Infinite: Your Physical, Intellectual, and Spiritual Self

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Thank you, President Eyring, for both the invitation to be here and for the introduction. It really is, for me, a tremendous honor to be able to be with so many learners in one room at one time. This is just fantastic. This is an unbelievable experience for me. Usually I have just a few students in my class—20 or 25—but to have several thousand at one time, it’s a fantastic experience. I’m just literally drawing in the energy from each of you and each of your spirits just to have a sense of what I hope will be a good moment of teaching and learning for both of us. My hope today is that I can basically proffer a simple question and a simple message.

You heard the question last week with the announcement of what I was going to be talking about, and that’s just this question I still want you to have in your mind, and that is, What is the most complicated object in the universe? How many of you think you have the answer? Anybody? A few of you. We’re going to come to that. And what are you going to do with it, since it lives with you?

Let me say also that it’s an honor to be here at BYU-Idaho, to have an opportunity to be with so many Latter-day Saints in one room. In the last 15 years of living in Arizona, I’ve come to admire the LDS community immensely for their strength of faith, their projection of goodness, their engagement in civic duty and civic responsibility, their building up of the community, and also for the fact that this faith sees all people as children of God—every person divine in origin, nature, and most importantly this last word: “potential.” Potential. In fact, the reason for focusing on the particular most complex object in the universe that each of you carry around with you—it’s really built around this idea of each of you finding a way to actually realize that—and this is not meant in any kind of cliché kind of way—that you have unlimited potential. Unlimited potential by the gift that you’ve been given.

I spent some time in the last few days getting some sense of what LDS leaders and LDS apostles and prophets have thought about the idea of potential. Brigham Young, in 1855, in a sermon that he gave, said the following: “The first great principle that ought to occupy the attention of mankind, that should be understood by [all]—the child and the adult, and which is the mainspring of all actions—” And then he went on to say, “...Whether people understand it or not”—and this is really important—all the ideas, the cognitions, all the labors of man are circumscribed by and incorporated in this great principle of life, and it “is the principle of improvement”: this notion that you can improve yourself, this notion that you can improve the lives of others, the notion that you can improve the actual earth, the actual world, while you are here.

This principle of improvement is something that has been actually a driving force for me in all of my life, as a teacher, as a professor, as a Boy Scout, Scoutmaster, as a leader in Boy Scouts, different things that I did along the way—this notion of potential, on driving your potential forward, has just been this unbelievably important thing for me. This notion of the question of the principle of improvement—the notion of how individuals might not be able to push themselves and drive themselves and move themselves forward given the gifts that they’ve been given (I’ll come to that in a second) has been on my mind since I was a boy.

I remember, growing up as a boy, I used to ask myself why so many people never achieved or even realized or even understood their potential, why so many people were willfully engaged in two strange things: underestimation of themselves, constantly doubting themselves, constantly underestimating themselves, constantly seeing themselves as limited, constantly seeing themselves as inferior to someone else, constantly comparing themselves to other people; secondly—this almost makes me laugh—purposefully being ignorant, just sheer, plain ignorant. I heard a couple chuckles out there. A little more chuckles. We’re all willfully ignorant sometimes, but this is just something that— As a boy, I grew up in a navy family. We moved around all over the place, and it was really something that I was seeing in people in different communities. I went to 17 different schools before I graduated high school, so I was meeting lots and lots of people. I kept wondering, “How is it that all of these people were so, in a sense, unwilling to take everything that they’ve been given and do something with it?” I never understood how people would argue that they couldn’t learn something. “I can’t learn that.” “I’m no good at math.” “I’m no good at science.” “Science is hard.” “I just like this.” “I just like that.” I never, ever, ever, ever understood that. I would hear it and still hear it now and still don’t understand it.

It turns out, because of the gift that you’ve been given that I’m going to talk about in a second, this thing between your two ears—the most complicated object in the known universe— I really want you to think about this. Most of you are going to say, “I’ve heard that before.” This notion of the fact that a human being in the right circumstance can learn anything. You’ll hear people say sometimes, “I can’t learn German. It’s just too hard.” I don’t know how they work it out in Germany. I just don’t quite understand that. There’s a worse kind of thing that I’ve picked up on a lot recently. You’ll hear this all the time. You hear people arguing against science, you’ll hear people arguing that “Oh, that didn’t really happen.” You’ll hear people saying, “Oh, that’s a hoax,” or, “This is that,” or, “That’s not true.” “That science is not real, and this science might be real, and that science can’t be real.” There’s this worse thing about not being able to fully move to the notion of the principle of improvement, and that is refusing to learn, refusing to try to understand, refusing to understand the complexity of the universe as God created it, refusing to embrace the scale, the breadth, the depth, the beauty, the vastness of all things just because it’s hard to see.

