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Continued Commencement
26 May 2004 by Ryan Singer
John J. Chapman’s commencement address to Hobart College is as powerful and relevant today as it was in 1900. An excerpt:
I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait. They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard. “In a few years,” reasons one of them, “I shall have gained a standing, and then I shall use my powers for good.” Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought, his ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say. I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always. Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don’t be gagged. The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time.
4 comments so far (Post a Comment)
26 May 2004 | LNJ said...
OK, yes that is relevant, but I think that with 'Reality' TV and Shock Jocks and the internet and TV preachers this loses a bit of it's bit. 100 years ago, good people with good ideas may have sat on those ideas or been killed on a boat by Hearst or what have you, but today... Today I think there are to many outlets for all people (some with good ideas, others with ideas that make the mind spasm) to scream their ideas at the mountain tops.
On top of that, with the saturation of media and internet and the desensitizing of America, it takes a lot more to get people's attention. These days, to make a point of be heard you need to drive a white Bronco at 45 mph on the LA expressway, kill a school full of classmates, snipe innocent people from your car, or tourture and rape prisoners.
I know, I make an extreme point up there, but think about that for a second. With the rise of Howard Stern, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swagert and all the rest; with the rise of the internet and blogs and public access radio and TV people don't sit on their message anymore. Hell, MTV's 'The Real World' became a joke and a platform for every Puck wanna-be by the 3rd(?) season.
People, rarely, want to use a platform for good. You think The Gubinator out here in CA is using the Governor's office to do good? People these days want to speak in a public forum so that they can be seen, get famous, make a Go-zillion dollars and hang with Paris Hilton, the Olsen Twins, Carson Daily and the rest of Hollywood's 2nd coming of the Brat Pack.
Holy jebus... am I ranting here in hopes that someone picks up on it and I'll get to hang out with Lindsay Lohan and her 'posse'. Oh, but a boy can dream.
26 May 2004 | old enough said...
I don't blame you. Lindsey Lohan is quite the dish.
27 May 2004 | LNJ said...
OK, so... I have spent the afternoon pondering what I put up around noon time. I can see how I was off base.
The basest of human freedoms is the freedom to express oneself without hinder or fear of reprocution. The need to speak and be heard is something basic to ALL humans.
Encouraging that speech, be that speech agreed with or hated, is doing nothing but encouraging human freedom.
My rant earlier focused over much on mass media and the tripe that is forced down own collective heads daily. I do disagree with the oversaturation of a market with an idea/poster/ad for whatever crap is on TV or being sold at the Gap/WalMart/et al., but my disagreeing with that and my disagreeing with free speech was short sighted on my side.
I just wanted to jump in here and express that and... isn't that kind of the point of speaking, no matter what you have to say? You're free to say it.
Thanks RS!
27 May 2004 | John Dowdell said...
"Do what you will, but speak out always."
Hey, can I sneak a little time in there for listening to others now and then, and testing what they say, or do I have to keep blab-blab-blabbing on my own without every really learning anything new...? ;-)
