Le Lycee Francais de Los Angeles - Actualites Yearbook (Los Angeles, CA)

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Dr. Scott Fraser delivering his Commencement speech Graduating class, Drs. Kabbaz, teachers and staff members, con- tinuing students of the Lycee, parents, families, and friends, I thank you for this honor to address you today at these commencement ceremonies. My daughter, Nicole, unfortunately cannot be here today but she extends her warmest greetings to all her friends and teachers here. I have taken my license as the guest speaker to permit me to shift roles. Normally, by vocation as a professor and psychologist, I would present some review of current knowledge in the studies of human behavior. However, today I will relish in the luxuries of being able to express some views from my avocations as a social philosopher and interested reader of literature, history, and the arts. Thus, I come to you to talk about some thoughts of Sophocles, Shake- speare, and Voltaire along with the related views of more contem- porary writers such as Michel Cervantes, Budd Schulberg, Arthur Miller, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. To dissuade you of thoughts that you are about to be dragged through dusty and semi-dusty pages of quotes from a basic course in Western Civilization, I will also venture onto the current stage and film productions of The Rocky Horror Show for a bit of a walk on the wild side. Some months ago I was spurred by Joseph Epstein ' s writings to reconsider the nature and value of a particular human characteris- tic, namely ambition. To Mr. Epstein. 1 am indebted for explications of many of the points 1 would like you to consider. The trait of ambition has always been suspect in recorded history. Most of you can probably recall the biblical explanation By that sinne fell the Angels. Yet over the course of the past century, especially in our culture, ambition has become increasingly at- tacked and derrogated. By some arguments, it has been nearly banished permanently from the list of virtues. There have been a host of sociological and psychological explanations offered for this apparent demise of ambition. We have neither the time, nor I am sure, the patience to review those proposed reasons this afternoon. Whatever the causes, the worst that can be said about ambition has been said and increasingly, unfortunately I judge, accepted. From my readings, the arguments against ambition have focused on three basic contentions. To begin with, it is said that ambition is often antisocial. Supposedly, the person strongly imbued with am- bition ignores other people. He or she becomes solely oriented to personal gain and thus socially detached. Ambition then drives the person to wish to rise above the masses and thus causes her or him to forget about the collective good. It makes you believe, the argument goes, it is a dog-eat-dog world and distinguishes you as wanting to be among the dogs that do the eating. Rivalry becomes M. Philippe Pochet, Attache Culturel de France your major emotion and you become somewhat, if not wholely, inhumane in the bargain. Many leading historical figures who be- came great through successful ambition are often judged to have really despised mankind at least a little. Secondly, it is said that ambition is inherently tragic in its conse- quences. It supposedly works on a person, eats her or him away, grinds one down to less than before because it is insatiable. By this contention, success spawns increasing aspirations in some expo- nential growth pattern. This then dooms the individual inevitably to failure. You can never satisfy all the goals you can possibly imagine and ambition, the argument goes, makes you imagine them all As So phocles wrote in Antigone: That greatness never Shall touch the life of man without de- struction. And lastly, but surely not the least of its theorectical ill effects, it is said that ambition is corrupting. By this argument, once one is roused by ambition, conscience goes into retreat. Morality some- how inevitably shrinks in the looming shadow of growing ambition. As Lord Acton is often quoted as saying; Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And the belief often is that merely a touch of ambition can achieve quite the same end. Ambition is viewed by this conten- tion as being linked inextricably with the trailing sins of vanity, greed, and the will to power. Whom the gods would make mad, they first allow their dreams to come true and all that. Thus, from these assertions heard repeatedly throughout history, ambition renders people insensately vulgar (like Sammy Click in Budd Schulberg ' s What Makes Sammy Run?), ambition leaves peo- ple pathetically broken (like Willy Loman in Arthur Miller ' s Death of a Salesman), or ambition makes people raving mad (like Shake- speare ' s Macbeth). Such is the virus of success as Theodore Drei- ser called ambition. My suggestion to you today is that all of these arguments against ambition are neither right nor wrong. They provide a useful list of cautions one would do well to memorize and recall regularly. They should serve as checks against possible deterioration of one ' s ethi- cal standards given that you are ambitious. Do not let yourself see others always as antagonistic rivals. Do not become enmeshed in continually rising, unfulfillable aspirations. And do not succumb to vanity, agreed, and the quest for power above all. However, having ambition is no certainty to produce either a good or a bad character. There is no question that ambition repels when it is in too great a disproportion to ability. It is sad when a person tormented by the need to rule an empire lacks the compe- tence to run a good hot dog stand. This is hardly a problem to visit