What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire

It was May of this year. North Carolina. The University thereof, in fact. At Chapel Hill. Rah, Rah, Car’lina-lina and all that. Sunday. Commencement Day. Mother’s Day. My elder daughter, Hannah, was there, dressed in cap and gown and not-quite-sensible shoes, commencing with a few thousands of her peers. I’m pretty sure I saw her, sitting in that sea of sky-blue youth. She called across the stadium on her cell phone to tell us where she was. Next to the girl with the big red balloon. That narrowed it down. But I can’t be sure. I was pretty far away. In more ways than simply the spatial.

Madeleine Albright was there too. Former ambassador. Former Secretary of State. Former lots of things. Currently professoring and CFRing and Board of Directoring and Hillary-Campaigning her ass off, it seems. She was there to pick up an honorary doctorate of laws degree. But she was nowhere near the girl with the big red balloon. She was up on stage. Coach Dean Smith, another honorary degree winner, may have received the most applause, but Madeleine Albright got to deliver the commencement address.

She started with a couple of jokes. Nothing fancy or forced. Appropriate to the occasion. From the book. She proceeded on to congratulations. And from there, she moved to guidance and inspiration. She spoke of “the shadows”, of tragedy and catastrophe, of political insecurity, social and economic inequity, and environmental instability. She spoke of religion and war and genocide. And then she said these words:

All of which is another way of saying: Class of 2007, you have work to do. You are the leaders of tomorrow, and it will be your job to pick up the baton so often mishandled by the leaders of today.

And then a most curious thing happened: not much. Where in a sane society one might have expected a rising retort of “Fuck you, Madeleine!” issuing from the thousands of young throats there assembled, what happened instead was… nothing. There was a pause. Maybe a mass sigh. As if something truly inspirational and profound had been said. But after a beat she moved on. I looked at my younger daughter, Kate. I made a face of disbelief. She returned it. We hadn’t misheard. But the moment had passed. I wrote myself a note on a mental sticky and pasted it to my brain.

Lest we give Ms. Albright too much grief (there are many people, I know, who still revile her for her careless words on 60 Minutes), I should point out that her declaration is pretty much standard fare for commencement addresses in our culture. I’ve attended my share of graduation ceremonies and I’ve heard this sentiment before, seriously intoned by some well-dressed representative of the “older generation” (which is us, now, baby boomers… it’s us…): well, we’ve pretty much fucked things up, kids…guess ya’ll are gonna have to fix it! It’s a sentiment that ranks right up there with that other commencement day golden-oldie, best voiced by Cat Stevens: Work hard boy, and you’ll find, one day you’ll have a job like mine.

It’s all bullshit, of course, but we’re long past letting such things as the truth get in the way of a rousing speech. Long past.

I’m like, ya know, excuse me? The kids have work to do? Madeleine? Have you looked lately? I mean, I can’t be sure about ALL of them, but I’m fairly certain that my kids are too busy getting the shit kicked out of them by this culture to do very much world-saving, thanks very much. After thirteen years in public school and four years in college, seventeen years of hard work and dedication serving the great lie of which Mr. Stevens (now Yusuf Islam) sang, they’re out in the world now just trying to make ends meet, trying to survive without getting swallowed up whole, working crap jobs for low wages and wondering just when that American dream is going to start. They’re hearing the tales of impending doom, the news of peak oil and climate change and economic meltdown and the fascist takeover and they’ve noticed – ahem - that pretty much nobody has a clue what’s going on or what to do next.

They have work to do? These young people who are mostly just struggling to stay afloat, who are trying to figure out who they are and what they can do in a world that is rushing ahead now at blinding speed, who are now learning, if they look closely at the situation, that all of the rules have changed, and that few, or none, of the expectations they’ve held, few, or none, of the assumptions they’ve carried, few, or none, of the plans they’ve made, can be counted on for much longer? These young people who are beginning to understand that the culture in which they were raised in is, in fact, quite insane, and that they’ve been lied to from the get go?