There’s even one last thing that I used to think about, and I still think about, and it’s still one of the main drivers for me, and that is this notion of a person who refuses to believe that they’ve been given unique blessings by their very existence. I have a brother, born 18 months after I was. He never graduated from high school; his children never graduated from high school. He’s a tremendously smart and intelligent person who didn’t believe, who didn’t understand what he’d been given. He was unable to take the gift that he was given and find a way to believe in it and believe in himself.

The question that I pose for all of you to think about—and I hope that you spend some time in your busy schedules. And I know that being in college is one of the most intense times in your entire life, so I appreciate the willingness for you all to consider the question that I put on the table, which is, What is the most complex object in the known universe? What is the most complex object in the known universe? What do you do with the one you were given? It turns out that your brain is in fact absolutely, unequivocally, in every possible way unique. There never has been a brain like yours before, there never will be a brain like yours again, and your brain is in fact the most complex object in the known universe. It’s more complex than the universe itself. 

Let’s take a look at that question of complexity just for a second, just to get you to open up your minds just a little bit. Eighty-five billion neurons in your brain, with thousands of connections to each neuron. And between the neurons, all of which create for you individually within your own mind—just imagine this number—to the 85 billionth power—the number of individual brain states in which your mind can be working to answer some kind of question, to create some type of idea, to express some sort of thought, to gain some understanding, to communicate with someone else, to create an idea, to create something that’s never been created before. Your brain, your individual unit that you were given at birth, is in fact the ultimate quantum-information processing machine. It has no limits, just as God has no limits. Each of us shares in that design. Each of us has been imparted with that object, that brain, that device, that thing, that quantum-information processing machine based on a biological system unique to you, which has the capacity to understand anything that it chooses to attempt to understand.

Let’s just take the universe itself. Some of you might have thought that the most complicated thing in the universe was in fact the universe itself. We live in a galaxy, one of between 200 and 2 trillion individual galaxies. Yes, 2 trillion potential galaxies; they’re not quite sure. Within this galaxy that we’re in alone, 100 to 400 billion stars within the Milky Way. They now estimate, based on people really exercising their brains, using every tool that we’ve been given, every ounce of energy, every ounce of creativity to understand creation—we now know and are increasingly knowing, through observation, through science, through all the things that we’re able to understand, and all the things that we’re able to achieve, that there are in all likelihood 80 billion inhabitable planets in this galaxy alone. This is one of between 200 and 2 trillion galaxies. The closest galaxy to us and all these things that I’m describing are the product of human science. All these things that I’m describing are the product of unbelievable work, unbelievable focus of this most complicated thing: the human brain, the human mind. The closest galaxy to us is only 2.5 million light-years away. That’s an object traveling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles per second, for 2.5 million years, bringing us light from the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest galaxy to our galaxy, for which there are hundreds of billions to 2 trillion additional galaxies. In the Andromeda Galaxy, we now know from hard science and from the work of science and scientists that there are a trillion stars in that galaxy, the closest to us.

Some of you are already saying, “Man. I don’t really like science. I have no idea why they brought that guy up from Phoenix to talk to us about 85 billion neurons and to talk to us about 2 trillion galaxies and 80 billion habitable planets just in this galaxy alone.” But it turns out that that is what your mind, your brain—both have the capacity to understand, the capacity to learn, the capacity to enhance that knowledge, the capacity to enhance that understanding. Each of you has been given that object.

Now, there are always science doubters. “Well, how do you know that it’s 2.5 million light-years to the Andromeda Galaxy?” And I’m now engaging your super computer. Doubters of science. Some of you may know, some of you may not know, that President Eyring’s grandfather was one of America’s great scientists. Henry Eyring—they only have the name Eyring with Henry—was a professor of chemistry who wrote, often spoke—he was the winner of the National Medal of Science in 1966. Many people felt that his chemistry was so great that he deserved the Nobel Prize. Many chemists still believe that today. He was—as President Eyring was speaking just earlier today, he viewed himself, very much not in an egotistical way but in a scientific way, like Newton. Newton helped shape how planetary bodies worked. Now, remember your mind has the capacity to remember planetary bodies and their interactions. President Eyring’s grandfather, the chemist Henry Eyring, had the ability to understand what made chemical reactions work, what were the basic rules for engagement. But he also said the following in his book Faith of a Scientist—he said, “Since the gospel embraces all truth, there could never be any genuine contradictions between true science and true religion.” I’ll say that again: “There could never be any genuine contradictions between true science and true religion. I am obliged as a Latter-day Saint to deliver whatever is true, regardless of source.”

