"My anxieties have anxieties"
President Harold Shapiro's Commencement
address, delivered on May 30
Commencement is always a joyous milestone, not
only for the graduating students but for their
families and friends, their teachers, and all who
have nurtured them, mentored them and cherished
them.
Our justified pride in the achievements of
today's graduates is buoyed up even further by our
feelings of hope, of anticipation and of optimism
as we welcome the next generation of leadership to
the challenges and opportunities we all face. It is
with great pleasure, therefore, that I join with
all of you in celebrating the achievements of
today's graduates.
I want to speak about anxiety and ethical
controversy. Moreover, I will advance the notion
that ethical controversy and at least a certain
type of anxiety may be a very good thing.
The particular anxiety I have in mind is a moral
anxiety, or a certain anxiousness or uneasiness
regarding the nature of the moral responsibilities
that accompany our rapidly expanding knowledge of
the natural world, our developing moral
sensibilities and our ever larger accumulation of
technology and resources.
The anxiety I wish to speak about, therefore, is
not the everyday anxiety one may feel about, for
example, taking exams or meeting deadlines for your
senior thesis These types of anxieties are real
enough, but not the focus of my concerns this
morning.
You may, however, remember the Peanuts cartoon
where Charlie Brown is complaining to Linus that he
is not only worried about his exams, but he is also
worried about the fact that he is worried. As
Charlie Brown explains, even his anxieties have
anxieties!
The moral anxiety I will speak about concerns a
deeper matter: namely, how we can build a better
future by constructing social and cultural
institutions and mechanisms that more fully reflect
the interests of everyone?
The purpose of my brief remarks is to suggest
that such moral anxiety and ethical controversy are
essential to the dynamic evolution of our society,
and each of us should consider them as welcome
companions on our life's journey. I believe that a
certain anxiety about society's current
circumstance is a necessary ingredient of both a
thoughtful life and our capacity to imagine a
better future.
Without such anxiety and concern, our lives
would never change for the better, and a life
devoid of ethical controversy or uncertainty about
how one ought to act means that one has ceased
taking moral behavior seriously. I believe that a
certain level of moral anxiety and a healthy, even
contentious, struggle on ethical matters is a very
good thing. They are omens of a healthy life, a
healthy society, and a cause of hope and optimism
regarding our future.
It is frequently the case, for example, that
widespread anxiety and ethical controversy
regarding some aspect of existing social
arrangements is responsible for initiating the
efforts necessary to bring about important and
desirable change.
Whether it is our moral anxiety that causes
change or not, the inevitable upheavals of change
itself--the redistribution of wealth, resources,
power and information that always accompanies
change--are themselves tremendously potent sources
of large-scale human anxiety and ethical
controversy.
One way or another, therefore, a certain moral
anxiety and ethical controversy are the constant
companions of change, and a high rate of change in
scientific, political, economic and social matters,
such as we are all experiencing in contemporary
life, can be expected to be accompanied by a high
level of anxiety and ethical controversy.
We have to accept the fact that in a world that
is changing as fast as ours, all thoughtful
citizens will have to share in the anguish of
finding the right moral perspective within which to
accommodate these changes so that we may all share
in a better future.
Each of us, as individuals, is invested with a
great deal of moral autonomy but also moral
responsibility. Indeed, the moral authority and
responsibility that is now presumed to rest on the
shoulders of each one of us is perhaps the most
significant aspect of modern life. It is both the
greatest source of our freedom and our freedom of
conscience, and the most important foundation of
our moral responsibility.
In order, therefore, for each of us to meet our
moral responsibilities and protect our freedom, we
must face and deal with the moral anxieties and
ethical controversies of our time.
In such circumstances all thoughtful persons
need to be anxious about just what we ought to be
doing, why we should be doing these things and what
objectives we have in mind.
For example, the extraordinarily rapid expansion
of the scientific frontier in the area of human
genetics is once again changing our view of
ourselves and introducing the possibility of being
able to extend our control not only over nature but
over human nature itself. Such developments may
require us to rethink such stable cultural norms as
the meaning of family and the relationships between
the generations. It will be a significant
challenge--full of ethical implications--to
construct the new social structures required to
give meaning to these new scientific
developments.
