Outside the bubble, a world of challenges

As we enter the beginning of the academic year, one fourth of the University community is looking forward towards graduating and piercing the confines of the bubble that has shaped their lives for three years, while another fourth looks to enter the boundaries of Princeton. It is the time of the year when we need to be reminded of the reality of the world — a place of six billion people, 192 countries, and 6,500 languages. Outside the gates of Princeton lies a convoluted jungle of humanity plagued by hardship. The true test of all our lives will be how we navigate through this river of complexity and adversity. Will we pursue coexistence and advocate cooperation? Or will we destroy the obstacles in our path of self-gratification and self-aggrandizement? What is it that we will stand for?

There is a certain power that each individual holds as a determinant — perhaps only in a small way — of what form this world will take. When the wealthy and powerful hold hands in harmonious unison, it can result in the realization of great — not necessarily good — things. Often however, the collective cacophony of dissent from the disenfranchised, and their concerns are brushed aside. When it comes down to it, we must all ask ourselves: are we standing for what is right, or are we acquiescing to what is wrong and ignoring the voices that plead for our conscience? How are we using the power and opportunities that have been given to us?

It is difficult to grip our hands around a moral compass in a global society where money is considered sacrosanct, and morality understood as a quirky byproduct. Somehow, we have been persuaded that morality is a novelty, worth preserving if only to pass by and observe at some museum for the concepts of the simpleminded. We scoff at notions of righteousness. Idealism? It belongs with the naïve minds of this world. Trying to make the world a better place? Just another trite cliché. How have the fundamental motivations of righteousness and wrongness been displaced from our consciousness? How have they been replaced by a system of callous realism and greedy worship of materialism?

Instead of dwelling on the severe chasm between the rhetoric of inclusiveness and the realities of exclusivity, we ponder the philandering of a sexually frustrated political leader. Somehow we are more outraged by a cigar than by our complicity in the massacre of 800,000 Black Africans. Somehow we are more outraged by the poor taste of words by a late night talk show host (Bill Maher, Politically Incorrect) in praise of the 'courage' of suicide terrorists, than by the support of the West's moral leader (Reagan) for barbaric death squads and terrorists in Nicaragua. It dominated the headlines when it was believed that Martha Stewart may have received prior notice of losses when she sold stocks in ImClone. But where was this story in the news, in the headlines: "3 billion people survive on less than $2 per day." I think I missed picking up the newspaper that day. For that matter, I must be misreading the newspaper everyday, because I have never seen that leading headline. I don't hear the concern in our media that one of the leading causes of death in the world is a disease (TB) that we a have a cure for but won't share.

Where is our sense of morality? Where are our guiding principles? Somehow the realism and materialism that dominate our society, especially in the West, dictate that pursuing what is right is appropriate only when it coincides with our 'interests'. Instead of pursuing what is right, we leave it to our system of personal material greed to check each other into some type of societal balance (i.e. the free market). Yet it is the interest of every human being who shares this planet with six billion other souls to pursue what is beneficial for all of humanity, and to stand up for equality, and against injustice. This means that wrong must be opposed not out of convenience or ease but out of conviction. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." We must determine were we stand, and stick by those convictions even in the toughest of times.

The vast majority coming out of our elite Ivy League institutions in the powerful West will achieve success. Yet, what is this success if it is not shared? What is the worth of this success if we do not use it to further the aims of equality, freedom, justice, and tolerance? Not everyone needs to live with the austerity of Gandhi, or in the shadow of Martin Luther King. Hopefully, however, we will live by the principles they preached. Our world is imperfect – too imperfect. It is permeated by the harshest kind of oppression, severe inequality, and unacceptable poverty. It needs to change, but we must realize that the change will only come from us, the human custodians of this world.

Taufiq Rahim is a Wilson School major from Vancouver, British Columbia.