GEORGE KONR.AD
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Every adult is an idealist in a way; adults know they have obligations,
obligations they set for themselves. The opposite of the adult is the plas–
tic person, the kind of person who assumes whatever shape happens to be
advantageous. Plastic people are ready to change at a moment's notice:
with a minimum of coaching, for instance, they can master a whole new
vocabulary. They are like spare parts, easily interchangeable . That is what
makes them so valuable. From burnt-out informer to shiny paragon in
no time flat .
This is a dangerous time: words are falling into disrepute; everything
is jumbled together - character hash, memory mush - and no one can
take consolation any more in the idea that things will change. What is
IS.
Most people are surprised that nothing seems to be going the way
they thought it would: everything is chaotic, everything is a mess, there's
too much exc itement, too much on at once! Now someone has come
along and predicted the chaos is over, we're in for harmony, history has
come to an end . But then there's the problematic human race , a half–
wild, half-domesticated race capable of anything. Though fully cognizant
of the natural history of decline and decay , though fully aware of man's
endless rese rves of evil, I would still maintain that the people I most
admire are idealists who are wi lling to make sacrifices for the goals they
consider the most wort hy and who feel that they have a specific, per–
sonal mission in life, one they do not know in advance but decipher as
they go along.
Universities transmit values.
It
is not enough for them to turn out
apathetic specialists. The harm apathetic specialists can do far surpasses
their potential for good. Think of the engineers and businessmen - up–
standing citizens all - who place the most lethal weaponry in the hands
of any tyrant with the money to pay for them. Indifference, conformism,
a lack of professional ideals, an impersonal readiness to do anybody's
bidding as long as the technical means are available - people have to be
taught these things for major crimes against humanity to take place.
If
by some strange quirk of fate I were to find myself on a university
podium, I would spend less time initiating my students into the tricks of
the trade than inculcating in them a feeling of personal responsibility .
You have been entrusted with a life, I would tell them, and that makes
you responsible for yourself and, in your person, for the whole of hu–
manity. Responsibility has a way of popping up in front of you; all you
have
to
do is recognize it.
It
is not enough to be a scholar; it is not
enough to be an intellectual; it is not enough to comply with a set of