Your mind, your brain, is the most complicated object, according to science and everything that we know about your brain, that exists in the known universe. It is unique to you. It is absolutely, unequivocally yours. You have been gifted this brain. You have been gifted this mind. The simple question, Why have you been given this unbelievable gift? Why? So that you can think that you don’t have the capacity to learn? So you can think that somehow there are smarter people out there that are better than you or can achieve more than you? There are no smarter people than you. There are no better people than you. There is no one that can learn something that you can’t learn. You may not have an interest in learning it. That’s a different thing. That’s a good laugh. Each of you has been given this absolutely unique thing. It’s unique to you because of the nature of how biology—again, back to Dr. Eyring, the grandfather—science tells us so. You’ve been given this, the most complicated object in the universe, which has no limits to its discovery capability, to its creative capability, to its ability to understand, to its ability to project, to its ability to communicate. Now that you know that you have this object, what are you going to do with it? Well, I have a recommendation for you—a couple of pieces to the recommendation.

First, you’ve got to believe that you have it, that it is yours, and that you are responsible for what you do. You are responsible for the decisions that you make. You are responsible for the engagement of your mind. You are responsible for what you are going to do with the gift that you’ve been given. You are responsible. 

Second, you need to view learning not as a process that you spend intensely engaged in at BYU-Idaho for a few years, whether you’re coming in through the Pathway program, whether you’re coming here as a freshman, whether you’re transferring from a community college, or however it is that you ended up here. This is not where you learn, per se. This is where you learn how to learn at the highest possible level so that you can spend the rest of your life—and I know you’re going to be really sad when I tell you this—learning. Learning about your faith, learning about God, learning about God’s creation, learning about who you are, setting yourself on a path of uniqueness, setting yourself on a path of, What is the unique thing that I’m going to do with this unique opportunity on earth to take this unique object, my brain, my mind, and move it forward in a way where I can go and be a part of learning how to do anything? Now, anything doesn’t mean everything. That’s not the way that it works. Learning how to do anything, anything that you see back to the notion of the idea of the principle of improvement—going back to the basic notion of the principle of improvement and basically saying that you’re going to take your gift, your mind, your learning, your lifelong learning, your processes, the things that you initiated here at BYU-Idaho—and you’re going to work to improve everything: your communities, your families, our nature of science, our understanding of science, our understanding of things, the design of things, the building of things. You’re going to work to improve. Whatever it is that you throw your energy to, you’re going to work to improve it with all of the energy that you have built around the principle of improvement.

My message for you, or my question for you, then is, What is your unique improvement? What is the one thing that you will take your gift, your mind, your brain—this most complicated thing in the universe that you’ve been given, which has unbelievable power and unbelievable capability to understand anything, to advance anything, to take your lifelong energy, your lifelong learning—what is the one thing that you’re going to do to improve that thing which you focus your energy on? That’s really my message to you today. What are you going to do to improve what you’ve been given?

I went to graduate school at a place called the Maxwell School for Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. It was really a school for the design, development, maintenance, and evolution of democracies. That was the nature of the school. On the wall, going into the school, was the Athenian Oath, the fledgling democracy from 2,400 years ago in Athens and a few other places that were trying to emerge, trying to figure out how democracy could work. In the Athenian Oath it asks us whether or not we will in fact transfer the city—by the word city they meant democracy—more beautiful to others than it was left to us. So what will you transfer to others more beautiful than what was given to you? How will you create beauty? How will you create unique outcomes? How will you take your unique mind, become engaged in learning all that you do, and create a unique improvement? So that’s the message from Phoenix, Arizona.

PRES GILBERT: President Crow, you’ve richly taught us today about our potential and who we can become. We have a gift we’d like to share with you. I think they have this up on the screen. Part of what you taught us is who we are. This is a history of the Crow family going back seven generations, starting with you, right here, and going all the way back. You have your paternal line here and maternal line here. As you know, we value so much who we are and who we came from. Part of that is our family history. We offer that as a gift from us.

CROW: Why, thank you.

GILBERT: You also will recognize that part of our answer for who we are is our genealogy.

CROW: Yes.

GILBERT: Well, part of our answer is the divine potential you referred to today, in all of us. Today, the closing hymn will be “I Am a Child of God.” As we do here in this auditorium, we reflect on that divine potential. I hope all of us, you and all of the students here, as we sing this closing hymn, we can reflect on that potential as we hear the words of that hymn. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Infinite: Your Physical, Intellectual, and Spiritual Self

Audio of Michael Crow's BYU-Idaho devotional address, spring 2017