ventures. I don't talk about it too much, but I had the good fortune of meeting my friend Kevin and actually we still run once a week and study the Bible and pray. And he said to me, 'Do you want to study the Bible?' And I said, 'No, I'm Jewish.' And he asked me again, I said, 'No, I'm Jewish.' And he asked me a third time. I said, 'Oh, what the heck? I'll study with you.'
And after a couple months, I started asking myself the question, you see, I thought, and this is interesting now when I look back, that I was genetically unable to believe in Jesus genetically because for 2,000 years, and it pretty much was in my genes for 2,000 years, we disbelieved in Jesus as the Christ. And I never asked myself why. It was just there. It was like, you know, I have a knee, I have an elbow, and I don't believe in Jesus. And my whole family was like that. We never asked why. We never really asked any questions. And I started questioning. I said, 'Well, why don't I believe in Jesus? And what does that even mean? Does it mean I don't believe he existed? Does it mean I don't believe that he was the Messiah?' And so I started reading his words and I fell in love with Jesus. But I never became a Christian. I just became a Jew who loved Jesus quite a bit. And I liked the Bible. And we kept studying.
And then I'd heard about the Baha'i faith in college and it sounded great. Someone told me something about progressive revelation which is really in my mind one of the most wonderful teachings of the Baha'i faith that a single God has progressively sent prophets to help humanity in every age. Great idea and Jews didn't have to hate Christians and Christians didn't have to hate Jews and Muslims didn't have to—basically supposed to love everybody. I thought that sounds pretty good. But I was a 20-year-old college kid and I went back to doing that and didn't really think about the Baha'i faith other than when someone would ask me, I'd say, 'Well, I like what the Baha'is have to say.' And that's what I said for over 20 years. And then I had a couple friends of mine who invited me to a Baha'i study group. And after a few years, I surprised them by becoming a Baha'i. They didn't know what to do with me then.
And it's really changed my life in many ways because as a Baha'i, as a Jew—I mean, I was a happy Jew. Like I said, I liked Reform Judaism. I didn't realize that it was mostly Baha'i already. But Reform Jews believe in the equality of women and men. We believe in harmony between religion and science. None of those things are in the Torah, the Jewish teachings. They're all Baha'i ideas. But I didn't know that because I didn't know anything about Baha'i. As I started learning more about Baha'i, I realized I'd been taught a lot of Baha'i ideas already. And in fact, those ideas have really infiltrated a lot of our thought. They've really been cascading through humanity.
So when you think about the Baha'i faith, it's the latest religion in the world. It's the latest chapter in a single book of God. It's not that the Baha'i faith is right and Christianity is wrong or the Baha'i faith is right, Judaism is wrong. It's just a newer version of Judaism. It's a newer version of Christianity, of Islam, and the rules have been updated because we need different things in this world. So when Baha'u'llah was teaching in the mid-19th century, Baha'u'llah said some really radical things at that time. He said women are equal to men. Well, at the time not a single woman could vote. Women were essentially slaves, second-class citizens all around the world. And I'm not going to say that it's perfect today. There's still some things we need to do. But think of the great strides we've made forward.
Raise your hand if you think women are not equal to men. Oh, wait. He's not getting cut tonight. You know, nowadays there's very few people who don't truly believe that women are equal to men. Now, whether we treat women as equals to men in every aspect, that's something different. But we've advanced greatly. Women can vote, women can have credit cards. You know, when I was young, women couldn't have credit cards. Just things we take for granted. Now, many things have already changed drastically.
Now we go to racial equity. Baha'u'llah said there was a single human race. That was radical. I live in Chicago, in the Field Museum there was a very prominent sculptor who in the 1930s had these sculptures of people as if they were different species, people of different races. And as we know now scientifically race is just an imagination. It's imaginary. There is no such thing as race. Genetically we are one human race. It's been proven. It was proven in the mid-1980s. And yet we still have so much racism. So while the idea of race is a figment of our imaginations, racism is not. And so Baha'u'llah in the 1800s was telling us that we're one human race and he gave us many instructions on how to root out racism, which again, we've made a lot of strides. You can have mixed race couples now and nobody blinks and you have them on every TV commercial or a lot of them and that's to me wonderful and I've been in a mixed race marriage for many years and that's great but we have a long ways to go. The nice thing is we've made some progress.
