December 20, 2003
Commencement Address at the
University of Georgia
By Betty Jean Craige
Good afternoon. Congratulations on your outstanding accomplishment. You are
in a position to create a stimulating and fulfilling life for yourself, to be a
leader in your community, and to help make a better world.
In December of 2003, the world needs everybody's help. Our national economy
is unstable. Our global society is in turmoil. Our planet is polluted and
overpopulated. But you can make the situation better.
I would like to talk to you about the emergence of a new conceptual and
social order in which our awareness of interconnections and interdependencies
will allow us as individuals to help make a better world.
Some sixty years ago wildlife ecologist Aldo Leopold wrote an essay titled
"The Land Ethic," which powerfully influenced both ecology and
environmentalism in America. In the essay, he presented nature as a system, an
energy circuit, which he called "the land." He viewed humans as
inextricable parts of the land. And he saw the components of the land-all of
us, human and non-human organisms-as interdependent parts of a whole.
Leopold's understanding of reality represents a fundamentally different model from the one that governed Western mentality for centuries.
The old model was atomistic, dualistic, and hierarchical. In the old model,
we separated spirit from matter, humans from other animals, culture from
nature, and intellectual life from politics. In the old model, we viewed
differences as differences in a rank order of value. In the old model, we
thought of ourselves-and our families and our countries-individualistically, as
independent of each other, competing with each other.
In the holistic model of reality, we cannot separate culture from nature. We
cannot view human activity as independent of the natural environment. Our
health depends on the land, Leopold argued, so we humans must develop
relationships of cooperation with the other organisms of our biosphere.
In his essay, Leopold observed that since the time of Odysseus, in the ninth
century BC, we humans have been expanding our ethical community to encompass
more and more diverse peoples. The ethical community is the group within which
there is interdependence. It is the group within which individuals cooperate to
enhance the group's well-being and consequently their own well-being.
Interdependence makes cooperation imperative.
At one time one's ethical community included only one's tribe-and certainly
not the slave class in the group. Then it included cities, and then countries.
The expansion was driven by the recognition of interdependence.
Eventually, according to Leopold, with recognition of our interdependence
with the land, we will include our natural environment in our ethical
community.
The expansion of the ethical community of the United States to encompass all
of its inhabitants has developed in stages. The Civil War emancipated the
slaves. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1920, enfranchised
women. Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington accelerated the extension
of equal rights to citizens of all colors. And in the past decade federal laws
have extended equal rights to citizens of all abilities. Finally our national
ethical community includes all the country's people.
Twenty-five years ago, President Jimmy Carter introduced the notion of
universal human rights, which I believe will be the twenty-first century's most
important moral ideal. In so doing, President Carter signaled the expansion of
our ethical community to include all the world's people. Our emerging global
society became our ethical community. And we became citizens of the world,
bound together by the recognition of our interdependence.
We have come a long way from appreciating only the members of our own tribe.
And we have begun to appreciate our natural environment as integral to the
stability of our global society.
The late Gene Odum, with his colleagues in UGA's Institute of Ecology,
implemented Leopold's "land ethic" in the development of ecosystem
ecology. In the twenty-first century, our ethical community will include all
the earth's inhabitants, human and non-human, and the soil, the water, and the
air. And in recognizing our interdependence as humans with our planet's other
components, we become citizens of the planet.
As citizens of the world, and citizens of the planet, we will be facing
extraordinary challenges in the twenty-first century. Violence will continue to
erupt in our global society, as globalization meets resistance from traditional
societies struggling to maintain their longstanding identities. We will have to
find ways to cooperate across national boundaries, even with our presumed
enemies.
So, on occasion, we will have to subordinate our own immediate interests to
the larger whole for the long-term well-being of our global society.
Pollution will continue to threaten the stability of our biosphere. We will
have to discover ways to reduce the damage we are doing to the land.
So, on occasion, we will have to subordinate our own immediate interests to
the larger whole for the long-term health of our species and the long-term
stability of our planet.
But that's what cooperation is: subordination of our own immediate desires
for the betterment of the whole, in recognition that in the long term such
action will prove beneficial to us.
What does this new model of interdependence and cooperation, a model based
on our understanding of nature, mean for us here, today, as
individuals-particularly as very fortunate, very well educated individuals?
The recognition of our interdependence implies responsibility not only for
ourselves but also for the whole of which we are part. Holism teaches us that
the actions we take in our lives have repercussions in space and time that we
cannot predict.
It teaches us that the quality of our relationships-in families, in friendships,
in professions, in national politics, and in global politics-determine our own
health and the health of the whole of which we are part.
It teaches us that collaboration with people unlike ourselves-with different
training, different cultural backgrounds, different interests-enables us to
accomplish more than we can by working only with people like ourselves, or by
working alone.
In our own lives we will have the opportunity for leadership in making the
whole of which we are part better. All we have to do is ask ourselves on a
regular basis: How are my actions affecting the whole?
Today, in whatever profession we may enter, we must think about the
implications of our actions for our global society. As we have learned so
painfully in the last two years, if our global society is unstable, our own
lives may be at risk. If people anywhere in the world experience injustice, our
own lives may be at risk. If the planet's air and water are polluted,
our own lives may be at risk.
And in our communities, our nation, and the world, if we fail to alleviate
suffering, if we fail to provide education, if we fail to diminish poverty, if
we fail to find peaceful solutions to conflict, then our own lives may
be at risk. Whatever our motive for cooperation may be, it is obvious that if
we help others we help ourselves.
So we must ask ourselves on a regular basis: How are my actions
contributing to a better world? How can I lead others to make a better world?
Those of you who are receiving advanced degrees today have given yourselves
not only the opportunity to have a prosperous life but also the responsibility
to enable others to share in the world's bounty. So, if you keep your eye on
the big picture, and act to enhance the well-being of the whole, you will be a
leader-in your community, your discipline, your profession, your state, your
world, your planet.
And finally, remember: Life is short. Make it count.
Betty Jean Craige
University Professor of Comparative Literature
Director of the Center for Humanities and Arts at the University of Georgia
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