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My fellow citizens, good evening.
This is the sixth time we have reached out to you. Each time we have done so to discuss with you some matter that we believe affected the cultural and social interest of our world today and, I dare say, its future generations.
This again is a timely address. Whatever else people disagree upon today, they at least agree on one point: We are living in an era of profound upheaval and change. Change that reaches so deep and so far, no stone is left unturned, nothing is left untouched. Not even our ideals.
I need not tell you that the situation is very serious.
Wherever we look, whatever we do, whoever we ask - we are potentially confronted with the continous disintegration of ideals. It is a deceptively subtle, yet terribly erosive undercurrent that is threatening to destroy the social, cultural, political and economic fabric of our world.
We all know that a society without ideals is a society without an identity. And a society without an identity is a society without a future. A doomed society.
I want to talk to you plainly today about this development, the reasons for it and how to resolve it. In every crisis there is an opportunity. There is one here now, if we have the courage to take it.
Let me explain what this crisis is all about. And why I understand this crisis as a challenge.
Yes, we live in uncertain times, perhaps even in desperate times.
Finding security and stability is diffi cult in a world pushed ever faster forward by the irresistible forces of history and human invention. A world so fast, so competitive that 90 per cent of new products are off the market within two years of being launched. A world united by economics yet still very much divided by everything else. A world full of different cultures; lives fi lled with different ideals.
Take beauty for instance. Our society seems to be obsessed with the quest for physical perfection. But, as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What one culture conceives as the epitome of perfection will look quite different to another culture.
Or youth. In contrast to the past, when to be an adult was the ideal, youth is now idolized by western society. Although other societies worship old age, and although our society is aging rapidly, we stick to the ideal of youth.
Or love. And marriage. Arranged marriages make up vastly the higher percentage in human history, but have become unusual and morally questioned in the Western world. Whereas other cultures - anchored to the age-old rules of an arranged marriage - would hardly embark on a love marriage which to many of us still represents an ultimate object of endeavor.
The impression can easily prevail that there is no such thing as a common ideal, one that is meaningful to all cultures. But does that mean we need not search for ideals that give meaning to the new interconnected, globalized world?
Our present society has been shaped by the ideals of our past. The future will be affected by the ideals we choose now.
I do not promise you that the choices to be made will be easy. I do not promise a quick solution to our world's problems, when the truth is that we are facing the greatest challenges in human history. We have to accept this challenge. The challenge to research, reconstruct, reestablish, redefi ne and, ulitmately, reinvent our ideals.
rosebud no. 6
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