The next thing Baha'u'llah says is the earth is but one country. Mankind its citizens. Think about that. Right now we have so many wars going on. Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Palestine. You've got all these wars going on, all these people hating each other because they're quote unquote a different country. Step up a little bit. Go to 10,000 feet. Go to 100,000 feet. Go to space. The earth is but one country. Baha'u'llah said in the 1800s, mankind, its citizens. What's really amazing about that is think about the world when Baha'u'llah was saying this. Think about the world well over a hundred years ago in the 1800s, 150 years ago. We didn't have computers. We didn't have phones. It was a much bigger place then. The world has gotten so much smaller. We didn't have the internet. And yet Baha'u'llah could see that, and people when he was saying this most didn't travel more than 20 miles from their house in their entire life.
This new age we're in requires new teachings. And now we come to maybe the biggest and the hardest one for people to understand. And that is that all religions are one. That they're chapters in a single eternal faith of God. In this country, something really momentous happened. Something happened in 1893. Does anyone know what happened in 1893?
Parliament of World Religions.
The very first Parliament of the World Religions in Chicago, my hometown. So in Chicago in 1893 comes the first Parliament of the World's Religions as part of the great Chicago World's Fair. It's the very first interfaith conference. You see, prior to that, the Catholics stayed with the Catholics and the Protestants stayed with the Protestants and the Jews with the Jews and the Muslims with the Muslims and most people didn't know anything about any other religion. That was also the introduction of Swami Vivekananda, if I said it right, the Hindus. So, the Hindus come to the United States. You know, at that point, most people didn't even know what a Muslim was. And yet, look at the world today. So, religions are now living next to each other and some are even talking. But the problem is today what you're seeing is probably the most most people have advanced to is interfaith. The idea that religions are different, separate but equal. Tolerance. Have you had someone say tolerance and what's the other word?
Coexistence. That's the word I was looking for. Coexistence. How many people like coexistence? Raise your hand. Tolerance. Not bad. Okay. I'm going to go coexist with you. Acknowledge your existence. I'm going to tolerate you. That's what Jesus said. Go tolerate your neighbor barely. That's not what—oh, wait. That's not what Jesus said. That's not what Moses said. That's not what the Buddha said. And that's definitely not what Baha'u'llah said. Actually, Baha'u'llah goes one step above love your neighbor in this age. He says we prefer our neighbors over ourselves. So, we go beyond loving them. We actually prefer them over our very selves in this modern age.
So, when we think about religion, it's still a great barrier, a great source of consternation. In fact, even just before coming up here and talking, I was talking with a good friend who was asking me about, well, what about this particular religion? And I don't know about those guys. And like, well first of all we're all one and second of all the religions are good but we don't necessarily do good things necessarily in the name of religion.
What we need to do and what Baha'u'llah taught and what the Baha'i faith teaches is that every religion is good and the followers are mostly good. There's some people who are extremists and I would condemn all extremism. If you're going to kill in the name of your religion, I think that's a bad thing. Particularly if you're going to kill me, but even more so if you're going to kill my neighbor, that's a bad thing. And that happens in the name of many religions. And so instead of saying this religion is bad, we could just say extremism is bad in the name of any religion. And that all religions at their core are good. Muhammad, he said none of you truly believes unless he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself. And of course, both Jesus and Moses, since Jesus was quoting Moses, said, 'Love your brother as yourself. Love your neighbor as yourself.' I mean, who's your brother? Who's your neighbor? Where are the asterisks? Is it your white neighbor? Your Christian neighbor, your male, female neighbor, your neighbor who's a US citizen, or is it all your neighbors? That's what Baha'u'llah is doing. He's explaining to us who our neighbors are, who our brothers are. Everybody. And this is the key. This is the key to making it a better world.
You see, one thing in the Baha'i faith that we believe as Baha'is is that world peace is not only possible but inevitable and that we can work actively towards world peace. One of the major problems in the world today is most people go about their business and never work one step towards making the world more united and peaceful. But that is the most important thing.
I spent most of my professional career building a company. I built a little company called Paylocity. I started in 1997. Started with one employee. And I worked very hard and got very lucky. More luck than hard work, but a little bit of hard work too. And that company today has 6,500 employees and went public in 2014 and did very well. Since I had too much money, I started a movie company and have invested over $100 million in a company called Wayfarer Studios. Maybe not so great financially, but wonderful because we're now as of this year going to have made 20 movies and some lovely movies to make the world a better place.