In addition to the rapid movement along the
scientific frontier, we are also at a moment in
time when many previous political coherences seem
to be shattering. For example, the world of easily
identifiable contending powers and ideologies seems
to be slipping away.
I grew up under the twin shadows of World War II
and the Cold War. It seemed easier then to
understand just who the major powers and ideologies
were that were competing for our allegiance. Our
contemporary situation has become much more
complex.
Given all these new complexities and general
uncertainty regarding our moral responsibilities,
the New York Times did a national survey on
the moral attitudes of individual Americans. The
results were reported in the May 7 issue of the
New York Times Magazine. Let me just quote
from the headlines of that survey: There is no
strong god, no strong (moral) rules and no strong
superiors, moral or otherwise; and Americans are
unwilling to follow anyone's party line regarding
how they ought to behave.
The reporter concluded among other things that,
unlike Socrates and Galileo, individual American
"dissenters" had no need to escape from society,
since society, in the sense of a common source of
authoritative rules, had, to some extent, already
evaporated. I would conclude that there is an
urgent need to take our moral responsibilities more
seriously than ever.
Whether it is new developments on the scientific
frontier or new political and economic
arrangements, all these changes confront us time
and again with new and anxiety-provoking
questions--questions about our place in the world,
the appropriate exercise of our free will and the
nature of our humanity. We are forced to wonder,
once again, just who we think we are, what we think
we are doing and to what ends we are doing these
things.
Interestingly, these are the same type of
questions that were prompted by the Copernican
revolution, when we found out that we were no
longer the center of the universe; or the Darwinian
revolution, when we discovered that we humans
seemed to be only one part of a vast scheme of
evolution; or by the Freudian revolution, when we
discovered that we may not consciously fully
control our personal lives.
What is so fascinating to me is that each of
these steps, which revealed to us more and more
about the natural world, generated great moral
anxiety and ethical controversy as they forced us
to reconsider the nature of what it means to be
human and the ultimate role and purpose of human
communities.
Indeed, since the earliest days of Western
history, there has been a pervasive anxiety about
how new knowledge would influence the future of the
human condition or affect the meaning and purpose
of our lives.
Are we, for example, destined to control and
exploit nature, as the Bible suggests--or do we
exist to praise and celebrate nature, as the Bible
also suggests?
And today, we strain harder than ever before to
define ethical guidelines that will help us to
navigate this floodtide of discovery--as we
struggle to construct new moral perspectives within
which science and technology can thrive in ways
beneficial to both individuals and society at
large.
You, who are about to become Princeton alumni
during this important rite of passage today will
pass through our gates to raise families, to follow
the paths of your careers, to lead your
communities--perhaps even your countries--and to
serve societies everywhere.
I hope that your experience at Princeton not
only helped you gain knowledge but prepared you to
eagerly confront, consider and debate the momentous
moral and ethical questions that accompany the
flood of new knowledge.
It is my belief that these issues will
ultimately determine the future of your generation
and the many generations to follow.
It will be your task to chart an ethical course
that encompasses the rich human diversity of our
nation and the complex realities of our rapidly
broadening global society. One of the important
distinctions that makes us human is the capacity to
put ourselves in the mind of another and to
understand what they believe, what they need and
what they desire.
This treasured human capacity is the source of
both our ethical responsibilities and
opportunities.
And in the midst of all the change, challenge
and anxiety, let me assure you that there is one
thing that we are not anxious about--and that is
how ready and able you are to undertake this task,
to push forward the boundaries of both knowledge
and understanding.
And so, as you leave this campus and disperse to
all regions of the nation and corners of the world,
remember that Princeton is here to serve as a
bright beacon in your lives, both searching and
guiding; a place to which you may always return
(either physically or in your mind's eye); a place
that needs the sustenance and wisdom of your shared
experiences to flourish and exist for the benefit
of succeeding generations.
I will close my remarks with the words of
Princeton's great 19th-century scientist, Joseph
Henry: "How short the space of an earthly career
and yet what a universe of wonders is presented to
us in our rapid flight through this space."
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