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Hon. Lois E. Hole
Accepting the Morehouse
Gandhi-King-Ikeda Award
Morehouse College Gandhi-King-Ikeda Award
Presented to her Honour Lois E. Hole
Grant MacEwan Community College, Edmonton
October 2, 2003
My dear friends,
Please accept my deepest thanks for the Gandhi, King, Ikeda Award. I have never felt as deeply honoured as I do today.
Last week, World Bank President James Wolfensohn told World Bank delegates, "Our planet is not balanced. Too few control too much, and too many have too little to hope for." Putting it a bit less tactfully, the famous entrepreneur Clint W. Murchison said, "Money is like manure. If you spread it around, it does a lot of good; but if you pile it up in one place, it stinks like hell."
Economic disparity must surely be the chief sickness that afflicts our world, the prime obstacle to a lasting, loving peace. As it stands, a privileged few enjoy wealth undreamed of in history, while billions must suffer under the soul-crushing weight of terrible poverty. This is not a status quo conducive to peace and brotherhood.
And even worse, it is a criminal squandering of potential. The world's poor, whether they live in the struggling developing nations or forgotten on the streets of the Western world's richest cities, have the potential to not only lift themselves out of terrible poverty, but to lead the rest of the world into a new age of peace, enlightenment, and brotherhood. We're talking about billions of human beings, an incredibly broad and deep pool of talent. Just imagine what an engine of economic, social, and cultural progress a rich, well-educated Third World could be. Just imagine how much the homeless people of Toronto, New York, London, or Edmonton could do for their neighbours if they only had the means.
I cannot help but mourn all the progress the human race has lost to poverty. How many brilliant young minds are withering this very moment because of malnutrition or lack of access to education? How many great composers, painters, scientists, and peacemakers will never see their tenth birthday, their gifts lost to the world forever?
The truth is, the poor people of this earth need our help. And since it is our children who have the potential to build a better tomorrow, part of our help must come in the form of investment in education. As one of my personal heroes, Nelson Mandela, once said,
"Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that a son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another."
This quote is a great inspiration for me, and reinforces my determination to support public education and public libraries here in Canada and in all the corners of the globe.
It is only through education and art — through music, through books, through theatre — that we will find the wisdom to trade hate for compassion, to trade competition for cooperation. Education and the fine arts engage the human mind, forcing us to think in new ways, forcing us to use our most powerful tool for progress: our imagination.
Albert Einstein himself once said that imagination is more important than knowledge, and history, I believe, vindicates his statement.
Dr. King, for example, had a pretty good imagination. In his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, he imagined a world where his children would be judged "not by the colour of their skin, but the content of their character." And when he accepted his Nobel Peace Prize, he went on to say, "I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."
Or consider the imagination of the famous explorer of the seas, Jacques Cousteau, who said, "If we were logical, the future would be bleak indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings, and we have faith and we have hope, and we can work."
And Charlie Chaplin had a great imagination too. In the late 1930s, he wrote and directed "The Great Dictator," a thinly veiled attack on Adolf Hitler. It was released in 1940, before most North Americans realized the full extent of Hitler's evil. In the film, Chaplin's character, a Jewish barber in the mythical European country of Tomania, is mistaken for Adenoid Hynkel, Tomania's ruthless dictator, and so the Jewish barber rules in the dictator's place. He has a series of misadventures, and at the film's end, with the people of Tomania still believing that he is the dictator, he gives an impassioned speech that astonishes the gathered masses. Here, in part, is what he says:
I'm sorry but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black men, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that.
…We don't want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
…To those who can hear me, I say "Do not despair." The misery that has come upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
…Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will! Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance! Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to the happiness of us all.
…Wherever you are, look up! The clouds are lifting! The sun is breaking through! We are coming out of the darkness into the light! We are coming into a new world; a kindlier world, where men will rise above their greed, their hate and their brutality. Look up! The soul of man has been given wings and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow! Into the light of hope! Look up! Look up!
What a beautiful vision, what an impassioned call for love and brotherhood. I love that speech, and I wish more politicians would echo those sentiments, for to embrace the grim alternative, hate, is to foolishly cast our destiny into the desert.
Love and acceptance, on the other hand, are like a garden, green and growing, lush and vibrant, sustaining our bodies and our souls. We, all six billion human beings, have a choice to make; will we live in the garden, or die in the desert?
Is it too much to ask for a desert turned green, or a lasting and heartfelt peace between all the peoples of the world? Is it too grand a thing to strive for a world without hunger, without injustice, without hate? I don't think so. I think we can build an Eden right here on Earth, if we have the will to do it.
I believe if we keep on planting seeds of hope and trust every year, the generations to come will sit under trees of peace and prosperity, sheltered from hate, from ignorance, from fear. Perhaps one day the Negev, the Sahara, the Gobi will be rich not only in vegetation and animal life, but in spirit; perhaps our deserts will become gathering places, living memorials to the triumph of love over despair.
Growing a new Eden here on earth means that we must first plant the seeds of compassion in our hearts. We must learn to accept the suffering and hardship of others as our own suffering and hardship. We must feel the loss of an anonymous Bangladeshi child as keenly as a famous and beloved leader.
Only then — only when we finally realize that the death of any human being diminishes us all-only then will we have the capacity to put hatred to rest and give birth, at long last, to peace, after a millennia-long labour. Only then will the soul of humanity be given wings.
The famous American guitarist and songwriter Jimi Hendrix once said, "When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." Gandhi, King, and Ikeda have shown us the power of love, and if enough people follow in their footsteps, then, as Hendrix predicted, the world will indeed know peace. Thank you again, my friends, for this singular honour, and thank you for all you've done for the people of our troubled but promising world.
Goodnight.
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