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

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although the scale and context are different for us. What is interesting I think is to observe that he seems to be reacting today in somewhat the same way as in past predicaments. One such reaction is to turn his back on the whole thing. This is the oldest of all responses to situations with which we feel unable to cope. We pull the sheets up over our heads in the hope that the shadows on the wall will go away. Some of our young folk today think they invented the technique of dropping out. It may be that in older and simpler societies it was possible to live in honest isolation from the community around one. But to pretend that in today ' s highly inter- related and inter-dependent world such detachment is possible let alone morally valid is to perpetrate a fraud and a delusion. Please do not misunderstand me. It is perfectly legitimate that at times in our lives we should wish to draw aside from the mainstream of events so that we may think through our next steps in relative detachment. But that is a totally different thing from refusing to take any reponsible role in life and then attempting to validate our refusal with philosophic argument. I do not for one moment believe that the option of deliberate disengagement from the challenges of life is one that will appeal to any graduate of Brentwood. However, there is a second and on the surface at least more excusable response we can make to the problems of the world around us. Having assessed their scale and complexity we can decide that, much as we would like to become in- volved with their resolution, our own resources are too limited and frail to permit our making any significant con- tribution: so that rather than doing some one thing, however modest, we do nothing at all. We fail, in other words, to lend what have been described as the stubborn ounces of our weight. Essentially we decide to leave it to others, and you see the trouble with this response is that more probably than not the others are leaving it to us. Indeed I am tempted to say there are more people today leaving more things to more others than ever before in the history of human affairs. And so in the event nothing gets done at all and sooner or later this or that problem becomes so critical that government of one kind or another is forced to step in and take over. And this of course is where the trouble starts. Because when, through our own default, or our fears about our own 17

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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

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inadequacies, we allow the government to enter some further area of our lives, we will find we must surrender in return a portion, however small of the liberty of choice and action we have accumulated over so many years and with such infinite struggle and suffering. So that history would appear to be moving through a full circle. The very variety and com- plexity of the society which free man has created is forcing him to turn again to new masters — whom we call the state — to free him from the burdens of his own genius. And I might just say in passing you will not find the demands of this new taskmaster any less exacting because you have the option every few years of putting him back in power. What I am trying, most inadequately perhaps, to suggest to you is simply this: That to you who are graduating today and to those who will follow you through this school in the years immediately ahead belongs a challenge of immense proportions and ex- citement, and with, perhaps, lasting implications for the future of mankind. For over 400 years western man has struggled to liberate his mind and his imagination so that they might be free to soar to the ultimate heights of human accomplishment. The crisis we face today is due not to the failure of that struggle but paradoxically to its success and to the fruits of that success. Paradoxically the challenge that confronts you therefore and the society of which you will form a part is not whether to continue man ' s exploration and conquest of the physical world around him because this will proceed at an accelerated pace whether you like it or not. Your challenge is rather to ensure that this new knowledge and invention are adapted and disciplined not merely to man ' s profitable convenience but also and pre-eminently to the enduring benefit of his total environment, and of this spiritual climate necessary to his self -fulfilment as a creature of divine invention. And since, in the last analysis what we are taking about is a moral choice, it can be resolved not by the actions of governments as such but only in the consciences of individual men and women. Your graduation today then marks what I hope will be the commencement of a total and running commitment to wrestle with the problems of your times and in doing so to 18