Brentwood College School - Brentonian Yearbook (Mill Bay, British Columbia Canada)

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The physical environment, which I know you have been taught here to cherish as man ' s faithful and necessary companion in the partnership of existence, you will see more frequently treated as some nondescript serf to be insulted, demeaned and if necessary broken into submission to man ' s immediate profit. Seeing all this and much else besides which will offend the sense of fairness, the compassion and wisdom which you have learned here at school you will, I know, feel not only sudden anger but also I suspect an impulsive desire to shatter the whole sorry scheme of things to bits and then, as old Omar says, Remould it nearer to your heart ' s desire. And let me make plain that this reaction is not confined to young people. There is certainly nobody here this afternoon of whatever age who at times these days is not overcome by a sense of frustrated rage at the sheer massive imbecility of the world and who does sometimes dream of starting the whole experiment over again with a new set of ground rules. One of the many myths popularised today is that discontent is an ache found only in young hearts. So believe me none of us who is older would wish in any way to moderate your determination to put as much right as you possibly can and as much as the world will stand. All, perhaps, that we do ask is that you first give some thought to what it is that has gone wrong so that you will not throw overboard those things that have served mankind pretty well until now and will serve you well also if you will but give them half a chance. Now as we look at this society into which you are about to step and in which so many dreams seem to have gone astray we are struck, I think by a rather curious paradox. Through countless centuries, as your studies will have told you, man has been engaged in a struggle to liberate himself from the oppression and tyranny first of tribal chiefs, then of priests and kings and latterly of dictators of one sort or another. At each new step along this path to freedom man has also learned that as he has gained his liberties he has had to condition them with certain self-imposed limitations. These restrictions have been found necessary not because they are good in themselves but because men and women, being human and therefore frequently selfish, cannot be trusted with absolute freedom. This system of liberty of choice, both in our economic and 15

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mark your progress, both up and down, for the rest of your days. It is traditional, in talking to young people at a ceremony of this kind, to encourage them to think of life as a road that sweeps inevitably onward and upward to some final summit of their aspirations: and indeed at the end of our days, and in retrospect, that is how we may judge it to have been. But I am sure your parents would agree with me that as you ac- tually footslog it through life it seems very much more like a game of snakes and ladders, so that just when we think we climbed to some final rung of knowledge or experience we are bounced down to the bottom to begin the weary ascent all over again. And this prospect, I hope, will not discourage you because struggle, failure alternating with triumph, learning from our mistakes so that we may climb a little higher the next time — these are the conditions that give life its savour, provide the challenge which is the condition of all human progress. As Browning said: We fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake. And so it is that while you and we have every reason to feel proud of your progress to this point, you should now, perhaps, be giving some thought to the proportions of the next and sterner apprenticeship that awaits you in the days ahead. And indeed, knowing you as I do, I am sure you are already doing this because for the first time in your lives the world beyond your families and beyond Brentwood is issuing something more than an academic challenge to you. As a matter of fact essentially what you have won for yourselves this afternoon is the right to exercise a proprietary interest in what happens in that world. It now belongs to you and, more important, you now become in part directly answerable for it. So perhaps it might be helpful if we enquired briefly this afternoon into what you are likely to find out there, and why. Well principally I suggest a very great deal that will arouse not only your deep concern but also I trust your rightful anger. For instance you will discover that many of the values which you have learned from your homes and from your days at this school are often abandoned quite cheerfully in the world outside if they appear to conflict with man ' s short term comfort and convenience. 14

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political options, and limited reasonably only by con- sideration for the equal rights of others we call freedom under the law and while you accept it today without question as being your essential birthright, I think it is important for you to realize that it is only in very recent times that it has been enjoyed by western man: and that even today, over much of the earth ' s surface, freedom under the law as we understand it is an alien concept. But as it has evolved in western society, starting perhaps with the Renaissance and then galvanised by the Industrial Revolution and as man has broken loose from the shackles which for so long held captive his inborn genius, suddenly a vast pent up reservoir of initiative and inventiveness burst forth upon the world and within a few generations has transformed it from a medieval society into the infinitely complex environment which we share today. And this vast and sudden outpouring in the products of human genius is accelerating at a rate which is well nigh terrifying in its ultimate implications. As a matter of fact in the ten years of the seventies when youwho graduate today will be laying the foundations of your business and professional lives, in these ten years there will be more new inventions, new products for you to adjust to and assimilate than during the entire period of 170 years from 1800 to this date. But unfortunately, and this is where the rub comes, this quite staggering rate of scientific and technological advance has not been accompanied by a similar progress in our un- derstanding of the moral implications of our own in- ventiveness. Because make no mistake about it, almost every thing that man invents does carry with it a moral implication, a choice as to the manner and occasion of its use, and in this regard we seem to have failed pretty dismally. We appear to have become too clever for our own good. Or to put it another way, we seem to have let our brains go to our head. And so with this contrast, this paradox between our technical competence on the one hand and our moral or spiritual inadequacy on the other has come this very un- derstandable mood of puzzlement and frustration indeed sometimes of despair, which all of us share and which is particularly felt by young people. Now this is certainly not the first time in his history that man has been confronted by this type of moral dilemma, 16