Uncritical Lovers, Unloving Critics
"... I am going to take you on a 600-year tour of history, beginning some three centuries ago and stretching three centuries into the future. Such a tour might present some difficulties for a qualified historian, but it is a mere finger exercise for a practiced commencement speaker."
He starts with a brief look at history, going back to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, describing some of the ingredients that led humans to believe that they could have a hand at shaping their lives and institutions - the identification of cause-and-effect relationships, transportation and communication that enabled people to see the varied nature of human customs and institutions in other cultures, etc.
The last paragraph of the "history" section is great:
Men can tolerate extraordinary hardship if they think it is an unalterable part of life’s travail. But an administered frustration – unsanctioned by religion or customs or deeply rooted values – is more than the spirit can bear. So increasingly men rage at their institutions. All kinds of men rage at all kinds of institutions, here and around the world. Most of them have no clear vision of the kind of world they would want to build; they only know they don’t want the kind of world they have.
He then goes into a fictional account of the future (made possible by some pills he was given by a Cornell Scientist, who wasn't sharing his secret because he found his capacity to know the future rather profitable)...
"...But as one twenty third century scholar put it, "The reformers couldn’t have been less interested in the basic adaptability of the society. That posed tough and complex tasks of institutional redesign that bored them to death. They preferred the joys of combat, of villain hunting. As for the rest of society, it was dozing off in front of the television set."
The twenty third century scholars made another exceptionally interesting observation. They pointed out that twentieth century institutions were caught in savage crossfire between uncritical lovers and unloving critics. On the one side, those who loved their institutions tended to smother them in an embrace of death, loving their rigidities more than their promise, shielding them from life-giving criticism. On the other side, there arose a breed of critics without love, skilled in demolition but untutored in the arts by which human institutions are nurtured and strengthened and made to flourish. Between the two, the institutions perished.
The twenty third century scholars understood that where human institutions were concerned, love without criticism brings stagnation, and criticism without love brings destruction. And they emphasized that the swifter the pace of change, the more lovingly men had to care for and criticize their institutions to keep them intact through the turbulent passages.
In short, men must be discriminating appraisers of their society, knowing coolly and precisely what it is about the society that thwarts or limits them and therefore needs modification. And so must they be discriminating protectors of their institutions, preserving those features that nourish and strengthen them and make them more free. To fit themselves for such tasks, they must be sufficiently serious to study their institutions, sufficiently dedicated to become expert in the art of modifying them.
Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too?
Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society
What do you think? What will it take to ensure the future of your "institution"? Are there other types of people besides the uncritical lovers & unloving critics? How do you deal with them?
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