These young people? They have work to do?

How about this, boomers: we’re the ones that have work to do.

We’re the one’s who’ve been surfing the last waves of the “post-exuberant lifestyle” (to borrow a phrase from William Catton’s Overshoot) for far too long. We’re the ones who’ve been here long enough to amass whatever wealth and power has been available to amass (all of it, we should remember to point out, at the expense of the planet and the community of life). We’re the ones who’ve mishandled baton after baton after baton after baton.

It’s time to bend over, ya’ll, and pick those batons back up and get our asses back out on the track.

If there is work to be done, boomers, let it be ours to do. Sure, we’ve been sold the same bill of goods. We’ve been trapped in the same insanity. We’ve been cheated out of our rightful heritage as human animals walking the Earth. But we’ve also largely looked the other way, and ignored the obvious signs, believing the delusion and living the fairy story and covering our ears when the music got louder and more painful. Let’s at the very least step into our response-ability, and not foist things off on the kids.

Couldn’t we at least do that? Our parents have been called “the greatest generation.” Couldn’t we aspire to something more that “the Pepsi generation?” I mean… really?

Ms. Albright went on to speak of the heroes on United 93 who, upon realizing they would soon die, decided to act, and how it’s what we do with our time here that counts. She spoke of leadership and courage and meaning. She spoke of a “largeness of spirit and generosity of heart”. Some of it was really quite nice. Some of it was even wise.

And then she said this, a sentence so confusing in construction and meaning as to leave my head shaking in admiration:

It is not my intention this morning to place the weight of the world upon your shoulders-for that will always be your parents’ job.

Um… hold on a sec…wow. Could we ask for a better example of this culture at work? In my most generous mood, I could look at this sentence and say to myself, “Well, ol’ Maddy has seen the errors in her previous statement and corrected them, taking responsibility for the world situation off the shoulders of youth and placing it firmly on the shoulders of their boomer parents.” But that, in fact, is not what she did. First, because her previous declaration rendered it already too late. And second because, in throwing off her academic cap and gown and standing there before us all, dressed only in her Freudian slip, she simply told the truth as this culture lives it: it is always the parent’s job to place the weight of the world upon the shoulders of their children.

Don’t you love it when people tell the truth despite themselves?

Here’s what I would have said on that cool May morning, had I been invited to stand at that podium.

Rise up, yo, you graduates, you kids, you young ones, you youth. Join in the work of dismantling the absurd and destructive culture of Empire at every level. Join in the work of creating a new way of being here on this precious Earth, a way that actually takes reality into account. Do it because this is your world, your life, your love. Do it because you are working for Life itself. Do it because it’s what you came here to do. But do it only if you are called to do it.

Don’t do it because some confused boomer can’t be bothered to bend over and pick up the baton that they themselves dropped. Screw ‘em. Tell them that that’s their work to do. You’ve got enough on your plate just trying to pay the rent.

The forests are burning. The markets are crumbling. The poles are melting. The floodwaters are rising. If there are arks to be built, tell your boomer parents to build ‘em. Noah was six hundred years old, for Moses’ sake. An established husbandman. A man of means. He “walked with God.” The ark was not built by twenty-somethings working data-entry temp jobs in the morning and waitressing at Moe’s at night.

We boomers have some important lessons to learn as the current world unravels. Our young people need us to get our shit together. We have work to do.

We may wish to start by learning what the hell a cubit is.

Let’s go out with another bit o’ the Cat. A few words of wisdom from Catch Bull at Four. Sing along, boomers. You know the words.

Silent sunlight, welcome in
There is work I must now begin
All my dreams have blown away
And the children want to play
They’ll soon remember things to do
When the heart is young
And the night is done
And the sky is blue

Those words of commencement from Madeleine Albright on a Sunday morning in May?

Those were for us.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 9th, 2007 at 1:51 pm and is filed under Tim's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.