We're working on three movies right now. My pet movie is a movie called Hello Darkness. We're shooting it right now as we speak in New York City. It's about a man named Sandy Greenberg. And Sandy Greenberg was 19 years old, going to school at Columbia University, tall, athletic, super brilliant, incredibly brilliant to this very day. Actually, he's in his mid-80s now. And he went blind. So he goes home to Buffalo, New York, nursing his wounds. His life is basically over. And his roommate Arthur comes and gets him and says, 'You can't stay here. You have to come back to Columbia with me. You're my best friend. I can't live without you.' Drags him back kicking and screaming to Columbia. Gets a team of people to read to him, take him to class, and Sandy graduated Columbia University in the 1960s. Summa cum laude. Then he went to Harvard University just to go beyond that and got a master's degree from Harvard, a PhD from Oxford. Came back to the United States, became a presidential fellow under Lyndon B. Johnson. Then he became an inventor, an entrepreneur, a millionaire, and a philanthropist. All while blind.
And Arthur, his roommate, was supposed to become an architect, but Sandy says, 'Hey, you got a nice singing voice.' And he says, 'Hey, you know, maybe you could sing. And you sang with your friend in high school. Why don't you sing with him? You could always become an architect later.' But Sandy says, 'No, try singing out. You got a special voice.' Arthur says, 'No, I hate my friend.' They got into a big fight, but Sandy convinces them to get back together, sing a song. They sing a song which starts with how Arthur used to greet Sandy. Sandy pays $400 for the two of them to record that song which starts with how Arthur greeted Sandy. 'Hello darkness, my old friend. I've come to talk with you again.' The number one song of the year came out. Sound of Silence. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel.
So why do I mention that movie? Because it's everything I want to do. You know what? What do you do with money? You make the world a better place. And why? What inspires me? My faith. That movie is a movie about friendship, about love. It also is about the nobility in particular of Sandy Greenberg as a blind man who's an amazing man. It's about putting a spotlight on blind people. And actually Sandy has dedicated his life to ending blindness. And when I agreed to make the movie with Sandy, 100% of the profits of the movie go towards ending blindness.
It's just—we may not make any profits. Most movies don't. But if we do, if we do, it'll help. And the whole thing is when you lead your life, it's about making the world a better place. So when Paylocity went public, I did very well. And I didn't buy a yacht mainly because I never liked yachts and I didn't join a country club because, you know, I think there's an old joke about any country club that would have you isn't worth joining. But I also just never really liked things. I drive a Toyota. I still do. I did then, I do now. And I had some extra money. And so I decided to give it all away.
And my faith drives me with this. So everything I do is about ending racism, about ending sexism, about ending nationalism, about ending religious prejudice. So I started a foundation, which I ended up closing down last year, and just going to private giving. But I'm going to give away the great majority of my fortune. And I've given away several hundred million already to organizations, mainly grassroots organizations. And I'm using the faith as a guidance. Raise your hand here if you're Baha'i. Probably a few. Raise your hand here if you're not Baha'i. Don't feel bad. Okay, we got a few of you too.
So let me just tell you to the non-Baha'i, you're welcome here all the time. And the one thing you should know about the Baha'i faith, an independent investigation of truth and that everybody is always welcome at Baha'i events like this. Because we believe you're one human family. We're not going to say you are or aren't a Baha'i in any way, shape, or form. But anyway, for the Baha'i, there's something—and for the non-Baha'i actually—there's something called the nine-year plan. So the Baha'i faith has no clergy.
So the question is why does the Baha'i faith have no clergy? Well because we can read, and what I mean by that is in 1800 I think it was 88% of the world was illiterate and today that's reversed, I think it's 87% of the world is literate. So back around 1800 we needed clergy because most of us couldn't read but today most of us can read. And you see, if we want to read the Bible, we can read it ourselves. We can read the Quran ourselves. We can read the Baha'i writings ourselves. And so, we don't need clergy. Now, I'm not saying anything bad about clergy. I have friends who are rabbis and priests and ministers, and that's great, but we don't need that today in the modern world.
And so, the Baha'i faith is run by committees, by assemblies. So, we have—raise your hand if you're on the Santa Monica Local Spiritual Assembly. It's a thankless job, but thank you.
It's a position of service, right?
How much are you paid for that?
