Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, class of 2011.
You are all aware that there is said to be an
ancient Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. I don't know what we did to cause the ancient Chinese to curse us,
but there's no doubt that we are all living in interesting times, and that the class of 2011 is beginning its independent
life at a point when no-one can really deny it any longer. Someone sent me an email the other day about what things were like
in 1911. It wasn't so long since the first car went on the road. Now, we have to wonder when they will run out of gas for
what might be the last car if we don't do something about it.
So, I'm going to use this occasion to
allow myself to wander through a little doom and gloom and touch on areas in which I am completely lacking in education. I
am untrained in science, economics and history, but I was fascinated by Ronald Wright's lectures in the Massey lecture series,
and thought perhaps a Canadian thinker was an appropriate reference for you, as you move along from your international education
in a beautiful small island. The lectures can be found in a book called A Short History of Progress,
and are really worth reading. His thesis is that whereas civilizations have always fallen, in the past they managed to fall
relatively separately. Today however, whatever our local cultural differences, we are involved in one global civilization
and when it falls, we will all fall together.
The image that has stuck with me most strongly from his
book was the image of Easter Island. I haven't gone back to the book to check it all out, because I don't want any boring
mundane facts to interfere with the story he left in my mind. You are free to go read his original and email me to tell me
I got it wrong. But essentially, the story I remember is this. Somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is an isolated
tiny little island. Nowadays, it is a must-see place when you are doing your expensive round the world cruise, because it
is covered in these fascinating giant stone sculptures, human figures with great big heads. I think someone has
proven that if instead of a cruise ship, you had to get to it by sail and canoe from the nearest piece of land, it would take
you about three weeks, and a pretty tough canoe. Centuries ago, a bunch of people got to it and started a happy little civilization.
Then they got it into their heads that the only thing that kept them prosperous was the good will of their ancestors, and
that this good will had to be courted and cultivated by carving statues with great stone heads to honour and commemorate
them. Then these stone heads had to be moved miles and miles to be set up in appropriate places. Some people have actually
speculated that they must have been moved by extra-terrestrials, because there seemed to be no earthly way of doing this.
But other analysis suggests that it was done by making rollers out of logs so that these enormously heavy statues
could be gotten down near the sea. So everybody started honouring and commemorating and carving these great big beautiful
heads and cutting down trees and cutting down more trees. I don't know when they started to notice that they didn't have as
much shade as they used to, or that the fruit and veg wasn't growing as well as it should have. Someone must have noticed
at some point that the last boat they had left wasn't looking too good. But they kept on cutting down trees and carving heads,
and honouring and commemorating until one day, some last woodcutter cut down the last tree. And basically, they all sat there
and starved in a wonderland of fabulous stone statues.
Well, you can see why the story appeals
to me. Here we are at a time when the oil is running so low they want to ruin great tracts of virgin forest in north America
to squeeze dirty oil out of sandy soil and then risk polluting drinking water for thousands of miles while they pipe the oil
to wherever they want it. We're at a time when our economic religion has been to let the stockmarket do whatever it
wants until we find ourselves in a so-called double dip recession - hey, I've never studied Economics, but isn't it at least
possible that this isn't a double dip recession, it's the beginning of a whole new type of economic situation that the class
of 2011 is going to have to live in and make some sense of? We're at a time when there are still some people trying to argue
that we don't really have climate change, or if we do it's not manmade, it's a natural cycle so we don't really have to rethink
our dirty habits which involve our greed for dirty oil and all our other comforts and toys...
I know,
guys, our generation let you down, and then spends all its time preaching at you anyway, right? But we are all living in interesting
times and there's no choice, we have to get on with it, and my generation has to hope and believe that you will do it better
than we did. My grandparents were small children in 1911. In some ways 100 years is a very long time, in other ways, it's
no time at all. But your kids may have to learn to live the way my grandparents used to live, unless you guys really come
up with off-the-wall science fiction stuff to replace the oil and create a new clean prosperity to replace the dirty one the
twentieth century used up in one single hundred years. And it really could go either way, I think. Super Science Fiction,
or back to small village life and everyone raising a couple of chickens and figuring out how to preserve the mangoes between
seasons.
But what can I offer you in these interesting times, other than doom and gloom? How about
the resilience of the human spirit? I look at Haiti, and see those poor people crushed by earthquake, and bereaved by cholera,
and I marvel at the spirit I can still see there in spite of everything. I am fascinated by stories of Japan after their earthquake.
If I began by talking about an ancient Chinese curse, let me end with the blessing of a lesson from the modern Japanese. After
their earthquake there was no looting. There wasn't even a whole lot of pushing and shoving. Think of SuperJs the day before
Corpus Christi or any other holiday. The place is mobbed with a bunch of us who are terrified that if the shops are closed
tomorrow we'll starve to death. In Japan, a few months ago there were people homeless and with no groceries and they queued
politely for a few things to eat. A Facebook friend of mine said he couldn't go back to his apartment but there were always
shelters where everyone was willing to share a bowl of Ramen. Someone said on the BBC that this all worked because from pre-school,
little Japanese children are taught that what really matters is that you care for other people, that we are all one society
and each of us is responsible for everyone else.
I hope that your international education in your tiny
island here has given you that blessing. That yours will not be the generation that cuts down the last tree, that it will
be the generation that realizes that the way forward will not be through greed and overconsumption but will be through caring
and sharing. That's the only way the human race will survive interesting times...
I wish
you many blessings.
Jane King Hippolyte
