Monday, June 11, 2007

   Progress!
“This you may say of man- when the theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward he may slip back, but only a half- step, never the full step back.”- John Steinbeck

Long after the trends of our time have faded away , long after myspace, youtube or Paris Hilton, there will remain mankind's tenancy (as Steinbeck so eloquently said) to live, grow, create- and grow beyond those creations. That is, if time marches on, man follows just behind keeping time, unheeded by the skeptics who would just as soon halt the entire parade for fear that the next step lead to disaster. Cowards who hide behind their fears for the future or who preach doom and destruction (or worse! Complacent idiocy)will not, cannot impede progress, and mankind as a whole will carry on- for the better. The past acts as the tools we will need to succeed; just as snapshots of where we have been remind us of the places we will happily return- or wisely avoid for trips to come. The past is a compass, by which mankind guides it's steps accordingly. It is a map, and an old, well-loved book. The present is the road we walk- brave, uncharted at places, and time-worn in others. And the future? The future is our horizon- possibility. The future is a sunrise, a blank journal, a newborn child, - offering potential, and a kind of absolute uncertainty. The future is an unblemished opportunity to avoid the mistakes of the past- to forge ahead to a brighter tomorrow. It is human to err, and so it is natural to stumble as a society, but also to continue to advance in spite of temporary faults. Current trends will not stop
the progress of mankind as a whole, for trends are transient, as are we. When one trend dies out- another often opposite begins, and so balance is maintained.


What worries me for the future is that so many of my peers would just as soon predict the apocalypse as they would examine the larger ideas concerning an optimistic future. I realize that as I type this, many of the most open-minded of our generation would just as soon condemn their peers, and subsequent generations (because of what we AMEX students deem the breakdown of our IQ's and the build-up of our nukes) but are you not all free-thinking individuals? Will you not all one day take up your lot in this world to combat the ills you would so vehemently speak to be the doom of our society? Open your eyes, and your minds as well! If there is an evil in this world (in our society) - there is as much a good that balances ( or outweighs) it! Society will continue to progress for the better, current social trends be damned, current cynicism aside, (and yes) in spite of the Bush administration! For to do so is to be human. To live is to progress, in one way or another. For “...this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.”

(I'm genuinely sorry there isn't more, my speech pretty much summed up everything I have to say on the topic)
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